City Commission - Regular Meeting

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For more than 20 years, CTV has captured the moments that matter in our community. From our studios in St. Clair, you're watching Focus with Paul Dingaman.

Happy June as we move along the month of June. We've got lots of summer activities for you to talk about and hear about today and talk about them with your friends. We're going to have the police chief, Chief Don Ennis. That's right. Good to be back. Welcome back to you, sir. This is a busy season for you from the end of May right through the beginning of August. You guys don't stop.

No, it's a busy season now, especially that school gets out. Yeah. You know, summer vacations start. Kids are out. Kids are on bikes. They're on e-bikes now. They're on golf carts. Kids are all around town. People are out and about. As far as the events this summer, I mean, the city of St. Clair has a slew of events going almost every weekend throughout the summer here.

And people are enjoying themselves, so they're not paying attention a lot of times.

No, we've got to remind people, as these e-bikes and these e-motos and golf carts become more prevalent around the community, they become cheaper, more widespread, easier to access. And luckily, our city did create that ORV ordinance. So if you get that, if you get an ORV in town, golf cart, a side-by-side, you've got to have insurance. You've got to have it inspected by the police department. And it has all the same safety equipment as a motor vehicle. So all people got to do is contact the city, bring your ORV up here, and the police department will inspect it. And if it passes inspection, we'll give you a little sticker to throw on that vehicle that says you're all compliant with the state and city laws.

Then where can I go?

Yeah, you can go for the most part on any 25-mile-an-hour street.

25-mile-an-hour street, okay.

Yep, so 25. So it's actually the ordinance says 30 and over you can't be on. So basically there's nothing in between 25 and 30. So basically it's 25 and lower. So we've got Clinton Avenue. It's 30 to 35, depending on what section. Fredmore Highway, 30 to 35, parts of St. Clair Highway, M29, Cox Road, Range Road. Those are roads you should not be on. We do not allow those ORVs on those roadways.

Not allowed on Clinton.

Nope.

Not allowed on Fred Moore.

You can cross the intersection. So let's say you're on North 9th Street or South 9th Street. You want to cross Clinton to go back in the south of Clinton there on 9th Street. You can cross the roadway, no problem. We just can't operate the vehicles on that roadway.

Kearney Drive?

25 miles an hour. So yeah, you can do Kearney Drive. Yep.

I happen to see somebody on Kearney Drive just before we started this interview. And I was aghast. There's a young child, maybe three, four years old in the back of the golf cart. Yeah. Just with a seatbelt on. Is that legal?

Yeah, it's not legal at all. So these are the same practices we've got to use just like a motor vehicle. In a motor vehicle, we've got to wear seat belts. In a motor vehicle, we've got to have booster seats for our kids. We've got to have child seats, depending on the age and the manufacturer recommendation. These are the same thing for golf carts. So we tend to think of golf carts as these little fun little vehicles that can operate around town. There's not really much rules. There are rules. It's a motor vehicle. And parents, you understand, you know, just because you've got your child strapped to you or a child on a seatbelt, you know, if that golf cart gets hit by a motor vehicle, people are going to fly out of that thing.

Oh, yeah.

So we don't really, you know, look at the consequences of it. We just want to go out there and we think these are slow moving vehicles and we can just operate it. There's people out there on their phone, people out there drinking and driving, there's people out there being distracted. So when you have a 5,000 pound motor vehicle and you have a 1,000 pound golf cart, who's going to win that battle? And you have a family in there and people don't have seat belts on, it's not going to be good. So we've got to remind parents, we've got to be cautious about those things.

Can I take that golf cart with a child, I've got to have a car seat, on the bike path?

No, so we don't allow any motorized vehicles on the bike path, as far as the ORVs. There's still e-bikes and scooters that are allowed on those paths, but as far as golf carts, no, we don't allow those. There's multiple classes of e-bikes. The things that we don't allow in our town are what they call e-moto bikes. So those are those, they kind of look like dirt bikes, but they're more or less battery operated and they're pretty quick. They go a lot faster than your traditional power wheels vehicle. So these things don't have pedals. They're not pedal assisted at all. So those things are actually considered by the state motorcycles. So we've got a 14-year-old kid driving an e-moto on a sidewalk on the roadway. That's illegal. We know that they're fun. We want kids to have fun. But unfortunately, those kids aren't licensed, and they shouldn't be in the sidewalk with those vehicles.

Where can they be?

Exactly, on private property. Unless they have a valid license, they cannot be on the roadway. In order to operate those things on the roadway, you also have to have headlights, taillights. You got to have all these safety equipment. Sometimes we get those things for our kids. And you should. I had one parent say they bought their kid an Emoto at Sam's Club. Well, Sam's Club doesn't sell motor vehicles. They sell more or less things that ride on your property, on your grass, out in the country, somewhere not on a public roadway. So we've got to remind parents that just because they get their kid this electric device, they can just drive anywhere they want. And we know that kids want to have fun. We want kids to have fun, but we understand the consequences. Oh, the danger is terrible. These kids on the roadway with motor vehicles. Oh, no, no, no. Operating on motor vehicles. So we really don't want to mix those two. We've got to kind of keep them separated. Okay.

Well, you didn't come here to talk about that.

Oh, yeah, no. But it's a hot topic in the city. So, you know, the police department is trying to address it the best we can. We want to educate kids. We want to educate parents. We don't want to just go out there in enforcement. But we want parents to understand where their kid can and can't be at with these devices. So if we can get the parents on board, we know the kids will follow.

And, of course, they can call your office or text you or email you guys.

Yeah, go ahead and email me, Dennis, at CitySanClair.com, or stop by my office or give me a phone call, and we can have a conversation about what the kids can and can't do operating the roadway because the big thing is the safety. We don't want no one to get hurt. Unfortunately, a situation may happen in the future, and there's going to be a lot of people that say, I knew that was going to happen. I don't want that to happen. I want parents to be educated now, but the parents have to be on board too. We don't have the parents on board. It's going to be a tall order. And unfortunately, we're going to have to start enforcing it.

Oh, everybody seems to be so busy that they haven't got time to worry about these things, but they have to worry about them.

You got to know what your kid's doing, you know, when you're at home. We got to teach, you know, kids have good choices, make good decisions. And, you know, just allowing your kid to go out and have fun just because they're outside doesn't mean, you know, that they're necessarily going to be, you know, operating where they should be with that device. So more or less those devices are for private property. Unless it's an e-bike, we actually can pedal, the pedal assist we allow.

Okay. Bicycles will move away. Now we're going to move to other three major events coming up in the city of St. Clair that are going to make some changes, some roadways. So let's begin with the Art Fair, which is, and I think we've got, there it is, the 55th Art Fair, June 27th, 28th, the week after Father's Day.

Yeah, it's always a big event. A lot of vendors, brings a lot of people in, a lot of business for the city. They all kind of piggyback off each other. All the restaurants and businesses kind of piggyback off these events. It's a great event for the city. We're going to kind of do something different this year. The Art Association asked us if we could actually shut down M29.

Oh, you're going to close M29?

For a portion of it, yep. So right in front of the plaza, M29 between J and Vine Street, we're going to shut down from Friday night at 7 p.m.

Friday at 7 p.m. Until Monday morning. Until Monday morning.

And that's going to allow vendors, the overflow of vendors to be on M29, to allow more food vendors, to allow more food trucks, and just better, safer for the pedestrians who park at the mall across the street and walk to it. So we're trying something new this year. We'll see how it works out. If it works out great, we'll continue it. If it doesn't work out, we'll go back to the drawing board.

Will the artists still be down in the park?

Yep, so they'll be in the park, but they're also going to have some vendors on M-29 too. So I'm not sure exactly what's going to be on M-29, but they're going to space them all between the park and the roadway.

And are there art exhibits in the plaza itself?

I don't think the art, I don't think they participated. It's going to be on M-29 and Palmer Park specifically. But we know the overflow with people parking and eating at restaurants is going to go to the mall. So they kind of work tandem together. Okay.

Number two, we've got a thing called the Art Fair. We've got Fourth of July.

yeah fourth of july every year this is uh you know how many years we're going on here saturday night it's a big night so we're kind of the same thing for the art fair we're shutting down the roadway we'll be shut i think this is on saturday this year so we're shutting on the roadway in the evening and then we're going to open it up back up sunday morning okay and right between jay and vine street right in front of the mall again and that just allows as many you know last year was a big event it was a lot of people in town i don't think i've ever seen that many people in this town Our city population almost doubles for the city event.

The 4th of July is going to be 250th anniversary celebration. So the city's fireworks display is going to be bigger, better, everything. Absolutely. More people are going to come.

Yeah, big 250 only one time, right? That's right. That's right. So yeah, so it's a big event. We look forward to it. You know, we have a lot of additional police personnel coming in from other agencies to kind of help with the amount of people that come in. You know, the plaza, I'm sure we'll have the stage going on M-29 again. And hopefully it's a safe event. Just remind people, just please don't drink and drive and, you know, be cautious of our surroundings. Same thing with e-bikes and golf carts.

The Fourth of July is a spectacular event. And as you said, the traffic is horrendous, but it's a wonderful show. It's a great show.

It's a great show. You know, I always recommend people write their grand finale. Go. Get ready to go or leave right before the grand finale because, you know, unfortunately, M29 is going to be shut down. So we send people north or south and it's just gridlocked. So if you've got to get somewhere after the fireworks. Forget it. Yeah. I always recommend people, if you live anywhere downtown or you want to come to town, park away. Because then you could park away, you know, walk downtown. You could walk to your car and be home faster than you would be leaving downtown. Yeah.

Because the gridlock downtown will be cleared by the time, somewhat cleared, by the time you get back to your car.

I think you're going to be in bed before that gridlock clears. It's busy. It's busy. It's just the influx we all got to deal with, with parking and complaints and people just getting downtown. It's just one of those things we all have to understand. It's a lot of people bringing a lot of attention to our city. So we have to understand that. It's a great show. We have to work around all those problems and realize what our goal is here.

And the final event for the summer for you guys is the Offshore Boat Show. Offshore Boat Race, not a show. But again, you're going to close the road?

Closing the row down. So depending on the amount of boats that come in, we may shut it down Tuesday or Wednesday.

Oh, really?

It's still kind of undecided yet. I know a lot of those boats, they leave their previous race and they kind of need somewhere to go. So depending on the boat count, we'll shut it down either Tuesday or Wednesday. But again, last weekend of July every year, and it's always a good show.

Oh, it is a great show. And I talked with President Butchkin's father the other day, and he said it's a go. There have been some press that maybe there were some changes in sponsorship, but he said he's been doing this 32 years, and it seems to happen every year.

Yeah, I've been fighting rumors left and right from people asking me all these questions, and I just say the same thing. Assume the last weekend of July, the boat races are coming. Whether there's two boats or 100 boats, it's going to happen. Okay. So just plan to go down there and have a good time. It's an enjoyable ride.

All right, well, we've covered a lot of things. You have a couple cadets. Talk to me about the cadet program.

So yeah, this was a good passion of mine. When I first started here, the St. Clair Cadet Program was pretty predominant in the community. We'd have eight cadets, and it'd be almost year-round. Were you a cadet? I was never a cadet, but we have four or five officers that were previous cadets. So speaking to the city manager, he gave us the green light. We haven't had cadets since 2019. So it's been a good six, seven years since we last had cadets. So we got two of them this summer. They're great kids, Carter and Dylan. Their main responsibility is to get out there in the public, assist us, be the eyes and ears, get on those e-bikes, walk around the mall, walk around the parks, just be seen. And our whole goal was one day to hire them as St. Clair officers. SO PUT THEM THROUGH THE ACADEMY, GET THEM THROUGH THE RANKS, GET THEM IN UNIFORM ONE DAY. THAT'S THE WHOLE GOAL OF THE CADET PROGRAM.

SO THE CADET NECESSARILY DOESN'T WRITE TICKETS, DOESN'T CARRY A GUN?

NO, THEY COULD WRITE PARKING TICKETS, BUT WE REALLY DON'T. WE'RE NOT REALLY GOING TO GIVE THEM THAT AS FAR AS WE KNOW YET. BUT THAT ALWAYS COULD HAPPEN. BUT AS FAR AS THEY'RE NOT ARRESTING PEOPLE, if there's any issues we allow them to you know mitigate if there's kids skateboarding or kids doing riding their e-bikes in the mall doing wheelies stuff like that we allow them to interact with those juveniles and just hey you know just be courteous be kind to them if it ever escalates we ask them to give us a call

One final thing, you had some damage at Cletcher Park and there was some damage out at Legacy Park and it's come to a good ending. Talk to us about that.

Yeah, so it was a sad situation. We had two miners go out there a few Saturdays ago. create some damage to the Little League parks. I said on the Little League board, that whole place is ran on volunteers and donations. Like no one's making any money there. So that's a gem for our community. So as soon as we have a bunch of cameras out there, we were able to get some still shots of these two juveniles. And the amazing part was, speaking of Matt Karras, the president of Little League, he put that out on Facebook. hey, you know, these are two juveniles. Does anyone know who they are? And within 60 minutes, we already had. 60 minutes. 60 minutes, we had two names. And we followed up with those two names and they ended up admitting to the damages. So I got to thank the community. And that's kind of like one of those situations where it's a place of community pride. Yes. Where even your friends will be like, hey, man, why did you do that to our park?

Right.

So that was really something that I got to thank the community for because it's something that we take so much pride in. I'm there five days a week, that little league field. So it's something that we take pride in. And so to put those still shots out with their faces being covered, and they still figured out who it was. Like we always say, it's a small town. It's hard to kind of run in a small town. We'll eventually figure out who you are.

And there's about 500 young people involved out at Legacy Park in Little League, from the little ones all the way up through the high school kids.

Yep, T-Ball, the Miners, the softball. I mean, that place for two, three months. Now's the busy season. And Merrick Harris and the board does a great job, and they're hosting some of the state tournaments, I think, for softball this summer. So that place is amazing. And the amount of people that volunteer to make that place look amazing, it goes unnoticed, honestly.

How can the public help you guys? Oh, we got to talk about life jackets.

Yeah. We forgot about that. There we go. The St. Clair Women's League. So we, as the police department, we've never had life rescue equipment for as far as the water rescues.

Oh, okay.

In the past few years, we have actually had a few officers jump in the water. Correct. And help people get out. So, but we've never had equipment for that. So that was always kind of a priority, especially for the Women's League. So Pam Cleese, she... Kind of helps out with the Women's League. And I've spoken to her about my concerns. She's on the foundation. And they generously donated $500 to help purchase this equipment.

So what have we got here?

So we got a couple adult life vests. We got four of those. So we got four children. Those big yellow boxes, they're kind of like life rings. They're kind of like collapsible life rings. Oh, okay. With 125-foot tow rope. So we can, officers can throw those vests on, hop in the water with that ring, throw it around the person and pull them in the water. or on the onshore throw that life ring in them then we got a couple emergency blankets to keep people warm so um planes also planes at the south end of kearney they also donated a substantial amount to help help purchase equipment wonderful we got four sets we got four patrol vehicles and each patrol vehicle now has water rescue equipment

That's very important. Very important.

Especially being a border town. We've got Pine River, we've got the St. Clair River. We've never had that equipment. So now that we have it, officers feel more confident.

And the St. Clair Women's League has been around a long time and they continue to do things like this. They do great things.

Yeah, they do great things.

Plains, you just told me, changed hands recently.

Yeah, they recently changed hands. So we're in the process of talking to them about their new management. As far as I know, the same employees, it's kind of a little flip of the switch to a new company name. They got bought out. So, yeah, but they're still operating as normal. But, yeah, they reached out to me and says, hey, we want to donate $1,000. Wonderful. So between the Women's League and planes, this was a great opportunity to get us some nice equipment because water rescue equipment is not cheap, but hopefully it lasts a lifetime. Right. And hopefully it's obviously going to save a life for them. Maybe save a lifetime. That's the goal. So my officers can throw that on with confidence and hop in that water and rescue someone.

Chief, always a pleasure to have you here. Thanks for all the important information. And I think to mention about the golf carts again, it was sort of scary to see this young child just sitting on the back of a golf cart running down Kearney Drive in a bump or a car. I think it could be tough.

Yeah, and this comes down to just parents just making good decisions. I understand it's easy to hop on that golf cart with your child and run to a neighbor's house or run to McDonald's, but the lasting effects of someone on their phone texting and hitting you or something else happening, it's honestly not worth it. So we've got to be cautious and make good decisions.

Okay, that's about it for this edition, and I think an important edition of the Focus Program. Thanks very much for tuning in. Until next time, I'm Paul Dingaman. See you soon.

Thanks for watching Focus with Paul Dingaman. Focus is produced at the CTV Community Television Studios in St. Clair. For over 20 years, CTV has captured the moments that matter to our community.

The preceding program was produced by CTV Community Television. CTV Community Television is supported by the cities of Marine City and St. Clair, East China Township, Cotterville Township, and the East China School District.