Category: Lawsuits

Posted on

June 14, 2021, City Council Meeting (held virtually)

Note: links to the video recording and the council packet can be found at the bottom of this post. Please note any errors or omissions in the comments. Anything noted between brackets was inserted by Clarkston Sunshine.

Meeting:

City Manager Jonathan Smith welcomed everyone to the meeting and reviewed the rules for virtual meetings as they were presented on screen. [Not read until after the meeting was called to order; video time mark 0:00:15.]

Agenda item #1, Call to Order (Video time mark 0:00:06):

Meeting called to order by Sue Wylie.

Agenda item #2, Pledge of Allegiance (Video time mark 0:01:47):

Pledge said.

Agenda item #3, Roll Call (Video time mark 0:02:10):

Sue Wylie, Al Avery, Ed Bonser, and Jason Kniesc were all present in Clarkston, Michigan. Eric Haven and Gary Casey later called in and joined during Item #4. Haven called in from Clarkston, Michigan; Casey called in while driving from Auburn Hills to Clarkston, Michigan. Luginski called in from Clarkston and joined under Item #8.

Agenda item #4, Motion: Approval of Agenda (Video time mark 0:03:21):

Motion to approve agenda by Kniesc; second by Avery.

Kniesc asked if there are any agenda items that they should not act on due to the number of absences so they could strike them now. Kniesc was also fine if they didn’t change the agenda. Smith said that they were talking about tabling the RPDD [Residential Planned Development District] proposal, Item #10a under Old Business. Smith thinks we need to have a full council to discuss it. It’s a large issue, and we would like to make sure that we have this ordinance written the way everyone would like to see it written so that we aren’t wasting council’s time. Smith said that we’d like to table that and bring it back at a future council meeting.

Clerk Jennifer Speagle said that she noticed that Haven had just showed up, but his microphone was on mute. Haven apologized for being late.

Wylie said she would turn the meeting over to Haven and noted that they were in discussion on approving the agenda. Kniesc said that there had been a motion and a second, and they were just discussing what items should be on the agenda since there are only five council members present now and some of the items are larger items.

Kniesc said that the other item that he had in mind was the southbound speed data, since Luginski had some passion around that item. It’s not a decision but a discussion. Wylie said as far as the speed data, the two people who put this together, CJ and Glen, were present and had planned on presenting. If Luginski wants to find out about it, he can listen to the recording. Avery thought since they took the time and effort to be here, they should be allowed to present.

Wylie asked Haven if Luginski and Casey had advised him that they were going to be absent, and Haven said they had not.

Speagle asked Haven to verify where he was calling from, and Haven said he was calling from Clarkston.

Smith said that before Haven joined, he had proposed that the RPDD proposal, Item #10a under Old Business, be tabled and brought back to a future council meeting.

Wylie said that the two people who made and seconded the motion need to agree to the changes because they moved to approve the agenda as presented.

Kniesc asked if it was just the RPDD or other items; Smith confirmed that it was just RPDD.

Kniesc amended his motion to include tabling the RPDD; Avery seconded.

Motion to approve the agenda passed unanimously.

Gary Casey joined the meeting and said that he voted yes on approving the agenda. Speagle asked where he was calling from, and he said that he was on the road and driving through Auburn Hills, Michigan on the way to Clarkston, Michigan.

Agenda Item #5, Public Comments (Video time mark 0:08:53):

Haven said that the next item on the agenda was public comments and he wanted to preface it a little bit to set a tone. He thought it was important to do this for public comments. Comments always need to be brought with respect. A lot of times various ones of us don’t have the whole picture. It’s easy to be presumptive and we don’t want to be that. We want to be able to agree to disagree. We don’t want to load our questions. We don’t need “do you still beat your wife” kinds of questions. We don’t want to put a straw man in place and knock him down. We want to seek truth in what we are doing here and do it respectfully to everyone involved. Haven said he knows you appreciate this; this is really the ground rule for good human relationships. We’ve all been in sessions in different organizations over time where these basic principles of human interaction were not honored. We don’t want that to be the case in Clarkston. We always want to be respectful of each other going forward. With that in mind, Haven asked if there were any public comments to be limited to three minutes, and he asked Speagle and Smith to monitor that. Speagle said that she would give a warning when there is one minute left.

Chet Pardee said he had public comments with no questions as follows:

    • Thank you, Mayor Haven, for suggesting to citizens who seek answers to questions to go to city hall and ask, rather than expect answers to questions raised in city council meeting public comments. Thank you, City Manager Jonathan Smith and City Treasurer Greg Coté, for answering my questions on 06/03/21 and 06/09/21. The questions to which I sought answers are listed at the end of these comments.

    • The city is out of money and has insufficient funds to spend on required infrastructure repairs, mainly streets and sidewalks. The current budget ending June 30 included $244,000 for capital expenses and the proposed budget starting July 1 includes $55,000. COVID did contribute to the required reduction when city council put paid parking on hold. This eliminated approximately $80,000 in revenue which has been used in recent years for repairs of streets and sidewalks and parking lots. But the reason for the significant reduction, as confirmed by Jonathan and Greg, is that the City has no funds for capital projects beyond the $55,000 proposed budget with the minimum required fund balance.

    • The RAMP [Road Asset Management Plan] report shows that we need to spend $80-100,000. The Capital Improvement Plan says we ought to be considering to spend $213,000, $617,000, and $578,000 in future years. Not sure that council members fully understand their responsibility to provide needed revenue. Pardee noted that council members had a copy of his comments.

    • Many residents, me included, feel that council has made poor spending choices, which have magnified the current problem. The city has borrowed from the sewer fund to renovate city hall and borrowed from the water fund to pay for the Oakland County Interceptor Sewer.

    • Most Clarkston property owners do not understand that one-third of their property taxes go toward repayment of bond debt which was spent for sewer, water, and street repairs in the past. The city’s 2020 audit shows/documents of 11 mills for operating, five and a half mills for debt.  Greg related in the last council meeting these bond payments expire in 2023 and 2024. It may be possible to treat these bond payments similar to a school levy renewal to provide funds for infrastructure repairs and maintenance without an increase in taxes to property owners.
    • I recommend a facilitated workshop for city officials and council members to better understand the city’s financial situation and understand alternative solutions.

Haven asked if Pardee beat the clock. He said he believed so and Speagle confirmed that. Haven congratulated Pardee. He thought the suggestion of a workshop was a good one, but it might be a bit tight this year, given that we are coming to the end of our fiscal year. He thanked Pardee for the suggestion and thought maybe it could be done next year.

Wylie also said that she thought that the facilitated workshop was a good idea. We can’t do it this fiscal year, but she didn’t think we should be waiting if what Pardee said is correct, and she has some faith in his abilities as a financial person. We do have financial problems. We’ve cut back a lot this year and we need to look at it sooner rather than waiting until next year. Sometime, as soon as possible, we should do a financial workshop and understand better what the city is going through because it really concerns her when she hears that we are running out of or don’t have enough money. We are cutting the budget down, down, down. We can’t do these capital improvements, can’t fix the streets. How long does this go on? There are things that we need to seriously look at.

Smith said that he’s talked with Pardee offline, and he also would support a workshop. It’s a good idea at any time to sit down and make sure that everyone has a full grasp of the lay of the land, so they know where things stand. We can talk about how we got here, and clearly COVID and the lawsuit had a role in this. Income was down and expenses were up. You know from your own individual checking account that when revenues are down, and expenses are up, you will feel that really quick. He fully supports a workshop, and we can do that as a result of the facilitated event. It’s a good thing to do and we can look into times where we can get that organized.

Smith wanted to correct one thing in Pardee’s comments. Pardee said that the city borrowed from the sewer fund to renovate city hall and borrowed from the water fund to pay for the Oakland County Interceptor sewer repair. That’s reversed. The city borrowed from the water fund to renovate the city hall and borrowed from the sewer fund to pay the Oakland County Interceptor sewer cost, so the budget includes $22,000 every year to repay the water fund, not the sewer fund. The payback of the sewer fund is coming from the residents, $42 per quarter, for four payments in one year. You said that it was for two years; it’s just for one year. Four quarterly payments in one year to repay that and our sewer fund will be built back enough to be used should we have another sewer bill or sewer repair of some sort. Pardee thanked him for the corrections and said he would make corrections.

[Note: Mr. Pardee submitted corrected written comments after the meeting and copied Clarkston Sunshine. The corrected comments are reproduced in the comment section at the end of this post.]

No other public comments.

Agenda Item #6, FYI

Item 6a – Vaccine Clinics, Vaccine clinics available at Groveland Fire Department, June 15th, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and Springfield Fire Station 2 on June 17th from 3:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. (Video time mark 0:17:35; page 4/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that there are two opportunities for those who want to get a vaccine and have not had the opportunity to do so. One is at the Groveland Fire Department on Dixie Highway on June 15th from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, and at Springfield Field Station on June 17th from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

Speagle said that she received an email with additional information. She wanted to let everyone know that they will be distributing the Pfizer vaccine to anyone 12 and over. Persons under 18 need to be accompanied by a parent or guardian, and if you want the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, you can get that, but it has to be by request only.

Item 6b – 41st Annual Concerts in the Park, Concerts in the Park dates, headliners, and sponsorship opportunities (Video time mark 0:18:40; page 5/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that there was more good news that we’ve been waiting for – Concerts in the Park are being reinitiated by the Chamber, presented by McLaren of Clarkston, and they will be on June 11th, June 18th, June 25th, July 2nd, July 9th, and July 16th. Six opportunities to gather in the park and enjoy the concerts.

Agenda Item #7, Sheriff Report for May 2021 (Video time mark 0:19:10; page 7/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that the report is in the packet, and he didn’t know if Lieutenant Hill was on the call or not. The data is for the month of May. Haven asked if Lieutenant Hill was on the call, and there was no answer.

Agenda Item #8, City Manager Report (Video time mark 0:19:44; page 9/82 of the council packet):

Haven asked if there were any questions regarding the city manager’s report.

Smith asked to add one more item regarding the sign auction. As you know, the city street signs have been replaced. There are more to put up, but those tend to be things like parking signs, speed limit signs, etc. Those will go up over the course of the summer and Jimi will be installing them, not the sign contractor, so we will have to work that in as time permits in Jimi’s schedule.

The old street signs that were taken down were the stamped, heavy duty steel signs from the 50s and 60s. Those will be auctioned off. With the help of the sign committee and others, we are getting the signs ready for auction, and they hope it should be ready in the next week. Smith will keep people posted by way of his weekly email, but there will be a little auction. We will have some fun with it, and you can get a sign with your street name on it.

Wylie asked if it would be a virtual or online auction, and Smith said it would be virtual, similar to eBay. You will be able to bid, and someone can bid you up, and you will have to revisit it. There will be a closing point, and whomever is the high bidder at that time will win. Wylie asked if there are some minimum bids, and Smith said yes. The proceeds of the auction will be reinvested in more sign poles because we need more sign poles to replace all the parking and speed limit signs.

Luginski entered the virtual room; he said he was tied up on a business call with a customer in California and apologized for being late. Haven asked where he was calling from; Luginski said he was calling in from Clarkston.

Haven noted that everyone was here now.

Agenda Item #9, Motion: Acceptance of the Consent Agenda as Presented (Video time mark 0:22:40):

    • 05/10/2021 Final Minutes (page 10/82 of the council packet)
    • 05/24/2021 Draft Minutes (page 12/82 of the council packet)
    • 06/14/2021 Treasurer’s Report (page 14/82 of the council packet)
    • 06/02/2021 Check Disbursement Report, 05/01/2021 to 05/31/2021 (page 15/82 of the council packet)
    • Carlisle/Wortman invoices, May 2021 (page 17/82 of the council packet)
    • Thomas J. Ryan, PC invoices, May 2021 (page 19/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that he would entertain a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented. Haven said that for those who weren’t familiar with this device, it’s a collection of a lot of information that can be authorized or approved all in one fell swoop. There are minutes and the Treasurer’s report, the final minutes from May 10th, the draft minutes form May 24th, and the Treasurer’s report for June 14th. If anyone has anything they would like to pull out of this and not approve all together as a group they can do that, but otherwise, he will entertain a motion to accept them all – lock, stock, and barrel.

Motion to accept the consent agenda as presented by Wylie; second by Avery.

Wylie had a question about a legal bill. She didn’t know if city attorney Tom Ryan was on the call, but Smith might be able to answer. On May 13th, it says phone call with city manager regarding miscellaneous HDC [Historic District Commission] issue on Main Street – Wylie asked Smith to explain what the issue was on Main Street that required his input. Wylie recognized that it was about a month ago. Smith said he would have to think about it and couldn’t recall off the top of his head. If he remembers, he will bring it up in this meeting.

Wylie said that it seems like we are getting an awful lot of legal bills being generated from the HDC, and a lot of them involve a fence or front porch. In some ways, Wylie wished we could get HDC to perhaps report to us what their legal issues are, what’s going on. It seems like every month we get “177 North Main,” “177 North Main,” going on and on and now it looks again like we’ve got 519 and 520. She assumes this is Washington Management, the case that’s being reinstated and read from the invoice – “The review of appellant’s motion to set aside dismissal and reinstate claim of appeal.” Smith said they missed a deadline to turn in some paperwork, but they did in turn reply with the needed paperwork, so it’s been reinstated. There was a period where it looked like it might be dismissed because the paperwork had not been filed, but that’s all a moot point now because the paperwork was submitted. Wylie said that Ryan had mentioned that before and she wasn’t clear.

Wylie said that if Smith remembers what the May 13th call was about, that would be helpful to know. Smith said that he did remember, and it was to find out the status of 177 North Main. Ryan sent Smith a status update on the case and the paperwork is just being filed so Smith called him to find out what the status was. Ryan told Smith that the paperwork had been filed with the courts. No action was needed on Smith’s or the city’s part; Smith just wanted to find out what the status was – it’s still an active case and is going forward to the circuit court for appeal.

Wylie said that there are an awful lot of legal bills generated on just that, and her recollection is that it’s just a fence. There’s an awful lot generated by HDC, and she’d be interested in having HDC come to council and report to us on why we have so many legal bills that are coming from them. She wants to know more about it.

Smith said that there’s another lawsuit about to start in circuit court, and that’s for 42 W. Washington. There will be two active lawsuits in the circuit courts, both are HDC-related matters, and Ryan is by default acting as our representative on both of those cases and incurring fees as a result.

No additional comments.

Motion to accept the consent agenda – Bonser, Kniesc, Wylie, Haven, Avery, and Luginski voted yes. Casey was muted and his vote was not recorded.

Agenda Item #10, Old Business:

Item 10a, RPDD Proposal [Note: this item was tabled and not considered at the 06/14/2021 city council meeting as discussed during Item #4 (motion to approve the agenda as presented), referenced at video time mark 0:29:06.]

    • Planning Commission Recommendation to Council – Align the RPDD Ordinance Language, Scope, and Standards with the Master Plan (page 22/82 of the council packet)
    • 02/03/2021 Memo from Carlisle/Wortman, Subject: Residential Planned Development District (RPDD) Ordinance Review and Recommended Amendments (page 24/82 of the council packet)

Item 10b, Short-Term Rentals (Video time mark 0:29:10)

    • Planning Commission Reply to Short-Term Rental Regulations (page 45/82 of the council packet)
    • 05/25/2021 Memo from Carlisle/Wortman, Subject Short-Term Rentals (page 46/82 of the council packet)

Haven noted that Item 10a was scratched and they were moving on to Item 10b, short-term rentals. The Planning Commission (PC) has done another excellent job of filling us in with background about this issue. A review of the history is in the packet in the PC’s reply to council on short-term rental regulations. Haven asked if Rich Little [PC Chairperson] would summarize, tell us where we are, and what we need to do next.

Little said that in the April/May timeframe, council voted to restrict short-term rentals to the Village Commercial (VC) zoning district. At that time, council asked the PC to do a little bit of work on three things: 1. Define short-term rentals, 2. Prepare regulations for what they are and how to regulate them, and 3. Talk about a way to phase out current short-term rentals in the R1 and R2 districts. Little asked if Ben Carlisle (from Carlisle/Wortman) was on the phone, and he was.

Little said that the PC has been through this several times with Carlisle/Wortman, and Carlisle has prepared a summary report and is prepared to walk through it quickly with city council. Little said that Carlisle has a bit of a deadline with another city council meeting to go to, so he will help him push through this as best as we can.

Carlisle said he got out of his other commitment, so he could be here as long as needed tonight. Carlisle said that based on previous direction from the city council, they went back to the PC with some regulations with regard to short-term rentals. This was reviewed by the PC, and they voted 5-0 to bring this language back to the city council for further discussion. Based on whatever direction is received tonight from the city council, they will take it back to the PC for actual draft language that would be part of the zoning ordinance. They will have a public hearing and then bring it back to the city council for its consideration.

They broke it down into two parts. A zoning regulation portion and a licensing portion. With regard to the zoning portion, it falls in line with the direction that the council gave to them. We are only permitting short-term rental in the VC zoning district. Short-term rentals will not be permitted in any other zoning district.

In order to regulate short-term rentals, we have to define what it is and separate that from what we consider long-term or just general rental. This was a lengthy discussion at the PC, and we decided that short-term rental would be anything that is 60 consecutive days or less. What that means is if you rent out your apartment or your home or whatever it may be for 61 days or longer, that would not fall under the short-term regulation and you would not be bound by these requirements. You could do a long-term rental in any building district and not be regulated by this. However, if you decide to rent your apartment out in VC, if it’s rented out for 59 days or less, you will fall under these regulations.

Part of this is to ensure safety, and we are putting in a provision that requires that all short-term rentals have to go through a Building Department safety inspection. Carlisle is still working with our “corporate counsel” [note: Clarkston does not have a corporate or corporation counsel; we have a city attorney] and the Building Department with regard to what safety compliance means, but it will go through some sort of inspection to insure that it is safe for renters.

We are requiring that the minimum stay is at least two days in a short-term rental, which would cover a Friday or Saturday night, and you cannot rent your short-term rental for anything more than 90 days per calendar year. Essentially what that means is you could rent your apartment for 45 weekends of two days total for a total of 90 days, but you could not rent it for 60 days of one period and 60 days of another. The total amount of time that you could rent out in a calendar year is a total of 90 days.

The last thing that was really important is that there are some existing short-term rentals in the Village, and we wanted to make sure that we were fair to those that are currently operating and how we eventually plan to sunset those uses. The PC put a clause in this that says that any short-term rental that is currently operating now would have to cease operations within twelve months. They felt that should give enough time for those operators to become long-term rentals and/or convert to another use or owner occupied.

That covers the zoning perspective.

With regard to licensing, this would allow the Village to track short-term rentals, regulate them as necessary, and fix any problems that may arise with short-term rentals. The key component of this is under “C,” which basically states that every short-term rental operator would have to register with the city and include property information as well as points of contact so if there ever is an issue, the police or sheriff’s office and/or city manager’s office, etc. could contact the owner and address any issues that may arise.

Carlisle thought that was all of the detail and was open to questions.

Avery wanted to know if these regulations related specifically to residential properties within the VC. He was thinking specifically of the Millpond, which has the exemption that it is VC. Are they subject to these regulations? Little asked if Avery was talking about the Millpond bed and breakfast, and Avery said he was. Little said that falls under a separate bed and breakfast ordinance.

Avery asked what determined what a bed and breakfast is versus an Airbnb. Little said in this particular case, they would be limiting Airbnb or short-term rentals to VC, so there would not be any in residential. However, if Bonser and others who have rented as an Airbnb wanted to rent their place for more than 60 days, that’s considered a long-term rental now by definition so that would be acceptable.

Avery said he wanted to wrap his head around the Millpond Inn.

Wylie said that the innkeepers have to stay to serve breakfast. There may be other requirements, but a bed and breakfast has to actually serve a meal, and short-term rentals don’t do that.

Little said that the operator of that bed and breakfast has to live on the premises, create the breakfast, and there is a separate ordinance for them with a separate set of rules. It’s just like if there are also ordinances to have a motel or a hotel in VC, with maid service and multiple units and several other things. This is strictly for short-term rentals.

Avery asked if we knew if the Millpond is doing that, are they living there and serving breakfast. Wylie said that she knows that they serve breakfast. Until COVID hit, Wylie knew that they were living there. She doesn’t know if they are operating now, but definitely before COVID, they were living there and serving breakfast. She’s had many relatives stay there and they were served an excellent breakfast. Avery said he’d reserved it for his daughter who is coming into town in August. He’s not sure if that’s what’s going on there now, but that’s a subject for a different day. Avery said he just wanted to get some clarification regarding who would be subject to this. Little said it would be strictly VC short-term rentals.

Bonser wanted to know how the committee came up with 60 days rather than the more commonly defined 30 days. Wylie asked if she could answer. She said that in the meetings, she was pushing for longer time periods. It doesn’t matter because it’s commercial, but there was a number both Bonser and another owner of a short-term rental mentioned that they were renting for longer periods of time, not just for two days or a week, but often for bigger chunks of time. It seems like that’s a more stable short-term renter, to have someone who is coming and staying for a long time, planning on moving, their home is undergoing renovation – that’s why. As Carlisle mentioned, that was a big discussion because we talked about going as far as 90 days but compromised on 60 days. Little said that is what happened.

Bonser asked if the apartments in the Village can rent for 30 days and be considered a long-term? It seems like you’re making this regulation for the short-term rentals, but then the long-term apartments could still rent for 30 days and less than 60 days.

Carlisle asked Little if Carlisle could respond to the question, and Little agreed. Carlisle said that while he would defer to the city’s attorney, defining a short-term rental in the ordinance, anything outside of the VC that rents less than 60 days would be prohibited because that would constitute a short-term rental and not be allowed in that zoning district. We clearly define the length of a rental as at least 61 days or longer outside the VC. That may get to your question about why not 30 days versus 60 days, but as Wylie alluded, we chose 60 days to allow flexibility because we understood there were some owners, some existing short-term rentals in the Village, that rent them out for two months because they have either people staying there for home renovations or for the summer or something of that nature. That’s why we went with the longer rather than the shorter, but the adverse impact of that is correct – anything less than 60 days outside of VC would not be permitted.

Bonser said that he saw on the legal bills that there was a phone call between Smith and Little about Senate Bill 446. Does that give some guidance to what we are doing here? Because from what Bonser understands, that’s the senate bill that is basically going to say that short-term rentals cannot be banned, so if you do implement this and the senate and house bills get passed, then we’ve wasted a lot of time, energy, and money on this, and it’s going to end up he would assume being allowed in form or shape. Little said that’s certainly a consideration. Last summer, they tabled it once, and council tabled this a full year ago for that reason, but at that time, they didn’t take action. We don’t know if they will take action this time. It’s heavily lobbied on both sides, and we don’t know where it’s going to go, but in discussions with Tom [Ryan?], his take was just keep moving on it because we don’t know when the outcome might take place.

Little asked if Smith had any discussion with the representatives from the legislature or not. Smith said no, but he wanted to clarify one thing. A year ago, the Michigan Supreme Court was carrying a case. It was thought that the supreme court might supersede the city’s ability to ban short-term rentals. That did not happen. Now, both the Michigan House and Senate have bills on the floor waiting for a vote to possibly take away the rights of the local municipality to ban these altogether in residential districts. The Michigan Municipal League spoke about this in their weekly call this morning, and they believe that both of these bills will fail. There is another bill right behind it that another senator is putting together as we speak, and it has a little bit more compromise. It still precludes the ability to ban in residential neighborhoods, but it does have some restrictions. It allows a local municipality to put some restrictions in place. This could all happen, but Little is correct, this has come up before and it’s been tabled and delayed and changed, and Ryan’s response is we should proceed ahead and see how this plays out in the Michigan Legislature but for now, let’s move ahead.

Haven invited public comment.

Pardee had a question about the administrative cost of managing this activity. Is there any estimate of those costs? It sounds like costs will be incurred at the Building Department, but will there also be costs incurred at city hall? Do we have any idea what the magnitude of those costs might be? Little said that the short discussion they had about that was that this is being limited by city council to only VC, and when you take a look at VC, the opportunity to have short-term rentals is very small, and so in that regard they thought the administrative costs would be very small. Little said that what they worried about more in the past was some commercial folks coming in, buying up houses, and running them as full-time Airbnbs. They were worried about regulatory costs with that because in some communities, that’s become very large.

Carlisle said that they also included a licensing requirement with a fee to be paid based on the annual resolution passed by the Village council. That fee is intended to offset any costs that are required to establish the ordinance and make sure that all the rules are followed.

Pardee asked how many units are currently operating in VC. Little doesn’t think that any are. There are only three and they are all in residential as far Little could tell. Haven told Pardee that he remembered a statistic that is part of the Master Plan that allocates different uses for land, and if memory serves him correctly, it’s about 6% commercial. We are about 50% residential and 30% water, and one of the smaller percentages is commercial, so that speaks well for the administrative burden as not being very heavy.

Haven said that this is a discussion item only, and we’ve had our discussion. He thought that he heard that the next step would be to formulate an ordinance. Carlisle said that if the council is comfortable with the language as drafted, he would put it into ordinance form, take it back to the PC, the PC will have a public hearing on the language, listen to public comment, and then make a recommendation back to council for potential future adoption.

Haven asked if that was Little’s understanding, and Little said it was.

Haven said we don’t need a vote and wanted to know if there were any negative comments for the PC to entertain. He didn’t hear any so he will close the agenda item unless there is an objection.

No objection was made.

Item 10c, Discussion: Main Street Speed Data (Video time mark 0:49:13)

    • Southbound M15 Speed Data for the period 04/1/2021 to 05/31/2021 (page 49/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that there is a lot of interest in this issue and noted that Glenn Gualdoni and CJ Savik were present, and he welcomed them. Haven noted that this is under the PC’s jurisdiction so Little should control the discussion.

Little said that most of the council had met CJ Savik at some point several months ago. She is the Michigan State intern in transportation planning who has been working with us for several months and has done a great job. She’s collected the data from the street signs, helped fix corrupt data, straightened out some technical issues, and finally, over the past two months, has put together 60 days of good data from the Main Street speed signs. She’s created a lot of charts and graphs for us and helped the PC understand what’s possible and not possible with these speed signs.

Glenn Gualdoni is another PC member who has also helped out with some statistical work, taking the data and putting it through some of the engineering hoops that he knows about, normalizing the data, and helping to understand what some of the behind-the-scenes things are.

They are both here tonight. Savik is the lead and should take the council through what she’s learned.

Savik thanked Little and said for those she’s met, it’s good to see everyone again. For those who don’t know her, her name is CJ Savik and she has been working with the PC for a couple of months looking at the speed data, mostly from the southbound M15 sign from April 1st to May 31st, 61 days, which is two months. Two months of good data is the largest period we’ve analyzed and looked at so far, and the period of time that we’re comfortable starting to make recommendations and conclusions about, which we can speak to later when looking at the data itself. The vehicle counts over that period averaged about 2,800 per day. The violator count (anyone passing that speed sign going over 30 miles per hour, whether it’s 31 or 65 miles per hour) is about 66% during this entire period.

Bonser asked for clarification – is it when they are passing the sign, at the sign? Savik said she believed so, and Bonser said that was a question he had the last time as well.

Savik said that what they look at is the average speed of the vehicles and the percentage of violators they see in the data while including the total number of vehicles overall for context. So, if 100% of people are violators, but we only have five cars, that’s different than seeing 100% of violators and a thousand cars. They have different weights.

Then they looked at analyzing averages from the sign data because that’s what the signs present to us. Rather than just getting broad data, which Gualdoni will touch on in his analyses, we see averages of either 15-minute or 30-minute segments, rather than saying car 302 was going 32 miles per hour.

The first chart is the average number of vehicles in half-hour intervals, which is each of the small colorful bars, and day intervals, which is the larger collection, with an average line going through. We can see the average stays pretty consistent across all days of the week during this period.

The next chart goes through just the number of vehicles and the flat number of violators with the same structure. We see that the average daily violator count remains pretty similar across all of the days of the week while fluctuating in periods during the day.

The next slide speaks to the percentage of violators spread out rather than a flat number of vehicles or a flat number of violators. In this chart, we do see a peak on Sunday, but not very much. It’s not very large, and one reason we posit is that this is because traffic on Sunday tends to be lower for most of the day, the overall number of cars, which we do see associated with periods of more violators.

The next chart is the average speed in half-hour intervals, with the speed limit indicated by a dashed yellow line, and the average speed per day being indicated by that same graph line. You will notice that it is always above the speed limit of 30, but the highest average speed is 34.5, so on average, we don’t see a lot of people going over 35 while approaching the sign.

The next few slides are breakdowns of the days. Slide 10 is an example of one of the weekdays. This slide contains all of the Wednesdays in our reporting period, with the graph on the top left showing the percentage of speeders over the time of day, and the bottom graph showing the total number of vehicles, allowing us to look at how those two influence each other. We see that from midnight to 2:00 am, we have almost 100% violators, but when we look at the graph with the total number of vehicles, we see there is a very low number of cars for those periods of time on each weekday, whereas when we see the dip down in our percentage of speeders graph, we see an uptick on our total number of vehicles graph. Referring back to what she mentioned previously, we see a higher percentage of violators when there are fewer cars overall.

Slide 13 is an example of a weekend day. This slide contains Saturdays throughout our recording period, and the two graphs are the same – percentage of speeders and total number of vehicles. The curve down from percentage of speeders in the very early morning is less drastic, but we do see it follow the same general trend, as well as the same general trend with the total number of vehicles. Savik said that she was using the word “trend” to reflect visual aspects; these are not statistical uses of the word “trend.”

The other days of the week that were omitted for time concerns look very much like this; they all follow the same pattern.

Slide 15 is back to the graphs all together, shown in three-hour time intervals, which are used later in our analyses. This is the average speed by day for each of those three-hour time intervals, also indicated with the speed limits. As before, we do see a lot of people are over the speed limit a decent amount but not too high. The top bar of the graph is 38, and none of our bars are close to that.

The next slide is formatted much the same way with three-hour time intervals, this time looking at our percentage of violators. We do see our 12:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. and our 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. time periods are still quite high, while our middle of the day is quite low, and it picks back up a little bit in the evening.

The next slide sums up what we’ve been talking about and what we’ve seen from our data trip so far. Data sorted between days of the week is quite similar between the average number of vehicles, percentage of violators, and average speed. There is no one day of the week, for example on Wednesdays, that looks particularly different. Traffic seems to behave in much the same way on each of those days. Average speed and percentage of violators do appear to be slightly higher on weekends than on other days of the week, but not drastically. Greater differences appear in the time of day, rather than the day itself. We saw that the peak percentage of violators is constantly around 2:00 a.m. in our chart and a trough, or the lowest portion, consistently between 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m., at least analyzing these changes visually. These differences appear to be linked to the amount of traffic moving through downtown.

Savik passed the presentation to Gualdoni regarding the analysis he did using this data.

Gualdoni wished everyone a good evening and said that he also sits on the PC. He wanted to go over a little bit what can be done with the data and provide some examples. He didn’t want to limit the potential to just that. There’s a lot you can do with data like this, but we didn’t go through it all, and we didn’t look at every aspect of it.

Basically, as Savik mentioned, we looked at two aspects – average speed and percent of violators. The first step is to summarize the data into meaningful distributions, and that has already been done with days and time intervals for each day. Each one of those distributions has a mean, but one of the first things we have to do is to check if the distribution is normal or not. If it’s not normal, you would have to employ some different techniques which require more data and also puts quite a bit more (unintelliglbe) into the investigation and into the intuition that you might get out of it. We do that and then we compare the means of the distributions, and the way we do that is we develop hypothesis tests.

Gualdoni did four variants of it here. You can look at the data and the charts and say that one day seems to stick out more than the other days. Optically, the data may look that way, but if you look at it from a statistical standpoint, those sorts of differences either are or are not significant. That’s what these hypothesis tests do.

Gualdoni looked at the average speed over each day, comparing each day to the other days, within the time intervals, the percent of violators from day to day, and within each day.

In the first example, the data is in the upper left corner. You can see that there are eight time intervals and seven days. The columns are days and the time intervals are rows. You can see there is a number for each day, for each time interval, and he also threw in the number of vehicles that were in that particular time interval over all seven days to the far right of the table. This chart here is a probability plot and shows the distributions. It’s trying to approximate a straight line on a log/log scale. Basically it’s a test to see if the data is normal or not. If it’s not normal, sometimes you can regroup it or change it so it becomes normal. This is called “normalizing the data.” There are some things you can do but then you may be looking at a different type of hypothesis.

The next slide is what is called an ANOVA [analysis of variance] and it is a hypothesis test. What we are trying to see is if the mean of each distribution, the mean of each day, is different from any of the other days. It’s kind of hard to see, but basically the chart in the lower left of the grey box has the average speed on the X axis and the days on the Y axis. Each blue line with a dot in the middle represents an estimation of the mean for each day’s distribution. That’s a range, average speed, and basically, if those lines overlap significantly with one another, then you can pretty much say that statistically, they are not significantly different. We really can’t pull out from this data that any given day has a higher average speed than any other given day. That’s really the test. That’s important because with that sort of information, you can really dig down and see if there is some difference that is meaningful or not if you’ve designed the test correctly. Optically, it looked like there was a couple days, it looked like Sunday, had the highest speed on average, but if you take all the data and look at it, statistically, it doesn’t say that. It says they are all about the same. That’s what you can do with this.

On the next slide, this is the same process, the same data with three-hour time intervals.

On the next slide, you can see that there are some significant differences. We did show that within a day, different time intervals, you can see the same thing on the X axis, it’s average speed but different time intervals now with distribution as a time interval now, not the day, and it’s the same time interval across all the days of the week. You can pull out different intervals and say they are significantly different, and he’s circled them on the slide.

On the next slide, this is the percent violators by day of the week, the same process.

On the next slide, again, you can see the percentage violators and you can see by day now that the blue lines more or less overlap each other, so you really can’t say that one day is statistically significantly different than any other day, at least with this data set.

On the next slide, this is the percentage of violators by three-hour time intervals, the same process, and this one we could say get a little more data. This is where you can say there are four distinct intervals of time where you can see that the difference in violators is statistically significant. That means that you could say with some high level of confidence that between 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., the top interval that is circled, that there are fewer percent violators than there is in the next interval, or the next interval, or the next interval because you can see that those lines don’t overlap. The estimation of the means is more or less within a definite range of percentage, and they don’t really overlap. So that means that it’s significant. We say that it’s significant to the .05 significance level, which is 95% certainty.

The next slide indicates four conclusions. The average speed does not differ significantly from day to day, but the average speed does differ significantly lower within intervals of 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., and 9:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. within each day, significantly lower when compared to the other intervals. The percentage of violators does not differ significantly from day to day, but there are five three-hour time intervals where there is some significant difference. In order from lowest to highest, the afternoon from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. has the lowest percentage of violators, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. is a little bit higher, and basically from noon to midnight you can see a progressively higher percentage of violators as the day progresses, then from 3:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. is the highest percentage of violators. That makes sense. As Savik said, as traffic volume is high, you wouldn’t expect to see a lot of violators. You just can’t go that fast because there is someone in your way.

The next slide has the overall conclusions, and Savik took over the presentation.

Savik thanked Gualdoni for doing the analyses and walking us through them.

The overall conclusion from the visuals and the analyses is that the average speed is relatively consistent from day to day, but the average speed can vary significantly during different times of the day. As Gualdoni said, the highest percentage of violators is between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., and the lowest percentage of violators is from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Luginski said it makes sense to him, but you are talking about percentages versus actual vehicles. The percentage of violators between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. could be ten cars that went by, so that really kind of skews it. When you look at the number of vehicles, he couldn’t remember but thought it was somewhere around 2,800 vehicles per day, and if you have 67% that are violating the speed limit, that’s roughly 1,900 cars. If we have ten of them between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., that means nothing. That’s a grain of sand on the beach. To him, that percent of violators that are exceeding the speed limit between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. should be thrown out. You always throw out the lowest and the highest in any kind of study you do, so to him, that’s a moot point.

Gualdoni would agree that from a percentage standpoint, Luginski is correct, but they also looked at average speed. It’s an average of ten cars. Luginski said if 1,900 cars are violating the speed limit, a very low percentage are between 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Savik said that maybe this can be how we narrow our data analysis looking forward. If council has time periods of interest, even though we have these periods between the highest and the lowest, if we would like to focus on those, and as Gualdoni said, dive into a couple more aspects of the data that we can pull from the signs to give a better idea of those more heavily trafficked but less high percentage of violators to account for those higher number of vehicles, that’s something that we can do, especially with this two-month data. As we pull data from June and July, we’ll be able to work with that more and more if that is something of interest.

Luginski said that all he is saying is that the percentages don’t mean as much as the actual number of vehicles. You could have ten cars at 4:00 in the morning, all ten of them, 100% violation, that means nothing. Gualdoni said the data is a little limited as it comes out of the box. It gives us these numbers, it’s already processed, that’s why he is saying that raw data would give a better feel for what is going on. But in answer to the statement about percentages, the number of speeders, or the number of people over 30 miles per hour, if you have say 1,500 of them going 31 miles per hour and only maybe six of them are going over 40 or 50 miles per hour, you probably want to focus on the six rather than the 1,800 or so going only one mile per hour over. That’s the funny thing about this sort of data. It does lend itself to misinterpretation if you’re not careful. He thinks he could do a lot with the data if he had the raw data.

Luginski said he agreed with Gualdoni 100%, but at the end of the day, this shows, taking out the periods of time, that roughly 67% of the people traveling on Main Street going southbound are speeding, though he doesn’t know about northbound. Gualdoni said that’s correct. Luginski thought that was a pretty high percentage, and whether it’s one mile or ten miles an hour over, whatever the time, Luginski lives on Main Street and has seen during multiple times of the day that when they hit that sign in front of him, it says you’re going 38 miles per hour and they hit the brakes, and then 50 yards up, they speed up again because they are beyond it. All we are capturing is what they hit at that sign, it is what it is, and all he’s saying is if 67% of the people are speeding when they hit that sign, they are still speeding when they get in front of his house and are maybe even going faster because they think they are good, don’t see a cop behind them, and they think, “I’m goin’.”

Wylie said when they talked about it at the last PC meeting, she thought it was the opposite. People are only just hitting their brakes as they approach that sign because sometimes you see the 40 miles per hour sign and then you see that, and she thinks they are still slowing down as they continue past that sign. Wylie said that she probably travels more often when the traffic is heavier, and Luginski is traveling at multiple times a day.

Luginski said he lives there and sees thousands of cars pass his house every day. He works out of the house now. Wylie is right, they slow down when they see that sign. Just like on Holcomb when you come down from Dixie, coming around the curve and seeing that sign, people hit the brakes. Luginski sees that thing going 45 and all of a sudden, it’s down to 30 because they are slamming on the brakes – and he thinks that Avery sees that every day. Luginski said once they get past it and clear out of the way, it’s no holds barred. He’s not saying they go 50 miles per hour, but they slow down, they feel comfortable, and then they pick it up again. Luginski wanted to know what to do with the data, what does it tell us, what does it mean.

Avery said that he thought it said a couple of things. We don’t have a lot of data about what was going on before the signs were put in, but he guesses that the percentage of speeders was equal to or a little higher, so the signs have limited success in slowing people down. Number two, signs alone aren’t going to slow people down. Without a police presence or the Sheriff pulling people over, and Lieutenant Hill isn’t here to address it, but the Sheriff’s department has written 19 speeding citations this year in five months. Last year, when we were in the throes of COVID, they wrote 64 through May. With no real deterrent, why would people slow down other than through the goodness of their heart because Lord knows you got a better chance of winning the lottery than getting pulled over. Luginski agreed. Nineteen tickets year to date and we are in June, a little less than half a year, and we have 1,900 cars a day violating the speed limit. Avery said to multiply that by five months and the 150 days that we’ve gone through.

Luginski said the percentage is ridiculous. Avery said that there is a little bit of a disconnect, this isn’t really a conversation to air out at the city council meeting. Perhaps they should have a meeting at city hall with Smith, Lieutenant Hill, and one or two of us to see what we can do about getting just a little bit more visibility of the Sheriff pulling people over occasionally. One a day and writing a ticket would be awesome. That’s what the data says to him. It confirms what we already knew. People drive fast on Holcomb and on Main Street. When it’s busy in the afternoon, the traffic is thick enough on Main Street that it does slow people down naturally somewhat, and on Holcomb, it all depends. If it’s heavy traffic, they do slow down, but for the most part, he thinks people are speeding when they come up that hill heading northbound. Luginski agreed. Avery appreciated that they took the data and put it together; it kind of confirms what they suspected.

Bonser thanked Savik and Gualdoni for doing yeoman’s work. He asked if the PC had any recommendations with this information for the council. Little said no, not at this point. They were looking for targets where they thought they would ask the police for enforcement. In other words, if we saw between 9:00 and 10:00 every morning, there were more cars at 50 miles per hour, then we would say that’s what we wanted to target. After looking at it, with the average of 33 or 34 miles per hour, they didn’t see what they thought they would. Little thought there would be a clear designation. The feeling in the PC was that in fact traffic has slowed because of the signs, but that’s strictly by all the walking that they do in the city and what they see going on, cars hitting their brakes at the signs and that sort of thing. It’s not clear to the PC what to do with it at this point in time. It may be that we want to put a second speed counter half-way down to Luginski’s house and see if they do in fact speed up, but to be honest, it surprised them because the number of violators was high but the average speed was lower than they thought.

Bonser asked if there would there be a way for us to hire someone to write speeding tickets and pay their salary out of that while also putting money back into our coffers and reducing the speed of people going through the Village. He’s sure that has been visited before but he’s trying to think outside of the box.

Avery said we’re paying someone to do that – the Sheriff. That’s what we’re paying for – to enforce our traffic laws and criminal laws. Avery thought that it’s an issue that we have to address with them. Luginski said that maybe Smith could help, but the “Your Speed” signs alone will not solve the problem. They help, and they are a deterrent, but they are one piece of the puzzle. We need multiple pieces to finish this.

Luginski asked Smith when we put the signs on Holcomb and paid the Sheriff for a number of months to monitor Holcomb and issue tickets; once the speed signs went up, we saw a dramatic decrease. Smith said we did do that, and he didn’t think, in all fairness to the signs, that we can expect a miracle without the other components. Smith agreed with Luginski; that’s another aspect of the solution. It’s not a one and done kind of thing. Periodically, you have to keep people on their toes and bring in the Sheriff for a few weeks here or there. That is a cost. To Bosner’s point, our parking ticket people do not have the authorization to write speeding tickets. Moving violations are an entirely different story, and only the Oakland County Sheriff can do that. Unless we were to restart our Clarkston police department, we cannot do that. Smith thinks we do need to sit down with the Oakland County Sheriff as the logical next step and share the data with them. Schedule a one hour meeting, sit down and talk with them about the data and the findings, and get his recommendation. At the same time, we can certainly talk about some additional presence, and whether that is something that they do during their normal hours, though Smith knows that he is stretched very thin on those, or do we have to pay for overtime coverage. Smith said that the officer worked overtime to come in to add some presence on our streets.

Luginski asked if we did that for Holcomb and if we paid extra, and Smith said that we did. Little said that their take on that was if we pulled people over for a few days or a few hours, social media would take care of the rest of it. Smith agreed. Little said that they would say “look out, the police are heavily patrolling Holcomb,” and there is a big bounce that you get from that. Luginski agreed, but we haven’t done that on Main Street. We’ve put the signs up, and he agrees that they are one piece of the puzzle, but signs alone will not stop it all. It helps, but there are a couple of other things we can do to help that.

Avery said that we have to be consistent. Doing it for two weeks once a year isn’t really going to send a message, and we’ll have a conversation with Lieutenant Hill about this. It’s not like the Sheriff is patrolling our streets gratis. We are paying them, and Avery didn’t think it’s too much to ask to maybe get a little more service for our dollars. He doesn’t think that we should pay them more to do what they should be doing during working hours. Luginski agreed.

Haven said he knew that this was one element in several that Little has looked at with SEMCOG [Southeast Michigan Council of Governments] and with MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation]. It’s early in that discussion, and Little has some other software that we’re piloting. Haven asked Little to tell us where we are with this one tool so far and how it might fit into the mix. Little said that we have been working with MDOT for the last several months. We are the pilot site for a computer simulation tool that they’ve developed that only recently reached a beta stage about a month ago. It allows you to set priorities regarding what you would want on Main Street. Are trucks our number one priority, or are people? Are bicycles the number three priority, or is it cars? There are several other aspects, such as what would you like to do with your downtown? How much traffic [unintelligible]? Do you want crosswalks, bump outs, bicycle lanes? How would you control the traffic through the town? Do you want to try to divert trucks around your city? What are the routes that you want traffic to take through your city? A group of them are actually going to be here tomorrow, and they are going to walk Main Street, talk about some of these aspects, and then come back and begin to enter this data into the simulation tool. In the long run, what we want is a plan that council would approve and be a part of as we work through it. We’re in the very early stages. But it would allow us to have some leverage with MDOT and SEMCOG. The next time they come in here and pave Main Street, for example, we could begin to implement our plan. Or, if we got grant money for some of the bump outs, crosswalks, and flashing signs and other things, then maybe we could discourage trucks from coming through the city and encourage them to take the route out Dixie Highway and around I-75. It’s been a series of discussions for several months, the tool has just hit the ground, and we are doing some work on it. Little expects that by August/September, they will come into council and start to show you what some of this is going to look like.

Haven thanked Little for the answer to the question.

Pardee suggested that when Little meets with Lieutenant Hill, he should ask him what the data says to him, and also ask if he recommends that we collect or manipulate the data in a different fashion to get him to be part of the solution on the data side. The other thing that Little was just talking about, about bump outs and other things, is that it appears that increased traffic density is in fact a traffic calming device, slowing the traffic down. Pardee asked Little if that isn’t what traffic calming approaches do, and Little agreed. Pardee said that it sounds like traffic density slows the traffic down, so traffic calming devices would likely help us. Little agreed.

Haven thanked Savik, Gualdoni, and the PC for their work so far. It sounds like there is a lot more to do and they have tools to do it with, which is encouraging.

Item 10d, Discussion: In-Person Meetings (Video time mark 1:28:52)

    • Discussion: In-Person Meetings During COVID State of Emergency (page 72/82 of the council packet)
    • 03/30/2021 Resolution Continuing a State of Emergency to Address the Outbreak of COVID-19 Virus in the City of the Village of Clarkston (page 73/82 of the council packet)
    • Flyer from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (page 76/82 of the council packet)

Haven hoped this would be a short item, and Smith can give a little discussion regarding this. It’s probably a good sentiment to go back to in-person meetings. Haven asked if the timeframe for this is the first meeting in July, and Smith said yes.

Smith said that if council recalled, we passed a resolution on Tuesday, March 30th to establish a local state of emergency due to COVID. That state of emergency is scheduled to end in a couple weeks on June 30th. Smith has talked to Ryan, and it is their recommendation, given that the COVID rates are declining, vaccine rates are increasing, and the State of Michigan is taking action to end a lot of the restrictions, that we not extend that state of emergency. It would be difficult to justify any kind of an extension given that the COVID rates are declining, and vaccine rates are increasing. It is their recommendation that essentially we do nothing, that we allow the state of emergency to expire as planned on June 30th, and then we would return to in-person meetings as it is shown in the third paragraph. There is still a two-point exception, so any of our meeting attendees, board members, council members, or commissioners may still participate virtually if one of two conditions are met – if they are deployed in the military or they are ill with COVID or uncomfortable attending due to COVID concerns. . [“Uncomfortable” is not one of the exceptions. They are “military duty” and “a medical condition.”] Those provisions are made available in Michigan’s Open Meeting Act, but Smith couldn’t recall the name of it. That goes through December 31st, so another six months would allow people to attend virtually based on one of those two conditions.

Smith is proposing that we contact Independence Television and reengage them to record our city council meetings. Smith hasn’t talked to them yet. There is a manpower concern whether or not that is going to be feasible. They’re having trouble finding employees like everyone else is. That will be Smith’s first attempt.

If that does not work, then we would have to do some kind of video recording on our own, but we will take it one step at a time. Smith is proposing that we would have audio sharing so that members of the public, residents, business owners, etc. can still call in and participate. They will see a video screen, but it will have very little on it. It will primarily be just Smith’s screen, and they would see any documents, kind of similar to what we have tonight. You wouldn’t necessarily see all the council members, you would just see the documents that are being presented.

So, people calling in would receive that, but from an audio standpoint, which is more important, we would have full connectivity. Smith would purchase what they call a microphone speaker pod system that would go on the city council tables. This would allow council members to hear because these pods have speakers in them, but they also have microphones in them so that the people on the phone can hear. Rather than having just one microphone in Smith’s computer or laptop that people on the phone can’t hear, it’s Smith’s recommendation that they purchase one of these microphone speaker pod systems. Smith will get a few quotes and bring that proposal to the next council meeting; he didn’t think they are terribly expensive. Smith will also know by then if Independence Television is going to be able to resume the recordings, at least the council meeting recordings.

This is not a resolution; it’s just a discussion item because Smith doesn’t think we need to do anything tonight. It’s our recommendation to just let the state of emergency expire on its own on June 30th and then any meetings after July 1st will be in-person. Smith said that by “our,” he is including Ryan, because they discussed the issue.

Little asked if he could ask a question for the PC. He is assuming that on July 1st and beyond, in order to have a quorum you would have to be physically present, and in order to vote, you would also have to be physically present – is that true? Smith said that unless one of these two conditions exist – one of the members are in the military and not on-site, or they are ill with COVID or have concerns about getting COVID – one of those two conditions has to exist for them to be allowed to vote virtually. Otherwise, yes, they need to be in-person.

Luginski said that he understands about deployment in the military, but the second one just says ill with COVID. It doesn’t say concerns about COVID. That’s a pretty grey area – how do you define that? Is that actually the verbiage, or is the verbiage “ill with COVID”? Smith said it was broader than that. In the interest of space, he shortened it, but Smith can work with Ryan and get the exact definitions. Ryan is on the phone tonight, but he wasn’t able to call in with his computer. Smith will talk with Ryan, get the wording cleaned up, and Smith will report back during the June 28th meeting. Luginski was just curious – it says ill with COVID and Smith keeps saying concerned about it; Luginski doesn’t know that that means. Smith said he will find out the exact wording. We want to be very clear about that.

Wylie said that she was a little concerned about feedback on the pod speaker microphone pod. That’s one of the problems that we have with these meetings, and we can mute that. Would Smith find out, and maybe Luginski and Kniesc can speak on it too, will we have feedback problems? And what do we have to do to mitigate any things like that? Wylie said that Smith didn’t have to answer now, but that would be a concern at the next meeting. Smith said that’s precisely why he wants to purchase the pod system because they are geared or designed to not create feedback from each other, as opposed to Smith running down to Radio Shack, even if they still exist, and buying a speaker, slapping it on the table, and putting a microphone about a foot away, which would guarantee that we would have feedback problems. This system is designed to talk with each other, they are all connected, and they plug into Smith’s laptop with just a USB port. They’re designed from the ground up to do that with no feedback.

Luginski wanted to know if in-person meetings affect the PC, Historic District Commission, everything, or just city council? Smith said everything.

Item 10e, Resolution: Paid Parking and Parking Enforcement (Video time mark 1:38:01)

    • Resolution – Paid Parking and Parking Enforcement (page 77/82 of the council packet)

Haven said he would just summarize the resolution before them which talks about the history of the COVID situation. We’ve been suspending paid parking at the Washington and Main lot since May 11th and continuing that extension at other times, but now before us, given the uptick hopefully in businesses downtown, we feel it would be a good time to resume paid parking in that lot as of July 1st.

Motion to adopt the resolution by Avery; second by Casey.

Casey said it couldn’t happen soon enough. We should have done it a month ago, but that’s water under the bridge.

Luginski said that as of July 1st, we are going to reinstate paid parking in the city in the lot, so the blue covers will come off of the kiosk and people have to pay, but we aren’t going to enforce it until July 15th? Smith said yes, that was a point he wanted to make. We’ve been off for about fourteen months now, and Smith needs some time to restart things and work the bugs out. It’s been a while. We would like to start July 1st, and that gives him two weeks from now to July 1st to get the kiosk oiled up and ready to go. Parking enforcement requires bringing the people back, and incurring hourly wages, so he would like a little bit of a head start on paid parking. Admittedly, it’s on the honor system because we aren’t going to be beating people up or enforcing until July 15th, but Smith would like to have some time in between the two to allow us to make an efficient restart of the process.

The second thing that Smith wanted to comment on is the statement from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services that on July 1st, all epidemic orders will be lifted. In June, all outdoor activities will be lifted, and then starting in July, all indoor or outdoor restrictions will be lifted. That’s part of the basis of this resolution.

Luginski said that as of July 1st, basically in two weeks, anything that’s been in place is gone. There’s no masks, there’s no limitations, there’s nothing, everything is back to normal, the way we used to know life. Smith said that’s correct.

Luginski asked if Smith had someone lined up to do the enforcement. Smith said that we had two officers and kind of a backup officer prior to COVID. One of the officers has been continually reaching out to Smith and saying they would like to resume. Smith hasn’t heard from the other one so this gives him some time to reconnect with them and make sure that everything is good and do a little bit of retraining for them. As you know, hiring in this environment is not easy to do so Smith is hopeful that he can get the two back that he had before.

Motion passed unanimously.

Agenda Item #11, New Business

Item 11a – Resolution: Millage Rate (Video time mark 1:43:24)

    • A Resolution to Establish the Millage Rate for the City of the Village of Clarkston for 21-22 Fiscal Year (page 78/82 of the council packet)
    • 2021 Tax Rate Request (page 79/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that if he remembers correctly, we are voting on the budget next meeting, and Smith agreed. Haven asked Smith to explain this.

Smith said that the second meeting in June is typically the meeting where we approve the budget. If you will recall, we had a public hearing the second meeting in May and we walked through all the details of the budget. Smith will go through that again at the second meeting in June, but it will be at a faster pace. No numbers have changed from what we went through in May, but because of the way that the dates fall this calendar year, the June meeting is very late. June 28th is our final-final budget approval meeting, but tax bills get printed on July 1st, basically two days later. We don’t have the ability to wait until June 28th, and although Smith knows that this may make them feel uneasy, we are printing up the tax bills prior to the final approval of the budget. Given the way the dates fall this year, we really have no choice. Greg [Coté, City Treasurer] has to signal to the county, who coordinates all the tax bill printing, what our millage rate will be on June 20th-June 22nd. We can’t wait until June 29th, the day after the next council meeting, to notify them because it will be too late to get our tax bills printed in a timely manner. Because of that, Smith is asking the council to approve the proposed millage rate that was presented in the public hearing and will be re-presented in the budget review next meeting. We are asking to levy the maximum allowable millage rate of 12.1141, and then of course we reduce that by the amount of the library millage so that gives the residents a little bit of breathing room, for a net millage rate of 11.4231. That 11.4231, as is shown in the next paragraph, is split between July and December. All Smith really needs to know tonight is that we are OK with Coté printing the July tax bills. What Smith is proposing in the resolution is that the July tax bill has one-half of 11.4231, which is 5.7115. The July tax bill would have that for the millage rate, and then on top of that, we have to add 4.9766, which is our debt retirement. That would be also on the July tax bill. That’s what this final statement is saying (Smith read from the resolution). We are asking for council’s approval to proceed with the printing of the tax bills based on this information.

Luginski asked what the debt, bottom line net, of this is compared to last year’s tax rate – is it the same? Higher? Lower? Smith said that it’s lower. Proposal A requires, and the Headlee amendment, essentially pushes down every year. We’ve been fortunate that, at least from the city’s standpoint (because a homeowner might not feel this way), that taxable values have been climbing for a number of years. So, this paragraph here says last year, the millage rate was 5.8107, and this year it would be 5.7115, so it went down 1/10 of a millage rate. It is lower than last year. Smith asked if that answered Luginski’s question, and Luginski said it does. Luginski added that at the end of the day, the tax rate is lower, but his taxes are still high, but that’s OK. Smith said yes, because Luginski’s home value has gone up. Luginski understands and is OK with that.

Haven asked for a motion to adopt this. Motion made by Avery; second by Luginski.

Motion passed unanimously.

Item 11b – Discussion: November 2, 2021 Election Updates (Video time mark 1:49:41)

    • November 2, 2021 Election (page 80/82 of the council packet)

Speagle said that she had a few dates. There will be no election in August – there’s no primary, no local, nothing on the ballot for us. It’s odd, but she double checked, and we will not have anything in August. For the November election, there are important deadlines. There are three seats up. Bonser and Casey will finish up their one-year term, and Kniesc his two-year term.

Speagle will need Candidate Nominating Petitions and Affidavits of Identity by July 20th at 4:00 p.m. They can be withdrawn by 4:00 p.m. on July 23rd.

If you would like to place a proposal on the ballot, Speagle needs the petitions by July 27th at 5:00 p.m.

Ballot wording of proposals qualified to appear on the ballot are certified with county and local clerks by August 10th at 4:00 p.m.

Declarations of Intent for any write-in candidate are due on October 22nd.

Haven said that Bonser and Casey are serving out the terms of Scott Reynolds and David Marsh. That’s why they are at one year; Speagle agreed. The next election there will be two, as with Kniesc, who is at this time finishing his second year.

Haven said that this is for information only. Speagle agreed. We are getting close to some of the deadlines, and Speagle wanted everyone to know what needs to be done. If you want Petitions or Affidavits of Identity, Speagle has them and you should come see her.

Item 11c – Resolution: Budget Amendment (Video time mark 1:51:57)

    • Resolution – Budget Amendment ($1,800) (page 81/82 of the council packet)

Haven said that this is a budget amendment and a little housekeeping issue. It’s explained in the back. Haven asked if Smith had anything to add.

Smith said it was self-explanatory but wanted to add that the Clerk’s publication budget went over the planned amount, but we understand the reason for that. We tried to put more detail in our minutes, and we did do that, but there is a direct correlation to our bills from the Clarkston News. We helped keep the Clarkston News in business this year by inserting more detail into our minutes, but we felt the cost of it here, so we had to do a budget amendment to offset that. [See Clarkston Sunshine comment below.]

DTE street lighting also has come in over budget.

Smith said it’s an $1,800 adjustment.

Motion to adopt the budget amendment by Wylie; second by Casey.

Wylie said that she thought the money to increase the amount of detail that’s going into the minutes was well spent. She hates to spend the money, but she thinks it’s well worth it. She thanked Smith and Speagle for doing that.

Motion passed unanimously.

Agenda Item #12, Adjourn (Video time mark 1:53:52):

Motion to adjourn by Wylie; second by Avery

Motion to adjourn was approved unanimously.

Resources: