Council - Regular Meeting

And um so many seriously in the comments Okay. We need to get somebody fixed.

Right. No, I understand. Yeah. But I was going to jump Hello. Hello. How's everyone? Good. How are you?

Sorry. Worked all weekend. Hope you guys know. Oh, what a shame. Can't wait till retirement. Oh, no. fun at all. They're having fun at all. Like this must be happening with somebody else. I care. Excuse me.

All right. It is 7 p.m. I will go ahead and call our meeting to order. If we can start with the stand for the pledge of

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the stands one nation Indivisible liberty andice city will take roll call please William Stewart here Ross Davis here and here I have a motion to approve of the agenda move to board

all in favor say I I oppos. Do I have a motion to approve of the consent calendar? So move. Consent calendar consists of our March 16th study session and regular session minutes. Um, all in favor say I.

I opposed. I apologize I skipped public comments. If there's anybody in the gallery that would like to stand and address council, you may do so at this time. Moving on. Do I have a motion to approve a second reading of ordinance 20264 to approve the pilot for Austin school? Support.

Uh, thank you, mayor. Um, this is the second reading of ordinance 2026-4. The first reading was approved on March 16th. I shared with you an overview memo by email and you also have a copy at your desk. We have a representative from the pivotal group who is here as well as um previous city manager Doug is here as well in case you have any specific questions. but it's a multif family um housing development and this will be located at the Austin school building. There's an annual service charge of 7% of the net shelter rent and the expected timeline for this. It would be 45 years from the effective date of the ordinance until the mortgage loan was paid off. also included some of the benefits associated with pilots at the bottom of the memo, including expanding the supply of affordable housing for seniors, workforce residents, and households on fixed incomes, helping attract workers for local employers and institutions, bringing outside investment capital to the community, preserving and repurposing a historic structure and contributing to neighborhood stabilizations, strengthening county revitalization efforts by increasing foot traffic, local business at the restaurants and projected to create minimal direct impact on the city's general fund.

Any questions for either city manager Terry, Mr. Trust or Mr. Perry?

Council member Williams. Yes. Rey, yes. Stewart, yes. Davis, yes. French, yes. Ander, yes. Do I have a motion to approve resolution 202614 to support the local bridge uh application? So move support.

This is a resolution regards to the grant applications of local British funding brand applications and I believe Syn is here to address the details in regards to that proposal.

Yes, thanks everybody. Um so glad to be here again to see all of you. So this is the third time we've actually approved a resolution uh for the same bridge. It's a different dollar amount this time. Our goal is to be the most competitive so that we get this grant funding. Uh for those that were at the um meeting where I we talked about money again, that is probably our biggest hurdle along with um that controls our timeline. So this this pot of money is uh Michigan Department of Transportation. We did two things differently on this application. We pulled out the demolition of the bridge and put it basically to the rest of the dam project trying to again show the sharing of this project. And then the second part is the water man we had included originally. It's still going to be part of our project. We're just going to have to find a different pot of money to pull it from. Um the second part is you have two resolutions, one for 10% match, one for 5% match. Um, if we are able to approve 10% match, that gets us one more set of points, again, increasing our chances of of being approved for this money. Uh, the two grants that we currently already hold for construction would match both of those amounts. So, no additional dollars towards the city. Um, that would already be matched by the by the other grants that we already currently have, plus the ones we're still going to keep trying to get. Um, but our goal is we just we need to get some more dollars coming in the door. Um, and was there one more point? I think that was it. I think I had all the points on that. So, you have two resolutions, one for 5%, one for 10%. It is up to you. Thank you. And if you have any questions,

any questions? Okay. resolution because they they both have the same one. Oh, um there should be two. So, I've got the one in front of me for 10%. Yeah. Um so, in the one, two, three, fourth line, it says here by making an increased 10% local match commitment uh to the Haven Bridge project in the amount of 296,370. Total project cost stays the same in both of these. That's the one I'm recommending, but I'm not sure which one you've approved as

this is in the resolve paragraph or you can see the dollar amount. Yeah. Yeah. So to me which one I would recommend the 10% it increases our likelihood of being successful. Okay. The mayor conference. So I would uh revise my uh motion to include the uh 10% local match commitment. So the first one um so that our uh the load is now $296,369.50 um as part of this $2.9.

Any other questions or comments? We are approving of the 10% action. Council member Reed, yes. Stewart, yes. Davis, yes. Branch, yes. Williams, yes. And mayor, yes. Future agenda items, anything like upcoming meeting? Mayor, um, we haven't had an a formal update from EDA or EDC in a while.

You may come to us with things that we wrote on the conversation. We want to, you know, maybe publicly announce the move of the EDC to Lington building. I don't know if that's been finalized. Oh, what happened? I think we had a report not too long ago from EDC. I was thinking that Emily was just here on EDA as well, but it's never too much. Yeah,

we can certainly request not paying. Anything else? I I don't know how to handle this, but my one-on-one meeting city went through um I would like to see us get to work on our strategic plan and incorporate appropriate organizations and that covers all organizations whether they're government organizations or private organizations in that topic and I like to do it sooner rather than later because I think a lot of our decisions are better made when we have that under our belt and in our minds. So I'd like to see us move on that. So, if it there's something we can do and we can strategize in our one-on-one together, but I would to see us move um purposefully and aggressively ask would this be an appropriate topic for a study about more detail?

Study session. So I guess um to clarify, we do have an RFP out for the comprehensive plan, but you're thinking something different than that because the comprehensive plan does incorporate all those entities.

Yes, I am thinking of something clearly different and it obviously would want to correspond with that. But there in my mind, we need something that's three to five bullet points. That is what we are focusing on as a city or a region, however we want to look at it. So that as we're making decisions on important topics that cost money, that we're making sure that they're in line with what our primary priorities are for the near term. So the strategic plan will comprehend a lot of detail, but what I'm looking for is something that we can articulate in a conversation with someone walking down the street or at dinner or something like that. So it's essentially an elevator pitch and it brings brings to a higher level what our main priorities are so that it's not sifting through 54 65 pages of strategic. So go ahead.

I'm I'm trying to understand uh seems to mean that if we have a strategic plan, we could have short-term goals and long-term goals, but that would still be a part of our strategic plan without having a different focus.

Yeah. um would sort of more or less like the council goes that that we do annually and we haven't done so. So I mean this opportunity to actually execute exactly what needs. Yeah. But I think again separate from comprehensive plans, separate from council goals because council goals are just what we have set in place for the city manager for the year to come and then that's kind of the metrics we use for evaluation. Right. But Councilman Stewart wants to incorporate all of our community partners to make sure we're all working in alignment. I correct and refer to that.

You're very close. Uh I I don't think any of these things should stand alone. I but I think who sets direction for the city in my opinion? It's this body

and this body needs to execute for a lot of reasons for the city manager's purpose and for others. And if we don't do it, who is going to do it? So, I don't I don't pretend to know all the things that go on, but um I would like to I would like to have us think about what we want to have, whatever we want to call it, and then make it be reflected in the strategic plan, make it be reflected in the council goals, whatever those things are. But I I know from experience that we tend to get lost in big behemoth lens and they don't come across reflecting what we really want because there's just too much there. We lose a lot in our big message. So um we can talk about it more. My proposal would be to talk about it and not have a council study session just yet until we have a better idea specifically what we can do. But I would like to I would I want to continue to push the narrative that we have to know where we want to go clearly and be able to articulate it and have everyone on board which is a really important part. It's called change management. Having everyone on board and then we can succeed. You know, we've talked for years since I've been in this in this city about we all we have to have a plan that we can get on board with. And so far, I think we've been less than successful. Like to see us be.

So, I guess my recommendation would be is to allow city manager Terry to have a one-on-one conversations with each of us first. let her put her organizational leadership skills into place to figure out how exactly we pull all of that together. Does that sound good? And then if she wants to call a study session or would just kind of follow her lead with our foot and kind of go from there knowing what you're thinking and make that come to fruition. That sound good?

That's great. All right. Anything else for future agenda? public comments. Anybody in the gallery that like to stand and address counseling? Uh, do you have a city management park? Yes.

I shared with you a talking about a report. Um, my second day here, we had a a busted water line, you know, unmapped. So great mystery to our student here and it resulted in us not having water running the toilets in hall. Thanks Jason and but we survived. So um thank you for the barking and getting things reinstituted. Um also I'm I'm thrilled to um share with you that staff here has um built a new construction update page on the website. So, our plan is that you can go there and see the updates in real time, but at least you have one place where you can go and get that information. And it's under the department's public services construction. Um, the water meter installations are at 49.48% and um we're anticipating that that information will also soon be posted on the city website. The Elton County Land Bank is moving forward with the demolition of 619 AM Street. Um it was identified by both them and safe as a condemn dangerous and unsafe structure. It does have this. So they are required to do the 10day notice with the state and I'm very excited to share that the Alb art commission city council are hosting a community open house to welcome me as manager and that will be on Wednesday the 25th from 5 to 7 at the Albian Arts Center located at 107 East Street. I've just established last night a city manager Facebook page so you can start looking for updates on that as well and I will

be drafting regular agreement or ongoing services with that

any questions for city manager comment the um the construction page looks great on that it's very informative it's nice to be able to point people toward Yeah. Any other questions or comments? All right. City uh council member counts. Do I do I have a motion to excuse council mans? All in favor say I. I opposed. Do I have a motion to adjurnn? So move support.

All in favor say I. I oppose. Meeting journ 7:17 p.m. Thanks for joining us. They don't want