City Commission - Regular Meeting

Recording, please.

We're back in session after an open session, after a closed session. And I think we have a motion.

Yes, I think we should recognize Commissioner Kolb's appearance. Because he was in the closed session, but he wasn't here.

Oh, you were not here. So, yes, Commissioner Colt has arrived. He arrived in time for the closed session. And Commissioner Host is temporarily not sitting here. That would be correct. Commissioner Host is temporarily absent, but we're going to move forward anyway.

All right. I move to authorize the city manager to execute an addendum to the Wimbledon Drive paving project contract, contract number 6-25, providing for reconstruction of the roadway utilizing hot mix asphalt in lieu of cape seal. substantially consistent with the draft addendum attached as Exhibit A, with the city and contractor sharing equally the incremental cost of the asphalt substitution with a total not to exceed $37,500, with no additional cost to the Special Assessment District or the affected property owners, subject to final review and approval as to form by the city attorney and as to substance by the city manager in consultation with the engineer. The roadway remains an unimproved road. Second.

Okay. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Host is absent. Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Mayor Ballard?

Yes.

Commissioner Cole?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Yes. Commissioner Haig?

Yes. Thank you. And motion to adjourn this special meeting. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Adjourned.

to Birmingham City Hall everyone for a regular meeting of the Birmingham City Commission in the commission room. It's 7 p.m. on July 13th. 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. Roll call, please.

Mayor Ballard? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Long? Here. Commissioner Hay?

Here.

Commissioner Hoest?

Here.

Commissioner Cole?

Here.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Here. Excellent. We're going to move to item number three. And folks, if you want an agenda and don't have one, they're back by the door. And those are there for you. We have item three, proclamations, congratulatory resolutions, awards, appointments, resignations, and confirmations, administrations of oath, introduction of guests, and announcements. So our...

Not the blue agenda.

Oh, the blue one is for our special meeting. Yeah, take the white one. The blue one we're done with. We already did that. Not much to it. First announcement. so happy to where did they go to announce uh the winners of the i voted sticker contest we have them they're in the packet i don't think they're in the agenda they're on our desk i know you're not gonna be able to see them i wish you could is there any way to get these i can pull it up give me just up there that would be awesome and and then we can announce uh each one

And I have some things for our students.

There they are. The first winner, I don't know if you guys are here. Ava, Aisha? Ava, are you here? Ava is our kindergarten. She's eight years old. Kindergarten to eight. I don't know how old Ava is, but she is the one all the way to the left there. That's one of my favorites for sure. And then in the nine to 12 category, Oliver Zamet. Oliver, are you here? Oliver, stand up and be recognized. Good job, Oliver. Do you have anything you want to tell us about your design and how you conceived it? You don't have to. I don't want to put you on the spot. No pressure.

Did you have fun? Mostly.

Anything else you want to say? Where do you go to school?

I used to go to Pembroke Elementary, and now I go to Derby.

Okay, good luck there. Thank you. And did you do this in your art class?

No.

No, just on your own, like after school? Excellent. Good job. Thanks. And 13 to 17 year is Sarah. And I know I'm gonna destroy your last name. Are you here, Sarah? Sarah, tell us, stand up. Let's all give Sarah a hand. Tell us how you pronounce your last name. I'm gonna try Ragab, Ragab? All right. Good. And anything you want to tell us about your inspiration?

It's like the Birmingham Water Tower.

It is. Is there some meaning in there?

Well, it says I voted on it.

Okay.

I have a little project regarding the Birmingham Water Tower, don't I? We're going to try to put lights on that. Thank you. Thank you very much. 18 and over. Mary, this is another hard one. Don't even bother. Yeah, let's get all the sticker winners who are here up for a picture. How do you pronounce your last name?

It's an old-fashioned Polish name.

Well, it's a good one. The best Polish names are the hardest ones to pronounce, right?

Oliver and Sarah, come on up.

And the clerk will take, I think, where is she? She's right there. The clerk will swear you in. I'm trying to be inconspicuous. The winning sticker designs will be available at Birmingham polling locations for the August 4th, 2026 state primary and the November 3rd general elections. We move to appointments. The first appointment we have, or we have two appointments for the Public Arts Board. We have one opening for a regular member through January 28th, 2029, and an alternate member also through January 28th, 2029. So, Julie Pincus. Hi, Julie. Come on up. Anybody who's coming up can go to either microphone and tell us about yourself and why you're interested.

I'm Julie Pincus. I've been in and out of Birmingham since the early 2000s. was a neighbor of yours and I'm a graphic designer by training and my mom had an art gallery in Detroit or in Birmingham for 35 years I say I've done a lot of work for the foundations the Kresge Foundation being one I did their eminent artists books for 10 years and I dealt with our art and artists and photographing art and dealing with all sorts of artistic endeavors, being a graphic designer and also an art collector. So it was of interest to me to get involved in the community and give back, and I think I have particular skills that would be relevant for this.

We're very glad that you have volunteered. Does anybody have any questions for Ms. Pincus? Okay. I'm guessing you're going to ride to a smooth appointment. Is Sarah Rudin here?

Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry. Sarah?

Yes.

Hi, I'm Sari, and I'm also interested in the position on the Public Arts Board. I'm also a graphic designer. I went to University of Michigan School of Art and Design with a major in graphic design, but I was back in, you know, I graduated in 2003, moved to New York. I was working in advertising there for about eight years, and I've been back in Birmingham for the past... 16 years or so. I've worked at Mars, a bunch of local Detroit-born companies, so Mars Advertising, Taubman Company, and I just recently, since they were acquired, a group of us went from Taubman over to Garner White, so I'm now in their marketing department, senior graphic designer, leading up the rebrand that we'll be launching in the next month, actually. the side I do a lot of actual art art more fine art I have a Instagram account called Sari tales which may not be safe for work but it's the art of online dating I turn into the messages I've received on dating apps into art I've been at the dirty show for the past nine years and have had my arc shown in a bunch of different galleries feminist galleries throughout the country anyway I came across I've been in Birmingham for 15 years I am in the Grayfield condos and I saw a post about the like a way finding the new way finding system and I was like oh that's really interesting I didn't know there was a committee that would be involved in that and so I kind of dug through and got into the website and realized that there's this whole world of civic volunteers and I was like I think I could really add to this and I was interested so this is how I ended up here. So glad I'm in the right spot.

You are. Thank you. Good story. Thanks. Any questions? Okay, I will entertain nominations. Commissioner Long?

I would like to nominate Julie Pincus as a regular member to the Public Arts Board to serve the remainder of a three-year term to expire January 28, 2029. Second.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Good. Another unanimous decision. Next, anyone else would like to make a nomination?

I would like to move to nominate Sari Rudin as an alternate member to the Public Arts Board to serve the remainder of a three-year term to expire January 28, 2029. Second.

Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Great. Okay. You guys stand by. Yes, we have an appointment to the Museum Board. Wadet Bradford, you're back. Great. We're glad. I think... Yeah, we heard from her last time. We heard from you. We told you to come back. We're eager to appoint you. We're going to do a nomination.

I would like to nominate Wadette Bradford.

Thank you for returning.

As a regular member for the museum board to serve a three-year term for July 6, 2029. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None? Okay, now the clerk will swear all you guys in. Thank you.

Can I have my public arts board friends join us up here? Raise your right hand, you'll say I do after. I do solemnly 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 to perform the duties of the office of Public Arts Board and Museum Board, according to the best of my ability. I do. I choose to pick a line, sign and print, I'll fill in the rest.

Before we dispense with announcements, is it appropriate to make an announcement about the action we took after the closed session?

You could if you'd like. We do have an update on that, but it's at the very end.

And I see people here from the neighborhood, so I think we ought to. So correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but we have been in talks with the contractor on Wimbledon, a phase one. And there's a broad agreement that the job was not well done. The outcome is that it's going to be redone. will be done in asphalt there will be no charge additional charge to any of the residents for that the city is going to pick up an additional cost of about thirty seven thousand five hundred for it and we're going to be very careful to you know to make it work with all the work that's already been done. And we're hopeful that that will get done soon. Was there a time on it?

The goal was before the Woodward Dream Cruise, but we actually mentioned in the addendum to work around it so there's no additional disruption. But maybe also just to say that the city manager and the attorney explained to us that we're trying to splice into an already busy schedule.

What?

Let's just leave it at that.

Time will be announced.

I hope everybody's happy with that. It's not, you know, whatever. And for those interested in Phase 2, that is Phase 2. And do you want to address Phase 2?

Well, obviously just to point out that because of this change now with phase one due to the quality issues and the switch to asphalt we're gonna have to reconsider what to do in phase two because the same Subcontractor that did the Cape seal work on phase one is also subbed out to do phase two So we will look at converting that to asphalt There'll be an addendum to that contract that'll come back before the Commission and I think everybody understands that we're gonna continue the asphalt phase two

Okay. And with that all being said, we can move on to the open to the public for matters not on the agenda. So we give three minutes to anyone who would like to speak on an... An item that is not on the agenda. Is there anybody in the room or online? If you're online, raise your hand and we'll get to you. But I think we have somebody in the room.

Tim Bradley, 519 Wimbledon. Just want to say thank you very much. We really, really appreciate what you did for us and it means a lot. And thank you for listening to our concerns and responding to them. Yeah. Thank you so much. Does that mean the Cape Seal is coming out then? Yes. Okay. Awesome. Fantastic. Wow.

Made my day.

Thank you.

Government works slowly, but usually around here, it works in your favor. We hope.

Sir? Hi, David Wynn, 1457 East Lincoln. Are short-term rentals on the agenda?

Well, there's a brief report, as usual, at the end, but I wouldn't make you stick around if you have a comment or you would like to read the report.

It's online. Okay. I'd like to make a comment. I sent all of you an email, and I think I basically want to read that email for the record. I was at the planning board meeting on July 8th, they voted on a proposal that exempts the railroad district and downtown d4 From any short-term rental restrictions. I think that's a mistake. I think the proximity of the railroad district to the residential area is too close and Personally if I was in an apartment downtown, I wouldn't want a short-term rental next door to me. They also decided they wanted to study exemptions For hosts and owner-occupied rentals. I believe that this again will allow workarounds and is not enforceable at this point, so I caution the Commission on that Finally and I think a few of us were there several on the Planning Board minimize the severity of the issue and this was a bit unnerving to me and I hope you can understand that. To say comments like we' re going overboard and it' s only 2% of the problem, the problem is big. It was a little bit hard to take at this point in the process to hear those kind of comments. So I just wanted to bring that to the record. Thank you. Question.

You referred to the meeting that you attended. It was on what date? July 8th. July 8th.

Last Wednesday.

Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much.

thank you for considering the new pavement for wimbledon to being that our property of butts since property so we'd like it nice and smooth in the same. Secondly that' s very important thank you appreciate it but secondly I would like to make a recommendation that in terms of If you could do it maybe a day or two in advance So that people know what's coming up on Monday and can submit a response or recommendation Our attendance come out on Thursday and Thursday and for the next Monday, correct but on Wednesday at noon the prior Wednesday we have to have a response in in order to get into the packet and

Correct. You have to have not a response.

Well, it's not a response, but it's kind of in conjunction with whatever the topic may be for Monday. And we don't know what the topic's going to be until after the deadline, if that makes sense.

That's why we opened the meeting to the public.

I realize that, but it kind of goes hand in hand.

I understand the conundrum, but I mean...

We need time to put together the agenda packet.

Yeah.

With all of the communication. Right.

And no matter what the deadline is for the packet, you would have the same issue. Unless we put out the packet so far in advance and then had a later deadline for public comment or communications. That probably is not a workable situation.

Then I apologize in advance for continuing to send in communications because I won't know if my topic, the stop signs, is going to be up. for a Monday meeting.

Your topic is going to be on the next one. On the next one? Well, thank you.

You're welcome. I appreciate that.

Great.

Well, thank you all very much.

Yeah, sometimes just a quick phone call or an email will get you the information you need.

Okay, I can do that. I believe it's July 27th, if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, okay, great.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone online? Nobody online. You can raise your hand function if... Okay, so that closes open the public for matters not on the agenda. We move to the consent agenda. All items on the consent agenda are routine and will be enacted by one motion approved by a roll call vote. No separate discussion of the items unless a commissioner or a citizen so requests in which event the item will be removed from the general order of business and considered elsewhere. So, do any commissioners want? Item H. H, item H. Commissioner Haag? A for alpha. A for alpha. Did I see a hand up over here? No? No hands over here. Anyone in the public want to remove an item from the consent agenda? Online, please raise your hand.

Seeing none, get a motion accepting A and H. I move to approve the consent agenda excluding items A and H. Second.

Mayor Ballard?

Yes.

Commissioner Hay?

Yes.

Commissioner Host?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Yes. Commissioner Cole?

Yes.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes. Excellent.

Item A, Commissioner Hay. Page 2 of the minutes, which is page 34, at least of the printed package. Right at the very bottom of the page, it says, Commissioner Host made a motion to eliminate STRs under three days. I believe it's 30 minutes. Yes.

That's an easy fix.

Thank you. So I don't know if we want to approve that with the noted addendum and it will be updated in the post meeting.

I can move the item with the correction. Second. No, you move the second. You just said it. Okay. All right. Roll call on A.

My motioner was Hague. Hague.

Hague. And the second was Post.

Oh, thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Long. Yes. Commissioner Cole.

Yes.

Commissioner Kozlowski.

Yes.

Commissioner K. Yes. Commissioner Coase. Yes. Mayor Ballard.

Yes. Item H. Commissioner Cole.

Yes. So I... I think this is probably easy. I think Tracy spoke to you earlier today. I don't want to relinquish or give a proxy on the voting. I'll do it. So you'll show up? I'll show up.

You'll be my first person ever that is not staff.

I'll show up. Congratulations. This is the most consequential election coming before us. I don't want to... delegate my requirements to anyone. So I'll be there.

Does that mean we have to reduce one of the other committee members or can we just add one?

I'll see which of the department heads that was assigned doesn't want to do it. They get a pass.

And just so you understand moving forward that that is open to the public too. So you're always welcome to come You can always show up.

I've even invited members of the public personally election inspectors Nobody ever shows up even though we post a notice and you're stuck with me.

I'm there. Okay, okay for the public's Edification what we're talking about here, which may not be clear is a what we call a public accuracy test of our voting systems, which takes place down the hall on Tuesday, July 21st, 2026 at 8.45 a.m. It'll be in this room. Oh, is this 205? Yes. Oh, okay. Here in this room, 205. Usually, the commission delegates that to members of the staff, and they just test the electronic tabulating equipment. So with that, would you like to move the suggested resolution with the change? Yes, sir. I'm adding your name. Do you need a reading of a...

So we're not putting a proxy representative in for cold and we are taking off Nick Duclee, the planning director. So it'll be resolution designating Assistant City Manager Mark Clements, DPS Director Scott Zielinski, Building Official Mike Moran, Director of IT Eric Brunk, Fire Chief Bartolino, Melissa Cota, as proxy representatives of election commissioners Mayor Ballard, Commissioner Host, Commissioner Haag, Commissioner Kozlowski, and Commissioner Long to conduct the public accuracy. and so on.

Second. How about so moved? So moved. Well, Kolb is the motion. Oh, Kolb is making the motion, so you're seconding. Okay, good. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Commissioner Cade?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Yes. Commissioner Host?

Yes.

Commissioner Kolb?

Yes.

Mayor Valley?

Yes. City Manager's Report? Yes. No, there is not.

It's on the second meeting of the month.

Yeah, no, because usually it says none.

Oh, you're right. It doesn't say none.

So we move to unfinished business. The first item of unfinished business is a motion to adopt an ordinance to amend utilities. single-family stormwater management standards in order to assist in reducing the burden of unmanaged stormwater runoff in the city of Birmingham.

Hi everyone.

Summer Allred.

How's everyone doing? Great. Great. Well, thank you for having me back. I really appreciate it. I have a presentation for us this time, and we hope to have a productive discussion again about the single-family stormwater management. And I want to thank you again for your comments in the last meeting. It was very helpful for us in moving forward with some edits and recommendations to our ordinance. So just to give a brief history for those in the room that may not have watched the meeting or been here, Birmingham adopted the Oakland County stormwater standards for commercial properties for sites greater than half an acre, but there's no equivalent for single family homes. And we're seeing an increase of teardowns and max lot size homes in the city of Birmingham. And Birmingham is currently approximately 50% residential by land mass and not having any sort of stormwater standards for single family residential has a clear impact in terms of land mass. So the cumulative effects have included more stormwater runoff and localized flooding risks and more pollutants entering the Rouge River tributary potentially. So we're here to talk about ways that we can help mitigate that. Just really quickly because we're gonna be going over zoning standards again, we pulled up a graphic to talk about minimum open space and lot coverage because there's gonna be a lot of very specific terms that are used. So as an overview, minimum open space requirement states that 40% of the lot must be preserved as open space. So open space is the green here that you can see on this graphic. This is for single family zoning standards. And for maximum lot coverage, 30% of the lot may be occupied by buildings or other structures. Now you can see here as well that there are some exclusions and exceptions. I can zoom in a little bit for you. Those exclusions and exceptions include decks, front porches, and five foot or three foot walkways, excuse me. So those can go above the amount of lot coverage. But in general, 60% is the rule that we use for the amount of impervious surface that is going to be allowed on any given lot according to our zoning ordinance. There's additional open space standards as well. In R1A through R3, there's a requirement for at least 75% of the 40% minimum open space should be vegetated. So we have got a little bit more prescriptive in different areas of our ordinance, but this is a high level overview of our zoning standards. So again, some important definitions. We talked about open space, lock coverage, and impervious service. We updated our definition within the last year. So the service that restricts the infiltration of water at a high level. This was included in your packet. We're happy to discuss any of these definitions as they come up. I included an example in here to illustrate the types of max lot size homes that we're seeing more frequently in the city of Birmingham. We have some as-builts from an example on Henrietta. You can see here in this first image on the left on the screen. Everything in green is currently impervious surface, it's open space. So see the house here and the driveway and the garage has quite a significant amount of open space. And this home when it was put under construction, there was an addition added on the back. and the driveway was reworked. You can see that there was a considerable amount of open space that was taken away. There was a new porch added off the front and a walkway. In general, we saw this property, once it was constructed, we have the constructed drawings here versus the image prior, increased from approximately 41% to about 52% lot coverage. So it's a 9%, or excuse me, 11% increase. So that is not maxed out, but it is quite significant. This is just an example of some of the homes that we're seeing come up.

I have a quick question. Yes, absolutely. So can a homeowner, by deciding to build a retention pond on their land, increase the impervious space?

No, the standards for zoning are strict. So for example, the 60% for allowed impervious surface, there's no carve outs for if you add a specific amount of detention, you can add more, for example. Okay.

Yes. Why are porches excluded? Because the zoning talks about a structure with a roof, and porches have roofs.

That's a great question, Jane, I might be able to answer.

I have an answer for that. What I was always told, anyways, in the 25 years I've worked here, is that porches were pedestrian-friendly, they were neighborhood-friendly, that they wanted to have porches and front walkways that connected those porches to the sidewalk to make it more community-friendly.

And if you count them, nobody will build one. So it's to encourage porches? Yes.

It's still impervious, just like a deck.

And that's why it's an exception, though, because they figured the social value was worthwhile to allow an exception to the pervious service.

Okay. And has it been successful?

I would think yes, because as Mayor Pro Tem Long just said, if we didn't allow this exception, people would not build them. And you'd get more, you know, the garage front houses, the flat front. Yeah, less open to the people on the street.

Well, then a second question about the coverage. If you go back to the driveways on the example, please. Just scroll back up. So this is a center block house that you use as an example. Where's the example where we use an end block for a house that has a minor and a major? Because every house that I've seen built in recent years that has been on the end of a block, it's had a side entrance to the garage, but the garage door has had to face the front. And so what you're forced to do is put this gigantic slab of concrete in there because everybody's got to bring their vehicle in and turn 90 degrees. And most vehicles can't do it. So why do we do that? Because that's forcing an increase in the impervious area by not allowing the garage to face the side, unlike the driveway. So it seems like we're counterproductive in our zoning requirement, and this is not showing that, which is a very frequent occurrence.

Does everybody understand what he's saying? At least on the commission. You understand what he's saying?

Yes.

Okay. It's a very good point, I think. Can you address it? Or is that a building official question?

I believe that would be more appropriate for a building official. I don't know, Nick, do you please in the audience, if you have any comment or color you would like to add?

And the building official's online as well if you wanted to call on him. But I would say that you can have a side-facing garage. Yes, you can. You can. It's just the problem is you can't get enough driveway to fit a car in the driveway and the garage, so most people don't do it. You could do it.

I'd just be the nasty guy here, Nick, planning director. Maybe a fine question, but kind of off topic. I think we can explore that later.

It's just impervious surface that it's generating, it's forcing a larger coverage of the driveway, which I know this later talks about replacements, but also it talks about additions. So with the new build, that is an additional surface area coverage by the driveway. So that would fall into what we're looking at here because it is an increase of the non-pervious area. That's why I brought it up because it seems like we're forcing that and not giving a... An easy way out because if I looked at that one and I transpose that one for instance into a side facing garage. If you move the garage to the left hand side of the structure, then you've got a 20 foot driveway, which will fit almost every vehicle.

And I guess by irrelevant, I just mean that this ordinance is not going to solve that.

Does it bring in more problems than it's solving by not talking to each other?

I think the two of them are talking to each other because our zoning standards are, as Summer declared them, so whatever corner lot, interior lot you're building on, you'll be holding to the standard of the zoning ordinance. Whether it's oriented this way or that way, I think is a different conversation.

I can add some color as well. You brought up the example that if this was a new build, right? And we'll get into the details of this in a moment. We would require them to, it would fall under the maxing out requirement. So the requirement for new builds, it would not be considered an addition. It would just be simply beholden to the square footage of the property. And the orientation of the driveway would not be pertinent to the amount of stormwater they'd be required to detain. in that example.

Interesting topic, slightly off the point, but something to keep in mind. It's impervious whether it's a house or whether it's a driveway. It's as simple as that, so that's why I brought it up. I think she needs to go on and talk about the purposes and what we're asking people to do, which is not...

I'll get there. Okay, for the purpose of the project, again, for those that weren't with us last time, this is to extend stormwater management requirements to single family constructions in addition, to hopefully reduce the burden on the stormwater, on the sewer system and combined sewer, and to satisfy a direct action item in our Birmingham Green Healthy Climate Plan that was ratified in September of 2024, which is to require stormwater detention or infiltration on all new single family construction. This directly ties into our target to increase capacity for the infiltration or capture of an additional 500,000 gallons of stormwater per rain event by 2035 as laid out in our plan. So, big picture zooming out, what will trigger these new requirements? Falls into two buckets. One is new construction or complete demolition and rebuild, including teardown projects. or the addition of an impervious surface exceeding 100 square feet per project. Projects under 100 square feet of new impervious surface would be exempt. The requirement for replacement projects has been removed in the proposed ordinance language. A standard replacement such as a driveway that does not increase impervious surface would not trigger stormwater requirements. So if someone is coming to put in their new driveway, even if they increase it a little bit on either side, but it falls below the 100 square foot threshold, it would not trigger stormwater requirements. I want to make that very clear. That was something that there was a concern from the commission last time and that has been resolved in this new ordinance language. I have taken, again, the advice of the commission and provided some concrete examples for you of how this stormwater ordinance would be laid out. And there's no way to do this without going through some numbers and some math, so I'm gonna walk us through it. And don't hesitate to ask questions at the end of each example. I've included multiple different types of projects and as well as different sized lots to hopefully illustrate a clear picture of what this ordinance could do. So I chose a lot on Madison Street. We have the engineering plans for this to show what the stormwater system is underneath. So it was a great example for us to use. And this is all using the worksheet that we used prior to reach our calculations. So our site details for this site are 10,935 square foot lot. This project is a complete teardown and rebuilt. And natural and constructed measures would be permitted per ordinance. So it would be a 60% constructed permitted versus 40% natural. So step one in our worksheet is determine maximum permitted impervious area. So that would be multiplied by 0.6, which is the impervious surface amount that would be permitted on that lot, times the amount of square footage of the lot size. That number is 6,561 square feet. So that would be the amount of area that they're capturing for, regardless of whether or not they actually build 6,561 square feet. of impervious surface because they'd never have to see us again. If they added an addition on the back, as long as it is within their open space requirements, which our building department would determine, they won't have to do any additional stormwater capture. They're already capturing for it. From there, we calculate the required storage volume, which is multiplying the square feet of permitted impervious area times 0.08, which is the first inch of rainwater runoff in any given storm event. So that's how that number is calculated, and that's the amount that we're detaining for is 0.08. And that then requires 524.88 cubic feet of storage. Cubic feet, not gallons, that's important. Cubic feet is a larger volume than gallons. In our worksheet we provide multiple examples of treatment measures that they're able to use and I've gone through the trouble of just randomly selecting some. Now these would not have to be prescriptive, they're not required to add a swale, they're not required to do a stormwater drain with a restrictor. They can choose and prove to us what measures they would be. But this is the example that we chose and I'll explain why in a second. I'm gonna move down to the next slide to illustrate something for you. So when going through building a new house, the engineering department is also concerned with water runoff. Particularly, the engineering department is looking to see if any water is being pushed to the neighbors by the addition of this new home or any new project occurring on this site. So there is a stormwater review, but it's not looking at the same thing that our stormwater ordinance will be looking at, which is more specifically looking at infiltration and detention. They're looking to make sure that we're not pushing any water to their neighbors. In this plan, they were required by engineering to add a swale at the back of the property here. So there was a proposed swale running the length of the property. in the rear. And if I zoom in, you can see there's two proposed catch basins back here that connect via a PVC pipe, a six-inch PVC pipe that runs across the rear of the property here and down the side yard and connects to the stormwater drain up front here. So these are requirements that engineering is already gonna require that this property install. And in order to make it as user friendly as possible in our ordinance, we would allow the homeowner to count that infrastructure towards their maximum impervious surface detention. So for example, by adding a restrictor, which is one of the examples that I allow them to use, I'm gonna scroll back up. We're saying that they can use that stormwater drain with restrictor. that would already be going to be installed in their pipes and count that volume that's going to be detained in those pipes towards their stormwater detention. What's a restrictor? Yeah, a restrictor is something that goes on the end of stormwater pipes before it goes into the sewer and controls the flow rate in which that water would flow into the sewer system. So without a restrictor in a rain event, we would possibly see... Makes the diameter smaller. Yes, correct. So we would see rain, the rain coming in, it would flow straight into the sewer system. Without it, with the restrictor, it would back up in the PVC pipe and allow for detention on site. Now, this isn't connected to a basement. This is external infrastructure, so it's not at risk for backup into the home, sort of.

They might have a pool of water in their backyard temporarily until it drained.

Not necessarily. The way that these... Systems are designed. Is there just designed for a certain amount of detention? So it would more likely gather in these proposed catch basins and maybe there'd be a pool in a Unicorn event on top of the catch basin But it would be unlikely with the stormwater infrastructure that it would just be like a pond in their backyard, for example Yes

So in your example, you say in this particular example, 10-inch pipe would be 154.44 cubic feet. Correct. That's 280 linear feet of 10-inch pipe. One foot is 0.55 cubic feet. Where are you going to get 280 foot long lots? Does that mean it's multiple parallel pipes?

So what we did here is we just added up the length of this pipe and the length of this pipe. on the lot and calculated the amount of storage volume with 10 inch pipes that would hold with the restrictor.

Because that says a six inch pipe under the swale.

Correct, which is why we would propose a 10 inch pipe which would allow for more volume. So the exact engineering, just to be clear, the engineering suggestion for this example before this ordinance was to put in a six inch pipe to make sure those would adequately get the water to the street. In order to detain a higher volume of water to make it easier on the homeowner in terms of the amount of different sort of treatment measures they would have to select, we would recommend that they increase that to 10 inches. Or, again, the homeowner's gonna be in charge here. They're gonna be able to pick whatever treatment measures they like. If they'd like to do a six-inch pipe and plant X number of trees to offset that, that would also be completely acceptable. But in this case, for this easy math example, I'm illustrating 10 inches.

So this concept of stormwater detention, holding it back, letting it flow in slowly, is that until this takes effect, is anybody, are there, do people do this at all?

In the city of Birmingham? I don't have data specifically to know. Melissa Cota may have more information because from engineering reviews. It would be purely voluntary though, right? It would be completely voluntary, absolutely.

So I'm going to venture a guess that it's rare. I would agree with that. The engineer is nodding.

I'm going to get through the math just so that we can move on from this example or answer any more questions about it. We would include the swale in the calculations here for the detention. There's a proposed swale along the rear yard. We're counting that linear footage according to our calculations. One of the things that is a huge asset in our in our worksheet is the preservation of mature trees capture a large amount of water and can hold a large amount of water and so in this example by just preserving this large backyard tree they would be be able to calculate up to 266.87 cubic feet of volume just for preserving that tree. There's a mathematical formula for determining the offset of water for mature trees and the amount of water that they hold and the value that they add. And by preserving this tree, which the property owner did not elect to do in their construction process, that tree went down, they may consider keeping that tree in the future because it could count towards their stormwater requirements. And that's something that we've heard quite frequently from our community representatives that they are looking for the preservation of more trees as well. So we were trying to take both into consideration here.

It doesn't really help with detention of water, though, does it? It's just an exception, sort of a feel-good way to...

The amount of water and the benefit that the mature trees add in the moment to the property and the amount of volume of water that they help absorb is quite large. Without that tree, you would see a lot more possibly standing water. Roots do a lot of work to get water back down into the water table. So the math is, quite large because not only can the tree hold it, but it can also add a lot of ability to get water back down into the water table underneath. So it's less feel-good and more practical.

Commissioner Haag, what's a mature tree? What makes it mature? Is there an age limit?

We have not defined mature tree in this ordinance, but we would be open to doing so.

The reason I ask that is thinking of all of the issues we have with city easement trees. We have an extreme predominance of maples, and lifespan of a maple is between 50 and 60 practical years. At 70 to 80, we know we're at risk based off city trees because we see them failing. So a mature tree is probably not going to last. So let's say someone builds their house and they don't damage the roof structure, which has been damaged by this house, because the roof structure goes as far as the canopy. So you can see there's already damage. So let's say the tree survives, but it's got five years left. Now what? They just went and they got a credit for 266 cubic feet, and now it's not there anymore. How do we handle that? Because a mature tree is a ticking clock. It has a finite amount of time left that is easily measurable. it would take exceptional trees like, say, hackberries or oaks that will not be on that ticking clock, but most of our trees are. So... We got the question. Let's take the answer.

Yeah, that's a great question. So this is something that we've talked about in depth with... internally with planning, but also with engineering and building in terms of keeping up with, once we grant these, how are we going to make sure that these measures stay put? One thing that we... is that whenever a project is done that requires a permit, we will be going out to that site. If we notice that that tree is gone, we will be requiring them, if they have done something else, to mitigate that difference and going through that process to make sure that, to the best of our ability, that the amount is recouped back through additional proposed measures. So if that tree does come down, that would be a concern for us. And we would want to work with that homeowner to correct that and mitigate that. Maybe by planting several more trees, perhaps by adding in a different built infrastructure, but there would be a review that would be done.

That's during the construction process. He's talking about five years. I've lived there for five years. The trees died since then. Now what?

This is, excuse me for not being clear, this would be any time in the future. So if there's anything that comes under review for this property, we would have the ability to go out and review it. Additionally, we're encouraging people to use this and apply for our stormwater credits. Stormwater credits have to be renewed every three years, and you have to prove every three years that those things are still on the site in order to get your credit. And sometimes that amount of money is quite significant, depending. The credit is for what? Stormwater utility credit.

Correct. We don't do that now, do we?

Yes, we do.

Yeah. We had an example in our...

It's all detailed on the city's website. It's been there for 10 years. This seems like a lot of enforcement.

There's a lot of admin work here. Very bit. Okay. Is that the 154 cubic feet that this guy got for... Oh, wait. No, the 266 cubic feet... that he got for that tree, that seems like a lot compared with the swale and the stormwater drain with 10-inch pipes. He's getting a big bonus for a tree that he could cut down, right?

I would say that this is, again, this is just an example.

How did you come up with the 266 cubic feet?

There is a formula for mature trees. It's done by the diameter of the canopy. There's a specific math formula in the worksheet that we included, which is one of the reasons why we did not define canopy or a mature tree, because you can calculate it just by the canopy size.

So I think his point, I would agree. You require them to put in the stormwater drain with a restrictor and 10-inch pipes. They're not pulling that out of the ground. They put it in, it's in, it's going to work.

Until it clogs up.

Until it clogs. Which it will. Right. And this is much less permanent.

Yeah. The enforcement burden seems huge. Yeah. Because you're not just going to drive by and go, wait, that's missing that tree.

Okay, go on.

I'm going to move on to another example that we can discuss. The Shirley Road example is using a large lot size with the addition of a 499 square foot patio. We kept under 500 square feet for a reason because at 500 square feet that triggers the requirement for or the ability to use constructed and natural measures and I wanted to show you the most intense version of only requiring what what natural measures could look like so you're building up to the max but are required to only use natural measures so for this example it would fall under the additions section, which would be to determine the constructed impervious area. They're adding a 499 square foot patio, and they'd be required to detain 39.92 cubic feet of water. So in this example, we selected a rain barrel, an 80 gallon rain barrel. It's a standard size. They come in 55 through 90 gallons, and two two-caliber trees, which equate for 30 cubic feet. I keep two examples here of what a rain barrel could look like and a type of tree. On this lot, outlined in red here is the addition of the patio. So a 499 square foot addition off the back here. And placing a rain barrel under a downspout off to the side down here and two trees to the rear of the property. These trees could go anywhere on the lot. They could be put in the front. They could be put in the middle of the yard. We're not dictating location. Instead, we're just asking that they be

Installed so this is an example and a two inch tree might mature at six inches or it might mature at 16 inches, right? correct, are we and obviously we would rather have a 16 inch tree is gonna suck up more water and

One of the things that we would make sure that we do is we provide a species list of approved trees that would be eligible for this benefit. So that we would have some level of understanding of what those trees would grow to be. And that's relatively standard. So this is an example of an addition.

Is it standard the amount of credit you get for each tree? Or do you get more credit for a bigger tree and less credit for a smaller tree?

At this time, it is standard.

We've proposed a standard amount.

It's essentially the amount of water that that size at that time will... will benefit.

Is there any merit to giving more credit for what will eventually be a much bigger tree?

It's something we can consider. And the last example that I proposed is a smaller lot. One of the things that we discussed was making sure that there was a variety of lot sizes in the last meeting that were given as examples. So this is a 7,721 square foot lot and they're adding a 250 square foot patio to this property. So it would fall under the addition section of the worksheet. We would determine, again, step one is to determine the amount, multiply by 0.08 in step two. So you'd be required to obtain 20 cubic feet of water volume. In this example, we selected to do just a rain garden to show what a rain garden might look like on site, the required size of that rain garden. within reason, the numbers are flexible as long as they equate to the right amount of cubic feet detained, is a nine by three rain garden. And this property you can see here that the proposed patio is is here on the on the lot their neighbor to the south has the exact same patio I did the math it's taking this property to 51 percent open or 51 percent impervious space so it's well it was well within their ability to do and the nine by three by nine rain garden is back here under a downspout on their garage so that's roughly the size that the rain garden would have to be to mitigate that runoff. there was concern at the last mission to make sure there was still space to play with your kids and be able to run around outside and not have it be super disruptive. So this is an example that illustrates the size. One of the biggest things that we then discussed was next steps and how we would go about administering this. We would propose that this ordinance go live instead of in a week like is normal ahead of a city commission meeting, that this ordinance would go live January 1st, 2027. So we would have a little under six months to make sure that the internal processes are really tight between engineering, building, and planning for review processes. We've already had conversations determining who would do what and the roles and responsibilities in terms of review and enforcement, but making sure that those processes are very clear. And in addition, make sure that our home builders and our Homeowners in the city of Birmingham are aware of these requirements coming live give them time to educate Us time to educate them about it and make appropriate Shifts internally, so we have several meetings that we're getting set up getting set up with builders to discuss the specific implement implications of this for conversation and just process internal process in general and we are planning on attended the home builders meeting in October to discuss these changes as well and And obviously we would be more than happy to do newsletter articles and do broader communications along with social media with this change. So happy to have some more discussion about it.

Happy to give you more. Do any other communities do this?

Yes, within the state of Michigan, Ann Arbor is one of the most stringent. Grand Rapids also has single family stormwater requirements as well.

Similar to what you're proposing? Correct. And if a homeowner, some of these things, the requirements like to make sure the tree is still there, does that flow through to the next owner of the property?

I can't speak to how other cities do that. For us, it would be tied to the property.

Yes, please.

I'm concerned about how this works in practice for a homeowner that adds a support court or whatever. Are there going to be additional permits required, additional review fees? And it sounds like in order to turn in a document if you want to put in a patio you're going to have to hire somebody to do a drawing for you that the city would accept.

To answer that question that was one of our major concerns was that requiring a person putting in a patio to do a full survey would be completely unreasonable. That would be thousands of dollars in additional expenses and would not be a fair burden in our opinion on residents. The initial conversations that we've had on our end for the logistical process is that this worksheet would be slotted into our existing permitting processes. So when someone would go through the process to build a patio, this worksheet would be included in that application and would not require an additional fee at this time. Again, that's something that we are going to work through internally, but at the initial conversations for us, we're not concerned at this junction to require it be completely separate. set of application fees.

But what kind of documentation are you going to require from the homeowner that doesn't involve them hiring an architect or civil engineer or somebody to do a plan? Do you want to go ahead?

Okay. So what we do currently, I'll give an example. I'll give an outdoor dining example because it's actually a decent parallel. We accept hand-drawn plans. So if someone is coming in to put a patio in, that homeowner would be well within their right to submit a scale to scale drawing, detailing where their patio would be and showing on their hand drawn plan where they're proposing to put a rain barrel or a tree. So they would not, in my opinion, be required to hire a outside architect or landscape architect in order to administer these requirements. The paperwork they'd be required to submit would be a plan to show what they're putting in. They would need to do that anyway. If they're putting in a patio and there's permits required, they need to show what they're putting in. And the only thing that would be added would be the indication of where they're putting trees or where they're putting a rain barrel or where they're putting a rain garden, for example, to that plan.

May I? Mayor Baller? Please. I just wanted to reemphasize, in case it wasn't clear, that part of our design process for this was to make sure that we're not, for example, requiring someone to get a survey that's very expensive if they weren't already required to get it. So, long story short, we're slotting this in very seamlessly, in our opinion. And, in our opinion... The review for this is quite easy. It's kind of simple math. We need to know the square footage of what you're doing and what treatment measures you're proposing and the two numbers have to line up. It's not a very detailed engineering level review of grades and slopes and what have you. Dare I say simple, but it's a rather simple review to just kind of slot in in existing processes.

Just to be clear, the planning department and the environmental sustainability committee are recommending this, but it's going to be up to who? administer it engineering and well it'll be part of the permitting process which is kind of done by building planning and engineering they all have a role in the permitting process community development you guys don't have much role in the yes we do in the in the residential plan review in the residential plan review no not as much in the residential side where does enforcement sit

You mean wood? So back to Andrew's example. House was built. They've done the plan to remediate their square footage. Tree comes down.

Then they cut down their tree.

They chose to cut down their tree. Storm knocks it down.

Storm knocks it down.

I think what some are saying is there would be a requirement that they offset that. So they would have to put in, say, three new trees or four new trees to offset the removal of the big tree.

That's not the question. The question is, who's overseeing it and forcing them to do it? Who's the enforcer?

What's the consequences of not putting in three or four new trees?

And I think she said only if they came to the city for another project. But if they never come to the city for another project, there's no review. And it's gone.

I understand what you're saying. It's a code enforcement issue. It's not going to be perfect, but at least it's better. The enforcement is that we would have code go out there if engineering determined that there are engineering building planners are always out there on inspections. If they determine that the tree is missing, then we would have code enforcement go out there and replace it with what's required. But are we going to catch all of them?

But where he's going and where they're going is tree comes down naturally, unnaturally, the tree's gone. Oh, how many you need to put in for new trees? No. Now what? No, I can't put it in. It wrecks the way I built my house. It destroys my landscaping. No. Now what?

That's actually built into the code. Yeah. No, you can go ahead. I was going to say it's built into the code that that would be technically a misdemeanor according to our ordinance. So it would be enforceable by law.

All right, then within what's been asked here, I'm reading through the existing descriptions for rain gardens and bioswales. You talked about, yeah, just build them. If you go back to your earlier example of the size of the rain garden, would you please scroll up a couple? Because I'm curious about how this one works as well. So this one, you talk about cubic feet, so you've got a nine foot by three foot rain garden. Our current rain garden requirement says a minimum of at least 130 square feet or three feet by 42 feet. This doesn't do anything because the current one says at least 130 square feet and you only get $15 a year for it. So I've got to build a rain garden that's the, in the case of most of the houses in the part of the city I live in, it's the entire width of the lot and it's three feet deep. To be clear, you're talking about the stormwater credits, correct? It's stormwater credits, but it's talking about the size of a rain garden or bioswale for the existing credits. And that has to match what we say here, because this is talking about getting a stormwater credit.

No. Fundamentally, no, this is a stormwater credit for impervious surface.

This is removing an impervious surface offset. It comes down to the same thing. It's retention of rainwater. let them respond because they're shaking their head.

That the homeowner is welcome to apply for stormwater credits. If the stormwater credit is more, this is my understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, Nick or Jana or Tracy. If it's more strict than what the requirement would be for our stormwater ordinance, then they simply would not qualify for that specific credit. Not necessarily that the definitions of a rain garden are mismatched, if that makes sense.

It seems like there's conflicting requirements because this is specifically talking about the runoff from at least 50% of the main home's roof area or equivalent paved surface area must be diverted to the rain garden or bioswale. So what we're talking about is the diversion of impervious rainfall to a pervious or an absorber or a retention mechanism. To get $15 a year, I need to put in 130 square feet today. This is 21 square feet. Not even. 27, beg your pardon. But this is different from the stormwater credit requirements.

This is saying that there's no stormwater standards in place for single-family residential. If you do adopt this ordinance, it puts some requirements in place which will help with flooding. Right? It'll help to contain the stormwater. It'll help to release it slowly. It will assist with flooding in the neighborhoods. It makes it better than it is. It doesn't necessarily guarantee you a stormwater credit against your bill.

No, it's not necessarily credit. It's just that we're already trying to do that and give people a financial incentive. And what we're asking people to do for financial incentive is worthless. I mean, 130 square feet or more, depending on the amount of roof runoff being diverted to blah, blah, blah. But that's for the smallest minimum. And so now we're talking about the amount that we want to offset for impervious surface, so it actually is just to try and retain it anyway. Yeah, okay, it's going to help, but again, what's the enforcement mechanism? What's the big brother going to be? Who's paying for all of the big brother that's going on? And then ultimately, we're going to go after half the city and say, oh, you know what, you've all got misdemeanors. Do you want to watch property value go to zero?

Okay, I'm going to try to move this conversation along. We have a lot of ordinances laws that are difficult to enforce and people skirt them all the time people speed on our streets, whatever. I think here the question is we're a policy making body First of all, do we support this idea in general? Without nitpicking, is this something the commission is inclined to be in favor of? Because if everybody says, nah, we're not Ann Arbor, we don't want to do this, screw it, throw it out, you're wasting your time. That's not my position. I think it's a good idea. Without nitpicking it right now, enforcement, I think we ought to get some sense of whether you agree with the concept or not. And then let's move on from there. Is that fair?

So first off, thank you for putting this together. And in response to the mayor, I broadly agree with the concept that I think there is value in trying to get the residential properties of which It's a large proportion of the city and increasingly they are a large proportion of the lots are impervious surface. And so I certainly support the idea that if you're going to knock down the house and dig up the whole lot anyway, why not put in some fatter pipes and a couple more trees and then, you know, people's. you know, basements will stop backflowing. I think I'm certainly on board with that. And I think there is a lot of nitpicking though to go on existing stuff. I'm happy to go into some of my nitpicks right now. And I have a couple broader questions if you'd rather I stick to those.

Think I'll start sense. I'd like to get a sense that people are supportive of the concept in general Commissioner host.

This is a step in the right direction I'm supportive for New construction where there's already going to be a survey and there's an opportunity to encourage saving trees I'm not in supportive for the 500 square foot patio example I I'm very glad you took out the replacement driveways because I was definitely against that. And you'd have maybe for major additions over some percentage of the existing square footage, again, where a survey and permitting already has to happen. If it's significant enough, there's got to be groundwork done. Yes, but otherwise, I think it's too intrusive.

I'm broadly supportive. I would agree with Commissioner Long's comments.

The kind of work of Commissioner Kozlowski is that, yeah, to your exact reason, we know we have flooding. We're on clay. It's as simple as that. We don't get permeability, so that's a problem to begin with. So we need to do something, but this is too intrusive. It is a little bit too... There's too much mental gymnastics going on here to make things fit into a picture. There are too many loopholes. Workarounds. Yeah, workarounds being created and then telling everybody, well, you're a bad person, we're going to write you up for a misdemeanor because you didn't do something on your own house that we're going to force you to pay for because circumstances drove something different. No. What it also feels to me as though we're doing, by going into this level of it, this is Nero fiddling while Rome burned. We've got bigger problems in this city than this. This is not a big deal for us right now. We've got other things we need to work on. So this is not high priority.

Are you arguing against applying this to new construction?

No, new construction for the reasons that Mayor Pro Tem gave, absolutely.

Okay, let's try to agree that we... It needs to be ratcheted back right now. Let's try to agree that we are broadly and maybe even specifically supportive of this for new construction. Yes. Yes. Okay. We're getting somewhere, right? Is there a way to enact it for new construction as we continue to develop acceptable ways of applying it to, what do you want to call it? Not new.

Additions or expansions?

Additions, improvements, expansions, right. Is that, most of the nitpicking, am I, Correct in picking it up, picking, that it applies to the non-new construction, the additions, right? Why don't you say what you got, because I'm trying to get us to somewhere.

Right, so one of my questions is about the sort of the treating of the preservation of a tree as a stormwater offset. I guess I'm not entirely sure what the logic is there. And in general I question, we seem to favor the natural over the constructed methods. And it wasn't really clear to me why. Why not just say, hey, if a 10 inch pipe is good, a 14 inch pipe is great. Just put it all on the pipe and it's not gonna hit the system. No basement flooding, problem solved.

That's a great question, I can answer that. When the stormwater goes into a constructed measure, it's going into the sewer system. we are not seeing infiltration of the water down into the water table on that site. It's being taken off site and put into the system. So the intention of the ordinance with the language that we've constructed in our Birmingham Green Plan is to infiltrate that water back down into the soil.

And we have some reason to believe that infiltration is a problem.

Correct.

Lack of it. Lack of infiltration is a problem. We are not infiltrating as much as we used to, and there are some problems. What are those problems?

Well, one of the things that we discussed is the soil type that we have here. There being a high amount of clay means that that water is gonna sit right on top without incorrect infiltration measures. One of the great added benefits of something like a rain garden is those roots break up the clay and allow that water to get down into the water table. So that's an example where if we're adding a natural measure, it allows that water to get infiltrate down into the soil. Is that your question?

I was more, I thought we were making some broader environmental point about the importance of infiltration. You're saying that, but I feel like that's the, then we're just saying, well, natural measures are good because they allow for more retention.

Keep the water on the site.

Yes, but then I'm saying mechanical versus non-mechanical. It should be six of one, half dozen of the other.

No, mechanical eventually sends it into the sewer.

But who cares? That's my question. As long as it's not... I know, but that's what I'm saying is if you have an adequate constructed measure to prevent the flooding, why is that inferior? We're saying you must do natural measures for a significant portion of this, and I'm saying what's wrong with doing 100% the same amount of retention, but 100% constructed measures?

Because you're putting it all into the sewer system.

Eventually.

No, it's still got a fairly high rate flow with constrictor but what the to go where you're going but not quite. What I wanted to ask is all the examples haven't made any discussion of the type of pipe or how it's laid in there because if we put it in French drains or dry well construction where it's a trench gravel perforated pipe water goes in it then also goes to the gravel and it slows it down because that then creates infiltration at the depth. The pipe to get into the sewer system is probably going to be about eight, nine feet down. So the amount of time it would take the first inch of rain to get eight feet down is days. In our soil, it's days. Well, if we can take it eight feet down to begin with and then start the infiltration, throw permeability out from the pipes, that's an accumulator. All it is is an accumulator with a slow flow out. Why don't we have something like that discussed here? Because that's so easy to answer the question.

I'm going to make a broader point. The worksheet, the math that's added here, other than the 0.08, None of that is in the ordinance language that is in your packet to approve today. that is all internal processes that can be amended and adapted based on feedback. So for example, the mix and match worksheet, which was in your packet, which discusses the different types of measures, the pipes, the trees, all of that lives outside of the ordinance. I just wanted to make that clear, that that is something that we can continue to work and communicate about without it affecting the ordinance. So I wanted to make that big picture here and maybe Nick has more comments about that as well.

Yes, thank you for letting me come up again. We also generally consider something like a dry well where you store water in there and it eventually seeps into the ground as a natural measure. That's a natural hydrological function. So it may be constructed, you may be building a well, but just the simple fact that it's leaching into the ground instead of going out into a pipe is a natural function. So I don't want to make it seem like you can only do a rain garden or a tree. That's why we can include things like rain barrels as a natural measure, because that water will eventually get infiltrated through gardening or what have you. I just wanted to make that distinction as well. So it could be that someone wipes a lot and everything's underground, but they're dry wells or perforated pipe or what have you. So I just wanted to make that distinction as well.

Okay, I would really like to move this forward. Not necessarily, I'm not saying I want to approve everything, but... We're policy makers, they're the administrators. I have a high degree of trust in the work they do, and I'd love to see a motion of some sort. Yes, Commissioner Hooks.

I'd like to make a motion to adopt an ordinance to amend Part 2 of the City Code Chapter 114-Utilities and to add Article 7-Single Family Stormwater Management Standards in order to assist in reducing the burden of unmanaged stormwater runoff in the City of Birmingham.

And that is the suggested resolution?

Yep. That is the suggested, which includes new construction and additions. It should include an effective date of January 1st, 2027.

Do I have a second? Can we do it just for new construction? Only if it's amended. Let's see if there's a second. If there's no second, somebody else can make another motion.

I'm sort of struggling with making a motion because we're just making a motion for something that hasn't been written. Because there's suggested language here, but now the suggested language has to be changed. So would it not be more accurate to say come back with a modification that references only new construction, and then it would be a much easier motion without having to assume the language will be what we want after the motion has been made? Sir?

You could do that, but I can tell you what you would strike. 114, 453B, you would strike, and you would strike the second part of the chart, and then you would strike 454B and D.

Why would we strike 453B? That's adding impervious areas exceeding 100 square feet. That's an addition. That's new construction by definition.

Oh, I thought you were saying you only wanted it when there was a new construction of a brand new home. Tear the home down, put a new one up.

That was my... That's what she was saying. But technically speaking, if you add something, it is a new construction. But that's where the pro tem was saying it. Do you want to have people doing all of these architectural drawings for an addition? That's why I'd say you'd strike B.

But by the nature of the beast, it's a new construction. Hold on. I'm going to rely on whether you think we need to come back or you think we can go with striking this, striking that.

I think it's best to come back. I do have one question, though, for clarification because if you don't mind. Sure. There was a quite additions and I know Mayor Pro Tem mentioned that sometimes additions may require a site plan.

It may be larger than normal I would I would support only brand-new home builds at this point complete demolition and demolition and rebuild or complete new home on a vacant piece of property should there be one and and then I think we should give it a year or two and then come back and see if we want it I'm also concerned about you know we talk about aging in place and seniors may need to do first floor bedroom additions and stuff and I do not want that kind of burden on them.

Then I suggest we make the modifications in house and bring it back.

I' m fine with that. I' m good with that. Okay then you' ve gotten sufficient direction no

I have some questions that may affect what what's going on at least in terms of the ordinance. The first one was the swale. I'm not exactly understanding what that is. When I think of swales, I think of Beverly Hills and what's going on in the front of the yards by the street and there's no sewer and everything is connected. Is this connected in the back? Are the swales connected to anything where it drains off or are we creating a pool in the backyard next to the fence in front of the neighborhood?

Yeah, so the swale in the example that I showed is connected to the storm drains. The swale serves a purpose to funnel the water to those storm drains so they can be removed from the property.

So if there's a swale, it's basically sort of a trench and it's connecting to the sewers in the front of the house?

It depends on the type of swale constructed, but in general, that tends to be the type of swale most commonly used, yes.

Okay. I'm not so sure how great of an idea that is. Maybe if it goes into a drain or something like that? Let's not engage in a discussion. The next thing is, in terms of the carve-outs for square footage for the lot coverage, one of the carve-outs that was mentioned is... you allow for a three-foot sidewalk walking up to the house a lot of the house is built now don't have three foot sidewalks they have five or more and to me it's not clear if someone has a five foot sidewalk if the whole thing counts is impervious service or if it's three feet or the two feet and I would like to ask for some clarification in the ordinance so it's very clear what is legal and what isn't because right now it's this 3c something there's some addendum and Okay, I think we get your question.

That's a building department question and it's not relevant to this particular. I understand your question and you want a clarification. I don't know the answer off the top of my head. But this is not redoing the impervious surface ordinance. This is a stormwater ordinance.

When we redo our zoning ordinance, you could bring up that question.

Absolutely. The next question is if we're putting in pipes with the restrictor, I think the mayor mentioned the pipes are going to clog up. Five years, seven years, ten years into the life of a new home, pipe clogs up, it's not working. Does anybody know? Is there any way to deal with it? Who's responsible? I mean, is it good until it doesn't work anymore and then it stays not working? Or what happens with the home that has that kind of system installed that's not working? Should I answer?

Sure. I think the question is what's the useful life of this stuff? Yeah.

The typical lifespan of a restrictor varies depending on the type. It would be relatively obvious if it failed during a storm event, the backup. If it was clogged, for example. I do not know off the top of my head this difference in statistics between a pipe failure versus a restrictor failure and the common occurrence thereof.

Thank you. My next question is, is this something that should also go to the planning board or would benefit from going through the planning board? Thank you.

Planning board's got their hands full.

I've got a question based on what he just asked, though. What happened to the swales that we used to have? Because you can go around parts of town, you can still see where the swales were at the back of the yards. I was just thinking about it just now. In Pembroke area, you can still see the depressions between houses where the back fence line goes. That was an engineered swale when they were built 50 years ago. What happened to that? Because that was doing exactly what he's getting. It connected lot to lot to lot and allowed the natural gradient to flow it down to the street slowly. So we used to have it. The whole area was built like that. Beverly Hills was more obvious because they got more problems. But we had it too.

She wasn't around. And I haven't been creeping around people's backyards to know. I don't have any friends.

I go back to my original question. So if the bias is towards natural, why wouldn't, if the owner is willing to build a retention pond, be the ideal answer? If they're willing to take up 300 square feet of the back of their lot and build a 200 gallon retention pond, and they don't mind the standing water and potential for mosquitoes, if they want to do it, have at it.

I don't know the building code requirements that would prevent that other than potential neighbor complaints with mosquitoes. I don't know if there's, if Jana you have any other, any insight to that?

No.

I don't know the answer. Could they do it?

Yeah. I don't know what the requirements would be if they were allowed to do that. Right. Because then it's a body of water that you're purposely keeping there and does it have to be fenced and all of that stuff.

Fair enough. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Excellent. We stood up under withering questioning. It's for the good of the people, right? Cross-examination. We now move to unfinished business. No. No? New business. I mean, new business. And the first item is actually public hearing. It's not labeled on the agenda as such, but I believe in the packet it is. So it is... 828 PM and I'm going to open public hearing regarding.

Wow, this is regarding help me out guys project contract number 1026 friends P hearing of necessity for water lateral special assessment district.

Thank you, Commissioners. The Engineering Department has created a PowerPoint slides for you to review. So this is a South Eden water main project hearing a necessity for water lateral special assessment district. The overview, the project limits for this are between Humphrey Avenue to East Lincoln Street. The project includes new water main prior to the LAP end-up project of paving and bike lanes that is coming up next year. That's going to be from 14 Mile to Maple Road. The special assessment district water laterals are going So general construction information, currently we have a eight inch installed water main that is from 1920. It is over 100 years old and we've had several water main breaks on it so far. I think in the last decades we've had approximately five water main breaks on that run. So we're proposing an eight inch ductile iron pipe that has a service life of approximately 50 to 100 years. And as you can see, this is an existing four inch water main on Bird Avenue that we found last year. This was installed in 1931, and as you can see, it's actually more of a three inch. It's got a lot of debris in there. Our city policy is to protect our infrastructures and public investments with capital improvement projects in public roadways. So the water laterals, we're gonna be replacing all the water services that are 60 years old or anything that's less than one inch or made of basically unsuitable material. All unsuitable water services will be replaced with a one inch diameter copper service. So as I stated, the assessment's gonna be 100% to the property owner. The costs can be paid in either a lump sum or over time with interest. The interest rate will be confirmed at the confirmation of rule. And then we have received bids from Brigadier and the current costs are $50 per linear foot for one inch diameter copper service and 35 inch per one inch diameter with this horizontally directionally drilled pipe. The cost was cheaper to directionally drill than open cut the road. So does that mean that's what you're going to do? We have sections where we're currently basically directionally drilling it. And then there are sections where we're going to have to open cut, I believe, because of what we got underneath E at the moment. There's busy intersections and stuff that we need to have open cut. But yeah, there's areas where it's like 65 feet of run where the water maze on one side and properties are on the other, as you can see. And we're going to basically directionally drill those.

So some laterals will, we're talking laterals only, some laterals will be directionally drilled and those people will pay less than...

Yes, and those are much, much longer runs. And you can see those are the limits of the project. So you can see there it's from East Lincoln on the north there and then we go south all the way down to Humphrey. And these are the Sidwell numbers. We've got, I think, about 25 properties on there. And then the engineering department recommends that the city commission declare necessity and approve the SAD for South Ian Water Main project for water laterals. Should the commission approve the SAD, a public hearing of confirmation of the role will be held on July 27th. Is there any questions?

First, we're going to go to the public and I will introduce to the public Mark Akram, our assistant city engineer. He was introduced to us earlier. Thank you. We'll know who's talking to us. And if you are in the public, this is a public hearing. If you want to say something, have a question, a comment, a concern... Now's the time. If you want to register opposition or a... What do you call it? A protest. Reserve your right to protest. You should do that now. If you're online, use the raise your hand function. Seems like everybody's happy with having their new laterals, so nobody's talking, nobody's coming in. Last chance. Close the public hearing at... 8.33. Questions, comments from the Commission? Commissioner Haig.

I'm not sure which one is a question for. When is Humphrey to 14 Mile coming up as the next step of that, or is that actually okay at this point? I have no memory of this piece. That's not part of this project, is it? I know, but I want to find out when it joins to this project, because if we need to do it, why don't we do the whole thing?

I don't know because they're not asking us to.

But I'm curious why not.

Yeah, we'd have to review that, Commissioner Haag. I think with the budget that we had and because of the local agency project that we had with Endow, we focused on North Eaton. But we could take a look at that for sure and see if that's the next step from there. But this does open up for us to do more improvements in the future in that area.

Yeah, I mean, this is still South Eaton, not North Eaton. It's literally you go down to Humphrey and then you go Humphrey down to 14, which is another quarter of a mile or so. I was just curious why that piece wasn't happening at all.

I believe it's because of the budget that we have for the water at the moment.

That's fine. The reading of the resolution. I'll give it a look. All right. I'll need to borrow a page number. All right, here we go. You might want to check. Is it, you want it red and full?

Since there are no... protests that we've received. I think you can reference the page numbers on this one if you'd like.

It's not even amongst the one you got. You got lucky. So what I just moved the motion as written on page.

As part of the packet on page.

As part of the packet on page 166, 167, and 168 of this week's commission meeting. Second.

That is sufficient? That's sufficient. We can locate it. Comments on the motion? Roll call, please.

Commissioner Haag?

Yes.

Commissioner Host? Yes. Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Yes. Mayor Ballard?

Yes. Commissioner Kolb? Yes. Okay, we move to item number nine. This is the 2026 concrete sidewalk repair program.

Correct, yep. We, the engineering department, recommend that the commissioners make a motion adopting resolution to award the contract to Luigi Ferdinandi and Sun Cement for the total amount of $971,825.64. Luigi and son has done a lot of work in the city of Birmingham including the 2020 2022 and 2023 concrete sidewalk repair program They've completed a lot of construction Including sidewalks drive approaches and exposed aggregate panels in the downtown area We recommend that they are ordered the project because they've done a lot of good work in the city This any questions from the Commission I Have one question.

Sure So what is the bond that these guys are putting up to do the work, just for understanding on award value versus bond value?

Performance bond?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd have to go and look in the contract at the amount.

While you do that, I will note as just a matter of interest that of this... 971,000 approx, a little more than a third of that is devoted to sidewalks. Correct. Yeah, which is to say we spend a lot of money on sidewalks and they're a high priority in the city.

$701,659.67 in performance bond. That's the whole amount. That's the whole, so they're putting up 100% performance bond? Yes. This is not the same as, say, a builder's bond where they put $10,000 on deposit at the building department. This is a performance bond, so it's a legal mechanism for us to get the money if we have to do the work ourselves. It's a whole other process, Tracy. I don't know if you want to give a little more detail.

No, that's okay. I get it. That's right. That's an insurance policy. Exactly.

They're not giving us that and putting it on deposit with the engineering department.

Okay. Thank you. Very helpful. Comments from the public? Anybody online? Raise your hand. Seeing none. Wait. Did we have a motion? We need a motion.

Right.

I can do it. Please. Sure. I would like to make a motion adopting a resolution to award the 2026 Concrete Sidewalk Repair Program number 1-26-SW to Luigi Ferdinandi & Son Cement Company, Inc. in the amount of $701,659.67. and a 10% construction contingency and $200,000 for random concrete panel repairs throughout the city at the engineering department's discretion for a total of $971,825.64. In addition, authorized the mayor and the city clerk to sign the agreement on behalf of the city after the review of Luigi Ferdinandi and Son Cement Company Inc's insurance and bond contingent upon execution of the agreement and meeting all insurance and bonding requirements. Funding for this project has been budgeted in the following accounts. May I reference the table?

Yes.

And the accounts are found on page 207 of tonight's packet. Second.

Comments? So the math doesn't work. So $701,659.67 plus $200,000. Does not equal $971,000. Plus 10%. I think that's where that 70 comes from. It's in the table. But it might still be worth it. It's in the table. Page 207.

Yeah, about the last line of it.

Fair enough. Okay, got it. 70 plus 70 plus, or 700 plus 70 plus 200. Got it. Roll call, please.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Commissioner Cole?

Yes.

Commissioner Hopes?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Yes. Mayor Ballard?

Yes.

Commissioner Higg?

Yes. Okay, thank you. Next item is discussion of sustainability for carbon reduction and other sustainability and climate action projects reasonably related to vehicle activity in the city. I am going to suggest that we consider this kind of a workshop, that we discuss it. We get all the questions, all the issues on the table, hear what people have to say about it. and then mullet a little bit and come back later date where we can actually perhaps act on it. We don't have to accept my suggestion right now but that is what I would prefer and we can hear from staff and begin the discussion and go from there.

That sounds good, and I hope you know that that's not my style. If it ends up that way, a new and improved report presentation would have you. I've got a short spiel, then I'll save the rest for the conversation. Our sustainability and climate action goals, as outlined in the Birmingham Green Climate Plan, are ambitious. As a reminder, we're shooting for a 25% carbon reduction by 2035, and we're shooting for carbon neutrality by 2050. Of course, that will not be easy. We never thought it was going to be easy. Our plan, all but said, this isn't going to be easy, and our experiences in implementing it so far have not been all that easy. That being said, I want to outline a few things that we know. some factual information. We knew that the implementation of the plan and any other of our sustainability and climate action agenda would come at a cost. We also know that investing in sustainability, generally speaking, does tend to provide a return on investment but that rate of return period is often quite long. We also know that we've got a tight municipal budget. We know that there will be competition for funding in the general fund. There's always priorities that need to be triaged and prioritized accordingly. We also know that Birmingham is quite the destination. We are home to about 22,000 people, but that's not all we ever have to plan for, generally speaking. There's plenty of other people that come from outside, both close by and distances, to use our amenities, visit downtown, or to make a living. The Birmingham shopping districts retail market profile I pulled a couple figures from their 2023 profile that suggests that we've got a 500,000 person consumer to consumer trade area and that we receive around 7 million visitors annually. We also know that, of course, the city owns and operates a parking system downtown. We've got a little less than 5,000 parking spaces, I believe, but that translates into over 2.5 million parking transactions annually. That's based on 2025 data. Finally, we know from the greenhouse gas inventory in the plan that carbon emissions from vehicles translate to 24% of the overall community greenhouse gas emissions for the city, which is about 65,000 metric tons of CO2. So we understand all this, and moving forward, we We figured we needed to get a little bit creative considering all of the above. We wanted to build a program that's not reliant on things like grants or regular allotments from the general fund or other finite funding sources. We want to bring money to the table through the sustainability and climate action regulatory fee that is charged directly to the user of a vehicle when they're performing a parking transaction. We believe that this will allow the city to generate or through this regulatory fee, generate some funds that we can use to directly mitigate the negative environmental impacts of those vehicles. Now, I'm not only limiting it to carbon reduction, although I've mentioned that a lot, I've also mentioned that stormwater capture and pollutant reduction are also, excuse me, multimodal improvements are also targets of this fund. The proposed fee that we brought to you today is 10 cents. I know it sounds small but it should generate in the $420,000 range annually. It will be applied to all transient parkers anytime you swipe or pay to get into a deck or a meter but it will also apply to monthly parkers and valet. Excuse me. We did outline some specific projects in your report that we plan to start spending this money on and potentially could be fully funded by a fee like this. What I wanted to make sure you know, when I say fully funded, I want to make it clear that what we're avoiding by potentially instituting this fee For example, I think next year during the budget cycle, I'm gonna be bringing you a proposal to update the city's multimodal transportation plan. Currently planning on $100,000 for that. Ordinarily, I'd be asking you for a general fund allocation, but should we generate enough revenue through this fee? I think that could be a project that's fully funded by this new fee. Also, we spend about $200,000 every fall on tree plantings. I think that to start, we can certainly start supplementing that program if not taking it over entirely. In theory, freeing up that $200,000 back into the general fund. We also envision electric vehicle charging, which I think is a pretty high demand here. average charger a good Level two charger could be in there on six thousand dollar range. We could install quite a bit of charges with funding like that the the emphasis here being fully funded by this feed thus freeing up more general fund money for your other important projects that I think we'll probably talk about tonight. So we did introduce this in 2025 almost a year and a half ago at long-range planning. We discussed it at five meetings of the Environmental Sustainability Committee who did unanimously move this forward as a recommendation to the City Commission. We also went to the Advisory Parking Committee. We did not get a recommendation from the Advisory Parking Committee, although they did provide lots of comments. I hope you follow the links in the report, but may I summarize they do they're citing fears of setting precedent with using the parking systems to generate funds for other things and they are also citing fears about effects on any future rate increases that this may incur it's also worth noting that The fee, as I'm bringing it to you now, is different than it started. We were proposing it as a part of a broader rate increase. So just to be clear, this fee is not proposed as a broader rate increase. The Advisory Parking Committee did not move forward with any proposals for a broader rate increase. I think there's an advantage here. by making sure that you all know that this fee is not a part of the parking enterprise system. This money will never hit the parking enterprise system. Immediately when the transaction happens it will split off into the sustainability and climate action fund. I think there was a lot of confusion when I was going through. I believe because it was part of a broader rate increase that this would be Parking chunk of money and we'd be taking a chunk of money from the parking enterprise fund I want to say again that this is not parking enterprise money. This is a separate fee It will never hit the parking enterprise fund In closing, I want to make sure that I emphasize that this helps fund our important environmental agenda, but it also, in my opinion, could catapult us up into an enviable position as a regional leader, which is the vision of the Birmingham Green Healthy Climate Plan. Nobody's doing this. This would be the first in Michigan, if not in the country, an approach like this, which I find value in. I also wanted to close by just pointing toward your strategic goal of positioning ourselves for changing future by instituting policies and practices that protect the natural environment and reduce extreme weather impacts on the community. I think that aligns well with our Birmingham Green Plan, and I think we're generally speaking the same language there. So that's my spiel. Of course, there's going to be questions coming out of this, but I'll just kind of wait around and see what you bring to me.

Okay, thank you. Do you want to opine on the legality? You have researched this thoroughly. Yes. And part of the reason it's taken so long is because... Is the research. Is the research. Do you want to, in a nutshell, summarize that?

We've looked extensively into the Bolt litigation. and a fee versus tax, and there is a three-prong test that's included in your packet to ensure that it is in compliance with that. We think that the biggest thing is to make sure that it relates back to the reducing the carbon emission, the goal. It needs to relate back to the goal, whatever you use the money for. He's taken a creative approach. We're probably initially going to be reviewing each use and then it will become more systematic and I think productive in that manner.

Okay, thank you. I'm going to kick it off with a couple questions going right back to the very beginning of your presentation where you outlined some goals that we adopted in the climate plan. Could you... reiterate those goals and give them a little bit more context. In other words, give me a goal, like reduce, give me one of the goals, reduce emissions, wasn't that one?

Yeah, the broad goals, so reduce carbon emissions by 25% by 2035. Okay, stop right there. Yeah.

What does that mean? That seems big and hairy to me. Yeah, we're talking about reducing emissions within the city of Birmingham, right? By fewer cars or more efficient cars or more electric cars, right? put some color into that statement so that we understand how, especially in the context of this fee, right? So how is this fee gonna help us and is it gonna get us all the way there or only part of the way there or just a tiny fraction of the way there?

I think this fee ultimately will just get you a fraction of the way there. As I mentioned before, carbon emissions related to vehicles are only 25% of the overall community-wide emissions for the city, which is somewhere around the 200, over 200,000 metric tons. CO2 so I guess sure if we limited everything from every carbon emission from vehicles this would reach our 2035 goal but I think even in just the statement reducing carbon emissions from all the vehicles in Birmingham is a little crazy to say as well I think it's been said before in meetings like this that yes we're a vehicle oriented community yes the metro Detroit region is a vehicle oriented community How can you tell me, Nick, that we're going to eliminate all 65,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from vehicle usage? Well, the answer is we're never going to reduce it all. But there are sequestration measures like planting trees, as I mentioned, that will suck some of that carbon back into the, in this case, tree canopy. So it's hard to contextualize because it is a big, lofty, kind of almost funny number goal. wrap your head around, but I guess that's my initial answer.

Okay. Implementation, should this move forward. Let's start with hourly meter rates. Would is it possible to program the meters to say that you will be charged separate 10% for your job? We have to put signage on each meter Ten cent yes, and it's every time You put a coin in the meter or put a credit card in the meter It's an additional ten cents if you cheat and feed the meter all day long. It's ten cents every time you make it It's transaction based right mm-hmm and so programming or sign

the coin operated meters are the only tricky part I'll say we as I understand it we do need to place new stickers on those and that's going to take some time everything else all the digital functions the card based functions or app functions as I understand it are exceedingly simple in speaking with the finance director and the parking manager so I'll then answer your question.

Okay, for the structure permits or the meter permit parking, it's very clear that it's 10 cents a day times the number of days for the permit. So a person who bought a permit for one of the decks would pay an extra $3 per month. Easy to understand. I do not understand the way the valet parking is presented because if you are suggesting you're only going to charge 10 cents to someone who's parking 301 or above cars over six months that is not equitable. So tell me how you get valet to be equitable.

It is not equitable in the slightest the way you described it. So it is a bit hard. I will a friendly correction. Do you mean 10 cents per vehicle? It's in the fees per car. So the way that I understand valet to be handled is a valet operator will come in for a permit within one of these three categories. They also as he calls it shore up at the end. So if you paid for a 1 to 100 car permit and you actually parked 300 they'll ask you to pay the difference. So we would be able to charge that fee per car at the onset and then shore up should they exceed what they've applied for.

And we track how many cars they park exactly because they swipe in and out with a valet permit or something?

As far as I understand it.

Correct. So the valet companies get a pass similar to a monthly Parker. So we track the usage So when they come into the city clerk's office, they apply for the valet permit every six months So when they apply for it for January to June at the end of June we'll pull a report on the usage of their parking passes and as Nick said if they are exceeding the guess the window that they applied for originally then we do provide the report and ask them to pay the balance so as Nick said we can run a report saying they parked 200 cars and would be 200 cars times the Tencent Obviously, this would definitely entail a lot of reports. Monthly, we'd have to work with the finance department, whether it's monthly parking, the meters, the valet, all of it is a significant amount of reports that we'd have to pull to determine the amount of money that has to be transferred from the parking department, too.

And it seems like it's going to be a significant education effort for all users.

Yes, and it's like you said, the meter portion, so I mean, it's 10 cents, so you can feed a dime into a meter now, so now your dime is essentially paying for the 10 cent sustainability fee, and then you're going to have to put another dime in to pay for your time that you really want. There's no way around that right now. We've already talked to the meter vendor. Signage is the only way we can do it by changing out the stickers. There's no messaging on the actual meter itself, the digital thing. You just have to put the money in so the first 10 cents would go toward the fee. the parking garage just to clarify like in the parking garage if you push a button pull a ticket when you leave and you scan your ticket it gives you a fee of two dollars four dollars everyone say stay that one we can have a line item on the screen that says it's two dollars and ten cents and then on your receipt it will say a ten cent sustainability fee that part we know we can do.

Mr. Cole. So I have a question Nick when you were opening you're talking about getting non-residents, right? For residents who use the parking structures, it is another tax. Well, it is not a tax, it's a fee, but I get the question. So we're charging people who are already paying to live here. charging them do we think ten cents is gonna get them stop driving from Barnum Park to downtown it's not and I don't think to your car I don't think that's equitable if there was a way to isolate it that people are coming to visit I mean a major tour people come for good it's a bit of a doom loop I'd be fully supportive if it was coming from people outside of Birmingham. But residents... Jesus.

I think you're misunderstanding the whole point. Not the whole point, but a big chunk of the point. The point is to generate money to offset carbon emissions. I get the point. The maths is wrong. So it isn't about where that car came from. It's that Parkers, this is a way to generate money from people who are driving cars. But the maths is wrong. That's what he's getting at.

The maths isn't right.

No, I don't have an issue with, if I live in my house and I have a choice to walk downtown, ride a bike downtown.

That's for a resident. Where the maths is wrong, which I think is where he's going, is If we look at how it's written, a parking structure permit, sustainability of $3 per vehicle per month.

That's 10 cents a day.

Per vehicle per month. If I have a valet for one to 100 cars prepaid for six months in advance, is it 10 cents times 100 times six? Because the way it reads right now is it's 10 cents for 100 cars. The math doesn't explain where that 10 cents works out for valets because if it was actually $3 per month per car for the 100 vehicle limit to match what a long term would be, that's 100 vehicles times $3 times six months.

Well, they're assuming that if you buy a monthly parking permit for 30 days, 10 cents a day, you go in and out. Come in the morning, leave at night. The valet sounds like... doesn't matter whether they buy a two month permit a four month permit or six month permit at the end of that time period they're going to look at the number of swipes on the card and it's 10 cents a swipe so it's 10 cents a car no matter how many months they prepay it's 10 cents per car for the number of cars they parked during that time period so it is the same equitability He's shaking his head yes.

And I'm going to say these again were like sort of getting into the weeds here when I would prefer a discussion of the merits of the whole thing on a broader sense. And then, you know, again, if we say we don't like this, then all the nitpicking becomes irrelevant.

So you said you we would be the first talking about policy but haven't other communities around the world implemented. They're calling of congestion charges to reduce the air pollution in major cities.

Yes, and I would suggest to you that they're not apples to apples. So like New York's charging the congestion fee to support their transit systems. Right. But the even broader 30,000 foot goal is to get people to choose a different mode of transportation. Ultimately, at the end of the day, if we can get people out of their cars and walking instead of coming, driving their vehicles to the city and parking them, that would be a

So I understand that goal, but let's balance it with the function of downtown as a retail and restaurant hub. So you said what the APC's input was. Do we have the BSD's input?

Well, I went to the Birmingham Shopping District Executive Committee. They had many of the same questions, a lot about what we're going to spend the money on, which we tried to answer to the best of our abilities. But I guess at the time of that meeting, it seemed well received. I think it was... I think there was a general consensus that $0.10 is no big deal in terms of the impact of the fee itself. I think that's where they were mostly concerned. Initially, in the early stages when it was part of the broader rate increase, they were very much opposed because they did not want to see a broader rate increase. But when we pivoted to the simple $0.10 standalone fee, I think that, I don't want to speak to them entirely, but my In my view, they came around a little bit. And oh, forgive me, I think some of them also mentioned that that's a cool marketable thing that the BSD can use. A lot of tenants come in here with their own sustainability and climate action goals, and it'd be nice to see those reflected in city government.

How do you come up with 10 cents? Why not a nickel, why not 20, 25? I just tell you, when I park, I mean, first of all, I don't use ParkMobile because I think they're adding a lot of fees. And the vast majority of parkers, I believe, at our meters are using ParkMobile. And they're insensitive. Apparently to the difference in the cost between Park mobile and just putting your credit card into the machine It's a lot more expensive to use Park mobile a lot more than a dime more and I I would be interested in hearing those Specific numbers for me. I won't pay Park mobile I've been in the credit card business and they're just skimming money off the top a lot would I gladly pay a dime more I'd gladly pay a quarter more every time I park at a meter. No, and it's not going to Park Mobile, but it's going to the city and our sustainability efforts. So I wonder why you came up with a dime, which we've seen is going to produce around $400,000, right? A quarter would produce a million dollars, which we could get to those sustainability goals that much faster. And I'd surely rather see the money go into that

Park mobile, but anyway sure I think there's two answers for me in my own personal opinion I think on the more philosophical side. I think 10 cents is a good marketable Hey, we can do all of this work with a simple 10 cent a dime the smallest coin type fee in the city of Birmingham But I think the bulk of why I chose 10 cent 10 cents is the end figure of roughly 420 thousand dollars which is centered on the bolt Lansing case and And the three, how did you describe, I guess the three, what did you call them? Prongs, yes. The first being we can't just develop a fee arbitrarily or as a revenue generating thing. It has to be a regulatory fee for a regulatory purpose. So that was one. Two, it has to be proportionate. And as of right now, with what I've got planned in terms of spending, I think it's proportionate. Third... Of course, it must be voluntary. It's kind of unrelated to the $0.10, but... Okay. That's generally why I chose $0.10. It's because $420,000, to say it simply... So you chose $0.10.

The Sustainability Board did not choose $0.10? No. That was a staff decision? Yeah, I think that's what we brought them. I mean, I'm not criticizing you on that personally. I could see 20 cents and it wouldn't... What they were focused on was the end dollar amount.

We thought that was the good sweet spot in between four and six to get the things that we've got planned done. We also, as I should mention now, there's an ordinance amendment here to...

to be reviewed annually to make sure it is remaining proportional to our good our practices mister hey Going back to what you started with You said there are seven million visits and two and a half million parking transactions generated per year Then you talked about this is to encourage residents to not drive in town So we were a 9,000 household community If I drive into town, I'm driving with my wife. So let's assume one vehicle per household hits town every day, every work day. That's two and a quarter million parking transactions with every single household coming in here, which is not real. So now you've gone and turned us into a bicycle community. What about the rest of the two million transactions? Because it's not doing anything for those to reduce the carbon footprint, because the carbon footprint from vehicles is predominantly not coming from residents. We have a carbon footprint, but it's not majority. We have 7 million visits.

Commissioner Haag, several commissioners are expressing curiosity about what? I don't think the point of this is to stop people from driving. You're not going to stop somebody from driving by charging them 10 cents. The idea is to generate funds to offset the negative impact

He said earlier to drive people to alternative modes of transportation to reduce car usage by residents in the city. So I'm questioning, if that's the goal, what about the other people that are the 7 million visitors?

Could you confirm for us that the goal is not to directly... inhibit people or persuade people not to drive, but rather to offset the negative impact of their driving.

Sure, and I will get to that, but to clarify, the 2.5 million transactions is a real data point? I believe that.

I have no quibbles with the 2.5 million. It's just that your other statement of get people to stop driving their cars into town and use other forms of transportation might work within a walking radius. So, seven million visits from people that didn't live in Birmingham. That has no impact on the carbon footprint for the residents. You talked about two separate things, visits and reducing resident vehicle usage. So if we reduce resident, if we took that out of the equation, resident vehicle usage turned to zero, we still have seven million visits and probably two million parking transactions. So I guess... Where's the gain for the residents who now are inconvenienced? This is where I'm trying to understand this part of the equation. Do not misunderstand what I'm trying to say as far as the goal of trying to have an improved environment is good. But where is it happening that it doesn't happen at our expense? Because right now it's at our convenience expense. This is where I'm missing the piece of the puzzle.

And I think, if I may... whether I said it unclear not you're misunderstanding a little bit of what I brought up about residents so I wanted to make sure that I made the proportionality argument in that yes we've only got 22,000 residents here but there's some 7 million people generally coming to this city affecting our carbon emissions so it shouldn't be on the residents which is why I'm proposing a fund like this as opposed to asking you for give me 400 grand from the general fund annually I'm arguing that the residents shouldn't be on the hook for mitigating all those carbon impacts Everyone, all the 2.5 million parkers should be on the hook for that.

And I'm fine with that. I have zero problem with that. But the way you said it was to get residents to use alternative modes of transportation to come to downtown, which is therefore driving residents into a disadvantaged position compared to everybody else. I would say... That was where I had the issue. Because it was not going to affect so many visitors. Are you willing to retract that statement? No.

Sure. Thank you. Because I think we need to get back on track.

So the way it's proposed, every parker, no matter where they live, pays 10 cents. And that money can be used to reduce our carbon footprint by paying for mitigation measures. No matter who parked. Their $0.10 would help pay for EV charging stations, more trees, air sampling stations, whatever, all the things that are on your list.

Just another question within that. If we had 2.5 million parking transactions, how did we get $420,000 out of it at $0.10 per transaction?

Yeah, that math doesn't work. It's not even close. $2.5 million times $0.10 would be only $250,000.

$250,000. We're missing a couple of hundred thousand here.

perhaps I'll share the spreadsheet with you, but I'm oversimplifying it.

It's important that it be accurate. You and Aaron put your heads together and make sure the math is right. I'm going by not the 2.5 million number. No, you have to separate it.

There's about... maybe like 1.4 million transients, you times that by .10, then you take the monthly parkers, whatever quantity that is, I'll call it 2,000, then you do that math, times it by 12, and then the meter parking. The meter monthly. Is each one a transaction? Yes, so you pay for a monthly parking permit once.

That's one transaction, yeah.

So it's their host. Yeah.

You know, I think we're in the weeds, and we need to realize that, yes, we all want a sustainability committee, and we want it to be funded. Now, we do want to know where the money's going, but... And an enterprise fund is not the way to go. In fact, I would suggest on the other side of the legal coin that it could be illegal. And as such, we should do it out of the general fund. I only have 10 reasons why we shouldn't do it out of the parking assessment fund. Okay.

this is not coming out of the parking right that's what we've already heard testimony from the city attorney that it is legal so suggesting that it may not be legal I'm sorry that's just irresponsible and it's non factual unless you have some information that our city attorney doesn't have. That's out of line. The second thing is they've also testified that this money will not be going into The Enterprise Fund. Period. So to say that it's going to come out of the Enterprise Fund, you're contradicting without any evidence what they've just said. So, look, I appreciate that you may not be in support of this. You think it's great to have a committee, but don't give them any money. Or maybe you don't care about achieving the goals. I don't know what it is, but please, let's stick to reality here. It's legal and it's not gonna go into the enterprise fund so it can't come out of the enterprise fund.

Well, we have a problem in the parking assessment, I mean the parking committee and that is we don't know how much money we need and we're going to raise the rates for all our parking at some point And all that money should stay in the fund. It shouldn't have 10 cents going anywhere other than to, hopefully, we're gonna have a five-year plan for our parking district.

We don't have it.

We don't have the CIP, which is much longer. And we just got a treatise from Paul Reagan that says that we're 1,700 cars short. And if I may digress. You are digressing. And it's not appropriate. I'm sorry. Yes, it is. Because all the money should stay in the parking enterprise fund.

until we know that it can be spun off. Why didn't the parking committee raise rates when they were asked to? We're straying here and we need to stay on the question. this fee okay if you're opposed to the fee that's fine yeah but I think we'd all be looking for rational reasons why not made-up reasons such as it may be illegal or the money's coming out of the parking system it's not so I'm gonna call on Commissioner Kozlowski now all right so

I think this is a good idea. And I think we did our due diligence to make sure that we can apply the fee properly. And I think that this is a very good way to do this. I believe the economics term that they would use is internalizing the externalities of driving. When you drive, you create pollution, there's particulate emissions, there's various issues that costs that the public bears associated with driving that the driver is in charge for. And this is a way to charge them. And to charge them, as the mayor pointed out, frankly, an amount of money that I don't think most of them are even gonna notice, 10 cents. Yeah, and I was going to mention ParkMobile had the mayor not mentioned it. People are already paying fees in excess of 10 cents. I don't think the 10 cents is going to deter anyone's decision to park downtown. I don't think it is going to create an unreasonable burden on any residents. but I do think it is going to fund a lot of important stuff that I believe the residents want that was in the Birmingham Green Healthy Climate Plan that the commission approved and said, we want this stuff. And as Planning Director Dupuy pointed out, This is a wonderful way to bring people who use the city, who shop here, who work here, and who create some of these externalities, create these costs on residents. This is a way for them to participate in the mitigation of those costs through planting of new trees, through these air quality filters, through everything on this list. and yeah, potentially through a new multimodal plan that may give residents more opportunities for alternative modes of transportation. But yeah, I don't think the 10 cent fee is going to deter anyone, nor do I think that is the objective. I think the objective here is to say there are costs to the city associated with sort of hosting all of these cars, and there are environmental costs in particular, and now we are going to charge for those costs to help us offset them. I think it's a pretty straightforward approach to this problem, and I'm in support of it.

I'm very much on board with a lot of the things you said. Ten cents, nobody's going to notice. Absolutely on board with you there. Trying to do something better. We've all said that. Again, same page. The piece that I'm keying into, and you touched on it as well, and that's where I was interested in the 7 million visits per year. The goal is to have us as a community, the 22,000 residents, not be the subsidising of everything else that drives 7 million visitors, because today, fundamentally, that's what we do. We don't share in business profits, but we spend an inordinate amount of money to make an environment that businesses can thrive massively in, and yet we see nothing fundamental from it. The argument of, oh, we get higher taxes, big whoop. As soon as they've got something, it's capped by Headley anyway, so it's not actually that big of a gain. It's an intriguing pathway here, But one warning bell ringing in the back of my head is why are we the first ones? Because surely this would be more of a California's been charging down this pathway for a million years. Why haven't they tried this? There's a reason. So inside my head, I'm wondering, is there not a different mousetrap? Why do we not do what Detroit does or New York City does? There's a business tax. They can charge the 2% or whatever it is, however that works for working there. Why can't we do something similar? Because those are generally people that are coming in. Let's answer that question. This isn't a tax. It's not a tax, but I'm asking why can't we do a methodology like that because other cities in the state.

I think he said that nobody else in Michigan is doing it. She pointed out that New York City is doing it and others.

I think you said the country that I'm aware of. The country, yeah.

The question of whether we can do a business tax as the city of Birmingham or... As an alternative to this because that may be more aligned with existing precedent.

I don't think we're permitted to do that.

Well, I would also say...

Hold on, let her answer the question. No, and it would have to go through a different measure as well. It couldn't be part of this. I'm sorry. It couldn't be part of an ordinance. It would have to go to the vote of the people as well. And so I...

May I note that the businesses already pay a tax? It's the Birmingham shopping district tax which pays for flowers and lights and sidewalks shoveling and a variety of other things in the city that the residents do not pay for

I would say one answer to your question, why is nobody else doing it? Or why are we the first? Why are we the first? Because we're smart people. And we do a lot of things before other communities do. And that's why we're the most prosperous community in Michigan. Go ahead.

Were there any other... that the group considered to raise these funds? Did you look at other areas besides a 10 cent parking fee?

Yes, and thank you for the assist on this one because what I want to highlight is this is one piece of the funding puzzle. As I try to emphasize, all I can spend this on is the 24% carbon reduction that vehicles create. There's a whole other 76% bucket of community-wide carbon emissions. that we're going to have to solve. Other communities do millages. Ann Arbor does a millage. I think it's like one mill or something like that. That's a tax. There's also, of course, grants that you can use. But as I mentioned, I need something a little bit more stable or what I'm suggesting is I need something a little bit more stable. And I think that's also a reason why a lot of communities haven't done this because we all copy off of each other. I think most people saw Ann Arbor do a millage and think, Hey, well, let's try that first.

There aren't many communities that have a parking system and that many cars coming into the town every day.

In my colleague bar, I think there are other examples in the nation. I think you can let, perhaps, if you'd like to hear from them. Deb Horner has some examples for you that she pulled. But to answer your question, Bill, yes, and we're going to still talk about it because we're still going to need your funding. 76% more money. At least, yep.

Out of curiosity, the 22,000 residents just breathing, how much of the 76% do we generate by just existing?

Are you in town or out of town? I'm breathing in town right now. Are you huffing and puffing?

I'm not heavily breathing, but you haven't broken out what 22,000 people's breath actually equates to, because that's going to be a lot all by itself. Well, that's an inviolable number. You're not going to change it without killing people. That's the only way you reduce it. So I'm curious what the 76% is made up by, by people just living here.

You reduce it by mitigation efforts.

I think we all have furnaces.

We're not reducing only sources.

I just want to know what the existence of a human being contributes because everything after that is something that can be mitigated.

A human being who is heated and cooled in their home? No, just by breathing. Okay, come on.

So I like, as Commissioner Kozlowski stated, the idea that this puts the... proportionate burden on the people who come here from outside who are not already property taxpayers so that the people who visit here contribute funds to mitigate the pollution the carbon foot that they bring with them so I think it's equitable and fair in that manner and takes as you said the burden off of the residents to pay for all the trees and all the EV stations and other improvements we care to make and if it's legal My concerns are, you know, can we get the APC on board? Can we get the BSC on board? And is the education going to be appropriate? May I ask one nitpick question? Sure.

I forgot to ask this when I was making my speech. Go ahead. Because this is a detail. What's the deal with the two-hour free parking? Are they paying a dime or not?

They would not.

Two-hour free parking is going to remain, two-hour free parking. Great. Thank you for asking. We said in the last meeting you wanted to have a finance subcommittee, which we need to talk about, and that was one of the things to be addressed in it.

I don't want there to be friction because there's no friction right now.

I think there should be a bucket for the free parkers where they can put a dime in it and be encouraged, maybe like they used to put it in the toll booth. Anyway, should we... parking director.

So since it's coming out of my system, I just feel like I should. It's not. Well, I guess that's not. That's my comment. I am not just where I stand. I'm opposed to it. I don't challenge the legality. I don't.

Hold on. That's totally inappropriate. I'm sorry. I'm going to cut you off right there. City staff member doesn't stand up and say he's opposed to a well So we're checking on a dime Which I don't disagree.

It's the general public will not buy it an eyelash on it I feel like this is it's nobody would notice but at the end of the day Well, there's a 10 cents here and probably more specifically the three dollars on a monthly parking pass I feel like the general public is going to view that as a rate increase. So while it is 10 cents and it's consistent. Okay, I'm sorry. No, I'm saying perception.

Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. Okay, hold on a second. Before we hear from the BSD and the parking committee, if there's any member of the, and I think it's important to hear if we have representatives, and you're not the chairman, you're the administrator, right, for the BSD. But we also have the chair of the Sustainability Committee here, and they are the ones who brought this forward. So before we have people up here pounding on them in opposition, I think we ought to hear from them. But I also would like to hear from the public. So if there's anybody here, I see one member of the public standing there. I see another. I see a third. I'd like to hear from the public before we hear. Unless the public feels like they want to hear from the BSD and the parking committee and the sustainability committee first. I see. You're saying yes. You're fine. How about you, sir? I'd like to call on the sustainability chair. I think it's appropriate that she probably should have been part of the whole presentation from the beginning.

Hi, Deborah Horner, 1800 Pine Street, and I am the Sustainability chair for the environmental sustainability committee committee for the city I actually just had prepared comments. So do I get three minute? Like how do you want?

You're allowed to go.

All right. So the city has adopted a green climate plan It sets clear direction for sustainability climate action pollution reduction long-term environmental responsibility And it reflects your own strategic goal But adopting that plan really is only a first step and if we're serious about implementing it We have to be equally serious about funding it too often cities like ours have sustainability plans that fail because they're not because the ideas aren't good but because the funding is uncertain or it's inconsistent or it's dependent on long wait times for items taken up by the Commission and that we have seen much like this so our sustainability fee this fee is a proposal that helps avoid that problem by creating this steady dedicated funding source that will directly address the environmental impacts of vehicle use and vehicle infrastructure it' s actually the structure of this proposal that' s important exactly because it' s connected to parking that' s what makes sense cars are the major source of local emissions it' s a quarter of our emissions pollution impervious surface impacts and the drivers are the ones who should be paying to offset and mitigate those damages not all of us citywide this fee as if it would if we came to this commission for general fund money this fee aligns the source of the funding with the source of the impact. So I understand the concerns of the parking system that they have their own legitimate infrastructure capital needs. The maintenance of our parking structures and our parking infrastructure and their long-term capital costs need to be taken seriously. But this fee is not taking away from parking revenues. It's simply a fee that's collected with the parking revenues through that parking system. So it's an easy way to collect those Revenues from the people who are creating the carbon impacts I also understand the concern about setting a precedent for looking to parking related funds for other purposes But I believe those kinds of concerns can be addressed through clear policy guardrails that you can all Institute Dedicating this fee only to carbon emission and vehicle impact mitigation which the the ordinance does maintaining transparency in how it's spent and we have to make sure that parking is protected. We have to make sure that parking is protected which our commission does and which you see and ensuring the underlying parking funding remains responsible protected which I think commissioner host and the rest of you are very committed to also maintaining our parking in its funding and health. Birmingham really has an opportunity to lead here and I want to address something that came up in the discussion. Nick mentioned that we would be parking fees. The parking fees for people who are using the parking fees in parking. We don't necessarily want to use parking funds we need to keep our parking funds specifically directed to the servicing of our parking infrastructure but there are communities in other parts of the nation that are doing something like this parking in order to fund carbon let's see carbon mitigation on an other kind of funding of climate and sustainability work mostly there in Colorado so Boulder Aspen Durango Breckenridge all have these kinds of fees Pasadena California and Seattle Washington are also using kind of a parking revenue structure to do this kind of carbon mitigation work So although I would like to claim that we're the first, I think there are other examples out there where communities are trying to do this kind of work by using driving as a source of revenue rather than citywide source of revenue. But this would allow us to be a leader in Michigan. We can position ourselves as one of the more innovative communities in the state. potentially lead other communities to do this kind of work so I believe this proposal is creative it's targeted at a particular set of users who are making impacts on our community and it's forward-looking so we can do take these funds and use them to make the community better in ways that we've seen most residents are really interested in it also chooses a funding approach that's connected to the source of the environmental impact rather than a general tax on residents so for those reasons that's why I would come urge the Commission to support the sustainability fee, and I think it's a reasonable step to funding our city's green plan, which has goals that we can create real, measurable progress in. So thanks, that's my set of comments. Thank you.

I'm gonna, for you three, if there are any questions, I'll allow questions of the...

Thank you, Erica Bassett, BSD Executive Director. I just wanted to point out, Nick cited the report, our market data report. So it's 7 million visits, not visitors, and it's about 1.8 million visitors, and that does include people who live in the city and outside zip codes. So I just wanted to clarify that because that came up a couple times in people's comments.

That's it?

Yes.

May I ask a quick question about that? Yes. Does an office worker qualify as a visitor in that number?

Correct.

hi michelle moody I'm a resident 957 pleasant street I'm also here represented the representing the advisory parking committee and Nick did a nice job of trying to summarize what our input was but I'd like to take a couple of minutes and really give you a kind of a deeper overview on what was a multi-meeting discussion about this topic Our position is really grounded in first principles. The founding purpose of the system is to provide the infrastructure which enables residents, visitors, employees, businesses to access our downtown. Parking supports people coming in to dine, shop, work, attend events, and enjoy our parks. It's not simply a source of revenue. It's really a set of infrastructure that makes all this wonderfulness possible in a world where everyone has to basically move with through vehicles We are struggling a little bit with this notion that it's it's really separate from the parking system because you are going to be putting a burden on the parking system and the parking employees to generate the reporting and the data and and to manage the communications around this fee so it's not as cleanly separate in our minds at least and as it was for all of you. There is an administrative burden that all of this is going to place on the parking system. And imagine the calls they're going to have to explain that reason why when you put a dime in the meter, it no longer moves the time. Because the first dime you put in the meter is for this sustainability fee. In particular, we had a lot of concerns about charging for metered parking because of the randomness of the transactions and the kind of overburden on a very low coin transaction. I would also say that overall, the committee is really wrestling with some of the challenges that the parking system itself is facing right now. We don't have a long-term capital plan. we see the garages aging before our eyes we know that there is a desire and a lot of work going on to upgrade all of the garages but those projects have experienced delays through really no fault of anyone's or maybe collectively all of our fault but you know we we've been working on Chester for the last couple of years hope to get started on Peabody but not not happening yet and anyone who walks into the pierce garage tonight is going to see a lot of deteriorated concrete and if you would go to the roof at park you will discover a plywood wall wrapped around the whole entire top floor to protect people from falling over the rail that' s now a temporary structure that' s now multi years old. So there is a lot that needs to happen inside the garages themselves so that we can all feel really good about that infrastructure. The last engineering assessment is over five years old. It needs to be redone. The industry standard is to do those kinds of assessments every three to five years. So we're at the outside edge. of our last assessment and then as commissioner host mentioned and I think you' re all aware a resident Paul reagan has taken the zoning information and the occupancy information and created a view of what demand is. he is saying we're short parking spaces I think we all want to understand that assessment better and get really much more comfortable with it I'm not advocating for it here tonight but I would say that we are now we're in our report starting to track the number of days we have to shut the garages down because they're full and you're starting to see a lot more during the week peak time parking Situations where you can't find a space and can't get into a number of the garages so with that I just wanted to be really upfront and clear with you on You know our concern was really selfish. It was thinking about the parking system. We're not adverse to sustainability or the need to do things to Mitigate carbon emissions. Thank you.

Okay. Hold on one second any questions?

People are worried about coin transactions. It's not a majority of the transactions. Take them away. It's actually more work for us to go around and empty all the meters. Just go for a credit card or a mobile. Just get rid of that as much.

We wouldn't be the first one to do that. I have a couple questions for you because you started to get into topics that really are not related to the sustainability fee and I want to make sure I understand your objections to the sustainability fee. And I only heard two, really one, that it would place an administrative burden on the parking system or the parking department. That is the single substantive argument that I heard you make against it. Is that fair to say or did I get you wrong or is there something else?

We didn't see it as in the consumer's mind as being separate as everyone is positioning here that it was separate from the enterprise fund because you're going to be taxing infrastructure in the enterprise fund.

We're not taxing anything.

I meant that more philosophical.

Okay, but back to my original question. I want to make sure I heard you right and that there was nothing I missed. Your primary concern about this is the administrative burden and now you're adding that it's confusion. That it's not separate from parking. It is not separate from parking by design. We've heard the rest of the staff explain that it is directly tied to parking because it is the cars that are creating the problem we're trying to mitigate. So I want to respect the concerns of the parking committee and I want to make sure I got it. So your concern is that it's too much tied to parking And that it's an administrative burden, but that's a matter for the city manager, not the parking committee, to worry about the burden. And insofar as we're her boss, we're worried about the burden on her entire community.

And we're already counting the parking transactions. We're already counting those, reporting those.

So that's a concern that if you believe, do you believe that this would cause an undue administrative burden on the city administration?

No, I do not. We're already counting all of those parking transactions. Okay.

We're already calculating fees. And you suggested that we'd be getting a lot of calls maybe with people wondering why they were charged an extra dime or wondering why when they put a dime into the meter it didn't register any time. I'll tell you, I put quarters into the meter and they don't register time all the time.

I heard one other. Yeah, go ahead. One other thing that she brought up, which is one of my concerns, is the capital expenditure required, like Chester, with the temporary wall that's now kind of permanent, or park, right, sorry, that that was another concern.

Yes, I heard that but I'm confused because the City Commission and later on I will be asking the City Commission to review parking pricing because I believe it apparently wasn't at our direct Request that you did that back in December in January but you did do it and you decided to do nothing and My understanding is there haven't been any increases in parking fees in many years. There's been some Rejiggering of where where we charge things and how long how long we allow people to park but I mean, there's been huge inflation, and I only raise this because it's in our report. I don't think it's necessarily relevant, but he brought it up, you just brought it up, and you brought it up. If you're so concerned about... capital improvement needs, why aren't you more interested in raising the revenue or increasing the amount of revenue that's coming in from parking? Especially in view of the market dynamics comparing, for example, the cost to park in a structure in downtown Detroit, which is about twice to three times what it costs in Birmingham. Or meters to decks. Sure, whatever. We've talked about it.

So I tell you what, you're right. We'd love to come back and have a conversation about the benchmarking that Erin has done in terms of how our parking is priced versus the communities around here. I think that's a great discussion to have. We're not opposed to raising parking rates. What we have been saying is we need to have a clear view of what money is required and, frankly, the speed with which we can spend it. We're seeing a struggle right now to basically get a plan in place and get it implemented in a really rigorous way. So maybe we need more money, maybe we don't. I don't know. I know that the feedback... Obviously, the shopping district input has been they're uncomfortable with the rate increase because they want it to be competitive.

I did not hear her say that. She had an opportunity to say whatever she wanted to say, and she did not speak up.

Okay, I'm sorry.

I didn't recognize. Come on up then. Thank you, Ms. Moody.

We did come to APC with a statement based on rate increases back in January. The sustainability fee is a little bit different.

Okay, you need to be at the microphone, I'm sorry And and I want to I want if you could preface your remarks with a brief description of what the BSD is sure and how it Functions and where it who it represents and where it gets its money and all sure so first My name is Amy Polat.

I am the chair for the BSD and have been on the bsd for 12 years or so and have a building in downtown birmingham I am a resident of birmingham. The bsd is composed comprised of up to 12 members that either there are different parameters of what falls into bsd members but they could be business owners property owners residents within the district and we also have a resident outside of the district represented so it is a group of us that get together the bsd has its own assessment within the district the district is the downtown primary area there' s also a portion of the triangle district and lower Old Woodward. If you look at it on a map, it is very jig-jagged.

But we do have it outlined on our website and everything like that.

we have reviewed the sustainability fee and so I put together a state or we put together as the BSD put together a statement the BSD understands and supports the importance of environmental sustainability we do have some concerns pertaining to it The parking system was created to be financially self-sustaining program that provides accessible, fairly priced parking to its users. While the BSD board is not adamantly opposed to a nominal sustainability fee, there is a concern about the lack of parameters around the proposed program. So maybe tightening in on some of those parameters. Yep, that was my next question.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yep. so historically citywide initiatives have been prioritized and funded through the general fund the parking system was approved completely autonomous autonomously and initially funded by special event assessments of the businesses and has been maintained completely by the funds earned within the parking system using the parking system point of sale to generate revenue other than citywide using the bsd i guess parking system as a point of sale to generate revenue that would go citywide takes that revenue then outside so you are tech not saying taxing because i know that wasn't the right word but you are putting that burden on the bsd and then that money would be spent also outside the bsd so they're not saying that the money that the parking system would only be

This is not a BSD thing at all, but I want I'm plan to ask city manager Why the BSD was consulted on this? I mean, I'm not I'm not Opposed to hearing your opinion, but as far as weighing in in some formal manner I I don't understand that but then earlier in the meeting you asked what the BSD is the thoughts on it because I knew you were here and I knew that you wanted to speak and I'm not gonna I mean I am interested in hearing what you have to say I think it's informal it should be informal I don't think this is a matter and this is just my opinion that the BSD's opinion on this should carry a whole lot of weight you've made a couple of statements are you done I don't want to go ahead no go ahead um

it would be more of a concern if the amount was increased. second the bsd considers the 10 cent fee to be nominal however if that amount were increased and would no longer be nominal then there would be more concern over it. At the actually came up in our conversations if it was a 25 cent fee which was interesting because you had mentioned that too and they felt that that was not going to be nominal they felt that was going to be more substantial especially because we do have so many people that come in here to work and that adds up on them and however so thus if the concern would be that not that it's a nominal fee but at what point with those increases or potential increases go into effect so if it was approved we would request that it would be set for a time period be revalued in four years or five years or whatever the time period would be but that it's set for a detailed multi-year time period, and approaching that time period, then the fee would be re-evaluated against the projects that were completed, and their impact on the goals defined by the Birmingham Green Plan.

And I'll just interject, he said that would happen. Absolutely, but he said annually.

But he said that they would be re-evaluated for the funds, but not the impact on the goals.

I think he said that we would evaluate what we spent the money on. Did you not? I think she's right. Thinking back, yes. I can't imagine that you'd come to us and say, we want to increase it, and I'm not going to tell you what we've done with the money.

If I'm right, but I think what she's saying is... She'd like us to demonstrate how much carbon we're reducing as a result of our performance metrics. So it's not only, hey, cool, you did that project and you spent this much money. But what did it achieve?

Did we achieve our goals? That's what we're looking for. Did we achieve our goals? Absolutely. current project lacks proposed scope of work budget and timeline so for example I'm gonna kind of jump so that I can conclude this faster, but for example When we when the city put in place the white wayfinding committee the wayfinding committee Created their structure. They created their project. They created their time frame They requested budget and the budget was approved so right now we have ideas of initiatives we have. you know creating a fund but at what point will that fund start to do something what is that project time frame so that we can get an idea to like is this really going to be beneficial and in what time frame would it be beneficial.

I will ask you might have to come up do you intend to bring projects to the city commission that to spend this money? Or are you just going to spend it without asking us?

I will absolutely not be spending it without asking you. That is a very clear bureaucratic function and a responsibility of yours to expend funds. Now whether it's a... There's a difference between budgeted projects and non-budgeted projects. If I come to you in the February to May timeframe with a list of things and the money that I have and say, I'd like to do these five things in this fiscal year and you approve it, then I would refer to the purchasing guidelines as to when or when not to come to you. If it's a project that was not budgeted for, purchasing guidelines generally at the scale we're working at require me to come here. Our goal is to absolutely be transparent. We don't want to do this in the shadows. I think it's good to publicize.

Do you have a notion of when you will start formulating your priorities, coming up with the list of projects? Let's assume we approved this tonight and you knew you were going to have $400,000 at the end of the year. Would you be... publicly coming up with these projects, telling us what they are, would you do them all, would you have all four projects or five projects, how many are you gonna do, or would you pick them off one at a time and say, well, let's do this first, see how it goes, and then we'll come back with another one, or what's your plan there?

We'll be here in April at the budget hearing with a plan on how we're going to spend that next fiscal year's money. So 27, 28. Whatever money we generate, we're a little behind, I guess. Right, gotcha. Whatever that is, 380, 360, I'd have Project XYZ in the budget. And the budget hearing is a public thing.

Oh, yeah. And the budget document is a public thing. So you would have a page in there, sustainability, right? Yeah. Because it's a new fund, right? Just like last year. Last year on our budget we had a page that said sustainable fund, $10,000 in, zero out, right? Yes.

So it would be its own item on the agenda as well. Okay. Unfortunately, later in the day, but...

are you we have questions for you i think but sure do you are you done yeah pretty much what i the summary paragraph was just we're not necessarily opposed to the nominal 10 cent fee we would like to make sure that there are parameters around it that you know we know the budget we know what it' s going towards that type of thing just like we had just like the city has done the commission has done with other projects and other committees and then the only other piece is that I would. We would ask that it would be longer than at least this 10 cents would be longer than a year at least put it in for 2 to 3 years so that it doesn't the concern is it gets started it goes in at 10 cents then we have parking lot increases or parking rate increases and then this goes up again and all of a sudden we have employees and businesses the businesses field some of that cost of what our employees sometimes pay they have to end up paying so again while we're getting national tenants in here we still have a lot of small businesses in here and it's what makes us different than a mall small businesses are not made of high capital. That' s what gets people coming down here and it' s very important to realize those small businesses they are not made of high capital. A lot of these businesses do not have the high revenue streams and high profit margins that people may think they do. I think we need to be careful of that especially for the small

Thank you. So I have a quick question. So in your conversations in the BSD, did the businesses feel that this was a marketing message to promote their business or was that not discussed?

not a marketing if you' re speaking about the comment earlier that was made not a marketing message to promote the business what it does is there are national tenants that ask about what we are doing what the city is doing and what we are doing to And so that is asked frequently by a lot of the larger national tenants. They're going to ask what's being done. So it's not necessarily a marketing aspect, but it is something that would be spoken to by potential companies that would come in. Because it would be to answer their question.

Well, because they can't achieve their goals unless we're doing something. Right. Because they have to count. One would hope in a positive sense.

Yes. Well, I started out saying, well, let's workshop this and then mull it. I don't know what the pleasure of the commission is. There are still other members of the public who want to comment. Oh, I'm sorry.