City Commission - Regular Meeting

Calling to order the City Commission Special Meeting Workshop of Monday, August 10th, 2026. It's 6 p.m. We're in beautiful Birmingham City Hall. Welcome, everyone. Roll call, please.

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

Absent.

Commissioner Host?

Here.

Commissioner Kolb?

Here.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Here. Okay, we have a presentation from the city manager and a discussion on public-private partnerships.

Yes, and Alex, can you put it up on the screen if you don't mind? The clicker should be ready. I've got the clicker.

Clicker is ready.

Okay, there we go So yeah, I just have a very quick PowerPoint presentation. It's like five or six slides long. I'm just gonna go over it So we can have so you understand the context of the discussion then we'll come back because there's two particular issues that I think we need clear Direction from the Commission on okay. So to start with public-private partnerships, I Think we've talked about them before. Let's see if my clicker works. I there we go excellent okay so we talked about public private partnerships before what are they their collaborative agreements between a local government and the private sector right so that we can each bring our strengths together and we can get something done that serves the benefit of the public and we can you know hopefully when we combine with the private sector we use some of their strengths which you know private equity efficiency technology things that they can do a little faster maybe and more efficient than we can. But basically you can see from this diagram here that there has to be a lot of agreement up front as to what it is we want and so what we' re here today to talk about is one of the royal blue segments on that chart basically the political commitment to a delivery through a public private partnership because if we're going to do it we need to have a clear grasp on what we want to do what we expect out of a developer what we're prepared to give them in exchange for what they will give us and then have a clear process to move through it. To start we need to talk about what is a priority public benefits? What do we want? The bottom question is what outcome does the city want the public private partnership to deliver? what do we want do we want extra parking do we want redevelopment of underutilized sites do we want redevelopment of parking lots to include parking and or other uses do we want you know some additional green space park space Plaza space do we want infrastructure improvements whether it be at a certain intersection or a certain street or in an area all of those things are all benefits that you could derive from a public private partnership so we want to talk about what benefits we want to see out of the deal. So the second part then is in order to once we know what it is we want we have to be clear on what it is were willing to to get that benefit so for instance you know the biggest things are what are we willing to do some communities do tax abatements I' m not suggesting we do tax abatements but that' s one thing a developer has access to public property that' s something they can' t buy on the open market because we don' t sell that property unless we go to a charter amendment and we' re not proposing that but if you enter into a long-term lease that gives them the stability they need to do a development over a long-term and we get to control it so we still get what we want which is our vision for whatever that particular site is and we still have the a cheaper land cost I guess is the best way of saying that and Then what other things are we willing to give are we willing to give extra height? Because if they're if we're gonna ask them let's say to provide two levels of public parking on a site And we know that you can't really fit that within our five-story regulations, and I'm not saying we should do this I'm saying this is an example of something we could do and in order to get two levels of public parking we might need to give them an extra two levels to do the private uses that they might do whether it's office or retail or residential. We might want to change our use regulations for instance downtown we allow five stories and we dictate first floor has to be retail in most areas no more than two floors of office. Then residential so you could change that office requirement You could give them extra office space if that would help them to fund the additional parking right for instance These are all things that we could provide to them also We could have an expedited review process priority plan review priority sending them to the different boards whether it's the Planning Board or the City Commission or both and and so basically we want to talk about what are we willing to Contribute to this agreement and to what extent because you know for instance Let's say let's take the biggest one height right if we're willing to give them an extra floor of height and we're asking for public parking spaces is three is one floor going to give them the return that they need in order to provide that 300 public parking spaces and have it work in the pro forma of their development right so these are the questions and this is what the city commission's goal is you guys set the policy objectives right so you need to determine a what public benefit we've said before we're committed to doing a public private partnership solicitation and going out to private developers and seeing what they're willing to come back to us but before we do that I think it's very clear that we need to decide what the vision is the benefits that we want to see what we want to see potentially where we want to see it or we can be open and let them come to us with their innovative ideas from the marketplace right and then what are we willing to give and what do we expect if we give one extra floor of height for instance what do we want 100 parking spaces 200 parking spaces all of these things are going to matter in the pro forma of the development because if we're only willing to give one floor and I'm picking the easy example what does that do to their numbers? Does it make it something that is going to be a partnership that' s going to give them what they need and us what we need? These two questions are what we' re going to focus on tonight. What do we want to see? What are the public benefits? What' s our vision? What are we willing to as we move forward I think we talked before as you know we hired plant moran and we' re going to use them and we will have them at future workshops or discussions because basically they' re the experts that they put the money they quantify all of this information they put the value on what is the benefit we' re seeking how much is it costing a developer to provide that what is the contribution that we' re willing to make like if we do a long-term land lease does the developer needs a 50 year term or 99 year term in order to get financing for the project and then what for every contribution that we offer how much benefit does it give us they would then once we decided what we want in terms of public benefit and what we' re willing to give then we go to them and have them quantify all that put monetary amounts on all of that and come and show us how deals could be structured to give us what we want based on how far we' re willing to go in terms of offering some type of contribution whether it' s land or height or density or what have you. And then if we want to go out to RFP for public-private partnerships like we talked about before We want to have all of this laid out so we can lay it out and we're really clear to developers when they come in with a proposal and Then we would also have plant Moran come in and review any proposals that we solicit right so they would do a detailed dive into the numbers and we want to go but they don' t get to tell you what your vision is as a commission for what you would want to see out of a public private partnership so I' m just going to go back to this screen and leave it open for discussion so I think we need to start here what is it that you want to see out of a public certainly heard people talk about additional parking downtown you know there's always the broadening the array of housing options that are out there do we want to activate a street all of these things if a month if I may thank you

So I wanna be clear on the second question. The first question is kind of open-ended and we can throw out anything we want in terms of what kind of benefit we're looking for. When it comes to what we're willing to give up, I want to make it clear in case the city manager was not clear. We're not today being asked to decide how many extra floors we might be willing to give or whether there should be a tax abatement or how long a ground lease should last for. There are a couple of things, though, that if we're not willing to do it, so it's really a binary yes or no on the ground lease. If we're willing to entertain the idea of a ground lease, then we can move forward. If we're not, then we might as well not even move forward, right? Because it won't work. That's end of the road. Now, let's say we say, so that simple question, yes or no, we're willing to talk about it. I don't know, for example, is it 50 years, 75 years, 100 years? Which piece of property are we talking about? Are we willing to have a ground lease on anything, or are there certain properties that we want to talk about a ground lease on? That's one question. Pretty much, pretty simple. The question of what we want to get out of it, great. The other question of what we want to give up, that's more, that's looser, it's deal specific. But truly, I think if you're not willing to give somewhat more density, some more density, If you say our 2016 plan is our 2016 plan and even the public property within the central business district or down by lot six must stay no more than five stories, I think... if we're not going to give that, if we're not going to give more density, higher, some extra height, we got to figure out something else we got because the ground lease ain't going to cut it. Not for much. You're not going to get much out of a ground lease. This, uh, this I know from enough conversations I've had, uh, So it's almost like, yeah, we're willing to talk. Depends on the project. Let's see what it is. Let's move forward. If you say no to that, it depends on where. I would say the same thing.

I'd be willing to have a conversation about Triangle District or the train district, but Central Downtown, no. It's as dense as it can get, unless we're going to add another garage or we get the developer to add another garage.

That's part of the thought. So let's take a property. It could be a hypothetical property or you could say, let's talk about the Pierce Street structure or North Old Woodward area. Either one, there's the potential going underground, going up, to put in... So you might say, this is just a hypothetical. We want... At least as much parking that's already there, we actually want to increase it. So let's say there's 750 spaces. We want 1,000 public spaces, plus we want you to park whatever development you propose there. So if you propose office, you propose residential, whatever you propose, you have to park it there in addition to giving us extra parking. How high do you have to be? Or how low do you have to go? Or what do you need out of us? What do you need from us beyond the ground? If we're willing to have those conversations, then we can move forward with a whole lot of other questions like, well, do we want to just invite public-private partnerships for any of these properties? Or do we want to focus here or there or here and there but not there? Right? Just like you said, depends on where. And it can get pretty complicated. and probably costly to evaluate if we just open the door to anything. But, I mean, we don't have to send everything to Plant Moran. Plant Moran would love to come in and handle everything for us. And I think, and I hope you'll agree, that we've got enough competence on this commission and in the city staff to look at what comes in and say, maybe, nah, wow, whatever. And then pass that along. So I'm going to shut up. Yes, please.

I think that the process we discussed last time involved that. That there would be an initial proposal and that city would look at it and maybe involve the commission and if there was general agreement that we thought it was worth pursuing then we would start running the meter at plant Moran but not automatically I do want to disagree or take issue with the term you're using what we want to give up I don't look at it as giving up it's what would we would contribute and I think we are what we're trying to do is develop a menu of options that we are willing to consider. Obviously, site specific, project specific. The public property is not technically covered by the zoning that is in place for all the other buildings. I would be willing, personally, to look at additional height, but only if it was equivalent to additional floor you know one floor gets you two or maybe two floors get you one we'd have to work that out but decide on the side of the building but you could get more parking more public parking I think might be worth a trade-off because parking is very expensive to build it's not unreasonable to think that we might want to look at some of the decks for example the ones that are not have not been repaired yet that are to say If you're willing to replace that, and you're willing to give us more spaces, and as you said, you're gonna park yourself, that might be a win-win-win solution. I'm also not opposed to a long-term ground lease. We already do long-term ground leases around town, the triangle by the old Hunter House and things like that. I think we had one example of the old, you know, the original North Old Woodward project. that went down in flames. And I don't think that people were necessarily opposed to a ground lease. What they were opposed to, what I was personally opposed to, is that there was no benefit to the public that was equivalent to what the project was originally going to be, which was back when RH was going to be there. They were building... They were going to replace the deck, but it was going to basically be connected to and serve RH. It was going to be almost a private enterprise that benefited that. And it had no public benefit as far as... improving access to the riverfront or community spaces that I thought were equivalent to the amount of money that they were going to Recoup, so I don't think that the idea is bad. I think that that project You know went down in flames because it was grossly Imbalanced and did not benefit the public to the degree that it should have so personally I'm willing to put Looking at density and looking at long-term ground leases and on the menu project specific.

Yeah, that's what we're here for. This isn't a particularly helpful thing to say, I guess, but I'm open to pretty much anything. I feel like at the end of the day, it's gonna be deal specific and somebody's gonna come with an offer and the numbers will either look like a net benefit to the city or they will not look like a net benefit to the city. But none of the things that we discussed here today strike me as like red lines that I would refuse to cross. It would just depend on what the benefit looks like relative to our contribution.

I have nothing to add. Yeah, so the one comment I would make is I think instead of casting a huge net over all of Birmingham, we should pick an area that we're going to focus on. So maybe we can get three or four different proposals from different organizations that come in that we can then assemble a little bit and say, well, he's going to give us five floors. He's going to give us two floors of parking. Now we've got something. Let's put them there.

And now we've got the nucleus of something special. Do you mind if we continue the conversation into what he's talking about? Because it sounds like You know, it sounds like we got the answers that you're looking for. And one of the things we talked about was do you do a catch-all, like just bring it on, or do you say certain sites? So the sites are pretty clear, I think. The parking decks that are over 50 years old that are, you know, having trouble or... Not having trouble. They're over 50 years old. We haven't updated them yet. Pierce, Park, and North Old Woodward. Now, we've done some work on North Old Woodward, and it's an enormous piece of property. Now, I think when we talk about these three, there's probably some prep. Okay, and then you have Lot 6. Everybody know what Lot 6 is? Down by the farmer's market. That's Lot 6. You almost want to have staff do a report on the pros and cons of each. We can kick it around. Pierce is right in the middle of town. No other than Merrillwood, no real adjacent residential. And it's one of the decks that's sort of full. I want to point out this is not an answer to any parking, you know, this is a long-term partial answer to the parking issues that we have. North Old Woodward, certainly. It's three times the size of Pierce, I think. It's four and a half, four point something acres. The site, for sure. Yeah, the site. And so a lot more potential, maybe, with that. It could be more interesting for a developer to develop on that, to build a path through it and a couple different... Oh yeah, I think so. And even go down. Yes. And, well, you can go down on both sites, but you get a lot more for every level down you go at North Old Woodward. And, but, there's also residential adjacent. There's the river adjacent, which probably, I mean, I think during the previous development proposal, they probably dealt with all the eagle questions that would arise doing, and so did Brookside.

yet because there is a there's a flood plain back there you know we have to look at that but also it's an opportunity to because that whole view and river area is not open to the public to see you go down there you look at a fence and you can't even see the river so that could be a benefit to open that up and make it Part of the public experience, if it's a plaza or access down to the river.

And then Park Street, and I'm going to just say a couple more words and then shut up and let you guys discuss. Park Street's interesting because it was once, first of all, Park Street didn't exist at one time. It was a Park Street and where the Park Street deck is was a surface parking lot. And now we have an alley and Park Street and the deck. So when you think about the Park Street property, you've got to include the alleyway. And you may even say, well, if we're going private, if we're bringing private people in, should we talk to the property owners with frontage on the north side of Hamilton? Now that's a pretty big chunk of property. And I've heard people advocate vacating Park Street because it's just part of the old ring road. I don't know if that makes any sense at all, but it's certainly an interesting potential. The easiest one to do among those would be maybe... Lot 6, because it's empty, there's nothing there. And Pierce, which is pretty simple, it's just a chunk of land. We own all of it. It doesn't have the river and all that. But anyway, so we could go out and say, any of those? Or we could say, we only want you to focus on this one.

I think all four of those are interesting questions. just to see what people have in mind. I also think, do we want to see development in Triangle and Rail? Yes, but we don't own any land there, which is a problem. We've talked about that for years. We would have to buy stuff. And there are grossly... Derelict style underutilized we've had demo issues Over there, but people are just aggregating that land and sitting on it waiting for something to happen Although Lincoln yard is for sale.

I don't know what you're asking, but I think any time Land that goes on the market in either of those districts we ought to be looking paying attention How big is it? What's the price? What could we do with it right now? In the meantime, I mean, we're not going to run a restaurant there, right? And we're probably not going to redevelop. No, it's across the street from the ice rink.

We do own the DPS yard and the fire station, but we're not going to really get rid of fire station one or the DPS yard. Could we utilize it a little better? Maybe, but it doesn't give you as much option as you do some of the other sites.

Just because of the size?

The size and the use that we need it for as well.

Is there like an obvious zoning map or something where we can just see every parcel the city owns in the city. Oh, that the city owns?

That the city owns.

Right, because we're talking about what potential sites are we looking at. And I agree that the parking garages are sort of the most obvious ones. They're big. They're downtown. But I think that we do own other pieces of land that when we think about some of these other projects, parking takes up a huge amount of space. So you need a huge lot. have some kind of supplemental police station. I don't know, maybe you need less land, maybe we have something already, or we could cobble something together with a piece of property that we already own that we could then For a police station? Yeah, or an auxiliary police station.

Or you could say that we want a police station at the Pierce Street property. Sure, I'm just saying it would be good to know what parcels we have.

Most of them are small.

They also do that parking lot over there on the back side of Shane Park. Very small.

Yeah, no, that parking lot's very important to people. That's why it's there instead of it being all parking. That was a compromise instead of going underground for parking, which would have ruined the aesthetics of the park and been four times more expensive, you know.

underground spaces. So the significant lots that we own and I'm not advocating redevelopment of them or development of them. There's two on Southfield Road right by just north of 14 and then there's the one near Kenning Park right on the other side of the little square northeast corner of.

And Parks and Rec has looked at that several times for several uses and even net to add parking and the city keeps Engineering keeps telling them no because there's so many utilities Under that piece of property really yeah tons. They didn't even want parking there Because we looked at that

And then all the parks, which I'm not suggesting we redevelop the parks, but all the parks we own, that's the vast majority of our public land. And I think the public has spoken many times that they don't want to convert any park land. So then we have the golf courses.

Yeah, there's a little piece across from Manor Park. There's a corner that people are very passionate about. parking lots and structure sites are definitely the most

the low-hanging fruit, for lack of a better word, because they're bigger sites, and they're not right immediately in the middle of a neighborhood, they're not converting parkland, you know, all of those things.

So Ferndale did sort of a PPP thing for the DAP. You know, it was a surface lot, and now it is a multi-use. It's got retail, it's got some civic space, and then it's got parking. And so they did a similar...

thing to to redevelop a spot up space get more parking and get more retail and civic uses so as long as we're talking about parking or you know is that so city manager has given us several sorts of things that we might want additional public parking more housing options like if we said smaller units whatever Police station. Parker Plaza space infrastructure could we could we just accept cash. It's not a thing that could somebody say look. I give you $10 million go to a few streets.

and let me do whatever I want here. Well, whatever. It would be a negotiation.

Like we would just lease them the ground for money and then we do whatever we want with the money.

Is that a thing? Is that even legal and possible?

I want to say we did do something similar on a smaller scale in the Triangle District where we gave somebody an additional... square footage if they paid money into a parking fund. That's kind of similar, but on a smaller scale.

That's in the ordinance.

Yeah, it is. But it's, you know, we've had some issues with it, to be fair. But it's in the ordinance.

Yeah, it's in the ordinance, yeah. I think you're better off with a coupled partnership of the land owned by the city for development for the dual purposes is... the manager is outlined.

So what are the thoughts about the kind of public benefit we want in return for what we give? One, three, six. Hold on. One, three, and five. on that list. So additional public parking. Yep. Are you focusing on a police station or are you... No, civic facilities.

Put in a new pool and maintain it for a decade. Just for argument's sake.

Okay.

And infrastructure. Yes. Those would be my three. I mean, I don't know of any underutilized areas.

Well, a surface parking lot is an underutilized area. Oh, okay.

Well, yeah. Well, you would get that.

You would get both if you put... And keep in mind with lot six that there is a very large floodplain area controlled and that lot floods.

Well, I would expect that if there was a development on that lot, we would solve that problem once. The developer would solve it, yeah. Right. Like, if you were building there, couldn't you do whatever needs to be done?

Don't we have a project that we decided not to do because of the cost?

You'd build the river to go. Or retention tanks.

I know, like for instance, is it 856 North Old Woodward? It took years to get somebody to put in a development there just because of the parameters. Where?

The Pearl? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, I I can remember for years trying to market that to people. Hey, you want to do something here? You know, but it was it's a tough site. There's a slope there It's in the floodplain there was contamination from uses to the north all of those things So but that was a privately owned site, right? But the floodplain does cause a lot of issues in the back there if somebody has a good idea and they think it's worthwhile they'll figure it out and

Do you guys agree that those are some of the things we'd be looking for?

Sure. I just want to mention when I found out that the Varsity Shop, which, by the way, is right through you, Mr. Mayor. Used to be. Yes, it used to be. The owner gave us $10,000 for the little park between their building and the Pierce deck, and I thought, how gracious of them to do that. And then I found out that the parking shortage on that building is 50 cars. So $10,000 was not a nice enough donation.

Just for the record, to clarify, when you say the parking shortage, what are you saying? On the Varsity Shop.

They did not receive a parking variance, so they're not short on their parking.

So, I want to make sure we're dealing in fact.

Well, the point is it's a five-story building and all it was required to do is have two parking spots.

How many residential units are in there?

Because the penthouse.

There's one residential unit? Yeah. That's all they're required to have? Correct. So, there's no...

My point is a $10,000 donation was chump change, whereas for a while I thought this was a lovely thing to do.

All right, I'm not focused on the $10,000 donation. I'm focused on your assertion that there was... There was some deficit. What did he say? Shortage. Shortage? Is that the word he used? Shortage?

For that location, you only need to provide parking for the residential unit. Okay, that's correct. Two spaces for one unit.

That's all that's required. So let's be clear on when you say there was a shortage and suggest that somehow that $10,000 donation was made... for them to get approval based on some non-existent shortage. There was no shortage, let's be clear, and the city attorney can confirm that. There was no payment made in return for any consideration made. So let's be careful about accusations, about being factual. Now, it is your assertion, I assume, that they created a demand of, what, did you say 50 spaces? 50 cars. That you think that they're bringing 50 cars into the town. Is that essentially what you're saying? According to our square footage requirements. Well, you'd have to look at... the actual use and see how many people are in there and how many cars are coming in. That's what really matters. It doesn't matter what standards we apply to some other part of town. If we were to apply those standards we'd have Adams Square parking lots all over the place. Part of the reason we don't have Adams Square parking lots all over the place, and we're getting a little off topic here, that we understand how parking works and how their shared parking and how a development like that would put extra load on the parking system but not necessarily to the extent that the parking requirements that we have outside the central business district would, I'm losing my, I'm sorry. Okay, the point is, right? That's your assertion, okay? There's no, and I'm going to correct it. It's not a shortage. There's no shortage of parking. They didn't pay any money to get anything in return.

It was a donation. But I'm pleased you brought up Adams Square. We actually haven't mentioned that specifically. There would be a perfect spot for a public-private partnership.

Well, maybe you can speak to the owners. There are two owners of Adams Square and bring them to the table. That would be amazing. That would be a true contribution. Do we own the post office land?

No, we don't own any of the property.

No, it's federal.

Land doesn't have to be the only thing we contribute, the use of land. We still could contribute some other.

That parcel from end to end, including the post office? In that case, the private would be giving up the land. Right. And the public would be contributing to some development there.

Yeah. In exchange for a benefit, whatever that we might want to see there.

So I hear, is there any more? We have plenty of time left. I hear, what was it, one?

One, three, five, I think. One, three, and five. Additional parking, construction of civic facilities, and infrastructure improvements. Is that one, three, five? Yeah.

Yeah, not that we would, the others might.

The others might be an opportunity to squeeze in, but for priorities. One, three, and five. All right. And I would also say one other thing on priorities. I think lot six in North Old Woodward would be the location priorities for me.

Lots and lots of considerations once you take one of those properties out of service. You've got two years before those parking places are replaced.

Just the existing, never mind the additional.

Have you heard, have you gotten answers that you wanted or needed?

Yes, I'm sorry, we're back to public benefits, yes.

Everything, the whole thing. I heard ground lease is possible.

Ground lease is possible and I heard from several of you that some regulatory flexibility might be in order too, site specific, project specific. So yes, I think that answers the policy questions because before we go down this road and invite people to give us partnership ideas. If we're not clear on what we want and what we're willing to contribute, then we're just wasting our time.

I will also say that we need to be fairly resolute. Now, she hasn't asked for a vote, and we're not necessarily going to vote on this, but certainly once we start talking to developers and making decisions about how we're going to proceed, we can't be changing our mind about stuff. We've got to know where we stand and move. have all the information we need to make those decisions, make those decisions and then be a good faith partner. Any other comments from the commission before we get public comment? Okay, we'll open it up to public comment.

612 Davis Avenue, I'm not a good singer Now I just had a quick question I'm coming tonight as a resident But I do have a question about the library and the administration contract that we have with the ongoing with the city I just a couple of things with there's a couple new commissioners here. Just a little I back in 2020 December 2024 January 2025 city came to the library and wanted to renew a new administration contract because it was way overdue ours expired in 2013 and what they were paying is far less than what you're currently paying now for salaries and everything that the city has to do and as as everybody knows since COVID everything's a lot more expensive so They came to the library. We have a discussion. They are currently working with the city, but we haven't heard anything from the city since April 21st about the contract. And I just didn't know. And hey, I know you guys have been really busy with other projects in the city, so I totally understand. She'll address it. But I just didn't know the timeline of when we can maybe... Can we let her address it? Yes.

Well, there has been work going on in the background between attorneys. Library attorney, city attorney, back and forth drafts of various agreements. And I think we're pretty much almost there in agreement and looking forward to having what we hope will be maybe one of our last meetings to... cross the t's and dot the i's. Is that fair to say, Mary?

Yes, and I think it's also fair to say the delay is not the fault of the city, nor the fault of your attorney. Your attorneys have been working very hard, and they've been really nice to work with, and they're very good and fair negotiators, but those things take time so that we do it once and we do it right, so we never have to go through this process again.

There's a lot more technical things behind it too as we talk about if we're sharing benefits and payroll systems and all of this and so we had to do a lot of a lot of Deep times.

I agree and I appreciate it. I you know when I first um, you know I I think it's very important that we have a very good working relationship with all the different aspects of the city departments and the library I wanted to be always want to have a very good working relationship with the city because we value what you do and we are a partner to make sure that birmingham is people that come to our community a great feeling of what we've been able to produce so I appreciate you all I really appreciate the hard work I know that you've been very busy with other things but I just I just wanted I didn't know if there was a timeline it's been going on and I will tell you we want to avoid this from coming up you know in five years and ten years and so on

So we're trying to lay it out in all of the agreements to be very clear what we're agreeing.

I appreciate your due diligence and you're looking into this and I look forward to resolving it and working together in the future. I really appreciate everything. Thank you. Thank you.

David Bloom, Birmingham resident. I have some comments to make regarding the public-private partnership discussion, and then I have a separate public comment to make. In terms of the public-private partnership discussion, I'm glad this discussion is happening. I think that before any significant large-scale development in this community, or even significant moves on public-private partnership, we need to get a handle on the parking situation, and described in mr. Reagan's recent report whether you agree with it whether you disagree with it it does have some serious implications for development if that report is correct that needs to be addressed in terms of public-private partnerships in general I think there are two properties that deserve significant attention right now the Y property and the community house i think that is well intentioned as the idea of the community house foundation is. If there' s some opportunity to have a public private partnership with poultice which wanted to buy the property given a 99 year lease let them put their name on it have some conditions that they adhere to the property can be used for the public benefits in birmingham they can run it they can use their capital and their know-how and it would be easier for birmingham there would be more money behind it And maybe we could have a better institution there with very little risk to Birmingham residents. I also think that there's a restaurant there. It's hardly ever used. There's an outdoor space. Call it the Birmingham Burger Bar. Lease it out to people or as pop-ups. Sell beer and wine there. Have a social district and allow people to take their beer in the park and their burgers. you can have that place hop in three four nights a week during the summer if anyone here has been to buns and patties in Berkeley that place is open till like 1 2 in the morning and the place is always busy the food is great we could have those people here spending money in Birmingham contributing to the community house welfare And it might be something worth to continue and then one of the items on that list that isn't was not endorsed by the commissioners is It's something on broader housing options and I think that senior people might benefit from Senior housing good senior housing is expensive We do have some facilities in this community It might be nice to have some type of affordable housing for seniors or more where Birmingham residents that want to downsize or leave their homes could have an alternative place to go and be in the community. In terms of my public comment regarding public comment, This is on sustainability, and there's an old saying you've probably all heard of, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The idea of sustainability, carbon neutral zero, those are very well-meaning, noble things. it's also pretty unrealistic first of all anyone that saw the paper over the weekend about the oakland county millages for police and fire that failed we have a difficult economy now it's harder for younger people to find jobs And those communities didn't want to pay for police and fire, and now those communities don't know what they're going to do. So the idea that Birmingham residents and people that come here are a fountain to tap for fees, taxes, whatever you want to call them, I think is a mistake. Anyone that thinks that these sustainability things are a good idea or going to work should check out a podcast from two weeks ago on Trigonometry with Scott Tinker. who's a climate change expert and he debunks, he does believe that there's climate change and what he said is that Europe moved to carbon neutral maybe 20 years ago and there's been no economic growth. Great idea, let's shut down the coal power plants, let's shut down the nuclear power plants. What happens? The production moves to China and India where they don't have those regulations. People feel good that they're doing those things and the carbon is just coming another place in the world and it's still it's still here So the idea that you're gonna do something meaningful It's nice to think that but you're gonna be taxing people and spending money to think that we're doing something useful and beneficial and it's not and I would encourage you to check out that podcast and then back in 1995 Thomas Sowell wrote book called the vision of the anointed self-congratulation is a basis for social policy I would all check you to I would all encourage you to check that out as well it's nice to have well-meaning policies you guys want to help the public you want to serve your community and some of these ideas sound really good but when you start to apply them and put them in practice they don't pan out thank you

Thank you. Any other public comment in the room? If you're online, please use the raise your hand function. Seeing no public comment, bring it back to the commission. Does anyone have anything further to say about private partnerships? If not, I would certainly entertain a motion to adjourn this workshop.

I have one question. Weren't we going to develop an application page that people could fill out? if they're interested in a PPP, like an entry point? And are we still working on that? Yes. With that, motion to adjourn.

Second. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you.

Opposed? No.

to the regular City Commission meeting of August 10th, 2026 at 7 p.m. in beautiful downtown Birmingham City Hall at 151 Martin Street. Please join me in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Ms. Bingham, could you please call the roll?

Mayor Ballard?

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Here. Commissioner Haag is absent. Commissioner Host?

Here.

Commissioner Cole?

Here.

Commissioner Klosak?

Here. Thank you. We're going to move to proclamations, congratulatory resolutions, awards, appointments, resignations, and confirmations, administration of oaths, introduction of guests and announcements. I'm going to, with the City Commission's consent, flip of announcements and appointments and go straight to appointments. Would that be okay? Yes. Okay. Well, we have an appointment tonight of Police Chief Ryan Kearney. We're very proud to do this. Help me out. What do we do?

well we' re going to swear him in first of all that he is my appointment I did interview him and I talked to several of the other police captains in looking to fill former police chief captain Kearney for the new police chief position he's got extensive background from the schooling his experience here his staff and command classes that he's taken all of the things I outlined in the memo so it is my recommendation that you bless essentially the appointment of captain soon to be chief Ryan Kearney as the new police chief.

So this requires a motion. It does. And are there any questions from the commission regarding this appointment or your advice and consent? None.

I would like to make a motion adopting a resolution to confirm the city manager's appointment of interim police chief Ryan Kearney as police chief and direct the clerk to administer the oath of office to Chief Kearney.

Second. All those in favor? Aye.

Enthusiastically.

Opposed?

Chief Kearney is joined by his wife this evening to share in the honor. Both of his children are engaged in their after-school activities, obviously, so they were unable to join us.

Good. Well, let's do it.

She should be on your side. Raise your right hand, and you'll say, I do, after me. I do solemnly swear a firm 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 Office of Police Chief, according to the best of my ability.

Yes, I do.

Congratulations. At your option, you may say a few words or not.

Thank you, Commission, City Manager. I really appreciate this opportunity. It's an honor and privilege to become an ex-police chief of the city of Birmingham. I've been here 23 years since 21 out of the academy. I've seen the city grow, I've seen the department grow, and I've loved every minute of it. I want to also thank all my colleagues in the back here, everybody that I've worked with over the years to make this place such an awesome place to work, and especially my wife Danielle and my family. Everybody knows that police work does not come easy for the family easier or easy. There is a lot of shift work and holidays and sacrifice to the family. So thank you for always supporting me and standing by my side.

Excellent. Thank you. So now we can go to announcements. And there is an error, it is not Mayor Pro Tem Long's birthday. Not today, not this week, not even this month.

It was last month and it was lovely. Thank you.

The clerk's office would like to thank the election inspectors and city staff who helped conduct a safe and successful August 24th, 2026 primary election. We also appreciate the many voters who participated by voting early, absentee, or in person. Approximately 40.14%. Approximately 40.14%. Okay. Sounds like exactly of Birmingham's registered voters cast a ballot exceeding the overall turnout rate in Oakland County of 36.58%. We should be very proud of that. Unofficial election results are available at oakgov.com slash elections under the August election tab. Official results will be posted after the Oakland County Board of Canvassers completes the official canvas. As usual, I would also... It's not on the agenda, but we should put it on the agenda. Each meeting, I will be giving an update on the community house. As you know... Mayor Pro Tem Long and I are on the board. We're there for a reason to, among other things, provide oversight and reporting to the City Commission and the community on the house. So I have several bullets here. We continue to get the house in order. It was not necessarily in order when we took it over. There were things like coffee makers left on in the kitchen and food in the freezer and the freezer was running full blast with nothing in it. We had doors we couldn't open because we didn't have keys. We had to get everything rekeyed, new locks put in. All the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing is being checked out. I'll get to that in a minute and we continue to make good progress on the building more to come on that we're making great progress I would say in a very short period of time in establishing and fulfilling the vision that we have to restore the early childhood center to have a Vigorous health hospitality operation that will in turn fund programming We have chosen, as I reported last time around, Birmingham Public Schools to be the operator of the Early Childhood Center. They have assured us and families in Birmingham that they will run a year-round program there, unlike some of the other programs they run which are only during the school year, and that they will continue to take care of infants and toddlers. They are well on their way to licensing. They have good relationships with the regulators, and we are soon going to be executing a contract with them. with regard to management of the house you may have heard me say in the past that we thought we had an operator who could take care of many if not most of the operations of the house that was ambitious we were very hopeful the organization that we were dealing with needed board approval which they did not get and so uh we do have a plan b and we are working on that plan b with all due haste that will involve working with a hospitality provider who will also be able to take care of many of the functions of the house That will still necessitate that we hire an executive director. We don't expect to be looking for anyone other than that soon. We've been very successful at recruiting pro bono contractors. thank you Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Among the first and I neglected to mention this in a memo to the commission recently near perfect media and Justin near was recruited for the and handled some news and they'll handle all the news going forward. We recruited BMG Media and their owner Blake George to handle our website design and they're already working on that along with our content person who happens to be sitting next to me. some other people Sam Cernow who is a member of our board and his team are securing the building they've done almost all of the work on the building very interesting funny story I was in there and I'll get to this in a minute meeting with a representative of the YMCA and we had left the door open out you know out front and This man wandered in, turned out to be a fellow named Ramiz Babacic, who worked there for the last seven years doing maintenance. And he said he would be delighted to help us out. I said, we have next to zero money. And he said, that's fine. I'll just work. This is my community. I want to help. And I'll tell you, every time I tell that story, It sends shivers up my spine. We have a member of the community who's attended many of our meetings. His name is David Stanislau. He runs a consulting business that works on HR issues. He's volunteered to help us in finding and evaluating an executive director. This morning I met with Ron and Roman. Many of you know Ron Ray and Roman Bonaslowski. They've designed many of the restaurants in Birmingham and in the Detroit area. They are well known for making places that people want to be. they were they were very impressed with the building and its condition and their ability they offered pro bono to do design work on the interior not a lot of stuff they feel needs to be done paint carpet a few other things not high ticket items and They also happen because they design restaurants. They're very good at designing kitchens And they said it was an amazing kitchen in great shape. It's a little dirty, but We can we can whip that into shape so So I've been working 10, 12-hour days on this. Other board members are putting in a lot of time. We are moving as fast as we can. And the president of the board and I, so the president is Anthony Long, who used to sit right here. We are not known as the most patient people in the world. And yet, it's going to take some time. So we don't want to open the house before as... Mayor Pro Tem Long says we have someone to clean the bathrooms. So there's a lot to do. We're putting the pieces of the puzzle together as quickly as possible. I have a few more things that are noteworthy. One of our most important partners so far in this has been ChatGPT. It has helped us in so many ways with forms, contractor questionnaires, best practices in many areas. One of the most amazing feats, it pulled off last night overnight. I asked it before I went to bed to go on the Wayback Machine. I don't know if you know what the Wayback Machine is, but it's a place where websites are stored forever. And I said, go back to the dawn of the internet, find here are several domains that the community house operated under, scour those and anything else you can find and tell me about the programming. And it came back with 30 years worth of data. It found 25 program books, more than 3,600 programs, and the names of more than 300 instructors who were involved in executing those programs over the years. It's amazing. And it's going to help us when we decide to reach out to the community, ask what they want to see. It's going to help us in many, many ways. Another very important topic, and this, please take note, and if you're from the media, please take note. They are not us. The meaning of that will become pretty clear. This morning, as we were touring the building, the door was left open, and another woman wandered in, and she wanted a ticket to the community house home tour. Well, the community house home tour is not being run by the community house this year. It's being run by the former occupants of the community house. She was quite surprised to learn that, and I had to tell her they are not us. But I mean by that is that the people who are running the community house home tour this year are the very same people to whom we paid $5.2 million in taxpayer money so they could go run a home tour under our banner and start a foundation that serves a much broader community than us. Anyway... They are not us. Now, where that really matters is that if you or someone you know has included the community house in your estate plan, and if you intend that money to go to the community house, which is the beloved building at 380 South Beats, where maybe you took dance lessons as a kid or got married or married off your son or daughter, you need to make sure right away that that your will or your estate documents or your trust specify that that money should go to the community house in Birmingham, the City of Birmingham Community House Foundation. We have an EIN, a federal tax ID number, and we have an address, and that's ours. And we wouldn't want there to be any confusion. And if you think you're giving money to the community house, double check and make sure that it's actually going to go where you want it to go. Okay. I do want to quickly address a letter that Commissioner Host sent to the board of the Community House Foundation, which made its way into the hands of most commissioners and also many members of the public. It recommended that the board give serious consideration, and this is his words not mine, to making the Community House the permanent new home for NEXT. Well, the board discussed that letter, our board of the City of Birmingham Community House Foundation, on August 4th. And the reality is that the Community House Foundation has neither the power nor the desire to try to force another independent nonprofit organization to act against its will. Next delivered a letter to us and its board chair George dill guard appeared before us Stating in no uncertain terms next belief which it has expressed for quite some time Long before we obtained the community house that the community house is ill-suited to its mission and its preference to stay the course outlined in its agreements with the city and those agreements include a memorandum of understanding and a lease that has already been executed. While our trustees made clear that next is welcome to use the community house as appropriate and next as enthusiastically said it would do so, having the entire next operation occupy the community house would not align with the vision of the board. Finally, I want to reach out to my fellow commissioners and members of the community and reiterate that we do not intend to ask for taxpayer support of the community house, at least not any long-term durable support. We may ask for a loan. We'll figure that out when we need the money. Right now, we don't need the money. Rather, we ask for your contributions, time, money, You name it. It's all welcome. No gift or pledge is too small. The Tim Allen donation, of which you have already been made aware, it was a matching grant. If we come up with $100,000 by the end of the year, Tim will match it. If we come up with less, he'll come up with less. There's a lot of good news here, though. The good news is you don't have to cut a check like the one one of our board members did this weekend for $10,000. You could give us $9,000. Or any amount. Or no amount. Instead, you could volunteer on a committee. We have finance, audit, governance, fundraising, communications, special events, programming, the building. These are all committees that are getting up and running and need your help. Or work for us, pro bono, if you're a professional. Or connect us with a contractor who's willing to work for us pro bono. I asked Commissioner Host to donate his email list to us. Believe it or not, the previous owners of the house took the email list with them too and we have a challenge in communicating with the public and this is why I'm talking to you at such great length tonight because we right now don't have an email list. So he could donate his email list, others could donate theirs. The city attorney has assured us that there are perfectly legal and ethical ways to do something like that. So that's it. Please stay tuned. If you have any questions, you can send an email to info at birminghamcommunityhouse.org. As soon as our website is up, that's where it will be located. If that's too difficult, just send one to me at cballer.com. at bhamgov.org and if you'd like to make a donation we're not yet up online but you can send a check a good old-fashioned check to the city of birmingham community house foundation and mail it to the birmingham city manager 151 martin street birmingham 48009 thank you for your indulgence questions

So can I just assume by your opening, because it was on my list of questions, that at every meeting we'll get an update of that sort?

I'm going to try to update you, possibly not at that length, but yes.

Because I think it's important because we're kind of on the hook, I think, for the success of the Community House Foundation. We all are. We all are. So the more information we get, the more we can help.

Absolutely. Commissioner Host. Is there intent to have those meetings zoomed as well as the agendas and the minutes sent out?

There is no intent to have them zoomed. There's no requirement there for and we don't have the technological capacity right now to do that. We're focused on the business at hand. We are in the process of developing a slightly better way of getting our agendas out and a packet developed. For now, the meeting notice and agenda is posted as required by law on the front door of the community house at least 18 hours prior to a meeting. I can tell the public that our next meeting will be held at the community house on August 20th at 3 p.m. And the city has been posting it on the foundation portion of the city website as well. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Other questions? Okay. Well then, we can move on. We are now to open to the public for matters not on the agenda. We welcome comment limited to a certain three minutes per person at my discretion on items or discussions that do not appear anywhere else in the printed agenda. We will avoid participating in question and answer sessions and will not take any action on any item not appearing on the posted agenda. You also will have the opportunity to speak on agenda items as they occur. If you'd like to make a public comment, please come up, state your name and your city of residence, but before we move to you, the city manager has a comment.

Yes, we were going to have an update on the water main break that occurred over the weekend, but we can do that after public comment if you'd prefer. Okay, all right.

Hi, thank you for your service. My name is Susan Lamphere. I actually live in Beverly Hills. I'm here just with a very quick but heartfelt thank you from Jerry Driscoll's family. Jerry Driscoll lost his life crossing 14 at Bates in May when he was walking his two laps. Erica his wife and the family have gotten wind that things seem to be happening They don't really know who to thank but it sounds like Beverly Hills Birmingham and the Road Commission are working together to Try to improve the safety of that crossing so I know that means a tremendous amount to the family So thank you, and it means a lot to us for you to come tonight and tell us I

hi i'm jay seifman i live at 420 east frank street which is right across from the cvs i was here about six weeks ago when the people were here i think from poppleton or regarding their city streets anyhow i was here about six weeks ago to discuss what i consider serious safety issues in the city as well as the sewer system and i've been complaining about the sewer system and my wife's here as well different people from the city including the sewer department for about four years and everybody seems to not know that we have a sewer issue and didn' t but in fact two people ran for the commission who recognized that there' s a sewer issue and in particular with our house where we' re located there are three storm five days out of 10 it smells like a horse barn the sewer system is overflowing with fecal matter it's absolutely disgusting when I've talked to the sewer department they say we don't know if any problem and so I would like my telephone numbers 248 496 you can call me at 248-496-4601. I would like somebody to communicate with me regarding the sewer and I bring it up tonight because I so that' s one issue. The other issue is the safety of the community. I believe that we are in a dire shortage of having police officers in this city patrolling and making sure that we' re all safe. I understand I don' t know if it' s true but I saw on instagram a riot in front of the willits over the weekend with kids. On to the farmers market on sunday on the way back and we were south of merrill street I all tattooed and as he got within my distance from Clint I noticed that he had a Glock 9 millimeter strapped in front of him. Now it's not against the law because this is an open carry state we all know it's an open carry state but the lack of police presence is disturbing to me we have a lot of violent crime growing in this city because people come near and wide to participate in whatever they' re doing night in downtown Birmingham I myself would have rather had the board Spend money hiring police and I wish the police officers would have stayed Because we need more police presence and we have situations like I said on Brown Street from Brown Street South it's like you know dream cruise every night and and like I said before we are in Palm Beach in the wintertime they put a police car you don't need a patrolman it's like a scarecrow you put a police car with lights on in the street I notice I go by the police station and you got police cars sitting in the lot so instead of have it sitting in the lot put it out on Woodward along the side street so that you know people will come and maybe they'll slow down but at least have something because there's no police hardly ever ever going there the last thing i'll say and this relates to the sign and from a cb2 that was put up there's a directional sign that's wrong all right we know that we're working on it yeah I mean I heard and maybe I'm wrong but the person next to me when I walked up to the sign said that we spent a quarter of a million dollars on that sign no no we didn't I found it hard to believe myself but that's obviously obviously the sign is facing in the wrong direction okay contractor knows thank you so what I really would and I'm happy to participate in anything regarding public safety and I especially want to be informed and interested in figuring out the sewer situation I don't know how the owner of the tax the hotel. Hasn't has an approach to every time you walk by the test.

We're going on this thing. What thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it Thank you, and I will ask the city administration to contact you and explain what a combined sewer is I know what it is Okay, do something about it. Well, okay You're welcome, thank you

Good evening, David Bloom, Birmingham resident. I have a single question. Do we know the reason we did not get the email list from the community house when we arranged the $5 million purchase agreement? That's my question.

Thank you.

The reason we didn't get the email list is because we bought the building. We're lucky we got the stuff that wasn't strictly the building. Anybody else? Online use the raise your hand function. If you're in the room, approach please. If there's no further public comment, we will move to the consent agenda. All items on the consent agenda are routine, enacted by one motion, approved by a roll call vote. There was no separate discussion unless a commissioner or a citizen so requests in which event we'll remove the item from the consent agenda and add it to the general order of business. Does anyone on the commission want to remove an item from the consent agenda? Nobody? Okay, does anyone in the public want to remove an item from the consent agenda? Anyone online? Nope. Okay, take a motion on the consent agenda.

I move approval of the consent agenda as presented including items A through L. Second.

Roll call please.

Mayor Fulton Long? Yes. Mayor Ballard? Yes. Commissioner Cole?

Yes.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Commissioner Host?

Yes. No city managers report tonight?

Would you like the update on the water main?

Yes, sure, sure, sure. Sorry.

Melissa, come on up. The city engineer is just going to give you a brief update on what's going on.

thank you. good evening city commission approximately 4.30 on friday afternoon the city started receiving phone calls emails and gov pilot alerts of people having no water or low water pressure in the and we were able to turn some valves upstream and downstream of the water main break to at least isolate the location and reduce the water from the water main break and restore pressure elsewhere in the system. On They removed approximately 20 feet of 16-inch water main that removed in replacement for it. And then today they did some fine-tuning on the repair itself just from working the long hours on Saturday. The first water sample was collected on Monday afternoon. we'll get those results back within 24 hours the second sample will get collected Tuesday afternoon and if that result is back Wednesday afternoon then if those two tests pass then we'll release the boil water notice that was issued to the southwest corner of the city to specify that that is residents located from Southfield Road to Cranbrook Road and Maple Road to the south city limits of Saxton that location there. With this because we received low water pressure and no water we got one or two complaints of no water at all with that we have to do a border wall notice until we get the two test results back.

It doesn' t mean there was a water quality issue but when the pressure drops you can have problems system wide so we' re required to do that

Commissioner Host. Yeah, Melissa, have you determined what the problem, you know, why this break happened?

Not yet.

And when I say you, I mean the city of Birmingham.

Not why, but we certainly know what it looks like and we have pictures of the pipe and the split runs numerous feet down the pipe.

Yes, I just received the pictures later this afternoon for the Department of Public Services of how the water main break looked like. It looked like there's essentially two big pressure holes, probably about this big in the pipe, and then you start seeing it spread and split from the whole pressure to the end of the 20 feet. Did you tell us how old that main was? That 16-inch water main is from 1951.

Only 75 years, right on the nose. Pretty good at the math. Any other questions for Ms. Cota? Okay, thank you very much for remembering that for me. We move to new business. We have no unfinished business Item a under new business is to you to a public hearing Request to postpone Is that correct? Would you like to introduce this?

Yes, so the for 168 West Maple which is Toyota for a special land use permit and final site plan and design review the public hearing tonight we did receive a request from the ownership asking us to Postpone the public hearing due to a change in ownership and so they're They're gonna just be working on adjusting all of the documents By their requesting that you postpone the public hearing to a date certain so that we can have everything updated by September 28, 2026. And the ownership is here tonight if you had any questions in regards to the request.

Please open the public hearing.

Oh, sorry, sorry. Open the public hearing. It's 736. The report stands on the record. Thank you. We need to ask the public if they would like to be heard. Anyone want to be heard on this public hearing, which is apparently going to be postponed? Seeing no one desiring to be heard, I will... Anybody online, use the raise your hand function. No. No. public hearing at 737. Yes, I would like to meet you. If you're here and you're the buyer, come introduce yourself. You're here. You might as well. Unfortunately, we're not able to conduct any business, but it's always nice to know

How are you all? Randy Fumia. I've been in front of you guys a few times now. Tara Kitchen and Cocktails. Oh, okay. And number 28 that's going on Hamilton as well. You're just buying up all the restaurants in town? What's going on? You know what? I'm good at what I do. I grew up in the food industry and you know i love the city you know i i i'm here all the time i'm working in the restaurant every day as it is and you know this was uh a different project for us because it's like a team effort so like we've been open now at chera for you know a little over a year and a half and we're i feel like we're doing really good things there and we have a really good team that's i mean we have the same management probably 80% of our starting staff that still been there not much turn over so this was a project to incentivize the people we have in our team head chef general manager where we could share good people that we have involved in our team to help grow with them as well.

So is your intent with regard to the, I think we've all seen partial, we haven't seen the final site plan, but we saw preliminary stuff. Is that your intent to do what?

Yeah, I mean, I think it looks really good. I haven't gotten to crazy detail with the architect that was originally working on it. I do want to... we have to get in with him and discuss exactly like I don' t know exactly what needs to move and all that so now that process can start in terms of doing that little patio seeing exactly what needs to be done but I think just creating a nice it' s 65 it' s not sit down again, full service. It's not going to be like a fast casual or anything like that. Is it going to be the same menu? Yeah. Yeah. So like, you know, there's like the equipment in there and I was all running like pizza oven, there's fryers, grills, all of that. So yeah, like, um, we probably would want to trend away from like the breast breakfast aspect of things and do more like lunch dinner, but like probably like an 11 to nine. Hmm. And, you know, maybe 10 on the weekends. But, yeah, like, you know, sandwiches, good handhelds, good salads, throw some pizzas in there as well. And, you know, I think it could work. You know, I mean, I love the location. You know, he built a beautiful restaurant. I don't think there's, oh, my God, so much you would want to change in there, right? It's brand new. So great, you know, I think I could bring some good tell us your name again, Randy Fumia Randy food meal meal. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Does anybody have any questions for mr. Fumia? Well, we really appreciate you coming tonight and giving us that little background.

Thank you Bring back the Italian salad and Tara I

All right, so do we need to do anything?

Yes, I'd like to make a motion adopting a resolution to postpone the public hearing to September 28, 2026 to consider the special land use permit and final site plan and design review application for 168 West Maple to permit the sale of alcoholic beverages for on-premise consumption as a bistro establishment and a new outdoor dining facility under new ownership.

Second. Does that require a roll call? No. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Well, a small unanimity, but unanimous nonetheless. Limited unanimity. Is that? I'll go with it. Fractional. Marginal. I like fractional. Okay. The next item of business is a resolution to award the South Eaton Water Main Project to bid again contractors. Melissa's back.

evening again. So brought forward tonight would be the award for the South Eaton water main project. Part of this project is to replace the water main on South Eaton from Humphrey to Lincoln Avenue before next year's projects of adding the bike lanes and repaving South Eaton from Maple to 14 Mile Road. With this, we went out to bids and we received eight bids for a consideration. Engineering Department recommends awarding the contract to bid at Gary Contractors. They previously have done work in the city Back in 2020-2021, they worked a little bit on our lead service replacement program at that time, and I'm available to answer any questions City Commission may have of the project or the contract award.

Thank you. Does anyone have any questions for Ms. Koda?

I think I have a question. Yes. So I was going through, so obviously there's a request for a transfer to fill in this gap here. And reading Norik and Faust's report, they say, the cost increases due to a combination of factors including overall timing of the bid and construction schedule. I was wondering if you could elaborate I mean obviously they wrote the report not you but if you could if you have some insight into what exactly it was about the timing of the bid and the construction schedule that may have contributed to the cost overrun.

So with this deviation from the estimate I think so sometimes what you run into is is that right now gas prices are higher than they were seven eight nine months ago type of a deal so a lot of times when we do our budgeting for the projects and work in France does their preliminary estimates the beginning of the design we may see cost increase just because there's been a duration between their previous estimate and when the contract gets awarded and during that time there could be married several variables including gas prices etc that could increase the cost

From when they preliminary estimated it But it is so it is mostly just like Commodity price volatility and yes, but it's not like that literally Like well, we bid it at a certain time of year and there's more demand then and had we bid it out earlier even with equivalent prices at a different time, we would have gotten a better price. That's what I'm trying to wrap my head around here. Are we just saying, well, oil prices went up, and so the prices are higher?

We're starting to see some of our unit prices come in higher now than we were, say, winter or fall of last year. I would be saying about two.

Okay. But it's basically just inputs. It's not... But the term timing of the bid made it seem to me like there was some element here that I wasn't understanding, but you're saying no, it's basically just the raw inputs are more expensive. Okay.

Any other questions? Seeing none, take a motion, or did you make a motion? You didn't make a motion.

And then we'll take public comment after the motion. I'd like to make a resolution to amend the South Eden Water Main Project, contract number 10-26P. Bidagar Contractors Inc. in the amount of $1,288,798.00 plus a 10% construction contingency for a total of $1,351,677.80. And in addition to authorize the mayor and clerk to sign the agreement on behalf of the city contingent upon meeting all the insurance and bond requirements by FDM Contracting Inc.

It looks like there's a typo on the agenda cover page where our software Right, right Agenda report has the correct 123 is correct

We need him to read it over again at the beginning. I believe he said make a motion to amend the selfie. Yeah so probably We have the and to approve the appropriation amendment Okay, fine, sorry

I'd like to make a motion adopting a resolution to award the South Eaton Water Main Project contract number 10-26P to Bidigar Contractors Inc. in the amount of $1,288,798.00 plus a 10% construction contingency for a total of $1,351,677.80. In addition, to authorize the mayor and clerk to sign the agreement on behalf of the city, contingent upon meeting all the insurance and bond requirements by Bidegare Contractors, Inc., and to approve the appropriation and amendment of the budget as follows. Can I just say on page 123? Per the graph on page 123.

Second.

Second.

Motion and second. Comment from the commission? Comment from the public. Anybody in the public? If you're online, on Zoom, use the raise your hand function. Seeing none. Anywhere? Roll call, please.

Commissioner Kolb?

Yes.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Commissioner Host?

Yes.

Mayor Ballard?

Yes.

Mayor Potemwa? Yes.

Item C, a resolution directed to the Department of Public Services. proceed with Plan B as the preferred strategy for the remaining park's bond funds, including completion of the proposed booth park improvements and advancement of playground improvements at St. James Park and Kenney Park. to further direct staff to evaluate opportunities to include priority drainage pathway and accessibility within the available project funding and to return to the City Commission for approval of final project scopes, contract awards, and any required budget amendments. So this is basically, we are down to our last amount of bond funds that we approved, 12.5? 4.25? 11.25. 11.25. And can I second that? No, that was just the introduction. I want the public to know that we're talking about the Parks and Rec bond that we passed in 2020.

Yes, pre-COVID. With 70% approval.

Yeah, and we spent a lot of it, and we're about to spend the rest of it. We have to make some choices, right?

And you have some preferences? Recommendations, but obviously, as always, the commission has final say. Of course. For the record, this topic was discussed with the Parks Board, and they were as split as you could imagine with their recommendation also, and it was from the point of They both saw value in doing chunks and doing all-out pieces of the projects It just it's one of those things where there isn't a right answer and there isn't a wrong answer It's just we have to make a decision to move forward It's basically to your point of what you said. It's the question that Therese asked a while ago. I feel like years ago now of Do we have enough money to accomplish everything? And at that time, I could not tell you because we had bigger projects coming that we had to at least get somewhat designed so we could get construction estimates to see where we're really going to be at. And basically, they're coming in. way higher than we would have hoped. It's the economy of where we have gotten to as a society that is kind of leading to these costs. And even our designers who have done work in many cities around us, they've been saying that it is the same economy of scale growth they've seen everywhere. So to an extent, they weren't surprised. It was a little higher than they anticipated themselves as they were putting it together for us. they were hoping it could be a little lower but as they pulled in new data it came up higher it basically it's based on other cities projects that have occurred in the within the last year or awarded during this past year that kind of got them to their point so we can get more into that later to start with we kind of wanted to very quickly. Summarizing this is in the packets of given all of you and that were put up on the board here. What we've accomplished so far with this issuance of the bond that so this doesn't include the first issuance of the bond this is the second issue it's. the West Lincoln playground improvements, the Pump House playground improvements, the Poppleton Park fully inclusive playground, which is currently underway, Pembroke playground, which the equipment's been ordered, but we're trying to make sure the project goes right after we get the equipment, so we've been holding off on that, but the money's been set aside for it. And we're sitting here, hopefully later tonight, approving Booth Park to move forward. So, with all that, we still technically had planned and budgeted amounts for Kenning improvements, St. James improvements, which are both larger scale, the entire park seeing different types of work occurring. Crestview, an accessible playground, and a Howarth Park accessible playground. Sorry.

As we universally accessible the same as fully accessible when you refer to Poppleton Poppleton is fully inclusive inclusive.

Sorry inclusive playground which you know accessibility universally accessible means all ways can get there no matter what so ramps and decking for wheelchair accessibility so at poppleton although it is fully inclusive it doesn't have all the ramping and decks however if you can transfer from a wheelchair to the equipment it is accessible all the way to the top which is very easy to do at poppleton with the

Which one is more inclusive? Inclusive is the more expensive, the one you want if you can afford it?

One big push that has come out of our entire plan for all the parks and from talking with residents and stuff is inclusivity in general. We've been incorporating, it's another reason why a lot of these products have been costing more, is accessibility to some amount that is better than just Wood chip engineered wood chips because engineer wood chips technically meet the requirements But we try to provide portions of port and play important place so that People can actually get to all the equipment in some aspects and we want to make sure everybody can enjoy it and that has caused additional costs as some of what we're seeing in these different projects So, as we all remember, Booth got pushed because of the MD&R grant, and we've been slowly chasing the MD&R grant, finally got everything from the state, hence why we're trying to do the award later today. well that got pushed back we got direction from commission go ahead and chase all the smaller playground projects and we brought them all forward and so we've been doing a lot of those and again they've been more expensive than we originally thought they would be with the grant but we've been trying really hard to focus on hitting those target allowances for each park and as even we came towards the end of this some of our ones that are showing here is 300,000 each, we were actually putting aside some general funds, parks fund money, those to help extend the bond further. So really quick we want to show you kind of where the concepts have gone and where the costs are kind of at in St. James and Kenning because we do have opportunities to piece these together but we recognize there's other impacts like in St. James's case We have 400 East Lincoln right there. Next is going to be moving in there. So as we went into the review with all the users groups, we got input directly from Next and that part of the community to try to incorporate stuff in that. We always knew once we bought that building that we were going to need to incorporate some of that and so that's kind of where the conundrum comes as to do we fully want to do st. James right now or do we do the piece that was most critical to as part of what the users groups asked for when the bond was pulled initially which is the playground specific So this is a general layout of where we've come so far with all of our user groups on general design for St. James. As you know, the playground is in the southeast corner of the park. We intend to keep it in that same general area, update it with a lot of the new equipment, provide more accessibility the same way we've been doing all of our smaller parks in our neighborhoods around the communities. Additionally, they were going to change the orientation of the softball field to make it more user-friendly and fit the space a little bit better. And we were going to try to potentially pull down in their more recent concepts, as you can see from on the right-hand side of the page to the left-hand side of the page. The left-hand side is the newer concept. where they've pulled the tennis courts down a little further. As you know right now, they're right in that corner. They're falling apart. They need to be replaced anyways. So we're moving them in more, pulling them down a little bit, and we're looking to add a basketball court off the end of it because the current basketball court that's down by the actual playground floods out on a pretty regular basis in the spring. It's kind of hard to use, that sort of thing. it also provides a little extra space for a small soccer field to go in there as well and provides additional opportunities now the area that's a little easier to kind of make out here in light blue the rectangle that's meant to be a entry space with a little bit of cover for people to sit at provide tables and stuff we're looking at possibility of adding types of yard games such as Shuffle board that sort of thing that are more meant to gear a little bit towards next and then next has been in conversations with us about Donating outdoor equipment. We're also looking at outdoor exercise equipment to add in and sprinkle along these paths That we have going through st. James Now, the good news is all of this can be kind of broken up into different groups. And they've actually updated their project areas into, they think they can make it in four instead of five sections, but it's time of putting this together and for the sake of conversation, just know that we could segment this Successfully into something we can do over time and do upfront that that user group that was intended the playground area and then we can do a few other items and Then we can work on other stuff and keep our costs currently low It will unfortunately add to overall costs if you do this entire park right now the estimated cost which as we know, when things come in, maybe higher, is $2.5 million, roughly. Go ahead and move forward. And they provided in your packets breakdowns of these different areas as to how much they cost as you go through them.

What are you plan, what is plan, the plan you're advocating is plan B.

What does that include? So I want to get through both parts and then I'm going to walk back to what plan B is in the report. Is that okay with you? Okay. Because it's critical to the conversation. Okay. So go ahead and move on to, yep. So at Kenning Park, we have drainage issues are a major problem here. We have a playground that needs to be updated. Anybody who's generally familiar with around the tennis bubble, there is water that's constantly around that tennis bubble. That's the major drainage issues we're concerned with. And it kind of continues its way back towards the playground areas. In the spring, it's really bad. Any major rainstorms you have, it's really bad. But again, trying to update the playground. Yep. And then we want to reorientate the little league field in green, turn it to fit the space a little bit better, and then there's technically a softball field is the one that's directly south of the ice arena. We want to turn that so that, or make it a little bit bigger and nicer so that it encourages more use. Currently, it isn't really used as much because it's not in the best shape. but by reorienting these a little bit and redoing that field we also open up the Possibility to have a soccer field in the space there. So we encourage more use in different ways of the space and then the other thing which is a little harder to see on this is the Gray that goes around everything on here is new walking paths to take advantage of all the beautiful trees that are in the area and have walking paths that work their way around the park and was it roughly three quarters of a mile or something like that is what it came to, of paths that we can make. And again, when you go through it, and we truly believe Kenning's one that you can definitely do in chunks and pieces over time, it's another 2.5 million. And if you go back, you saw that we only budgeted one million for the one, 1.7 million for the other. So you're seeing major cost overruns compared to what we had planned for. So we are trying to get additional items, and we have successfully secured some donations for different things in all of our parks, not just these two specifically. We've gotten a huge donation towards the butterfly section of Booth Park, which we'll talk about a little bit more later. They are covering all the costs of that. So we try to find... How much is it?

It's right around $30,000. Yeah.

So you know we encourage everybody if you want to donate to any of our parks in any way you can go on to our city donation page it's called see my legacy and you can go donate for specific little projects you can donate for like benches and stuff there's all sorts of items and we always are trying to encourage people to go there and use it we're hoping as some of these projects kick off there'll be a little more attention to them and people will donate more but you don't get so much right now. And we're continuing to look for grants for different items to try to update things We try to do a lot of our maintenance in-house to help save on cost of those sorts of things as well so You asked what was the plan? So in the report, we kind of laid out chunks of this because as we've been bringing forward these smaller parks, and that was the discussion we had in-house, is the intent of the bond was to cover multiple parks. It wasn't meant to only cover one park. And so we get to it.

My apologies. And so what's the pot of money we've got left?

It is roughly $3,267,133.64.

Yeah, I was going to say roughly 3.3, but I wanted to make sure before I said that. So that's the comparison that we throw up in our report is that... I guess that's the one report I can't find here. My apologies. is to just be focusing on those priority improvements. Trying to find the exact, okay. Plan B, fully complete proposed improvements at Booth Park, which we do have a recommendation for budget adjustment that comes with that. That was included in our estimates that we did with this. we have a lot of work to do. While providing only playground improvements at kenning park and st. James park rather than completing full scope of work with approximately $922,000, which could be used to go towards future drainage improvements and the playground improvements at Crestview and Howarth Parks. And there may be some money left over at the end of it, not a significant amount. What that would do is change all those pieces of the puzzle for each of the other parks would become things that we determine what the official true priority is on getting that work accomplished. And we bring them in as general fund requests in future budget years so that we can keep working through items. opposed to put all the money in the bucket for if we had to which was one of our recommendations of C or not C sorry a is Just focusing on st. James because of what's going on with the next building there and trying to completely do that Playground and then we would do the same thing with segments on Kenning and the other two are the other two parks bringing them in as Requests later. So hence why we're asking for direction the wish list puts us in the hole approximately 3.7 million if we were to do everything that we originally planned to do this year Does that conclude your presentation yeah, all right, I'm sure we have comments from the Commission I

Commissioner mayor temporary provisional interim Chair of the parks and rec board when we put forth the bond and developed the priority list for the bond and then championed it once I was elected to the City Commission and and actually think there is a right answer and I think that it's plan B because I pulled out of my records what we told the public when we promoted voting for the bond we had a priority list and we said these are the things we hope to accomplish and we did you know the first bond issue was Adams Park the ice arena and some trail improvements and creating a pickleball court and we pretty much did that but for the second bond issue the priority was playgrounds in all the parks and and Crestview and Howard were on the list to get playgrounds and I think that plan B allows us to keep the promises we made to the community. I understand and I watched the recording of the August 4th Parks and Rec meeting. I think actually more of the members of the Parks and Rec Board were good with Plan B. There was one who was pretty passionate about Plan A, but I think it is... to do st. James all the way through at this point because next isn't in the building yet and and there may be things we don't understand about how we want to use that space or if we go back to the elevator discussion addition you know additions changes construction so I think plan A is premature plan C we you know that's just That's a wish list. So I am strongly in support of Plan B. And at that meeting, Carrie, I think you said there would be a little bit more than just playgrounds at St. James and Kenning. And I don't know if this is the point where you said there's a little bit more might be included in some of those programs. than just the playground equipment alone. You said you could do a few more updates in both of those parks.

We can clarify if you like.

we do think we can as you know since the time of this rating of the report that our consultants have been fine-tuning those costs and seen how can they can combine things so we think we can incorporate the entry area potentially at kenny where you know because a lot of the comments from the public for that we don' t even know that there' s a playground at kenny so I think that would really be we will be able to do that. We will be able to do that with an additional cost

I think you've really thought this out and what Commissioner Long said about why the people voted for this bond. Plan B makes the most sense because we're following through on at least aspects of everything that we included in the bond.

I have a question. If we do plan B, when will the Kenning and St. James playgrounds get done?

This fiscal year, we have that.

Yeah, we have the money in position to proceed forward this fiscal year. Well, I don't know, fiscal year. Season. Probably spring. Probably become spring because of what we're doing right now. When will Booth Park, if we approve the contract tonight? We are hoping to break ground after Labor Day. I was like, Memorial Labor.

Okay, and then if we decide there are ways we want to spend the $922,324, Now we're talking another year down the road for that or would that likely be eaten up in the next fiscal year?

Well, it's hard to say, but it would be within the following fiscal year.

You're soliciting public input on Crestview now. Yes, we are. That is the public believes Crestview is happening, which is another reason to support Plan B. Yes. they're asking for opinions about it.

My question is, when is that? You know, to me, every year you don't spend it. Is it invested? Does it grow up?

Does that money grow? It does technically grow to an extent, but we have only so long before we can technically have to use it. When do we have to use it? I don't remember what that is off the top of my head. Okay. All right. I just think people want the improvements.

We got the dough. This is the prudent way to go, plan B. But there's nearly a million dollars there waiting to be spent on the stuff that people voted to get done. So let's get her done, whatever it is.

Yeah, so I probably broadly support plan B, but I was having some trouble. You have all these different phase diagrams and lots of lists of stuff, and I was having a very hard time mapping out what I thought, because none of these things, if I just pick one of these phases for Kenning and pick one for St. James, I feel like they don't add up to whatever, 2.4 million, which is what we're saying we're gonna spend here. So I would like to see, a more detailed breakdown, line items about, and Commissioner Mayor Pro Tem Long mentioned this as well. What exactly are we saying we're thinking we're gonna do in St. James and Kenning Park in phase B? Because it seems like it's more than just, significantly more perhaps than just the playgrounds

Yeah, so we did get updated. The problem is those literally came in after we submitted everything for this, and I didn't want to muddy the waters further by bringing in new documents explaining the breakdown of that stuff. Do you have the...

I have, yep. So, let's see.

I mean, if we're only talking about broad strokes, like, I agree with the broad strokes of, like, let's focus on the playgrounds in those parks. Let's make sure we have some money left over to do Crestview and the other parks. If all we're giving is that broad direction... I'm happy to do that and we can fill in the details later.

Yes, especially because we have to now go back and go, okay, now we're going to look at just this piece and get true final numbers because if there's little tweaks we have to make to set it up for the next section to be tied to it later, now we know we have to build it that way. Okay.

and I can help just a little bit more so what they' ve done in our updated drawings is combine the red and the blue together on the screen into one but it is a little more than that 400 and it' s 477 combining those two. It' s going to tap into that 922 a little bit more but not

Sorry, maybe I'm not being clear about my confusion. So my confusion is we're starting with $3.26 million, right? And then we're going to spend some amount of money on Kenning Park, some amount of money on St. James, and we're going to end up with... $922,000. So between the, that's my understanding of what we're saying here. And so I'm saying between those two projects, we're spending $2.3 million. And I'm trying to figure out, okay, I'm looking at these line items, I'm trying to figure out what do I sum up to get that $2.3 million number?

Some of that is booth. To get to the final number where we're at, you actually have to back out all of our projects currently. And get it down to that final number. That's why it doesn't.

This is how much we're sitting at, including the stuff that's spoken for in other projects. This is not how much we have for St. James and Kenning and Crestview, et cetera. Correct. Okay, that was my misunderstanding. Okay, thank you.

Trust me, we had a lot of conversations with finance to make sure we all understood where we were going with this. Thank you.

I'd like to make a motion adopting a resolution to direct the Department of Public Services to proceed with Plan B as the preferred strategy for the remaining park fund funds, including completion of the proposed Booth Park improvements, advancement of the playground improvements at St. James Park and Kenning Park. Staff is further directed to evaluate opportunities to include priority drainage pathway and accessibility improvements within the available project funding and return to the City Commission for approval of final project scopes contract awards and any required budget amendments.

Second. Motion second. Any comment? Comment from the public? Happy to take comment from the public. Anybody present? Come forward if you're online. Use the raise your hand function. I don't see any hands. Going once, going twice, bringing it back. Roll call, please. Even though it's probably not required.

Commissioner Host?

Yes.

Commissioner Kolb?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem Long? Yes. Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes.

Mayor Bama?

Yes. Thank you very much. Good work. This makes this next presentation way easier. Yeah, I could imagine that might be a problem. You think so? The next item is a resolution to approve the contract with Warren Contractors and Development Inc. for the construction, how many years later? 22 years later? Of the Booth Park Entry Plaza and Trail Improvement Project. in the amount of $2,185,922.61. Does that include the 400,000 we got? Yes. Okay, so our cost is actually 400-ish less than that, right? Correct. Okay, just to be clear, what's 400,000 out of that? Brings you down around 1.7-ish, right?

Yeah, but the catch-22 is that the type of grant it is, we have to complete the work, then submit, then they give us the money back, so we have to have the upfront money to do it. Just when we say how much it costs. Yep, and that is... Yeah, and that is in the calculations of the sheets that helped cause some of the confusion in our last presentation. Is there much to present here? No, the short one would be is if anyone would like an explanation of why we selected the contractor we dropped forward, or if the report covered it. I think the report covered it. if there's if there's something you want to highlight for the general public please do it was just solely the fact that when we went through the process the low bid was founded in our opinion to not be qualified to complete the construction mainly of the bathroom facility was our largest concern during interview they clearly stated that they would be the ones doing the actual build of that and and they provided us no documentation showing that they truly had the ability to complete that work. We presented that because all this has to be approved by MD&R. We showed them our conclusions that we drew and they concurred with our decision and approved us to move forward with coming to the commission for award.

Okay, and I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of interest in the bathroom. So could you, now that we are actually pulling the trigger, right? This is pulling the trigger on a public bathroom. The first. First freestanding public bathroom in Birmingham. Great description of it. Decades of discussion. Could you give us a brief overview of what that public bathroom is going to maybe look like and where it's going to be located?

So she's going to pull it up from our plans.

I think I'm going to pull up the renderings that I still have. That might work.

So this was a huge discussion by the commission, feels like eons ago at this point, to do a custom build because we wanted to ensure that it got basically the beauty that we had come to expect in this city.

It should be at least as good as a pump house at a...

Yes. Also, that's the donation piece was that piece. If you go back here, it is going to be in the location. Actually, it's been adjusted since discussions.

Is this the old one?

Yes, that's the old one. It's going to be tucked up to basically the north edge of the property.

I'm sorry, I have the wrong one.

No, it's okay. You guys can pass this across. Basically, we shifted things around with one of the spots that was intended to be for, as we had on here, these areas for the, Bringing in the food trucks and stuff and having the billing proceeding we shifted basically flocked With originally the bathroom was here now.

It's up in here hidden by the trees So just to review we approved a concept plan correct Correct. I definitely remember that did we ever approve a final design? now All right. And this looks like what you had up there. Yeah, that sheet is what I pulled through up there. So do we not even have, I don't mean, you know, I am the biggest proponent of this project on earth. And are you telling me we don't have a picture of the final plan?

We have all the plans in the packet.

I'm sure that there's construction and engineering drawings that go to the state and the contractor and in the RP, but she can find them and show them.

I guess what I'm looking for is a rendering of the, I'd like just a plan view of the park. And then not an engineering drawing, something basically like that, but that's accurate.

That is the general concept plan view of this. Okay.

And then, do you have a rendering of the toilet?

I do have a, I just have to find that. Yeah, this is old, I'm sorry. Rendering, rendering. Oh, that's our latest. I have it on the website.

It is apropos that we're searching for a bathroom. I said apropos, we're searching for a bathroom.

Well, I think they've got the bathroom. Why don't you skip to the bathroom?

Yeah, we do have our architect's algorithm online. I'm not sure if she'll be able to pull up the most recent renderings.

Now we're talking about the bathroom or are we talking about there there is surrendering from the website? Okay, is that what you were looking for? Yeah, pretty much What is the bathroom gonna look like and roughly where is it gonna be it told us roughly where it's gonna be I'm satisfied with that Fellow commissioners. Are you all? We're at the end of the road I'm waiting Eager for a motion

I would like to make a motion adopting a resolution to approve the contract with Warren Contractors and Development Incorporated for the construction of the Booth Park Entry Plaza and Trail Improvement Project for the amount of $2,185,922.61, further to authorize the mayor and city clerk to assign the agreement on behalf of the city. and in addition to appropriate and amend the 2026-2027 budget as follows, park system construction fund revenues drawn from fund balance 408.0-000.000-400.000, $2,185,922.61 and expenditures for land improvements. Fund 408.2-901.751-979.000, $2,185,922.61. Second. Comments, public, in the room?

Online, we have a hand raised. Christy Barrett. Christy Barrett, I believe your name is in bronze at Booth Park.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Well, okay, I'm just curious if the bathroom, yes, you are correct, Mayor Ballard. We worked together on fundraising for that.

And I want to make sure that the...

original donor is not like blocked wall, it's not blocked by the bathroom.

So, and I just joined, so I don't know if you reviewed this or it's been discussed or what, but I just wanted to give my- So your concern is the donor wall that exists, that it is as prominent, let's say, as it exists today, but it's not like behind the bathroom.

It won't be behind. Exactly. And then you may discuss this. I just joined like 10 minutes ago, five minutes ago.

Can you assure us that the donor wall will not be obscured by the bathroom?

We laid it out in the field at the park. It will not be blacked.

All right. Or I want my donation back. No, we don't. That was non-refundable. Okay, anybody else? If you're online, use the raise your hand function. Okay, bring it back. We have a motion. We have a second. Any comment on the motion from the commission? Seeing none, roll call, please.

Mayor Brunson-Long? Yes. Commissioner Host?

Yes.

Commissioner Colden?

Yes.

Mayor Ballard?

Yes.

Commissioner Kozlowski?

Yes. Thank you. Proud day for all of those in the community who 25 years ago participated in the community build. If anybody wants photos, I have an extensive library right on my phone.

Please let the Parks and Rec Board know we appreciate all the work that they have done to get us to this point.

Thank you. Much rather spend $3 million than on truckloads of asphalt. Okay, we move on to item E, a resolution dual point blank. One of us?

Yes, one of you. If any of you plans to attend that conference. If you do not, Assistant City Manager Clements will be going and will be your alternate.

Okay, this is in Traverse City. This is a bonus. Is the city of Birmingham paying any expenses for this?

Yes.

What expenses will be paid? Lodging and a per diem?

I don't know about a per diem, but I know we pay your registration and your lodging, yes.

And lodging, okay. Bartab?

No, absolutely not.

This is the Michigan Municipal League. This is a big deal. I would go if I was in town. Unfortunately, I was leaving for somewhere else that day. Anyone care to volunteer to go to Traverse City in October? The leaves are changing. It's a great town. I'm shocked.

I will be at a different conference already.

I'm in Europe with my grandkids. Okay, wow. Okay, well maybe, what are our other alternatives? None?

Or Hank, who isn't here. Or, you know, you can just make Mark Clements the primary voting delegate.

Yeah, let's have a motion, please, to appoint Mark Clements. My suggestion.

I'd like to make a resolution to appoint Assistant City Manager Mark Clemens as the City of Birmingham's official voting delegate and an alternate to perhaps be named for the Michigan Municipal League Annual Meeting to be held in Traverse City, Michigan on October 7th, 2026.

Second. All those in favor? Does this involve spending money? Do we need a roll call? No. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Unanimous. Fractionally unanimous. Okay. Commissioned items for future discussion. A motion is required to bring up the item for future discussion at the next reasonable agenda. No discussion or very little will happen on the topic tonight. Does anyone in this fractional quorum have an item to bring up? Going once, going twice. Okay, we move on to item G. Commission discussion on items from a prior meeting. Mayor selection process is the item. I have something from a prior meeting. It's not on the agenda. We do have something on the agenda from a prior meeting. Oh. Which it is... So my understanding of this process, and please, anyone who wants to dispute or add to that, my understanding is that the three-step process is you bring up the item at a meeting, at the next meeting you have an opportunity, or the next reasonable meeting, you have an opportunity to expand on that, take it to, and then get a vote to take it to a third step. So if you brought up an item in the past, you got to kind of wait. And again, correct me if I'm wrong, you got to kind of wait for the city administration to say they're ready to talk to. Usually, it's brought up pretty quickly. It's step the second stage. because that's just do we want to talk about it. It's the third stage. And is this for the one on the agenda tonight? Is that the third stage? Yes, it is.

And this is one of the older ones on the list.

Right, right. It's been around a long time. The point is...

It doesn't come up for stage three until it comes up on the agenda.

So if there's something you brought up at the last meeting, and for some reason this is directly to what you're trying to bring up something, if you didn't You can't just randomly choose to say, I want to discuss this because we talked about it at a prior meeting. What is the item that you are desirous of talking about?

Well, in February, we discussed the fact that these developers are not paying for the parking system or the public roads that they're... Using which belonged to all of us and I'm just wondering in March You said as mayor that the city staff was looking into it and I wonder where we are on developers paying for use city of Birmingham taxpayers like the Porsche dealership I think he's referring to the builders bonds and we did bring it no I don't know I thought I thought that I'm referring to the parking system and the you know the public roads which we all own but I thought we had

agreed, correct me if I'm wrong, that we would begin charging developers for metered parking spaces which were rendered inoperable during construction. So we are now billing developers if they... We're talking about parking. Yes.

Yes, we are.

Well, good then. It answers my question. Thank you.

Okay, so to get back to the agenda as printed and we are on stage three of a discussion of the mayoral selection process and this is a mixture of like sort of just us. the administration is not part of it, and some that they have a say in or they ought to contribute. So bear with me and I will just basically read. I'm sorry, it's not on paper. So several city commissioners, including me and members of the public, have expressed a desire to continue refining the process by which the Commission chooses the Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem. This discussion is timely given our shared desire to continue to enhance transparency. The need to conform with a new state law that you may not know about that may delay the swearing in of new commission members in election years. I'll get to that in a moment. A desire to reconcile the city's, the process of picking a mayor with the city's rhythm of holding city commission elections every two years while appointing the mayor and mayor pro tem every year. So there was a sort of a conflict between our process last year. We didn't hold a workshop because the people who were going to be voting on the mayor hadn't even been seated, couldn't participate in the workshop. and the need to amend the charter, most likely, to move forward the date on which the commission holds its annual organizational meeting, which is now the second Monday in November, possibly to sometime in January of the following year, at least in municipal election years, because as the city attorney will explain to us shortly, This new rule says that when we vote in November, those people who get elected don't take office right away at the next meeting. They have to wait until the next year. But our current charter, our charter currently says very specifically on the second Monday in November of each year, the commission shall meet at the usual place for holding the meetings, blah, blah, blah, and appoint somebody mayor and mayor pretend, okay? So, why don't you address, you wanna, we can, I think we should address the charter and the law and all that. And then we can come back to discussing the other stuff.

So as voting has changed, and I'm going to look to the clerk to make sure if I say anything wrong that she corrects me. As voting has changed in the state of Michigan, it is taking a different amount of time for the ballots to be certified. And that is done by the county, not us. So the problem has been that it's taking them longer to certify and yet our charter says the first Monday after the election your commissioners will be sworn in. However we can't swear you in until the ballots have been certified. Thankfully and this has been going on for a couple years that we've been holding our breath particularly Alex back there. luckily the state did do something about this and they stepped in and now there's a time limit that the county now has which is 14 days after the Thursday after the Thursday of the election the clock doesn't start ticking that night it's 14 days after certain period which means that we know we won't necessarily have a certified ballot and certified commissioners consistent with our charter but that's okay because as soon as the state says something that's different than our charter the state preempts our charter we don't have to change it we put a footnote on muni code and a footnote saying that this particular provision has been superseded by state law.

Okay stop right there which provision of the charter do we not need to change?

We do not need to change. Section, so it's Chapter 3, Section 4. Which says... At each regular election, there shall be elected commissioners equal in number to those commissioners whose terms will expire on the first Monday following such election, each of whom shall serve for a term of four years beginning at 8 o'clock p.m. on the first Monday following such regular election. So we don't have to change that. It's superseded by state law.

However. However.

Section 5 of chapter 3 says the language at mayor you previously read on the second Monday in November of each year the Commission shall meet at the usual place and at that Organizational meeting shall elect one of its members as mayor Etc and mayor Pro Tem which has nothing to do with the election

results, right? That's just an organizational meeting to appoint a mayor and a mayor pro tem. However, the effect is... And there's no state law that governs that. That is correct. So there's no state law that's going to supersede that and automatically move our organizational meeting to later. So we have to change it. Well, it's advisable. You could have lame ducks voting on the next mayor.

that's the alternative right so you could still go forward but then you don't have new like this year for instance it doesn't matter because there's not a general municipal election So you still have to comply with section 5 you shall on the second Monday in November and there is a commission meeting the second Monday in November have your organizational meeting and elect a mayor and a mayor pro temp but next year there will be a general municipal election and if we don't change section 5 in the charter. It can read just like this and you can still do the same thing, but then you may have sitting commissioners electing a mayor when they're going to be out in three weeks.

So that seems a little weird.

Right. And maybe somebody who's newly elected but not yet seated, they couldn't be named as mayor or mayor pro tem. not that we normally do that with a new person, but because... Because they're not there. They're not there. You couldn't choose them. Alex wants to say something.

It's December 1st is the start date. Thank you. Not January, December 1st. Right, but what we're saying is that to get the new... My recommendation would be to change Section 5 and go through the process of a charter amendment, which is laborious, to maybe be your second Monday in January so that the new commissioners have a couple meetings to settle in.

And what ballot would that be on? That would be on the November 2027 ballot. At the same time we're voting for these new commissioners, we're also changing the charter.

Unless we were able to get it on the August, which we may have to get special permission for, but otherwise it would be in the November ballot.

In any event, there's no urgency to doing that. There's plenty of time for you to investigate the legality.

We will need to get started on the process in about January, February of 2027 because it is laborious. You have to approve the ballot. It has to go to the attorney general. They tend to be very particular about ballot language. It goes back and forth a couple of times. So anytime we amend it, you have to approve it before we can send it. And then once the attorney general's office approves it, it gets sent to the governor for approval. And then it finally gets back, hopefully in time to make it up to the county by early August to be on the November ballot.

So we got about a year.

It does take the full scope. So definitely January 1, we'd want to get started on this for sure.

Okay.

Any commissioner hopes?

The city clerk said that it has to be official by December 1st. Why are we talking January 1st? Why not just change it to the first meeting in December? Did you say official by December 1st or the clock starts ticking December 1st?

You shouldn't be swearing people in and letting them take action until after the canvass. So the law would say that these newly elected officials cannot start working until noon on the first day of the month following the election. So November election, they take office December 1st is the soonest they should be able to start taking action. And that gives us enough time to make sure that the election is canvassed.

So there's two issues. That's that. No problem there. We can comply with that. It has nothing to do with the Charter Amendment. The Charter Amendment says, when do we elect a mayor and a mayor pro tem from among the group? I think she's just saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, make it after January 1st, give those people time to be seated, get settled in, attend a meeting or two. finish up the holiday season.

Right, and there might be a lot of people that miss meetings in December with the holiday season.

So I think, is that, am I correct? Yes. That that's why you suggest maybe in January. It could be any time. We could make it in June if we want. There's no, there's, I mean, you could do whatever. There's no reason, there's no reason practically that the selection of mayor may pro tem has to be near an election. They're two different things. So if we said, and this is something we can talk about, well, when we change the charter, we can make it any time we want. And there may be good reasons to make it in September, or everybody's always here, or something like that. I don't know. Can anybody think of any reasons why we'd want to make it some time other than relatively close to an election? I mean, I think it's awkward. Actually, it has been awkward having it so close to the election. And there may be, you may remove some of that awkwardness by just getting it away from the election altogether.

Well, unless there's the rare occasion that the mayor is up for re-election and is not re-elected or chooses not, the person who's mayor chooses not to run for re-election. So I'm not sure you want a huge gap, but I do think January sounds reasonable.

We just want to be careful, too, on which January we pick either, excuse me, Monday that we pick in January, February, because there's a number of legal holidays running around January and February.

So you make a very good point. You don't want to have the mayor elected in June and then he gets kicked out of office.

November right and then you don't have a mayor and you got to do it all again but not according to the Charter you're doing it because suddenly we don't have a mayor yeah so I think there should be some proximity but but not obviously we cannot do what we've been doing because the first we have to change the Charter because it can't be that second meeting.

It can be. You're just going to have a rain duck situation.

Right. So this is more or less an FYI. We're not taking any action. We're giving you some feedback which you can use when you come back to us within a couple months.

And we will have to change how we when we seek the new members to as Alex said no sooner than December 1st. So that would be the first meeting in December

Right could make sense right, but we don't have to do that's not in the Charter.

We don't have to do anything to the Charter for this. That's what the state law is going to say. We inform the public of this. Commissioner Kozlowski.

So this this piggybacks on what temporary mayor Pro Tem Long said. So we would need to outline some sort of protocol even if it's a small gap right about what happens if the mayor is no longer serving as a commissioner as of whatever, December 1st, and then we've gotta run six meetings before a new mayor. Sorry, six weeks was what I was thinking. Two meetings before a new mayor shows up. Are there other communities that do this sort of thing and we can?

You also have a mayor pro tem. So remember you got a mayor and you got a mayor pro tem.

Unless they're both gone. Well, if you lose both of them.

Then you vote temporary.

Then you vote temporary. Yep.

All right.

Easy enough.

Well, if you're not seating the new people, let's say January 1st or whatever, the old people are still on until then, right? If you lose an election in November, you're still serving.

Well, you don't lose an election until the vote is canvassed, right?

My point is, there's no vacancies because of the election. The mayor, should he be voted out of office or she, would still be mayor until that January point.

No, we're saying the schedule is the election takes place in November. The certification process must be completed by December 1st. The new commissioners will be seated early December. Right. Yeah, right. Okay, sorry. And then the mayor selection process is a month after that. Yeah. So there is this gap.

Again, you've got the mayor pro tem, and if necessary, you just elect a temporary to get me over the holidays.

But there'll be no lame duck stuff. Any other questions on that aspect of tonight's discussion? Okay. The public, anybody who might want to make a comment can hold off or raise your hand. I don't see anybody. Okay. Now, back to the commission for the things that we have to discuss. Two years ago, in an effort to increase transparency and deliberate on the selection of Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem, the Commission agreed to hold a workshop for that purpose just prior to the organizational meeting. Many saw this as a step in the right direction, however, last year when a municipal election meant that new commissioners would not be seated for such a workshop, the workshop wasn't even held. new commissioners were sworn in and immediately asked to participate in the organizational meeting. Furthermore, in retrospect, the compressed timeline the year prior of a workshop immediately before the organizational meeting did not, in the view of some on the commission and in the community, provide the level of transparency and deliberation desired. So, tonight I would propose that we talk about considering additional measures, possibly to be included in our rules of procedure that bring greater transparency and deliberation to the process. What are they? Well, there's a couple here that I probably wouldn't even consider now at this point, but I'll just throw them out there. Should we have written descriptions of the minimum duties of the mayor and mayor pro tem? Should we hold the workshop or it could just be an agenda item? At least some number of weeks. Prior to the organizational meeting. Maybe. You know one meeting prior to meetings prior so that we can. Follow some procedure now some possible things. Each commissioner. might have the opportunity to indicate his or her willingness and ability to serve as mayor and or mayor pro tem the following year. That doesn't mean you're locking yourself in to being a candidate and it doesn't mean that if you don't suggest or say that you're willing and able to do it, you can't change your mind later on. It's just maybe at this early meeting a few people raise their hand and say, yeah, I'm willing to do it. Those indicating a willingness and ability to serve would have an opportunity to discuss their qualifications. And commissioners and the public, including new commissioners possibly, including new commissioners who have been elected but not yet sworn in, could question one another or comment upon the discussion regarding leadership. At the organizational meeting, of course, commissioners could further deliberate, may, would not be required to take into account the information provided in that earlier workshop. As I said, a commissioner who did not previously express willingness could do so at the organizational meeting. Somebody who had expressed a willingness could say, I'm no longer interested. and nominations for the position for the positions would not be accepted until the Commission had deliberated at these two separate meetings and You might say, we might formalize some of the questions that those interested in serving or being nominated might be asked and asked to answer. Why are you interested in serving? How would you describe the mayor or mayor pro tem's role? Which, by the way, the mayor's role is kind of spelled out in the charter. The mayor pro tem's role is so limited it just basically says the mayor pro tem runs a meeting when the mayor's not around. How much time do you anticipate devoting to the job? What qualities do you believe are most important in presiding over commission meetings? How would you handle disagreements among commissioners? And what would success as mayor or mayor pro tem look like after one year? We can come up with any number of other questions that we might want to ask, but I think the broad outlines of This idea is an earlier workshop. Let's get it out there. Who's interested? Who's not? What are the qualifications? Talk about it. Then come to the organizational meeting and actually discuss that stuff and not leave everybody thinking, well, the fix was in. Which last meeting, it wasn't. Some folks in the community thought it was, but it wasn't. But whatever. So that's, I'm done.

So you'd have to hold the workshop, the first meeting in October then? If you don't want to do it active. If we only do workshops at the first meeting of the month?

It could be an agenda item. Not a workshop. We're sitting here. It's only 9 o'clock. We're essentially having a workshop. The second of the night.

A rare meeting that it's not midnight.

Two in a row right now.

Don't jinx it. I don't have any... Dispute withholding the workshop earlier. It's probably a good idea or the or an agenda item to have the discussion earlier We couldn't have it earlier.

I don't think you have to wait come out to the election, right? I No. Well, if the new commissioners... They'd be in attendance as non-participants.

They could be in attendance and participate from the floor as members of the public. But you're right. The timeline is somebody sketching out

So then you'd have to do it in, if they are not seated till December 1st, then you would have to have the workshop at the second meeting in December and then the organizational meeting at one of the January meetings.

You're nodding your head. You're nodding your head. Is that okay?

Whether it's a workshop or agenda.

Yeah, right. But that's what we're talking about.

Yeah.

Thank you. What about, I mean, the rest of that is all, it's really discretionary. I mean, unless you put it in the rules of procedure and say, you know, that's what we're going to do. But, again, I don't think we should hold someone. You've got to announce your decision. sort of candidacy at that first workshop. And if you don't, that's it. You can't. That's not right.

Yeah, but then what is the point? If they don't announce their candidacy and they don't participate as a candidate in the workshop slash agenda item,

I think come, I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but come the organizational meeting, they've got some explaining to do. And look, things come up, you know. We've had people who life changes cause them to drastically change their, on a dime. So you might say something in November, or not say something in November and by January, circumstances have changed. So I feel like we need to leave open that opportunity, possibility for that sort of thing to occur. But yeah, somebody would, you would say, well, you're interested now, but you weren't three weeks ago or whatever it was, why? Reasonable question. Or, geez, you were interested three words ago, and now you're saying you're not. What's the deal? And you can say, well, it's just personal reasons. I'm not interested anymore. The real thing, I mean, the other big part of this, it isn't just whether you're interested in doing it. It's like talking about what the job entails, how you're going to execute it, and this whole idea. I'm telling you, just from experience. This is a difficult job that requires a lot of time and it takes time to get used to it. And there's a whole lot to it. And you don't have to approach it the way I, she didn't approach it the way I approach it. She watched every meeting of every advisory board on video. I haven't watched a single one, okay? That's just one example of how we're way different, right? Bless her heart, she didn't include me in Jack when I was Mayor Pro Tem. We had, you know, we had a period. Now, you know, I include her in a lot. Because, you know, that's just, the Mayor, so this is talking about not just the Mayor's role, but the Mayor Pro Tem's role. I can tell you from experience and from observation, the Mayor determines what the role of the Mayor Pro Tem is. Now, the mayor pro tem may or may not be the mayor in waiting. Sometimes he or she is, sometimes he or she's not. I don't believe the mayor pro tem should be the mayor in waiting. That should not be a presumption. The extent to which the mayor and the mayor pro tem click, trust each other, it's all going to determine how involved the mayor pro tem is in the day-to-day operation of government. That said, that's the mayor pro tem. The mayor, it's how you approach it. And Jana will tell you, you can call Tom Marcus or Joe Valentine or anybody and say, oh boy, they'll tell you, oh boy, that runs the gamut, you know? It runs the gamut from somebody who's very involved, who's not involved. Somebody who's a pain in the neck, somebody who's very cooperative. Somebody where the city manager has a great relationship, somebody where the city manager has not so great a relationship. So all those things factor into who we should choose as mayor and the quality of leadership that we're gonna have. and we ought to talk about it.

Punctuation.

Period, yes.

So, and you know, temporary Mayor Pro Tem Long kind of touched on this. I like the suggestions and I like the idea about the increase in the transparency. I guess I'm trying to figure out what exactly do we gain by splitting it up into a workshop and then an actual agenda item where we do the voting.

We talk about it because it's very... May I answer? Yeah, please. We talk about it and we have time to think about it. If you do this organizational meeting with no prior... Discussion or you only discuss it that night. Mm-hmm It it's just it's not transparent at all. It's not deliberative at all You think you're under insufficient time to that night that night is crazy. You have a bunch of people there's all their families in the room and And everybody's taking pictures and you have this long break. It's so it's it's a bad time to be talking previously

prior to us starting this workshop project process. Older commissions did have sort of a mayor-in-waiting process. And there was some question about whether they deliberated and how OMA played into it. But people, I mean, they just showed up at meetings, they made motions, they took votes, and it was over. And the public didn't get any chance to comment. And nobody understood how the decision was arrived at. And I will say that in some cases, it was reviewed as a, you've had your turn, now it's my turn, they would just go through all the commissioners that were still seated and since they were all seated 15 and 20 years and some of those earlier those Commission's everybody went through the list in the end and I spoke with people who had served as mayor who said quite frankly it was my turn and I wanted it but I should have never been because I wasn't good at it and so it was more of a honorific than choosing someone who was going to be good at the job, who could put the time into it, and who could actually lead the commission. So we wanted to get away from that. We came up with this idea of a workshop to allow people to discuss their reasoning to say who they thought would be suited or why you would be suited and for Members of the public to be able to ask questions and comment and make recommendations I'm not saying it's a perfect process but it is different than just showing up and making nominations and motions and which under the old method was the way the agenda was laid out because there wasn't any other opportunity for any broad discussion.

With a lot of inappropriate phone calls going on in the weeks ahead or the week before.

Well, I don't know if you want to say inappropriate. I'm not going to say people violated OMA.

I didn't say that. I said they were inappropriate conversations.

Yeah. So if we do the staggering though, we're going to eliminate the everyone's family's going to be there and there's going to be taking pictures and stuff, right? That's all going to happen in December. That'll happen when they're seated. And then we're not doing this mayoral selection process until January. So I'm saying even if you compressed it, you just said it's going to be an agenda item and, boy, it's going to be a doozy. We're going to do all our deliberation. We're going to have periods for public comment. And we're just going to nail this thing out in one meeting.

My preference...

I'm just asking because it's just to give people time to consider.

That's what I think. I think it's important. I don't really object to that. It's coming up. Think about it. Talk about it. And then a couple weeks pass and then... make the decision. It's just like in a lot of cases, we know an agenda item is coming up and we get access to a report in advance, we think about it, whatever. This is important enough that it's one of those things I think we ought to have some time.

So are we going to Is the objective here to sort of roll this all into a single charter amendment?

No. No, there's a charter amendment. She'll deal with that. The point might be to ask them to come up with language for an addition to our rules of procedure, perhaps. If there's not a sense that we want to put it on the rules of procedure, we can just say if there's, let's call it unanimous consent, that that We will just proceed in that manner and they will schedule those Meetings and we could say we should document it.

Okay, I'm open then So I think to keep your process of the three-step process Where you're heading now though is to make a motion to put this on as an irregular agenda item with direction to staff whomever that may be to add language and to your rules of procedure, taking into account everything that we just heard. I just don't want you guys to forget you need a motion now to put this on the agenda. Oh, okay. Because you're doing your three-step process. You want to stay consistent.

Usually in the third step, you actually do the business, don't we?

No.

Third step is the business.

Third step is, yep, we definitely want to do this as a full agenda.

Okay, okay, okay. Happy to take a motion to...

I move that we direct a city staff to place mayor selection process as a formal agenda item at their convenience and provide suggested language to amend our rules of procedure to incorporate the potential cadence that we discussed this evening second

Okay, motion second. Do we have any comments? Are we unanimously, fractionally unanimously in favor of this? Marginally. Marginally unanimously in favor of this? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Excellent. Thank you very much. I consider, I'm very proud of this. Thank you. We have nothing removed from the consent agenda. We have communications regarding next and the community house. We have commissioner reports, a notice of intention to appoint the design review board, another notice of intention to appoint to the historic district commission, and another notice of intention to appoint the advisory parking committee. We also have a notice of intention to appoint to the city of Birmingham Community House Foundation Board of Directors. We have an update and anybody in the public. You're probably not listening now, but Dial in to whatever time it is It's approximately seven two hours and nine minutes into our meeting for a report on the Dollar tree at three three eight seven seven Woodward that was promised to you many weeks ago and my Sincere apologies that we have not gotten it to it until now city manager

yes well I just was just giving an update because people had asked about it there have been concerns about a dollar tree going in whether it was permitted at this particular address. Crime concerns etc as I think we did mention at an earlier meeting we did contact several local police departments to see if the crime rate went up as a result of a dollar store it did not. At least that's what was reported to us. In this particular location, it's the former Save on Drugs location and that is a retail location. It was built as a retail location and the parking accommodates a retail location. and it is dollar tree that has applied to go in there they have applied for all of their permits they I believe the permit has been issued I don't use that is permitted there and it has enough parking and basically the only things that will be controlled will be you know whether they have shelves blocking the windows with the signage will be et cetera but it is a legally permitted use in that tenant does intend at least today to move into that space and that the permits have been issued.

Any questions from the commission. I have a question or 2. Do we, are there any business types that we do not allow? Could a McDonald's open in Birmingham?

There are regulated uses, which are... couple of weird things such as bathhouses tattoo parlors and a couple of things like that tattoo parlors that are regulated uses yeah they would have to come for a special land use permit for regulated use approval through the City Commission and there are uses in every zone district that are permitted uses accessory uses or permitted only with a special land use this is just so for instance if you type these talked about a McDonald's with the direct let's say there's a drive-thru McDonald's is retail retail would be permitted under the zoning but they may not have enough parking because parking requirements are different for a restaurant use compared to a retail store and then if they had a drive-thru there are some cases where drive-thrus are not permitted or they are permitted as accessory uses and it depends.

Okay, so I would submit, it was very interesting that you brought up tattoo parlors because I would be willing to bet that when tattoo parlors were added to regulated uses, there was... In 1963 or thereabouts.

Yeah.

You know, and only Hell's Angels and former Marines who were abroad who came back with tattoos. Now it's like totally acceptable part of society. Likewise, dollar stores probably didn't exist the last time we looked at permitted uses or not permitted uses or regulated uses. And now all of a sudden dollar stores are a thing that get people all hot under the collar. So I don't know. I mean, we can't do anything about this dollar store. I'm not sure we'd want to do anything about this dollar store. However, I wonder if we ought to be reviewing the businesses that we require to have permission that are not by right. I don't know. Wouldn't that be included in the zoning review? Could be. Well, that's a good question. Yes.

So I don't know much about dollar stores, but it seems to me that it might be extremely difficult to differentiate between something that qualifies as a dollar store and something that qualifies as other ordinary retail. We used to call them 5 and 10s.

Yeah, exactly, right?

SS Kresge. Right. 5 and 10. I just feel like we would have to do some kind of micro-regulation about the volumes in which you sell things and the prices, and it could be extremely difficult, I think, to just negotiate what we mean when we say, what is truly a dollar store. Whereas a tattoo parlor, I think, you can tell somebody's doing a tattoo parlor.

My guess is dispensary.

Yeah, we address that. We address that. We don't do that. Nick, you're here. Feel free to come up and contribute to the conversation if you want. He's going to duck and cover. I'm sure planners, is this not something planners talk about? Changing times, changing mores? and how planning and zoning adopts to those changes without discussing dollar stores and the difficulty just in there?

The answer is yes. I actually think where we're trending in our current zoning ordinance update project is to be a little bit more general because times change so quickly these days, retail environments, office environments, that the way we pigeon-holed ourselves in our current ordinance, it's like 25 years old, is extremely unhelpful. So we're actually going the opposite way in order, or a lot of people are going the opposite way to be a little more general so that we can accommodate nice things that may not be specifically listed. And there are strategies, like Jana mentioned, the ones we know that should be regulated, the ones we know cause a little extra concern in the communities, are special land use permit processes. So we're sensitive to those things as well, but it's trending to be more general.

For instance, we used to list retail, flower shop, gift shop, apparel shop, candy shop, all of these things, right?

Fur shop. Right.

And so if you came in and said, well, I want to sell... I don't know, hats. Well, there was no hat shop listed, so you couldn't do it. Yes, so that's what the point Nick is making now is that it's more general to say that retail is a permitted use.

Somebody called me a few months ago and said, boy, you guys don't allow this thing. Do you remember?

It's tobacconist, probably.

No.

Because hookah bars, for instance, are only allowed in certain areas. That's one we get a lot. Marijuana dispensaries, another one.

It was something seemingly. Escape rooms. No, it was like a yoga or fitness studio.

Those are limited in terms of where they are limited.

That's true. That's what it was. Why?

Parking.

But you just have parking required.

And I can tell you that probably three times in the last 25 years we've brought this up again. Should yoga studios be allowed anywhere downtown or anywhere here? And there's always opposition to it because of the turnover and the traffic. in the parking so like 20 people go to this yoga class but then 30 people are coming into this yoga class and so we've never been able to planning has brought it up before the planning board in the city commission in years past and we have not been able to change that to allow it in more zone districts.

Mayor Bonner, that's something that I would say is a perfect example of what's changed over a 20-year period. There weren't these boutique little yogurt or pilates type things in 2005. There are now, and people really love them, but our zoning ordinance has... remained a little bit antiquated. So we did manage to get them downtown, but there's plenty of zoning districts where you'd scratch your head when I tell you no, they're not allowed. Adams Square is an example. You'd think that'd be a perfect place for that. It'd be perfect because they got parking. Parking coming out their ears. Actually not permitted, so it's another thing that we're... That makes no sense.

Does that make sense to anybody sitting up here?

That's why our zoning order update project is so important. So you will address things like that? I think confidently I can tell you absolutely is.

Okay, that's a new one on me. You got oceans of parking there that are not used. You could fill it up with some cars. You could do another whole front shopping center and stuff in a park.

Daycare centers are another one that are...

It's really hot right now, yeah.

Yep.

Well, and speaking of PPPs, we had a provider of daycare interested in a PPP because the demand is out of sight. And it's costly to put one in a place like Birmingham. But the demand in Birmingham is huge. So if that's something we think is a public benefit for our young families... We might consider a daycare center as something we want to devote some space to. Anyway, thank you very much. Thanks, y'all. That brings us to... Commissioner comments. Commissioner comments. This might have been an appropriate time to bring up the comment or question regarding something about whatever it was, builder bonds or use of public rights of way or whatever. Advisory boards, committees, commissioners reports, legislation, city staff, Wimbledon phase one project update.

There's just a very brief memo in there that says, as you know, we've negotiated and we've changed that we're going to go with asphalt, and it looks like that's going to start just shortly after the Dream Cruise on the week of August 24th, I believe.

And 2026 Cape Seal program update?

That was just an update to say, as you know, the same contractor that did the Cape Seal on Wimbledon was also doing those four projects, so we were monitoring every tiny little step of the way, and it's going so far so good, and now we're just on a punch list.

Okay. Short-term rental report?

There's not much to report other than Nick on the planning board side, that language is going to a public hearing at the planning board. Or did it already? No, it's on the 12th. Next week. Oh, yeah. Wednesday. And then it'll come to you. But we haven't had any short-term rental issues per se. We're still, of course, monitoring the different sites like VRBO and Airbnb, etc. to look for unlicensed ones. Okay.

Well, information only, that's just information only. It's 9.22. Was it a before and after? Do we need to wait nine minutes for you to win the bet?

No, no, I just, I believed in you, and you were spot on. Two times in a row. Don't blame me.

Motion to adjourn.

Second. All those in favor? Aye.