City Commission - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Calling to order a special city commission meeting. It's Monday, June 22nd, 2026 at 6 15 p.m. at 151 Martin Street in Birmingham. Roll call, please.

Mayor Ballard? Here. Mayor Potemlock? Here. Mr. Hague?

is absent commissioner host here commissioner cole here commissioner kozolski here okay uh we're open to the public for matters not on the agenda of this meeting i will allot two minutes to anyone who has a comment they would like to make we are not going to participate in a question and answer session we'll take no action on any item not on this agenda does anyone here would like to make a comment None, okay, thank you. We'll move on to anybody online? Sorry, anyone online? I didn't prepare, do you see anyone online? No. Okay, no one online, great. Then we will move on to new business, a resolution to meet in closed session. Can I get a resolution, please?

Mr. Cole, fire away. I'd like to make a resolution to meet in closed session pursuant to MCL 15.268, section .8, parenthesis 1, parenthesis H of the Open Meetings Act to discuss and answer questions regarding a written attorney-client privilege communication.

Second.

Roll call, please.

Commissioner Host?

Yes.

Commissioner Kolb?

Yes.

Mayor Baller? Yes. Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Law?

Yes. Okay, we shall adjourn to closed session. It is 6.17 p.m.

Make a motion to adjourn the closed session.

Nope, not the closed session, the previous meeting. The previous meeting. Previous special meeting, right. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Okay, good, thank you. Good evening. Welcome, everyone, to the regular meeting of the Birmingham City Commission. It's Monday, June 22nd at Birmingham City Hall, 151 Martin Street. Please join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Miss Bingham, can you please call the roll?

Mayor Ballard?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Here. Commissioner Haag? Here. Commissioner Hoest?

Here.

Commissioner Kolb?

Here.

Commissioner Kowalski?

Here. Okay, thank you. We move on to proclamations, congratulatory resolutions, awards, appointments, resignations, and confirmations, administrations of both, introduction of guests and announcements. I have an announcement that is not on the agenda, and that is that our chief of police, Scott Gruy, has submitted a letter. He will be taking his retirement effective July 17th. July 17th, I thought that was the day. And we wish him well and congratulate him. Moving on, we have appointments. The first set of- Mr. Mayor?

Yes. May I make a request that we move open to public for comment for matters not on the agenda before appointments since I suspect appointments is going to take a considerable amount of time potentially?

and i suspect open to the matters for open to the public for matters on the agenda will likewise take uh take some time as well um i think that folks well you can make that motion and if it's second we can comment on it second okay comment on the motion I would comment that both are likely to take time and that there are a lot of people here for both of those items. And there was some expectation of those who viewed the agenda online that one was going to come before the other. But I am perfectly willing to go with the pleasure of the commission. So happy to take a vote on the motion if there's no other comment. Did Commissioner Hague have a comment? No, I thought we were voting already.

He just kept talking. So yeah, I'm voting yes.

Yeah, I'm fine. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. One, two, two. Okay. Motion passes. So we will now open it up for comment. from the public for matters not on the agenda, which may be limited to a certain number of minutes per person. We're going to make that three for tonight, and the clerk will keep track. That's at this section of the agenda. We're going to limit it to three minutes. this is for items that do not appear anywhere else in the printed agenda the commission will not participate in a question and answer session and will take no action on any item not appearing on the posted agenda the public can also speak to agenda items as they occur when the presiding officer opens the floor to the public so when you are recognized by me please state your name for the record and direct all comments to I suspect there's gonna be some comments on the pool party. And raise your hand if you intend to comment on the pool party. OK, only three. So I want to make some comments of my own before we get into that. I want to express my heartfelt apologies. I believe that I'm probably joined by everyone else on the commission for the police response last Saturday. I also want to tell you that the responding officers and the dispatch officers share in that sentiment. We know that we did not perform up to the expectations that you all have. We attended that meeting last Monday. And though we had been briefed briefly on what had occurred, whether you're here tonight or you're listening, your in-person eyewitness testimony to what occurred, you witnessed us learning that in real time. And we know what a disruption it was to the neighborhood. I don't think any of us sitting up here would have tolerated such a disruption in our own neighborhoods. And I'm gonna call on the city manager momentarily and the city attorney to tell you, the city manager will tell you what we're doing to make sure something like that never happens again. I do want to call attention to a letter that is in the packet tonight from Brian Brown and his wife, Eden. And it is an excellent letter, and it has been, I think everyone up here appreciated it, agrees with what's in there, and the city administration is using it as a template for their response to you. I'm not going to read it because it's two and a half pages, but I'm tempted to. And so I will, so understand that we are sorry. And I'll give it over to Janet Ecker, our city manager, first, and then we'll go to Mary Kucharik, our city attorney.

Okay, well just to add to the fact that last Monday we did give a presentation, I did, presentation on to what had transpired and what our debriefing and our review was, at least as of Sunday and Monday after the pool party last week, so I won't repeat all of that. But as Mayor Baller has indicated, we have identified some areas that we could certainly do a little bit better to respond in the future. And there's a couple of different ones. Mayor Baller has asked me to go through the questions provided in here, and I will, and I'll expound a little bit. First question asked by Mr. Brown was, what changes will be made to ensure police officers respond more effectively to similar situations in the future? okay there's kind of three four things that we we have already done as i mentioned we went through an extensive debriefing process last monday in conjunction with the city attorneys the police department myself code enforcement etc to review all of the things that happen and look for places where we could make improvements in the future. Follow up to that, we had a long discussion on Friday with the prosecutor for the city, the city attorneys, myself, the police department, and the code enforcement to review all of the issues and to review the law on the police officers right to enforce zoning ordinances and how we should handle this type of thing in the future. For instance, one of the things raised was, well, it was simply a noise violation it was it was zoning and code enforcement has to handle zoning so i think that's a very gray area under the law but we had we did a deep dive into it and we looked at what the law says and we discussed with the police department what they can do in the future to ensure that they coordinate more with code enforcement and that they shut down things a little bit earlier and uh all of the things that they can do to make it different in the next scenario and I'll answer that question a little bit later but in terms of what those items are we also reviewed all of the other nuisance ordinances that could be applicable to this and any other gathering similar to this as you recall you heard comments last meeting that well the police told us it was just noise and there's nothing else we can do So we've had an extensive debrief and review of all of the different offenses that we could look at, and that is why you saw additional charges that were placed on Monday that include breach of the peace, nuisance, permitting disorderly gatherings and so on in addition to noise. So there are some times where you can see that something is getting large enough that it has the potential to spill over and even though it might not be 70 decibels of noise at that exact moment, it's building and it looks like it's going to create a And it did create a nuisance, as we know. So that's another thing. So we also discussed in our meetings that when there's a doubt on, you know, on a Saturday night when something comes up, the police, if they can reach out to the chief, if the chief doesn't know the answer, they should reach out to our code enforcement team, to our city attorney, to myself, to discuss live, I always have my phone on me, so do the city attorneys. Call us and tell us what it is, and we'll work it through with you. Also, the other thing is that we determined that when you're shutting down a party, you need to have some police presence there to ensure the safe and orderly exodus of all of the people. that things happen when a lot of people leave a premises at the same time. So those are some of the things that we discussed and policy changes that were made as a result. The next question was what guidance or protocols will be established for shutting down overcrowded disorderly or commercial operated parties in residential neighborhoods. As I mentioned, we are going to review all the things to find a way when you see that something is trending and getting to be a little too disorderly, that you can make those charges and shut it down sooner. And again, you need to have a police presence during that exodus. Now, I understand we heard that the police were not on... on site when they shut down the party because they got called to another accident a motorcycle accident on Woodward in that case there are other things we could do we could have kept back one officer we could have contacted our mutual aid agencies around us to assist us in providing coverage for that to make sure there's a smooth exodus of people. And I think all of what I've said so far addresses the third, which is how the city will ensure that neighborhood residents receive priority consideration when their safety, peace, and quality of life are being disrupted. I think all of those things say that we know that the neighbors want to have peace and quality of life. And we do have to act within the confines of the law, but I think there were other options and other pathways we could have used to help us get there a little sooner. and we will do that going forward. Fourth, what changes, if any, will be made to dispatch procedures to ensure residents' concerns are treated seriously and communicated accurately? I think I personally discussed with the police chief that We need to have training provided to officers and dispatchers alike to make sure that they receive better training on what some of the other issues are, what to do when there's a potential zoning violation, and how to handle and deal with residents in a polite and calm manner. I know there were a lot of calls we heard last Monday that a lot of people made multiple calls to the police. It is our intention in the future that this will be addressed. swifter next time so that you won't have to get to the fifth police call when you see that things are getting a little over the top. And when I say over the top, it's whether you wanna talk about the fact that it was not just noise, there was potential other violations, that there was potentially a commercial event occurring with their own security team and charging money to get in, the homeowner was not home, all of that as well. We also, Since then, I also wanted to mention that part of the zoning violations that we gave included a cease and desist order to stop using the pool, the deck, and the garage due to some other building code issues that were unresolved that had meant that those permits had not been fully closed out. So thankfully we did not have any other incidents this weekend and I think that was probably part of the reason why we avoided potentially another activity going on in that particular pool at least. How will the police department proactively protect neighborhoods from similar events before they escalate into public safety emergencies as I just everything I've said especially and in particular using the full breadth of all of the nuisance type offenses that we could look at and consider when we're faced with this situation and I think the city attorney will talk a little bit more about what the nature of those offenses are and what the implications are And so this is kind of a summary all of it as to the accountability measures That'll be implemented and have been implemented already Obviously as the facts unfolded on Monday and Tuesday in particular we've continued on and this is still something that we're spending a lot of time on in the city administration with the prosecutor with the city attorney and with the police department and And so we definitely thank everyone that came to the meeting last Monday and provided a little more detail on what happened. And also, we do thank our police as well for all of the work that they did. But I think there's always, just know whatever happens, there's always a little room for improvement. And I think that these are the things that we will be doing to make sure that we have a better response in the future.

Thank you.

City attorney yes, mine will be brief. I think the manager covered it quite well We keep talking about the difference between zoning ordinance and other ordinances and I'll just touch on that briefly The zoning ordinance is part and parcel of our general code of ordinances, but the zoning ordinances have specific remedies Requirements and ramifications and those are presided over by the building official per state law The other types of misdemeanors that we are talking about come under the general offenses. I've heard references to the fact that both the homeowner and the party organizer received citations. That is not a correct term. They're not citations. They are in fact criminal misdemeanor tickets. So the homeowner has received for one of them for zoning violation, which is also a misdemeanor and then three others gathering of disorderly persons breach of peace and causing a public nuisance and the party organizer has received a noise violation. gathering of disorderly persons, and also public nuisance. So these criminal misdemeanors will follow the criminal law process at the 48th District Court. The first step in that process is arraignment of both people, which is to occur July 22nd. at the arraignment the judge or magistrate will tell the the two gentlemen the charges against them the potential penalties and their rights under the constitution as to how this progresses the second step will then be pre-trials where the parties and or their attorneys will meet with our prosecutor and discuss how this case the cases are going to proceed So it tends to be a little longer process in the 40 just records are extremely busy. But it is important that that process is protected in it here too. I know this evening there will be. A lot of public comment by a number of different people. I want the public to understand that I'm cautioning all of you and all of us that response to particulars or questions would be inappropriate, as we need to respect the criminal process and allow it to play itself out at the 48 District Court in its due course.

Thank you. And now, with no further ado, we'll take public comment.

Good evening. Thanks for having us. I'm Michael Lutz. I've been living in Birmingham now for 26 years, and it's been a great time here. I'm glad to be here, and also I'm kind of not glad to be here. I live in Poppleton Park, and in Poppleton Park, as many people are aware, there's been quite a bit of construction, particularly on Wimbledon Road, and it's been a protracted process. As a result of that, and since Wimbledon Road has been closed for such an extended duration of time, our street that I live on, which is Madison, is the only street off of Woodward where these trucks can get access to Wimbledon and can get up there. And so we've had an excessive amount of traffic on our street to the point where our road has become destroyed because of all the heavy trucks and all the traffic that has occurred on Madison going up Oxford to get to Wimbledon. As a result, it's really not very safe to walk on. It's not safe to ride a bike on, which I do quite a bit of, and there's many bicycle clubs that use that as their main thoroughfare. So what I'm requesting is that Birmingham reassess our street and give some thought to repairing and doing some damage control for the street as it exists now so that people can safely ride, walk, and actually travel on the street of Madison, which is from Woodward to Oxford. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir.

And the city manager has taken a note.

Thank you.

Good evening. David Bloom, Birmingham resident. I'm here to make some comments about the pool party. I was at the meeting, I heard a lot last week, I heard a lot of upset residents. They absolutely had a right to be upset. If I lived in that neighborhood, I would have been extremely upset too. There were a lot of comments by residents wishing or expressing concern that the police ought to have done more and ought to have done it sooner. If I was a police officer responding to that event, I might have felt a little uncomfortable. We live in an age where there are many people who make judgments about things happening based on identity. And if the party had been shut down earlier or something had gone wrong, instead of having 50 residents complaining, you could have had 150 or 200 people at that meeting calling for defunding the police. So I think we ought to cut the police a little slack and a little grace for what happened and the judgments that they made or didn't make that evening. I think that the biggest fault was the issue of the police not knowing that it's a violation of our ordinances to charge for a party. That probably would have been the easiest justification to shut down the party earlier without causing bigger problems down the road. Also, there were comments about the road being blocked and people parking blocking Driveways and things like that and what I don't understand is if that was the case why those individual vehicles weren't ticketed and the vehicles weren't moved or towed and I think if that had happened that and vehicles were like blocking driveways and things and the vehicles were towed and That's not necessarily an onus on the person throwing the party or the owner of the property, but the individuals decided to park where they shouldn't have parked, and that may have been another way of addressing the situation, and I don't know if that's happened. So those are my remarks, and I wish you all a good evening.

Thank you. My name is Brian Sullivan. I live at 314 largely. I share a fence with Alexander Simpson 307 Westchester and I have since I moved in in 2023. First and foremost, I'm really excited with everything. This is really cool. So I do and I'm up here for my kids just so everybody who knows I'm up here for my children. I'm up here for my children and I'm up here for the children of the community. That's why I'm standing up here. I can't write fast enough. So you said public nuisance, breach of peace. Just so I know, because that's what I was doing looking at ordinances and ways that this can be shut down quicker next time. So what are they?

Gathering of disorderly persons.

Okay. Reach of peace. I got that. Public nuisance. Public nuisance. Thank you. Okay. I appreciate that.

That's under Section Chapter 74 of the Birmingham City Code.

Okay. I appreciate that. So there's a couple things. There's a couple things. One I want to talk about. One, Alexander Simpson is the problem and he's not the problem, right? I'm here advocating for my children and the children of Birmingham on behalf of the Alexander Simpsons of the world. The gentleman has a profound lack of empathy, an inability to feel remorse, and a consistent disregard for social norms, rules, and the rights of others. I've been listening to his pool parties since 2024 when he put the pool in. And what I did is I printed out three songs here. NWA, DMX, we get to listen to this all the time. There's upwards of 50 swear words in each song. This one's disgusting. This is what my kids get to listen to, the kids in our neighborhood. I'm gonna leave it with you guys. And because race gets thrown around, I printed out a Walker Wheeler Jr. I don't wanna hear this either. I don't wanna hear any of this smut in my neighborhood, any of this profanity. I don't care what the color of the artist is. I don't wanna hear it. My kids don't wanna hear it. So my question is, The next time Alexander Simpson has a party, or the Alexander Simpsons of the world have a party, and they're at the 75 decibel level, and I gotta listen to this smut all day. Are these, is this how it's gonna get shut down next time? Is this how it's gonna get shut down? Also, I want to work with you guys. How do we get the decibel level to like 40? I mean, these are small yards. So I don't know if he answered my questions. Do you answer my questions in this or no? Tend not to. Okay, got it. So then I'll follow up with y'all. So one, what I need to learn is what's the path forward to get the decibel level lower to 40 in Birmingham. Two, this smut, when they're playing it, when I call the police next time, because it's going to happen. He's on Facebook. I see all his party promoters already saying they're going to throw parties. It's going to happen again. I want a response. So that's the first thing. This is unacceptable. I don't care the color of your skin and what type of artist you are. I don't want to hear this in my neighborhood. You basically answered my questions on the ways that he was given misdemeanors and anybody else that does this. So that helps me.

Could you reset the clock to one minute? Because you had that exchange where she was... So I want to give you an extra minute. Okay.

So that's really what I want to know. What are the ways around disturbing the peace? So you've given me some paths that the police can shut this town sooner. So you've answered my questions. But yeah, and you guys talked about the police response, right? I mean, dispatch, when we told them what was going on, they told me that they were allowed to sell wristbands, they were allowed to have this party, they're allowed to have a party. He hung up on me. First of all, I said to the dispatch guy, wow, America is going to hell in a handbasket. I can't believe you guys are going to allow this. The police dispatch hung up on me. I called him right back and I was like, did you just hang up on me? He's like, no, I didn't hang up on you. We're getting a lot of 911 calls. So maybe that plays into what other citizens were saying last week about the police not being staffed adequately. You guys saw the nudity. You saw the bare-breasted women bouncing around. My kids just got to go on the trampoline to see this. So... I appreciate everything you guys are doing, but it can't happen next time. And someone did ask me if the apology on Facebook was enough. Community members asked me from the police department. And you know what my response was? I don't care about that Facebook apology. That's not the apology. The apology next time is the police doing their job and shutting it down. So I'll see if the apology actually happens next time this happens to my neighborhood or any other neighborhood. And I know for a fact that the police have walked into my neighbor's backyard when his wife and four friends were just sitting around their hot tub, shut it down. I got a prominent buddy. Everybody in here would know this business name. The police just walked right into his backyard twice and shut down the party. And my wife was talking to another resident just drinking wine, Benson Boo. And they came and said, turn the music down or shut it off. So we need to remove race from this equation, what everybody's talking about. It's not about that. It's just about doing the right thing. So, thank you.

Please leave me with the lyrics that you have.

Yeah, it's brutal. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to prove, what I'm trying to point out is I don't care if it's NWA, DMX, or this country singer, Walker Wheeler Jr. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear this stuff in my yard.

Thank you. I will make a general statement, not necessarily in response to what you're saying. And that is that there is a section of our agenda where a commissioner can raise a topic for future discussion. And perhaps one of our commissioners will raise a topic for future discussion. Next. You have to address the, you have to approach.

That's okay. Good evening, Jim Arpin, Birmingham resident, also a member of the Advisory Parking Committee that I may be reappearing this evening as, but today I'm a resident. I wanted to share my request for the city leadership to consider proposing a resolution to enact a culture around the use of enterprise management software. Three weeks ago, the mayor and I shared some ideas on current issues where a city enterprise management information system would help resolve current issues involving cross collaboration between departments. The use of enterprise software such as OpenGov, which the city is currently invested in, eliminates manual data entry, reduces calculation errors, allows real-time cross-department collaboration, and enables automatic generation of interactive, resident-friendly budget dashboards, just to name a few of the advantages. At the present time, I'm aware of at least 12 siloed software applications deployed by the city, providing many efficiencies, but not to the degree of an enterprise software system. To summarize city owned open gov enterprise software could provide for air reduction and edit functionality cross department collaboration. Numerous opportunities for efficiency and time savings greater opportunities for public. engagement. It's audit-ready compliance. Every decision, status change, and funding request, bonds and grants, is logged, making compliance reporting straightforward. I was surprised to see the request for three bound copies of the CIP in the RFP resolution this evening without a request for any enterprise software application concepts in the RFP. Please consider the potential for bound paper copies of any plans are most likely to promote boundless inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? If you're online, please use the raise your hand function and we will recognize you. If you're in the room, approach either one of the microphones.

Good evening. I'm Jay Seifman. I live at 420 East Frank which is right next to Old Woodward across the street from the CVS on Old Woodward. And I'm here today to talk about an issue that we've had since I've been living there for three years and that is the traffic on Old Woodward at our intersection and at the intersection of Hazel. I have a map if you guys want to see it so that I can

You can give him all of them and he'll pass them down.

So there's no traffic signals or a traffic control on Woodward And the intersection you can see that they're not a. Ex intersection where you can have a 4 way stop and it the street Hazel hasn't been open in 3 years, which is a problem to which is a different problem to address. But the traffic control is nonexistent and I walk Old Woodward and I Drive on Old Word every day probably six or seven times a day I go out and I walk six miles a day and whatever and There since there's no traffic control. I was told by several members that are sitting here today that you step off the curb on Old Woodward and the traffic should stop and Well, it doesn't happen all the time. You have people coming from south of Brown. They have a tendency to speed up. For whatever reason and they exceed the speed limit and by the time they see me coming across the street It's a problem. I have to jump out of the way It's even worse for cars at on Frank Street when I exit my my place and I go east to Old Woodward and I have to go in to the pedestrian Crosswalk in order to see cars coming north and south And the problem is I'm looking north to see if a car is coming and I don't see a car coming then I look South and I don't see a car coming but by the time I turn around north there's cars coming and that's partially caused by the fact that the street is too narrow and was built to narrow in the sidewalk is too wide and I even have a picture of it and when you have a truck that's parked in front of the CVS that's a large truck most of the time you can't see past them This guy, I just want to show you, this guy parked on the curb. He was actually courteous and parked on the curb in order to not be in the driving lane. Now I've talked to the police department, I've talked to the fire department, the police officers actually tell me that our intersection is one of the dangerous intersections. I've talked to the to the police department liaison and I really haven't gotten anywhere Nobody seems to want to do anything. I'm willing to work with the city to try to get something done We have places in in Palm Beach where I've said to them to the police department You know when we have traffic issues in Palm Beach what they do at the intersection is they put a police car there and And there's no policeman in it, but they got the lights on. Well, when you see a police car with lights on, what do you do? You slow down. You know, it creates an atmosphere where instead of having people speeding south on Brown or north on south of Brown on Old Woodard, it creates some kind of an incentive. Or put a stop sign there. or even put a signal there like we have at the waterfall on maple which you really need to do something to make that place safer and i i would really like you to address it i'm happy to show you guys what's going on out there and meet with you and try and resolve the problem i wasn't here so We really need to wrap it up.

I am. And I can tell you that we are giving greater attention now to crosswalks, to pedestrian safety. As we all know, it was a fatality last month. And in tonight's packet, I believe, is a memo regarding our direction to the Multimodal Board to give more attention to this matter. And I can assure you that after your speech tonight, the city manager will make sure that intersection is near or at the top of their consideration.

Now, I didn't come here to talk about the swimming pool, but I just wanted to make one comment about what... Your time is up. I'm sorry. Let me just say one comment about what you can do. I've been in other neighborhoods in other states, and they have ordinances that absolutely restrict and forbid music in outdoor pools, and it's enforceable in California and Florida, and I think maybe we need an ordinance.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Hi, Tim Bradley, 519 Wimbledon Drive. This is not an agenda. I'm here to talk about West Wimbledon, the status of the work there. So last Tuesday, June 16th, the road work finished, and myself, my family, and all my neighbors were shocked at the shoddy and poor quality of work done on the actual final stage, the road stage. I scrambled to take about... Mr. Bradley? Yes.

Do you mind if I interrupt you?

Please do.

Okay. I drove it. I have urged every other member of the city commission to drive it. We have spoken to the city manager. I do not believe that the surface of that road meets a standard acceptable to anybody. I appreciate the applause, but no applause please. So I am going to ask the city manager to make a statement for us and then if you would like to continue you may, but trust that we are all aware of the situation and For me personally, I've been waiting for the conclusion of this project to see what happens. And now that it's almost concluded, we see what it is. And I also wonder, given all the other problems we've had with this, whether we could have expected anything better. But the city manager will tell us what this, and possibly the city attorney, because this involves contracts. Okay, she doesn't wanna talk. But this one will, so she's gonna tell us where we are on that, okay?

Yes, and thank you. And I just wanted to, as you know, Mr. Bradley, I've talked to you out there before. I have personally driven the road as well, and we've had people looking at it. I do want to say that it is not finished yet. I know it's almost finished, but it isn't finished. Here are some of the items that are still outstanding that will be correct, that will... correct some but not necessarily all of the concerns that we may have with regard to the surface of the road we need to add material to feather in all of the catch basins so if you recall when we indicated before that with an unimproved street we don't guarantee drainage but if you see the street out there and and i did with puddles in it from this weekend's rain um They're not adequately even directing the flow to the catch basins at this time because all of the hand pouring and work that hasn't been done yet to fine tuning around the catch basins. So that's what, when the cape seal comes through, basically there's a layer of gravel that's put down and then there's the slurry on top. When you get too close to certain items, you can't get the machine in too close. So you have to have hand work, hand tooling, they call it, done. So for instance, around catch basins, and I can tell you, the one I'm thinking of is on the south side of Wimbledon, pretty close to Woodward, maybe a block in. And there's puddles all around the catch basin and the water's not going into the catch basin. So that type of thing, those are all considered hand tooling issues where they will come in and carve and slice and add and make sure that that water will flow in. That has not been done yet, but it will. Also adding material in front of driveways where the machine couldn't get too close. So you may have, I don't know if you were driving it, if you noticed it, but I'm sure you did, Mr. Bradley, that there's areas where it's not perfectly We have a lot of catch basin covers and manhole covers that have keep seal material spray that went on to them that we do cover them but some spray gets on does come on that's another one of those finishing points that will come in and there's a special. chemical that you can put on that takes away all of that stain and including that there's also a section of sidewalk that one of the masking materials that we put on flew off in the wind and landed on the sidewalk. So there's keep seal markings on the sidewalk. That's again something that will be finished as well. um for the road we did cut it down to clay grade we proof rolled it we did have a tester company come in and verify that it was proof rolled correctly and it did pass that we did also have it was within 0.100 tolerance i also have i don't want to get into all of this so i'll talk to Oh, I'll get to the next couple of points that apparently and I'm not an expert on cave seal and I'm not an engineer But I do have Paul tool and can guess here from no I can frowse who designed the plans for the road on Wimbledon phase one and two Who is here that is available to answer any questions if anybody has? essentially, I guess one thing it's important to say too is that with the cave seal Road is The worst time is when it's first laid, and it takes approximately six weeks for everything to settle in, especially in the warm weather and for people to drive on it, et cetera. So for what it's worth, I'm not an engineer, and I'm not a road construction person, but that's the information that I've been given thus far that isn't done. I do know as well that there are some areas of the road, particularly towards the edges where it sort of goes like this. Which does appear to be a little bit more than we would normally see so I do have as I said Paul to look Angus here from no I can frouse if the Commission wants to hear anything from him on the design I have been assured at least that the road was constructed to the to the design that was prepared and

Do the residents who are, raise your hand if you're here because of Wimbledon. Okay, raise, keep your hand up if you would like to hear from the engineer from Nowak and Straus or Kraus. Okay, and commissioners, would you like to hear from the engineer?

Yes.

Okay, the engineer has the floor.

Are you okay still seating the floor? Okay, thank you. All right. Well, I'll just introduce myself. I'm Paul Tlucangas with Nowak & Frouse Engineers. I've been involved in many road projects throughout my career for City of Birmingham. And I guess I did, I have been involved in the project throughout the long, lengthy construction process of this one in particular, Wimbledon Phase One. I did just actually for the first time this evening before I came here just drove the limits of the job since it's been Cape Seal. I believe the final kind of layer of Cape Seal went down last Friday if I'm not mistaken. And your impression? So in general, taking a high level, and I want to go over a couple of things that are different with a Cape Seal road compared to an asphalt road, just for context.

How about you just give us your impression of the surface of the road?

So my impression is, overall, I believe the road is... design mostly per plan we have not done a final as-built and we have not done a punch list which are two critical items that I believe will address probably a lot of the concerns about workmanship and and you know isolated pockets of water and things like that so I think from an overall perspective I think that the drainage issues that are visible on the road are more for isolated areas where the When the cape seal goes down, it's less of a precise process than if you're doing an asphalt road. So I think some of those areas probably got a little rolled where they created those birdbaths and then the cape seal treatment went down on them. I believe there's some issues at the edges that were mentioned as well where it kind of got pushed out a little bit. So I think, again, we have not completed the project.

I think, I'm sorry to interrupt you again, but I think by far the concerns, my concern, the concern of the people here, is the surface of the road. I mean, one person wrote over it and said she got car sick.

Is the concern the texture or is it the drainage, I guess? The concern, it feels like I'm on the Baja.

The bumpiness. It's speed bumps. Now, if you want to cut down speed and cut through traffic, you might want to just live with what you got. Because I live on a street.

where they're going 40 miles an hour, because it's really smooth. So I think a lot of that may be, you know, when we do the as-built survey, where we go and we basically send our survey crew out, we verify all the rims of the structures were constructed properly, including the catch basin rims for the drainage considerations. I mean, if there's anything that's not in compliance or for the specifications that would come in as part of the punch, it's called a punch list, you know, as part of the project.

Is there anything that can be done to make it a smoother ride? We speak English here, not engineering. It's not a smooth ride. I think that's what you're concerned about, are you? Is that right? Raise your hand if you're concerned about the ride. Okay, that's what we're concerned about.

Well, I think Jana mentioned, you know, there's gonna be some final touch-up work as part of the punch list.

Are we gonna be back here again in two weeks or three weeks or a month complaining about the ride because it hasn't been improved? Because there's nothing you can do? You can't roll it, you can't scrape it, you can't do anything?

So I think as part of this CAPE seal treatment, this is really kind of the first layer and then I believe that it gets layers on top as future maintenance as part of the CAPE sealing program. You just said it was a final layer. No, I mean...

He means in seven years when we do it again. Right. So... I don't... I want to... Thank you.

Sure. Is there any other questions I can try to answer for you, I guess?

Yes, there is, actually. Can I ask a question?

You're out of order. If you can stand up, get in line behind Mr. Bradley. I'm sorry. Thank you. Should I wait up here? Yes, absolutely. Don't go away. I'm going to give the floor back to Mr. Bradley.

Thank you. Well, I'm encouraged to learn your kind of feel the same way about the road. I think the overarching concern is it's extremely bumpy and uneven along the whole length of it. Like you said, it's like a Baja ride. It's wildly uneven. The drainage is a major issue. It looks terrible. It drives terrible. I mean, I went to the folks that were on the crew on the road and I said, is this it? Like, is this what we get? Oh, yeah, this is basically it. There's nothing about punch lists for six weeks. So I'm encouraged to know there's going to be some remedial work, but also concerned that it can actually make a difference because, you know, fixing little things on the edges here isn't going to address like the fundamentally like awful job that was done. But as a valid sort of point of comparison, 2023-2024 there was 10 roads that were cape sealed including in Poppleton, some by Southfield Road and some kind of the Hazel Chestnut area. I drove all those and two, three years later they're much, much better than our road was like a day after completion. I mean like remarkably better. So Something was either some magic gonna be performed and make the road better Which sounds like that's probably wishful thinking or it was just done terribly and it needs to be redone. So That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, please Sure, I guess with the the texture issues I believe Jana kind of mentioned that it does kind of smooth out over time So when they put this down, there's basically they put They pull one strip of it along the edges and then one in the middle. So there's some overlap so That kind of like I guess as you're driving parallel with it where there's some unevenness will kind of smooth out. So I think that's that's kind of what was mentioned there with some of the roads that were completed several years ago.

Try not to be redundant.

Tim Doyle, I live at 244 Wimbledon Drive. One of the things that I noticed was that when the gravel was put down and it was you know, it was level at that point. It was probably a month later before the cape seal was put on. During that time, cars were driving on it, trucks were driving on it, which created pockets. It created this rollercoaster effect. Now, if Cape Seal had been put on when the gravel was first put down and leveled, we may not have had this issue. It seems like, and from what I understand, the Cape Seal company was separate from the company that put in the gravel. There was no coordination between the two. So the Cape Seal company said, it's not our problem. We just came out here to lay down the Cape Seal. We had nothing to do with the state of the road prior to that. I think that's a major issue as to why we have a roller coaster. Thank you.

Yep. And could that be an issue?

That certainly could be an issue. Thank you. Okay, sure.

pam doyle 244 wimbledon the other half of that one um just wanting to comment on peace quality of life and what was the other thing that we're supposed to be entitled to in the city of birmingham i mean what has gone on since last august in our neighborhood is unbelievable in capital letters flashing neon signs Between the park the mud the duration of this project. I don't know if there had been a timeline originally on it I understand on the other half of Wimbledon they have 88 days and they are Assuring people in that area. It will be completed in that timeline. I mean this is Ridiculous and it's you know for the kids for the park. It's just been unbelievable and we do live in on a city road, and Mayor, I remember you suggesting at a meeting months ago that maybe we should just pave the road and not charge the residents. Not everyone on the commission. You were mayor of Port Towns. I suggested we cape seal it and not charge the residents until the residents decided they wanted to. Because I think something ought to be addressed for what the neighborhood has been living through. That's why we're here. Thank you.

I will I'll just say thank you first of all for having the Commission drive the road one of the first questions that I would want to ask would be have you guys seen this and would of the six of you or anyone in this room. who has sanity think that that's a completed road that should be paid for by the residents, you'll get a resounding 100 out of 100 unless someone works for the company that did it, I would think. As a couple have mentioned, this has been a multi-year process for a lot of us. You will all remember us coming up here, FOIAing requests, fighting with commissioners, attending every single meeting, getting petitions signed. We then had the road sit like this for an entire year. The mud, the dirt, the damage to people's vehicles, the damage to people's homes, the lack of use of the road. It's been an insane couple of years for us and for this to end the way that it is with the quality of work that's been done. I believe Mr. Bradley has submitted some documentation with some photo evidence and I don't think it was accepted by this commission because it was put in several minutes behind the point that it was deemed to be put into the meeting minutes this week. But there are some great photos that you'll see of the street of manhole covers being completely paved over of catch basins that look like they're falling apart. I mean the rain that happens days and days before that's just sitting there from the quality of this road is almost laughable. I think most of the residents are sick of hearing that this Wimbledon phase one job was not done correctly. I've heard it from several people on the city commission from people with city engineering department from people at city planning when calls are answered to and actually return to residents they say it was not done the way that it should have been done and that there are regrets but we're tired of being that guinea pig we're tired of being told that there's an apology or that there's something that was done wrong we want this fixed and we don't want to pay for it it's it's a ridiculous thing to say that the phase two folks they have a limit we're talking about this 88 days that the phase two wimbledon folks have they're getting assessed a the company who's doing phase two, correct me if I'm wrong, they have to pay $1,000 in overages for every day that they've gone over. I don't, I'm sorry, I don't know the detail. Correct. Okay. So we went, I mean, they have 88 days to do it. We went 187 days. So by that math, this would have been about $185,000 in overages that would have happened from the year that this sat like this. We would have been able to pay for the entire project out of the pocket of every resident if this was done correctly. It wasn't done correctly. The residents do not need to pay for a road like this, and we want to know what's going to be done. We hear all the answers that it wasn't done correctly and that maybe there's going to be some repave or it might level itself out. We want the road completely redone, and I think we deserve that after all.

Kathleen McInerney, 129 Abbey. And please forgive me my voice. It's allergies. You need a cup of water. I'm good. Thank you very much. So my husband Jack and I are at 129 Abbey in Birmingham. Thank you very much for being here. I know you guys have sincerely tried to help us and guide us on the best practices for Wimbledon. The problem is MDOT has a motto of saying, fix the right road at the right time. Wimbledon just happens to be the right road at the wrong time. With three broken gas lines later and four broken water mains later, guising into the air, our project has failed from day one. I'm not gonna go, I don't need to go over all the things that have already been mentioned today, but we were asked by the city to mark our sprinklers, which we all did. We marked them and they were all ripped out, the heads and holes all together and thrown away in dumpsters. Our home, we have a long side, we're up front on Abbey, long side of Wimbledon. We had a two-story mound of contaminated, bacteria-filled dirt the entire project. And I kept asking, and I'm making chocolate chip cookies for these guys. I'm trying to be good to these people that they were working. And I said, hey, when does this dirt get moved? And they said, oh no, this isn't contempt, this is good dirt. I'm like, there's broken clay, there's broken big chunks of asphalt, and this can't be good dirt. And they said, every time, because I would ask another guy. Every time they go, no, this is going to stay here until the end of the project because we're going to use this to make the new road. And I'm like, I did go to college and this does not look like new dirt, but it stayed the entire time, the entire time besides shipping container and a port-a-potty. which was fun when you're hosting a bridal shower. The sewer drains obviously you mentioned are higher than the road itself. The thing that worries me is that MDOT does not recommend Cape Seal for a road that is a brand new road that has a rock base. From MDOT's description of what Cape Seal should be used on, it should only be used to go over the top of another existing road or paved asphalt to make it extended another five to seven years. So I don't know how we landed on that Cape Seal was gonna be great for us when it's gonna shift and move with the weather, right? We know that. It's just very frustrating to live through this whole thing. So my only other thought was, and I'm really glad, thank you for driving the road because it is like Mr. Toad's wild ride. And it would have been great if my kids were little, but they're all grown up. But if Birmingham is going to say, you know, their motto is we are a walkable city.

But if you happen to walk on Wimbledon, you would roll your ankle.

Thank you. Thank you.

My name is Rita Rossi Miller. I'm at 147 Abbey. I have the lucky location. I have Twin Oaks on the back, Wimbledon on the side, Abbey on the front. So I've got all three of them. I agree with all of my neighbors. The one item that I want to mention is the fact that I think Birmingham dodged a bullet on safety. I'm gonna give you three examples. We have a lot of children in the neighborhood. The first example was when a load of pipe came off of one of the trucks. up near Oxford, came down and took out one of the large street blocks That was one. The second one was I was turning off of Woodward onto Wimbledon, and you've seen a wild fire hose going in every which direction, right? That's what I came on. Threw my brakes on so that it wouldn't go through the windshield of my car. Waited until it went under the truck it was on, scooted by, and talked to the guys up the street, and they went, oh, okay, and they went down. Then the last one was on Twin Oaks. I think it might have been consumers digging the hole because they took something out multiple times. And the hole was probably eight to 10 inches deep. I'm sorry, eight to 10 feet deep, eight to 10 feet wide. You could drop a small car in it. It had a large piece of metal on the bottom and there was an opening this wide that any child could have fallen, any adult could have fallen into. So when you're doing the other neighborhoods, you really have to have somebody out there looking for the casualties or the possibility of casualties. And leaving sand piles for little kids to play in, You might do some reading. Several children have died falling in sand piles. And I'm across the street from Kathleen's. I could look across and I could only see her second floor window from the pile of dirt. So as you're going through Poppleton and other streets, somebody, whether it's your project manager or somebody else, has to come out and take a look at the safety issues for our kids. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Pierre Girond. I live on a 420 with . OK. I think it's clear that everybody is upset with this road. And I heard your punch list. This is a detailed punch list. The punch list is not the issue. The food road is a disaster. I think, I'm hoping that people understand trying to fix it will not be the right fix. They have to redo the project. What I'm surprised is why we have to come here to kind of show that is obviously the road is not in a good condition. So I'm surprised as an engineer, we should have for every project, we should have a clear acceptance criteria when a project is done. So I don't know if those exist. I don't know if they pass. If they pass, that means those criteria were definitely not strong enough. And if it only exists for the next road, we better have more details on how we can accept the road and don't expect people to come here to complain. Thank you.

Hi, I'm at 144 in Wimbledon. I appreciate you taking the time to listen. One of my big complaints with this project is my husband, Rita's husband, Jack McInerney, a number of us put our own sprinkler systems in on the city property between the sidewalk and the street to maintain the grass and have the yard look nice. So that was ripped out. no attempt by the city to replace the sprinkling systems that they ripped out. We were told that it was up to us to fix it. My husband, Rita's husband, we have husbands now that are elderly and they are not able to do it. And the quote to have it fixed was quite extensive. Therefore, we have mostly elected to not put a sprinkling system in, so the sod that was put in now will die. And sprinkling systems on our property were not repaired by the city. They were just dirt put over the existing pipes, sod put over that, and that sod's not being watered. So I think it's really unfair. the way that we were treated. Plus, I have the never-ending porta potty on my pot. It was moved from Kathleen's now to my property. And I would really appreciate that being removed. And I also was under the impression that on the sides of the road, we were gonna have like a little bit of a gutter to help with the drainage and the water management. There is no gutter at all. I mean, we have the road and then we have the side. That's going to be a problem. We know everybody's going to drive on it, but we're going to have a drainage issue. So I would like, you know, all of these things to be addressed. Thank you.

Thank you. Online we have Katie Dabrowitzki. Katie?

Hi, yes, thank you for having me. I'm a resident of 826 Shepherd Bush. Let me see if I can go off it.

You can't go off video.

Okay, I'm a resident at 826 Shepherd Bush and I also wanted to just make two comments. Well, three comments really. The first is I'm heartened to hear that it sounds like the Wimbledon job has been universally that these concerns have been raised and are being addressed by the Commission. The quality of the road is terrible. It's not safe to, I think, for kids to ride bikes or scooters on. And I'm encouraged that the city commission appears to be listening to our concerns. The second thing is that now it seems the staging area for Wimbledon part two is at the end of my street. There is an enormous dirt pile at the end of Shepherd Bush. They were in the park a few days ago bulldozing it. They put in a bunch of huge chunks of stone and they appear to be loading it up with construction equipment. And there's a huge dirt pile that's now about 20 or 25 feet tall. I would ask the city commission, especially since the attorney is there and also since. Um, the city manager is there to investigate this use of the land. Um, the 1st thing is that I don't this is a public nuisance. It's not fenced. There's entrances and access that are not controlled. We have children on our street. They will inevitably want to play in the dirt and this is not safe. The 2nd thing is, um, I think that this is a breach of the, of the restrictions of the title of the labs. If that's part of the nature preserve, then there's no way that the city can just arbitrarily. Go ahead and take it for a staging area. They bulldozed a nature preserve and I don't think again with the city attorney there. I don't think that that I think that that is an absolute breach of the. Use of that land in the title restrictions. So what I would ask the commission to investigate is as these street repaving projects move forward in my neighborhood, what changes will be made so that other streets can avoid the same fate as Wimbledon? How are you going to hold these contractors accountable? This is the first I've heard of the 88 days. I'm encouraged about that. The second is what steps are being taken right now to alter the percentage of homeowner payments so that we share and contribute. I know that Wimbledon was a 50 50 job, but that's because it was deemed a major road as these projects come through the neighborhood. I'm looking at paying for 85%. And I don't think that's fair. I don't think it's equitable with other communities. And I think that that has been expressed before the commission before. And I would ask the commission to immediately start reconsidering and adopting reconsidering the current breakdown and adopting a policy that's more fair and equitable. And the last is, what accountability measures will be implemented to prevent shoddy work in the future? These projects are moving forward and I would like to be able to appear before the Commission and compliment the work. And instead, I think that you're going to be facing lines and parades of angry homeowners if things don't change. Thank you.

Thank you, Katie. I'm going to note that we will have the city look into the use of that property. We perhaps should have notified residents that at a pre-construction meeting, it was decided that that would be an appropriate staging area. It is city property, but your suggestion that there may be some deed restrictions involved with with it is worth investigation. And I will also note that on tonight's agenda, we'll probably put it off for a meeting or so, but is a proposal to go out to put out an RFP for a consultant to assist us in developing a comprehensive infrastructure master plan that would include consideration of the funding mechanisms that we currently use. That's going to take some time because we're only now considering putting out an RFP to hire someone to look at it. But it is on our agenda and we are planning to do that. So we'll move back into the room and

Hi, my name's in Bradley. I'm at 5, 1, 9, Wimbledon. I have the joy of the phase one and phase 2 lining up directly in front of my house. So I am fully in it for both phases. In fact, I had to leave without cooking my children dinner tonight because once again without any notice the water was turned off. I'm not in phase 2, but my water was turned off tonight. I think what's frustrating to me is even if We choose to repave the entire Wimbledon and you guys fix that. The oversight on this project has been so inadequate. The buck stops with no one. It doesn't stop with the city councilors. It doesn't stop with the city employees. It doesn't stop with the contractors. Everyone is blaming somebody else and nothing happens. I've been on my front lawn, had conversations with you. There was a guarantee that the road would be finished by June 15th. It was not. It is not. There was a guarantee that they would not start the second phase until they had finished the first phase. That is also not true. None of the promises that have been made have been kept. The citizens have showed up. We followed decorum. We followed procedure. We've made our voices. And I don't feel like we've been reciprocated on the other side. I've had to manage the project myself. I work from home. I had a sidewalk replaced in front of my house. Two days later, they tore that sidewalk back up. I went back out and I said, looked pretty good to me. Why did we tear that up? And they said, oh, because they stamped it. The city of Birmingham does not allow stamped concrete. So they ripped the brand new stamped concrete up. Two days later, again, working from home, they're replacing the sidewalk. I go back out, they've stamped it again. I said, guess what? That's why you ripped it up two days ago. Can you call someone? I called the assistant manager of the city. I left messages. No one responded to me. I had to talk to the contractor supervisor to tell him that that was not allowed and you were going to have to rip it up again. So what did they do? They came over with a hose and scraped it. And now we have like a random scraped spot in the brand new concrete. That is just one very, very tiny example about how horribly managed this project has been from start to finish. I have had my door knocked on by a city firefighter because they blew a gas line. I was not allowed to start my car. I was not allowed to start my oven. My daughter missed a gymnastics practice. I mean, I could tell you a hundred of these stories. So even if you replace the road with Wimbledon, if you don't figure out how to do this oversight, if you don't figure out how to manage the contractors that are not at the level that they should be, you're going to have this problem in every single road in every single neighborhood moving forward. And it's just not acceptable. That's all I have to say.

Thank you.

My name is Sally Swift, I'm at 541 Wimbledon. I live next door to Ann and Tim Bradley. Originally I was in phase one and the road is ripped up partway across my property. Then it was determined now I'm in phase two, which is what it is. I have also the orange shipping container, porta potty and piles of dirt in front of my house. But what I am mentioning today is the fact that I rode that Wimbledon the Sunday before they put the Cape Seal down. And I thought, well, they're gonna have to come out and grade this tomorrow. And they didn't because it was rocky rolly. So two days later, I was trying to get out of the neighborhood and a city employee helped me to find a path. But I said, you know, I've been reading online, a lot of people are very upset. And he said, yes, he said, I understand, but you didn't vote for asphalt. And it was graded for asphalt, which made no sense because it keeps you a little long and we were never given a proposal for asphalt. So I thought I should, in essence, he was blaming the residents. That being said, I'm hoping that phase two goes better and that the workers do what they have to do timely and don't shut our water off without notice. Yep, thank you.

Thank you. Sam A. Online, you can unmute yourself.

Hello, can you hear me?

Sure can.

okay perfect very good um i was just wanted to uh talk today about uh city of birmingham resident by the way wanted to talk about the um private pool um residential uh issues that we were having um so i know uh in last meeting we kind of had a talk about um someone had asked a question to uh the police officer there regarding the captain regarding the number of people someone's allowed to host at their house and I think the city manager at the time had briefly looked and said that there wasn't any ordinances that said that there's any type of gathering limit.

So what I'm asking today is not to prohibit public pool parties, but what I'm asking is that the city look at the number of people that a house is able to host. And so this is not just pool parties, this is graduation parties, et cetera, et cetera. And that is just for making sure that large events are planned responsibly and that there's adequate consideration given to traffic management, emergency access,

and any neighborhood impacts. I know in the past we've received some flyers saying that there's going to be a party and it just kind of gives us a little bit of heads up and we've never had any issues like that before.

I just want to make sure that the city is looking at the fact that maybe residents should notify the city, which would then in essence notify the police department and say, hey, we're going to be having a party and we're going to have 50 people, you know, maybe 50 vehicles or whatnot on our street. And so I just want to let the city know that that's something that maybe should be considered if you guys aren't already considering it as is. That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your suggestions. Okay.

One more? Okay. Sally Swift is my wife. I live at 541 Wimbledon. And her punch, she was running out of steam. The last thing on the punch list is, so we're not in phase one, we're in phase two, but we're right at the middle point. But our tree lawn has been torn up and the sprinkler system shredded. Without regard to, it was just a machine that they scraped everything. So Just another thing to the list. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you and Coming up yeah, well sooner the better Thanks, I'll make it quick I Don't think anybody's mentioned this yet

I'm Dave Wills, I'm at 176 Abbey and I don't live on Wimpleton but I use the road. I'm curious about the warranty for the road and what the measurables are for that warranty. So next year, if the road is out of spec, are they going to improve it? The fellow mentioned earlier that if traffic, that traffic has an impact on the smoothness of the road. Well, it could also impact it negatively, most likely, right? The more bumps in the road, the more they're going to push in and make it worse, okay? The other thing I just want to quickly mention is in front of my house, there's not that many potholes and that sort of thing, so it's a pretty good example of what the current CAPE seal is for the non-improved roads yet. And that has sort of a convex curve to it. The center is higher than the edges. And it's very smooth in that way. And I don't think any number of cars could create that by driving over it. Something there from the start. And I don't see that on Wimbledon. And I'm thinking, geez, did they add enough rocks or dirt? You know, the underlayment that they put the cape seal over. They might have skimped on the amount of stones that they put on that road. Thank you, thank you, Sir. Appreciate it.

Hello, my name is Jordan Ingram at 269 Wimbledon. My concern here today I would say is, you know, like all of my neighbors, the personal property and destruction that we've seen is unbelievable. I have a 1929 house with a long slate walkway that goes to the front door. and we had the unfortunate timing to have redone that walkway about a year prior to this project and with all of the heavy-duty machinery that's come by we have felt an unbelievable amount of shaking and vibration and I mean to the core of the house to where some points you're like oh my gosh is this house gonna fall down while we're in it what we did not realize at the time was we look out at our front walkway and we compare it to the back walkway that we replaced in the backyard that goes to a screen and porch around the back of the driveway both were poured at the exact same time the back walkway is perfect in terms of all of the grout and chinking in between, the slate in the front yard is completely ruined. I mean, the vibration has destroyed the entire walkway. We also had our sprinkler system completely ripped out everywhere, all the sprinkler heads, and then the city or the construction damaged the first three feet of our slate walkway to the point where Slate was missing. It was just gone and My wife actually sent in an email we called We were told that the the walkway would be replaced they came out and found random pieces of slate and cut them to fit and now we have seven or eight small little pieces of slate at the bottom of our walkway and that don't match the walkway they don't match anything you know that we had before and this was about a week and a half 2 weeks ago and they still haven't come out to pour the the grout in between so my my request here today is that could someone please look into the personal property. the residents that has been completely destroyed from sprinklers to walkways to driveways to I mean all of it it has been an absolute nightmare to live through and now the expense is being put back on the residents as well as the cost of the road for all of all of the above it's been a nightmare so thank you for taking us today.

Hello, I'm Anthony and Sarah, 176 Wimbledon Drive. I want to reiterate what all my neighbors are saying about the quality and condition of the road. I do a lot of work with asphalt in my businesses, too, and I've never seen a job like that. I mean, if they did a job like that, we would... make them fix it or you know sue them for the just the quality of work um my a big concern of mine too is in the winter time when this freezes and thaws what's it going to do to this road i mean it already seems like it wasn't done correctly i think it's just going to be a nightmare going into the future And honestly, I think the best course would just to be completely redo it and do it correctly when they were leveling the gravel It's like they were out there for like maybe four or six hours or something like that And it's like it just didn't even seem like they created it properly. It's like they rushed the whole job at the end Thank you.

Thank you Well, we've heard you Okay, and we started out saying we agree with you so I'm sorry I can't give this more time tonight. We need to move on. But trust that the commission hears you. And this is where the buck stops. And I guess we're just going to have to see, you know, we need to consult with the administration. And I'm sure you'll be hearing from us. So thanks for coming out. And if it's okay with the commission, we move along. Fair enough? Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll give folks a minute, those who want to leave, to leave orderly. We're going to move on to appointments. We have appointments to the museum board. There are four positions open on the museum board, and we have five applicants. Martha, I'm going to call you in the order that you applied. Martha Rauch-Logue, are you here, Martha? Raise your hand if you're here. Martha? Okay. Wadette Bradford? Come on up or come on down as the case can be. Hi, Wynette. Could you just tell us briefly about your interest in the Museum Board?

Yes. Good evening, Mayor Fowler, Commissioners. I'm Wade Dapp-Bradford. I live at 956 Henrietta. I've lived in Birmingham for eight years, and I'm here very interested in the Museum Board because it's entering a new chapter, the year of the Strategic Plan, also America's 250th, and a very ambitious slate of programming, including the F. Schneeby Program, Back history exhibit. I was there on Saturday. I fell in love with the baskets. And also the continuation of the Underground Railroad work that Director Pilot has so very eloquently led. The 250th carries personal weight for me. Both of my parents are veterans. My father was a World War II veteran. So history and museums are very personal for me. The Peabody Family Exhibit that's being hosted this year is the kind of story I grew up understanding the value of in Tuskegee, Alabama, which is my hometown. Boards like the Museum Board at this phase benefit from members who bring complimentary capacity. I bring four things to work, which include my NACD Accelerate training on board governance, two decades of enterprise data and digital leadership directly applicable to collections in virtual access, as well as signature event fundraising experience as the chair of the Junior Leagues of Atlanta Tour of Kitchens during a record-breaking six-figure year. As an active museum engagement and holder of the Met, the Gill Hall in East Hampton, as well as the Breakfast Club of Detroit and the National Historic Sites in my hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama, I've joined the Friends of Birmingham Museum because I'm very passionate about the strategic plan and I look forward to serving as a member of the board. Thank you.

Thank you. Does anybody have a question for Ms. Bradford? No? Okay, thank you. We'll take a moment. Can I ask, did we hear from the first person?

Not that I recall, but it was a free applicant.

Okay, and is she indeed the chair of the board? Okay, Michael Abelson, are you here? Hi, Michael, can you come on up?

Good evening. I'm a re-applicant to Museum Board. I've served on it for the past several years. I've been a resident in Birmingham for over 30 years. I currently live at 584 Tooting Lane in a Wallace Frost home. I have a great interest in the history of Birmingham, and in fact, our home was just recently approved for the Michigan Heritage Home Program that I applied for a couple of months ago. So I very much hope to continue to serve on the museum board.

Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Abelson? Commissioner Host. Yes.

Michael, you said you were on the board. When was that, and for how long?

What's, I believe it's three years. So I've been on three years.

That was my first term. Excellent. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Ippleson? Okay. Alexandra Harris, are you here? Hi, Ms. Harris. How are you today?

Hi. I've been in Birmingham for about 30 years. I feel very inadequate. One that definitely should be on the board, we need you. This is my third term and my philosophy is that everybody should do something for the city they love and I don't, I'm a barista and an artist and a crossing guard of the police department and field staff for an organization called Life and Messiah and I've done a few paintings for the board and I enjoy it very much, people are great. And if you want me back, I'll come back.

Okay. Hold on. Any questions? Any questions for Ms. Harris? Just don't ask me about the Wimbledon Road.

You haven't attended any meetings this year at all.

No, my work with Life and Messiah, and I've talked to Leslie about that, involves a lot of travel. So, you know, the position on the board, she encouraged me to stay. She said I do contribute, and I will attend as much as I can. But I know with the last couple meetings, I was out of the country.

Okay, thanks. Any other questions for Ms. Harris? Christy Barrett.

I'm currently an alternate on the museum board and before that I think I finished a term a vacant spot or something. So it's been more than three years I know. I know I was there before Mike Abelson was. I feel like I I didn't fill out my form the way I should have. It looks like I'm not involved in community work and I've been extremely involved, just not in the city. So if there's questions about all the volunteer stuff I've done, I'd be happy to answer that. I was part of the strategic plan. I was part of the grounds reconstruction. And honestly, I don't know if The community really knows what a gem we have in Leslie Pilick. I mean, she's, for our only three employees, this is top-notch people. So, anyway, any questions? I'd like to come back and... Commissioner Hague. Three years you've only missed one meeting is an alternate. It's pretty good. I'm very compulsive about being on time.

That's admirable for something that you're not even a mandatory attendee type thing. So thank you for that.

Well I was on the strategic plan for the Birmingham schools twice and I was told I was the only person who never missed a meeting. Anyway, I enjoy it. I think I contribute. I show up and I'm prepared.

Questions? Any other questions for Ms. Barra? Okay, thanks. We will now, I guess we can go right to nominations. I don't know if we want to discuss the fact that Ms. Rausch-Logue is not here, and we have an enthusiastic applicant.

Yes, if I may make a comment, Mayor Baller. Yes. If you look at the agenda packet, the Museum Board membership list on page 31 and 32, I confirmed at the beginning of the meeting today with Clerk Alex Bingham that although we advertised for this meeting the four positions that expire July 6th, 2026 for Mr. Abelson, Ms. Barrett, Ms. Harris, and Ms. Loeb, that there is an additional position open that was vacated January 15th, 2026 for a member that was advertised and not filled and that it clearly says vacated 1-15-26 and because it doesn't expire until July 6th of 27 It was advertised earlier this year when it was vacant, but was not advertised tonight because it doesn't expire in this round. So I wondered if the city attorney could opine whether we could appoint all five of these individuals this evening since we actually have five vacancies.

I'm not, I'm not following. So there is another active open seat that had not been advertised.

It was advertised, but there were no applicants. It was vacated in January of this year.

So I see that there is a three-year term expiring July 6, 2027. Yes. Are you saying there's a second one? No, I'm saying.

No, that one's vacant. That's vacant. And then the other four positions that we advertise for tonight that are in the red boxes, those people are all here and they have reapplied. Okay, so those four were advertised this evening and those four are listed in our agenda packet. Three regulars and an alternate for Mr. Abelson, Ms. Barrett, Ms. Harris, and Ms. Lowe. But we do have the additional vacant position that we did not advertise for tonight. However, it was advertised previously and not filled. So for tonight...

I think if it wasn't advertised and it wasn't noticed for tonight, it's only fair to... put out the intention to a point and whomever doesn't get it tonight please reapply and thank you they'll have it and go to any meetings in right in the interim observe whatever comment

get acquainted. Fair enough?

Can I ask a quick question? Sure. The vacancy set to expire in 2027 is for a regular member or an alternate member?

Regular.

Regular. Thank you.

Okay. I'll take nominations. Commissioner Host. Oh, okay.

Christy Barrett for... the term as a regular member.

Let's be clear about when it's going to, which one?

July 6, 2029.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Can I make a comment? I think what the Mayor Pro Tem was trying to do was a very nice thing to do because we have four regular, or four people on here, and we have a nice young lady that, you know, I hope gets the fifth position. Right.

Who is the alternate right now?

Christy Barrett.

So we just appointed her. So now what? What are we going to do? Demote someone?

I would Mr. Mayor nominate Alexandra Harris to the alternate position since she does travel frequently and that would allow her to continue to attend meetings and to participate but would have less pressure for regular attendance so I'll nominate her as the alternate.

All those in favor? Yes. Aye. Opposed? Congratulations.

Okay, another one. Commissioner Colt. I'd like to nominate Wadet Bradford as a regular member to the Museum Board to serve a three-year term to expire July 6, 2029.

I think the intention of what Temporary Mayor Pro Tem Long was suggesting was that Ms. Bradford would stand by rather than demote someone who's currently serving. Fair enough. Or remove them temporarily. So would you like to amend your... Would you like to make another? Yes.

To point Michael Abelson...

As a regular. To which one? Because there's several different.

The alternate's already full, so there's only two regular.

So it's either 329 or 27. 29 or 27, yeah. 229. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Congratulations. And finally, anyone?

I'll nominate, oh. Martha Rush Love to the remaining regular position, which is the one that expires July 6, 2027.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Done. Unanimous. Another unanimous decision.

And then we would encourage Ms. Bradford with your enthusiasm and your admirable background to apply when we post the other open position. Please. And to attend meetings in the interim.

And you know how to keep track of that, right? Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to... Mr. Mayor, I'm sorry, the clerk has your hand up. Oh, I'm sorry.

We have done in the past, recycled a recent application for the... You can do it on her behalf.

she's willing are you are you okay uh ms bradford with having this an automatic having your application automatically be entered yes thanks for the clerk okay you're welcome thank you You're in payments too, right? A lot of automatic stuff going on in your life. Ethics board, we have two openings and two applicants. Lawrence Handler, are you here? Mr. Handler? No, Mr. Handler. Mr. Bradley, I see you are still here. Tell us about your experience and your desire to re-up, and I mean your experience on the board, not your... Sure, yeah. Whatever you want to tell us in one minute or less.

Okay, one minute, you got it. So I've been an alternate member of the board for the past few months, and admittedly no matters have come up yet, but I've been on standby if they do and I'm needed. But I've been a Birmingham resident for about 10 years and worked for a Birmingham law firm for the better part of 20 years. And I value the opportunity to give back and to contribute. And I enjoy living here a lot. And I think it's an honor to be part of the board. So hopefully you'll consider me for renewal.

I think we will. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Bradley? Mr. Bradley, I have a question or a comment for you. And forgive me, this is not going to sound super friendly. I want you to be aware. I know that you have been very critical of the city when it comes to our approach to Wimbledon, okay? There's a line I want you to be careful not to cross. That line is when you disparage the city to the point that it affects residents or anyone's confidence in city government. Now I think we're all shaken by what has occurred here and we walk that line as well. Okay. Any nomination? A nomination? Okay, fine.

I would nominate Mr. Bradley to the alternate member position for which he has applied for renewal.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Unanimous. What is the Commission's pleasure with regard to Lawrence Handler? Commissioner Host?

I'm willing to nominate Lawrence Handler as a regular member to the Ethics Board to serve a three-year term to expire June 30th, 2029.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Opposed? None. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Folks, do we want to... Let's swear these ones in because the community house is... Yeah, right.

Okay. Swear them in. Great. We're going to swear you guys in. And, yep, even if you've already been sworn in in the past, you get to swear again.

So museum board members that were just appointed and ethics board members, if you can come on up. And you'll raise your right hand, you'll say I do after me. I do soundly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of this state and endeavor to secure and maintain an honest and efficient administration of the affairs of Birmingham, free from partisan distinction or control, and perform the duties of the Office of the Museum Board and the Ethics Board according to the best of my ability. Three of you will sign and print, I'll fill in the rest. So just sign and print.

Great, thank you. Now we turn to appointments to the brand new Birmingham Community House board. And I hope that we can now, a wait has been taken off us, we can do something pleasurable, happy, and positive. I want to sincerely thank all of those who have applied for this board, and all of the and say that it's an extraordinary pool of candidates. And we have, it's tough. I wish there were more openings, but there aren't. And so we're gonna do our best to fill the few openings that we have from this great pool of candidates. Certainly if you are not appointed, you will, even if you are appointed, this board will, it's highly likely that it will establish several committees and we will be looking for you folks and others in the community to serve on those committees. So they're very important. Committees such as a programming committee, a fundraising committee, a finance investment committee, a governance recruitment committee, those are all possibilities. I do think that the call for applications did a pretty good job of outlining what we're looking for here. The intent is to have two commissioners on this committee who the idea there is for them to provide oversight and be able to report back to the commission on what's going on there and they will be voting members. There are two ex-officio members, that would be the city manager and the city attorney, whoever that happens to be at the moment. There have been some discussion about reserving two of the two-year terms for commissioners so that when we do get around to nominating and voting on commissioners for this, it would be for two-year terms. I've been advised that it makes sense to have a motion and a second and a vote on that aspect, so I would ask for a motion on that.

I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, the clerk has her hand up.

The two-year is two-year just for now to get the rotation in, so it's not in perpetuity a two-year term.

No, in perpetuity. I get that.

Okay.

I get that. We're going to set aside two two-year terms here so that when we do get around to nominating everybody else, there's only one two-year term out there available for the at-large members. Okay? So that those who are making nominations know that. So could I get a motion real quick and a second to set aside those two two-year terms?

I will move to reserve the two of the two-year terms for the Community House Board positions for the City Commission. Excellent.

Second. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Okay, great. We've got that out of the way. So what we're going to do, we will work on the commissioners later. because there's a chance I might be appointed to that. I don't want to be presiding over the appointment of my fellow members if I'm already on the board. So we're going to ask Those of you who have applied to come up and speak for two minutes and introduce yourself then and the clerk will time you in the same way that she timed the other folks and then we will ask you questions. There's no limit on the Q&A so we're going to start and who has the official list? I believe Linda Solomon was first. Linda, come on down.

Thank you so very much. In the book, The Heart of Birmingham, the community house story written by Betty and Frank Angelo, my dear friend Gail Caldwell shared the importance of the community house. Gail, a former executive director said, and I quote, it is the place you go when you need to know that someone truly cares. I'm here because I truly care. When I read in November, that the heart of Birmingham was in jeopardy, I called a group of citizens to meet at my studio. The Free Press did a story about our advocacy, And I even gave the reporter my phone number to engage more citizens to join us. We formed the Visionary Arts Council of Birmingham, bringing together noted leaders across professions with one shared vision, to save and revitalize the community house. We care about the children in our community. who will bring their talents to life at the community house, filling the halls and the walls every day. I have secured a sponsor for the children to photograph the heart of Birmingham, capturing what our community means through the eyes of our children. We care about our teens and their ideas. We feel it is important to create a youth advisory board, giving them a seat at the table. I care about our older citizens. I picked up the phone and I called members of the senior men's club to find out why they left the community house. and what we need to do to bring them back home.

Ms. Solomon, I'm sorry. I'll give you about 15 seconds more. We can address some of your points, certainly during Q&A, but I need to be fair with everyone, and I did say two minutes.

As Coretta Scott King said, the greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members. And together, through these actions, we will not only define the heart of Birmingham, we will become it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I want to ask the commission if they have any questions for Ms. Solomon.

I got a lot of general questions and observations that I think I want to wait a little. Okay.

Is this our opportunity to ask questions of the applicant? This is our opportunity to ask questions of the applicant. So my question is, Birmingham is lucky to have a lot of great public and private institutions. We have a great school district, we have a great library, we have a municipal government, we have lots of great businesses downtown. So my question is, where do you see the community house fitting into that network?

This is the center. As the Angelos define, this is the heart of Birmingham. And it's so important, as I mentioned, to give children the opportunity to express themselves, to give the youth, to give the seniors the opportunity to bring back their house. And so that they can share memories, create memories. This is the most special place in Birmingham. And we have to cherish it. And that's why I want to serve on the board.

Thank you. Commissioner Host. Yeah, Linda, could you just tell us about some of your public good endeavors, in particular raising money?

Oh, thank you. Please. I have worked with children and youth for over 20 years, and I have worked with children experiencing homelessness. I have a nonprofit, Pictures of Hope, where we've helped children in 54 cities. We give children the opportunity to share their hopes and dreams with a camera. And we've changed many lives. It has been corporately sponsored by very important and noted companies and family foundations. And that's why I wanna continue with that mission of giving our children and youth a chance to express their feelings and display those beautiful photographs and their artwork at the community house. Not just one week a year, but every day of the year. Is that pretty good?

Now, did you have a hand in getting the corporate sponsorship?

I personally did. The first program that I founded was sponsored by the Kmart Corporation and Kodak, and we reached 250,000 children per year with a total of 1 million children receiving cameras. And I personally engaged the Kmart Corporation to sponsor my program.

Other questions? Thank you. Thank you. Next up, Kristen Boundy. Kristen, are you here?

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Kristen Boundy. Five and a half years ago, I moved my family to Birmingham from New York City, where I spent 10 years working on Wall Street. I've read the applications of the other candidates tonight, and on paper, they're incredibly impressive. But what a paper resume cannot show you is who actually shows up when it matters. On November 3rd, when it was announced that the community house was facing sudden closure, I didn't sit on the sidelines. I immediately stepped up. Since that day, I poured my heart and soul into finding creative solutions for saving the house, driving dozens of meetings with community house leadership and city leadership because I refuse to let this institution fail. My presence here tonight isn't opportunistic. It is the inevitable next step of the heavy lifting I've already been doing quietly behind the scenes. I'm not here to check a box or add a line to my CV. I'm here because we cannot afford to repeat the past. We cannot have a board that is a microcosm of the exact same insular thinking that got the community house in trouble in the first place. This board must reflect the true modern community of Birmingham, and that means young and old, men and women, professionals, and those with young families. We must listen to what this community actually needs and provide high value services for Birmingham residents. If appointed, I will pour my effort into building a sustainable resource that is aligned with what modern Birmingham families need to thrive. In the 1920s, the community house's founding women saw a gap in our civic infrastructure and refused to wait for someone else to fix it. I am running to bring that exact same fierce founding energy to this board. I care deeply about Birmingham. Let's honor the people who built our history by appointing leaders who have proven they will fight for its future.

Thank you. Thank you.

Questions from the founding? Commissioner Hay. So I think of several nails that needed to be hit on the head, you hit one of them rather nicely. And I'll just read it for everybody's benefit in here because I read everybody's. I don't even know how many times I've read them all. Many longtime residents have strong members of the community as a central part of the community life. The challenge is helping newer generations build that same connection. Today's residents live differently than they did 50 years ago, and the organization must continue evolving to meet those changing needs. So, yes, the community house didn't work by using the same recipe. And looking backwards and saying, but the community house was this. How old's the youngest person in the room? Don't answer that, but just look around. He's probably one of the youngest people in here. I actually went around several people I know that are recent transplants into Birmingham this weekend and said, hey, what do you think about the community house? Most of them looked at me blankly and said, the what? Don't know what it is? And in blunt terms, don't care, because it's never been a feature for them. So I'm glad you're looking forward to not saying, well, we did this in the past, it'll work, because it won't. I can tell you that that's why the replacement administration that took over from the previous one really struggled when we ended up where we are because they tried the same recipes and they don't work because everything changed, tastes changed. So I like your forward thinking. Thank you for bringing that up and making it very plain. I appreciated that.

Commissioner Kozlowski.

So I have the same question which is basically how does the community house fit into the network of existing institutions in Birmingham?

Yeah, it's a good question. I think the board has a lot of work in front of themselves in terms of doing the research to understand what the citizens of Birmingham truly need and want. Part of that is going to be asking those citizens surveys, whether it's at the farmer's market or via email, whatever. But another big part of it is going to be looking at the services and institutions that already exist in Birmingham and understand what works well, what doesn't work well, where are there gaps, and then also doing research to look at communities surrounding Birmingham to see what they have that we can borrow from and be inspired by to bring to the residents of Birmingham. But I think that's the work of the board that we have to do.

Thank you. Commissioner Host. Yeah, Kristen, do you mind just telling us, you said you're involved in Forgotten Harvest and the greening of Detroit and the Alzheimer's Association. Can you just briefly tell us what you do as a volunteer?

Yeah, so... I feel very fortunate to work at Rocket Companies, who mandatorily makes us volunteer every year. And there's eight hours that they will pay for you to volunteer, and I have gone above and beyond those every year. Those are just some of the institutions that I've decided to dedicate my time to in the city of Metro Detroit.

Anyone else? Kristen, I think it's important to note for the record that you have made a proposal to the city to take over management of the early childhood center, is that correct? That's correct. And you, in that proposal, made some suggestions of how you might take that center beyond where it is right now. Could you real quickly review those ideas?

Yeah, so when I moved to Birmingham, I didn't know anybody. I'm not originally from Michigan. And I met my first friends at the ECC. And so it's near and dear to me. But something that I realize as well is that there are neighboring communities that have specific groups for pregnant and postpartum moms, which is some of the hardest times to go through. It's very isolating as a postpartum mom. And these are also moms who are pregnant at the same time whose children will likely be born at the same time and will likely go to school together. And so why wait until they're in elementary school to introduce those families together to form a community when you can do it when they're first born. And so there's some extensive programming that I've been talking to other people in the city about bringing some of that into Birmingham.

Great.

Thank you. Thank you. Lee Trumbull.

Good evening, my name is Lee Trumbull. I have a lifelong connection to the community house. I took classes there as a child, I worked there as a teenager, and I spent 23 years there as an employee. The reason I'm interested in serving isn't because I want to preserve the community house exactly as it was. In fact, I don't even think that's possible. What interests me is helping determine what the community house should be next. Over the course of my life and career, I've seen the community house evolve as the needs of the community evolved. At its best, it listened, adapted, and brought people together around a shared purpose. I believe the foundation's first responsibility is to understand what Birmingham residents want and need today, and then build an organization that is financially sustainable, community-centered, and relevant for future generations. What I bring is a unique combination of institutional knowledge, nonprofit experience, and a deep love for this community. I've seen the community house, like I said, at its best, and I have seen it struggle. Those experiences have given me a unique perspective on both the opportunities and challenges ahead. I'm committed to helping the community house become a vibrant and meaningful part of Birmingham's future. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. came in under two minutes. Thanks. We need to catch up. Questions from his trouble.

Commissioner Kozlowski, I'm just loving the same one and everybody. So in your opinion, how does the community house fit into the fabric of a fabric of institutions in Birmingham?

Think it is again basically what the prior candidate said is that we need to find out what the community wants the last two president CEOs have come in with their own ideas of what the community wanted and Didn't listen at all didn't even ask for that reason. And I think that we need to implement systems to figure out what the people want and using, again, like the other prior candidate said, looking at what other communities use. I do think there are plenty of tie-ins with Next. There are ties in with the city of Birmingham. There are many, many opportunities to make the community house what it should have been probably for the past few years. Thank you.

We'll go ahead, you're first.

Ms. Trumbull, when did your employment with the community house end? December 2020. If you had concerns about the direction it was heading before that, did you take actions to alert anyone or try to impose change from inside or exterior if you thought it was going down the wrong track?

No, and I'll give you one reason why. Bill Seckler. I was signed an NDA. I signed an NDA. Forced to sign an NDA. When you were hired? No, when Bill got there.

He made everyone sign NDAs? Yes. Charming.

I felt I had no recourse and as a matter of fact that's why I left it broke my heart I expected to retire there it is my second home that building is my second home and I love it.

All right, thank you.

Did that NDA bind you after your employment ended?

No, but even then fear of reprisals from was a concern. And I just I wish I had had more strength back then to to fight it but I needed to find another job I needed to take care of my own family and as much as I love that house and broke my heart leaving. I didn't have the wherewithal to do anything as a matter of fact and tell really Camille came back into the picture and really looked at the whole mess that was made and decided to try and. Take care of the situation without going into details. That was my main concern because I secretly hope that when the transition happens we get someone in position who would really look at what it needed to be now and that didn't happen either. So now I stand here because I'm tired and I want my house to succeed desperately and I'm unwilling anymore to stand silently. That is why I'm here.

Remember Pro Tem asked my question.

Okay, all right, any other questions? Thank you, thank you very much. Next up is Anthony Long.

Good evening. Hello. It's been like two months. Nice to see you all. How you been?

For those of you who don't know, he used to sit right here.

Former 31-year resident of the city of Birmingham. I left because I got married. Marriage 2.0 is amazing. And you're all married and you'll understand that sometimes you do things for your spouse that you never do. That doesn't mean because I've stepped down that I can't still participate and I think I have a lot to bring to the table. I served on the multimodal board for a number of years, served as a city commissioner for a number of years. I served on the ad hoc senior recreation center committee. It was a disappointing decision, but I think we made the right one given the financials that came out with that. You all know my background, but briefly for the record. I have a bachelor's degree in economics and management. I have a law degree from Michigan State University. The last 21 years, I have been a partner with the law firm of Howard and Howard. For the last eight years, at the request of my partners, I've served as general counsel for the law firm and managing partner of Arroyo-Locas. I'm now in my 32 year of service. of private practice. So why did I apply? Well, first of all, I reluctantly stepped down. I enjoyed serving a city that I've lived in longer, more than half of my life. I still come here. I see many of you when I do. I had my wedding reception at the Birmingham Community House in 1995. And it's always been a special place. It needs to evolve. When I first came to Birmingham 31 years ago, I thought the community house was owned and operated by the city of Birmingham. And I bet you, up until recently, a large segment of the population of Birmingham thought that. And I quickly found out that I was wrong. With the purchase of the community house, we have an incredible opportunity to make the Birmingham community house the Birmingham house. What it is to do, what it is to serve remains to be seen. because it needs to evolve. It needs to have a business plan. It needs to have a group of leaders that can take it into the next century and keep it on the tracks. It obviously fell off the tracks a number of years ago. I sat and watched it, we all did. We need to restore the community house as a non-profit community center serving all of the residents of Birmingham. supporting social philanthropic civic activities for the benefit of the entire community. I didn't write that. That's in the deed restrictions. That's what the donors wanted the building to be. And that's what we need to make it.

Your two minutes is up. Okay. Maybe you can make any other points you have. Certainly welcome to bring them up during Q&A.

I think the priorities of the board, I'll name four.

How about we open it up to questions and the first question will be, what are your priorities?

Absolutely. First and foremost is cultivating strong relationships with donors. Establish a group of experienced financial advisors to make sure that we ensure the longevity for another 100 years long after we're all gone. Mapping and understanding local community needs. First and foremost, because we need to evolve and we need to find out where it is going to fit in the community. But I think there's a place for it. And I think it is the heart of Birmingham. I always thought it was when I first came here, and I still think it now. And finally, establishing reliable funding to ensure long-term viability. I didn't mention I serve on the Variety Children's Charity Board. I've served down there for five years. I'm an executive member. and I'm familiar with 501 s I'm familiar with advising that board both on legal issues as well as raising money for for the the various children's charities that that we support everything from from limbs children without limbs we did this did a bicycle night 150 bicycles given away to needy kids but also kids who have disabilities and those bikes are modified to allow them to to use those bikes so I have a vast legal experience but also experience with 501 C 3s and and and raising money

And I'll ask one more question and then open it up. And you are willing and able to provide legal advice to this board? Yes. Thank you. Any other questions for Mr. Long? Yes.

You may be able to see this one coming, but... But in your mind, and I think this pertains to many of the things people have been talking about, about the community house evolving, is this idea of where does the community house fit in the network of existing institutions in Birmingham?

Well, obviously, as I said, it needs to evolve. But I think it needs to be, it is the center. It should be a gathering place. It should be a gathering place for all ages. And we need to make sure that it is. But I think it can be the center for the city of Birmingham and I think it needs to serve all the residents and I think we need to have programming that provides for that. What that programming is is something that the board needs to be charged with to find out what we really need now and what is gonna work now that hasn't worked in the past.

Further questions? I'm sorry, did you have your hand up? Okay, go ahead. Could you move the microphone just back slightly? Thanks.

Yeah, sorry. You touched on one thing that nobody's touched on yet, but I think, and I can imagine from reading what's in the package from several people that there's a couple of you who are going to hit it. I spent part of the weekend rereading this. 26-27 budget. We don't have any money for operating it. So you touched on fundraising, which is really, really important. I can visualize a couple of others from what was written here. That's actually very, very high on the list of things we need to do. So I'm very encouraged by you starting your four points with strong relationships with donors because I mean, I did a spitball on what it's going to cost to run this place per year, and I came up with $2 million. That's just so that we can cover costs. That's not programming or anything. So the heavy lift for donations is extremely heavy because there's no padding in here to take $2 million out of the budget every year.

So thank you for that being your first point. And I will add that the first two years are going to be the most difficult years to get this up and running, to make sure that we have the money to get the donors involved. There's going to be a pipeline that is going to have to be supported for a period of time. And so you need a board that recognizes that and is on board right away to start that process. Otherwise, it's not going to work. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Next up, Kevin Denha. For future reference, either microphone works.

It's okay, yeah, good evening. My name is Kevin down, huh? I'm happy to be here. Thank you for viewing my packet. I'm a Bloomfield Township resident, but my office is located in downtown Birmingham. I have several businesses based here. They're operating a corporate office or on a retail level. Haven't been in this town my whole life. I'm 57 years old Given that piece of real estate my background was retail and real estate. I Think I've been the community house once so it's been out of sight out of mind and when I heard About this committee being formed and the city kind of taking over I was ecstatic. There's nothing but upside to come and I having said that the committee house these integrate I think a lot not just with the local community which is for me the Birmingham residents but also the surrounding area because let's face it this town draws everybody here for the reasons we all know. So, having said that, it's tough where you pointed out where you gotta raise some money. My background from a social standpoint, as I sit on various boards, Caledonian Community Foundation, which is a fundraising arm, I'm Executive Vice President of Caledonian Community Foundation, and I also sit on the Marion High School Board. So, It's not easy raising money, but if you build a product, hence the community name, and engage with the community, I think given where it's at and the amount of capital in this town and the surrounding communities, I think the upside here is... It's huge for the community. So you can talk about programming, talk about fundraising. I think another aspect is having, you know, some events there with respect to pointing out to a wedding or event space. So, I mean, you have meetings for your staff. It's tough to find a spot for 25, 30 people. That's just one aspect of it. But Board's got a lot of work to do. I think you've got to really consider the top line revenue in conjunction with fundraising, too. Let's look at this thing as a business and, of course, incorporate the community, service the whole community, hence the name community, and let's go from there. I'm happy to answer any questions.

I'll ask you a quick question, then I'll call on the guy down here. Ever run a business that lost money? You know what? Yes.

I don't know how to think about those. I don't like the word capital call.

All right. Along the lines of where I was going, because I was actually very intrigued to see your name on here and also extremely pleased for a couple of reasons. One of them was really what you've refocused back on. You're literally looking at the You're looking at the P&L side of things, and that appeals to my head.

You look at that, but you look at the P&L, but you also look... See, top line cures all. I'm not saying this is just a business, but you've got to throw a little bit in there in a community aspect for something that's not funded from a municipal aspect. You know?

And your background and what you do is very encouraging for a couple of things because, so things that I see that we have entered with this purchase, we've entered into business ventures that this city has assiduously stayed out of for decades, event hosting. There's a Class C that came with it, I believe, am I correct? Yes, we. So there's a Class C license that came with it, childcare. None of this is something this city has experience with and has, like I said, with intention stayed away from for decades. So people with knowledge of how to make these things work are going to be very helpful, not necessarily from the run it, but how it should be operated, how it is successful. And I think you sound as though this is an area that you've got experience in. Am I touching that somewhat correctly?

You are correct. I mean, listen, I've made a lot of money. I've lost a lot of money, to the mayor's point. And I say that very, very humbly. The city's government, you know, generally speaking, it's tough for them to run a business. But I don't look at this just as a business. It's a component of the community that generates business to the community house. Does that make sense? So, I mean, yeah. I mean, whatever happened in the past, I didn't dive deep into that with respect to the four walls and how it was run. But this is a turnaround. But I think, Anthony, correct? Yeah. He made a good point. Your first couple years are going to be tough. They call that the cash burn. You've got to raise some cash. I don't know if we're paying property taxes on there, but I think we can appeal them. I'm just kidding. But listen, my partners and I just bought Buddy's Pizza. That was a disaster. We're in the third month of it. We're just blocking and tackling. But you've got to get dirty, and this board, whoever you appoint, listen, they've got to donate, too. Every board I sit on, I donate. That's just my expectation, personally. But also, you've got to get out there. There's parlor events you can have. You've got to get door swings in there. You've got to have some events that are low-hanging fruit to get them in there. We raised in the Keldean Community Foundation. I was the lead on that. It wasn't just me. We raised about $30 million in five years. That's hard. I've been to some of the Jewish events. They'll raise $100 million in five years or less. You know, you've got to get at it. But it's key that the board is involved. They've got to do some footsteps. They've got to have some events. They've got to be involved. And listen, time's our biggest commodity. If I didn't want to do this, I wouldn't do it.

So one last question. I'm a businessman, not a politician. I tell it like it is. Some may like it, some may not. I love that because this drives me crazy up here being politically correct. Are you going to be able to handle that?

You know what? Be careful what you wish for.

All right. Good deal.

Any other questions? Any other questions? Go ahead.

Stock question. How do you see the community house fitting in with the network of public and private institutions we have at downtown already?

Listen, the public, private institutions, the community house, respectfully, has kind of been out of sight, out of mind. So... there's different components how they're integrated, depending on the institution. You just gotta, I think that's not step one or two, I think that's a little bit down the line, because you gotta get your money in order. And then you gotta get your programming in order, whether it be childcare, whether it be, how are you gonna serve the community? Then you go, that will answer the question how you're gonna deal with institutions. Does that make sense?

Thanks, Owen, thank you.

Thank you, and thank you for waiting through all that public comment, all of you. Sam Sernau, I believe, is up next.

Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having me. I rushed here. I didn't think I had time to put on my tie, but I was quite wrong. I actually am a resident on Bates, just down the street. I've lived in Birmingham for about almost 15 years now, and I spend most of my, pretty much all my professional activities in the city. I serve on the principal shopping district, and where pretty much every meeting is held at the community house. I sit on a couple of the subcommittees. I will admit the fundraising aspect is vitally important. It's not something that I've done. I've volunteered on plenty of philanthropic organizations throughout my life, but I grew up in real estate. I did read, you did send it on the Saturday. I was on a family vacation. I tried to read some of the history and the great stories, and I think that it definitely is near and dear to me, but we can't simply just rely on nostalgia. It's got to be run like a business. So I started out after getting my master's as a CPA in New York City for about four and a half years. I grew up starting as a janitor for my father when I was about 11 and pretty much grew up in real estate running income producing properties. What I do think, and I've heard a lot of questions and a lot of comments, this is one of the most valuable properties in the city, and if not, probably the state of Michigan. There's going to be ways to find money. I think it's gonna be a real stretch. But I think that, at least for me, I thought about my experience, and I think that real estate development It kind of ties in with evaluating an asset, managing a budget, thinking long-term and strategic down the road. And I think that that really is important when it comes to governance. HQ currently is in the post office, which is one of the four buildings in the Shane Park Historic District. So I spend a lot of my time dealing with buildings and problems and historic adaptation and creating highest and best uses out of all these beautiful buildings that we've worked hard on in Birmingham over the last couple of decades. And I think that this asset has survived wars depressions. I think it's going to be different than it was the recipe. But I still think that the mission and staying true to benefiting the community is very important to me. I care deeply about Birmingham. I don't really ever plan on leaving here. I love this city. I love volunteering for other organizations and I'm in it for the long haul. I've started other businesses from nothing. I'm fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to take over my family's real estate company, but my brother and I have started our other business from nothing, putting in our, you know, a couple hundred dollars and growing it to a national company with distribution and that is not easy. that is working all miters, that is doing things from scratch. It's clawing and making every dollar work. And I think that that also is going to help. And I know that, I think that I look at this, it's like every building that we've ever gotten involved in, when we first get into it, it's like, it's so hard to kind of come up with a vision. And then years down the road, it's almost hard to imagine what it was because it's so amazing and it's so worth it down the road. I don't have all the answers, but I'm willing to roll up my sleeves. I know a lot of people that are good at raising money, so I'm happy to tap my network and plug those people hard. And all I can tell you is I'm willing to devote my time, put my experience forward, and help any way I can. And even if I don't get the director position, which is totally fine, I'm happy to come to the committees and help.

Thank you. Any questions for Mr. Serna? Commissioner Host.

Sam, you mentioned Make-A-Wish Foundation and then you also mentioned Detroit to Nepal. Could you talk about what you're trying to do with each?

Sure, so I don't actively do as much on Detroit to Nepal anymore or Make-A-Wish. I grew up in that organization, you know, writing for Make-A-Wish kids that, you know, fulfilling dying wishes for kids with either seriously debilitating or terminal illnesses. My family was a donor to those causes. Detroit to Nepal was basically coming up, you know, flying to Nepal and coming up with ways to put an infrastructure to you know third world countries with uh you know horrible basically lack of civilization so i've been active and have donated a little bit to that but as of recently most of my time as a volunteer is really with the city of birmingham

Mr. Kozlowski. All right, stop question coming at you. So in particular, I'm interested in your response as a member of the BSD, is how do you see the community house fitting into our downtown fabric and the network of institutions we have in Birmingham? Sure.

just from you know the the psd standpoint i mean i think that there's a lot of creative ideas that we could probably plug community house into other than it just being a place where we host our meetings i think that the education the early child care some of the things are working i don't i don't have uh you know privy to the to the books and records i haven't seen how the actual operations are other than that it's obviously you know financially it hasn't worked which is why we're taking over but i do think that there are a lot of great organizations amazing organizations in in this city uh including um you know i i went to birmingham schools growing up so there's going to be a lot of ways i think to get involved but i also i think that again i think about It might it might take a couple of years before we start really benefiting the residents because we need money. I mean that's what I'm hearing is that we need money badly and so my plan would be to just you know. Tap the shit out of everybody that we know. That's the reality of it. That would be the first thing that I would think of is there's a lot of people, but there's a tremendous amount of wealth that is coming into this town. I mean, being in the real estate market, I see what some of these things are trading for. I mean, people are, frankly, it's hard to fathom how much has come into this town over the last 15 years. So I think that there's going to be, I think the network is probably already here for the most part. And I think that the private sector is going to be really important because, like, anything that I do this is a this is a wonderful property and we need to be maximizing literally every square foot probably every square inch into figuring out how we can start generating revenue quickly good using those networks thank you thank you very much any other questions for mr. sir thank sorry

Well, you could have asked the other guy. All right. I'm pretty sure Katie knows her. Are you here? She indicated she would not be here. Jennifer Farage, are you here? No. You indicated you would not be here. Richard Weatherold, are you here? Come on up, Richard.

Good evening. My name is Rick Weatherhold. My wife and I have called Birmingham home for more than a decade, and we are raising our three children here. This community has given me much of my family, and I'm eager to give back through service. Professionally, I'm a strategy manager at Ford, where I've spent more than 14 years leading strategy initiatives, managing investments, and bringing cross-functional teams together to achieve common goals and mission. My background combines business and technical leadership, degrees in engineering, economics, and an MBA from the University of Michigan. I believe the community house is one of Birmingham's most important community assets. It is more than a historical building. It's a place to bring people together and strengthen the connections that make our city special. My goal as a board member would be to help build a financially sustainable and transparent organization that can preserve its historic legacy but evolve to meet the needs of future generations. I see opportunities to strengthen governance, grow philanthropic support, evaluate modernization needs, and expand programs that foster community engagement. My experience with fundraising initiatives combined with professional background in strategy, operations, marketing, and long-term planning has prepared me to help address these challenges and opportunities. I recently ran for city commission because I care deeply about Birmingham and its future. Serving on the community house board would be another meaningful way for me to contribute and apply my experience and service to our community. If selected, I will bring thoughtful leadership, strong governance, and a collaborative approach, always focused on advancing the community house's mission and ensuring it remains a source of pride and value for all Birmingham residents. Thank you. Thank you.

Questions for Mr. Weatherill? Commissioner Host.

Yeah, Richard, you mentioned that you have been involved in fundraising and philanthropic initiatives. Can you just tell us about one of each or two and one, whatever?

Mix and match, one can column A. So fundraising, I was involved in, I spent a lot of time at university and been involved in a lot of student organizations and one of those was the University of Michigan Marching Band, which does a lot of fundraising and working with donors and supporting mailings and associated materials, so I was involved with that.

Other questions? Okay, why don't you just hold up my sign?

I know, I should. Yeah, so same question. Where does the community house fit into network of Birmingham institutions?

I think for me, looking back just a generation ago and kind of understanding, having a chance to go back to where my father grew up, things were a lot different because everything was done through the church and that was where Boy Scouts was through and that was through sports and everything else. And if you kind of fast forward to today, everything's changed where there's a lot of other organizations that are filling those gaps. Think community house is intended to be in my mind kind of a central connecting point for everyone But the way that I see it as needing to adapt and I agree with many others that we do need to ensure That we're capturing the voices of all as we shaped the vision and the product but kind of my hypothesis going in is a way to connect the threads to the other existing parts of the community and whether it be through churches or whether it be through daycare centers or other areas that people connect through. So it's kind of that central hub. How do we enhance those offerings? How do we bring a connecting point into the various other areas of people's lives that they're involved in today? Thank you.

Thanks. Thank you. Racklin Hoff. Familiar name?

Well, first I wanna thank the commission for making this decision to save the community house, because I think that it's such a valuable asset in our community, and I worked with some of the others, many of whom are applying, to help to save the house, and you did it. I'd like to begin by telling you a little bit of my background, as many of you know some of it, that I think prepares me for holding a foundation position. First of all, as far as my career goes, I was in public relations and marketing. And so I did that for many years, including several fundraising efforts. I produced the Jerry Lewis Telethon, which was strictly fundraising for six years, the Channel 56 auction, and several other. I wrote all the materials for those types of programs. So professionally, I do have experience in fundraising and in marketing. I also have a linkage with the community house for many years. I've lived in Birmingham for 49 years now and I was very involved with the community house from the time my children were young and they took dancing lessons there. I served on the marketing committee and as recently as last year I taught classes there. So I think it's a real asset in our community. Also, my background in serving on boards and committees. I've done a lot of that. As you know, as far as community service goes, I was on the city commission for 20 years and served as mayor three times. I also chaired the foundation for Birmingham senior residents for 19 years until it was dissolved and absorbed by Next. So I am familiar with that. I am also a mediator in Oakland County, the only mediator for small claims court at 48th District Court, which I do as a volunteer. So I have the experience of resolving conflict, of working with people to resolve conflict. So I think that I have a lot of applicable experience, but that said, equally as important as passion and experience is an ability to do strategic planning and to accept fiscal responsibility. These are key to the future success of the community house. Having been on the Commission, I am very familiar with budgeting and have looked at the budgets, what was just held up here, the budget document, The thing that we have to do is make certain that the community house is self-supporting or else it's going to fall on the city and that is a key element of where we go moving forward. So I would say strategic planning and fiscal responsibility are primary considerations moving forward. We don't want the community house to be a burden on city finances or taxpayer dollars. So in order to do that, as far as the strategy goes, I feel we have to identify the current wants and needs by involving community input. And that's exactly what several of the other people have said. We have to reach out and Get people involved. Hear what they want. The community house may not be doing exactly the same things as it has in the past, as we know. But that's what we have to look at. What do we need to do? What does the community house need to offer to ensure success? Okay, that's enough.

Thank you, thank you. And you know, if you have other points, you know, politicians are very good at answering questions, not answering questions and so. Well, I hope I answered your question. No, no, what I mean is you can, if you have other points you'd like to make, he's gonna ask you a question, you can make any points you want.

Kevin. All right, so where do you see the community house fitting into the network of existing institutions in Birmingham?

Well, first of all, I think it is a landmark building in downtown Birmingham, and I would be very upset if it was destroyed. I think it's a beautiful building, and it contributes to the whole look with Shane Park and the community. So, as far as the building goes, I want it to stay there. As far as the future, again, I say we have to do strategic planning. We have to do outreach. We have to find out what people want to be done with this building. And so that's my answer. I can't say definitely I want the building to be there, definitely, but I don't know exactly will it offer classes, will it offer a preschool, will it be primarily banquet and catering? I don't know at this point. But I think with the cross section of people that you have here tonight that I've heard, I think that we'll come up with strategic planning if I'm on the foundation board.

We'll probably do it either way. But thank you. Thank you very much. No other questions? Any other questions for Commissioner Hoffman? Okay. Next up is Kathleen Devereaux. Are you here, Kathleen? She's on Zoom. Ms. Devereaux, you may unmute yourself at this point, I think.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay, good evening. I'm Kathleen Devereaux, Birmingham resident for 47 years. What is the first duty of a foundation director as I see it? Responsible, responsive, and accountable governance. We must adhere faithfully to the mission and ensure that the community house operates as the community center it was intended to be. A director has a fiduciary responsibility to the community house's stakeholders, namely the public, the city, and the donors. But the board cannot carry out its responsibilities if it is unduly beholden to any particular stakeholder. We must always remember that the community house management reports to the board, not the other way around, and the board reports to the city and the public. Times have changed, but I don't think the community house is outdated. There is just as much need for it today as there was in 1923 when Ruth Shane and a group of ladies sat down in someone's living room and said, this town doesn't have a community center and we need one. If appointed to the board, I pledge to be faithful to these operating principles. I will help avoid the missteps of the past while helping to usher the community house into the future. If you rebuild it, they will come. Thank you.

Thank you. And you came in 25 seconds short, so thank you for that too. And Ms. Devereaux, I would be remiss if I didn't thank you wholeheartedly. The city of Birmingham and the residents of Birmingham owe you a gigantic debt of gratitude for what you've done in Thank you in exposing the deed restrictions and getting us on the move in that direction. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I will open it up to questions. Commissioner Host.

I have two questions, but it's for the city attorney. Number one, are these meetings going to be OMA'd or can Kathleen zoom in?

That's a really good question and I'm glad you asked it because I wanted to clarify something as people have been talking. This board is going to be the governing body of a 501c3. It will not be a public entity. It will not therefore be driven by the confines of the Open Meetings Act because it's not a public entity. It is going to be the board of a 501 C 3 which makes us a little different than this normal appointments that the city commission makes so this this foundation has to start somewhere. Hence why you are choosing its founding board members but after this the board will be self governing the purpose of having 2 city commissioners on the board is to be the watchdog to assure that this public asset is being treated appropriately and following the deed restrictions so that's the purpose of having the commissioners on the board whether or not the board chooses to open their meetings to the public is going to be up to the board but they are not a public entity confined to the oma so may ms devereaux zoom in that again will be up to the board to determine once they have their bylaws established and accepted by the board

Another question. She's on the Board of Review. Is there a conflict?

No, because again, it's not a city board. You are establishing it. It has to start somewhere, but this foundation will be its own 501c3, self-governing.

Other questions for Ms. Devereaux? Questions for Ms. Devereaux?

Yes, same question to you, Ms. Devereaux. Where do you see the community house fitting into the network of institutions in Birmingham?

Well, for the last hundred years or so, it's been our only community center and it will fit even better into the fabric of the city and downtown if we ensure that it starts acting like one again.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Devereaux. Next up is Eva Kirkman.

Eva?

Ready?

Yeah.

Okay. Good evening. My name is Eva Kirkman. I'm a lifelong resident of the Poppleton Park neighborhood in Birmingham. Although I spent time away for school in New York City and starting my non-profit career in Los Angeles, Birmingham has always remained home and was the place that I cared about from afar. I've always believed that strong communities depend on residents who are willing to invest their time and talent. That belief has led me to serve as the vice chair of the YMCA Camping Services Board and a board member of Impact 100 Oakland County. Closer to our home, I also serve on the Birmingham Museum Board, reflecting my commitment to the organizations that help define and strengthen our local community. Professionally, I'm an assistant vice president with CCS Fundraising, a global nonprofit consulting firm, where I have the pleasure to work with organizations across the Midwest as they address their unique needs through fundraising and planning initiatives. I've led fundraising efforts ranging from $6 million to $80 million, giving me experience working with organizations at many different stages of growth and transformation. Birmingham residents care deeply about the community house. The conversations surrounding its future demonstrated this. Now the city and the future board members have an opportunity to rebuild the organization with sustainability in mind. To me, that means continuing to listen to residents as it relates to programming and future activities, exercising strong financial stewardship, cultivating donor and community support through new fundraising strategies, and operating with transparency needed to build the confidence in the organization and its future. I'll be an excellent addition to the board because I bring the professional skills needed to support the foundation's long-term success and the valuable perspective of a resident who cares deeply about our city and its future. Beginning on day one of the formation of this board, I will make an immediate and meaningful contribution to the foundation's work.

Thank you. Thanks. Commissioner, Mayor Pro Temo.

Thank you very much for applying. I am very interested in your work with CCS Fundraising. I had a couple of questions about that. You seem to have really relevant, diverse fundraising background. Does your organization support working for a nonprofit in a volunteer capacity that in the same way former Commissioner Long is willing to provide legal advice, would you be able to provide fundraising advice, guidance, strategy to this board?

Absolutely. It's actually really encouraged that every director at CCS is involved in their communities in some ways. In fact, if you look at our partnership at the firm, many of them are involved on national nonprofit boards. As you also heard, I'm a member of several additional nonprofit boards myself where I lend my time and talent. So I would be happy to continue that in this capacity.

And you said that you had worked with organizations at many different stages of growth. There's nothing shakier than a brand new 501c3. So have you worked with early startup, early phase?

Usually my role in campaign work is coming into an organization as they're addressing challenges or needs. not necessarily new, but definitely looking at challenges and coming in to say, how can we support you? How can we listen and how can we make changes? So for example, a recent client I was with had a stalled campaign. They had raised $12 million. The goal kept growing because they started the campaign in 2019. And as you can imagine, by 2026, that's inflated to 33 million. So when I showed up day one, my job was to listen, understand the needs and reassess the way that we can grow the campaign. I'm really proud to say that concluded in January and we had reached that new goal. So in six months had gone from a full stall at 12 million to 33 million by, you know, coming up with really just unique strategies, thinking about reengaging prospects. stewardship, strengthening relationships, and then building out a robust public phase after those leadership level gifts.

All right, thank you. I have a question or two or three. You heard at least one or two people mention that there seems to be an enormous amount of pent-up money in this town and that's probably in your lifetime that it's gotten, you know, the way it is. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on how to tap into that quickly.

Yes, so actually I appreciated what you said. Tap the shit out of everyone we know. And my initial thought was, okay, I love it, but let's be strategic. So how are we doing that? As board, as a volunteer committee that we might form underneath us, gathering those names and then really putting the research and data behind it. It's one thing to go out and ask someone, hey, would you like to support us with $10,000? It's another thing to really be informed about their potential giving capacity their affinity and affiliation to the organization. And then to say, actually what we'd like to ask you for today is $1 million over five years and paid over a pledge period to really maximize that gift. So that's some of the types of strategic fundraising that we utilize during campaigns that I think I could lend just a bit of marry the need to go fast while also being strategic and not leaving money behind on the table, as that can often be a pitfall of fundraising, especially in a time crunch.

You've been doing this for some time?

Yes, I've been in nonprofit fundraising for about 11 years now.

Do you see a bright future for the community house?

I hope so. You know, to answer Kevin's question in advance, one thing that I think is talked about a lot in public discourse right now is the need for third spaces, talking about those spaces that communities can gather that are not restaurants or bars and I think we already in Birmingham have those spaces through the museum and the library, but there's a unique need and opportunity for the community house to fill some of those other types of needs that can exist in a community. For example, growing up here, I remember it was very cool when my parents finally let me go walk to Birmingham by myself and go to the movies. Yes, but then what was I doing after? Sort of standing around and getting ice cream. So how can there be programming in our city for teens, for young adults, for parents? And I think some of the ideas mentioned here today are really great starting places. I think listening sessions will be very important to understand the future direction of the community foundation and the function of the community house, as well as, you know, in exchange for listening sessions, really open transparent communication around the decisions being made high level so people feel like they're coming along on that decision-making process as We move from this phase where lots of things are up in the air to a phase where the community house is flourishing Thank you any other questions for this curtain Thank you

Andrew Herzog did withdraw. Kim Jackson, are you here?

Hello, good evening. My name is Kim Jackson. I actually was born and raised in Michigan, but I've been gone for a while. So I was born and raised in Grand Blanc with a family-owned business from my parents. And my dad was also a teacher and has a background. But I've been in North Carolina. Well, actually, I went to Northwood University. And then after a year, after I graduated, I moved down to North Carolina to pursue my business and automotive degree. And I also have a Automotive marketing degree from Northwood and a business management degree and proceeded with moving down to North Carolina with a Rick Kendrick automotive group one of the largest independently owned dealers and worked in service departments always solving problems and helping people and that ended up evolving to having kids. I always wanted to come back to Michigan, but I ended up going through a divorce and didn't want to take my kids away from their husbands, so I've stayed down in North Carolina for the past 28 years, and I've been back for about the last two years and about the last year as a resident. And one of the things that I've been wanting to do since a single motherhood is own a daycare. So I, since I've been back, I have met people at the community house and at the daycare center and met with the staff and the director and One of my best friends also owns a daycare in Fenton, so we have been working together for years. I've been actually kind of working on this project for about 21 years now, although it's in a different process. So now being in Michigan and learning about the ECC and the community house shutting down, I have been actively working behind the scenes for a new location. And this is now the first location actually fell through. The second location is now put on hold due to us now finding out that the community house was being purchased by the city and there's a possibility for a daycare to still continue. So that is put on hold until we kind of figure out this process for the daycare and what we can do to move it forward. So I've been working with the staff and the families, and it's near and dear to my heart because I've been a single parent. That was actually the first time that I wanted to open up a daycare, being a single mother, and how do I fit it all together, and having a business mindset. But I learned that it was going to take a focus away from my children. and what I had to do as a single parent for my children, but I've been in the businesses of your largest purchase with your houses and now currently in the mortgage industry specializing in reverse mortgages with the elderly because I like to have a special niche and help people.

Let's turn to some questions.

Sure.

Is that okay?

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, you can make any points you want during the question and answer part. Do we have any questions? You know I do.

I'll put a twist on it. Do you remember my question?

Yes. So, due to having an interest, I would like to see the community house. I've learned from families what the heart of and what it means for the families and the community. And I would like to help grow through other programs, keep the ECC, the daycare there and do other programs. I've also have, used to be, College athletes, so I used to coach my daughter's soccer team as well So I've done fundraising through there But I really have an extensive background with children and helping people and growing and education From my family and stuff as well and helping people Thank you. So I would like to help it grow.

I Have a quick question. Yes, hopefully a quick answer. I No offense. That's okay. I just want to confirm that you also, and for the record, you also have made a proposal to the city manager regarding continuing operations at the ECC. Is that correct?

So I've spoken to Jana, yes. I have not submitted a proposal. Basically, she told me to come to the meeting tonight, have the board form. So I have one ready. Okay. Let me know.

Okay, great, great. But that is a primary interest of yours? Yes. Okay.

Yes, the primary interest is for the daycare, yes.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Is Mr. Howe, Errol Howe, are you here?

He said he would be on Zoom.

Oh, Mr. Howe, are you on Zoom? He might have lost interest.

I don't see him on Zoom either.

Okay. Well, if he shows up, let's keep an eye out. Linda Schlesinger Wagner.

Good evening. I'm Linda Schlesinger Wagner. In 1964, I turned 16, grew up in Livonia, and got my brand new car and went to Pierce Street, the village store, and fell in love with Birmingham. a few years ago actually in 77 I rented my first space at one 63 Townsend for kids store. And then that many years later 16 years later. I rented 10,000 square feet what started at 600 and now it's up to 10,000 over on eating. I'm never leaving I'm staying it's what I do it's what I love. I am currently on the board for get sure which used to be Jewish family service, the Jewish vocational services and I do fund raising I have all their holiday parties and barbecues because what do we want to do raise money. I also I'm on the board for life leaders, which is a mean either land or started 6 years ago and I've been with her since day one doing the same thing. All of that and I am also on the board where I think my heart is mostly is Detroit historical. And I was appointed a couple years ago to be the executive vice chair for John Decker, who kind of runs the whole thing. So I'm very involved in that fundraising and doing events. I have about six or seven parties at my house every year. They're all related to fundraising, and thank you to the boards I'm on. I am the lucky woman who got to do a Holocaust project and traveled to 12 countries and 10 states, and not one Holocaust survivor said no to me as far as an interview. They did it first, but then when they met me and I started talking, 486 all did it. So I'm very proud of that. It was probably the saddest thing I ever did in my life, but it also was the best thing I ever did in my life. So I'm very connected to Birmingham. I'm staying here forever doing anything everybody needs. I have I was the I have been the co-chair for women to work to get sure for I was honored 10 years ago and I've been the co-chair for the past 9 years except this past year. I was the chair and every year we raise more money and now I've I guess they want me to do it again now it's going to be a half a million dollars next year and 500 butts in the seats And Linda, you were one of our honorees, right? Yes. It's serious people. Sherry Finn-Silver, Susie Farbman, Monty Must, his brother-owned buddies. Great people. So I love what everyone's doing. Linda brought me on when she told me what was going on here in November. I went stir crazy. Because this is my heart. My heart is here. So thank you. Any questions? I take them all.

I have a question. You do. What? I have a statement. Uh-oh. I have a funny feeling you're going to be here for us no matter what.

No matter what. You know that. You know that. My thing at work with my staff, and I have a great staff, and they have changed their language. Don't tell me no. I told you this. No, tell me how we're going to do it. We make it happen. We just make it happen. Everything.

Thank you. I have a question. Must you? Well, I couldn't deprive her of the opportunity.

Oh, what am I going to do? What do I see happening?

Well, what do you see as the role of the community house in this network of institutions we have in Birmingham?

Well, I have a whole list and I didn't bring it, but because I'm thinking of things and bringing the young people in and bringing Holocaust survivors before they're all gone. I mean, it's stuff that people need. But the age I think we really need to hit, because you already have the little ones, is the 13, 14, 15 year olds. And I've talked to some that go to some of the schools. They really want a place to hang out. They really do. And their parents don't necessarily want them to go to Starbucks. So I'm all for everything and anything.

Great. Great. Thank you so much. And I think you've done a very good job of setting the table for our next applicant.

Uh-oh. Sorry.

Ms. Roberson. And I'm sorry, I said wanger, not Wagner, because it's printed as wanger, Deb.

Did you say 13, 14, and 15 year olds?

We'll get to that. You know about them, right?

I do a little bit. Good evening and thank you for having me here. I currently serve Birmingham Public Schools actually for the last 18 years. The last five I have served as the superintendent of Birmingham Public Schools. And I spent most of my education or most of my experience in education because I love public education because the doors are open to all. Regardless of demographics, it's open to all. Students learn together. They work together cooperatively and collaboratively. They learn to disagree respectfully. And even though the mission is focused on academics, the benefit is a better society and a stronger community. The community house may have a different mission, but its benefit is the same. For 100 years, the mission has been to impact lives educationally, socially, and culturally with the purpose of strengthening the community. This is important to me because I believe a stronger community means a stronger society. The reason why I believe that I'm uniquely qualified to be on the board is because of my experience with preschool, early childhood through age 26. And those are the students that we serve. And then we're always also servicing their village, right? So their parents, their grandparents as well. With having 7,500 students and also their parents and also over 1,000 employees, you have to learn how to focus on a mission and do strategic planning while having sometimes the same mission but competing agendas. And so it's really important to be able to put a strategic plan together with goals, with measurable goals. As well, I understand governance. I actually report to an elected board, as well as serve on a board. I oversee a large public budget, over $200 million, with 150 of that being operating expenses. And my job has been working with a lot of different partnerships, the Birmingham Youth Assistance, the Birmingham Coalition, the Rotary Club, and across a number of municipalities, because Birmingham Public Schools actually serves not only Birmingham, but Bloomfield Hills, Troy, Southfield, Franklin, Bingham Farms, and so on. I don't know. I'm over my time.

You're okay. He's going to ask his question and you'll go.

This will be very important to me because, again, I do believe in community and I think community is the key to have a stronger society.

So I'm gonna ask you, how will you help the community house bring not just the 13, 14 and 15 year olds, but all those kids into the community house?

Well I think it's one very important as people have said earlier is to really find out what is needed and what's necessary so I can opine right now what I believe that people need but the reality is is that we need to do surveys we need to do focus groups we need to find out where the gap is just like they did a 100 years ago to find out where the gap is where's the gap now and how do we bring in those students and families and have programming that is relevant for today.

Do you have a hunch as to maybe the top one or two or three things that might end up on that list?

Well, I definitely think we need to continue the early childhood. That's not a child want, that's a family want. But our students are craving an opportunity to get together in a very constructive way. I think our community is looking for ways to bring in different parts of community to collaborate together. I think that having it in a neutral area like the community house where it can bring in not just public school students but private school students in all parts of the community would be a way to do that.

Thank you. Questions from the Commission?

That kind of satisfied a lot of it. I mean, I'll be honest, your application was part of the inspiration for my question because I know we have the Early Childhood Center. We have people talking about how there is a need for middle school and younger high school kids. What can they do? And I was thinking, well, Birmingham Public Schools is a big institution that, in a lot of ways, is trying to solve similar problems. And we also have the city, and we have the library, and we have a lot of institutions in the city that are all you know trying to to accomplish and as you said similar beneficial things to build this community together and so i'm interested in in what people think about well where does the community house fit into that puzzle and i think that some of the things you said were already pertinent but if you have any further thoughts i'm happy to hear them

I would just add that it is the glue and one of the things that sometimes we're working again in silos. So we all have this agenda to make the community better. I think expanding community engagement, intergenerational programming will be important, as well as reestablishing some of those partnerships. Because I am a tenant senior men's club in Rotary, I've heard some of the history. And so reestablishing those partnerships will be really important. But the key and the challenge is going to be how are we going to remain relevant and still focus on the mission? With an ever-changing society and so that's really important that we don't go We have to keep them the main idea the main idea once that's established as a board And making sure that we focus on that While still listening to the needs of the community, okay, thank you.

Thank you Mr. Haig.

I think a lot of the applicants in their verbal answers were given an awful lot of hints from what you wrote in yours. Because I really liked, you were the only one that actually wrote down the thing that jumped out at me the most. What do you see as the biggest challenges? You actually, oh sorry, what opportunity do you think Foundation should prioritize? And you said, go and ask people. Almost everybody else had an idea already. You're the only one that said, I'm not coming in with a preconceived notion. That was probably a really big help to everybody's verbals because nobody else said that. That really impressed me. Thank you for that. Ms. Schlesinger-Wagner. Sorry, German pronunciation. I lived in Germany for years, sorry. She brought up an interesting point, something that I've actually started banging on about recently as well, and I expand on it, and I'll actually say, in my opinion, the city of Birmingham failed 16 years and under. There's nothing for... We have a skateboard park. Woo-hoo. Big deal. There's nothing. we don't do a good job for what's effectively an unrepresented group of our community and I was really pleased to see your name because I think you actually have the opportunity to bring that piece of the puzzle in there because of what you do for a day job as you basically elucidated already I think you have a unique perspective for everybody so I like the way you've presented what you've presented. I like the way you've spoken about what you have. I think you've raised points that others have keyed into already. So thank you for that, because it helped probably consolidate other people's thoughts as well. I appreciated everything you said. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And you've waited. Mr. Bowen is here.

I didn't know how many more you might have on your list. I guess that tells me when my application arrived. So and certainly a tough act to follow with the Birmingham Public Schools and the key constituency that that is in our community and where we really need to work in the future. But my name is Rob Bowen. I have lived in Birmingham for 32 years. My wife and I are over on Harmon Street. We raised our children there. They're now grown and live in other parts of the country. I'm retired, have been retired for a few years. I spent my career in automotive, both in finance and operations positions, both domestically and internationally. And then at one point I was able to take an early retirement and I went to the Detroit Institute of Arts, which I think is probably the most relevant experience that I have in my career to the community house and what we might be looking to do here in the city of Birmingham. I was there for about 10 years where I was the CFO and also executive vice president for operations. And so I did all kind of the back of the house stuff. So they kind of didn't want me to touch the art, but everything behind the scenes was something that I did work on. You know I learned a lot about community engagement because of the operations and knowledge support that the museum had and that really change sort of the culture of the museum and I think that's something that is very relevant to the community house you have to be very responsive to. to the community's needs and make sure that we do understand what the community is looking for, find new ways forward. My experience, as I said, is pretty broad because of the work that I've done. My deepest expertise is really in financial management and planning, which is You know an aspect that you know is not the sexiest in a board But something that needs to be filled and somebody that you want You know a good deal of competence on those kind of operations Clearly the you know, the mission is all driven on the on the front side but if you're if you're not doing the foundational aspects and finance is a key and aspect of that. You can't get around to doing the mission if you can't do that work well. And so that's an area where I think that I can provide a lot of value. In terms of other things I've done outside of my professional work, I've been involved in a lot of literacy organizations. That's kind of been a passion of mine for more than 15 years, I think. organizations. The one I'm currently involved with is named Brilliant Detroit. They operate 18 hubs in both Detroit and Pontiac. And we really focus on sort of belly to age eight where we're really working with families and children to make sure that the families and children have what they need to make sure that children are school ready. Other organizations that I've been with seemed to start a little further out, and it was like, well, we really need to get back down the chain to the beginning and see if we can have an impact, and I think this organization is doing well. In addition to being a trustee, they're chair of the finance committee, chair of the investment committee. And those are things that I have deep experience with. When I was at the DIA, my role supported those committees there, the finance, audit, and investment committees. We're fortunate there to have a fair amount of money to invest, so I do have some pretty deep experience there. I haven't really been involved in anything in Birmingham over time, and I see this as a good opportunity based on where I am in my life and the situation that we're looking at. Without having been that close, I always thought Birmingham had plenty of talent, and that could probably be more useful someplace else. Where we are now, I think this might be a place where I can serve. You know, and I'd also say, you know, I'm retired. I'm fortunate. You know, we can go anyplace. We don't have to stay here. But the quality of life in Birmingham is very high. And my wife and I have made the decision that we want to stay here. And I think the community house is one of the things that historically has made this city a community and brought things together. And I think that if I could play a role in helping to bring that back and to integrate and improve community connections and make this, continue to make it a great place to live for people.

I'm going to ask the first question. Are you optimistic? Always. Okay.

Thank you. I mean, finance guys tend to be a little negative. I mean, you know, that comes with the territory. But yes, I'm optimistic. And, you know, Mr. Mayor, you sent out the document the other night, and I spent my Saturday evening reading the history. Like our whole region, the community house has gone through cycles, but it's always been able to figure out how to come back, and that's because of the community. And so we still have that strong community. So I'm optimistic that wherever we are today, we'll be able to build now going forward.

Thank you. Commissioner Host. You know, I'm fascinated by the fact that you went to the DIA as your last official job. You know, namely, what prompted you to leave automotive?

Well, you know, I left automotive at a time when things were, you know, not that great i've had a you know almost a 30-year career i had the opportunity for frankly an early retirement um i actually felt that uh from a from personal health standpoint that uh getting out would would provide longevity that working there for another 10 years, might not. But frankly, the DIA was actually something that I had met my predecessor 10 years before that. And he was a retired automotive guy. And we're standing in the great hall, which hopefully you've all seen in the DIA. And I was talking to him. And in my own mind, for whatever reason, it clicked. I said, that's what I'm going to do when I retire. And so when I retired and I started setting up my list, I contacted them. And the timing just happened to be good. And they hired me. And I stayed there 10 plus years. And I trust you were well vetted. I think I was. There were a number of people on the board that I had worked with in other aspects of my career.

One last time. How do you see the community house fitting into the network of institutions in Birmingham?

I think that's something that we need to learn and understand. you know, philosophically, it needs to connect with everybody. And we need to find out what the right role is in connecting with those organizations, with those other organizations. But the community house should be something that, a place for everybody, and we should work well with all other organizations and be supportive of everybody. And the community, you know, to me is a place that, you know, sometime during the year there should be something for every one of us to want to go to at the community house. I mean, we should all, we should all be there at some time. And I haven't been in there in a number of years.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you to everyone for sticking around. I know I told you we'd be starting this shortly after 7 o'clock. I didn't anticipate the change in the process. So what we're going to do now is I'm going to ask for nominations. Please keep in mind the terms that are available. And I'm going to allow each commissioner, if they want, to nominate up to two people to move things along. And after we have all the nominations, we will vote in the order nominated. And so, and I would like to kick it off by, if I may, and I think I have confirmed that I may, with a single nomination, I'm gonna nominate Linda Solomon as a regular member to the City of Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a two-year term to expire June 19th, 2028. and I trust that you are keeping track of the nominations. Thank you.

So now I will have Mr. Mayor, what weren't the two year terms for the commissioners? There's three.

Commissioner Kolb. Yes, I'd like to make a motion to nominate Biko Robertson as a regular member to the City of Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a three year term to expire June 18th, 2029. I have a second one. I'd like to make a motion to appoint Anthony Long as a regular member to the city of Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a four-year term to expire June 17, 2030. Okay.

Commissioner Kozlowski. Yes, I would like to nominate Robert Bowen as a regular member of the Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a four-year term to expire June 17th, 2030. And I would also like to nominate Sam Surnau as a regular member of the Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a three-year term to expire June 18th, 2029.

Okay, Commissioner, temporary Mayor Pro Tem Long.

I would be delighted to nominate Eva Kirkman to serve a four-year term to expire June 17, 2030, and Mr. Kevin Dunha to serve a three-year term expiring June 18, 2029.

You know, I've been trying to write this down. Didn't the mayor pro tem just add somebody into the 2030? Was it done out? I'll allow the clerk to clarify. I have Ballard-Solomon, two-year.

Holden-Vica, three-year. Holden-Vica, three-year. Who was your second nomination? Anthony Long, four-year. Long confused me again. Kozlowski, Bowen, four-year. Kozlowski, Sternow, three-year. Long, Kirkman, four-year. Long, Denhoff, three-year.

Do you have further nominations? Or do you just want to clarify what came up?

Yeah, I wanted to clarify what they were. Okay, I would like to nominate Richard Weatherholt for June 18th, June 18th, 2029. And Racklin Hoff for the same.

So you're doing the three-year positions?

Yes.

Is that sufficient for you? Mm-hmm. Okay. We only have two nominations for four years, if I captured that right.

We have four.

There are three.

There are three.

Sorry, I didn't... For Anthony Long, four-year. Kowalski-Bowen, four-year. Therese Long for Kirkman, four-year. Ah, that's what I missed.

Thank you. further nominations they go all the ones i was going to okay okay um in that case uh i think we can vote in the order in which they were nominated so do you have that order great i know i nominated linda solomon first so um is it sufficient to do a voice vote yes okay so uh we'll take a vote on linda solomon's nomination all those in favor say aye aye unanimous congratulations i'm sorry who was next cold nominated ambika for three years ambika roberson uh all those in favor of ambika roberson congratulations wow And Kolb nominated Anthony Long. For four years. All those in favor of Anthony Long? Aye. Another unanimous. The myth of lack of unanimity continues. And then we had who was next?

Kozlowski nominated Bowen for a four-year term.

Bowen for a four-year term. All those in favor? Aye. excellent and he also nominated all those in favor of Mr. Cernow No. Okay, that one was five to one.

And Mr. Mayor, I want to give you deja vu. When we originally did the ad hoc sustainability committee, the last nominee got two votes, the mayor pro tems and mine, and that individual was probably the first choice for the ad hoc sustainability. Okay, I'm sorry, you're slightly out of order.

Thank you for the comment. We've done his two, and then, right, correct?

We were voting in order of nomination.

Yes, and the last one.

We are now on Kirkman.

Thank you very much. Eva Kirkman was nominated for a four-year term. All those in favor of Eva Kirkman, signify by raising your hand. Wow. Kirkman, congratulations, Ms. Kirkman. And the other nomination. Denha for a three-year term. Denha. Mr. Denha for a three-year term. All those in favor, say aye. Aye.

That's your seven board.

That's it. Thank you. Congratulations to all of those who have been appointed. We hope that you all will stay engaged. I would like to propose, there's no swearing in, so you don't have to stick around for that. However, I would like to propose a meeting tomorrow at 4 p.m. in City Hall. for those who have been appointed. So if you're here and you were appointed and you think you can make it tomorrow at 4 p.m. at City Hall, time is of the essence for us to get moving here. Please let me know or let the clerk know or just raise your hand right now. One, two, Mr. Solomon and Mr. Roberson. Yes, we're good. Mr. Denha had to leave. He had an emergency. Pardon? Ambika raised her hand. Yes, yes. I saw almost everybody raised their hand.

Do you want me to book the commissioner again?

You guys can both make it. Do you wanna do it in here?

Probably the conference rooms. Conference, the double, the conference rooms.

Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you so much to everyone for your applications, for your thoughtful responses, for sitting through this, for listening to everything that occurred. You don't have to, you can go now. Oh, there's still the two city commissioners. Oh, we have to do the city commissioners. Sorry, sorry, sorry. You can leave, but we're going to do the city commissioners. They can leave, we can't. They can leave, we can't. We can't, yeah, right. Okay, well, I'll take nominations for Commissioner Kozlowski.

I would like to nominate temporary Mayor Pro Tem Therese Long to serve as a regular member on the City of Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a two-year term to expire June 19th, 2028. Okay.

I would like to appoint Mayor Clinton Baller as a regular member to the City of Birmingham Community House Foundation to serve a two-year term to expire June 19th, 2028.

Thank you. Other nominations? Okay, let's vote on Commissioner Long. Aye. That was all those in favor. Any opposed? No. Thank you. I guess vote on me. Mayor Butler. Aye. Thank you. Appreciate it. So we have a fully constituted committee. A lot of unanimous votes. Thank you very much. We need to take a break and we need to know what can reasonably be removed from this agenda going forward because there is no way we're going to get through the rest of this. And if there's anybody in the room, I see the engineer has been sticking around. I'm not sure why. I hope he's not on the payroll.

Old Woodward.

Old Woodward.

Then there's Wimbledon.

Let's get to the ones that they need to, that they're here for. I'll let somebody else jigger around while I go to the rest. Bye everyone. Take care. Thank you very much. Taking a five minute break? Five or less. We're coming back into session. Commissioner Host is on his way back in. We are going to abbreviate the remainder of our agenda. The city manager's report will be noted that it is online and anybody can look at it there. Feel free to send your questions, whatever. About that, we are going to remove an item about a sustainability fee.

Unfinished business fee.

Unfinished business fee will be removed and taken up at a later date.

New business. D, draft RFP for capital improvement projects.

New business item, did you say B, like boys? D, like David. A, an RFP for capital improvement projects will be removed. Picking it off, right? Yeah. Until the next meeting. Yeah. Yes, so if anybody is online waiting to hear that, everything else we're gonna try to get through with some amount of haste. And so we move to the consent agenda. All items listed on the consent agenda are routine and active. Yes.

I just wanted to point out that there's an error in the agenda for consent agenda item H it refers to fiscal year 2425 that's a mistake that should have been referring to fiscal year 2526 so okay just I want to make so the clerk will note that change and anyone.

So there's no separate discussion of the items unless a commissioner or citizens request in which event the item will be removed and considered elsewhere. So we have a big consent agenda. Does anyone have any items they would like to remove? Fire away, which ones would you like to remove? H Hotel, I India, L Lima. Yeah, that's it, I'm gonna leave the others. Okay, can I get a motion? Is there anyone in the public, either online or in the room, who would like to remove an item from the consent agenda? Seeing none, can I get a motion, please?

I move the consent agenda as presented, excluding items H, I, and L. Second.

Roll call, please.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. That is for the police expansion for the Sallyport.

Okay, all right, thank you. And that is the general fund account, is that?

Yes, we moved funds from the general to the capital.

I just can't, I can't identify the account numbers as well as just ask for clarification. Okay, all right, thank you.

All right, motion to approve item H. Let's hold the motion and do a motion to approve all three. Is that fair? Does that sound good? Sounds good. And then we have one roll call? Okay, what do you have out of your public comments, don't you?

any public comment on item h or comment from the commission we'll consolidate it all all right anybody want to comment okay none seeing none item i item i uh the only one there and i know commissioner kozlowski and i both noticed this one at the time of budget i'm just trying to find it right now i hear um memory wise the schedule of fees we asked why the parking meters are a dollar fifty per hour and the parking deck is two dollars per hour and it's still showing that way in this it seemed like the perfect opportunity to realign them because the parking meter is a convenience so it should actually carry a price premium as opposed to a discount so we were both wondering why it's cheaper than the decks because we could have fixed it here and said even just make it the same number

I'm going to see you and raise you one. I have proposed that we establish a subcommittee of the commission, two members, and the clerk, right, to review this whole thing and hopefully do it quickly. Is there a deadline? Fees for the parking? Fees in general? Everything. All the fees. It concerns me that there are fees on here that have not been updated in 15 years. I'm good with that proposal. You did mention that, didn't you? Yes. So I would like a brief feedback on whether there's some deadline related to approving these, or do we have, let's say, two weeks?

Or could we do a second adjustment? Is this mandatory as only once a year to maybe quantify what he's asking?

The clerk has her hand up.

We can adjust it as needed. All the departments reviewed it. The clerk is mainly the compiler. All those other department fees come from input from the other department heads. So I shouldn't be the only one along with you guys on whatever committee you might think about creating.

Yeah, it should be Treasury too, I think.

Yeah, okay, that would be fun. Treasury would be good. My concern is actually more Treasury than you, right?

Two questions. One, or two points, Commissioner Haag. The Advisory Parking Committee had recently talked about raising parking rates and decided not to move forward to it. That doesn't mean you can't. You can, as the Commission, you can do that. Absolutely. They're an advisory board. We do review these every year. It's not mandatory, but we do review them every year. Each department goes through their own. So yes, we can do that.

From my point of view as a commissioner, I would like to understand better that review process and by involving commissioners in it, I believe there might be more integrity. Possibly. Use a different word. There may be more fidelity to the data. Okay, fine. More fidelity to the data. I was using the term as a data scientist might use it in terms of the integrity of the data. And that's what I meant. So if you agree that that's a good idea, we can omit that. What? Oh.

Just note, this was the routine one, and we can always change it by resolution at any time, and we have done that on an as-needed basis.

So we could do both.

Yeah, my comment is because that is true, and because several new fees that have been, I am sure that... I agree.

I see the point.

Pass it as is, and then continue to meet and maybe adjust in a couple months.

Okay. So we may have to... And it'll take longer than two weeks to review. Okay. I'm fine with the Mayor Pro Tem's approach. Mm-hmm. Me too. Me too.

Pass and then adjust.

OK. All right. And then item L, it was just because it was pay related and it just seemed logical to bring that up because typically when we have adjustments like that, they don't just get a general pass type thing. It's just to mention it. It's not necessarily question it. It's just so that we have it as a separate line item. That's all. So if everybody's okay, we'll make a motion. Do you have comments?

I have no comments. On that item?

Yes, on that item. Okay, sure. I'm here, Michelle Moody. I'm the chair of the Advisory Parking Committee. And just specific to the discussion we had about raising rates, recall that we did raise the parking rates for the meters about 18 months ago after a thorough review and discussion, particularly with the local merchants. who are very sensitive to the price of the on-street parking, particularly those who like sell items, clothing, jewelry, etc. because they want some of those spaces open for customers who want to just be able to park and quickly run in and out. So there was a lot of sensitivity in balancing kind of the demands of all of the different stakeholders for the pricing of those meters, but we did raise them about 18 months ago. We also commissioned a benchmarking study of all of the different municipality charges for parking in the general communities around here as well as like Ann Arbor and the city of Detroit. And so I'd be happy to share this with you so that you have the data that we looked at when we made a decision not to take an action on the parking pricing.

Please share. Yeah. Thank you. And did you stick around all night just to say that?

No, I was here for two other topics, the cave seal project and the sustainability project, which I moved to July.

Our apologies. Thank you. Thank you very much.

OK. Do you want to move those? All right. Motion to approve the three items as written. Second. Roll call, please.

Yes. Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Okay.

As I said, we're going to dispense with the city manager's report and move right into unfinished business. The first item of finished business is a stop sign that we have talked about already. I would like to see a motion on the floor as soon as possible so that we can then discuss the motion and perhaps make a determination on this as quickly as possible. Is anyone willing to make a motion on this? no yeah me either okay uh then we'll get a staff report we do have julie kroll here as our transportation expert okay she could address it under the context of a motion but if i'm not going to get a motion julie would you like to come up and tell us about stop signs Thank you, and again, my apologies for keeping you waiting.

This is my second meeting of the evening. I double booked this evening, so luckily you ran late.

Julie, that's why we did this. I appreciate that.

You hung out for me to make it over here in time.

Do you have some presentation materials that you want to show on?

Nothing that's not in your packet.

But do we have someone who can get that on the screen for the public? Yeah. That might be online or watching a rerun on TV?

Thank you, Alex.

It looks like page 317 I think is what I have in my packet.

Do you want to scroll up here to go through it? You can drive if you want, if it's easier for you. Would you like me to drive up here?

Yeah, you could go up there and drive the train up there, yeah. Maybe for expediency.

I think also Melissa Cota is online.

Can you just tell us what changed in the revision? Yes. Do you see Melissa Cota? Yes.

Okay, we might have her on mute as well if she wants to say anything.

So we did revise the memo that last time I was with you, we talked about the stop sign. We added in the site distance exhibits that were requested to show the site distance. We also looked at some additional information regarding what, Understanding that we're recommending there's an existing intersection that's all-way stop control at Poppleton. The recommendation is to make that a two-way stop control and what additional measures we could do to improve pedestrian safety and make it very clear to drivers of the traffic control at that intersection with the revised intersection geometry. So those were the changes that we made. Also try to simplify the memo. I removed a lot of the language from the MUTCD and put it as an attachment to make it very clear what our recommendations are.

So your recommendation changed in any way.

The base recommendation for the stop sign has not changed. We did add some additional recommendations for additional signage. So the exit recommendation at Warwick did not change. That's as was presented previously. The recommendation at Wimbledon, we did add in a recommendation for some additional pedestrian signage at those crosswalks. So previously we just had this one on Poppleton. We added the recommendation to add those at the crosswalks across Wimbledon as well. We also recommended the cross traffic does not stop sign underneath the stop sign to provide some additional clarification for those drivers. that it's a two-way stop control intersection.

Okay, and the stop sign that's being eliminated

So right now the intersection, you can see all this red hatching, that is going to be filled in. Right now that is not in the existing condition. So right now the intersection operates like a very wide skewed intersection and the stop signs are on either side over here. When we change the configuration with the Cape seal we're making two separate intersections and it's very similar to Oxford and Warwick and this is going to be the two Poppleton so they're going to be offset intersections as opposed to one giant intersection and then when we do that In the case it is right now the stop signs cannot be more than 50 feet from an intersection So with the skewed intersection as it is it's already not compliant and now we're making it two intersections And so I can't put stop signs. I'd have to have two separate always stop intersections, which would not meet MUTCD compliance so for this to meet compliance I have to make two two-way stop control intersections.

And that's what you've done?

Correct. That's what we're recommending.

But I only see one stop sign.

I just put two arrows. There's one here and one here. there's none on east-west east-west correct we're not recommending on Wimbledon because what I said is we cannot make it's too far from the intersection that stop sign has to be 50 feet from the intersection so if you put the stop sign here it's too far from the intersection to meet compliance what intersection the

it's two for the northern intersection it's right on top of it right so if i make two always stop intersections then the stop sign is not suggesting two always stops but if there's two it's a staggered north south in the west that's what she's saying she has and she leaves the signs on east west which are out out of compliance then it is two always stops because that's four

So I've got a question about how that's laid out, though, kind of where I think the mayor's going. What we've done on, as we look at it, the right-hand side on the southern side, so the southeastern corner, is it's filled in a lot. Exactly. why why didn't we actually pull the road where that filled in section is and fill in on the west side of it so then the north south in effect is much closer to one another because what we've done here is we've artificially staggered it further apart and reduced the ability to put the stop signs in if that's existing road surface today then move the southern portion to the east and then it's going to line up within probably 50 feet actually closer a lot closer than it is to the northern side because it will be much more of a skewed cross as opposed to a staggered s then we could put a four-way stop in look should we ask the road designer why it was designed that way

There's a reason you stayed.

There it is. I really enjoyed the discussions and I just want to remind everyone to run for the hills after the Cape Seal discussion. So with this here, basically we did take the opportunity when we were laying out the roadway alignment to essentially create like the southern part of Poppleton more as a T-type intersection where it's butting in at a perpendicular angle to Wimbledon. That generally is just a safer configuration, more traditional. We had some space in the right of way to do that as opposed to kind of keeping the angle connection to the north there. So I guess, you know, there is certainly space to change that. Nothing is set in stone yet. This project is just kicking off. I do think this is the best way to have set up for the skewed alignment is to kind of correct the south side, if you will, based on where the right-of-way lines are and some other considerations. But with the, I don't, I guess, Julie, would you say, the existing condition use as non-compliant as well. So going back wouldn't necessarily solve the issue with obtaining compliance with where the stop signs are located and keeping east-west stopped at the intersection.

Correct. So the issue is right now the stop sign is actually in front of these crosswalks and so we can't have stop signs up front. They have to be behind the crosswalks. So when we put those stop signs in the correct locations, even with the skewed location, it doesn't meet that 50 foot from the intersection. They're too far.

Sorry, could you say that again? The stop signs are currently...

They're in front of the crosswalks.

What does in front mean? Like I would imagine, right, you want the stop sign to be in between the cars and the people, right? You would like the car to stop before it enters the crosswalk, correct? Correct. And that's what we're saying is the right thing. We're saying right now the stop sign is after the crosswalk. Correct. So the car would enter the crosswalk prior to stop.

Correct. So it's not complying already? Correct.

I have a legal question. Why are we even considering this? Why? Is it the city commission's job to approve every snops? Is that something, is that an ordinance that says we have to...

So do we need a resolute, so I can see why we would need a resolution to install a stop sign at Warwick. What if we just don't say anything about this intersection?

And didn't this come up because of a complaint on Wilton that it removes a resident's view? Isn't that how we got here?

No, not for this one. That's the Warwick one. This is the one where it's changing a four-way stop to a two-way stop. And it's not slowing traffic. Yeah, we got Mr. Boyle, who I think he was online, or he may still be online, sent in a letter specifically about this one as well, where it's talking about it's not encouraging traffic to slow down. And with the number of children around here, this is just making a major road faster.

What's the width of the road at that point?

It's typically a 26-foot wide road as designed.

26.

So is it wider than it is now?

It's going to be much narrower.

I don't know.

I think at that point it's pretty narrow, isn't it? It's pretty narrow. I'd say in general the road is getting wider by a foot or two on each side. So it varies right now.

I just don't see how you guys are making an attempt to slow traffic. You're actually causing traffic to go faster. Unless you put in a street as bumpy as the one we put on phase one, cars are going to get going faster there than they would otherwise. Commissioner Host.

You know, either we leave the stop signs out of compliance or we put speed humps.

I don't think we can put speed humps in.

Yes, we can. It's Cape Seal.

Commissioner, if I can, you can output speed humps on Cape Seal Road.

We could put something there, maybe. We've got to be able to do something. Look, we've got to move this thing. We've got... To me, this is the more, with all due respect to the residents, this is the problematic one. and if we say you must put those stop signs in we're in essence defying the the the recommendation of a traffic consultant best practices and the traffic uniform device code you're you're basically going i think the concern about slowing traffic is legitimate and we have to do something else to slow the traffic

Well, the road to the east is currently 18 feet wide. Now we're going to make it, what, 26 feet wide. The road to the west is 23 feet wide. It's going to be 26 feet wide. It's acknowledged as a major road. An 18-foot wide road is, by the nature of the beast, going to be a lot slower than a 26-foot wide road. So what we've done is we've turned it into a raceway.

Well, I wouldn't call it a raceway, but I've already made the point that it's going to be a wider, faster street without stops.

Your street is an example of that.

If we approve could we do and approve this and ask for options. We tend to do something besides the 2 stop signs. I appreciate the cross traffic does not stop in the additional crosswalk signage but one of the suggestions we heard from the residents was to put in a lighted crosswalk that had flashing lights to draw attention to it. And if you can't put paved speed humps, many cities use the platform speed humps that they just drop on the side of the road, on the top of the road. I think we have to have something. We have to have something on Wimbledon to slow traffic. I don't want to vote against your recommendation for the stop signs because I understand that that is poor practice for a commission to vote against expert advice. Because it has exposure, but I would like to see a solution that's that and the light across right costs crossings or the flashing ones or added the platform speed bumps that they just drop and then can move in the winter for plowing and so forth.