Introduction:
Though public comments can sometimes irritate the city council, there is value to both the council and the public in hearing them. While they can’t eliminate public comments entirely without violating the Open Meetings Act, your city council has decided not to acknowledge public comments during a city council meeting unless the person submitting the comments also appears at the meeting (in-person or electronically) to personally read them. Mayor Eric Haven also frequently cuts people off for exceeding the city council’s arbitrary three-minute time limit (it’s arbitrary because no time limits are required by the Open Meetings Act).
If your public comments were submitted to the council but not read, or if you tried to make public comments but your comments were cut short by the mayor, please email them to clarkstonsunshine@gmail.com and I will include them in my informal meeting summaries either under public comments or under the specific agenda item that you want to speak to.
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.
Agenda item #1, Call to Order:
(The meeting was not officially called to order on the video.)
Agenda item #2, Pledge of Allegiance (Video time mark 0:00:03):
Pledge said.
Agenda item #3, Roll Call (Video time mark 0:00:19):
Eric Haven, Al Avery, Gary Casey, Bruce Fuller, Joe Luginski, Laura Rodgers, and Sue Wylie were present.
Agenda item #4, Motion: Approval of Agenda (Video time mark 0:00:32):
Motion to approve the agenda as presented by Wylie; second Fuller.
Haven said that they had a motion and a second, but they want to make some changes, correct Jonathan [Smith, city manager]?
Smith said that there are two changes. Depending on when you printed off the agenda, we have a 10b that you may not have. If Jennifer [Speagle, city clerk] printed the packet for you, it’s already on there.
Smith said that he needs to add a 10e. As you recall, the DPW [Department of Public Works] pickup truck is in the shop for some repairs, and Smith got the bill today. It’s well beyond his approval level, so he has to come to the council for approval so he can sort of tell the dealership in the morning are we fixing it or what are we doing. That will be 10e.
Additionally, Smith would like to move that they move Old Business after New Business because we have two groups of people here tonight to speak to you, and they’re under New Business. So, not to hold them up, Smith would rather do the Old Business after New Business.
Haven asked if Wylie would accept those changes, she said that she would, and she would like to make a motion to amend the agenda as Smith said adding 10e and switching Old Business with New Business. Fuller seconded the changes.
Haven asked if there was any further discussion about the agenda.
No further discussion.
Motion to approve the agenda passed unanimously by voice vote.
Agenda Item #5, Public Comments (Video time mark 0:02:36):
Haven read the rules for public comment and asked if anyone had a public comment to make.
Chet Pardee:
Thank you, Jonathan Smith, for confirming the city’s actual fund balance on June 30, 2021, per the city’s audit. Greg’s [Coté, treasurer] fund balance projection was the most accurate in recent city budgets.
Thank you, Mayor Haven, for your “Dutch Uncle” discussion following the last council meeting. It is clear our perspectives on the city’s financial issues and solutions are different. I do not see philanthropy as the solution.
The capital project budget for 2022-23 will be similar to the current budget which was reduced from the previous year’s $244,000 to $55,000. The $98,000 in ARPA [American Rescue Plan Act] funds will replace the usual $80-$100,000 of parking funds not available based on council’s suspension of paid parking due to COVID. Unspent capital project funds from the current budget will be available for next year’s capital project budget which will likely not include significant funds for street or sidewalk repairs. The seven paver aprons on Main Street remain a cost and engineering challenge due to ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] sidewalk design requirements.
The city is fortunate that MDOT [Michigan Department of Transportation] is repairing Main Street and the Road Commission of Oakland County is capping Clarkston Road. There is no solution to the storm water management problem on Clarkston Road due to the gasoline plume contamination, but the current state budget proposal “includes nearly a quarter billion (dollars) for EGLE (Michigan Environmental) [Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy] with funds allocated to clean up contamination sites…” These funds could be helpful to the city.
Robertson Court residents may see cut-thru traffic as Main Street repairs are likely to extend into June to accommodate storm sewer basin grate repairs which were to be let last week by MDOT. It may be a good time to revisit Robertson Court easement purchases to bring Clarkston Road storm water directly to Parke Lake.
The HDC’s [Historic District Commission] city hall backyard fence height approval should consider the view from the elevation of South Main Street buildings, including Harrison’s and potentially Rudy’s Rooftop Restaurant.
When the code enforcement officer presents her update, she should include escalation recommendations for council’s approval for residents who have not remediated their property for one, two, or three years after receiving notice.
Financial workshop content is below for your reference. The source is Clarkston Secrets.
Pardee attachment – Let’s Talk About Taxes
Haven asked if there were any other public comments.
Wylie said that she had a public comment. Just before coming to this meeting, Wylie attended a committee meeting for the 4th of July parade. She’s just now kind of processing this and wanted to give them a few notes. One of the main things they ask is for volunteers, for people to help with clean up and set up, and in particular, clean up. There are some things that Wylie is going to talk with Smith about that they had, that they’re interested in, and Wylie thinks that some of it might come back to council, requests for having the city pay DPW for the cleanup. We can talk about that. The one thing that they did ask was, the parade is on a Monday, Monday, July 4th, and they have asked that the garbage bins in downtown be emptied before the day of the parade. And, if you know anybody that wants to enter it, they said right now, probably because of COVID, this is the first year it’s been back after a two-year absence and they’re hoping to get more entries. Right now, they don’t have a lot of entries. Wylie said that was all for now.
Smith asked what group Wylie was meeting with. Wylie said it was the 4th of July parade committee. Smith said this is a new committee, obviously. Wylie said she thought it was the same committee that has been existing for a long time, they all seem to be very comfortable – (interrupting Wylie), Rodgers asked who Wylie contacted to be on there. Wylie said that they asked her. They contacted her. Smith asked if it was Joette Kunse. Wylie said no, it was Rich Mercano. Peg Roth is on it. The meeting today was basically cancelled. The only reason that they met was to fill Wylie in on things that were going on. A couple of people from Mount Zion church, at least one man from the Knights of Columbus at St. Dan’s, but Wylie didn’t meet any of those people. Smith said OK. Wylie said that’s it. Smith said OK and thanked Wylie. Haven thanked Wylie.
Haven asked if there were any other public comments.
No additional public comments.
Agenda Item #6, FYI
Public Notice – ZBA [Zoning Board of Appeals] for 69 S. Main Street (Video time mark 0:07:45):
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- Public Notice, Zoning Board of Appeals Meeting and Public Hearing, May 11, 2022, starting at 7:00 p.m. (page 3/38 of the council packet)
Haven said that there is a public hearing notice about a ZBA [Zoning Board of Appeals] meeting which is on May 11th, starting at 7:00 p.m. right here. They will be considering a property at 69 South Main, requesting a variance to construct a new garage that will result in a percentage of the lot covered by buildings to exceed the 25% allowed in the city zoning ordinance for R-2 residential districts. So, again, that’s May 11th, starting at 7:00 p.m., right here.
Budget Public Hearing – 05-23-2022 (Video time mark 0:08:23):
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- Public Notice, 2022-2023 City Budget Public Hearing (page 4/38 of the council packet)
Haven said that there will be a budget hearing on the 23rd. That’s our next meeting here. So, our budget will be presented then for public comment and so on.
Election Update (Video time mark 0:08:37):
Haven asked Speagle if she had an election update for them. (Speagle made some unintelligible comments.) Speagle said that turnout here was 16.4% of our voters. Again, Speagle wants to thank Cara Catallo, Evelyn Bihl, Jonathan Smith, and Eric from Bunkhouse Burgers for keeping them fed, and her crew for keeping us going for 12-plus hours. And now we’re on to August. The deadlines for the August election are fast approaching.
Haven asked for the deadline for those running for council. Speagle said that the write-in for November is July 21st. Haven asked if those are actually signed applications, right, July 21st? Speagle said yes. Haven said that the write-in deadline would be in October. Speagle apologized and said yes. Write-in is October. Your petitions are due on July 21st. Haven said 25 (unintelligible) signatures. Speagle agreed.
Haven said OK, good. Speagle is going to be busy. Haven thanked Speagle for all of her hard work, and he knows it is grueling.
Haven said that’s all under For Your Information unless somebody else has an announcement they’d like to make about what’s going on in town.
Speagle asked if they brought up the public hearings. Smith said yes.
Agenda Item #7, City Manager Report (Video time mark; page 5/38 of the council packet 0:10:16):
Haven said that they had the report in front of them. He asked if there were any other questions or comments for Smith relative to this. They are going to be addressing the service work on the pickup later, so he will defer that. Haven said election worker thank you; that’s what Speagle just did to your election coworkers. And then on the Main Street paving, Smith is going to give us an update here, which it’s kind of obvious around town that things are happening.
Smith said yes, but he guessed there’s some bad news relative to our last discussion at the last meeting where he drew on the board this kind of scenario we have with the pavers, the seven paver aprons and driveways. Anything we do to touch those, then it’s going to be considered new work and we have to bring it up to the code. And, to bring it up to code, the sidewalk portion of the driveway cannot exceed 2%, and the remaining driveway portion of the driveway cannot exceed 8%. Smith said that he would draw on the board real quick here.
[Smith walked over to the whiteboard.]
Fuller asked if Smith was talking about grade. Smith said yes. Smith said so, this is the parking lot level, and here’s Main Street down here. And right now, we have these driveways. This is obviously exaggerated, but it looks like that. But Smith can’t do that anymore because the sidewalk, let’s say this portion is a sidewalk before it slopes down, this cannot drop more than 2% and then it slopes down. So, this might be 9%. This cannot exceed 8%, so that’s not allowed. So, you say, well what do you do?
Smith said that one option is to just replace the pavers on a one-by-one basis, and when you do that, now it’s not considered new, it’s considered maintenance. Haven said grandfathering. Continuing, Smith said under the maintenance plan, he can just pluck out the broken concrete paver and put in a new one. Smith said that we can do that. It’s kind of time-consuming, and you have to remember all of the pavers you didn’t replace are still 20 years old. They could fall apart tomorrow for all we know. So that’s the downside of doing maintenance.
Smith said to do replacement, what HRC [Hubbell, Roth & Clark], our city engineer, is telling him is that what we are going to have to do is probably come back to here and buy this, buy an easement. And you say where does that get you. Well, that gives him, if now the city owns all the way back to here, that gives Smith a longer distance to average from here to there. He’s not drawing it to scale, but you get the point. If Smith buys more parking lot, that just gives him a longer distance over which to spread this. This still can’t go over 2%, and this can’t go over 8%, but it just gives Smith a longer distance to do that.
Wylie said that what Smith drew made sense. Smith said OK.
[Smith returned to his seat.]
Haven asked how we buy an easement from ourselves. We own it, right? Smith said no. Well, the Washington and Main, that’s a good question. We own that. But the HealthQuest, or the driveway going into Rudy’s, that’s ours too, OK the HealthQuest driveway, the Union, the apartments over here, we don’t own that lot. So, we would have to buy an easement. Time-consuming. Tom Ryan [city attorney] is on the phone. Time-consuming and expensive to do. Haven agreed.
Smith said he’s getting an estimate on the 1 x 1 paver replacements. That’s probably the most realistic from a budgetary and a time standpoint. We’ve got holes in the sidewalk right now, there’s trip hazards that we need to get resolved, so in the interest of time, and in the interest of money, the 1 x 1 paver replacement probably could be our plan for this year. Smith said that he’s getting quotes on that right now, and he’ll have it in time for the next meeting, but that’s kind of what he’s leaning towards because that easement approach, while technically an option, is going to be expensive.
Haven said in the meantime, aren’t we replacing broken ones because we have an existing trip and fall situation until we resolve this? Smith said well no, we don’t have the pavers to replace them, so he could fill them with asphalt. That would look horrible. Haven agreed. Smith said he could fill them with concrete. Technically, it wouldn’t look quite as bad, but it would make getting those pavers out very difficult in the future. So, certainly, the urgency is there to get something done as quickly as we can to eliminate the trip and fall hazard. Smith said that he would like to get the quotes and he would try to have them for the next meeting, and we’ll hopefully make a decision at that time. Smith said that we have the ARPA [American Rescue Plan Act] funds, so technically we have some money that we could apply to this problem.
Wylie asked if filling with paver is considered maintenance, with blacktop. Smith said yes, that would be considered maintenance. Wylie said that it may not look good, but it also may be a quick, easy way to do it. Smith agreed.
Fuller said that he thinks it’s complicated when you’re talking about that four-unit apartment building just north of town, because that whole parking lot is just pavers. Smith said that they opted to continue. Fuller said if you buy that and take that over, then we’re responsible for pavers forever in that section of their parking lot. Smith said yes, if we were to buy the easement, then we would be responsible. If we just do our section, there’s still a line there, the city/private owner line there, that we wouldn’t have to go beyond that. Even if there’s a paver right on the other side of the line that’s broken, technically, that’s their responsibility. Fuller said yes, but if the city buys that into perpetuity, then we have that. Smith said yes, we have maintenance. Fuller said it’s different than those short six- or seven-foot angles in the parking lot. Smith said that when we first looked at this, HRC thought we could just get by with the skin of our teeth with that 8% requirement and that we could just get in under 8%. They’ve done their topographical survey, and they said no, unfortunately, you are going to be more than 8%. So, it just physically cannot be done without extending the run. With the rise and the run, you can only fix the angle by extending the run. Haven agreed.
Smith said anyway, that’s what this is about. More to come on that, hopefully, at our next meeting.
Wylie said that it says that the paving is scheduled to be in May, so she’s assuming that it will not affect the 4th of July parade. Smith said no, that’s correct. He’s told that this will be done by the end of May. If they get bad weather, it might go into the first week of June, but definitely not July. And Smith wants to correct a rumor that is out there, and one of the business owners called Smith today and was very angry because she thought the rumor was true, and the rumor is that we are going to close Main Street for two months. (Laughter.) Smith said that he said absolutely not. This is a state highway. We can’t close that for two hours without getting complaints, so two months, no. There’s no closing. There will be periodic lane closures, and they will have flagmen, but it will always remain open throughout the construction. Wylie thanked Smith.
Smith said it’s just starting to get off the ground here, so it’s going to be a busy month on Main Street.
Pardee told Smith that he was told by MDOT that they would be doing grate and sewer drain work in June based on a contract that they were letting last week. So, that’s separate from gutters, and curbs, and pavement, that it’s coming after that. Smith said correct, there are, he thinks there are about a half dozen sewer manhole covers right on Main Street that have to have their foundation fixed. There’s a great one right at the crossing here at Church Street. It’s more involved, and they can’t get that done before the pavement. Smith said that he hates to say it, but they’re going to pave Main Street and then the next week they are going to come in and cut out the new pavement around this sewer/manhole cover, dig it all out, fix the foundational issues below it, and then rebuild it and pour new concrete. Smith said unfortunately, they just couldn’t fit it all in before the paving.
Haven asked if there were any other comments or questions for Smith.
Agenda Item #8, Motion: Acceptance of the Consent Agenda as Presented (Video time mark 0:19:42):
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- 04-11-2022 Final Minutes (page 6/38 of the council packet)
- 04-25-2022 Draft Minutes (page 8/38 of the council packet)
- 05-09-2022 Treasurer’s Report (page 10/38 of the council packet)
- 05-04-2022 Check Disbursement Report, 04-01-2022 – 04-30-2022 (page 11/38 of the council packet)
- April invoices from Hubbell, Roth & Clark (page 17/38 of the council packet)
- March invoice from Thomas J. Ryan, P.C. (page 19/38 of the council packet)
- April invoices from Thomas J. Ryan, P.C. (page 21/38 of the council packet)
Haven said that he would accept a motion to approve the consent agenda as it’s presented to them.
Motion by Wylie; second Rodgers.
Haven asked if there was any discussion about this.
No discussion.
Motion to approve the consent agenda as presented passed by unanimous voice vote.
Agenda Item #9, New Business
Item 9a – Discussion: Employee Retirement Savings; Presentation from John Waugh from MERS (Municipal Employees’ Retirement System) (Video time mark 0:20:19):
Haven said that they are going to do their juxtaposition here now. We’re not going to stop for Old Business, which is normally first, and go on to New Business because of our visitors. 10a [9a] which is a discussion about employee retirement savings and a presentation by John Waugh. Waugh agreed.
Smith said he would bring up Waugh’s presentation. Waugh said he would go to the podium.
Smith said he’d give a quick introduction. So, Smith had mentioned we had brought in the MERS, the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System. They have been a long-standing option for municipal employees in Michigan for creating their 401(k) savings kind of plans. So, it’s always been an option for us, but in recent years, we haven’t had any contributors amongst our staff. Smith thought, as he gets ready for retirement, he thought it would be a good idea for younger employees to hear this message, because Smith heard this message thirty years ago and he’s prepared, but he’s afraid our younger employees aren’t, and it’s very, very important for them. They don’t have a pension from the city, so it’s very important that they have a funded retirement plan.
So, Smith brought in MERS to give an excellent presentation to all the staff. He’s hopefully fired them up about starting to donate money into the plan. What Waugh is here to talk about tonight is another step that Smith would like the council to consider, and this is that the city contributes a match to some of their savings. Smith is just proposing 2%, so up to 2% of the employee’s salary we would match. Smith would like to be up in the 5 or 10%, which he’s told is more normal for municipalities, but we have to crawl before we run, so Smith is proposing a 2% match this time, and if we can’t afford it in a given year, we might have to turn it off. That happens in the business world. But Smith would like them to hear out Waugh, he’s very knowledgeable on MERS, and let’s ask him any questions that you may have and we’ll see if this makes sense for our city.
Haven thanked Waugh for coming. Waugh said thanks for having him.
John Waugh:
He appreciates them being flexible and moving things around to coordinate this. Waugh said he prepared just a brief presentation so it shouldn’t take too terribly long, and he will go fairly quick for them, but he does want to make sure that they spend enough time so if they have questions, there is an opportunity to answer those.
Waugh said that he wanted to go over real briefly some of the reasons for considering a retirement plan. You have a 457(b) deferred compensation plan right now, which is just an optional plan where employees have the ability to set aside funds. So, we’ll talk about that briefly. We’ll also review the proposed plan, which Smith touched on just a moment ago, which would be basically combining that 457 plan with a 401(a), or what’s called a defined contribution plan. Typically, most people hear the word 401(k); governmental plans don’t allow 401(k)s. They are private sector plans. We have 457(b) and 401(a) plans. Waugh will talk about why they are proposing that we have two plans, as opposed to just one. There are some advantages to that. He’ll just share a little bit of information about MERS and then talk about any next steps if we decide to move forward from there. Waugh said that they should feel free to chime in and ask questions as we go; there’s no need to wait until the end, but there is a spot at the end as well.
Waugh said that some of the reasons, as you’ve probably heard, the labor market is tight. It’s difficult to find good employees right now. We’re in a competitive labor market and having a retirement plan will help recruit and/or retain employees, even if it is a minimal match to start with. It’s important to retain those people once you bring them in here, because it does take time, and it takes money to be able to hire them and also to train them. And oftentimes, in Waugh’s experience, what they are hearing a lot of is that we can’t keep people. They’re leaving for places that have higher pay, better benefits, things along those lines. So that’s really what provoked this discussion.
Even if you have an employee benefit plan, even if it’s a smaller one, as Smith said, you can move that up over time. It doesn’t have to be diving in headfirst.
So, employees are expecting some sort of a retirement plan. In the private sector, it’s not atypical to see a plan like say between 3 and 5% and municipal public plans typically between 5 and 10%. We’re proposing, you know, maybe a 2% employer contribution assuming the employee puts in 2% of their own. That might help increase employee morale, satisfaction, prevent some of that turnover.
There are employee tax benefits. Some people may not want to, you know, if they don’t need the paycheck, maybe they’re retired, or they’re collecting money, and they just want to come here, give back a little bit, still have some daily interaction, and provide a service to the community. And then, as Smith pointed out, retirement security. So, giving them a vehicle in which they can set aside funds. A lot of times, those 457(b) plans, because they are voluntary, just kind of fly by the wayside because most people don’t give a lot of thought to it, but when there is an incentive for them to contribute to the plan, they may be more likely to do so.
Waugh said that the proposed retirement plan is pretty simple. You have a 457(b) already, so we don’t need to do anything other than maybe modify that to fit whatever group of employees. In this case, we thought all employees, because pretty much everybody works 20 hours or more to exclude the one person who may not, the cost to have them is very minimal. So, it would be something that would be eligible for all employees.
The employer would contribute 2% to the 401(a) defined contribution plan, provided that the employee contributes 2% to the 457(b) deferred compensation plan. So, it’s two plans. Basically, the employee puts their money into the 457. The employer would match it. If the employee does not contribute to the 457, it costs you nothing.
Basically, they have access to the MERS investment lineup. There are no ongoing costs to the plan, other than whatever you budget, the 2% at most. All the other fees would be paid by the participants in the form of investment, record-keeping, (unintelligible) the expenses which are quite low with them. It usually averages about .39%, or $3.90 per thousand dollars per year. So, a very low-cost plan with MERS compared to other providers. With a plan this size with virtually no money to start, you’re usually looking at a total cost to manage the plan, you’re looking at very high employee investment costs and such, usually probably around 1-1/2% on the lower side, 2% plus because it’s a small plan on the higher side.
So, they’ll have the freedom to invest their money. This is not a pension plan. This is a defined contribution plan, so they’ll have their money to invest over time, and then provided they meet the eligibility requirements, they can use that money upon separation for the 457(b) plan regardless of age for pre-tax dollars, and then for the 401(a) plan (unintelligible due to background noise) reaching age 60, or 59-1/2.
So why two plans? 401(k) plans are what most people know, private sector plans, you can start, stop, decrease whenever you want. Defined contribution plans are not. They’re a little bit more rigid, so if you offered a match within your 401(a) plan, if an employee decided they didn’t want to participate, then they’ve made an irrevocable decision not to participate in the plan. So, by putting the employee money in the 457(b) plan, then they can kind of start, stop, increase, decrease, whatever they want to, and then the employer would simply match whatever they contribute up to that 2% into the 401(a) plan. So, it makes it more 401(k)-like, it’s basically how it works by dovetailing these two plans together.
So, that’s really the main reason. Other than that, the 457 plan that you already have, it’s employee contributions only, they’re 100% vested, it’s always their money. They would have a post-tax Roth option as well as a traditional pre-tax option to that. The 401(a) is just going to be pre-tax employer money going into the plan.
So, that’s really the key information that you need to know about how the plan structure would be. If you felt you wanted to do more than 2%, you’re absolutely more than welcome to do that, but that was just, as Smith mentioned, he thought that would be a starting point and then as more funds become available in the future, you can explore amending the plan. Same thing if budget is too tight next year and you can’t do it, you can also amend the plan and reduce the match or eliminate it altogether. So, you’re not stuck with ongoing expenses with regard to this plan; it’s something that can be modified as you go.
Waugh said that he kind of touched on the 401(a). A couple of things that he wanted to make sure that he pointed out here. There would be 90-day probationary period for this, so that would align with any other benefits, that you have to be employed for 90 days before you can participate. If they’ve already met that 90-day requirement because they are already employed, (unintelligible) waived. And then you have a vesting option for the employer money. So, if they do leave and you contributed to it for six months or whatever and they decide to leave, that defined contribution money would come back to them. If you put that money in the 457(b), there’s no vesting and that money is gone.
So, the proposal here is a one-year vesting, so they need one year of service, that employer money then becomes their money as well. You can do a longer vesting, but Waugh wouldn’t encourage too terribly more than maybe two years at the most, because then it kind of doesn’t seem like it’s much of an incentive because it’s only 2%. So, having a little bit of skin in the game, I’ve got to stay here in order to keep that 2%, but again, their money is always their money.
So, that’s pretty much it on the 401(a). Just a little bit of information about us, little bit of background on MERS. We are kind of an instrumentality of the state, so we’re sort of a quasi-governmental agency. We used to operate as part of the Office of Retirement Services for the State of Michigan, and we operated as such from 1945 when we started up to 1997 and then we separated from the state, and we’ve operated independently since then. We are a public not-for-profit organization, and that’s how we can help keep our costs low to the participants. We serve about 150,000 employees throughout the State of Michigan, and we’re getting really close to having a thousand municipalities joined in the MERS system in some capacity or other, whether it’s a traditional defined benefit, 401(a), 457(b), or any of the other programs that we offer as well. The reason we can offer our programs is we operate similar to a co-op in the sense that we pool everybody’s money together, so we manage about $15,000,000 in assets, and that helps us to be able to go out and negotiate better pricing with our vendors, our record keepers, our investment managers, and things like that.
So, that’s really just a quick overview of who we are. Something that is important also that you’re not going to see with a lot of other companies that do retirement plan offerings is that we are the sole fiduciary of our plans, which means that we are constantly reviewing the plan for compliance, making sure it’s up to snuff with the IRS rules and regs, and we will monitor the investments. If a manager leaves and we hire a new manager, and you don’t like the manager or you don’t feel it’s a good fit, we will get rid of the manager, and we’ll hire a new manager. If they are not performing well, we will get rid of them. If their fees creep up too high, we will get rid of them. So, those are all things that normally you technically would be responsible for with most other providers. So, we take that responsibility on for you, so you don’t have to do it. Our board oversees the entire system, and our investment department has probably about fifteen people in that department that really manage that money and then make recommendations to our investment committee and then ultimately to our board.
So that fiduciary role is something that you don’t have to deal with is kind of a relief because you should have insurance for it, you should be meeting, you should be doing all these, and in my experience, most communities just don’t have the time nor the bandwidth to do it. So, that’s something you can offload, and we take that on automatically.
Why do employees look for MERS? When people leave a MERS employer, they often look for another MERS employer. It’s just the way it goes. They like it, because we also offer what’s called MERS-to-MERS time, so they can use their time from their other employer toward vesting and eligibility here and vice-versa. So, as long as they have four months of employment here in one of those 401(a) plans, they can use future time to be able to vest and meet eligibility in their previous plan. So, if they’ve left before vesting, or maybe they’ve had an early retirement prior, or maybe let’s say 55 years of age and 25 years of service in a traditional pension plan, and they’ve left with 20 years, and they came and worked here for 5 years, that 5 years can be added to their 20 and they can draw on that other one at 55 instead of having to wait until 60. So, it is a draw for people when they’re coming to work for another employer to be able to look for another MERS employer who’s offering those sorts of retirement plans, even though it’s not a traditional pension. You would not be on the hook for any of that money; they would just collect a traditional pension from the previous employer.
Other than that, we do offer (unintelligible) education. As Smith mentioned, we were just out recently trying to provide education. Waugh said that he thinks sometimes it takes a little bit of an incentive for people to start contributing to those plans. Then when it starts to get employer money plus their money going in, eventually that money grows, and then suddenly they’re looking for other ways, like, oh, this actually works pretty well, how can I contribute more toward my retirement. And then you could always look to add more in the future.
We do offer consolidated statements, so if they have a DC [defined contribution] and a 457, they get one statement each quarter from us so they will be able to see it all in one spot, both plans, added together, with a balance projected out to future retirement balance and income. So, that’s handy. And then we do give outside education. We offer financial loans, tools, those are all included in the plan at no additional charge for those.
So, those are all advantages that we’re trying to help people take more of an active role in their retirement, look at their budgets, look at their debt situation, look at their retirement savings, and the tools are actually pretty cool. All of your MERS plans will be in there, but you can also merge in your bank accounts, your mortgages, your other investment accounts, and you can see it all under one site. So, it kind of pools everything together. You can see your home balance, and your total net worth, assets minus liabilities, so it’s a nice tool to be able to have available (unintelligible).
Waugh said that’s basically what he has prepared. He wanted to be mindful of your time tonight. He could go on for hours, he likes this stuff, but he knows that you have a lot of stuff on your agenda, so with that, next steps would really be addressing any questions you have, but other than that, any amendments to the existing 457 plan, and then there would be a resolution and an adoption agreement for a defined contribution plan, and whatever structure. If you decide 2% is where you want to go, they can set that up no problem and get those approved. Waugh said that he didn’t know; the only other resolution that they might ask the city to complete would be a resolution establishing authorized signatories that would give Smith or the mayor, somebody to sign the agreements for MERS, so we don’t have to wait for minutes, and then approved minutes, so we kind of get things moving a little more quickly, but that’s really about it.
So, with that, Waugh said that he would answer any questions that you may have.
Haven said that the IRS code limits deferrals, right? Waugh said yes. (Haven made an unintelligible comment.) Haven said that it’s a nice service for sure, but what we need to know obviously is the figures, you know, what would it cost us to do this. Will you be providing those to us? Waugh said that Smith said that payroll is roughly $183 [183,000]. Smith said yes, so if we did 2% and every employee put in a full 2%, the max exposure to the budget would be $3,700. That’s not a lot. We don’t have a huge payroll. Haven said exactly. Smith said so 2% of a relatively small payroll would just be about $3,700, that would be the exposure, and in the budget proposal, Smith roughly put that in and found a place for it. We had some other expenses that went down, particularly on our IT [Information Technology] expenses, we’ve gone with Comcast on our IT expenses, brought in some savings this year, so that’s good news. So, anyway, it could fit is his point, but it’s up to the council to consider this. We’re not asking for a vote on this tonight, this would be part of the budget approval process. Smith is going to put it in there as a line item in the budget, it could be plucked out of there if you don’t like it, next meeting will be our public hearing, we’re going to go through it. Smith has a finance committee meeting this week where we’ll go through some of the details with the committee, but next council meeting, we’ll go through the whole budget. And even that is not a vote. It will be the second meeting in June where we actually vote on the budget, so we have some time, just trying to bring in a few of these things to get in your head.
Rodgers asked if there are any additional charges, like to use your company, or is that the max, that $3,700 would be – (interrupting Rodgers), Waugh said that would be it. There is no startup cost, there’s no enrollment cost, there’s no employer cost whatsoever, so it’s literally plug and play. The only cost would be whatever the employer contribution is, the 2%, or whatever you decide.
Fuller wanted to know what investment options are available to employees, is it all securities and bonds, or is there a fixed option which would be a lot more conservative. Waugh said that was a good question. We have a pretty streamlined investment menu, so we offer a default fund, which are what are called retirement strategies or commonly known as target funds in the industry, so that’s where, when people enroll, that’s where they get put in. They’re fully diversified, but they’re more age-related, so they’re more aggressive when you’re younger, more conservative when you get older, and they automatically rebalance, and they get more conservative as you get into retirement. So, they do everything automatically for you, but once you’re enrolled in the plan, you’re free to change your investments to whatever you want. So, we do offer asset allocation portfolios, so if they want a certain mix of stocks and bonds, they have the ability to do that. And then we have individual funds as well. There’s not a fixed option. Usually, we have a stable value fund, so that would be the closest thing to more of a guaranteed type of an account, but it’s not guaranteed. He’s never seen them lose money, but it usually returns, over the last several years, between 1-1/2 and 2%. But it’s not a fixed. Usually, any time you want a fixed account, it’s typically some sort of an insurance-based product that usually has some hooks in it. So, if you want a fixed account, you’re going to lock your money up for five years, and you’re not going to be able to pull it back out. So, you might get a 2 or 3% return, but if you want to change your investments when the market corrects or something, you can’t. So, we don’t like them for that reason because they take away your freedom to do what you want in exchange for that guarantee. So, they’re basically hedging that they can give you 2 or 3% return, but they’re going to have your money on lock down for five years, so we’re probably going to do better over time, and we feel that you will do better on your own if you just stay in the market and use a risk adjustment portfolio based on your needs. So, those are the three main criteria – target funds, asset allocation portfolios, then we have individual funds if you want to construct your own, and then we also offer a self-directed brokerage account, so if you wanted to go out and buy individual stocks or ETFs [Exchange-Traded Funds] or mutual funds, anything above $5,000, your first $5,000 has to be in a MERS plan, and then anything above that if you want to go out and above that in a self-directed account, you can. Most people find their menu suitable. Waugh said roughly 99% of all plan assets stay in the plan, and very little goes out in self-directed, but it is available if people want other options. So, if you wanted to put money into gold, or you wanted to buy a municipal bond or something like that, you can do those sorts of things through that brokerage hookup.
Luginski said on the target funds, those are typically like 25-30, -35, -40, 20-25, 20-30, every five years, pretty much in increments. Waugh said that is correct. Luginski wanted to know if they could allocate 50% of their donation to that, and then go down, or if they go to a target fund, 100% would have to go into the target fund. Waugh said nope, it does not have to go (unintelligible). So, you are correct, they are in five-year increments, and the year that they would go into is the year that’s closest to the year when they would turn 65. So, for example, Waugh is 47, he would go into the 20-40 fund. That would be – (interrupting Waugh), Luginski said you can go beyond that if you want. Waugh said that is correct, so if you said I like this idea, a fully diversified do-it-for-me concept, I don’t really want to manage the money, but I want something more aggressive, I want something more conservative, or you can plop it into a different target fund, or you can mix and match. Luginski said OK. Waugh said he usually advises against mixing and matching between the asset allocation (unintelligible) because there’s just a lot of overlap. So, he says pick a strategy, find your risk tolerance, and then go with the option that makes the most sense for you. But we do it, he’s seen it, there are people who put 50% in a target, 25% in asset allocation, and put the other 25% split between all the other ones. It’s your money, you can do whatever you want with it.
Haven said that Roth option is nice too. Waugh said that the Roth option is nice, especially for younger folks to be able to set that aside and then, you know, having the funds go into two separate plans, if somebody wanted to max out their 457, that employer money that’s going into the 401(a) doesn’t interfere with those limits. Same thing with IRAs. You can have an IRA, and you can still have a Roth 457, which is nice, because with Roth IRAs you may be limited by income, or the IRS limit for that is $6,000 a year or $7,000 if you’re over age 50, but with a 457 plan, you can actually put in $20,500 even up to age 50 plus another $6,500 above, so $27,000 max. If somebody wanted to set aside their entire paycheck, they could do that.
Haven said so basically the reason for adding the 401(a) is to allow them to, to allow the city to, contribute, right? Waugh said that is correct. (Unintelligible crosstalk between Haven and Waugh). Continuing, Waugh said that it’s just a plan that would incentivize them to save on their own by giving a little. If you put in a little, we’ll give you a little. Haven said good.
Haven asked if there were any other questions for Waugh.
No questions.
Haven said that this not-for-profit is a very interesting aspect of it and being quasi-governmental historically. Are you the only game in town for this kind of proposal? Waugh said no, there’s plenty of other games in town. (Unintelligible) number, Waugh said that he could tell you that the vast majority are going to charge, you know, being as small as you are, they’re going to charge you money to set up the plan, maintain the plan, until it gets to a certain point, and then eventually, when there’s enough money in the plan to generate revenue, then they can start to pull those fees away, but generally, where you are going to start something free of charge with no plan document fees, no set up fees, no participant fees or any of that, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find one. Haven said good. Waugh said that MissionSquare is the only one that he’s aware of that would probably do something like that, and in his experience, the fees are usually closer to 1.25 to 1.4%, versus ours being closer to like .39%, so you are paying nearly four times as much for the same thing. Haven asked if they were for profit? Waugh said he thought that they are the only one that he’s aware of that is a non-profit as well. But they’re national, you know, we’re a Michigan company, and we only service Michigan municipalities. That’s probably the biggest differentiator. They’re a lot bigger, and sometimes that means maybe a little less service too.
Haven asked if there were any other questions.
Fuller said Waugh just brought something up. So, they pay our fee to MERS, but there’s no additional fee that they pay for the management companies, say Fidelity or whatever, there’s not another fee on top of that? Waugh said no. The .39 on average that Waugh mentioned is all of that. That’s investment management, trustee record keeping, operating expense, all that. So, if you have a plan that’s only got $1,000 in it, it might only cost $3.90 a year for the plan. That’s dirt cheap. (Fuller said something unintelligible.) Waugh said that they definitely deliver a pretty good value. With most other plans, they’re asset driven. So, the larger the plan, the more aggressive they can get with the pricing. With us, everybody gets the same pricing, no matter what, whether you’ve got zero dollars or whether you have $100,000,000, your cost is the same.
Pardee asked if the return history was made available to the employees when you made the presentation. Waugh said absolutely, our numbers are always available. So, there’s a fee and performance for (unintelligible) directed accounts available on our website that has all the different fund options as he mentioned, their performance as well as the fees listed right on it, which a lot of times with other companies, you don’t always get the fees transparently, they’re sometimes hidden, or there might be an investment fee that they show you, but that is stuck in the disclosures and you’ve got to comb through it and most people don’t know how to find it. But that’s one nice thing about us; we’re very transparent. We follow the Department of Labor guidelines as far as laying it all out, and then that summary sheet, you can click on funding, and it will pull up a more detailed sheet with more information as well. So, if that’s something you would like to see, he would be more than happy to email a copy over to Smith and you can have a look at it.
Haven said that the next time that we will see this is a line item in the budget. Smith said that was correct, as a proposal.
Haven asked if there were any other questions.
Waugh said just as a side note, even if you decide and you’re not happy, you can tell us to take a hike if you want and use somebody else in the future. There are no hooks or anything like that, no fees if you decide you want to leave and transition over with no problem. Or as Smith mentioned, if the budget got tight, 2% needed to be cut somewhere, you needed to remove that at some point in the future, you can do that as well.
Smith thanked Waugh for coming. Waugh thanked the council, said they were all good questions, and wished them a good evening.
Item 9b – Discussion: EV Charging Stations; Presentation from Duane Lobbestael from State Electric Company (Video time mark 0:47:25):
Haven said that the next item is EV charging stations. Someone walked over to the podium and said his name is Greg. Smith said that he’s talked about this before, this idea of electric vehicle charging stations, and it is kind of the wave of the future. We do have, even though we’re a small historic town, we do have people that are buying electric vehicles and the question has been asked, do you have a charging station in your community, and he’s said no. It’s an additional benefit and maybe Duane or Greg will talk about this tonight, but there’s an additional benefit. We’ll be kind of put on a map as Smith understands it, and it will say if you’re running low on charge, you can exit at Exit 91 – Fuller said 91 – (Smith continuing), and you can go eat at your favorite restaurant and get your vehicle charged. So, it’s almost an attraction for people with electric vehicles if they may want to come. So, we’ll let them talk about it. Smith is kind of considering two of these in the Washington and Main lot, the paid lot, and two down here in what we call the employee lot, the Depot lot. That’s four for the entire community. That’s not a lot, but Smith will let them talk about how the program works. Smith was very intrigued. They came out last week, we looked at all of our panels, they were very thorough, looked at our electrical capacity, and they think this is all very doable.
One of the speakers said he wanted to make a brief introduction. His name is Duane Lobbestael and he’s the owner of State Electric, local here, been in business for over twenty years. Greg Cerkovich (spelling?) and Dillon Lobestael, his son, as well as a lot of other people, they came here with him today. Smith summed it up very well. Cerkovich has probably a broader sense of knowledge of this, even though Lobbestael is the owner, but he’s going to let Cerkovich take it from here and (unintelligible).
Haven asked Lobbestael what did he do twenty years ago, before. Lobbestael said that he’s been an electrician for thirty-five years. Haven said electrician, OK. Lobbestael said that he grew up in Troy, and he got out of school and went to college for a while, and then he took a job as an electrician. He told his dad when he got home one time that he’d gotten a job as an electrician, and he said that’s a good job. So, anyway, Lobbestael has been able to employ about fifty people. His office is across from River Run, he lives in Ortonville on Hadley Road in (unintelligible). Cerkovich lives in Clarkston, (unintelligible) and raised his family there, so he’s local here and works with towns and restaurants and so on and so forth. Cerkovich said that pretty much – (interrupting Cerkovich), Lobbestael said that you can divert any questions or technical stuff to Cerkovich (unintelligible).
Greg Cerkovich:
Cerkovich said that Duane Lobbestael is the owner of the company, he and Dillon Lobbestael are project managers, and Dillon Lobbestael is also an estimator of the company. We kind of mentioned that we are sort of a small/medium size family-owned company over in Holly and we do a lot of local work here as well (unintelligible) and the State of Michigan as well.
We are kind of moving in this electric vehicle charging direction here throughout the State of Michigan. Currently, we do a lot of residential installs for people buying Chevy Volts, the Mustang Mach-Es, a lot of that kind of stuff throughout the whole State of Michigan, as well as we do a lot of commercial installs for dealerships, Chevy dealerships, Ford dealerships, Cadillac dealerships. We have quite a few projects going on right now, so we’re well-versed in the scope and everything and what comes along with these.
Basically, this is the product (gesturing) we are proposing to install for you guys here. This is something we have recently installed in the Village of Holly as well, and it’s basically an attraction as well as an amenity for the business owners so people can see it. And, as Smith mentioned, it does put you on a map. There’s a large map that people who own electrical vehicles use to find local charging stations to them as well as an attraction point if you’re coming to the village to go to one of your many nice restaurants here. They can plug in and get a suitable charge while they’re parked for the duration of their meal.
Basically, usually what this looks like is we lease a couple of parking spaces from the village, and it’s a monetization stream. So, essentially whatever the rate that you guys are getting charged for electricity is, we will usually probably about double that, and we’ll offer a kickback from some of the monetization stream to the village itself. Lobbestael said “sharing revenues.” Cerkovich said sharing revenues. (Laughter.) Cerkovich said wrong word, sharing revenue streams basically at that point. So, a little bit like that. It’s nothing that’s too crazy major, so don’t expect a crazy revenue stream off it, but it’s just a small – (interrupting Cerkovich), Lobbestael said it’s about $.03 a kilowatt hour is what it averages. He has leases throughout the state in different localities and municipalities where he homes the chargers. Some of them are high-speed chargers; Copper Harbor Michigan is where he has a high-speed charger. People go there as a destination location, and you can’t go anywhere else when you leave. You need to have a full charge, you can’t wait for a few hours with us, so you can do it real quick. With that being said, leases are structured so that whoever it is, it’s usually about $.03/kilowatt hour and then Lobbestael takes care of everything, all costs. He purchases this (gesturing toward charging station). We’re an electrical contractor so we do the electrical service, the concrete, landscape restoration, the whole shebang. No money out of pocket to lease any of this stuff.
Smith said that’s the attraction to that if we didn’t give you that indication in the beginning. Smith said that he’s talked to companies that will sell us a machine like this, but it’s around $12,000 a unit. This company fronts all of that cost. There would be nothing out of pocket for the city and we could have these up and running – (interrupting Smith), Lobbestael (and Smith) said in a relatively short time. Cerkovich said in a couple of weeks after they get approval. Smith said as Lobbestael said, you won’t get rich off this, but you won’t lose money either. Lobbestael said he’s not going to get rich. He uses funny analogies sometimes and he says it’s like a modern gumball machine. We’re not making a ton of money on it, but he lives here, you know, and he kind of likes it, it’s what we do, he likes to put his name out there, it’s small fries in the big scheme of things, but you know, he just likes to have, he just likes it.
Haven said so the space is dedicated and no one else can park there. Smith said that we have to talk about that. Lobbestael said that’s the little bit of a grey area, our lease there is dedicated to EVs. Haven said OK. Smith said you have to have some (interrupted with unintelligible crosstalk). Lobbestael said if you have people park there with a regular car, it completely negates the purpose. Haven said for sure. It has to be dedicated. Cerkovich said he thinks as Smith can attest, when they were walking around the village to look at some of the electrical service, they did see quite a few electric cars here. (To Smith), Lobbestael said didn’t we point out three or four in this parking lot alone? Smith agreed.
Cerkovich said an interesting fact, if Smith could flip to the next slide, is a couple of the proposed locations. This is kind of the first location. This is right outside the – (interrupting Cerkovich), Smith said right outside here, next to our handicapped parking, and then up in – (interrupting Smith), Cerkovich said this is the other location, up in the parking lot up there on Washington. Smith said the Washington and Main parking lot, in the island there (unintelligible). Cerkovich said that there is some existing electrical service there too and they would come in and kind of fix that. It’s in kind of a structure right now and he knows that Smith wasn’t too pleased about the big wooden structure. It’s not the most pleasant to look at, so that’s something we would obviously take care of throughout this process, we would absorb the cost of that, fix it up. Haven said clean the electrical service up. Cerkovich agreed, clean it up a little bit, bring it back up to code and that sort of thing.
Cerkovich asked if anyone had any questions about what he’d gone through. He’d be happy to answer them.
Wylie said that Cerkovich said it was universal, but he didn’t mention Tesla. Cerkovich said that Teslas are still universal. All new Teslas now come with an adapter to plug into this. This is what they call a J plug, and this will do any car that’s made in America, Europe, and pretty much anywhere except for Japan. Japan has their own separate standard and they’re not very popular so it’s not – (interrupting Cerkovich), an unidentified person said not going to be an issue. Cerkovich said yes, it’s a CHAdeMO plug, it’s not really an issue, and anyone that owns a Tesla usually has an adapter and use the charging stations all the time, and they can be purchased relatively cheaply on (unintelligible).
Fuller asked if someone backs their car into this, will they come out and fix it at no charge to the city? Cerkovich said yes. We have a warranty on all of our stuff, and the site, since it’s leased by us, if anything happens to it, you guys hit it with a snowplow or anything like that, we’ll come out pretty quickly since we’re local and get it fixed up.
Avery asked about liability. What if somebody plugs into that and blows up their car and then they want to sue the city because they think they got a bad charge. Lobbestael said that’s why we have a lease, and it would be his responsibility. The city would be hands off. Cerkovich said all the liability basically. Lobbestael asked Smith if he’d sent him that lease he used for Holly. Smith said he thought he did. He will have to have Ryan look at it, look at the agreement.
Lobbestael said just something else because it comes up that he wants to say so everybody is aware. Picking up the plug, Lobbestael said no, you can’t lick this and get a charge. (Laughter). And a kid can’t put his fingers in it even though there are (unintelligible) contacts in there, but this actually has to plug into the car and communicate and then the power flows. Wylie said OK. Lobbestael said so, yeah, it’s dummy proof. Cerkovich said it’s very safe.
Haven said but it doesn’t take cash. Lobbestael said no cash. Rodgers said she was sitting here trying to figure out how you make money. So, they pay for this. Cerkovich said this QR code here (unintelligible). We can pull it up quick. Basically, you can walk up to it and your typical QR code and it will bring you to an app that you can use to pay for it. Most – (interrupting Cerkovich), Rodgers asked how much it costs. Cerkovich said to charge it? That’s something they would set up later. It’s not a specific cost set around the state. They usually look at what’s local and what you’re paying for your current delivered rate of electricity and kind of base it off of that. Haven said something about gasoline. Cerkovich said it’s a lot cheaper than gasoline right now. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)
Fuller asked why they wouldn’t put in a rapid charger. Cerkovich said the cost, and the infrastructure. Usually to bring the infrastructure in, you need 480 volt three-phase as well as the cost of the charging unit, and as Smith stated, it’s anywhere from $6,000-$12,000 for one of these. A rapid charger usually starts at about $40,000, just for the charger, plus the installation and infrastructure costs is a lot higher than one of these. Lobbestael said to give a quick example, they did Cadillac when there was a big infrastructure change that had to happen in order to have high-speed chargers there, and the job was $800,000 just to put in chargers.
Casey asked if this ran on 220. Cerkovich said yes.
Fuller said when you get on that map, and in fact, he was just looking at that map last night and (unintelligible) green and whatever is on there, they’re not, and when you think about the need that’s coming forward, there’s not nearly enough. Cerkovich said that is correct. Fuller said (unintelligible) that his question to his GM daughter-in-law is if he were buying an electric vehicle, how am I going to take off across the country, how am I going to get on I-75 and go somewhere when the range is 230 miles or so. I can’t do it. But we’re near I-75 and so when you get on that map, is it going to say 30-mile limit if you pull over here, (unintelligible) so people won’t expect that they’re going to pull off the freeway, charge up, and keep going. Cerkovich said exactly. Lobbestael said the Korean (unintelligible) south of here, he’s a close friend of Lobbestael. We are working with him right now about potentially renting a high-speed charger in his parking lot. Luginski said that they have room in that parking lot too.
Cerkovich said that he pictures this as more of an amenity to offer for people doing business downtown. Lobbestael said it’s a start, you know (unintelligible). Cerkovich said it will get you on the map. Lobbestael said there’s something to be said for it, you know, for getting his name out there, make a little money, but maybe there’s a demand down the road that we see that there’s enough usage that maybe it won’t work, and we bring something else in and we can talk about it at that time but right now, he thinks that (unintelligible) first. Fuller agreed.
Lobbestael said that their office is across from River Rock. We are repaving the whole thing right now, and he’s added (unintelligible) spaces of parking. We put in a high-speed charger and a whole bunch of these. Kind of like practice what you preach, right? It’s an expensive endeavor for the high-speed one. Lobbestael said he’s not really expecting that he’s going to have a revenue stream off it so much, but we might be sorely mistaken. Sometimes you just don’t know what you’re missing because you were never at the side of the road selling candy anyway, you know what I mean, or a lemonade stand to sell. So, maybe people are on this heatmap and will be flowing into our parking lot, but our place looks pretty nice.
Pardee asked how long you need to be at dinner in order to get what percentage. Lobbestael said it’s kind of like a top off. Cerkovich said it’s kind of hard to see up there – (interrupting Cerkovich), Lobbestael said he would let Cerkovich talk; he’s muddied the water up a little too much. Cerkovich said roughly about 30 miles range per hour that you’re plugged into this. It’s not a very fast charger, but it will do the job. It’s better than plugging into your normal 110-volt household outlet, you know, more than an amenity than anything else. (Fuller made an unintelligible comment.) Wylie said if the parking lot is filled, somebody might say I’m just going to just charge my vehicle. (Laughter.) Cerkovich said or somebody might say they may as well, just plug in, if they’re going to be at dinner or somewhere for an hour or two.
Lobbestael said the changing landscape of transportation. We’ve really entrenched ourselves in the last two years in this. Fuller said it’s rapidly changing. Lobbestael said like by the day. Fuller said by the second. It’s all about this. It’s all about this infrastructure. Lobbestael agreed. Fuller said you can get all the cars you want, but if you can’t keep the things charged up, forget it. Lobbestael said it’s like what came first, the chicken or the egg, you know. You’ve got to have both in order to make it work.
Haven said that Lobbestael talked about Cadillac making an $800,000 investment to manage high-speed ones. Lobbestael said yes. Haven asked so who takes that on, do they share that with the customer? Lobbestael said that one was their cost. That was because General Motors mandated it. Haven said OK. So, Lobbestael is doing the amenity ones and that’s fine because you make (unintelligible) revenue, but you’re not going to do the high-speed ones. Lobbestael said oh yeah, he has about fifteen of them going in the upper peninsula. Haven said that he’s just saying without charging something for the installation of the unit. Do they have to share that cost? Lobbestael said that he has fifteen going in the UP right now that we’re working on that he’s installing that he owns (unintelligible). Haven said that you’re leveraging it. Cerkovich said you’re talking about high-speed down here, he thinks that Lobbestael is right, baby steps here and see how these work out. If we do down the road deem that there is a need for something faster here, that’s something we can talk about. Haven said certainly – (interrupting Haven), Lobbestael said he would love to see a high-speed one here and could talk to you about it, but he doesn’t know that the demand is, he would like to just kind of test the waters.
Haven said so there’s no downside to this. He asked Smith if there was a downside. Smith said he doesn’t see any downside at all to it, he really doesn’t. Avery said it just depends on how we structure the lease, because if only electric vehicles that are going to use that meter are allowed to park there, we’re losing parking spots. Lobbestael say so you get $70 an hour. Smith said 70 and 52. Avery said we are losing (unintelligible crosstalk). Smith agreed.
Smith said we have to talk about, if we took two of the spots in our paid lot, do those people still have to pay for parking on top of the QR code payment. Haven said he hadn’t thought about that. Smith said we have to figure that out. Haven said they are two values. Smith said we have to have clear signage, electric vehicles only, and other vehicles, combustion engine vehicles, could be towed or something. Or at least ticketed. Some strong language. Cerkovich said that they usually provide the signage too with whatever verbiage you want to put on it.
Pardee said our paid doesn’t start until 4:00, right? Smith agreed. Pardee said so it’s a good place to leave a vehicle for the daytime. Lobbestael said you could. Employees might use it. Smith agreed.
Lobbestael said that he thinks that we are going to see that this becomes more and more prevalent and mainstream. Avery agreed.
Smith said he was proposing two here, two down there. We walked up down East Church as an ideal location. We would have to work this out with Eric [Lines, Union Joints] and Curt [Catallo, Union Joints]. There’s an ideal spot, right next to a power pole up there adjacent to Honcho that we could put a potential charging station there. Just even in Rudy’s parking lot, we own that parking lot, and we could put one there, but Smith thinks that these four would be a good introductory step to see how much demand there is. Smith didn’t know if Lobbestael would have statistics that say how much it’s being used, or would you – (interrupting Smith), Cerkovich said that after they’re in, we have a whole software where you can see the utilization rate, how often, what times, and all that kind of stuff and when it’s being used. Smith said OK, so we could see if they’re really being used up there or not down here or something. Cerkovich said exactly. We can see all of it in real time. If one’s broken, we’ll be able to see it from our screen at a moment’s notice and come up and fix it.
Rodgers asked if this thing, if it is broken, will it let the person that plugs in know that it’s broken, would they be able to tell? Cerkovich said yes, you’ll be able to tell. There’s actually, it’s not plugged in right now, but this little bar right here gives you different indicator lights that will flash a different color, red or whatever, meaning don’t go. It will also tell you from the app as they pull up to it. There are a lot of different apps that electric vehicle drivers use to find charging stations and stuff so they will be able to see and note that.
Haven asked what their decision-making process looks like. We could make a motion tonight if we wanted to, or are you going to bring us a proposal? Smith was thinking, we like to think about these things and sleep on them, and he told this to Lobbestael. Lobbestael said to blindside you. Smith said he would like to just present tonight the concept and let you think about it. We can bring it back next time for a vote, or if you feel strongly about it, right now is fine too. But Smith wasn’t planning on voting tonight. Wylie said she thought that we should wait until the next meeting. Haven agreed. Avery said that he thinks that we need more information, we need to see a copy of the lease. Smith said that Ryan needs to see it. Avery said he’s had experience with other municipalities and will make sure that everything is good before we (unintelligible) the prudent thing. We don’t really know what we’re approving tonight.
Pardee said there’s no financial downside to us. Smith said no. No risk, no out of pocket, Smith just doesn’t see any downside. Pardee pointed to Avery and said that he offered an opinion. Smith said yes, it’s a convenience to our patrons. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)
Haven asked if Cara Catallo would like to make a comment. Catallo said she just wanted to say that it’s a huge (unintelligible) because she really thinks it’s vital and time to do something like this, but she just wanted to say to make sure to, and you might know this from what you do with other communities, because we seem to have peculiar vandalization that sometimes happens, just to make sure that you’re aware of, that the city wouldn’t have to somehow, you know, extend that (unintelligible) if someone does something wacky to it. Lobbestael said so that’s where us owning them, he would take care of that, that’s a (unintelligible). Catallo said the fact that it’s not a (unintelligible) is definitely a plus for you, but again, that seems to be like where weirder things happen, but – (interrupting Catallo), Smith said that we have cameras. Catallo said she just wasn’t sure if (unintelligible) it’s like the meters (unintelligible) sort of the cameras (unintelligible) and night there, but sure if you had something like that. But yeah, she thinks it’s a great idea and definitely a sign of the times. Haven thanked Catallo.
Fuller said he had one last question. Do you find that people are considerate in wrapping that hose back up (unintelligible crosstalk). Cerkovich said so far, from what they’ve seen, yes, for the most part. Lobbestael thinks that right now, the demographic buying electric vehicles, it’s going to change, but generally it’s a little higher income and higher education and it’s someone that’s going to have a little more thought process as to taking care of their environment, right? I mean, it’s just facts. Those people are more inclined to wrap up the cord. Cerkovich said like the people who put away their shopping carts. Lobbestael said exactly. (Laughter.) Lobbestael said he can’t stand when people don’t do that. Haven said especially when it has a retractor on it. Lobbestael said they make them, but it starts getting really pricey.
Lobbestael said by the way, they are the distributor, as a matter of fact, he doesn’t even know how this ever came about, but they are, they ended up becoming the number one channel partner of Anel (spelling?) in the whole United States for distributing their product, really, truly by chance. They are a $100,000,000 company out of Italy. They are a massive powerhouse, and by persistence, and just a stroke of luck, Lobbestael ended up having more product in his possession that he bought, hedged himself, he guesses, than anywhere in the whole U.S. We sell these things like they are going out of style, and they are shipping out of our warehouse out of Holly. And we’re doing installs. Haven said the Holly connection.
Pardee asked (unintelligible) no Japanese adapter. Cerkovich said that they make a Japanese adapter for them, it’s just not very popular. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Cerkovich said for the Japanese car in America, there’s not a very (unintelligible crosstalk) market this year, it’s not very high, because the Japanese manufacturers don’t have very many cars like that. They’re out there, but maybe a handful. Pardee said Hyundai is part of – Cerkovich said yes, correct. He thought they were Korean. Hyundai probably doesn’t. Cerkovich thought it was Nissan. Pardee said so Hyundai is OK. Cerkovich said he believes so. Don’t quote him on that because he’s not exactly sure, but he thinks Nissan is a major one, basically, but those aren’t very popular. Lobbestael said we’re talking about a CHAdeMO hook. Cerkovich said yes. Lobbestael said which, by the way, you’ll hear this term, you may hear it over the years, now it come up – CHAdeMO. Cerkovich said it’s a spinoff of the Japanese. Lobbestael said he chewed on this thing, what does that mean, he looked it up, it means, in Japanese he guesses, you take some time and have a cup of tea. So, he guesses people charging over there, you know, it takes a while, you plug in your CHAdeMO plug and go have a cup of tea. Gesturing toward the example, Cerkovich said that this is just the most universal and accepted form of outlet, basically. There only three outlets. There’s the CHAdeMO which is for your Japanese manufacturers, the J-plug, which does pretty much every other car, and your Tesla, but then Teslas are now using this.
Cerkovich asked if there were any other thoughts.
Haven said that they would see it again when Smith brings it back to them. Lobbestael said perfect. Haven and Smith thanked Lobbestael and Cerkovich. Lobbestael and Cerkovich thanked the council. Smith said he appreciated them coming out tonight and bringing a demo. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)
Item 9c – Discussion: Proposed 22/23 FY Salary Changes (Video time mark 1:12:40; page 24/38 of the council packet):
Haven said that this one is for Smith. Haven asked if this presentation is preempting the budget presentation? It will be part of it when we get there. You’re kind of early by a month on this discussion. Smith said yes. Wylie said that Smith has done it before, let us know what (unintelligible). Haven said OK. Smith said that he did this last year, correct.
(Smith stepped up to the podium.)
Smith said that last year, he did the same thing, because the public hearing is a lot of discussion on a lot of different topics. It gives the public a chance to question the numbers that are on our budget and Smith would like to have a little bit more time in advance to talk about salary changes.
So, it’s kind of goes in line with the previous discussion from Waught from MERS, it’s the importance of keeping our staff happy. If you have any employees, if you’re involved with employees, you know how difficult it is right now to get employees and how important it is right now to retain employees, not only because you have an investment in those employees, but because just getting them, getting somebody qualified in this market is challenging. If Smith hasn’t told them before, he loves the staff that he has right now, and has no plans for any changes. He loves the staff, he thinks we’re hitting on all cylinders and doing a good job for the capacity that we have with five of us, six of us in total actually, including himself.
As Smith says in the introductory slide, employee satisfaction and retention are especially important in this inflationary time, low unemployment, people have lots and lots of opportunities. Even some of the fast food and typically lower-paid industries are paying up to $20 an hour, so it’s become very competitive.
Smith said that what he’s done before is done a comparison to where we stand currently with the Michigan Municipal League’s (MML) annual salary study. So, during COVID, the Michigan Municipal League unfortunately did not do, this past 2021, they did not do a salary survey. So, this is 2021 data. It’s a year old. But here again is an example, and Smith has used for himself, the city manager, so this is just a partial snapshot of city manager pay scales, and that yellow column in the middle, actual pay range, anywhere from $17,000 to well up over $100,000. So, it varies by community, but what Smith has done in this yellow band in the middle has picked communities, and he’s sorted the list by taxable value. So, these are the other communities that are kind of, sort of, like us in size. Their tax base is in the same general range. So, Smith has taken Clarkston’s taxable value plus or minus $10,000,000 and that gives him this box in yellow. And what Smith is saying in this example is the average salary in that box is $70,729. Again, that’s a year-old number before inflation hit, so that’s even low, he thinks.
Let’s go on to the next slide and Smith said he would tell them how that relates, that’s $70,729. So, on this slide, what he’s showing you is, he starts out with city manager at the top and $70,729 is the comparable salary, and then in the next two columns, the green column is the current salary, and the blue is the proposed salary. So, at $40,000, Smith’s current salary, as a percentage of the $70,729, which is the MML average, he’s paid 56% of the average. If we try to get closer to an 80-ish percent, what he’s proposing here is a 3% increase for the staff, not just for himself, but for all of the staff, that would go up to $41,200. So, this same analysis that Smith just walked you through for city manager would apply to the treasurer, the clerk, the admin., the DPW supervisor and the DPW laborer. So, all in, it would take us from a current salary total of $180,000 to $186,000.
The next slide kind of summarizes that in a slightly different way. So, on this slide, he’s showing you a little different viewpoint, and it shows the actual percentage increase. Same numbers as the previous slide, but he’s averaged it out on a weekly hourly work wage. So, he works about 44, sometimes 50 hours a week. That equates to $18 an hour. And that’s a 3% change year over year, and he does that for all the wages. DPW supervisor, Smith bumped him a little bit more than 3%, because here again, if he hasn’t told you how much he loves Jimi [Turner], he loves Turner. He’s just doing a phenomenal job. He’s got the right attitude, he’s got the right sense of humor, he’s got the right knowledge. Probably most important is the mechanical knowledge. He’s just doing a great job and Smith feels the need to keep him there.
Wylie asked how long Turner has been with us. Smith said that he’s just been here about a year, year-and-a-half maybe. Don’t get him wrong, Smith loves Mike [Speagle, former DPW Supervisor] too, but Mike went on to bigger and better things, and Smith really got lucky when he found Turner and he wants to keep him. So, Smith is proposing $22/hour. The ranges of people in his profession, anywhere from $18 to $28/hour. So, $22, Smith is trying to keep him with a plan here that keeps him happy. It’s a small team. We have kind of a family environment here. Smith tries to keep it light-hearted, have some humor in our day, have fun, Smith gives him some latitude to do the things that he likes. He likes doing mechanical work, but other things come into play like the retirement thing, and Smith had Waugh talk to you about it earlier. It’s the importance of having some longevity so he can see himself here for ten, fifteen, or twenty years. Smith is trying to convey that importance.
Carson [Danis], the laborer at the low end, he’s young. Smith loves Danis, he’s a great kid, a great attitude, but will he stay? Probably not. Smith is probably going to lose him because he’ll find something better and bigger. He’s going to school at night to get his bachelor’s degree, so we’ll probably lose him, but in the meantime, Smith wants to keep him here. He’s got training, Turner has him trained, so Smith wants to keep him here.
Anyways. The bottom line here is that Smith is proposing a 3.4% increase. Our revenue this year will go up 3.5%, on the revenue that you’ll see next week. So, this is, keeping the employees going up at 3.4 is consistent with our revenue going up 3.5. Smith is not trying to gobble up more than our fair share of the revenue is what he’s trying to say here. It’s a very important aspect. Our little house of cards falls down if we don’t have good staff. And this isn’t Smith pushing for Smith. If you want to take him out of this equation and say I approve everybody but you, Smith would be OK with that because keeping a good staff here is very important, and they make Smith’s life easier. So, if that is a gamechanger for you and you want to take Smith out of the calculation, then so be it.
All right. That’s all he wanted, kind of short and sweet, he just wanted to give you some introductory to the topic that will come up in more detail in our meeting, in the public hearing next time, and then it will come up again in July when you do your final budget approval. And the finance committee is going to talk about this a little bit more this week too, so there will be lots of eyes on. Smith asked if there were any questions.
Fuller said that Smith seems somewhat passionate about this. He asked if Smith feels that this is what it’s going to take to make everyone happy, to keep everyone happy, because Fuller’s understanding, for example, he sees the clerk is under a lot of pressure a lot of the time with various FOIA requests and information for various entities and so forth, keeps the ship on keel a lot of the time. Smith said absolutely. Fuller asked if that $16.98 an hour, is that real? Smith said that the things he tells the staff is that if they ever think about making a change, please talk to me. Smith said yeah, he’d love to bump everybody 10%, yes, and in these inflationary times, he’s hearing raises, and this is more in the business world than the municipal world, but Smith is competing with them, right? Eight to ten percent right now, this year, is not unusual. Employees are getting raises of that magnitude, so 3% is on the light side, and he knows he can’t, like he said earlier, he doesn’t want to gobble up more of the budget. He’s just trying to stay whole with our proportional increase. He’d love to go more, but he doesn’t think that he would feel comfortable asking for more. But, know this, if Turner comes to Smith tomorrow, or Speagle comes to him tomorrow, or any of them, Greg [Coté, treasurer], any one of them come to Smith and say you know what, I’ve got another offer, I love working here but I have another offer, and I’m going to leave. Smith said he would say give him a week, let me talk to council, and see if there’s something he can do. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t, but Smith will ask for that favor, give him a week, see if he can do something to keep you. And Smith has said that to the team, and he will say it again to them.
Haven asked what the inflation forecast is (unintelligible) tenuous times (unintelligible) when you look at 3% (unintelligible). Avery said it went up 7%-8%. Haven said so we’re not keeping up with inflation. Smith said we’re not even keeping up with inflation. Haven said projected to (unintelligible), so again that’s a negative (unintelligible) right there. Smith said it’s a difficult time in the employer business right now. Haven said it sure is. Smith said whether it’s a municipality or a business, it’s very difficult. (Haven made an unintelligible comment.)
Smith said if there are any other questions, he would be happy to answer them.
No additional questions. Haven and Wylie thanked Smith. Haven said he appreciated Smith’s thoughts.
Smith said that the last slide was a just a breakdown of the DPW budget, as we’ll see next meeting has lots of line items. He has to break it down by line item so Coté can plug it into the budget, so that last slide is just to show how that plug in would occur.
Item 9d – Discussion: Christmas Market (Video time mark 1:26:29):
Haven said that the next item on the agenda is the Rules of Procedure. Luginski said that they still had two items on New Business. Smith agreed. Luginski said 10d and 10e, right? Haven agreed and said that Rodgers was on for this agenda item.
Rodgers said she just wanted to bring to council’s attention today the idea of having a Christmas market. It came to her during the light-up parade this past December. Kind of when the parade was over, it was fantastic, and it was over. So, she kind of, in her mind, whether it’s after it or not, remembered when the light-up parade happened when her children were in school, there were things going on within the town. Stores were still open, restaurants had things going on, and it was like a very festive-type evening. And so, she just came up with this idea of perhaps having a Christmas market in Depot Park that would coincide with the parade. Everything that she is going to say today is all proposals that haven’t even really been formulated to its final idea. They’re just ideas. There’s a committee that is forming that Rodgers has kind of asked people to help her with, and she’s looking for other people that might be interested with this idea if you guys give the blessing on it.
Rodgers said that basically what it would be, would be a Christmas market that would, and that’s not even the title of it per se, it might be, it might not be, we don’t have, similar to like Rochester has a Kris Kringle market in one of their alleyways a weekend in December, plus it coincides with the parade. It would be out here in Depot Park. There would be maybe boutiques, kind of similar to what Art in the Park had, like those little boutiques that work out of trucks and vans, and selling hats, scarves, like Christmas-y type items. We hope to have maybe some arts and crafts for kids, they could maybe write letters to Santa, or make little Christmas projects. Somebody just told her how maybe we could have a tent where kids could take money in and buy things for their parents like we used to, our kids used to do in school. Apparently, they don’t do that anymore. You know, like for a dollar you can get some cheap plastic necklace that your kid makes you wear for six months until it breaks. Haven said a sales pitch. Rodgers continued and said they remind you every day to put it on. Something like that. An idea was thrown out to work with the fire department and maybe do a s’mores station where they could make s’mores.
Things are just kind of out there. Of course, we will work with our restaurants. Hot chocolate, maybe different kinds of winter foods or desserts that they could serve down there and then work with the Chamber of Commerce to ask if the stores could keep their businesses open for that time allotment.
We don’t have a definite time. We are thinking somewhere, she thinks the parade is around 6:00 she believes, so maybe 4:00-9:00, 5:00-9:00. There is some discussion about what or how, apparently Calvary Lutheran Church has Santa there, he finishes the parade, it finishes there, he is there for children and how that would all be intertwined, and so Rodgers has asked the pastor there if he would be interested in coming to this committee meeting. He’s sending a designee to it.
Rodgers reached out to Carla Hughes (spelling?) who is in charge of the robotics parade and has told her about the committee. Rodgers has not yet heard back from her. It’s been a few days, so Rodgers is waiting to hear back from her. One of the people who want to help Rodgers suggested that she reach out to Mr. Sean Ryan of the school district to see if he has any ideas. But we also reached out to Fairy Tale Fantasies, the princess place, next to Neiman’s, and Rodgers spoke to one gal who is reaching to their main person to see if maybe characters would want to come and walk around the park and interact with the children. Rodgers doesn’t know, even maybe use the gazebo to put on some little shows for them as a means of advertisement for them. It’s not something that we would pay for, but they would use that as a means of advertising their own product that they have.
Rodgers said that’s kind of where they are at. She just would like to bring that charm back to our city. We don’t really do anything at Christmastime, besides just the parade, which in and of itself is fantastic, but to make it more of a complete festive evening. She thinks it would be fun and maybe draw people from other communities.
Speagle said the only thing that she would say is to just keep in mind when you’re trying to figure out the time is that Depot closes about an hour before the parade. Rodgers asked if it has to close, that’s her question, and then can it reopen after the parade? Speagle said it does. It reopens after the parade, but it closes about an hour before (unintelligible) DPW kind of, because of the parade route, DPW kind of follows the parade and opens up as the parade – (interrupting Speagle), Rodgers said that she did not know that, thank you. Speagle said that would be, and she knows that it’s been talked about before in other instances, we can’t reverse the one way, we can’t have people coming down the wrong way on (unintelligible) – (interrupting Speagle), Rodgers said that would be really smart. Speagle said that even though people do that every day anyways (unintelligible), we can’t change that, so you would have to keep in mind – (interrupting Speagle), Rodgers said and it closes so that there is a route for traffic, is that right? Speagle said yes. Rodgers asked if that is why it closes? Speagle said it closes at Waldon, it closes in front of Depot, not Church Street because it comes down Church, M15 to Miller, to (Avery said Holcomb; Haven said Glenburnie) – Smith said Glenburnie. Speagle said Miller, Glenburnie, to the church. So, you have a closure at Depot, and you have a closure at Washington. Rodgers said the roads are closed, but does the park have to be closed? Speagle said the park is not closed. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Rodgers said the road is closed but the park isn’t closed. Speagle said you’re not going to, people aren’t going to be able to drive down. Rodgers said if they’re not already parked, they’re not getting there. Luginski said until the parade is over. Speagle said until the parade is over, unless they come early before the road closes. Rodgers said gotcha, OK, the park’s open, just the road is closed.
Haven said those are the traditional closures that we’ve had in the past. Would there be any objection to a circuitous route, where we would start, because we want to use the direction that’s already established for Depot, to start at the north end of town, with the flow to the south, down Depot and back up Holcomb. Speagle said that would be something that you would have to talk to Kyle (unintelligible) about. Haven asked to whom? Speagle said changing the parade route, you would have to talk to Kyle. Avery said that the parade route has always been pretty standard. You start at the catholic church, St. Dan’s, and go to the high school or vice-versa, that’s usually (unintelligible). (Haven made an unintelligible comment.) Haven said he was just trying to include Holcomb in the process, and sort of going circuitous around the village, you know. So people can go out on their front porches if they’re on Holcomb as well as Main Street. Smith said he missed Church. Haven said it gives us sort of a feeling of inclusiveness. Speagle said so Haven is saying have the parade route down Holcomb? Haven said yes. Speagle said she doesn’t think they’ve ever done that because of the – (interrupting Speagle), Wylie said you’re closing two roads, you’ve already got Main Street closed. Speagle said some of the turns that they have to take with some of those big parade floats – (interrupting Speagle), Avery said his understanding is, and it’s before his time, is that when they redid Main Street at one point, they couldn’t have the parade down Main Street, so they had it down Holcomb. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)
Fuller said that he’d like to say that he thinks it’s a great idea and the only thing that he would say that Christmas green sale is the Farm and Garden Club’s biggest fundraiser of the year, to talk to them whether they would want to participate – (interrupting Fuller), Rodgers said that somebody else mentioned that – continuing, Fuller said we wouldn’t want to steal all their sales because they are very supportive of our community too. Rodgers agreed. Somebody else said that too, that might be an additional evening that they might want to put their stuff out there too. Haven said he thought it was an additional evening, because the Lutheran church entertains Santa and has a tree lighting and all that there on the night of the parade. Haven thought that their Christmas green sale was on the morning of. Rodgers said in the morning, on a Saturday. Fuller thought it was the Episcopalian church. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Fuller said theirs is mostly preorder, so the members of the Farm and Garden Club contact people and you fill out what you want. We wouldn’t want to take that away from them, and they may also want to participate, and for the people that didn’t fill out a card or whatever and just happen to be wandering through (unintelligible) a wreath or whatever. Haven said sure. Rodgers thought that would be a good thought.
Haven called on Cara Catallo again.
Catallo said that she thinks that the Farm and Garden, they’ve been, she thinks, for the last two years has been all online sales but they could be different this year. Haven said have they. Catallo said it’s usually, she thinks, a different day, she could be wrong, or it’s in the morning, it’s never at night. Haven said that’s what he thought. Catallo said that she remembers too, when it was, you know, we would all meet up in the park when her daughter was small, it was a charming sort of finality to the parade, and she thinks Santa would be the one in the gazebo and there would be, or at least sort of, a large mailbox where people could put their lists. She really wants to say like she wouldn’t try to lure anybody, any for profit entity into the gazebo, she thinks that to continue to make that special. But like, coincidentally, Catallo is one of the liaisons with Main Street Oakland County, and we just met, Brandon and I, Brandon Still is the other liaison, we were just talking about doing, that something similar would be a great idea (unintelligible). Rodgers said of course. Catallo said so, we can talk and see if there’s any way that we could, sort of, you know, help you with your planning meeting to discuss that a little bit more, so Catallo saw that on the agenda and was like what? (Unintelligible crosstalk and laughter.) Catallo said yeah, so we could share some of the ideas we had, because we weren’t sure if, you know, Depot is possible as much, or if there was something about maybe blocking off that little bit of Washington Street, but yeah, she thinks that, not the busy part, but the, more the neighborhood part, but she (unintelligible) what Birmingham does, and Catallo doesn’t know if you’ve been to their winter market, but it’s charming and festive and exciting and – (interrupting Catallo), Rodgers said it’s a fun night. Catallo said she’s really enjoyed it. She usually gets like an additional, like she gets greens from the Farm and Garden Club and usually gets like something extra at that market, and she thinks it could be a really nice idea. Rodgers said thank you; she thinks so too. Catallo said way to go.
Haven asked what night are they talking here. (Unintelligible crosstalk). Avery said December. Wylie said it was December 11th last year. Rodgers said it’s usually the second one, it’s usually (unintelligible crosstalk). Haven said the 11th. Wylie said that’s what it was. Rodgers said that this year, it would be the 10th if it holds true. She couldn’t find it on her (unintelligible crosstalk.) Wylie said they always announce it very late. Luginski said it’s been the first Saturday a few times too, because it’s right after the – (interrupting Luginski), Smith said the historical society. Luginski said (unintelligible) the best one. Smith said he thought so too. Haven said so it’s the 3rd or the 10th. Rodgers said yes. Smith said that the robotics people would know. Haven said they’ve probably figured it out. Rodgers said when she hears back (unintelligible). Speagle said she will look back on the calendars too, but she thinks that originally, years ago, it was the first, and they had not done it one year, so when it changed, then they were starting it back on the second week, the second Saturday. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)
Haven thanked Rodgers. That’s really cool. He really loves the idea. So, you’re going to have a meeting soon? Rodgers said yes, a couple weeks, next week, so if anybody knows anybody that is interested, just email her. Speagle said and if you have any questions about the logistics of it (unintelligible). Rodgers said she will, for sure.
Item 9e – Resolution: Urgent DPW [Department of Public Works] Truck Repair (Video time mark 1:40:28):
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- Resolution – Urgent DPW Truck Repairs (Page 31/38 of the council packet)
Haven asked Smith what the bad news was on the truck repair. Smith said that he just learned about around 4:00 today, so he didn’t have a motion sheet or resolution to put in front of you. So, the truck, the Ford 550, the F550 dump truck went into the shop because of a few things. One is the front end was rattling. Smith said that he was told that this is not unusual for vehicles with plows, that additional weight of a plow on the front end will often kind of wear things down, so it’s normal. So, we took it in for that, but we also had the windshield wiper on the stalk, on the turn signal stalk, just stays on indefinitely (gesturing). The wipers are 24/7. And then we kind of have a persistent oil leak. We didn’t know where it was coming from. So, Turner knew that it was up, way up under the engine and getting to it without a lift, he didn’t think it was something that was within his realm.
Smith said so, we took it to the Ford dealership, and they’ve had it for a full two weeks, and with Speagle’s help, Speagle is very persistent on the phone, with her help today, we finally got through to a manager and he called Smith back with the bad news. So, he says they can get started on it, but we are looking at a total bill of $8,260 to repair those three things – the oil leak, the turn signal stalk, and the front end. And the front end is the most dangerous because it’s tie rods and the axle joints that hold on the axle. When you see a big vehicle on the side of the road and their tire is slanted way out (gesturing), that’s because their tie rod or their axle joint is broken, and at that point you’re dead in the water. You can’t drive it. He says you’re very close to that. The axle joint is nearly broken. So, Smith talked with Turner about the three things – the axle joint and the tie rod repair is the most important.
Smith said if they wanted to skinny down the bill, surprisingly, this oil leak, it drops about a dozen drops on the floor every night. That would be the most expensive, $5,400 to repair that oil leak, and it’s because they almost have to take the engine entirely out of the vehicle to get to this oil pan. They don’t have to take it all up, they just need to get it up about six-eight inches so they can get at the oil pan. So that’s a big bill, $5,400. Turner thinks, he’s looking at some YouTube videos to see how other people have fixed these, and he would say don’t do that right now. In the meantime, we can put a pad under it in the garage. Turner said let me do some more research on that before we spend $5,400 on that. The turn signal switch, he’s said that he’s repaired these. We can just buy the parts, and he’ll install it.
Smith said so we are proposing not doing those two and just the tie rod and the axle, because without a lift, that’s kind of a tough job for Turner to do. He’s done it before, but he doesn’t feel comfortable without the equipment. That bill is $2,460, just for the front end, which Smith doesn’t think was bad for a truck of that size. So, $2,460. Smith is asking for approval for $2,800, just to give him a little leeway in case they forgot to add in some gasket or something, he doesn’t know what. So, he’s asking for approval for $2,800. The dealer agrees that driving it, the other two items you can wait, but that axle joint, you’re taking a risk every time you drive that out on the road with that being as dangerous as it is.
Smith didn’t bring it back from the dealership. It’s still there. He’s proposing a bill of $2,800, and he will have to come back at the next meeting to tell them where he would pull those funds from because our truck budget is already over in the red on both the big trucks. It’s another reason why he wants to trade in these trucks and get something new because they’re really starting to rack up some repair bills. Smith said that he is in the red on both the repair bills for both trucks right now, so he doesn’t have it. He’s going to have to borrow from another budget just to pay this $2,800, so he will have to come to the next meeting, if they approve this tonight pending the source for the monies, that’s what he would say he will do is come to the next meeting.
Smith asked if there were any questions. He knows it’s not good news.
Pardee said that there is money in capital projects. Smith agreed.
Fuller asked if this involves new parts. Are they going to replace the axle? Smith said not the axle, the axle U-joints and the tie rods. The tie rods and the axle U-joints will all get replaced, but those apparently are vanilla kind of repairs, and they have the parts in stock.
Wylie said that she makes a motion to approve the amount of $2,800 with the (unintelligible). (Someone said it had to be a resolution.)
Ryan said he didn’t mean to interrupt, but first of all, you need a motion to amend the agenda to include this item on there. It must be unanimous by all council members present to place a resolution to approve this expenditure. Thank you.
Wylie said she didn’t think they had a resolution. Luginski asked if Ryan was saying a motion to add the resolution to the agenda. Ryan said correct, yes.
Wylie said OK. She will make a motion to amend the agenda with a new resolution to repair the truck. Avery second. Ryan said thank you.
Haven said we had the line item; we need a resolution to be the definition of this line item.
Haven said that there was a motion and a second to change the agenda, and that probably is aye or nay, isn’t it? Avery said yes.
Motion passed by unanimous voice vote.
Wylie said now she will make a resolution to allow Smith to spend $2,800 on the axle U-joint and the tie rods for the repair of that pickup truck with the account to be determined by the next meeting. Smith said yes. Avery second.
Haven said that there’s been a motion and second to spend the money and asked if there was any discussion about that.
There was no discussion.
Haven asked Speagle to take the roll since it was a resolution.
Casey, Luginski, Wylie, Rodgers, Fuller, Haven, and Avery voted yes. Motion carries.
Agenda Item #10, Old Business
Item 10a – Motion: Meeting Rules of Procedure (Video time mark 1:48:04)
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- Motion – Meeting Rules of Procedure (page 32/38 of the council packet)
- Meeting Rules of Procedure, Revised: April 21, 2022 (page 33/38 of the council packet)
Haven said now we can move on to our procedural item in Old Business. We’ve been looking at this for quite a while. Haven said that he was going through it again and asked Smith if there is anything that they haven’t seen before, has it changed at all since when we originally saw it four meetings ago?
Smith said yes. We’ve looked at, this is the fourth meeting we’ve talked about this. If you’re not comfortable voting on this tonight, we can defer it again. He doesn’t want to rush it.
Smith said that after the last meeting, we talked quite a bit about public comments, how much, and when, and where should the public comments occur. So, Smith and Speagle did some research and found what other municipalities, how they have their agenda structured. So, at this point in the document, what Smith is showing here is a change that they have not seen before, and if you don’t like it, we can take it out, but what this has here, and this is consistent with other municipalities, not all, but some municipalities have it structured. In this format, on 3.5 section, you see two areas of public comment. Early on the agenda, that’s to date, we have public comments, but they are pertaining to items on the agenda. Today, it’s currently not on the agenda. What this proposal is, is today that they can make comments on items that are on the agenda, and then later, at the end of the meeting, after new business, but just before adjourning, then you can talk about items not on the agenda. So, a new topic, blue sky discussion, you know, should we be saving the planet, things that are on the agenda that people want to talk about, but they shouldn’t probably take up time before the normal business items. So, we put those at the end. The other change that this results in is if you’re allowing people to make public comments on items that are on the agenda early on, then when you get to 3.8 here, where you are actually discussing an agenda item, in theory, you don’t need public comments anymore. Now, you could, you could always open the door and entertain that, say that this is an important enough topic that I want to hear from Mary or Joe or whoever, and you could still do that, but in other municipalities when they’ve changed the public comments in the front of the meeting to be items that are on the agenda, then the theory is that you don’t also need to have public comments again when you get to that action item.
Smith said that those are the two changes that they made. If they don’t like it, Smith can unwind it all and make it back to the way it was, but it was just to show you some things that other municipalities have done. Wylie and Smith talked about this in an email today, and he knows it was kind of a shock (unintelligible crosstalk comment from Wylie).
Wylie said that she’s really opposed to this idea. We can discuss it now, or she assumes that this would be a motion. Smith said that it is a motion.
Avery asked why Wylie was opposed. Wylie said that there really are a couple of reasons why she’s really opposed to this. One, this is kind of general, she doesn’t like the fact that people who want to make public comments on items that are not on the agenda have to wait until the end of the meeting. She can remember going to school board meetings when there were a lot of issues when her kids were young, and people had to wait hours to make their public comments because that’s how they operated. The public comments at the beginning of the meeting don’t take up that much time.
Wylie said her biggest concern is not allowing public comments when we are on an agenda item, when we are on an action item, and it’s because when people in the public hear what council is discussing, they suddenly think, sometimes, wait a minute, that idea is wrong, or I strongly disagree with it, and I would like to comment on it at this time. Wylie said her big reasoning goes back to the time, a number of years ago, possibly more than six years ago, when council members were discussing the library millage and how we had to deal with it in our budget, and there was a lot of misinformation and confusion on council members that people in the audience were trying to correct. Wylie was not on council at the time, but she was in the meeting, and she thinks that the public had to hear first what the council’s discussion was before they could comment. Just saying something before the meeting when they had no idea what Wylie was thinking was not that helpful. Smith said understood. That is a valid comment for this approach.
Luginski said that just to comment, he doesn’t have a problem with comments being made on agenda items during the agenda item from the public, but he doesn’t think we need it twice. We don’t need it at the beginning of the meeting and then again during the meeting. One or the other. There’s no reason to have it done two times. And Wylie said she would agree with the old tried and true, because we’ve always done it this way. Smith said OK. Wylie said she has stronger reasons for it. Smith said OK.
Avery said to Wylie’s point, he thinks the way that they do it now he thinks is fine. He thinks that the mayor has the authority here to reign in the conduct of the meeting – Wylie agreed – continuing, Avery said if he feels that the public comments are going on too long, or it’s too much, he can always shut it down. He has the authority to do that. Haven said they’re limited to three minutes, and there can be spokesmen for groups. Avery said absolutely, so he’s not sure why we need to. Either we do it this way, like we’ve always done it, or we literally shut it down and just have all public comments at the beginning and once public comments are over, then we get to our business, we talk, they can watch, and then we’re done.
Luginski said that the only thing he would say, and he brought this up at the last meeting and discussed this, and he’s seen it happen time and time again, and he’s sure everybody else has seen it here as well, is when we get into those agenda items and public comments, you can’t have the same person making ten comments every couple of minutes because they thought of something else. There’s got to be a way to curtail that. Haven said it could be written in script. Luginski said he’s just saying that’s where we run into a problem, right? (Haven made an unintelligible comment.) Luginski said he remembered that meeting where we talked about it because he was the mayor. Wylie said he was on council for sure. Luginski said no, he remembers the meeting. Wylie said OK. Luginski said that we had certain people, and everybody can guess who they were, that talked a dozen times because they felt that they had to say something every time somebody else made a point, right? And at some point, you can’t do that. Make your point, maybe once or twice, he gets it, but you can’t talk three, four, five, six, seven times about an agenda item. Avery said that the mayor could have shut that down. Luginski said he knew it, and of course, they would have our back. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Avery said a recent example was when we had the apartment complex and the fellow that was – Wylie agreed – Avery said and he had a hard time staying in his seat, because when we were talking, he’d jump up and want to get back in the conversation.
Rodgers asked if there is anything written in here that the mayor can shut it down. Wylie said it’s part of Roberts Rules of Order. Haven said it’s in there. Rodgers said that she didn’t see anything specifically. Rodgers says she agrees, she thinks there are some things that come up that you don’t think of, and then all of a sudden, somebody says something and like oh my gosh, I didn’t even think of that. Avery said that is kind of the charm about our little village here that people do have the ability to banter back and forth. Rodgers agreed. Avery wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for the township where you’ve got 30,000 people. Wylie said right, and she understands.
Luginski said he has no problem with public comments during the agenda item.
Haven said he was listening to their comments. He was thinking the other way, of having things that are on the agenda so we can be informed up front before any votes. But he gets it. At the time of the item, that’s a good time for people to make a comment, and then also not make them wait until the end of the meeting, you know. If it’s not on the agenda, put it up front. Wylie said it could be timed. It’s not at our meetings that often, but it can be tough. What you do is get an angry audience who is sitting there for hours. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Haven said that’s why Smith tried to change the schedule today. Avery said that on the agenda today, to talk about truck repairs and things like that. Haven said exactly, oh my gosh, it drives him nuts.
Haven said that he would say that there’s a built-in conflict right now, because 2.11 says public comments not on the agenda and 3.5 says that they are. So, they have to be consistent. Your 3.5 was just elucidating the order of the agenda and 2.1 [2.11] is talking about public participation, so they just have to be in agreement. Haven thinks that 2.11 is the way we would go then, given that we agree, that public comments can be things that are not on the agenda and then the same would have to be true of 3.5, public comments for things not on the agenda. Haven asked if Smith saw that on Item 5. Smith said that he thinks number 11 [2.11?] in here can go away altogether, right? Basically, this whole section 11 [2.11?] – (interrupting Smith), Haven said that you’ve got your timing – (interrupting Haven), Avery said he thinks it’s the other way around, 2.11 is the way that we do it now. Smith said he was going to say that 5 [3.5?] becomes not on the agenda. Haven said that would take care of it.
Haven said that he thinks it’s nice that we have the order of the agenda in this document. And you would take 11 [2.11?] off that, right? Smith agreed, and 5 [3.5?] he would make not on the agenda. (Avery made an unintelligible comment.) Smith said that when we get to the actual item, he will add public comments back just before the vote. Wylie said that the 4/25 version of the minutes, this is what it was. Smith said he would unwind that. (Haven made an unintelligible comment.)
Casey said to prevent certain comments, they could restrict the discussion to one comment per person. Wylie said that you have to be really careful about that. Haven said that’s kind of restricting. Wylie said with open meetings, you have to be really, really careful about that.
Luginski said that the way he reads 2.11, and correct him if he’s wrong, the way that he reads 2.11 is that it talks about the first sentence, or part of I, says about public comments for issues not on the agenda are limited to three minutes, and – that’s where it gets in contracts where you guys know as well as he does because he negotiates them, where it’s and, and or, those are very important words even though they are very small – it says and following council discussion on each agenda item prior to the vote by city council on that item limited to three minutes. So, it’s not interactive, the way that we do it today, the way that he reads that is it’s saying we have an agenda item, we discuss it, and then public comments are limited to three minutes per person. Avery and Luginski both said “on that specific item.” Luginski asked if they see what he’s saying. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Luginski said he’s not saying keep that or not, that’s the way that he sees 2.11 reading. Smith agreed. Avery said that’s kind of how we have it set up now (unintelligible crosstalk.) Luginski said that’s his point.
Haven said (unintelligible) where we’re going with this. Smith said that 2.11 can stay the way it is. It doesn’t get changed. Haven agreed. Smith said so it can stay the way it is, we just need to (unintelligible) 3.5.
Smith said that he guesses the question is whether they are OK with voting on this with the changes, or would you rather see a corrected copy before we vote on it. Avery said that he would rather see a corrected copy. Haven said that they could do it pending. The nice part, and Rodgers is not going to be here on the 23rd, so we’re trying to get this done without having councilmembers absent, you know. Now if we get the spirit of council now, then we can probably fulfill the process after.
Wylie asked if it was a rush. It’s not a rush. If we can’t do it tonight, and we can’t do it the next meeting, no matter how long it takes, we’ll get it right.
Ryan appreciates the comments and he’s glad to see everybody here this evening, and he knows that we’ve looked at this awhile, but he thinks that they need a place in here, Smith and Speagle and council, just what we talked about tonight. We should say a public city council agenda can only be amended at the meeting, at a public meeting, by a unanimous vote of council. Ryan thinks they should put that in there. That’s the first addition after reviewing this a few times.
Ryan said he also had another addition, and then he has one deletion to suggest.
The other addition is on 5, boards and commissions rules of procedure, letter f, it says 21.12 [2.12] closed sessions, that it is not applicable to boards and commissions. Well, that’s not really accurate. It’s not applicable to the Planning Commission, but it is applicable to the zoning board [Zoning Board of Appeals] because they may be involved in a lawsuit because they speak with finality for the city, and it also may be an HDC [Historic District Commission] meeting involved in a lawsuit, which allows them to go into closed session. So, Ryan thinks we need to correct that. That’s 2.12, closed sessions, because those two, that one commission and that one board is allowed to go into closed session, respectfully.
And lastly, the one deletion that Ryan would suggest in reviewing this, and that is the prior page, it’s under 3.5, public hearings, this last sentence, he looked up the statute and it says, the second line from the top, it says public hearings may be held separately or in connection with the regular or special meeting and may be adjourned from time to time, and Ryan is suggesting that we put a period there because that’s in fact true. But the rest of this, in the case of hearings on proposed ordinances, the public hearing shall follow the publication of the ordinance and notice of the hearing by at least seven days and then it cites a statute, which is an administrative procedures act. It’s not the zoning enabling act or (unintelligible) or the city charter which is not applicable either. So, Ryan would suggest, respectfully, that we strike in the case of hearings no [on] proposed ordinances the public hearing shall follow the publication of the ordinance and notice of the hearing by at least seven days because that’s not the procedure that we use. We don’t publish the ordinance prior to the public hearing, so that’s a deletion that he suggests relative to these rules and the reason why. Smith said so strike the last sentence. Ryan said well, not the last sentence, just in the case of, the last two, you know, may be adjourned from time to time, period, and strike the rest of that, the last two lines. Smith said the last sentence of that paragraph. Ryan said he could send it to Smith tomorrow if he wants. Smith said he’s with him and thanked Ryan. Ryan said he was sorry. He’s just been looking at this a few times and realized that shouldn’t be in there either. Smith said OK.
Smith said so we will bring this back with the corrections to the June 9th or June 10th whenever that meeting is.
Fuller said so just to be clear, a member of the public can comment on an item at the conclusion of the council’s discussion on it. Once the person is recognized by the mayor he speaks, so there’s not just people randomly asking questions and talking throughout the discussion. Smith and Haven said right. Haven said council first. Smith said that he thinks they have their internal discussion first. You’ve already had a motion and a second at that point, and you’re in discussion mode. Once that discussion is done, so in here, in g, 3.8(g), g.1, where you have public comments. So, we’ll reinsert that. Fuller said that’s required of every item or is it at the discretion of the mayor on item. Smith said that it could be either way. The thought was you put it in and then shut it down if it’s nonvalue-added, but it’s there on every action item. It could be – (interrupting Smith), Ryan said a better practice is to allow public discussion. Whenever it needs to occur it should occur at a public meeting. Smith said that’s what Wylie was saying, the 4/25 edition that’s the way it was, so he will have to change it back to that. Smith said that if they feel that the discussion is just running amok, you’re just wasting time, and redundant comments are being made, that’s when the mayor would step in. Ryan said right. (Fuller made an unintelligible comment.)
Haven said he has one other one. In 2.11, Haven wanted to ask Ryan a question relative to the definition of terms, the word “shall” Haven interprets by reading these paragraphs, the word “shall” can be a synonym for “must.” Avery and Ryan agreed. Ryan said he would say that’s correct. Haven said and the word “may” equals optional, is that right? Ryan said yes, “may” is discretionary, “shall” is mandatory. Haven said OK, given that, then he would question in the middle of 2.11, the city clerk shall record in the meeting minutes the name of those who wish to divulge it of persons who address the council and the topic to which they speak. Haven said that, in a way, is somewhat contradictory to the brevity paragraph. He doesn’t have that noted, but where we’re just in the minutes to just record the actions of council. We voted up or down a motion or resolution or something, that would be the skeletal version at least, and we can always add to it, but this shall here means that she, the clerk, must record every person who is willing to divulge their name and what was their comment of addressing council. To Haven, that’s heavy-duty prose. It’s going to be added to their meeting minutes. Haven said that he would like to see that not there himself. So, what’s your pleasure? Luginski asked if that was a question for council. Haven said yes. He didn’t think there was any requirement. They can make their own rules, right? Ryan said that this always the age-old discussion about what’s got to go into the minutes. He thinks that basically, you just need the bare bones of who started, who was there, what was voted on, and how people voted, but Ryan thinks Speagle has tried to, not verbatim, but list like so and so made public comments about X for something, and Speagle is right there, he doesn’t know if she feels that’s onerous on her or not, but he guesses that she should be asked. Ryan said he thought she was trying to do that, to get that balance ignoring who in the public is there and saying Mr. Pardee is there and he spoke and his comments are on record or whatever or presented written comments. Ryan said he thinks that Speagle is trying to do that and reaching a common balance between not having anything there and not making verbatim transcripts. Haven said right. Ryan said he thinks she’s trying to do this. Speagle said whoever makes public comments, she puts their name in. She tries to do an abbreviated topic of what it is. She doesn’t go into detail, but she will say financial and roads, but also if they are sent to her by email, she prints them out and keeps them in the packet that gets filed.
Luginski said that there’s a possibility of a public comment being made, especially during an agenda item, where someone just raises their hand and says something, they don’t introduce themselves and you don’t know who they are. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Speagle said that if it’s in the middle of an agenda item, she doesn’t put anything down. Luginski said right. Speagle said it’s only during public comments that she (unintelligible crosstalk between Luginski and Speagle). Avery said to Haven’s point, we should probably change that from shall to may. Haven said that he would like to give her the option. That’s his point. You know, he circled “shall,” so he would like to change that to “may,” and that gives her the option. Haven asked how council felt about that. Wylie said it was 2.11. Rodgers said that Haven was right, because as it stands right now, you’re kind of (unintelligible).
Haven said that the only other question that he had was down, and a little bit of a humorous one, the mayor shall enforce the orderly conduct of the meetings, that’s interesting, any member of the council or any other officer shall – (interrupting Haven), Wylie asked where he was reading from. Haven said 2.9(c). Haven said the mayor shall enforce orderly conduct of the meetings, any member of the council or other officer who shall fail to maintain conduct in an orderly manner at any meeting shall be deemed guilty of misconduct in office. Get that. The next one though, any person designated by the mayor or the presiding officer of the meeting shall serve as the sergeant of arms of the council in the enforcement of the provisions of this section. That’s kind of an interesting one, not that we have to answer the question tonight, but frankly, Haven didn’t know who he would call on. Who’s got the most muscle here to enforce this? (Laughter.) Wylie said not her. Haven said it’s necessarily inevitable, but it’s here in very clear terms. Haven would have to appoint someone as sergeant at arms and say would you please escort that gentleman or lady out of here. (Unintelligible comment from Luginski.) Haven said that Luginski would do it, but in case Luginski is not here. Avery said who is second in command here, he doesn’t know. Wylie said that the sergeant at arms isn’t necessarily the brute force. Everyone has been in other committees or groups where you’ve had a sergeant at arms. Ryan said that it’s in the city charter so it may look good on somebody’s resume. (Laughter.) Haven said he has the impression that they are not going to settle this one tonight, but it will come up at some point, and Haven can see a hostile participant at some point. Wylie said you could call the sheriff’s department. Haven said that’s right, you’ve got 9-1-1, but that’s not what they are saying here. There’s somebody in the room who can be assigned to be – (interrupting Haven), Wylie said the enforcement may be calling 9-1-1 or saying please sir, please leave, ma’am, please leave, or we’re going to call the sheriff’s department and we call. Haven said the third time, Speagle calls 9-1-1. (Laughter.) Smith said that some of these items were cut and pasted from other items, so it isn’t necessarily (interrupting Smith), Haven said he gets it.
Haven said the other thing here from the person who has to live with this standpoint is the three-minute thing, and that’s hard to adjudicate. He jokes about the hourglass thing. You can’t do that; it doesn’t work. And we’ve got our phones, but you’re punching on and off and not listening, so he’s not sure what the mechanism is. Wylie said that Speagle is tracking. Speagle says that she keeps track on her phone. Haven asked if Speagle was OK with how it works, if the person just stops and they were at 2.6. Speagle said that she uses the stopwatch on her phone. Haven said all right, she’s trying to take notes too, and he didn’t know if that was a problem. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Rodgers said that she thinks that for the person that’s delivering the comment, it would be nice to have some type of box that shows them how much time they have. Haven agrees. Rodgers said because three minutes goes super-fast. Luginski said he’s been at other municipalities where they do that. They just have a box, they have it sitting right here, and it would be three minutes. You hit the button. And you’re looking right at it. And then they know, down to fourteen seconds. Wylie said last time she was the mayor pro tem (unintelligible) Chet (unintelligible). (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Smith said that they do have one. They’ll try it and see how it works. Haven said let’s find something. We’re tying Speagle up with it, or himself, and he doesn’t want to be tied up with it. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Smith said that one was donated, and we’ll try it out. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Haven said it’s got to be clear, the three minutes. Avery said we don’t want a boobytrap where the sand, and a big hammer comes down. (Unintelligible crosstalk.)
Haven asked if there were any further comments about the procedures.
Luginski said so, we’re going to get this thing cleaned up and revisit it next meeting. Haven said that we have to. (Unintelligible crosstalk.) Luginski said OK. Haven said Rodgers won’t be here. Luginski said that neither will Wylie. Haven said that it helps that, just to make a comment, it helps Smith and Speagle a lot if she knows that you are going to be absent. (Unintelligible.) Haven said that by and large, especially when they are putting agendas together, they clean out anything that we really need all our participation in, you know, and don’t have it if we’re not all here. Smith said that it is very helpful. If we know that we’re not going to have a full council for something important, just drop him a quick email, text, call, whatever, to say I’m sorry, I’ve got something coming up next Monday and I won’t be there. It is helpful, so he appreciates that.
Haven recognized Cara Catallo for an additional comment.
Catallo just wanted to say about the quorum part that she feels like she read that, you know, at least for the council, if there’s no quorum, there’s no meeting and she feels very strongly that that should be the case for boards and commissions. Smith said absolutely. Catallo said that the HDC went ahead without a quorum at a meeting, and she thought it was incredibly inappropriate, where they still discussed something and the applicant could have gone home because nothing would be decided, so she just feels like that’s something to stress. And also she feels like she mentioned before, when we had a guest who wasn’t necessarily her guest, but somebody from the county, he was struck that people just chimed in at will instead of being called on, and she just still wanted to stress that you’re elected officials and we expect you to talk, and maybe she has a strong arm or she was raised a certain way, it’s no problem for her to raise her hand and then chime in instead of acting like an eighth council member. But that’s just, you know, her opinion, so she hopes that if this gets voted upon that you, you know, request that the audience behave like an audience and gets called on for their comments.
Haven said that the fact that we are putting this in place now and appending the other groups to it, that gives them protocol. Haven said that they are all on a learning curve, we’re all volunteers, so things can happen, but Haven thinks that this helps us to use as a tool.
Fuller said something unintelligible about volunteers. Haven said well, technically speaking, they are not all volunteers.
Agenda Item #11, Adjourn (Video time mark 2:18:08):
Haven said he would entertain a motion. Wylie asked if she could make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Haven said she thinks it’s time. Wylie said she wants to squeeze it in here now. The second was unintelligible.
No discussion.
Motion to adjourn by unanimous voice vote.
Resources:
Mayor Haven’s statement that 25 signatures are required on a nominating petition for a city council candidate is wrong. The city charter, section 3.8, says not fewer than 20 or more than 40 are required. He wouldn’t be trying to discourage challengers to the docile incumbents, would he?
The discussion about easements to fix broken pavers shows that those discussing the topic don’t know what an easement is. They are assuming the city will take ownership of the additional property in the driveways beyond the city sidewalk and will be responsible for maintaining that property forever. That’s a purchase, not an easement. An easement could give the city the temporary right to enter that area and perform repairs but would not confer ownership on the city. The city attorney, who should know what an easement it, didn’t step in to correct the misunderstanding of the council members and the city manager.
The city manager said he would discuss his proposal for a new retirement plan financed by the city and his proposal for raises for city employees at the next finance committee meeting. “We’ll go through some of the details with the committee.” “[T]he finance committee is going to talk about this a little bit more this week.” There was no discussion of this at the May 11 finance committee meeting.
In discussing the council procedures that the city manager drafted, the council is ok with having minimal meeting minutes that have only the statutory minimum of who was there and how they voted on motions. No explanations, no summary of discussions, nothing to let people know why something was decided. The city manager should stop talking about transparency.