City Commission - Regular Meeting

at the last minute, right? This is like a Brazilian barbecue. All right, it's 6 p.m. I'd like to call this meeting to order and we can stand up with the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge of 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. Okay. First off, just wanted to get it out there. As president of the commission, I'm here to step in when the mayor is not able to make a meeting. This is my first time doing it, so I'm glad to share that with everybody in the room here. This is a fun experience for both of us. But give me a little grace. This is my first time doing it. I doubt it will be nearly as professional and smooth as we're used to. But I think if we work together, we can respect each other, we can hear each other out, and we can do this efficiently and let our city staff get home at a decent hour for all the hard work they do. So with that said, I'd like to start with approval of the agenda. Do anyone up here have anything they'd like to add or remove from the agenda tonight? All right, hearing none, I will move on to public comment. This time, is there anyone that would like to come up and speak to an item that is not on our regular agenda items?

My name is Frida, and I live on Wolfie Street, and I just want a crosswalk so my mom can walk me to school, make flower, and I live on Wolfie. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, yeah, tough act to follow.

Yeah, yeah, really. Hi, I'm Dave Tappan. I live on Belle Claire Avenue Southeast. I've lived there for about 25 years. And I have just a really short couple of things to say. I'm sure you all have read this, because it's the handbook of the city of East Grand Rapids. And what I find really interesting on the second page is it's got an org chart. And at the top are the East Grand Rapids citizens. And I'm sure that all of you work to serve the citizens, but I would ask you when you go into a private session to think about whether you're doing that with regard to the PUD. I would just like to ask you to please think about where we are and let's stop the nonsense. Let's stop wasting time and money. Let's just not appeal. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, Betsy Anderson, 435 Edgemere Drive, Southeast. Commissioners, tonight you have a closed-door executive session for attorney-client communication to address Circuit Court Judge Quist's August ruling, which upholds a protest petition submitted to you last October by your residents. What happened and why are we here now? Basically, after months of residents spreading the word about a huge Gaslight Village development plan and hundreds of residents reaching out to you to say it was too big with too little parking, you decided that you would approve it anyway. The protest petition required a super majority of five votes to approve the Gaslight plan, and you knew you only had four. you heard a quick preliminary opinion from your city attorney that he felt the petition was not valid. So instead of taking your time, tabling it, instead of working with and for residents to ask for a better plan, you chose to just ignore what was and is a valid petition. You voted four to three and you didn't look back. Residents then collected over 1,500 signatures in three weeks to put the development plan on a ballot so that residents could have their voices heard. Not a small number, 1,500 is over 50% of the 2,700 or so EGR residents who voted last November in a local election. Sadly, the city ignored the referendum petition, saying that enough validated signatures were indeed collected, but the form itself was deemed invalid. Could it be that the form was the only one provided by state law that didn't require volunteers to write out the language on each of the 75 individual petition sheets? So residents filed a lawsuit after their first legal steps were ignored. That's why we're here. Back to tonight and your closed session. What are your choices? You can choose to ignore again. This time the judge's ruling and appeal it to the Michigan Court of Appeals. The petition was and will continue to be valid. or make a better choice. Accept the judge's ruling and ask the developer to submit a different proposal that better matches what residents want and will support. On a side note, please let me know, will your decision be voted on publicly? And are you going to be having public discussion after your executive session tonight? Thank you.

David Decker, 925 Belle Claire, and thanks so much for letting us use the slides tonight. You can go to the next slide. So I'm going to talk about why you should not appeal. Next slide. Attorneys are expensive. It's going to cost money. In this picture you see four attorneys, one paid for by East Grand Rapids residents, two paid for by East Grand Rapids taxpayers, and one paid for by the developer. Each of them is charging several hundred dollars for every hour that they work. I don't know what the cost, next slide please. I don't know what the cost of this commission's flawed legal decisions have been so far, but I think it's safe to say that an estimate of 250,000 or a quarter of a million is probably about right. Next slide. It's going to take a lot of time. That's another reason not to appeal. We've been advised that an appeal will take 12 to 18 months. It puts us into 2028. Everyone in the community wants a development. Why put the process off? If it's in the appeals court, nothing's going to be done on the development. Even if you were to win the appeal, it would simply be remanded back to Judge Quist, and then the referendum would be put in front of voters for them to have a chance to vote. Next slide, please. The judge's ruling was clear and unambiguous. The city's approval of the PUD amendment is null and void. Next slide. Another reason that you won't win the appeal is that the Michigan Court of Appeals has already ruled on a very similar case. Next slide, please. An East Grand Rapids resident stood right here and made public comment on October 20th. What he told you was, I am puzzled and concerned that you believe the legislative decision you made on October 6th was simply an administrative decision. I represented a township in Kent County that made an administrative change to a PUD. At least we thought it was an administrative change to a PUD, but we were wrong. The appeals court ruled it was a legislative change, not administrative. And that township has a local ordinance functionality that's essentially the same as East Grand Rapids. A PUD change is either major or minor. If it's a major change, it's legislative. If it's a minor change, it's administrative. That appeals court decision, this isn't the attorney talking, this is me talking now, That appeals court decision is part of the package that Judge Quist reviewed, sent to him on August 3rd. He reviewed thousands of pages. And that opinion, which was the appeals court opinion, has been, as he stated, adopted. Judge Quist stated that the plaintiffs documentation has been accepted as the opinion of the court, and that includes that appeal court's decision. Next slide. Thank you, Mr. Decker. Next slide is the next presenter.

Oh, perfect. That's what I was going to ask. I was like, there's a bunch left here, and I'm hoping we have someone else to tag team up. Absolutely.

Go ahead. You can throw the next slide and the next slide.

All right.

Hello again.

I'm Jerry Anderson, 435 Edgemere Drive. Next please, Lori. I'm here to talk to you today basically to give the simple message that it's time for this commission to unite itself and unite the community behind a gaslight village that will truly make East Grand Rapids a better place to live. We've seen that the path you followed for the last 18 months has been unproductive. Thank you. As we've seen already, um, this is supposed to be a city that is led by the voices of the residents who express those voices to the commission who instruct the city manager on how to run the various departments. Next please. What we've seen instead is a flip of that organization chart. We've seen a process driven by fear of litigation by the developer and his lawyers where the developer tells the city manager what he wants, the city manager leads the commission and tells them what he expects the vote to be, and the commission tells the citizens what sort of development they're going to get. We need to put this back on the right path with the residents on top. Next, please. You've heard from your residents that the last proposal did not meet their expectations on character. It failed their expectations on safety, traffic, parking, and quality of life. Next. Rest assured, if you follow a similar path and you bring back the same plan, you will end up in the same place. You're going to see a new protest petition A new referendum petition, you'll wait for an entire election cycle. And meanwhile, you will see time and taxpayer dollars wasted. Next please. This commission will leave a legacy for the people of East Grand Rapids. You have no choice. And there's two paths that you can choose to go down. The first path is the one you're on now. You can be a commission that twice lost to its own residents in court, that made no progress on the biggest developments the city has seen or has been proposed for in 100 years, that wasted time and money, a legacy of dysfunction and divisiveness. Or, next slide, you can make it easy on yourselves and great for the city of East Grand Rapids. You can have a legacy of a commission that settled lawsuits, that listened to and united itself and the community, that voted unanimously, and that created a Gaslight Village that made all of East Grand Rapids proud. The ball's in your court. I encourage you to make the right decision. Thank you.

I am here to urge this body to not approve the decision, to not appeal the decision rendered by Judge Quist regarding the protest petition. I am not sure if you did not get proper legal counsel or if you ignored your legal counsel. But you, in court, got beat like our beloved East Grand Rapids football team got beat by South Christian on Friday night. To call it a beat down would be a charitable characterization. The decision was cut and dried. The odds that you are going to win on appeal against a veteran, highly respected jurist like Judge Quist are slim to none and slim just left town. And remember what East Grand Rapids attorney Nolan said in November. He is a municipal attorney, lost a case just like this one on appeal. Additionally, is this how we want to spend the next 12 to 18 months? Paying Varnum another $250,000? Do you people on this body, Are you comfortable using your fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayers of East Grand Rapids, spending up to $500,000 in legal fees to decide whether an action is legislative or administrative? Is this really the hill that you want to plant your flag on? Do you want to die on this hill, really? It's inexplicable to me. So instead of spending our time and taxpayer money on legal fees, let's devote our time and effort and money in developing a revised new and improved PUD. Let's get more buy-in from a larger constituents of East Grand Rapids residents. Let us use Judge Quist's legal decision to unite East Grand Rapids. Additionally, if the city of East Grand Rapids does not appeal and the developer does, I would hope that you would tell them that we as a city are not going to support the current PUD, that we have learned our lesson. Now to appeal to your good graces. East Grand Rapids is unique because it is a community. Rockford, Ada, Cascade, not the same. Let's unite as a community to improve the PUD and unite East Grand Rapids behind this project. And can we at least reverse the exterior facade of the condos in particular? How about a gaslight village motif for a project called Gaslight Investors? Or something having to do with Reeds Lake, Ramona, or traditional East Grand Rapids architecture? Currently, the facade of the condos looks like Section 8 housing, and the apartment buildings look like sterile office buildings by the airport. Lastly, how about compromise? How about you folks get together with the developer and come up with a revised plan that makes perhaps almost everybody happy and we do not waste another 12 to 18 months and another $250,000. Thank you. Thank you.

Football team catching strays. Um, can I get your name and address for the record?

All right.

Thank you. Next. And for the record, I think we're gonna rebound this coming week. East Grand Rapids football, we've got brighter future ahead on that one. That was hurtful. Sorry about that.

That's okay. Good evening. I spoke to you on August 17th. That's the last time I've spoken in 2026. Judge Quist of the 17th Circuit had ruled the week before that the protest petition was valid and the PUD agreement was null and void. Now we move on to a resolution. Are you, the city commission, going to appeal the court's decision? That was a rhetorical question for Katie. The plaintiff's attorney spelled out very clearly his reasons and Judge Quist agreed. His opinion stated, plaintiff's motion is granted. The protest petition contained all information required by Michigan case law. The protest petition was signed by owners compromising greater than 20% of land within 100 feet of the PUD amendment. By operation of the Michigan case law, approval of the PUD amendment required a supermajority vote by the City of East Grand Rapids. The City did not vote by supermajority to approve the PUD amendment. Consequently, the City's approval of the PUD amendment is null and void. This process took months. As they say, the wheels of justice move slowly. But more importantly, during these months, the lawyers for both sides were busy researching the law, conferring with their clients, and racking up enormous fees for their work. One thing I want to emphasize, as taxpaying residents, we expect you to spend our money judiciously. not on appellate ventures for the developer. The court's opinion was crystal clear. Please accept it. As commissioners, you owe it to your constituents to do the right thing. Please do not vote to waste more taxpayers' money. And speaking of money, Here's my check for $1,000 to help with the legal fees that we have run up. As I said before in August, we all want the property to be developed. Let's work together with the developer to make it happen.

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Janet Rose. I live 2311 Wealthy. I am echoing everything that has been said tonight, but just for what I have to say is I'm asking you not to appeal. You would be spending taxpayer dollars when the judge was very clear that he followed the law in making his decision. I also want development, something that fits the space and enhances Gaslight Village. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, my name is Steve Giroux. I'm at 1635 Seminole. My family has lived there for about 27 years. I was at the meeting last October when you guys all voted, and I was just blown away by how premature I thought that was. I thought it was terrible. on your part, the city manager, and the whole commission. And in the years since then, I'm feeling even worse about you guys for spending all of our money. I mean, I don't know if it's 250, that's a ridiculous amount. Even if it's half that, it's a ridiculous amount. And how much more are you willing to spend? Yeah, I guess I just don't understand this at all. especially for a developer who has shown for 24 years that he doesn't really care about Gaslight Village. He's let it fall into complete disrepair. So I'm not sure what your motivation here is, but you know, I'm dead set against you guys appealing it. So thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Sarah Buck, 308 Manhattan Road. The closed-door meeting tonight with Attorney Huff is scheduled. We ask the Commission to very carefully consider the implications of your next decision. At stake, as we all know, is whether or not to appeal the decision and fight East Grand Rapids residents or not to appeal and respect the court and your own citizens. If the commission decides to appeal, it would send the message that the commission does not support the taxpaying constituents who voted them into office. Asking those same citizens to then finance the city and commission's effort to overturn the courts and defeat the citizens would only deepen the loss of public trust. On tonight's consent agenda, the check voucher run shows five city attorney invoices totaling over $62,000. One of those invoices are for litigation services totaling over $9,000. And we're only at the very beginning of this legal process. Our tax dollars should be used to serve this community, not to wage a continuing legal battle. against residents who exercised their rights and prevailed in court. At some point, and we hope it's tonight, the Commission must decide whether it will represent its citizens or intend to keep fighting them. If, on the other hand, the Commission decides not to appeal Judge Quish's decision, the Commission could begin to repair the issue of eroding public trust. the Commission's accountability and judgment could be strengthened by showing it understands those it is elected to serve. Do we have leadership implies in place who can recognize these concerns? Will the Commission's decisions treat citizens as voices that matter rather than obstacles to their own agenda? Tonight, your choice is clear. The court has already ruled. The concept plan was invalid. Do not choose to appeal. Instead, put your citizens first. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good evening, Commissioners.

My name is Russ Afton, 948 Maxwell Avenue here in East Grand Rapids. You've heard the same thing I'm about to say how many times now. I hope that you've heard it and it sets well in your mind and that you take it seriously. I've been here 39 years with my family with five kids going through the school system, participating in sports and recreation things and all kinds of stuff. We love this city, we love the way it looks, and we all in my family, as most of the people here do, and the people that signed, more than 1,500 people signed the petition, we all want the development. We don't want a concrete jungle. We do not want what was proposed. Please work with a developer and come up with a different view of the city, and I truly applaud the gentleman who shared, let's do something that's Per the design and the scope and the look of what Grand Rapids should be Thank you.

Thank you My name is Janet Deech I live at 562 Greenwood I agree with what's been said. I just feel like you guys have an opportunity to do a do-over and to start the process over. And I hope that it doesn't become a control battle, that it just becomes let's do what the citizens want and to work with everybody. I think you guys, you as a board and citizens and the developer could come up with a plan that we would all be excited about. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Patricia Westphier. I live at 2311 Wealthy, apartment 18. And I'm just asking you not to appeal. The judge was very clear. that he made his decision following the law. And we want the property to be developed, but we want it to be something that enhances our beautiful city where everybody is safe and we can just all enjoy it. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else would like to come up and talk to a item not on tonight's agenda?

Hi. I'm Ann Risch. I live at 2107 Anderson. and longtime resident, thank you guys for your service. First of all, please don't appeal the judge's ruling on the protest petition. I agree with what everybody's saying. Like development, just the present plan's too big, not enough parking, too much retail space. Okay, so now I would like to talk about trees. I feel like, I know that like the out lawn between the sidewalk and the street, the city is responsible for maintenance the people are responsible to plant the trees. And they can get them for half price, but I feel like the city should just offer them for free because a lot of people don't plant them. This is along Boston. It's like three blocks and there's only like one tree at the end and it's dead. Let's see, this is York. This is right by Breton Downs School. So I don't know if the city can take care of the, property by the schools. This is San Luray. There's a whole bunch of trees that could be planted there. This is San Luray as well on the other side. Okay. So that's that. And there's just a lot of blank spaces all around the city where there could be trees. And also I feel like the city could spend a little bit more money on maintenance as well because there's a lot of dead trees around the city and half dead trees and trees that have dead branches. And here's just two pictures of trees that are dead. This one is the dead one by Breton Downs at the corner of York and Boston. And here's one on my street that's pretty much dead. There's about five other dead streets trees on my streets too. And I feel like not only are they ugly, they could be a hazard. They could fall down and hit somebody's house or their car or their kid. So anyways, it just seems like there's an awful lot of money in the budget right now for legal fees. I didn't realize we'd spent that much roads, traffic circles, painting on the robes, curbs and signage, which is all good for safety. But anyway, just please consider using some more money for trees. All right, thank you.

Thank you. And A plus visuals from all of you tonight. This has been very well done. Anyone else like to speak to an item that is not on the agenda? Going once, going twice. Well, no, sorry, I apologize. And I want to thank all of you for

Staying under your three minutes making my life easy giving everyone time to speak With that said I wanted to move forward into I want to close public comment Absolutely, yeah, right come on up Just in time, my name is Judith Baxter I'm an East Grand Rapids resident in Hall Street and I just wanted to point out to you that I know the subject of the Public comment has been on whether or not to appeal the ruling that the court gave in favor of the eastern rapids for responsible development folks and against the city commission's vote on the concept plan and against the advice that you got from your lawyers and i want to remind you and ask you to ask yourselves who exactly do you represent who all of these people back here take time out of their busy day week after week month after month to tell you what they want And they are from their district. And this is just the tip of an iceberg of the people who feel similarly to them. There were 1,500 people that signed that referendum petition. You've gotten several hundred letters, maybe 500 or so letters of people opposing that gaslight development project as it was proposed. And you had numerous other people writing letters. So that roughly might be 2,000 people. That's a fifth of the total population of the city opposing this project. Now, if you're a representative body, and each one of you represents your district, who do you represent? An anonymous city? Do you represent who exactly? Who's giving you information? You don't represent the lawyers. They're the ones that are going to make out the best out of all this lawsuit, all this money, all this division, and all this conflict. You represent the people who are here, the people who are coming here and speaking week after week, month after month, year after year. That's a fifth of the population. You don't have any data on the entire majority of the population telling you what they want. You don't have it. So you'd have to deal with, I suggest you deal with the information that you do have. And those are the people here who are opposing this project. You don't have to appeal this ruling. Now is a good juncture to meet with the citizens, meet with the developer, meet with people of the city commission, and come up with a plan that everybody can live with. Not everybody's going to like it. But it's a compromised, negotiated plan that everybody can live with. And put this to rest. No more money. You're spending taxpayers' money to fight the taxpayers. What sense does that make? And they're spending money to be heard. What sense does that make? You've probably seen in the news people that are opposing data centers. And their citizens, their boards say, no, we're going to table this. We're not going to do this. The citizens oppose this. But you're not doing that. So please remember who you're representing. Who are you representing? It's the people of the East Grand Rapids, and those are the people that are here. If only one person stood up here and said they don't want this development as is, that should be enough. Why isn't it enough? Please reconsider. You don't have to appeal. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, anybody else? I'm going to close it for real this time. All right. Hearing and seeing none, uh, I'm going to close public comment. And, uh, before we get to the report of the mayor and commissioners, I just wanted to give everybody a heads up that we are not coming back after the executive session. So when we do end at the end of this meeting, um, sayonara, and we'll see you in two weeks. Uh, with that said, um, let's start down on the end with commissioner Schwartz with her, uh, report.

Thank you. Just finishing up some notes here. Um, so first of all, thank you to all the residents who came out tonight, um, and who I've spoken to a lot in the past. Um, I appreciate your comments and I'm looking forward to learning more on getting some more questions asked in the closed session tonight, um, around the appeal process. I think the plaintiffs who are here have probably had some conversations with their attorneys on the topic that we haven't yet had the chance to have with ours. So I'm looking forward to that tonight. With that in mind, Attorney Huff, they have a couple of questions I thought might, you can tell me, we can keep them for later, but I thought it might be helpful to air these because that $250,000 amount has been thrown out and I, like many others, have been asking repeatedly throughout this process, how much are we spending, where is this going? I understood that it was closer to $65,000, which is not nothing, but it is not $250,000. Can you help

That is the correct answer. It's $65,000. I don't have any idea where $250,000 number came from.

Okay. So $65,000, just to make sure people can hear that at home, $65,000 has been spent on litigation. I'm guessing that somebody extrapolated from the retainer fees.

Could be.

But that is not used towards litigation.

And it's also paid over a year.

Great. Thank you so much. Expenses don't multiply based on attorneys. The fees are the fees. We've spent $65,000 on litigation expenses, not nothing, not $250,000. Okay. So I also, this is a challenging conversation to have, and I hope everyone will listen with an open mind because folks who tend to come to meetings are fighting something, right? So at this point, I think it's important to also speak up for those who are not in the room. And I was surprised at how many people have reached out to me, email, phone calls, and in-person conversations in the time since the decision. And all of that feedback that I have received was to express disappointment that the development is not going forward. And I'll note that some of them wanted the original You know, the original proposal, Gaslight Investors said seven stories. Some only liked it with the revisions that we worked on because, remember, we worked on this together. Front row, how many phone calls did we have where we talked about what we did and didn't want? We got them from seven stories to five stories. We got a 10-foot wide pedestrian path going through. We got a community triangle space where a community can gather. And it's okay that that's not enough for some people, but I think it's worth acknowledging to the people who spent time coming here, providing comments, pushing back on those points and working to get those compromises, we should acknowledge that. Some of those people who also expressed the disappointment that it's not going forward, they just said they don't care, they just want any development. But all of them were okay with what was presented and voted on in October. and were deeply disappointed. They've asked me to do what I can. Unfortunately for the voices here, that means they do want me to think about an appeal. They also asked what they can do to make sure it goes forward, to which I said, I'm not sure what that is. I say this kindly and sincerely to everybody who's worked hard on this to oppose this. What they've said is this group does not speak for me. And I hope that you do not think that all residents feel this way. This is a challenge for everybody up here on this issue and others. We're trying to do what we can to balance the people who come here and speak as well as those who cannot come here and speak. The people I have texting me right now saying, am I going to make it? Gymnastics ends at 6 45. And I say, sorry, public comment just closed. There are residents who have thoughts on this and who also just thought it was happening and so don't come to speak because their work or their family lives do not allow for it. And so my job is to not only represent you, but represent them. So with all of this in mind, I, again, kindly, sincerely, I'm not trying to, I don't want, this is not antagonistic, this is sincere. For all the folks tonight who are talking about Who speaks for the residents? And what is unity? Let's think about what that is, because you are residents. You are respected residents. There are other residents. So you are not all residents. And the vision is unclear. I've asked many people along the way over the past year and a half, what is it that you would want to see? Let me fight for you what it is that you want to see. Everyone has a different idea. And I respect that. There's a lot of ways that this can go. and could go, could have gone throughout the whole thing. Um, but we need to remember that everybody in this room right now is not everybody in this city. I'm not discounting your voices. I just, let's keep that in mind. You know, the protest petition that we're talking about was adjacent neighbors and the protest petition with the 1500 signatures. I can speak firsthand and, and echo my neighbors who said, Somebody came to my petition and came to my door with the petition and said, you need to sign this if you want to engage in the democratic process. Maybe they would have voted no. Maybe they would have voted no. Maybe they would have voted yes if it went to a vote. We don't know. But I think it's wrong to characterize every one of those 1,500 petition signatures as somebody in the community who is against it. Some people just said, yeah, I want to have a say whenever it comes up. Regardless, there's a lot to learn tonight. I haven't decided. I don't have all the facts. I haven't decided what I'll be doing. I know you guys disagree. It's okay. I listen to you. You can listen to me. You too, Ms. Buster. So regardless, there's nothing new for us to collaborate on right now. The 2025 plan did not pass, and we're back to a 2004 PUD. that has five, six and seven story towers, no pedestrian thruway, no public gathering space. That's our status quo, just the way it was two years ago. And if I'm if I'm being honest, I'm disappointed, but that's OK. I can move forward and I can keep us going. However, this lands the developer comes to us with another PUD. Let's do it again. Let's talk about what's in that PUD that doesn't doesn't work and let's work together. You know, I, I mean this sincerely, I'm seeing a lot of shaking heads and I hope that cynicism can fade because it's, it's, you know, we're residents, we're taxpayers. We live here. I have young kids. I have a daughter at Mayflower. Let's get that crosswalk. I've thought about riding my bike there. And I don't know in the mornings, a little sketchy crossing the road, you know, we all want what's best for the city, even if ultimately we disagree on it. Um, so I just, again i'm not saying this to be like you're wrong we're there's no us that this this is about all of us we are not the them you are not the us you are not the them i am not the us so let's all work together on this and and yeah be a team so remember that everybody has residents thank you thank you commissioner groff blazek uh i i'm gonna save most of my comments on this topic until

We have it as an agenda item and it's something that we're going to discuss here. I do want to say, you know, I'll acknowledge certainly there is a bias in terms of who shows up at these meetings, but I thank you for continuing to show up. Organizing is hard work and it is a rare and unusual thing that this number of folks get engaged in a municipal issue and continue to do this for well over a year now. I see that. I recognize that. And that does send a very powerful message. I think that based on the conversation about a year ago now when we talked about the approval, you know where I stand in terms of the legal interpretation. I do want to provide reassurance that the Open Meetings Act requires that any discussion, not just a decision, but any discussion that we have leading to a decision has to be done in an open meeting. What is discussed behind closed doors this evening cannot include any discussion or debate amongst us about where this goes. So just want to provide that as well.

Thanks for that. Commissioner Hunter. Thank you.

Yeah, I too wanna speak to kind of how we've gotten here. And I feel like for my comments, I've tried to remain fairly consistent in and around the idea of personal agency, legal standing and constitutional representation. But as commissioners, we take input from a variety of sources. Votes, petitions, emails, personal conversations.

What does that say?

Our own intuition. And public comment. I've received all of those as I'm sure all of my fellow commissioners have received all of the above there might even be ones that I'm leaving off the list, but we try to Synthesize all of those into into one opinion and that's a tough job However, I don't I'll cite a conversation from last week at the varsity soccer game where a very, very good friend of mine whose kids started in kindergarten with mine and now goes to the U of M together, so life kind of long EGR friend, who criticized me for my decision. at the game, right? And it's no big deal. We're going to remain friends after this. It was friendly. Um, but I was reminding him like, you know, I came on on the other side of this conversation, right? Uh, on, on this debate. Um, and I said, I just really encourage you to come to a, to a meeting. This has been going on for 30 months and there are people who have shown up for possibly close to a hundred meetings now, or I guess, yeah, probably close to a hundred meetings. That's meaningful. To have a conversation in the backyard or at a birthday party is also meaningful, but it's not as meaningful as what you guys have done. And I'll take it a step further and say that EGR responsible development is the only actual organization representing the residents right now. There really is no other resident group. If there are, I'd encourage us to invite them to the meeting so they could have this constitutional representation of sharing their First Amendment right of free speech in an open forum. It helps to receive the information at the soccer game as long as we can keep it civil. But I must also say that Those folks who have come out of the woodwork and we have seen them, I've seen the uptick as well in those who have said, hey, wait, I heard that the appeal, or I'm sorry, that the verdict from the judge ended this thing entirely. What the heck happened? Each of those conversations though have ended with do not appeal. So I could also say that I have not received one single yay vote in my series of inputs that I received from residents that have said, please get to the bottom of this and keep fighting the battle after the war is already done in court. I do believe it'll lead to a level of divisiveness we haven't seen in this community. I think it is, like Commissioner Grofblazek said, let's save a lot of our comments for when this is an actual agenda item. But the idea that you folks have come here, I will say is honestly where I've arrived at the majority of my decision. I was largely absent for my first 18 years of living here, and there was a lot that happened in our city. didn't attend a meeting and I didn't provide public comment, I wouldn't have expected for anything to have turned out my way if I had a strong opinion one way or the other about the parks millage when I wasn't coming here to provide public comment or doing much of anything else to sway a commissioner's opinion. So I just feel like the fact that this moment has arrived should give us all pause and consider the org chart that was brought out tonight and who exactly we are being represented by and who we are representing as residents of the City of BGR. Thank you.

Thank you. All the way down there to Commissioner Skaggs.

Well, I didn't really come prepared to talk about appeal tonight, so I'll save a lot of my thoughts. I also think we're still in a situation where commentary on the lawsuit is still something that we're required to stay mom on as a commission until the final order is issued. And I don't think we're there yet. One thing I do think is really important for everybody to consider, and just so you have the facts, is that we are not, as the city, the only party to this lawsuit. The judge, Judge Quist, permitted the developer to intervene as well. You saw the picture of him there. And therefore they also have a right to appeal. So I would hate for there to be a misunderstanding if they decide to take that action, that it was actually us. And I just want to make sure that that's clear, that they have that option apart from the city. They can take action on their own. And I don't want there to be confusion. So with that, I too am appreciative of everybody coming out and letting us know where you stand. I'm also looking forward to a further conversation this evening so we can learn more and make the best decision possible as a city. Thank you. Wonderful.

And last but not least, Commissioner Wesley. I really didn't have anything to report. I'm sorry I missed the last meeting and the last closed session. So I'm just eager to get in there just to get caught up. But I do appreciate everyone coming out and sharing their voice. It's really good to hear. But again, I'm also not sure what I can share until I have a chat with our attorney. So I'll just refrain and then have a comment maybe afterwards. Appreciate it. Thank you.

All right. And lastly, for me, I'm kind of in the same boat. I don't know enough to make a good concrete statement about this yet. I'm looking forward to learning a lot in our executive session tonight and get updated on it. But I kind of want to echo both sides on this one when we talk about thanking everyone for coming out here, because I think the people in this room sitting up here and the people sitting out there being active in local government, at least for me, I got involved because I was anxious. I was anxious and needed control of what I saw as bigger things happening around me. So I was immediately like, well, what can I do to help? What can I do to put my time in to know that I can look at my kids, I can look at my friends and say, like, I've done everything I possibly can. I think you guys share a lot of that with what we do up here. I mean, heck, you're at most of our meetings. We're all spending this time together. So I do want to thank and I want to let you guys all know I do respect you guys spending your time and your nights here that can come here. That being said, I also want to agree with Commissioner Schwartz saying that it is our job up here to represent people that can't be here. I was there. I'm a stay-at-home dad. My kids are finally old enough where they can ride their bikes to and from these sports. But even tonight, I had one that had to go over the library and is over at swimming, and then it's going to come back to the library afterwards. And hopefully we get out before that library closes. But I'm not alone in that. There's a lot of us with a lot of priorities. So I don't want to dismiss anyone that's not able to make these events or not be able to make different gatherings like this as not being involved when we all have a life to live and a lot of them put a lot of trust in us up here to help represent them and make those decisions. And hopefully we can talk to them, like you said, at a park or at a playground after school lets out or up at a, you know, at a football game in the stands, right? I feel like a majority of mine get started with, Ryan, what the heck? And then I have to ask them to elaborate because that could mean so many different things. That could be for or against many different issues. And at that point, we start digging into it. And I think those are really healthy, good conversations to have. I think tonight's been great. I appreciate all of you guys for having the respect for everyone in the room and letting everyone have a voice, including those up here, because I think that's important. I think it's really important that we can all come up and we can all say what we want to say and we can all listen. Freedom of speech doesn't really go very far if everyone's yelling at the same time, because no one hears anything. It only works when we're organized, respectful, and we're hearing everyone talk. So I really appreciate everyone doing that tonight. I don't have anything to add. Parks and Rec didn't meet this week, which is a bummer, but hopefully next month we will have a full agenda of gobble wobbles and festivals to approve again. So with that, Commissioner, sorry, City Manager Charles.

Thank you, Mr. President. A couple things in regards to tree trimming, things of that nature. Contractor and staff is mobilizing in the near future. So a lot of the items that were identified in regards to trees that are in need of maintenance are actually on our list, and we'll start work on that here in the near future. So you will start to see that. The last thing, I do want to take an opportunity to recognize Director Bukema. He just completed his 30th year with the city, and we want to thank him for his service and his time.

That's all. All right, with that said, we can move on to the regular agenda items. First on the list, number six, consider the mayor's recommendation for Mike Stelter to the Zoning Board of Appeals as an alternate, the intro by City Manager Charles.

Thank you, Mr. President. Excuse me. The mayor has recommended Mr. Stelter to be appointed to a recent vacancy on the Zoning Board of Appeals as an alternate, so that would require commission action.

All right, with that said, would anyone like to speak to this agenda item? Yeah, come on up.

Thank you.

I have a concern that's been expressed to me by other residents in the community about Mr. Stelter. I don't know him personally, but I do understand that he's an employee at Corwell Health. And given the fact that there's some issues of zoning involving Corwell Health and the Blodgett development, if he's appointed, I would expect him to recuse himself for any votes regarding Corwell Health. and the zoning issues that surround that because it could be construed as a conflict of interest or an appearance of a conflict of interest. So I'd ask that to be considered. I don't know exactly what a role of an alternate is or whether he'd be on every vote, but I'd ask the court to remember that and consider that when you consider this appointment.

Thank you.

I live at 2615 Oakwood, resident for a while. And I too have heard these stories about Mr. Stettler and how he's involved with Corwell Health. And I think, again, we could be looking at many conflicts of interest. So I think you guys will hopefully do your homework and let us know what you think. Thank you.

Ooh, I thought we were getting them. With that said, I can bring it, would anyone else like to comment to this agenda item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back up here for discussion and a motion. Who would like to start?

I have a question. Maybe maybe a comment. I did do a little bit of homework and looked back through all the agendas that I could find from the ZBA and Coral Health did not appear on any of the agendas. And I was curious because there were no agendas from 2026. Mr. City Manager has the ZBA met in 2026 just to do training, I believe.

So thank you.

So I was just going to say, having sat on the ZBA, We did have to go through training and we follow a similar policy as we do here. And as we do on planning commission, I'm assuming all of them to where if any party appearing before us, we have a conflict, we recuse ourselves, just making sure that's still the policy with the ZBA. And as an alternate, if Corwell came before the ZBA, he would not be selected. Correct.

I'm looking at Mr. Lefebvre. That's correct.

Okay. Thank you.

Just a point of clarification there on this topic, Mr. Lefebvre, how many commercial rezoning applications versus residential come in front of the ZBA? So I think so far in my tenure, there haven't been any commercial.

No, I think there's been one, I think in your tenure, and that was a conditional rezoning, um, adjacent to Gaslight Village, but typically they're the residential mostly nature, um, 95% of the community or so are residential properties. So they're typically related to single-family home additions or remodels, those types of things.

Just to clarify that the ZBA hears appeals of zoning decisions. They do not make determinations or opine on rezonings. So if it's only an appeal, that's before the commission or the zoning board of appeals.

Right.

All right. With that, is anyone willing to bring a motion and a second for this agenda item?

Sure. I'll move that we appoint Mike Stelter to the Zoning Board of Appeals as an alternate.

Second. All right. With a motion and a second, would anyone like to discuss before going to a vote on this one? I can give a quick one. My wife works for Corwell. In West Michigan, I feel like we can probably pick between a handful of companies, Steelcase, Corwell, Bissell, Meijer, and we're probably going to run into someone in town. You couldn't roll a ball down the road without running into somebody that works at one of the major West Michigan institutions. That said, in the same way that I would handle it is I would... I would advise anybody that's coming up on any of these issues of should I recuse or should I not, is we have legal counsel and people to bring that to. And I would expect him, as any one of us would, to follow those same rules and do what he's counseled to do. And with that being said, I'd love to take this to a vote if anyone else has something to say. All those in favor say yes. Yes. Yes. Any nos? All right, motion passes. Next on the agenda, consider the final reading and consideration and consider adopting of amendments to Chapter 32, Section 338 regarding public ways or clear vision areas. That intro is by Deputy City Manager Lefebvre.

Good evening. As is noted, this is the second and final reading for these ordinance amendments. As is outlined in the memorandum, which we covered at our prior city commission meeting, provided a red line version as well as a few different graphics to try to help depict some of the challenges that we were seeing in the community. Currently, the property maintenance code does cover the five-inch grass height, and it does have a provision of noxious weeds, et cetera, but what it does not cover are more native-type plantings, we're seeing in right-of-way areas that are beautiful and wonderful, but we have some more emerging safety concerns in some of those locations, and just a few of those were provided for in the memorandum, some photos where we just haven't been able to find any sort of corrective measure to address those, and have had citizens reach out to us with concern at some crosswalks, some driveway locations, those types of things where we believe they have very valid points. So when we've looked into that, we've also reached out to some other communities that have made modifications to their ordinance. So a few things we looked at were kind of your lower profile vehicles. There's a 30 inch piece there for some of those lower profile, more of a convertible type vehicle. We took into account kind of a height you might see for a kindergartner, as is noted in the memorandum, as well as somebody who maybe on a sidewalk or walking path with the wheelchair assistance as well to make sure that they can be seen as they're on a sidewalk or pathway. With that, we also did provide a provision for exceptions because when we have clear vision areas, there's always a situation where where they're, depending on the topography, on a hillside or something like that, where a strict definition, sometimes you do have that clear vision available even at those heights. So we wanted to leave that piece in there so that we can utilize other professional traffic engineering advice and manuals given those types of situations where maybe the more literal piece may not be applicable. So with that, I'll just go through the key items here. That maintenance is to include the public right-of-way. The reduction of vegetation height goes from 36 to 30 inches in Clear Vision areas for not only private, which is currently in the ordinance, but also the public right-of-way. And then, as I noted, those specific reasons and the exceptions. And I'll just provide, for the sake of those who've stayed here this evening, This is kind of the clear vision piece when we're looking at a vehicle and the height there, and also just showing a few of the photographs of just some of the areas where we've responded to some complaints where we have 54 inches at a crossing, those types of things where we don't have a mechanism to enforce. This is probably the most helpful piece here, but the graphic. We haven't changed the existing clear vision triangles that are adjacent to driveways and side streets, the 20 by 20 feet for street sides and also the 10 foot for private property driveways, but we just extended that. So if you're looking at the red triangle here and here, those regulations just stay the same alls we're doing is projecting those into the right-of-way too because if you're if you're at a street an intersection or a driveway approaching you need to maintain that all the way through the right-of-way and so With that be happy to answer any questions that any of you have this evening.

I Have one point of clarification I just found the language a little bit confusing about the height that it can be 30 inches above the top of the curb at street level. It's 30 inches from the street level, right? Because the curb is like six inches. So it's not 36 inches.

It would be from the top of the curb because that's where you're going to get the surface for like a sidewalk is generally going to be aligned with that. So that's where we take the measurement.

Okay. I was confused because like the tape measure here is at the street level.

Sure. And what we did is we kind of took those, the six inches off there, five inches off there. But again, we want to be very specific. Generally, when we encounter these situations, there's a lot of passion involved, and so people want to know exactly where they're getting judged or measured by, so.

Perfect. And chat GPT will tell you the exact flowers to plant in your out lawn to deal with street salt, and they're 30 inches high. I just did it, so highly recommend.

I have a question on the drawing of the triangles. You're extending into the right of way. We're still measuring the 10 feet triangle from sidewalk up driveway. But then that triangle line goes all the way out to the road. So somebody who has a really big outlawn right of way would have a very wide.

Correct. And that's why we provide the exception piece because There's going to be situations, like you said, where there's a wider right-of-way or other pieces in the given environment that are going to require that type of exception. So this is more of your general approach to this, but that's why we had the exception language and how we would look at that because we do have clear vision analysis that we do for no parking, et cetera, in the city, too, where things like the speed limit, your sight distance, those types of things can be looked at. it may be different. That's why we wanted to have that exception there, because if otherwise you could see, we want to be able to say, okay, we have a complaint here, but you know, maybe we don't need to have 200 feet of clearance. Right.

So I think I was trying to like, think about the triangles and must've missed the full exception part. And the exception is like a resident can kind of work through that safely. And like, it only comes up if there's a complaint or like, are they supposed to come to the city and say, Hey, I'm making my triangles.

We go on every single complaint. So we would go out to look at the situation. Right. And if, if it's covered with the plain language here, that's how we would address it. Um, if we looked at it and, um, for the example you gave, we would say, okay, we're going to look at an AASHTO manual or something like that to, to see what it really needs to be in order to be effective and safe.

Okay. I just really don't want to dissuade anybody. I love when people use their out lawn for wildflowers. I know you do too. I know. I just want to make sure we're not inadvertently messing with someone's beautifully curated out lawn. Thank you.

So it sounds like we've heard from folks that have concerns about the out lawns. Have we done any specific outreach to people with those that theoretically are going to be impacted?

Generally, um, it's been, if there's no regulation there for us, then we would like to leave it as is. And we've definitely have covered, you know, this is the height of a child, et cetera. And generally, um, they're like, well, you need to change the law.

So what will enforcement look like this passes tonight?

And then what happens with those that have, so with, like with any enforcement, uh, that the city, um, partakes in, uh, the first piece is education piece just to make, make sure people are aware of it. And then we, we, um, before we give them a, a deadline, uh, we'll ask for when they can be meet compliance and reach out to us. Um, sometimes there's right. There's a whole variety of reasons why somebody may do it, um, in a short period of time. Um, if this is a, if this is a concern at a particular crosswalk where we can't see children, we will, um, we'll obviously notify the resident, but we're going to take the, we're going to take the action to, to cut it at, at, uh, at 30 inches to make sure that, you know, safety is number one. Okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions for, uh, deputy city manager of faith?

I have one more question. I'm sorry. I wasn't here at the last meeting. That was the first reading. Correct. Did anybody come to speak to this agenda item?

No. Okay.

All right. Thanks, Mr. LaFave. The undisputed champ of visual aids. With that said, I'm bringing up for discussion up here. I guess I'd start by saying like, what a great problem we have where we have too many beautiful flowers and they're growing too tall that it's becoming a safety issue. This is a great, I think this is a great, tuning to it where we do have the exceptions, where if there are those large out lawns, we can work with individuals because as we've seen, like there are a lot of homes that have different lot shapes and lot sizes and like having a way to work with them is a good thing. I would encourage anyone that comes into that category to reach out to either your commissioner or to Deputy City Manager Lefebvre to make sure that we don't cut down any unnecessary flowers. With that, does anyone else have any comments before going to a vote?

You need a motion? We do need a motion. I will happily motion.

Okay. Do we have a second? Oh, I'm sorry. Absolutely. Would you like to comment? We should get a second. Oh, get a second. Second. OK, I'll open up for public comment on anyone that like to come talk with that. I apologize.

I just had a question and I'm sorry I didn't get material. Does this visual, Judy Baxter from Hall Street, East Grand Rapids, does this include snow banks and snow visuals on plowing or just plants? That was my only question.

We do cover snowmakes in a separate ordinance.

Thank you. Yes.

It's a good question. I apologize. You missed the start where I said this is my first time driving this car. So there'll be some times where I miss things. So I appreciate you speaking up so that I can make sure that we all talk. With that said, we have a motion and a second. So I'll take it to a vote. All those in favor say yes. Yes. Yes. Any nos? Motion passes. All right, on to number eight. Consider adopting a resolution to establish a temporary polling location at the community center. This intro will be by City Manager Charles.

Thank you, Mr. President. Before you is a resolution to establish a temporary polling location moving our location for Ward 3 from the Performing Arts Center to the community center. We did this for our August primary. We'd like to do the construction at the high school. We have to move this again. So we're asking for approval of the resolution. This is just for the November election. We will continue to evaluate as construction proceeds if we can get back into PAC or not. But this is just for the November election.

All right, anybody have questions for Manager Charles? Would anyone like to come speak to this agenda item? All right, seeing none, I'll bring it back up for a motion to second.

So moved. Second.

All right, we have a motion to second. Would anyone like to speak to this agenda item before voting? I guess I would just say I hope we have signage at the PAC that says, hey, come on down to the community center. We will have signage arrows and...

My understanding was it worked well for the August primary.

It did. Yeah.

Great. All right. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor say yes. Yes. Any nos? All right. Motion passes. All right. Agenda number nine, consider a one-year pool use agreement with Aquinas College for scheduled use of the community pool. This intro will be by Parks and Recreation Director Melville.

Yes, good evening, Mr. Mayor, Acting Mayor and Commissioners, Mr. President, I should say. As outlined in the memo, we've had a collaborative arrangement with the Aquinas College swim and dive team since the 2021 season. where we initially formed a three year agreement to provide their newly formed team access to the high school pool for practice purposes and then also for swim meet purposes to the tune of somewhere between 200 and 400 hours of use. So over the first three years of the agreement, we really were able to fine tune that process and the operations with Aquinas to the extent of which in 2024, there was a willingness to extend that agreement for a one year term. The reason why one year terms were preferred in 2024 and in each subsequent year, it allows for us to review the prior year's costs of operating the pool to better align the agreement cost with Aquinas to make sure that we're covering our costs for the operation of the pool. So as you can see here, this year we are proposing a $30,000 cost for up to 200 hours of use of the pool for their swim practices. In coordinating with Aquinas, we make sure that their practices align with non-peak times of the pool. Typically they're practicing from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., so after the morning swim period, but before noon lap swim. And also I should outline In addition to the growth of the Aquinas swim program, we've also realized other benefits here with that relationship with Aquinas. We do have a number of their collegiate athletes are lifeguards within our program, which as you are familiar is one of our more difficult positions to fill. We also have collaborative arrangements for them to help coach and volunteer in a variety of areas. So because the pool is jointly operated with the school district, the proposed agreement would result in us splitting the revenue with East Grand Rapids Public Schools 50-50 and they have reviewed and approved this agreement and their staff has and they would be updating their board at an upcoming meeting. So happy to answer any questions you may have.

Alright, well we got them up there. Anybody have any questions on this agenda item?

Just to comment, Commissioner Burdick and Commissioner Schwartz and I in finance committee did hear this agenda item first time through earlier tonight. And we had just talked about both sides of the collaboration scale with Aquinas potentially allowing us to use fields as well. And Director Melville let us know that as well, you know, the high school staff, the administrators at the high school level, the public school level are also in these conversations and very actively looking for any types of collaboration back and forth with not only pool usage, but fuel usage and all other types of sporting types of fields and Places that that kids need to go and when there's just not enough space around town.

So Thanks for all the the work you've done on this item Absolutely anyone else with any questions for? Mr. Melville All right hearing none, thank you, I'll bring it back up here first off Let's see if anyone would like to have public comment speaking on this agenda item Thank you

And I've spoken to the director of the Parks and Recreation Department before. I'm a lap swimmer. Our pool is in great demand all the time. Peak hours going to a college is great. I think the collaboration is great. But I have made the suggestion, and I don't know if it's in this contractual agreement, lifeguards have been a problem for us for lap swimmers as well. And the pool is closed mostly, almost all Saturdays during the school year. So I was hoping that this could be considered if it isn't already in there, and I haven't seen the contract, that Aquinas could provide lifeguards for events other than their own activities to allow us to open the pool on a maybe Saturday or extended hours on a Sunday for lap swim. So if that could be considered, I think that would benefit a lot of people who are lap swimmers who have to get up at the crack of dawn or during the middle of their workday. There are no evening hours for lap swim. The only lap swim is offered at noon on Sunday, 12 to 2, I believe. So that's from a lap swimmer's perspective. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Much respect to all you that jump in the pool before the sun's up. I can speak from being on the Parks and Rec Commission that has been a focus that we've had is this partnership has helped us hire more lifeguards. And just as importantly, we've updated our pay scales to work to attract more lifeguards because you hate to have a pool, a perfectly good pool there with people that want to swim in it and no one to keep them safe. So I do know that that has been looked at and this agreement does help us find some more of those lifeguards. With that said, would anyone else like to speak to this agenda item? Hearing none, I'll bring it up here for a motion and a second.

Move to approve a one-year pool use agreement with Aquinas College for use of the community pool.

All right.

Second.

Great, with that said, anyone, do we have any comments before we want to go to a vote here? All right, hearing none, all those in favor say yes. Yes. All those, any no's? Hearing none, passes. On to the next one. Considering awarding a 50-50 right-of-way tree-planting program contract. That intro is with our deputy city manager, Lefebvre.

Okay, so the 50-50 right-of-way tree-planting program, we worked with Kent County Fiscal Services, their purchasing division, to bid out our tree planning program for fiscal years 26, 27 through 28, 29. We have a listing that we publish here that are included in the bid documents for current trees that we offer in that program. And we do that for a variety of reasons. One is we're working, as referenced in the memorandum, there's a link to a 2016 citywide analysis we did of all of our right-of-way trees. There are 7,100 of them that all got a visit. And through that analysis, we have over 60% of our right-of-way trees are of some form of maple tree. In fact, you saw a few of those Norway maples, which are actually now considered a form of invasive tree this evening that are at or near end of life or they're susceptible to root girdling and drought conditions that we've had as well. So what you won't see based off of our analysis of the right-of-way trees is those types of tree offerings, even though they give beautiful color in the fall. We're trying to make sure that we're addressing things in a manner that diversifies the the canopy so that we're not susceptible to different types of diseases or invasives like we've seen with Dutch elm disease, like we've seen with emerald ash borer, those types of impacts to our tree canopy, because there's nothing worse than having a beautiful lined street line street or tree line street where you lose them all because of one of those things. So the other piece to it is with the tree planting program that we go over with residents who are interested is we also look at, I'll put up just, I highlighted some of the key factors we look at. We look at locations for residents, not just based off of some of the benefits or the visual aspects that they see with trees, but we'll go over with them basically the what they have going on in the right of way. So we'll look at things like drought tolerance. So if they say, I don't have irrigation or anything in my property, and maybe it gets a lot of direct sunlight, we'll have that conversation to look at what might be the best option for them. We look at drainage tolerance. We have obviously areas in the city that can be very wet. And so we'll look at that as well for them. If you're on a major street, one of our major plow routes, we'll look at salt tolerance. Even though we do try to mitigate, to the greatest extent possible, our use of salt, we still have to do that for safety in the community. We want to make sure that the types of trees we're planting, we're not going to have a negative impact from salts. Then we'll skip on over to outlaw and width. One of the biggest issues we have, it's the next two, that we deal with today are really just things from the past where locations of power lines, those types of things were an oversight or the out lawn width where someone puts in a beautiful oak tree and they got like two feet of grass. So what does that do? It damages, it's not good for the tree. It damages the curb, the sidewalk. We all see that. And then with the overhead wires, everyone's, I'll use the football comparison. Everyone sees the goalposts that no one wants to see for a tree. for those power lines and their clearance. So when we look at plantings, we're looking at a lot of those aspects. We also look at what can we source here in West Michigan for tree plantings, and we also try to plant natives. Of the 10 offerings I believe we have here, five of those are native to Michigan. Those are key factors for us, but I wanted to kind of share with you all kind of how we're looking at with our arborist for offerings. If we do see any type of tree becomes very popular, we will give that a break after a couple of years and roll in another one that's recommended just so we don't end up again where everyone loves the maple tree and we have too much of one variety or species. So that's just a little bit of background into what trees that we're offering the program currently. I would like to actually, it's at the second paragraph of my memorandum we heard tonight from a resident who was interested in some of the barriers in the tree. We call those areas that are areas of focus that we would like to focus on from a city staff perspective. So going back to that 2016 period, we really hadn't had a wealth of depth of knowledge really digging into what we had for an inventory. It was, what we offered was, I'm not really sure how we came up with it. It had been in place for some number of years. But with that, we also did develop a preventative maintenance program for our tree canopy. And so we were basically on about a five to six year cycle where We go through the appropriate time of year. Our arborists will go out in a section of the city and they will note trees that need to have preventative maintenance pruning completed. Unfortunately, this time of year is not a good time of year to do that for disease and those types of things that will impact them. So we typically will do that in like January, February. For removals, we will do those unless it's something that's determined to be an imminent issue. Typically around this time of year, as Manager Charles noted, Our public works staff are, in a lot of ways, are cross-trained, multifunctional, much like public safety is. So the same crews that are doing water main or infrastructure projects are also doing forestry management. They're also doing road work, everything else in the city. We're actually, in our seasonality of our work, we're right into the removal time of year. So a lot of the, I know those trees that were noted. It's like, oh yes, I've seen that. So we do have an inventory of those. And so we will be addressing those. I should also add that when we do remove trees, we do notify the adjacent resident that a lot of times they've contacted us. If not, if it was reported by somebody else or we happen to come across it, We notify them, we let them know what the determination is. Sometimes a tree looks like it's dead and it's just having an issue with a drought or something else. So we do give it a good look before we take them. And then when we do, we also encourage them to consider participating in our tree planting program. So we're not just taking something, we're trying to encourage them and the 50-50 program is an incentive way to do that. Getting back to the beginning of what I was mentioning in the second paragraph of background, What we're going to be looking at the next year or two is looking at a grant program to kind of go through our system again, give us a really good checkup at where we're at in terms of the overall tree canopy and how we've really changed those percentages from someone independently looking at our right-of-way trees. But also we want to look at looking at further incentives to address those areas of focus that would benefit from additional canopy diversity. So areas where we have gaps in open spaces, what we sort of envision is bringing this program after we've had that analysis done back to the city commission to consider in some of those areas where we might cover all the costs, we might cover 70 or 80% of the costs depending on where we see those gaps. Or if we see an area where We have too much of one type of species of tree where we really want to encourage that diversity on those streets where maybe they're all sycamores or something else to try to get residents to be interested in starting something before and if something were to occur to damage those types of trees. We did receive nine bids through Kent County. As I noted here in the memorandum, the staff is recommending the overall second to low proposal, and we did advise that that is with Davey Resource Group. That is also the same large company that our arborist works for, but our arborist was not involved in any way with with the bidding process here. That was handled through Kent County Purchasing directly. We just wanted to disclose that to you all so you're aware of it. If you're like, hey, I'm reading this letter from your arborist talking about the different types of trees and is that who we're awarding it to. So I wanted to make sure that you're all aware of that piece there. And then lastly, we included through the calculator the EPA has for really the benefits beyond the beauty that we see from our trees and our right of way and beyond. that for an air quality perspective, over 15,000 pounds of pollutants are removed each year from those 7,100 trees. The net total carbon sequestered and avoided is 4.4 million pounds per year, and stormwater over almost 10 million gallons per year. So they really do have a positive impact beyond the view that we all get to enjoy on our environment and in our city. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions that you all may have this evening.

Any questions? Looks like it was thoroughly covered. Thank you, Mr. Lefebvre. Would anyone in the audience like to come up and speak to this agenda item?

Betsy Anderson 435 Edgemere I really like East Grand Rapids having all these wonderful trees one thing that occurred to me and I need to buy a couple trees is On the list of trees that are available. Do you highlight which ones are? native because i think that's something that i think all of us can agree is really important to our community the other thing i'd like to piggyback on that is that with doing the inventory of your right-of-ways are you looking into the trees that are near all our new paths and our bike paths to make sure we have a plan for the existing trees that might actually harm what's being built or what has been built so that it stays in great shape for a long time. I think that's really important to add to your inventory. Two other things is just, I know how much we wanted to do things like gas engines for lawnmowers and such. And it seems like another thing to look at is giving residents incentives for certain native plantings, like if they decide to put in a native tree, see if we can give them a discount or something back for doing that. And then also for removing invasives, I know Huge thing at Houghton pile right now. I don't know how we're gonna do it I knew that I know the e green team is trying to help with that but it's unbelievable the number invasives that are around our community right now and Anything you can do to promote that and even with this new development with their plantings I think would be really good to put in there. We want native plants and the same with what you're doing in all your your gardens around the city that are beautiful, but they could be better if we included more and more natives. Thank you.

Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak to this agenda item? Okay, seeing none, I'll bring it back up here for a motion, a second, and some discussion.

Move to consider awarding the 50-50 right-of-way tree planting program contract. Second.

All right, with a motion to second, I guess I'll start. I just wanna thank Mr. Lefebvre for the crazy amount of data he catalogs, not just for trees, but for pipes and for road conditions, for lead like replacement, like you name it, that the amount of data that we have since he's been able to start building some spreadsheets is incredible. And I think that probably goes a long way when we have these grant processes because it gives the grant writers a lot more data on what we need and what we have. It isn't amorphous. It's not like we just might need some more trees. We have a very firm grasp on what we have and what we need. And so all that work that goes on in the background that helps us hopefully get more native species and we did ask about that actually in our finance meeting and half of them on the list are native right now. A good suggestion to market so we can let people know but it was mentioned and it was covered and half are and they are all locally grown so they're not gonna get shocked by their first Michigan winter like people that move here from the south. That said, does anyone else like to comment to this before we go to a vote?

I just, I would second. annotating on the document what's native. As we were sitting in finance going through this, I was Googling each one. I'm like, I know Juneberry is, but I was checking on the others. I think that'd be helpful so we don't have a whole town Googling. Thanks.

All right. With that, let's go to a vote. All those in favor say yes. Yes. Any nos? All right. Motion passes. Last but not least, consider approval of a contract for a cured and placed pipe. to rehabilitate sanitary and storm sewer mains. This, again, is introed by Deputy City Manager Lefebvre.

Okay, I did bring, beyond visuals, something a little more tactical for you, too, as we discuss this. So, as a sort of with the request, we're requesting a one-year contract with authorization for two one-year renewals along with the City of Grand Rapids contract. We are partners with the City of Grand Rapids and other local communities and water systems and sanitary sewer collection systems here in the metro Grand Rapids area and so often times when we have very similar needs we partner together to find ways to really benefit from the pricing and so in terms of sanitary and storm sewer carried in place pipe which is a rehabilitation method we're able to benefit from the pricing of contracts that is much larger than what we would get if we went on our own. So by partnering with Grand Rapids on bidding documents, we're able to benefit from that. So that's just a little bit of background and not just what we're looking at here in East Grand Rapids, but regionally to work together. In 2016 and 2017, the city did receive a grant from the state of Michigan And we televised all of our sanitary and storm sewer collection systems. And the, like you've heard us mentioned with, with streets, something you can see of course, there's Paisa ratings and that has an asset Paisa rating of a one to 10, one being great, new, and, and, and, or I'm sorry, the, the opposite. One is terrible falling apart and, and, and, and 10 is great. And so, for Pipe, it is a one to five rating. And so, there it's the one is the great score and the five is not, so it's the opposite. And so we've gone through the entire system systems, I should say, and we've built out a plan when we're looking at integrating all of our different vertical and horizontal assets, whether those are from collection or distribution systems that are subgrade that residents don't see and pair those along to the extent we can with improvements for for streets or other types of improvements on the surface. And what I have just to show you just a couple of graphics from our GIS system where we do track that. This is just a very zoomed out view of our storm sewer system. So you can see we've gone through and we have about give or take between 45 and 50 miles of pipe, whether it's sanitary or storm in the city. We literally have crawled through and had people review these and look at every inch of the system and kind of give it that same rating that we do for PACER. So when we're looking at projects and integrating them, that's one of the things we're looking at. And then this is, Sanitary layer you can see that the blue is all really good. So that's those are all the ones so we've made a lot of headway with making investments proactively to avoid infrastructure failures in the last probably 10-15 years and our staff really from engineering and operational level we have great synergy between our groups and meet together regularly to not only look at what an asset rating is, but what's the maintenance issue or what do we see in the field? Are we seeing root problems? Those types of things beyond what it actually may look like to a camera. So really kudos to our staff for really working hard together to make sure that we're putting the investments right where we need to here in the city. And then I will show you here before I distribute some more tactile displays. This is an example of what we... what we would see. This particular sanitary sewer was on Frederick Drive. And so you can see that most of our collection system and our infrastructure in East Grand Rapids is, you know, it's pretty old and a lot of this stuff was put in the 1920s and 30s. And so you can see here the clay tile, you can see all the fractures that we have. Am I going the wrong way? There we go.

No, go ahead.

Okay, well I'll just do this one first so you get the full line here. Again, this is mostly encapsulated with clay around the clay tile pipe, but we want to get to these before we get to a catastrophic failure where you have a collapse. Now we have a street where nobody could discharge their sanitary sewer. It's likely going in their basements, those types of things. We've really knocked out any critical areas such as this one here over the last 10, 15 years. The other benefit to doing this is that when we are able to put in a liner, inside of it essentially to rehabilitate the pipe back to its reset its asset rating. So if it's good for 70 to 80 years, we're resetting that. You see no more cracks. It's all a monolithic piece of pipe. So what that also does is reduces groundwater that infiltrates into that sanitary sewer that otherwise gets treated at the wastewater, or I should say the water resource recovery facility for the city of Grand Rapids. So we're saving, we've been saving quite a bit of money on the operations side just by keeping that clean water that doesn't need to be treated out of our sanitary sewer in particular, and that just keeps it in the watershed where it's supposed to be. So again, this just kind of shows you kind of extremes example that we're able to Contractors are able to install this method too. A lot of times we can be off of a street within a day. Contractors will utilize existing manholes and they will unroll, which is essentially almost like a sock.

I'll pass this around.

They're very clean, I'll tell you that. So that's the, the first one is the, when it comes off on a roll off of a truck and then that's the hardened version of it. And again, essentially, they're able to, within a day, restore that pipe and they go through with a TV truck afterwards. They've GPSed all the lateral connections to residents' homes and they'll clip that out and cut it out to restore that. So the impact to residents is typically about a day for reduced usage and then we're able to provide that particular street where we're at new infrastructure for the next, like I said, 70 to 80 years when it comes to either sanitary or storm. For the City of East Grand Rapids, the pricing that we use the most, which is about 70% of our system, is eight inch clay tile. And the cost for that in this contract is $37 a lineal foot. If we're to excavate that, that gets upwards of over 200 to 250 per lineal foot. So again, it has a smaller footprint for our residents for disruption to other infrastructure classes. and really helps us really be good stewards of the resources we're given to make the greatest impact we can. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions on sanitary and storm sewer or period in place pipe contract. Anybody got questions?

Kind of. Just curiosity, when you had the map up showing the state of affairs for each of the streets, what was the legend? You said blue was good, but there was brown. My street was brown. That made me nervous.

That's middle of the road, so that's okay. I mean, we televise them when we do the street project. What that can mean is there's, in that kind of mid-grade sections, there may be a, I'm not gonna call it a defect, but there might be like an imperfection, let's call it. So nothing that is structural that when it's been viewed is of concern. So what we really want to do is get anything that's in that red or yellow category. Those are where we're really putting the dollars, but also we're aligning them with projects where if we're already going to be digging up a street for say water main and putting in new and looking at the utilities, if we have maybe in the same trench or close to it, like storm sewer, we'll just do open cut because we've already opened it up. but if the sanitary is not in that area and in the lower condition, we'll line it. So we really look at the trade-offs of what the impact is and we try to leave an area until the next cycle with the road work as best we can.

Got it, thank you. Is that map online, like the street map?

That is not online, nope. That's more of an internal asset management tool.

I would love to meet someone who researches sanitary pipe online for their city.

Never come across one.

Well, thank you, Mr. Lefebvre. With that, would anyone in the audience like to speak to this agenda item? Seeing none, I can bring it back up for a motion and a second. So moved.

Second.

All right, with a motion and a second, would anyone like to speak to this agenda item up here? All right, hearing none, we can go to a vote. All those in favor say yes.

Yes.

Any nos? All right, motion passes. All right, now we have the consent agenda items. I need a motion and a second.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor say yes. Yes. Any nos? Passes and now we will be heading into an executive session. So I want to thank everybody for coming tonight Thanks for a first time.

Yes, we need a motion in a second.

Well, I'm getting okay. Okay now I just want to thank everyone for coming. It's my first time. I appreciate you guys all Sharing that with me. So thank you for that with that said we need a Motion a second and a roll call vote to go into executive session so moved second All those in favor say, yeah. Oh no, now we have to do the roll call. Yeah.

Uh, commissioner. Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right guys.

With that, I will close this meeting and we will head into executive session. Thanks everybody. We are.