Mayor and Council - Regular Meeting

All right, good evening, everyone. We'd like to call to order the mayor and council meeting for Tuesday, September 8th. Please stand if you're able for the pledge.

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.

Julie, roll call, please.

Mr. St. John?

Here.

Mr. Bonanno?

Here.

Mr. Smothers? Here. Mr. Sandusky?

Here.

Mr. Caves?

Here.

All present and accounted for, Mayor.

Thank you. All right. Sorry, I've got to get my stuff together here. Okay, under Mayor's remarks, we have several tonight. First, those who didn't know, I'm sure everybody probably did know at this point, former Mayor Jeff Snoots passed away. So if we could just take a moment of silence to remember him and his contributions. Thank you all. And please continue to keep his family in your prayers. I know they're struggling right now with that. Okay. Next up, I'm going to do a police officer swearing in. So we'll come down there. And then repeat after me. I, Bethany Hiller.

I, Bethany Hiller.

Do solemnly swear.

Do solemnly swear.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

And the laws and constitution of the state of Maryland.

And the laws and constitution of the state of Maryland.

And that I will.

And that I will.

To the best of my ability.

To the best of my ability.

Diligently and faithfully.

Diligently and faithfully.

Execute the duties as police officer.

Execute the duties as police officer.

For the City of Brunswick.

For the City of Brunswick.

Frederick County, Maryland.

Frederick County, Maryland.

Congratulations and welcome aboard. Do you have any questions for her?

I definitely want to say welcome aboard and thank you for choosing one of the best police departments in Frederick County.

Appreciate it.

In all of Maryland.

Thank you so much and welcome.

You're welcome. Okay. It's always exciting to get a new police officer on board. Speaking of police, kudos to Kevin and his team. I know there's been a lot of rumbling about the Brunswick Elementary School car rider situation, but from my point of view, it has been resolved. Things are going well. Really only the first day of school was the worst and things have been going well. And if anybody has questions when Kevin does his staff report, I'm sure he'll talk about it as well. I think it's definitely going well. We're making the best of the situation we have. Obviously, the parking lot's not that big, and more and more people are driving their kids to school and picking them up than sending them on the bus. So we have to deal with what we have, but kudos to them. They spent a lot of work on this all summer and working with the administration, and it's been going well. Next up. Today was exciting. There was an event held at the Brunswick Volunteer Fire Company to announce the results of the feasibility study that had been going on with Frederick County Division of Aging and Independence regarding the future of senior centers in Frederick County, what they should include, and the amenities. And as part of that, Frederick County will begin building brand new senior centers instead of repurposing structures that don't really work. and the very first one will be here in brunswick so we're very excited about that if you've ever been to our senior center right here on a street um it's not great so we're very excited to be the first one um we started working on that with county executive jan gardner she came out and looked at it and and really the wheels got turning and county executive fitzwater has is seeing it over the finish line. The design is fully funded, and there are funds in FY28. The entire project will be fully funded in the county CIP for new construction. Those that don't know, it will be located on 17 across from Brunswick Crossing, sort of the Burger King area in that strip. The Hopes owned that, continue to own that, who owned the farm that Brunswick Crossing is on, and they have recently sold that to Frederick County. so that is where they are looking at locating that so very very exciting about that and i know just before i came out here the county executive posted about it and there's a lot of information on the county's website so feel free to check it out and get all the updates on that Let's see, beginning September 28th, we recently heard from MTA and Mark that beginning September 28th, there will be a pilot weekday round trip service from Brunswick to Baltimore, and it will skip Union Station. They've heard a lot of complaints about that and the amount of time, so it will get folks from this area and through Montgomery County directly to Baltimore, weekday round trips. And this is really a, if you guys know, there have been a lot of different meetings and public discussions in the last couple years regarding how to enhance MARC train service. And some of these are the low-hanging fruits that they've been looking at, things that they can easily modify schedules and be able to kind of implement things and pilot and see what works and what will improve ridership and getting people connected throughout the state. So this isn't the only thing that they're going to do. Other things require a lot more construction, easements, looking at additional tracks, station changes, all those kind of different things, including looking at weekend service, service throughout the day instead of only in the morning and evenings during peak hours. So there's a lot of different things that they're looking at and trying to negotiate with CSX to look at expansion of service. Lauren's posted recently, Railroad Days is coming up, first weekend in October, so we hope to see people there, pray for good weather, because we have a packed lineup of vendors, events this year. This year we are also, I believe, piloting or doing, I can't remember, I'm gonna say it, and hopefully we are doing it, but we are gonna, as people know, last year, anytime we have good weather, the entire city becomes gridlocked, and traffic backs up and the parking lots fill. So we are going to look at shuttling overflow from one of the schools downtown and back and forth to help expand parking and hopefully expand more people. Because the last thing we want is people to come and they can't get to the festival. And that kind of spreads negative publicity around that. So we're trying to avoid that and look at ways to continue to expand and provide opportunities to make the festival bigger and bigger every year. Let's see, last thing, Brunswick High School. The construction team, project team is coming September 17th from 6 to 7.30 p.m. at Brunswick Elementary School. So please come out, ask questions. Brunswick, it'll be at the elementary school. Yes, yes, yep, yep, they're gonna have it at the elementary school cafeteria. So it will be the 17th, 6 to 7.30. With that, let's move along to approval of minutes. We have Mayor and Council Workshop August 6th, Mayor and Council Meeting August 11th and 25th. I'll make a motion that we approve the minutes.

I'll second.

Motion and second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, vote is unanimous. Next up, Citizens Forum. Anybody here? Come on up, sir, and state your name and address, and you'll have three minutes.

Ariel Gonzalez representing American Legion 18 South Maple. Mr. Mayor and honorable members of this council, I stand before you tonight to invoke the iron of the old rail lines, the sweat of the railroaders and the farmers, and the names of the ordinary men who held the line in distant, brutal conflicts so this city could exist in peace. As a historian and chaplain for Post 96, my sacred civic duty is to ensure their names are carved permanently into our present. I come before you to canvass a vision from Buck Messner that is now a moral imperative for the spirit and vitality of this community. We are faced with a choice to be the stewards of our posterity or to sell our identity for the sake of modern convenience. Our legion's new motivation is this. The traffic circles in Brunswick infrastructure to some individuals curse must be transformed into monuments. They are to be named after our local sons, the railroaders, and their families who wore the uniform with absolute distinction. Names like Sherman Lowry, Charles Stream, Alvy Keenan, and Harold Steadman. These names do not represent history. They are the embodiment of platonic virtues and Brunswick pride. We are a city of proudness with a deep, unbreakable heritage. As we begin this canvassing process, I am also asking the council to step up and speak on our behalf to the State Highway Administration to officially rename Route 17 as Military Drive. Ultimate service requires ultimate sacrifice, but we are the watchers. It is our absolute duty to ensure that sacrifice is recognized and recorded. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Anybody else here to speak tonight? All right, seeing none, we will close out Citizens Forum. Next up, resolution and ordinances. We have ordinance 634, which is the mayor and council salaries. Gary.

All right, so this is the second read for Sorry, I was not prepared for this ordinance. We talked about it at the last meeting. So this is to codify the current salaries of the mayor and council into the code. This language used to be in the city charter and when we changed the charter last year, maybe a year and a half ago now, we took out the specific verbiage and just made reference to the fact that we would approve it. from time to time, excuse me, by ordinance. So this is to solidify the current salaries. I will add that since the last meeting council members felt that it was important that we begin the process of looking at current salaries of council members. So I have started the process of doing some of that research just to get it on the record. Any changes that would eventually potentially be made would not go into effect with the current terms of office, but would be put into effect in future. That way no one is voting on their own salary increase. That's how that typically runs. So any questions?

Questions for Kerry? I'll make a motion that we approve ordinance 634. Second.

Motion and second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, vote is unanimous. Next up is staff reports. First up, Kevin.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. I think the staff report that you guys have is from July, so I apologize. I will discipline Veronica tomorrow. I'll just go down what we had there. We had 1,425 calls per service during the month of August. 237 of them were citizen generated, which is a little under eight per day, so not too crazy. Crashes, we had 11. All 11 of them were property damage crashes. Six of them were in parking lots. Seven of them were crashing into a stationary object, like usual, and three of them were hit and runs. Assaults, we had eight. Three of them were domestic related. None of them were arrested. Two were neighbor related. Two were a random mutual assault at, I think, Smoketown. And then one was a first-degree assault where the subject was arrested. He spent, I think, three and a half weeks in the hospital first for mental evaluation and then was served an arrest warrant. And I think he's also responsible for quite a few of our malicious destruction of properties that we had over the last couple months. He's got charges pending on a couple other things, but was arrested for the assault. Thefts, we had three thefts. One was a fraud, a sextortion fraud. Again, if you have grandchildren or young teenagers, encourage them not to take pictures of them naked and send them to anybody because It's probably not a really hot looking female on the other side. It's somebody that's going to extort money from them. It happens quite a bit. We had an attempted burglary on Brunswick Street that we're in the process of investigating. A lot of repeat offenders on the overdose and mental calls that we have. We had one subject, I think we had eight calls for the same person, five arrests, all of them were dog arrests. And the page that I always forget to get to is, We had a departmental this month. We had one of our officers had a little mishap on Route 15, property damage only, everybody was okay. No use of forces and then complaints. We had one complaint from July that we sent up to the ACC, so we're still waiting on that. That should be heard, I think, in October. And then we had a complaint, or I had a complaint on myself from the Brunswick Elementary School traffic, which... Only after the first day, though. And really, the first day was a little hectic because the kids didn't know where to go. I mean, the school did a great job, and kudos to the administration there. They pivoted after that first day, and I think it's been running great ever since. There's been a couple times where we've had to move people along, but it really hasn't been bad at all. So I think we've been... out talking to the people we went i went to a pta meeting the other day and we talked about it and i think everybody is uh is pleased with the way things are going so knock on wood we hope it continues very good questions for the chief that is so what's our fix for between the bus traffic and people dropping off their kids so that folks understand what's going on up there i mean that's only so much room up there we go through this all the time I mean, to be honest, I think it's worked itself out. Usually it takes a while. And usually the issue is that they were always backed up on Central Avenue. We've encouraged people to pick their kids up a little bit later. There's a big rush between 330 and 350 probably. School doesn't get out till 345, but there's people up there early, because they don't, I guess they've got things to do, I don't know. But once the, they have 12 cars in the queue at a time, so once those 12 cars get loaded up, it flows pretty smoothly. So it really has been great. Again, kudos to the administration because they pivoted after the first day, and I think they're letting the car riders out first now instead of the walkers. So it's gone smoothly. Questions?

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next up, utilities. Matt.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. So starting off with the Waterside, we've been discussing the wells with Phillips and Son Drilling and then another company, I can't remember the name of them off the top of my head, but essentially we're just looking at water to help reduce the amount of treatment necessary from the Potomac River Plant. Groundwater is a lot cheaper and better quality. So we're gonna keep investigating that. The cost to drill a six inch test well is $22,475. from Phillips, but that's, you can't just throw a stone and say drill a hole there. We have to still do a little more research and determine where the best locations are gonna be and where it's feasible. It had to be so many feet from other services and then everything like that. So we're gonna keep looking into that and hopefully find a good source of water within the city. We had some more issues with the intake. So we deployed our dive team, aka me, to the screen in the river and removed any debris and scrubbed any buildup off of the screen. It didn't look too bad, but we did find another issue with the air supply line that opens the pneumatic valve and resolved that. Everything is good to go there. Yorty Springs is cyber secure, we're back in business. I know we discussed that at the last council meeting, but we're really confident in what we have up there, and I think we're even taking further measures with Innovative to make it more secure up there. The reservoir, we're still going back and forth. I think everything is with the USDA now, so the ball's in their court to determine if We're going to receive these funds. We believe between us and WRA, the engineers, we've done everything they've asked. So we're really confident that we're gonna receive that million dollars to help pay off that reservoir. The demo is slated to begin in 2027 if we were to go with the company that we've been counseled by, the DN Tanks. And then the build would occur in 2028 and be completed sometime that year. We have a pre-construction meeting up there on Thursday with the soil conservation district and Washington County government. Just one of the things we had to do was sign an agreement which was at the last meeting to say we're gonna maintain the stormwater facility and take care of it that way they don't have to step in and take care of it. And once all that's done, we're gonna start building. I think everything else is ready to go. They've ordered the tank. First step will be excavation and pouring the concrete and then we'll slap a nice pretty new tank up there hopefully before the end of the year. Weather permitting and everything. The setbacks, it's kind of held up. I'm having some trouble finding NSF pumps. that are submersible. Anything that touches water has to be NSF approved. And the type of pump that the contractor wants to use, they just apparently don't make an NSF version of that. So we're working out that and then hopefully see some progress. I talked to Ricky about doing a budget amendment to move the funds from FY26 and FY27 so that we're not scrambling to find money to pay for this. We do still have it, it just needs to be moved. Wastewater treatment, we're seeing a lot of exciting updates over there. The demo is complete on the old press. We've got some pictures we'll be happy to share on the Facebook page at some time, but the concrete section has been removed and the next step will be pouring the new concrete and we receive delivery of the new press on the 16th. So some exciting progress there if you're into wastewater presses. Otherwise, they're just planning the conduit runs and demo the breezeway where the ultraviolet goes and a few other odds and ends like that. But that's the big achievement that we've seen here lately. We have the temporary press open running, so we're not without the press right now. And that's all I have, unless there's any questions.

Questions for Matt?

Thank you to the dive team. It was a pleasure. It was 90 degrees that day, so kind of nice.

Glad to see you.

That's a different kind of diving. All-purpose dive. You dive off that thing, it's not going to be a good outcome.

All right. Thank you, sir. Thank you. All right. Bruce and John are out, so Carrie.

Okay I just have one quick thing just to remind everybody that we are currently running the process of accepting interest for the mayor and council vacant seat for the appointment process and they are due to me by September 28th at 4 30 p.m. I will just remind everyone they don't have to contact me in order to get that they can get it online so when people ask me if I know who has applied no one has applied yet and I don't know who all has picked them up so The other thing that I failed to do, I was so bad, I did not include the proclamations that we should have done this month for September. So I thought about that today. So I should have included a National Recovery Month proclamation, a National Preparedness Month proclamation, and a National Suicide Prevention Month proclamation, all for the month of September. So they are not included in the packet, but I will do a Facebook post tomorrow so people know that we have done so.

All right. Okay. Thank you. Jeremy.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. Jeremy Moos, Deputy City Administrator. Really nothing new to report, just we're wrapping up the sports complex project. We'll have that done by the end of the month, and then I would submit for our little over $2 million in grant reimbursements. And as that project wraps up, we will be starting the phase four of that project, which is the skate park renovation, which we should have a preliminary design for that for the Mayor and Council to take a look at here in the next month or so. And with that, any questions? Questions?

Yes, sir. This would normally be more of a question for Bruce, but since he's not here, I wonder if maybe you have an idea. Where are we at now with the estimated time for breaking ground for Springdale and Vista Point?

Actually, I think we're probably less than a year out for actually breaking ground. They've already went through all of our approval processes here. So probably less than a year for them to actually break ground. And then once they break ground and record their first plats, that's when we'll have those funding coming in for the developer fees. But we're also going to get some up front as well for water and sewer. But once they actually start recording the plats, we'll start getting... some of that developer fees coming in, but I would put that at less than a year. Okay, thanks.

Any other questions? Julie.

Okay. I just have two things. One, Councilman Caves asked me about, we had been doing in the Parks and Rec area a survey of the tennis courts because we had heard from a lot of the public that they really wanted the tennis courts down on East Potomac across from City Park, that they wanted those tennis courts into pickleball courts. And so we put a survey out and I don't actually have the results in front of me. I know they were mixed. We will be presenting the results at the next meeting in September 22nd. And we do have some internal deliberation because we didn't want to just bring the results without a recommendation. And that's the other reason that you haven't seen the results yet. Because that area is somewhat problematic. It's in a floodplain and it stays wet all the time down there. And there are other concerns. But we'll get the full picture and get into it at the next meeting. And the other thing I wanted to say was thank you to Mayor Brown because today was a big day. I know we kind of make fun of it, but this regional 50 plus community center that there that the county is building the first one in brunswick is a really big deal we are the prototype for what every other county facility will be like in the future and i know that this has been a both personal and political effort on the mayor's part. And I just want to say thank you to him for keeping that in the spotlight because our seniors really deserve it. And there's been a lot of work in the background from a lot of people. And I just thank you for keeping that in the limelight. And the last thing I'd like to say is I cannot believe I thought, I know you guys thought I was excited about sidewalks when that end of North Maple was done, but not near as much as I'm excited about a wastewater press. The fact that we have demoed the old one, we have a temporary one working and we're about to get the new one delivered has been something that we have worked on for years and years and years. So people who think these new things just pop up in Brunswick all the time, they all have years of work behind them. So I just want to say I'm really excited about wastewater and senior centers and sidewalks, things I never thought I'd be that interested in.

Julie, the grant that Chrissy, they said not to make public, but they said today, did they release it? i don't know i mean all right well we won't we'll announce it at the next meeting because they specifically asked the state act we have a really good grant that's coming too related to sidewalk stuff um but they said not to announce it so i don't know if they released it today or not i have a question for julia though yes go ahead you're back to the pickleball yeah you know we have courts so it's getting ready to be up at wtri stadium how many pickleball courts are going up there two two okay so

we're gonna look at leveraging the two downtown versus up there or trying to do a reclamation of those courts?

We're factoring all of that in. We have a quote that was astronomical for turning the tennis courts down there on East Potomac into pickleball courts. I'm sure of that. And so we're weighing all of those options. We also, didn't we hear that there are gonna be pickleball courts at Othello at some point? So anyways, we're weighing in all those things. Oh, some of the new developments too will have pickleball courts.

Yeah, but if they're in those developments, that's gonna be specific for the folks that are living there typically.

Maybe, maybe not.

So that's... Well, I'm hoping that they're not because I mean, typically when we have developments come in, it's for their use only and not for everybody else, but everybody else can use everything that we have. I kind of don't like that.

Well, that's because everybody pays taxes and everybody doesn't pay HOA fees. So city facilities are used by all because all people, including people in developments, pay taxes. Not everybody in the cities pay HOA fees. However, some of the senior amenities in those developments, specifically like pickleball courts, we've asked for them to look at how they can be inclusive of the broader community. But pickleball is team sport. So as people move into a community and get to know people, you can invite people to come and use those amenities as well. So there will be people that live in the community who will be able to use that. It's the same thing with the pool at Brunswick Crossing, for example. It is not exclusive to the residents in the sense that they can have guests come and there are people that don't live in Brunswick Crossing that use that pool as guests of people that do live there. So there are different ways that this works, but I just wanna be clear because I hear all the different stuff of, Well, we can't use that stuff. Well, we don't pay for that stuff. However, they do pay for our stuff. They pay for our municipal pool through their taxes that people in the developments probably don't use, specifically in Brunswick Crossing. Maybe they do, I don't know. But I just don't ever like the tit for tat.

That's true.

It's my soapbox for the night.

And more specifically, the development that's at the Cooper Farm development up by Springdale, is that what they call that? That had area for a senior center on it that was going to be publicly accessible, and now clearly we don't need it.

It has four acres that were dedicated to the city. The reason being is when that development came in and we were in very preliminary stages with the county for a senior center, And it was very important to me that it did not fall apart, which these things can do very quickly. So we leveraged all avenues to find land for the senior center once we knew the county was on board to pay to build it. So that included leveraging four acres in that annexation agreement with Cooper on the Cooper farm and included at the same time, they were looking at this piece that they had to acquire from the hopes. So, and that also included our annexation agreement to acquire the piece of land that's next to where the senior center is going to go. So we're also going to own that land that could potentially have outdoor amenities for seniors and not. I mean, pickleball, there are a lot of seniors that like to do that as well. So perhaps pickleball courts could even go out there. We haven't, so we haven't made any, now that the dust is settling, we'll have to go back and look at the four acres at Cooper. We'll have to look at the parcel on 17 that won't actually be needed for the senior center since they acquired the Hope piece. So there's a lot of different things. And then the specific, tennis courts that Julie's talking about, community members came to us and asked us to evaluate transforming that. So we let them know that we would kind of go through these steps of putting the survey out. Once the survey data we have kind of collected, present that to this body to see if based on the data we're interested in a conversion of tennis courts or leaving it. However, we did make very clear to that group that if we agree to move forward, they would be interested in paying for it. So we have a lot of other park priorities, so I'm not sure converting something right now is a high on our priority list with budget items. But if they want to pay for it and get quotes that this body's comfortable approving, then that's a decision that you all can make.

There's a lot of things going on.

There's also the fence around the court is still under a grant agreement. So the entire court can't be demolished. It has to be done within the footprint of the fencing. So yes, there is a lot to that.

I would just simply say as a dovetail onto what the Mayor said, I do know the Brunswick Crossing tennis courts, for example, have been lined for both pickleball and tennis. And I know that there are non-residents playing with residents on those courts fairly regularly. The more courts that there are in the expanded to annex developments in both on the Cooper property and on the Vista Point property, as those courts are developed, of course, that will also reduce the impact on the courts that the city has. So something to think about.

Yeah, and I think the PVYA uses a soccer field, if I'm not mistaken.

At one time, I know there was some group using them. They do.

Yeah. Okay, all right, any other questions for Julie? Okay, moving along to consent agenda. We have several items tonight. Does anybody have a question on any?

I do have a question about item B. Okay. And because it falls under a department head that is not here, I'm not sure that the question could be answered.

Ask away. Yep, ask away.

I'm just wondering with the acquisition of it if the pieces for calibration for safety cameras and whatnot are being acquired with this machine. I didn't see anything specifically outlined. I know that there are domino boards and various other things for basically calibrating the OEM. I'm not talking about like additional auxiliary cameras or anything like this. I'm talking about like the OEM safety systems cameras that are in the windshield of most modern vehicles now. I know that they're in several of our municipal vehicles. I want to make sure that we are also acquiring the ability to be able to calibrate those with regards to this acquisition.

You're talking about our cameras in the trucks?

Not talking about the insurance ones that we add in after the fact. I'm talking about what Ford puts in from the factory that's up there by the rear view mirror. Right.

No, I don't think. This is just for the tires and wheel alignment, just for the wheel alignment.

Okay, because there are domino boards and whatnot. When you are doing a calibration on those systems, you do it on an alignment machine, and you have domino boards that actually calibrate that system while you're doing an actual wheel alignment.

I'm not sure I can answer that question for you, but I can get you the answer. But I know this package here is everything that they need to do what they need to do as far as align the tires. but I can get the answer for you in the Senate. Please. Yes, Council Member Cages.

Thank you, sir. I have a question about item 7A, the grain truck. What's the expected service life of that truck, and what do we estimate the rough cost of maintenance each year for it?

Well... As if anything, the maintenance would probably be around $5,000 or so a year. With any of those vehicles, we're hoping to get over 10 years out of useful life. Whenever we purchase an expensive vehicle like that, we want to get more than 10 years out of it. That's kind of our new standard that we've been doing in public works with their vehicles is trying to get them past that 10-year mark. Then we start looking at replacing them. Any other questions or is there a motion?

Go ahead. I also have a question on 7-8. What's the lift capability of that crane?

I did not see that in the... You keep passing it. Oh, it was on the other paper?

I'll send it over to you. But it's everything they need to do. Because the main purpose of it is to help them on the job site to lift, say like pipes up out of the ground during water repairs, when they're installing new water lines, just general lifting. I'll send you over that spreadsheet.

Okay, I'm also looking at if there was something emergent here in town that we needed something that needed an item lifted off of something or someone or whatever, you know, before you get a tow truck out here. You know, typically that's what we have, our crane service that's available that, you know, I'd just like to have an idea what that lift capability is.

Okay, I'll send you that spec sheet or so, you know, so you know what its capabilities are.

Sorry, one other question to follow up on Councilman Smithers. What do they do now when they need to lift something?

It's very dangerous. They will use the backhoe and hook chains to it, which requires a few people to do that, and it's dangerous. Or they'll use the skid loader forks to hook chains to and lift things up and down. This will turn that into more of a one-man operation that's done a lot safer.

is there an alternative to rent these crane trucks and what's that sort of look like in terms of cost?

Well, I mean, I'm not really sure about that off the top of my head. I don't even know if that's even an option. I'm sure you can rent anything, but I know like if it's along the lines of like running, like we rent generators all the time, you're probably talking five or $6,000 every time you use it for like a week or so.

And it wouldn't be available to you if you had an emergency water repair or something. May I ask a question procedurally? We've gotten away from taking items off the consent agenda if we wanna start asking questions about them and that really wasn't the idea of a consent agenda. By the time they hit a consent agenda, they've already passed finance committee recommendation and they've already been recommended by the finance committee to this body. If you'd like me to start putting these things on as new business, I think that would be more appropriate. Consent agenda really is just a blanket approval or denial. I think I should start doing it correctly if we're going to ask questions on every item.

No, I mean, I'm just affording the opportunity to ask questions, but Carrie is right. I mean, like, for example, the crane truck is a budgeted item, so it's already past that level of approval. So now you're just approving the actual purchase contract. But I mean, questions are fine, but. Procedurally, it is not how a consent agenda works.

I'll email out the entire council all the questions I was asked this evening.

So for the consent agenda, in order to pull something off, you need to have... majority vote to pull it off to then ask questions. We've gotten away from doing that because I'm just trying to extend courtesy. But if it's a consistent thing that we're going down, I don't think we need to move it to new business. I'll just go to not taking questions and last the majority vote to remove it from consent agenda and then add it to new business.

So do we make a distinction between questions and discussion? I guess normally like Robert's Rules discussion would follow a motion. if the questions would be.

It's still on a consent agenda. You should pull the item off if we're gonna talk about a specific.

My only issue is that sometimes items come up here and it's only handled within the committees and not everybody sees what questions and even though you approved the purchase of it, there's questions that some of us here that we'd like to ask and if you take that away then I'm not as apt to vote in favor of what you're approving. I mean I don't care how we do it procedurally but there's gonna be times that I think some of us want to ask questions even though you have approved it or the committee's approved it. I mean you guys do stuff behind closed doors.

Councilmember Smothers, the Finance Commission meeting is public. You all receive the minutes and you can watch it. I'm sorry, but to sit up here and say we're doing things behind closed doors, we're actually running the executive function of the city, which is the mayor's job with the staff. And if you have questions, we're affording the opportunity to ask the questions. The proper procedure on the consent agenda is to make a motion to remove it from consent agenda, receive a second, and then receive a majority vote of the body to remove it. If you don't, you can vote no then, but it will still pass with the majority. But to make accusations that things are being done behind closed doors beyond the proper things of what the staff does day-to-day operations, we can't run a $12 million city all day every day on live TV. So I just want to put that out there. Council Member Caves.

I move to remove item 7A from the consent agenda and continue it at the next meeting after we've had some time. Just think over the answers to these questions a little bit more.

Okay, there's a motion. Is there a second?

I'll second it.

Any more discussion on that motion? All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay, so Kerry will remove that to the next agenda. Is there a motion on the rest of the consent agenda?

I make a motion to approve the rest of the consent agenda.

I'll second it. Motion and second. Any discussion on that? All in favor? Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, next up on the agenda is unfinished business, which is the Kaplan Building MOU.

So you have in front of you another copy of the MSU and the only difference between this copy you have in front of you and what was in the packet is I have removed paragraph C and I will explain why that is. So paragraph C speaks to the resolution number when we declare that the property is no longer needed for public use. We generally don't declare property surplus until we actually are going to sell it. And the MOU, this MOU is not to sell the Kaplan property. It's to enter an agreement with the potential buyer to move towards a sales contract. So in the future, when you would have in front of you a resolution to declare the Kaplan surplus and no longer needed by the city, you would also have the sales contract in front of you too. Now let me go back and explain a little bit why we have an MOU at this point and what the difference is. So this is an interesting situation that we haven't quite been in before. And you know, we're good at that here in Brunswick. So what we're doing by this MOU is forming a, a understanding of how we can move forward to get to the sale of the Kaplan property. And here's the problem. Unless you have a set of fully designed plans for the building, for the renovation of the building, you won't have a true idea of the cost of the project, right? So for both us and the potential buyer, he needs to have that number in place. So to get there, we have to go through a planning and design process. So this MOU is to get us through that planning and design process and spell out how we will work together so that we can get to that sale of the property. I will point out that there was you guys on October 26, 2021 in paragraph F. It references the special ordinance number 579, which is what authorized us to purchase the building as part of the blighted property acquisition program, understanding that the blighted property acquisition program whole idea is to buy property using grant money and then resell it at a reasonable cost depending on what the renovation would need to be done. So that's what we're attempting to do with this entity monocacy hospitality. So you will note in paragraph, where is it? Oh, in number five under, on the third page, the top of the third page, where it talks about the MOU amount. This is the estimated cost of what it's gonna take to get that full set of plans and design, and we are splitting that cost. Half of that cost will be factored into the purchase price from the Monocacy Hospitality side, and the City will put up half. If something happens and that whole transaction never goes through, depending on who the city will retain that half of the money, get that half for the designs, and we will retain the ownership of those designs at the building. If it's the other way around, if the city defaults, then we will bear the full price of the design for the building since we would end up with the plans. So that's kind of the background between this. We thought it was a cleaner way to move forward so that there were ways to either clearly mark when we should move forward with this process and or protect the city and at the same time make sure that the project moves ahead. So this has been fully vetted by legal and all that too. So and signed off as you notice by the Monocacy Hospitality. Question?

I have one. I'm not seeing anything in here in terms of a timeline and the only reason I bring that up is because the whole thing with this transference since they first presented. I mean, it's been a couple years now and this is, I'm sure there might have been other entities since the original proposition that we opened it up for people I'm sure there have been other entities since then who could have moved forward on something with regards to that building. But we have dragged our feet with this whole thing. So I'm kind of curious, is there an expiration timeline this has to be executed within?

um we we debated that we went back and forth with that i believe that was in here and then not in here um oh you will notice it does say on june 30th 2027 on number three on the second page i thought i did think we had that i see that now i did not i glazed past that earlier so they have until june 30th

to get this, shall we say, inspection more or less done. And at that point in time...

Collectively, we have till June 30th, 2027 to have plans done so that we have a final price so that we can move forward with the... sale of the property.

Okay. I'm not interested in dragging this out any longer than we already have. Neither are we. And I know that they're looking for certain concessions in order to move forward, and I know that you've worked diligently to do whatever you can, but I just... There becomes a point where we need to move on.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That was entirely the reason we put this MOU together.

Other questions?

Council Member St. John? In general, I think it's a good agreement. I think it was my main thing I wanted to be going in was that we would retain ownership of the plans since we were paying for them. I think it's good that we have a deadline set for the development of those plans. I mean, it's hard to set any other kind of deadline because we don't really have a funding source for the whole project. and I would not want to set an artificially short deadline if I didn't have clear funding lined up. So in general, I think this is a good idea.

Any other questions or motion?

I generally agree with that. I think these are usually, sometimes they're just agreements to agree and there's not much you can enforce with them, but I think this one has some teeth and looked like it made sense with respect to the timing questions and also that we would make sure that we owned the plans coming out of this. So I'm in favor of it.

We have gone back and forth, so yeah.

Would you like to make a motion, sir? It sounded like one, but not worded. Sure.

I will make a motion that we approve the Kaplan Building MOU. Second.

Motion and second. Any final discussion? Council Member Case?

I think it's consistent with the special ordinance that's referenced in here in the preamble number 579 with the previous commitments that were made on this project. I think it's the... important to be predictable and good to good to our commitments as a city. So, favor it as well.

All right. Anybody else? All in favor?

Aye.

Anyone opposed? Okay. Vote is unanimous. Kaplan Building MOU. We have no new business. So we'll move to council member comments. Council member St. John.

First of all, I'm very excited about the senior center. as I'm sure many other people are. I mean, as far as the topic we touched on with the consent agenda, I've had some frustrations with the process too, mostly because It's sometimes difficult to attend two meetings or review two meetings in full detail before making any decision. And also, if I attend the meeting, I'm not able to ask any questions. So if some question occurs to me while the Finance Commission meeting is going on, I can't transmit that information to anybody in a meaningful way. But that being said, I think the commission does take a fair load off of us in a reasonably transparent manner in terms of going through the nuts and bolts of what needs to be done. So I'm not sure there's any clear course of action coming out of that statement. There you are. All right, thank you, sir. Council Member Bonanno.

Just to dovetail on the mayor's comments at the beginning of the meeting, there is also a Board of Education meeting tomorrow night that I think we'll have a presence at. So if you're free tomorrow at six and you want to show up in your Brunswick gear and support the cause for the new high school, that'd be great. And I did. I managed to find the specs on that crane, I think. I think it's got an 8,000 pound vertical lift capacity, but just confirm that, make sure I'm not, I had some trouble looking at the quotes during the finance committee meeting. But that's it.

all right thank you sir council members mothers i'm going to agree with councilman st john just said so you know we there's questions that need to be had sometimes that we can't ask even in that correct form so you know i'm not trying to say that we're hiding anything so but we will have questions and there's no good way to ask those questions so we need to figure out a way to work that out even though that some things get approved I was able to attend by Mayor and Councilman St. John to the rollout of the new senior center, community center. It certainly looks good on paper. We'll see what happens when the dirt actually starts moving, but it's long overdue. We've been done without. I think folks know, sitting here on A Street, 50 years is a long time. and have our residents walk up and down that street and hill and all kind of weather. So it will be glad, I will certainly be glad when I start seeing the dirt move. It will certainly benefit not only the community here in Brunswick but some of the surrounding areas and it's great that we're gonna be the first bite of the apple that they realize that we really need it over here as opposed to some of the other areas in the county first. So I'm not saying that they don't need it but we really need it. So that was a good day. We'll continue to look at the stuff for the high school and stuff. There's a lot of work to be done there yet behind the scenes. Moving forward, I think everybody's paying attention to that. I would say for folks this week, the animals company certainly starts their breakfast this Saturday, so they're back on. So just put that out there. And that's out of that. Enjoy the rest of your summer.

Thank you, sir. Council Member Sandusky. I'm not going to beat the consent agenda horse, but I do agree with the idea of being able to ask questions in some format. I also am very happy about the new senior center, especially with 255 and older approved communities moving into the area. I think it's actually going to be a huge... shall we say selling point or it's gonna be a good benefit for folks that are living here, especially with two developing aging communities that are coming in. So very happy to hear about that. And I'm looking forward to hearing what the other we're not supposed to know about yet grant is. So and with that,

First, I echo Julie, I'm very excited about the sludge press. It's fundamental infrastructure right there. I'm also excited about the senior center and I owe an apology to the county folks because I already said I'd be there and then I wrote down tomorrow. So, my bad. Second, anyone who is happening to watch or listen to this who is interested in the council vacancy, apparently we don't have any applications yet. We've got some time, but I encourage you to not wait until the last minute, because you do need to get the petition of 20 signatures of Brunswick resident registered voters, and that can take some time. Third, you know, sort of on that, you know, related to the consent agenda thing, I think we probably could benefit by investing a bit of time as a body into just getting on the same page with Robert's rules order and sort of maybe getting a bit more proficient for all of us on how we navigate that. And I think if we do, I think we'll, perhaps find it easier to sort of maneuver our way through these meetings with maybe a little bit less friction and i would be willing to put some legwork into an effort like that that's all i got all right thank you sir all right so that concludes everything i'll just make one final comment that may

help this process in the future. So I think it was a little bit confusing in the meeting. The consent agenda is supposed to be for routine items that have already, like you've already approved them in the budget. So you've already allocated the money through the budget. or you've allocated the money in the budget, the finances talked about it. It doesn't mean you can't ask questions though. And so I do afford the courtesy to ask some questions about it. But what, you know, kind of what Carrie brought up is it really should be limited. because it is the consent agenda. The way you ask questions is not that you can't, is you need to make a motion to remove the item from the consent agenda to put it on the regular agenda, either under new business, unfinished business, likely new business, because it's an item that has not been on the agenda before. It needs to receive a second and a majority vote. We then strike it from consent and put it on new business. Then we can discuss it all day long. That is really the procedure of that. um so that's kind of what yes in the same meeting correct so that's kind of where you know we just want to kind of follow the process accordingly now what you can do also is you receive the packet if you have a question you can go back and look at the finance or you can send an email if you think it's something simple if you want to then speak what the question you asked an email in the public forum and the answer you got that's completely fine so if it's something minimal like I'm asking about a specification or this or that. Those are the things maybe you wanna engage with staff prior to the meeting and then you can mention at the meeting that you asked that question and maybe it doesn't warrant a vote from removing it from consent agenda. But that's kind of the way the process works. If we follow it as designed, I think there won't be an issue. But I think what we're trying to get away from, which is what happened a long time ago, is to sit and spend hours and hours on each consent agenda item. They're supposed to be grouped together because they were already approved pre-budget. their routine business, something like that, and then you vote on it all together. But there is a mechanism to remove it and then discuss it. And that's not adversarial. It's completely fine for us to do that.

Yes, and I apologize if it seemed I was coming off the other way. I was trying to keep us online procedurally because that's what my role is. I never meant that no one could ask questions. The other thing I will just add, Julie and I are currently rewriting our procurement policy into an actually, we have an updated procurement policy, but we're trying to really fine tune it so that everybody's clear. There's a lot to it. This will be included in that. So this is one of those areas we can talk about in there as well. But when we do it the right way, it helps me better understand, oh my gosh, they're pulling every purchase approval off. So we need to stop putting them on consent. So it's like learned behavior. That's why I'm trying to keep it procedurally accurate.

yes and to carrie's point if there's something that routinely appears on consent like purchase approvals or something else that we want to remove let us know and we can have that con we'll bring that to the body to see if that's what you guys want to move forward with to do that we're happy to do that so the last thing i'll say and i debated saying this but i'm going to anyway and it's not adversarial, please don't take it that way, is if I'm educating you on the consent agenda, I'm happy to do that, but it's really not my role. So as to Councilmember Caves, if you guys wanna put something together to talk about Robert's rules and procedure and better understand how the process works between legislative, executive functions, what the staff does, how the meetings flow, how the agenda is, please do that. Again, it's not adversarial, I'm happy to help when I can, but I feel like when I've sat up here for several years and it's, There's been all kinds of council members come and go. You know, it's people looking to me, which, yeah, it is as the meeting chair to keep it in line, but also to educate people how to do things as a council member. And I think with the vacancy out there, I want people to really educate themselves on what the Roberts rules are, what the procedures are, how to do that, and put the time into doing that because I think we'll be able to run much more efficient meetings. if we're all on the same page with that. So again, maybe that came out weird. I'm not trying to be adversarial with it, but I think there's a homework piece of it with folks looking into that and not waiting for me to say, well, that's not really how we do, or Carrie, how we do consent agenda and those kind of things. And that will help, I think, you guys also get the questions that you want answered as we go through and know how the proper procedure to get the questions answered. so you can get through robert's rules of order you're doing something i never could exactly while sleeping or help sleeping that'll do it yeah you'll fall asleep every two pages all right i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so move all right we're adjourned thanks everyone