Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the East Lansing City Council regular business meeting of Tuesday, June 16th, 2026. The meeting will come to order. Could we have the roll call please?

Council Member Whalen. Here. Council Member Meadows. Here. Council Member Singh. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Grigsby. Here. Mayor Altman.

Here. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of previous meetings?

I'll move to approve the special meeting minutes from June 2nd, 2026 and the regular council meetings from June 2nd, 2026.

Motion by Meadows. Second. Second by Singh. Any corrections to those minutes? Seeing none, the motion is on the minutes as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries and those minutes are approved. I will move approval of the agenda as presented.

Second.

Motion by Altman, second by Singh. I will make an amendment. I move to amend the agenda by moving item 5.5 concerning ordinance 1578 to the start of the business agenda, renumber it as item 5.1, and renumber the following items accordingly.

Second.

Motion by Altman, second by Meadows. Any discussion of that motion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. The agenda is amended. I will make a second motion. I move to amend the agenda by adding item 5.6 under the business agenda to enter into a closed session to consult with a labor attorney WITH THE CITY'S LABOR ATTORNEY REGARDING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING NEGOTIATIONS AS ALLOWED UNDER SUBSECTION 8 SUB 1 SUB C OF THE MICHIGAN OPEN MEETINGS ACT. That is my motion.

Second.

Motion by Altman, second by Grigsby. Any discussion of that amendment? This requires unanimous consent. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries. And the agenda is amended again. So the motion now is on the agenda as amended. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, nay. Okay, motion was unanimous. And the agenda as amended is approved. Okay, that brings us to communications. All written communications received by council by 4 PM on the day of the meeting are posted on the online agenda page. packet communications from the audience. The first slip I have is Tricia. Last name starts with a P. I'm sorry, I couldn't pardon. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening. My name is Tricia Parton. I live at 1720 Hitching Post Road in East Lansing. I'm here tonight to speak regarding newly renumbered agenda item 5.3 and am requesting the approval of the site plan for the Howard site tonight without further delay. That's it.

Thank you for your comments. Sarah Kiefer?

Hi, my name is Sarah Kiefer and I reside at 1736 Hitching Post Road, East Lansing. And I too would like to speak to item 5.2 and request that the approval of the site plan for the Howard development site happen tonight. And that's it.

Thank you for your comments. Carrie Freeman.

Hello, Council. I'm here to speak about a few things tonight. First is in relation to Agenda Item 3.24 on Ordinance 1576. I'm asking you to pull it from the consent agenda. There's no need to move forward with the public hearing with it in the condition that it's in. As proposed, this ordinance results in a diverse housing requirement being applied to all business districts, not just B3. which it currently is. Even your staff recommendation is to not approve this. The diverse housing requirement of 1559 already stifles development in B3. It is going to, if you approve it in the condition that it's in, it's going to make that problem even wider spread. Even council members have recently discussed whether the diverse housing requirement should be maintained and continued. So this is really putting the cart before the horse. There's been a lot of astute comments lately from the council suggesting that maybe it's more appropriate to remove barriers to development, to remove regulatory bars, and to make development more attractive here in East Lansing. And I agree with those comments, but this amendment would do the opposite of that. As written, it adds more regulation and more barriers to a wider geographical area and to more property owners, many of whom probably don't even know that this is happening. So I'm requesting that the ordinance be reworked and rethought before it even goes to public hearing. There's no point to bring it there at this time. I also want to speak regarding agenda item 4.1, which is public hearing. Do you want me to talk about that right now or should I wait until 4.1 is called? if you would be willing to wait that would be terrific that's just fine thank you and then my last comment is just this on your business agenda tonight item 5.3 now is amended where a Harbor Bay is requesting approval of the site plan for the mass timber lead gold architectural gem of a building known as the Howard. We would like that to be approved tonight. We've been working with the city for over a year now trying to make this project happen. It's finally ready for approval. Harbor Bay is here and prepared to answer any and all questions that you have and to share the excitement that we all have about this project with you. As someone who's been working on this for a long time as a resident of this city I'm asking you to approve the site plan tonight so we can move forward with it as fast as possible This building is going to be incredible.

So, thank you Thank You, Relesha Payne

Good evening. East Lansing City Council, Mayor Altman, Mayor Pro Tem Crispy. I'm here to speak to you regarding the charitable gaming license and speak to 3.27. My name is Relisha Glover-Payne. I am fundraising chair of the Ivy Forum Foundation. I come before you this evening on behalf of the Ivy Forum Foundation. The Ivy Forum Foundation Incorporated was established in 2019 in East Lansing in collaboration with the members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. incorporated Chi Epsilon Omega chapter and granted 501 status in 2023. The foundation is dedicated to promoting advanced learning, education, advocacy, and programs that support the sustainable well-being of children, youth, and families from marginalized and underrepresented populations throughout Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham counties. The foundation provides annual scholarships to graduating high school seniors and supports impactful community service initiatives and local organizations in the East Lansing area. This year, two East Lansing high school students were provided $1,500 in scholarships, and two local non-profit organizations were granted $1,000 grants to supplement their mission. In the past, Chi Epsilon Omega has been able to fundraise with the foundation to provide signature fundraising events including the annual Jazz Scholarship Brunch and the Derby Goes Pink and Green. Changes to international sorority requirements have made it impossible for Alpha Kappa Alpha Chi Epsilon Omega to lead fundraising activities. The foundation will now serve as the fundraiser for the signature events and new events including the upcoming designer bag event and other types of raffles to continue raising funds for scholarships and non-profit organizations in this area. In order to continue these services, we are required to gain a state charitable non-profit gaming license. The first step of the process is to have the East Lansing charitable gaming license application approved by the city council. The Ivy Forum Foundation is seeking today approval for a charitable gaming license to expand its fundraising capacity and generate additional resources to support its educational and community service mission throughout Clinton, Eaton, and Ingham counties. As a 501c3 nonprofit organization, all proceeds generated through licensed gaming activities will be used exclusively for charitable purposes, including providing scholarships to graduating high school seniors, supporting educational initiatives, and funding programs that promote the well-being of children, youth, and families from underserved and underrepresented communities. Obtaining a gaming license will provide the foundation with an additional fundraising mechanism that complements our existing events and helps ensure the sustainability of charitable programs. The increased revenue generated through charitable gaming will allow the foundation to expand scholarship opportunities, strengthen community partnerships, and increase support for local organizations that address critical education and social needs. The Ivy Forum Foundation has demonstrated a strong commitment to responsible stewardship of funds and community service. Approval of this gaming license will enable the foundation to further its mission and enhance its positive impact on residents throughout the region. We respectfully request the City Council's support for our application, recognizing that the proceeds will directly benefit local students, families, and community programs. And before I take a seat, I want to just give a little additional information related to the chapter, the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated Chi Epsilon Chapter.

You have 30 seconds remaining.

We were founded in 1908, Howard University, African American women's sorority. We have a total of approximately 1,120 chapters, 390,000 individual or members in 15 nations and all states. Chi Epsilon Omega chapter was chartered here in East Lansing as the first African American organization to be chartered here in, female organization to be chartered here in the city. Uh, we were also awarded by the city of East Lansing in 2014, the crystal awards, um, crystal awards. So we were a recipient in 2014. Thank you.

If I could ask you to conclude your comments when you have an opportunity, please.

Yes. And that's it. Thank you so much for your time.

Uh, Josh Freeman.

Good evening, council. I'm here to voice my support for amended item 5.3, which is the approval of the site plan for the Howard building. I'm a longtime resident of East Lansing, over 20 years since I first set foot on campus in 1993. I believe that this development will provide much needed tax revenue for the city. It provides additional housing opportunities for the city, which is also needed. And I think it also puts East Lansing on the map for being on the forefront of sustainable environmentally conscious development, which I think is important to most people in this city. So I urge you to approve the site plan tonight and allow this project to go forward immediately. Thank you. Thank you. Luke Hackney.

Good evening.

Tall boy.

Luke Allen Hackney, I own Retro Duck, downtown East Lansing, 210 Abbott Road, and I've served for the city since 2010, most recently on the Downtown Development Authority since 2018. I'm here personally though to support the approval of the Howard. I believe East Lansing needs more housing in its downtown core. It will help meet growing demand, support local business, and reduce pressure on existing housing throughout the community. Increasing housing supply is one of the best ways, in my opinion, to improve affordability in East Lansing over time, and this project represents the kind of smart, walkable growth that aligns with what I believe should be the city's long-term goals. I also believe the city should consider eliminating the diverse housing requirement altogether. The best way to improve affordability is to allow more housing to be built. When regulations make more projects more expensive or difficult to build, fewer homes get built. We are seeing that downtown where no new housing has been built in the last decade that we are now almost over halfway through actually. East Lansing should focus on removing barriers to housing and make it easier to build the homes our community needs. And then quickly regarding 5.3, I believe I'm generally in favor of whatever the graduate needs to remain a top attraction for the downtown. Thank you.

Thank you.

Tim Brzezowski.

Tim Rosowski, 613 Grove Street. I served on the Masked Timber Committee and the Green Code Committee and also the Billing Board of Appeals, so you know where my heart is on this. So I wanted to comment on several of the agenda items. 4.1, like the speaker just said there, from my perspective, I'd scale back 1384, eliminate it completely. But if we're going to have it, I support the fee in lieu item under 1559. On the business agenda, I think it's now 5.2. That's the mass timber one, which would allow for some additional height. I happen to attend the ZBA meeting. You were there, Councilman Whalen. I think you served as a substitute or something there. But universally across the ZBA, they wish that they could have granted the 168 feet that was proposed. But they couldn't because the zoning court simply didn't allow it. So I support this one. I think it makes good sense. We don't currently have a project that's proposing this. Next one would be 5.4 now. I think it was 5.3, the graduate. I echoed the previous speakers. You know, the rooftop. dining and Establishment up there is great. I think expanding it makes sense. I can't see any reason why I Can't find any reason against that project and then lastly I wanted to comment on which is now 5.3 the Howard so I also support this a lot. I think it's consistent with the comprehensive master plan which called for increased density downtown and It complies with all the current zoning requirements. The street scrape already has multiple tall buildings. So I think this one actually is consistent with what we're seeing along Grand River. It makes sense to have a tall building there. It's far enough away from the neighborhoods that it doesn't create shading there. So I think this is, I think actually having another tall building will kind of continue that trend. The developer really listened to the community. They held multiple town halls. and I've been watching this project for like a year, and I can see quite a few elements that came from the community discussion. Personally, I'm looking forward to, I'm not that interested in what happens on floors 11 through 12, but I'm really interested in what happens on floor one. And I liked what they proposed. I think it would be great to have some other restaurants that don't necessarily just serve chicken. And so I like the way the building is set back. I think, you know, I've been saying for years that what we really needed to have was more cafe-type seating on Grand River. So I think that supports that. Also, this will be the first high-rise bass timber lead gold facility multifamily in Michigan and only the second in the nation. So like the other speaker said, I think it puts us on the map. I think it'll get a lot of attention. I think it'll get great PR for the city of East Lansing. And so those are my comments. Thank you.

Thank you. Kath Edsel.

Good evening. There are so many issues right now facing the city that it's hard to focus on just one. There are many brilliant minds here tonight who will speak on the last agenda item that, it's now the second to last, that my only comment will be slow the process down. Don't undo a 60 year old ordinance in this rushed fashion. Now I'm gonna veer in another direction. Like every other woman in this room and watching from home, I've experienced sexual harassment. It started for my sister and I when we were young, when the neighborhood boy constantly exposed himself to us. By then, we already somehow knew telling would change nothing. Most likely, we'd be told boys will be boys. In fourth grade, I was top in the class in sports and math. Several boys were frustrated and decided I could not be a girl or I could not be better than them. Twice they surrounded me and threw me to the ground and pulled my shirt off to prove I was not a girl. I never told because the first time they did it was in a classroom with a teacher present. I was nine years old. Male entitlement to girls and women's bodies was an early lesson. When my sister played basketball in high school, my mother worked late and was unable to pick her up after practice, so the coach drove her home. She would sit on the far opposite side of the back seat so he could only reach her so far when he molested her. She wanted playing time, so she never told, not even me, for a decade. I had a college professor who put his hand on my pants. I had worked hard for a good grade and did not want to jeopardize it. I never told. I could go on, but that is as much as I wish to share. If every woman in this room shared, we would be here for hours. But would it really change anything? Recently, Ellie Park reviewed a complaint against two officers who were on a drastic violence call. One officer spoke to the victim and her roommate about abuse while on speakerphone in her patrol car with the suspect in the backseat. Later, the suspect taunted the victim by saying, I heard everything you said. A second officer got on the phone and asked the victim, if this is a recurring thing, why do you keep placing yourself in situations to get assaulted? The victim replied, I really think you should educate yourself on cycles of domestic violence. She then said, this is the first time I have reached out for help, and now you are shaming me and not support me. The officer replied, I can tell you I have worked more domestic violence cases than you, because I always ask people why they put themselves in positions to be assaulted. And I always tell people to get PPOs. While the complaint was sustained, both officers are still with the department. Given that the second officer previously violated policy by essentially stalking a female community member, we continue to have serious issues in every part of the city regarding the treatment and harassment of women. The city manager's behaviors harmed at least one woman working in our city. Worse than that, the mayor had the report since November. The only consequence to the city manager was some leadership training, even though the report, while claiming the behavior did not rise to the level of litigation, still considered it concerning. Potentially worse than the city manager's behavior was the mayor's comment when he released the report. The glibness and smugness that Mr. Altman exuded as he stated, it's a relief for me to finally make this statement to the public that these claims are unfounded, was disgusting as he re-victimized a woman and an employee of the city. Furthermore, claiming that I look forward to continuing to work with the city manager, Bellman, as he leads us through the city. This is how sexual harassment is kept in the dark. Little girls grow up knowing they are powerless, adult women are harassed by cops, and when one does file a complaint, the men in charge make mockery of her concerns. It took the only female on council to call out an inappropriate, the mayor's conclusion and ask employees to step forward. But firing the city manager is not enough. This is not a one-off. The city attorney who continues to address issues only from a risk management position needs to go. We are not a sum total of our risks. We are human beings. Mr. Mayor, you need to step down. It is clear you cannot lead on any of the issues facing the city. If you will not resign, turn the gavel over to Councilmember Ebersole Singh, who appears to be the only Councilmember willing to address at least some of the issues. Furthermore, to every white woman who is listening and agreeing with what I had to say, I beg of you to now turn your attention to all the black and brown people who have repeatedly called out racism in this city and no one is willing to listen. It's the same dynamic. It is the same power structure. It is the same white men keeping all of us from believing each other. Sexual harassment is real, racism is real, and we need to work together to bring an end to both because when we unite, they're really in trouble. Thank you.

Thank you. Ann Brown.

Good evening, Council. I acknowledge and pause for just a moment because I'm shifting into something far more superficial than the request that was shared with you prior to myself and had a feeling my name would follow. I take a moment to acknowledge and pause as we shift into talking about a development, a much significant change from that request. My name is Anne Brown. I am a city of East Lansing resident and property owner for more than two decades, which I know shocks and stuns all of you because I look so young. How is that possible? Okay, thank you for that. I support the Howard. I encourage you to approve the site plan this evening and support the evolution and growth of our city. This project and the material that they've elected to use to build it is exactly as mentioned by several folks that have spoke before me, a stunning showpiece of a building. It becomes a living and breathing structure more than just the developments we're accustomed to. I celebrate Harbor Bay's investment and thought and care in proposing this building as a mass timber building, and I encourage you to approve their site plan this evening. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Al Bay? Oh, public hearing. Got it. Thank you. Cameron Jacobson.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Cameron Jacobson, and I am a project architect with DLR Group, located at 333 West Wacker Drive in Chicago, Illinois. I'm here this evening to speak on business agenda item 5.3, a proposed mixed-use residential project called the Howard, located at the intersection of Grand River Avenue and Charles Street. DLR Group is serving as the architect of record for this exciting, sustainable, and innovative project. The latest staff report includes 30 approval conditions as outlined on pages 39 to 41. We have been working extensively with city staff to address those items and I would like to clarify where we are at in that process. While there are 30 conditions, the majority of them have already been addressed in our latest submission. In addition, we held discussions with city staff as recently as last week and received verbal confirmation that several other conditions have already been resolved. A handful of others are routine and ordinary steps involved with every project to acquire a building permit through a plan review process with the building department. We greatly appreciate the continued collaboration and assistance provided by city staff throughout this process. And I'm available for questions when this business agenda item is addressed later this evening. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Sadashu Malia.

Good evening, Councilman.

My name is Sadashiv Malia. I'm a professor at Lawrence Tech University and also a practicing architect in Ann Arbor. I'm here to speak in support of the Howard Project and why it's essential for not only East Lansing and also for our great state. I teach mass timber to young minds, teaching them how to design mid-rise to high-rise buildings. ranging from housing, corporate and hospitality facility. And what better opportunity for this project to happen that is over a bookstore that has been a cornerstone of the community in Lansing. This project is unique as it puts forth the next stages of sustainability and it brings to life essentially in a different form what a bookstore did in a book form. This building will be a true living laboratory in terms of the way sustainability at a lead gold standard and mass timber is being used. Once this project is done, this project will be a true feather in the cap of East Lansing from a community side. The education side is being taken care of by the university, by buildings that's being developed, but now the city gets an opportunity to put forth for the community an education tool in a built form. So with this, I'd like to urge the city council to approve this project.

Thank you. Daniel Bowman.

Good evening, Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening, and thank you for your work preceding this meeting. And remember what that was like during my time in Planning Commission, where I served eight years. And I'm really excited about the Howard project as well, and would like to encourage you to approve its moving forward. As you know, I'm an architect in practice of over 30 years, and I'm a practicing professor of construction management at Michigan State University. And again, I'm particularly excited about this project. My colleagues in construction management and in forestry are acknowledged experts both nationally and internationally about this really relatively new, at least in the United States, method of building. We have this opportunity here in East Lansing to plant a new building, at least in the boundaries of the city, that will be immediately adjacent to campus, of course. Of course, they're also reaching a little bit further in this case and aiming for LEED Gold certification. But it's not just about the building, of course. While the occupants of the building, at least on the upper floors, would not be just limited to students, of course, the fact that this is immediately adjacent or as adjacent to campus as you can get will be a significant draw for students. It's replacing older, outdated, and increasingly empty buildings with a new structure with a higher and better use. As you are well aware, there is no parking required. In fact, it's effectively prohibited in this particular part of the city and there are specific objective studies that were part of the packet that was provided for you. both by Walker and by Urban Land Institute that support that need to encourage less parking so as to encourage us to all walk. The last time I spoke to you about a particular project, I walked to my office on campus, I walked to my studio here on Abbott and the city, and I walked here tonight despite the threat of significant showers in our direction. This project also happens to be located on several bus routes, so if you want to get out beyond the potential walkable typical radius, you're also able to do that. We're told in the report that we're looking at approximately 300 new beds. Grand River and that the inevitable increase in activity along the block again, I'll ask you to recall the difference between What the Newman lofts building the activity that brought to what had been? surface parking lot just what eight nine years ago and the difference that that the activity that we see on that block now is significant new housing reduces the pressure on the existing housing stock, potentially leading to lower rents and the desire to expand, that typical desire to expand rental properties into our downtown adjacent neighborhoods. I will echo what Mr. Mirzowski said. I attended several of the planning meetings, the public meetings that the developer had organized and they listened. The brick cladding on the building, the covered colonnade, which again this walker appreciates on those times when he forgets his umbrella. And then bringing along obviously two retail establishments to help to keep the street along Grand River activated. This proposal was strongly endorsed by the Planning Commission. It's supported by the Comprehensive Plan and East Lansing Zoning generally. So again, I'll encourage you to approve it and allow it to move forward. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mark Bell?

Good evening, Council. Mark Bell, CEO, Harbor Bay. I'll try to actually be brief. 5.3 now amended. Know that we've got materials, we've got boards, we've got presentations. I want to be respectful of time. So to the extent that any of these subjects interest you, suffice to say we can talk further about it at the appropriate time. Two minutes, if I may. I'll try to keep it in two minutes. I think what's important to me is to tell a quick story about mass timber, what it means to me personally. We've got some really astute professors that I love because they teach this product that not really many people understand. Mass timber is talked about a lot. We go to conferences and we talk about it, but there's, I call it maybe the 80-20 rule, but it's really about 98-2 in the sense that 98% of the people, in my opinion, don't do it and 2% do it and we all listen to each other. I was taught in real estate that real estate is a commodity. Office, industrial, residential, it's just a commodity. We gauge, we look, we plagiarize as architects, engineers, builders, developers. And then there's mass timber. And so I was in Minneapolis in 2017 and I toured Heinz's first T3 project. And Heinz is a big international developer and they build mass timber in office space. And again, I was schooled as to real estate is just, again, it's just commoditized, right? And I went to that building. That building, for the first time in my life, spoke to me personally. There was this term called biophilia that I had no idea what that meant. All the professors know what that means. But I learned what it was. That means what the outdoor elements, bringing that into an interior condition, an interior design, and what that means to a resident. And so we went on a mission to do something different than what Heinz did, because Heinz has office space. We wanted to do mass timber resi. We started that mission in 2020, plus or minus, maybe 2019. We built the largest mass timber building in Cleveland, Ohio. That's a whole other story as to why we picked Cleveland. It was difficult. We had to go through an alternative engineering method in the IBC code. We had to source the wood from Austria. There wasn't a single U.S. manufacturer that actually bid the project. That has changed today. We now have onshoring. The proposed project would actually come, believe it or not, from Alabama. Southern Yellow Pine, there's a great American company called Smart Lamb that manufactures it. Some of the professors and I have talked about what this could mean to Michigan, literally, not overnight, but in years. There's about a $27 billion GDP in forest industry, sawmills, the UP in particular, so on and so forth. So I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that Mass timber, there's a lot of different storylines about mass timber, and we're happy to talk about it tonight. There's lots of other aspects of this project that are beyond just mass timber, so we don't want to monopolize the conversation with mass timber. But thank you, city staff, for being patient with us. Thank you for your consideration tonight, and appreciate everyone's time tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Council. It's a pleasure to see you all here tonight. I'm here to speak briefly on a couple items. First, what is now 5.2, I believe, Ordinance 1567, the mass timber and other special construction projects. I urge you to pass that and give developers the flexibility we need. I think you've heard from people who are much more expert than me on why that's important. Secondly, and what I'm spending most of my time talking about is the Howard. I'm here to urge council to approve this project. I've been engaged in many of the community conversations like many of my fellow community members here over the last year. And I think with the conditions now identified, I think this is a great project and I hope you'll approve it tonight without further delay. We need additional housing in East Lansing and we need additional housing in downtown and as several have alluded to, you've seen the studies, you have the data, you know that already. This project epitomizes so many of the goals in our master plan. It provides that dense walkable environment along Grand River And in the great capstone to that is being proposed to be LEED Platinum and Mass Timber, which really helps advance our sustainability goals. We have one of the global leading mass timber programs with MSU and with the faculty here. And to have an opportunity to have a building like this across the street from that I think is just amazing. So the other final point I'll just make on that is that this project will bring in substantial property tax revenue. And I think we can all agree we need that more than ever now in this city. So more housing, more tax revenue. I think it's time to move on this. I hope you'll approve it tonight. I do want to just mention really briefly on the outdoor dining at the Graduate, I, too, hope you will approve that. I think it's an amazing project. I have some personal bias towards why I think that's an amazing rooftop spot. Every time I'm up there, it takes my breath away looking out over campus and our community. So expanding it and making more room is great. I hope I'm going to be here for the public hearing still, depending on how long some of this goes. But I also really urge you to move forward with the changes as proposed on the housing ordinance, and I'll speak to that again if that happens.

Thank you. Those are all the slips that I had. Please. Just leave it up there. Yeah, thank you.

Good evening. Thanks for taking my comment at this last minute. Mr. Mayor, council members, I'm Sandra Lupien. I lead the program Mass Timber at MSU, the program a few people have mentioned here, which is really the hub of mass timber activity around which we've developed a community of practice comprising hundreds of people statewide who are working to advance mass timber construction and realize mass timber production here in the state. And we work in very close collaboration with state agencies, especially the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, to realize these goals. Because when we build with mass timber, we are building in a way that helps to advance the goals of the My Healthy Climate Plan, right, to achieve net zero carbon by 2050. And we are creating a reality in which we can manufacture products that we're putting in buildings that are made by our rural forested communities, which are seeing economic decline in a growing way over the past many decades. So putting together these pieces, the Howard is a shining example of that type of leadership. Now this city council, the city of Lansing has already taken a significant leadership step A LEADERSHIP FLEX IN THE STATE BY UPDATING ITS ZONING ORDINANCE IN NOVEMBER 2024, I THINK IT WAS, TO ENABLE A PROJECT THAT NOW ENDS UP LOOKING LIKE THIS ONE. THAT'S VERY EXCITING. THERE'S STILL NO OTHER ORDINANCE LIKE THAT IN MICHIGAN AND ONLY LIKE A SMATTERING OF THEM IN OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTRY. SO THAT IS VERY SIGNIFICANT. AND IT REALLY, REALLY SUPPORTS THE GOALS THAT WE HAVE AT THE UNIVERSITY. just across the street. Now you have an opportunity to approve the site plan for this building that would be the first very large density mass timber housing in the state. Do you understand that it's impossible to understate the importance of taking that type of leadership? People are looking for ways to solve the housing crisis in this state. People are looking for ways to do that in a sustainable manner. If we can do that here in East Lansing, here right next to the Capitol, we are showing that we are willing to lead the way and create models that other communities can adopt, models that can inspire other communities to build this type of density housing that really serves growing community needs in a high quality way, right, that has those biophilic elements that Mark mentioned, that does store carbon, that allows us to build in a more sustainable way, that also advances, economic and policy goals that we share statewide and across our communities. So I'm just here to say thank you so much for considering it. It's so exciting to see this progress to where we are today. And I do hope that you will approve the site plan. Thank you very much for taking my comment.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address that? You could leave your slip up there. Thank you.

GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL. I AM THE CHAIR OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION AND I'M GOING TO USE MY PUBLIC COMMENT TONIGHT TO READ INTO THE RECORD A MEMO THAT WAS SENT OUT LAST FRIDAY THAT RESULTED FROM A PUBLIC FIRM THAT WE HOSTED AS WELL AS NUMEROUS MEETINGS OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION. The Human Rights Commission respectfully requests City Council defer the vote on amendments to Ordinance Number 1578 and request the City Council form a committee to review, edit, and propose recommendations to amend Chapter 22 of the City Ordinance. This committee should include at least one member of the Human Rights Commission and at least one member of the East Lansing community. Any Council members that have a conflict of interest should recuse themselves from any vote regarding Chapter 22 of the City Ordinance. We also request that any council member that has received funds and has or have had any business relationships with companies or individuals the HRC has investigated recuse themselves from the vote of the committee. The commission's request is based upon the following concerns and unresolved questions. Number one, process and transparency. The Human Rights Commission, the body charged with implementing and administering Chapter 22, was not meaningfully involved in the drafting of these amendments. It was notified only shortly before the proposed consideration. The Commission is concerned that the proposed changes have not benefited from the collaborative process that would ordinarily accompany such revisions of such magnitude. The amendments have also been afforded limited time for public review despite substantially altering East Lansing's civil rights framework and are coming at a time when the majority of students are not here to give their input and these ordinance changes could drastically impact students. Commissioners and residents have further expressed concern regarding why explanations of the legal basis and anticipated effects of these amendments have been discussed in closed session rather than in publicly accessible forums. Significant changes to a long-standing civil rights ordinance warrant transparent discussions so that residents may understand the rationale for the amendments and their practical implications. Commissioners also seek clarification regarding the urgency of these revisions. THE ORDINANCE HAS EXISTED IN SUBSTANTIALLY SIMILAR FORM FOR SIX DECADES. IF THESE LEGAL CONCERNS HAVE EXISTED FOR MANY YEARS, THE COMMISSION REQUESTS AN EXPLANATION OF WHAT DEVELOPMENTS NECESSITATE SWEEPING AMENDMENTS AT THIS TIME. NUMBER TWO, ACCESS TO JUSTICE. THE COMMISSION IS CONCERNED THAT THE PROPOSED AMENDMENTS MAY REDUCE RATHER THAN ENHANCE ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR RESIDENTS AND VISITORS. THE PROPOSED REVISIONS APPEAR TO SHIFT COMPLAINANTS AWAY FROM MEANINGFUL LOCAL REVIEW AND TOWARD STATE AND FEDERAL AGENCIES. While those agencies play an important role, they are frequently slower, more procedurally complex, and less accessible to individuals without legal representation. These barriers disproportionately affect low-income residents. Additionally, East Lansing has historically chosen to provide protections that reflect the values and needs of this community. Commissioners are concerned that residents protected under the city's broader standards may lose meaningful avenues of recourse if local authority is substantially reduced and state or federal agencies do not provide equivalent protections such as students being a protected class in our city and not at the state level. City exemptions and equal accountability. The Commission is particularly concerned by the proposed exemption excluding the city, city council, city officials, city employees, boards, commissions, committees, and other city bodies from the Commission's complaint process. Civil rights laws at the federal and state levels routinely permit complaints against governmental entities, recognizing that public institutions should remain accountable to the standards they establish and enforce. The proposed amendments would direct complainants alleging discrimination by the city to pursue remedies elsewhere while preserving local review only for private actors. This creates a different standard of accountability for government actors and for residents and businesses operating within East Lansing and may undermine public confidence in the fairness and legitimacy of the city's civil rights framework. weakening of the local complaint process the commissioners the commission's existing complaint process has historically provided residents with a meaningful local forum to raise concerns regarding discrimination and violations of civil rights under the proposed amendments the commission's role in receiving investigating and addressing complaints would be substantially narrowed independent finding authority 30 seconds appears to significantly be significantly reduced with the process focused primarily on document review referral and mediation Commissioners seek clarification regarding what meaningful local processes remain when a respondent declines to respond, a respondent refuses to participate in mediation, mediation is unsuccessful, or a complainant seeks independent fact-finding regarding alleged discrimination. And Abby Takaki is going to go next and finish this for me.

Thank you.

Abby Takaki. Respondent participation. The proposed language explicitly states that respondents are not required to respond to complaints or otherwise appear before the commission. Commissioners are concerned that this creates an imbalance which complainants bear the burden of initiating and pursuing claims while respondents may simply decline participation without consequence. Questions remain regarding how such a process would effectively address allegations of discrimination or discourage meaningful engagement. Mediation. The Commission recognizes that mediation can be a valuable tool in resolving disputes. However, mediation is most effective when parties participate voluntarily and from relatively equal positions of power. Discrimination complaints often involve significant disparities between employers and employees, landlords and tenants, businesses and customers, or institutions and individuals. Commissioners are concerned that mediation should remain one option among several available responses rather than becoming the principal mechanism for addressing civil rights complaints absent meaningful investigation or factual findings. Loss of enforcement capacity. The proposed amendment substantially reduced the Commission's ability to take action following receipt of a complaint. Under the revised structure, outcomes appear to depend largely upon voluntary agreements reached by the parties. Commissioners question whether the resulting framework provides sufficient incentive for participation or adequate tools to address discrimination, inequity, and patterns of exclusion within the community. Disability rights concerns. Commissioners and community members familiar with disability advocacy have expressed concern regarding the proposed amendment to section 22 through 36 relating to accommodations. Questions remain regarding whether the revised language alters existing standards or weakens protections for individuals seeking reasonable accommodation. Given the importance of these protections, the Commission requests further review and clarification before adoption. Contractor accountability. Questions also remain regarding the proposed treatment of contractors. The amended definition does not clearly distinguish between current and former contractors. It's unclear whether the proposed language applies only to entities presently doing business with the city or whether businesses with historical contractual relationships could be treated differently than other private entities. COMMISSIONERS ARE CONCERNED THAT THE PROPOSED LANGUAGE WOULD ININVERTENTLY REDUCE ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CERTAIN ENTITIES AND CREATE INCONSISTENT STANDARDS OF REVIEW AND LEGAL RATIONALE. THE MEMORANDUM SUPPORTING THESE AMENDMENTS RELIES HEAVILY UPON A 1978 MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL OPINION CONCERNING LOCAL HUMAN RELATION COMMISSIONS. COMMISSIONERS RESPECTFULLY REQUEST CLARIFICATION REGARDING whether more recent legal authorities were considered, whether less restrictive alternatives were evaluated, whether the quasi-adjudicative functions of other municipal boards and commissions were reviewed for consistency, and why the identified legal concerns require amendments of this breadth and scope. commitment to a deliberative review. The Human Rights Commission recognizes the importance of ensuring the city's ordinances comply with applicable law and provide fair processes to all parties involved. At the same time, East Lansing has long been recognized for its commitment to civil rights, equity, and meaningful local engagement. Because ordinance number 1578 would substantially alter the city's civil rights framework, the commission respectfully requests the city council defer consideration of the ordinance and convene a collaborative review committee including representatives of the Human Rights Commission and the broader East Lansing community. A transparent and inclusive process will allow the city to address legitimate legal concerns while preserving meaningful local accountability, maintaining public trust, and ensuring continued access to justice for all members of the East Lansing community. In closing, I would just ask if the proposed changes to this ordinance are the legacy that you wish to leave in your time serving the city. I also thank you for taking action to remove the toxic city manager from the city.

Thank you. Is there anyone else?

GOOD EVENING, COUNCIL. I WILL BE BRIEF. MY NAME IS RICHARD ENTI, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT MANAGER AT LEAP, THE LANTING ECONOMIC AREA PARTNERSHIP. SPEAKING BRIEFLY TO ECHO ALL OF THE SENTIMENT AROUND THE HOWARD DEVELOPMENT PROJECT, I'LL JUST READ SOMETHING HERE FROM ONE OF THE LETTERS OF SUPPORT THAT I THINK BEST ECHOS MY STANCE IN SUPPORT OF THIS PROJECT. Currently, communities across Michigan and the Midwest are competing fiercely to grow population, attract talent, and strengthen their tax base. While the Howard represents exactly the kind of bold, future-focused private investment our region must champion, the Howard will push boundaries of manufacturing, supply chain innovation, engineering, architecture, education, and it will elevate our workforce and expanding economy here in the Lansing region. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address the council at this point?

Hi there. My name is Antonio Gomez. I'm just here in support of the HRC's many requests to not strip them of their power and to postpone this until they have adequate time to really make changes. They feel like changes should be made to this, but they'd like to be a part of this in such a hastily manner that seems like retaliation. Likewise, I'd like to bring this to the council that during the commission's meetings, they had asked the lawyer present if she had any knowledge of who requested the changes to the ordinance, in which case she said she had no knowledge at all. And then a meeting later, she accidentally let it slip that not only was she aware or might be aware that someone had, or who had requested the changes, that she was also part of that process in changing a section, though she didn't give really any detail about that. I've mentioned before that I feel that the elements of the city or employees of the city seem to be rogue members. If they're lying to commission members one day and then letting it slip that they have knowledge of things they've asked for, is that really somebody the city should be employing? Just, I mean, I just don't understand how that makes sense. Also, we seem to be spending a drastic amount of money on the city attorneys that seem seems to be like, what, three times as much as the previous attorney over three years. It seems like a drastic waste of resources that the city's partaking in. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would care to address the council at this point? Do we have any callers?

Yes. Caller with the last name David, you are now free to address the council.

Hello, City Council. My name is Pablo David, and I'm a representative of the Graduate Hotel. I'm so sorry I could not be there in person today. We're certainly excited at the prospect of earning the right to move forward and in the process to not only expand the rooftop at the hotel, but also the valet operations. I'd like to just hit on a couple of points in case there's any confusion. We are going after a 199 person occupancy. I know that there's been a few iterations and I know that those are shown in the agenda packet. But I do want to be clear that we are going after 199 person occupancy. I'd also like to address the fact that we are addressing the valet concerns and we will be going before the planning commission, hopefully on July 22nd. to bring forth our plan and again, hopefully earn planning support. And lastly, I know that there was a note in the packet related to Fire Marshal Holt and some measurement concerns. Those have in fact been addressed by the graduate, by Fire Marshal Holt, and I know Alicia Wrighton from planning department also has that communication and the fire marshal, I would never want to speak for him, but he did email us and said that he was comfortable moving forward with those solutions. And just again, just to reiterate, we also want to thank Alicia and Stephen so much for their continued patience and working with us to ensure that We get everything right and that solutions are presented that are not only good for the hotel, but for residents and our neighbors alike. And I'm happy to answer any questions when it's appropriate. Thank you.

Thank you. Any additional callers?

Caller with the phone number ending in 977, you are now free to address the council.

Hi. Can everyone hear me?

Yes.

Okay, thank you. My name is Nadeeta Lajavarti, and I'm a resident of East Lansing. I just want to start off by saying thank you to the city council. This is sort of a big broad general thank you. I appreciate you over the past six months listening to a group of us who have come before you asking you to consider our positions on the homelessness ordinance, on releasing footage from the shooting of Isaiah Kirby, for listening to the victims of sexual harassment, and for taking action. And so I want to start off by saying that I am deeply grateful of the venues you've created both inside and outside of formal council spaces to hear residents concerns um these have not been easy conversations and i just i want to say at the outset that i am deeply grateful for your engagement and i recognize that this is a lot for you to manage all at once i recognize that these um you are human beings of course and these do take personal tolls and so i just want to say thank you for that engagement um i am here once again to uh speak to you about something that's a little bit tough, which is about the HRC ordinance. And I want to echo a lot of what Karen and Abby have already said. I, you know, as I shared with you before, I'm a political scientist. And everything we do as scholars of American democracy to really assess the quality of it is to weigh the ways in which all members of our democracy are able to seek justice In an equal fashion. And that is really core to our measurements of democratic representation. It's really about ensuring equal access to justice and measuring that. And so I'm deeply concerned about this, uh, former, uh, uh, business agenda item 5.5, um, about the, uh, adoption of ordinance number 1578. And I'm respectfully asking the city council to postpone its consideration of the ordinance and its amendment. until there is some more deep engagement with the HRC and with other members of the community. And I know I'm not alone in being deeply concerned about it. My concern is primarily that it's going to reduce access to justice for local residents of this community. The way I see it, the HRC offers a checks and balance to our city government. And we don't have to really look far to see how democracies, institutions, and norms they fail when we start to erode checks and balances. This is so ingrained into our form of governance. And if you just take a step outward and look at today's politics, you know, as a political scientist, we have reports measuring the quality of democracy for every country from the 1700s onwards. And one of the most recent reports has now unambiguously ruled that the United States has lost its status as a liberal democracy for the first time in 50 years. And that is in part because of a weakening of its institutions due to a weakening of checks and balances. And so I realized that sort of a grander frame, but I think it's important at the local level because I think what we're seeing here with these proposed changes to the HRC, we're seeing what's happening nationwide being sort of mirrored here locally. And I am deeply concerned that this entity that has served for decades the needs of this community to ensure that we are all protected is being jeopardized. I think this entity is integral for addressing comments of discrimination across our cities for offering a venue where findings can be independently verified. And I'm just so concerned that by half hazardly swiping and reducing our commissioner's ability to take action under this revised structure, our local government is going to be removing one incredibly important avenue for democratic engagement for members of our city. And so I just urge you to please just consider slowing down. Please have further review. Please clarify this. Please talk to the members of this community before this ordinance is adopted. I think adopting this is a signal and a harmful one at that to your citizens that it's coming in concert following some of the more challenging conversations that we've had recently as a city. And to what Antonio said, it can be read as retaliation. And I just think These are conversations that we should be having as a city together. We should be coming together. We should be doing the hard work. And the HRC is one place where those conversations happen. And so that's all I had to say. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. Do we have any other callers?

Caller with the last name Raimondi, you are now free to address the council.

No comments from me at this time. Thank you.

Caller with the name Christian, you are now free to address the council.

No comments from me at this time.

Caller with the last name Gomez, you are now free to address the council.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes.

Good evening. My name is Kayla Gomez. I'm a resident of East Lansing. I'm here to address two items. First, I urge the council to delay the vote on item 5.5. I think it was changed to 5.1, so I apologize if I'm wrong. The proposed amendments to the Human Rights Commission, the ordinance would weaken critical civil rights protections for our community at a time when those protections matter most. Changes of this magnitude require broader community input and a transparent process. Our residents deserve more time to engage with us and for what is being proposed before a final vote is taken. I ask that council table this item and commit a genuine public engagement process before moving forward. I also like to point out the council that the laws that are referenced in the need for changing these are not such. They are an opinion piece from 1978. THAT HAVE NOT SUCCESSFULLY BEEN USED IN COURT TO STOP LOCAL COMMISSIONS SECOND I'M CALLING ON THE COUNCIL TO WELL YOU ALREADY DID SO I WANT TO THANK CITY COUNCIL FOR GETTING RID OF ROBERT BELLMAN THAT'S THE FIRST STEP BUT I'M STILL ASKING THAT WE GET RID OF POLICE CHIEF JEN BROWN IT'S TIME THAT WE MADE THE RIGHT STEPS FOR OUR COMMUNITY AND I JUST HOPE THAT YOU'LL CONTINUE TO WORK WITH US IN GETTING THERE THAT IS THE MATT THAT IS MY WHOLE STATEMENT HAVE A GOOD NIGHT AND THANK YOU THANK YOU ANY ADDITIONAL CALLERS

Caller with the name State News, you are now free to address the council, if you please.

Yes, hi. This is Chris Richard. I'm located at 435 East Grand River. This is in relation to the newly amended Agenda Item 5.3 regarding the Howard development. I'm speaking on behalf of the Board of Directors in my role as General Manager and Executive Director of the State News Media Group. This is in relation to the Howard development and we'd like to counsel to know that, while our concerns still remain. Our discussions with Greg and Brad ball line today we're very positive in addressing several items that are attorney Nolan moody from Dickinson right wrote about in a submitted letter on our behalf. At this time, our board and I feel that we'll be able to work together as neighbors with the ball line family, as well as harbor bay to see this development succeed.

Thank you.

There are no callers remaining in the queue.

Okay, very good. That concludes communications from the audience. Communications from Mayor and Council Members. Council Member Singh.

Yeah, just want to briefly mention You know, reflecting on our special meeting session earlier today and then thinking about the recent meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Grigsby and I participated in with staff as well as individual listening sessions. I've had the opportunity TO ENGAGE IN WITH CITY EMPLOYEES. I JUST WANT TO THANK FOLKS FOR OFFERING FEEDBACK AND SHARING THEIR POINTS OF VIEWS AND TALKING ABOUT HOW THINGS ARE GOING AROUND THE CITY. AND I THINK IT'S BEEN REALLY BENEFICIAL FOR ME TO TAKE THAT INFORMATION IN. SO I WANTED TO START THERE AND SAY THANK YOU FOR THAT. I also want to just reference there's been a lot of exciting events downtown this past weekend with Pride Fest as well as I know there's a lot of fodder all around the neighborhoods about the new recycling program that we've rolled out with our organic materials and such so just want to congratulate folks on that and I say that all to say that while we are embarking upon a transition within the city there's a lot of hard deep tissue work for those massage therapists in the room or those interested in massage therapy that there are some really heavy lifting that we need to do and deep tissue work to assist the city to move forward. And this is a long term effort starting with our agenda later today.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem.

Yes, thank you. I just want to start off by thanking Acting City Manager Newman for stepping up again and working with us in this transition. I want to thank Ms. Irwin as well for taking on the interim role, which is huge for us. And I want to also thank the Mayor in regards to a lot of the work behind the scenes that it takes to really make sure that we are in great communication and understanding what directions we are leading ourselves into and what we need to be thinking about in regards to being prepared in our discussions publicly and nonpublicly. Appreciate that. I will, and I think along with Council Member Singh, I'll be doing another community conversation in July, mid-July, sometime around there. So please be mindful of that. I look forward to hearing from community members in regards to all things East Lansing. And I look forward to engaging you in that. That's all I have right now. Thank you.

Thank you. Council Member Meadows.

Well, it sounded a little like a broken record because I do want to thank Chief Newman for the work that he's done over the last few weeks. I know that he has made staff feel more comfortable about the transitions that are taking place, and he's shown great leadership. to the community in his dual role, which I think we have to appreciate the fact that he took on a whole new job on top of his other job during that time period. And I also want to thank Annette Irwin for coming back and accepting this challenge that the council has issued to her. As I thought about it, and she said I think that she started in 1996 here at the city, I realized I've spent my whole time here with Annette Irwin. And I'm very happy about that. And then I want to, you know, I think now City Manager Irwin's comments that were directed towards staff, you know, I want to make sure that all our staff know that while we make decisions up here, they implement those decisions. And they implement those decisions throughout this community. They are really the ambassadors who deal with city residents on a daily basis in a respectful manner. And we don't get anything done without our employees and we should be supporting them in every way that we can. And I also want to mention because of some of the comments that were made tonight that while we may also make decisions up here on a regular basis, really most of the work that is done by the city council is reflected in the work that is done on our boards and commissions the volunteers from our community that agree that they're going to serve for hours and hours at times on issues that they never thought they'd have to deal with and then make recommendations to us so i want to thank them as well let's go forward this is a big change for us I've been through a couple of city manager changes over the years and I was hoping that we wouldn't be able to or need to do that again during my short time remaining here. And I want, you know, I want the public to know that we're going to stay on top of this and we'll be moving forward as rapidly as possible.

Thank you, Council Member Whalen.

Thank you, Ann, I do. Also, thank you, Acting City Manager Newman, for all you've done. Civil service is hard, especially when you're treated like a servant. I spent 25 years as a civil servant, and it is a privilege and an honor and a challenge. So Ms. Irwin, you failed at retirement because you're back. I did the same thing. But civil service is a valuable thing to do when you get to look at the plans of these buildings and you stay up till midnight and you go to all these commissions, Alicia. You do all these different things to make sure everything's in place. So, as Ms. Irwin, Interim City Manager Irwin mentioned, there's so many different departments doing such incredible things. I did have someone stop me at Costco two days ago and said, you know what, I went through the city and I found 10 things that I love about this city. but we don't talk about it enough. It's an incredible place. When you walk around downtown, the amount of cheerful people, happy people, it's really, really amazing. My family just bought a different home in East Lansing and we chose to live in East Lansing because I love this town and ready to serve in this town. Our best days are ahead. We do have lots of work to do. We've got a lot of challenges ahead of us, but our best days are ahead. Last little note, I have talked to Director of DPW and the light at Hagedorn and Saginaw and Hazlitt. I had been promised they're working on that. If you know what I'm talking about, you drive through that intersection. Anyway, I do appreciate all that the city staff are doing and I appreciate everyone here tonight.

thank you um i will for my part just echo that um i think we're all acutely aware of the people involved in a transition at the leadership level but i think we're also all acutely aware that our priority is the well-being of the city staff moving forward because nothing happens in the city without the The staff getting it done. 300 people make life possible for 50,000. and it was with that in mind that we made the decisions that we've made here recently. I want to also take the opportunity to introduce Carlito Young, sitting in the city attorney seat. Mr. Young will be taking over as lead city attorney from Steve Jopik, who has played that role for the past year. We are not changing law firms. This is not a transition in firms. Mr. Young has been an integral part of the Rosati team since we engaged them a year ago, and Mr. Jopik has at this point simply passed the baton of lead city attorney to Mr. Young. I want to thank Mr. Jopik for his work the past year and welcome Mr. Young to this new role. We all look forward to working with you and your team, and we appreciate everything that your whole team brings to the table. And with that, the city manager's report, Mr. Newman.

Communications from the city manager's office. Friday, June 19, 2026, Juneteenth, city offices are closed. There will be no trash or recycling collection on Friday, June 19. Friday's scheduled collections will take place on Monday, June 22. The Summer Solstice Jazz Festival will be held Friday, June 26, and Saturday, June 27, representing its 30th anniversary. Friday, July 3, city offices will be closed in observance of Independence Day. Friday trash and recycling collections will take place on Monday, July 6. On June 20 at noon, the library will celebrate the grand opening of the city's musical garden, featuring outdoor musical instruments and sensory play elements for young children, paired with a meet and greet with the library's new director, Chrissy Avazquez Garrett. The East Lansing Family Aquatic Center has welcomed 5,899 visitors through June 10. That's an increase of 1,990 visitors from the beginning of 2025. And finally, in the coming weeks, the clerk's office will begin sending absentee ballots for the primary election taking place in August.

Thank you, sir. City Attorney's report. Mr. Young.

Good evening. I don't have anything to report today, but I do say thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to working with the City Council and all those in the city in my new position. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That brings us to the consent agenda. Settle in. Mr. Newman.

There are 28 agenda items. Item 3.1, approve the following appointments or reappointments to boards or commissions. Jonathan Foreman to the Human Rights Commission for a partial term ending December 31, 2026. Michael French to the Zoning Board of Appeals for a partial term ending December 31, 2028. Kristen S. McCool to the Arts Selection Panel for a partial term ending December 31, 2026. Item 3.2, approve a resolution recognizing July as Parks, Recreation, and Arts Month in the City of East Lansing. Item 3.3, approve a resolution recognizing June 19th, 2026 as the Juneteenth holiday in the City of East Lansing. item 3.4 approve an amendment to the fiscal year 2027 budget tax rate and fee schedule resolution item 3.5 approve a contract with fishbeck for design surface services of the downtown events hydraulic bollards project with an street Plaza added services in an amount of $106,000, which includes a 15% contingency and authorized the acting city manager to sign, approve a contract amendment with HDR Michigan incorporated for the wet weather resiliency master plan in the amount of $50,000 and authorized the acting city manager to sign. Approve a contract to renew the city's excess workers' compensation insurance with Midwest employers casualty for the period July 1, 2026 through July 1, 2028 in an annual amount of $140,985 and authorize the acting city manager to sign. Item 3.8. approve a contract to renew the city's property and liability insurance with the michigan municipal risk management authority for the period july 1 2026 through july 1 2027 in an amount not to exceed 881 144 and authorized the acting city manager to sign item 3.9 approve a bid from the Meridian Rapid Defense Group in the amount of $477,484.77 for the purchase of modular vehicular barricade equipment to be funded through the BJA fiscal year 24 burn discretionary community project grant and authorize the acting city manager to sign. Item 3.10. approve a contract with HDR for the traffic signal asset management plan in an amount of $220,000, which includes a 15% contingency and authorized acting city manager to sign. Item 3.11 approve an addendum to the proposal and contract for janitorial services with capital city janitorial LLC to extend the contract term by two years to June 30, 2028 with no change to hourly rates and authorized the acting city manager to sign item 3.12. Approval of a contract with LD Doxa associates incorporated for the purchase and installation of two brine tanks at the department of public works in the amount of $149,957 with an additional 15% contingency for a total authorized amount, not to exceed $172,450 and authorized the acting city manager to sign. next page item 3.13 approve a one-year extension to the contract with color of sound audio for twenty four thousand one hundred nine dollars to provide production sound and lighting services for the 2026 summer solstice jazz festival and authorize the acting city manager to sign Item 3.14, approve a change order with Rowe Professional Services Company for the Hazlitt Road Rehabilitation Project in an amount of $66,000, which includes a 10% contingency for a total authorized not to exceed amount of $330,164. and consideration of a related budget amendment and authorize the acting city manager to sign. Item 3.15, approve a three-year agreement for use of school facilities with East Lansing Public Schools and authorize the acting city manager to sign. Item 3.16, approve a change order with NTH Consultants for materials, testing services, and plan review in an amount of $167,000. which includes a $21,570 contingency for total authorized not to exceed amount of $257,000 and authorized the acting city manager to sign item 3.17 approved traffic control order. five Oh seven for the installation of an always stop at the intersection of Oxford road and sunset lane. Item 3.18 approve a road closure for east and westbound lanes on Albert Avenue from Grove street to Mac Avenue for eighties night from Friday, July 17, 2026 at 2 PM to Saturday, July 18, 2026 at 8 PM. Item 3.19. Approve scheduling a public hearing on July 21, 2026 on proposed ordinance 1564, an amendment to chapter 50 of the city code to rezone approximately 40 properties north of Lake Lansing Road, west of Chandler Road, and east of 127 from their current DeWitt Township zoning to East Lansing zone districts. Item 3.20. Approve scheduling a public hearing on August 11, 2026 on proposed ordinance 1570 and amendment to chapter 50 of the city code to rezone 3859 stole road from before restricted office business to our one low density, single family residential item 3.21. approved scheduling a public hearing on july twenty one twenty twenty six on proposed ordinance fifteen seventy two and ordinance to amend chapter fifty zoning division five residential rental restriction overly districts of the code of the city of east lansing to add a new section fifty dash seven seven eight removal of property from the rental restriction overly districts item three point twenty two Approve scheduling a public hearing on July 21, 2026. proposed ordinance 1573 an amendment to chapter 50 of the City Code to rezone 825 West Lake Lansing Road from RM 22 medium density multiple family residential to RM 14 low density multiple family residential in order to bring an existing single-family residence into conformity with the zoning ordinance item 3.22 3.23 approved scheduling a public hearing on august 11 2026 on proposed ordinance 1575 amendments to chapter 50 of the city code the zoning ordinance and to chapter 4 of the city code to modify requirements related to electric vehicles and charging stations parking ratios for automobiles and bicycles landscaping green space and trees and the keeping of bees and chickens item 3.24 approved scheduling a public hearing by city council on july 21 2026 to receive comments on proposed ordinance 1576 amendments to chapter 50 of the city code the zoning ordinance to require special use approval for multiple family residential units in certain business districts clarify requirements for retail sales of alcohol for offsite consumption and add requirements for use of certain building incentives. Item 3.25. Approve the transfer of the Burcham Park Community Solar Park lease agreement from Community Energy Options LLC to the Lansing Board of Water and Light and authorize the acting city manager to sign. Item 3.26. Approve a letter of agreement between the City of East Lansing and the Capital City Labor Program Support Unit and authorize the acting city manager to sign. Item 3.27. Approve a charitable gaming resolution recognizing the Ivy Forum Foundation as a nonprofit organization located in the city of East Lansing for the purpose of obtaining a charitable gaming license from the Michigan Lottery Bureau. And finally, item 3.28, approve a license for a secondhand junk dealer in the city of East Lansing.

Um, would any council member like any items removed from the consent agenda to the business agenda? Seeing none, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as read?

So moved.

Moved by Meadows, second by Whelan.

I just wanted to make a comment about two of the items.

Why don't you second the motion and then you can make a comment. Second.

Okay. Motion by Meadows, second by Whelan. Any discussion, Mr. Whelan? Thank you.

That was impressive.

Acting city manager.

number one the 3.17 is the stop sign four-way stop sign at sunset in oxford that was talked about extensively at the transportation commission we also talked to neighborhood stakeholders and it was all very much in support and that is also from public works it was unanimous that there was a concerning intersection so it's a good i believe that's very good move also i want to applaud the ladies from ivy forum foundation for your advocacy tonight and your project that's all i have

Thank you. Any other further comments? I would like to make an amendment to item 3.16. The number in line two appears to be $1,670,000 with a comma in the wrong place. I think that's probably incorrect. I suspect that that number should be $167,000, which is how the acting city manager read it. So I would like to amend to strike one of the zeros after the comma in that number. and to make the corresponding change in the subject field of the agenda item report. Are there any objections to that change?

No, I'll support it. Good catch.

all right so without objection that amendment is adopted uh any further discussion of the yes i did also want to echo uh councilman whalen took the thunder from me but uh the ladies from the i reform foundation

I'm just really proud of the work. I know when we had a conversation and met and, uh, uh, you told me about your organization and what you want to do in our community for the students here. Uh, it just was wonderful. So I'm glad to see that we are here at the end of that. So I'm very proud of that. I'm good. I'm glad to see what is going to be coming forward. So thank you.

Any further discussion? Okay, so the motion is on approving the consent agenda as amended. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries unanimously. The consent agenda is approved. Which brings us to public hearing, item 4.1, a public hearing to receive comments regarding proposed ordinance 1559, which would amend section 50-94 of the zoning ordinance, which defines a diverse housing requirement in downtown East Lansing. The amendments would allow for a fee to be paid in lieu of meeting the requirement, to find a formula for that fee and allow for the transfer of diverse housing credits from areas outside of downtown. Mr. Bartley and Director Hodges.

Thank you, Mayor. Landon Bartley, Principal Planner. So the zoning ordinance was amended in November 2016 to create the diverse housing requirement which applies to multi-family residential as special uses when they're located in the DDA district west of Collingwood Road. Excuse me. In the last couple years we've received Pardon me. In the last couple of years, we've received some, um, requests from developers saying we'd like to have some other options, uh, to meet this requirement other than providing the units. And based on that, uh, feedback, uh, we went to the planning commission, uh, for several discussions last year. Uh, and then, um, based on more discussions with the planning commission and city council this year, uh, introduced an ordinance, uh, that would change the diverse housing requirement, um, as presented tonight. So, uh, Briefly I want to describe the diverse housing requirement and then describe how the Planning Commission is proposed to adopt the ordinance that's before you this evening. So the diverse housing requirement I mentioned applies to properties that are special land uses, if they're multifamily residential in the DDA district west of Collingwood Road. And that requirement means that if you're building multifamily residential subject to a special use, that 25% of your units must be diverse housing. And diverse housing is defined in this requirement as affordable, low to moderate income, senior housing or owner occupied housing. There is also a transfer mechanism that's allowed in the same area where a diverse housing project can transfer units, sort of credits for units that exceed the minimum requirement of 25%. They could transfer those units as credits to a different property also in the same district. to help that project meet its diverse housing requirement. So that's what the requirement currently is. The ordinance that we brought forward to the Planning Commission that City Council introduced earlier this year, the Planning Commission recommended several changes to the diverse housing requirement. Specifically, they recommended reducing the diverse housing requirement from 25% to 10%, so 10% of units constructed in a special use multifamily building in that area of DDA west of Collingwood, 10% of those would have to be diverse housing instead of 25%, the current requirement. They also proposed a fee in lieu to provide diverse housing, a fee in lieu instead of providing the diverse housing units on site, I guess that's in lieu. That would be 5% of the total residential construction cost of that building. We had originally brought forward a sort of affordability gap calculation. We found that that was quite complex, and the residential construction cost percentage is a little bit less complex. So that would be the fee in lieu. new building and your total let's say your total cost of construction for the residential part of that building was a million dollars then you take 5% of that and that would be the fee in lieu and so you wouldn't have to provide the diverse housing units on-site if you pay that fee. The Planning Commission recommended a reduction of that fee in exchange of 1% in exchange for construction and building out of mass timber. They also recommended consideration of fee reductions of 0.5% respectively for providing transit passes for all tenants for five years or the same reduction for providing at least one car share vehicle on site for at least five years. They recommended creating a council-appointed advisory commission or committee that would recommend disbursement of funds received under the fee-in-lieu program and recommended that at least one planning commissioner and housing commissioner served on that committee or commission and also suggested restricting spending of any funds received to housing, providing or incentivizing housing. Finally, the Planning Commission also recommended changes to the transfer mechanism. They propose allowing transfer of credits from diverse housing projects that are located outside of downtown, specifically on a one-to-one basis for properties that are within the B3 or EV zone districts. The B3 is downtown, and EV is East Village, which is generally south of Grand River, east of Bogue, and west of Hagedorn, and north of the river. And they recommended a 1.1 to 1 ratio of credit transfers from some other zone districts. So a unit, essentially 11 units being transferred from these districts would count towards 10 units downtown. And those specifically would be in the B2, RM32, or RM54 properties. And all of those must be located south of Saginaw Highway. So essentially it's proposing to expand the transfer area from just the existing diverse housing area downtown to many more areas as long as they're south of Saginaw Highway and zone in these ways. And then finally, finally, finally, they also recommended a one-year review of this ordinance if adopted as presented or as proposed to be amended, just to check to make sure that it's creating the intended results. So tonight's step is a public hearing. The process for changing the zoning ordinance is introduction and referral of the ordinance by council to the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission then has a public hearing for it, which they've done so. Then they, either at the same meeting or in subsequent meeting or meetings, they discuss it and recommend, recommended action by council. In this case, the Planning Commission recommended adoption with the amendments as proposed by them. This has also been reviewed by the Downtown Development Authority late last month, which recommended not adopting the ordinance as introduced. And also the Housing Commission discussed this ordinance several times, and Director Hodges is going to give a little bit of an update on their discussions.

Thank you, Council. Housing Commission did have discussion mostly about a week and a half ago at their June meeting. It was introduced in May, but it was a lot of information that came at them at a short amount of time. So there wasn't a lot of discussion in May, but we did have a very robust discussion just a week and a half ago, like I said. And they couldn't be here today to present, and they didn't make a formal motion, but they asked me to send along their message and the summary of their discussion. And overall, they The theme and the tagline they wanted to share was diverse housing in diverse places. And they like the idea of diverse housing. They feel that it should be available anywhere and encourage developers to be able to develop it anywhere. So whether that's downtown or outside of downtown, That was their overall message. They did have a lot of questions about, they specifically were reviewing the planning commission's recommendation sort of as a broad overview and had a lot of questions about how else can we incentivize development and diverse development? What are other ways other than mass timber? What are other incentives? So they were really asking a lot of questions about that. and really encouraging the city to think about supporting HUD programs outside of just housing and creating diverse spaces, art spaces, third spaces, and thinking more creatively about that, of what to bring downtown outside of housing. So that's kind of a quick summary of what they discussed. They did really like most of the Planning Commission's recommendation. Some commissioners felt 10% might be too low, but they did feel that a reduction was necessary. They just didn't get into the nitty-gritty details of making a formal recommendation. So happy to answer questions as well.

Questions for staff?

Mr. Whelan. So the Planning Commission did not recommend, say that again?

The Planning Commission recommended adoption of the ordinance with their amendments as proposed.

They did? Yes.

Further questions for staff?

That's what I was curious. You mentioned the DDA had concerns. Can you summarize their concerns? Or talk about them in detail if you cannot summarize?

Mayor, I wonder if I could defer to you on this.

Yeah, I can actually talk a little bit about that. So if it's appropriate, I'll sort of weigh in with my concerns. The historical context for the diverse housing requirement was that, speaking for myself when we adopted it about 10 years ago, was to try to create a more diverse demographic profile in the downtown with a goal of creating a more diverse commercial and retail profile in the downtown. That was sort of the original goal to avoid it becoming to avoid it going completely in one direction given that it's right across the street from campus, essentially. We want downtown to be a place where everybody has a reason to come and go, and so on the theory that retail follows residential, it made sense to try to diversify the the residential profile and it uh it worked really well once right we got newman lofts as a result of this and that's a great neighborhood and community that we have down there and it's close to full if not full um people have argued that it's a it's a burden on development the downtown especially since that the downtown is is fairly small there's not a whole lot of real estate there anymore to develop and there's various with getting loans and so forth for projects that serve different demographics is my understanding. So it has perhaps acted as a barrier to development and I think it's worth revisiting whether that's a goal we want to continue to press. My concern with the ordinance as it's described in the agenda item report with the ability to transfer credits in from outside the downtown. Essentially we're waiving the diverse housing requirement for the downtown by doing that. Because now you can build whatever you want in the downtown and transfer the credits in from somewhere else. So now you're not diversifying the downtown demographic profile, you're maybe diversifying it in a broader footprint but not in the downtown itself. So that could be fine to let go of that goal. I'm just saying that's in my view, what this ordinance does is it lets go of that goal in some sense. And so then the next step in sort of my thinking about this is, okay, what's, what's the goal, right? What goal do we want to achieve? And I think one goal we've heard a lot about is affordable housing or attainable housing, or just more housing, right? Because we need it. And from that perspective, the best way to get more affordable housing is to build more housing. And the best way to build more housing is to remove regulatory barriers. So from that perspective, it makes sense to just repeal the diverse housing requirement and just build. And so that was the direction of my reasoning at the DDA. And I said a version there of what I said here. And when we get to after the public hearing and start talking a little bit about what sort of direction we might want to give to staff here, I will try to translate some of those ideas into some motions that might help focus our discussion a little bit. And we can... think about what directions we might want to take to give direction to staff. So that was a very long answer to your question, and I'm happy to.

But are those your concerns or DDA's concerns?

Well, those were my concerns that I articulated at the body.

So did the body share those concerns?

Well, they seemed to be persuaded by them in the sense that they voted to recommend against adopting the ordinance.

Okay. So there was no other feedback other than?

I think I stunned everybody into silence by talking for 15 minutes.

Okay.

Further questions of staff? Okay, this is a public hearing, so I will open the public hearing and I have one slip at this point.

Al Bay?

Is Al here? Okay. Is there anyone else who would like to address the council on the issue of this ordinance?

Yep. Kath Edsel, East Lansing. For months we heard from the rent is too damn high. They came and they spoke many, many times and I think influenced sort of the decision around the suggested ordinance to criminalize homelessness and thankfully a majority of you voted down that proposal. But that's only the first step. We take away criminalizing people who can't afford housing in East Lansing and then we have to create housing. that is affordable in East Lansing. And when you, I'll start by saying I'm not opposed to development. I just built my fifth house here in East Lansing. Well, two new builds and two remodels and a fifth house. not opposed to some of the projects that are suggested tonight, but to have a solution on the books that increases the creation of affordable housing. And I'm in the over 55 group. I really don't worry about that being represented downtown. I'm more worried about affordable housing. And to give an opportunity to kick that affordable housing out to the outer city limits so that we can have certain development downtown and maintain a certain profile downtown is really problematic to me. It's ghettoizing affordable housing, and I can't support that. So I didn't get a chance to read the whole thing because my phone died while I was back there, but the brief stuff that I read and the 2016 ordinance that required affordable housing up to 25%, I think that should be left alone. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address, please?

Luke Hackney again from the Downtown Development Authority. Just wanted to step in. And yes, I do think largely what Mr. Mayor Altman said was the... largely the extent of the DDA's concerns. I think when Landon said that people were looking for other options to meet requirements other than building the units, what that really means is that they're looking for other options other than meeting the actual requirements, because that is the only requirement, which really just means that they don't want to build affordable housing downtown. And I think that's just a reality that we have to acknowledge as much as I would love more. Newman Lofts was a decade ago and it's about 100 units. It's been mostly full but never actually full and there's been no other projects brought to us in that time. We've had zero beds built since 2018 in that core downtown that would meet these requirements. And I think as opposed to a fee in lieu, we also talked about offering actual incentives. So you start at a base where we're just trying to bring in new developers and then we offer them incentives to do affordable housing, to do the things that you're actually looking for as opposed to the other way around. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Counsel, Attorney Carrie Freeman. I think it sounds to me like originally council kind of hung their hat on this ordinance to create the diverse housing and the affordable housing downtown. And what we're just seeing is that didn't work. And I think the suggestion here at this point is that maybe we go in a different direction. And I don't think taking the diverse housing requirement out of 1559 is going to then prevent us from being able to potentially even have that downtown What it's going to do is it's going to increase development. And if we have more options downtown, more housing downtown, rents are going to come down. There will be more. You can't charge as much because there will be more. So I think that we still could get the result by not having the diverse housing requirement. And I think the other part of it too is if we can pull people to our downtown and have more available for them there, then maybe the other geographical locations where the diverse housing, affordable housing, 55 and older might work won't be so far out of town at that point. It could be even in the neighborhoods right behind the immediate Albert Avenue, that kind of thing. I think we need to think about just this in a different way. I don't think it's about stepping away from trying to accomplish this goal. like Mayor Altman saying, the goalposts may have just kind of moved and we need to figure out how to then move our direction and go there. So I spoke at public comment and I just wanted to ask that you guys don't approve 1559 in this form. I mean there were a lot of good things, there was a lot of thought, so much time and effort put into this by your city staff. But so much thought that I think this was then overthought, and it's become extremely complicated. And I also think that there was a lot of, well, let's give here, but then there was takeaway over here. And so what we have left is something that's super complicated and really isn't going to accomplish the goal. It hasn't allowed us to go that direction. We originally approached you, I did actually, with a fairly simple idea of the fee in lieu to amend 1559, this was over a year ago, as an option to just maybe loosen those requirements of 1559 to allow developers to come in. And then it was because, and we did that because 1559 was just proving to kind of be too rigid and untenable, and we were hopeful that we could somehow try to promote development downtown. But nearly a year later now, this is a far cry from what I know I originally intended it to be. The Fianlu language is enormously complicated, as actually some of you have already stated. And our community would be best served at this point by removing, I believe, onerous regulations and not adding them, which is what this is going to do. This ordinance isn't going to, in this form, provide the incentives that we were trying to do. Our community would be better served. If we make development more attractive, as you said at our last meeting, it would be better served if we could actually probably remove the diverse housing requirement altogether at this point versus actually adopting this amendment. It's presently, I think, misplaced for it being in the downtown area. The cities of East Lansing's comprehensive plan found that residents desire a greater housing densities in the downtown core, and they want redevelopment along the existing corridors, so let's give it to them and stop preventing that. like it has been told to you all tonight, the DDA didn't even recommend adoption in this form. I don't think it's possible to approve this tonight under your city charter, since it's the first introduction, but I ask that you just don't do it at all, at least in this form, and give this more thought before you move forward. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Mark Bell, Harbor Bay. I actually was not going to talk on this subject, but I think that I'll be brief. I can maybe provide some helpful perspective to council because this is an important decision. As I think everybody knows, we developed Newman Lofts. And Mayor Altman, Councilmember Meadows, we worked hard on that. The honest truth about that is that the geometry of the sites allowed that to happen. And I think that's really important for everyone to understand. Development is really, really hard. And it's been harder since COVID as costs have gone up 40% in utilities, insurance. And it's pretty easy. It's just a math game. And we have to go into a banker or a lender, right? And I have to provide a personal guarantee on a very large loan, and the math has to make sense, otherwise a lot of people get in a lot of trouble, right? So Newman Lofts worked because we took the surface parking lots and we took the structures and we vertically subdivided everything and it worked, right? Because, you know, we laugh and we say, okay, would market rate work with, you know, senior on top? It just wouldn't, right? And so when we look at... The geometry of real estate, when we make geometry of real estate harder, it becomes nearly impossible to finance. So for example, what's ironic to me is that 1384, very well intended, what is the definition of diverse housing? Newman Law Offices senior housing, right? Affordable housing has never been built since the inception of that ordinance. For sale condos is also in that ordinance. Condos are very hard to build, right? And are very just cyclical. I don't pretend to know the answer. We do use affordable, or excuse me, fee and lieu in a lot of cities we work in. It's been brought up by council, and I think acutely, correctly, is that what do you do with the money when you get the money? In our town halls, actually the biggest reply has been can we do a house buyback program with the money which i think would be great but in practice maybe that's difficult because then you have to presumably get an appraisal on that house that would be maybe higher in a rental situation right and that deduction or something would be funded by the city if money would be able to accumulate through this program In the example of building outside of the B3, getting credits and transferring to B3, I personally don't even think that's practical. It'd be very hard to find a site somewhere else, build a product that, again, developers are like doctors, right? We develop either industrial or office or resi. Within resi, it's senior housing. It could be market rate housing. It could be condos. And so I would partner, perhaps, with an affordable developer outside of town to then get those credits. Last point, case in point, I like PK companies a lot. I think the gentleman is 0 for 4 through LITAC credits, right? Trying to get 9% out of Michigan. Michigan gives most of that to Wayne County and not to Ingham County. I don't know if that's fair or right, but that's a great case study that we've been trying, even dating back to the convex CDRW days, to get that site developed. So again, I was not commenting on this particular topic. It's very difficult. Everyone wants affordable housing. There are supply and demand economists and developers like myself that truly do believe Austin's a great case in point where you build abundance of housing and rents actually go down. That takes a while. It doesn't happen overnight. And I think Eastlands is obviously different than Austin, so I don't pretend to say that's an exact example. But anyways, hopefully that was helpful just for context from a developer. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone else from the audience who would like to address this issue? Do we have any callers?

There are no callers on the line.

OK. So no more takers. In that case, I will close the public hearing. Thank all the speakers for their thoughtful comments. I think this was very good. So yes.

I do want to just kind of restate what we've talked about in prior discussions on this. One, I don't look at East Lansing residential housing as a market that if you open the market, you will see a flourishing of diversity. I think without government intervention, whether that's through incentives or requirements, then that drives the type of development you want to see. So I am against repealing a requirement completely on diverse housing. I am, as I've stated before in prior discussions, open to the idea of the 10% coming down. I have been in many conversations on the fee in lieu because I believe you need to create the framework to drive what you want. As I've said before, I have a landlord friend in town, I don't think he likes to be referred to as a landlord guy, but who said everyone wants to be close to the beach. okay well if you got a beach like campus and you want to see how you attract you know a variety of amenities you got to figure out how to leverage the beach for lack of a better phrase You know, I understand and I'm sensitive to the conversations and length of time we've taken with us. Um, but I do think there's been a lot of great work that both staff and the planning commission has done. Um, and. You know, I think. we may be making this overly complicated. I'm open, you know, to figuring out what the right approach would be, especially if we're gonna follow the planning commission's recommendation to review this in a year. But I am, you know, especially, we have been, I think, pretty open to looking at bringing that requirement down as well as looking at more flexible tools for developers. to help drive development, and whether that's both downtown or around. It's really hard, as you just mentioned the PK example, to get LIHTC and other dollars into this community to do affordable. Guess what? A fee-in-lieu fund could help us drive more, whether that's refurbishing homes in our community that are low income, Um, or that need refer, uh, refurbishing, um, or if there's another pot to help buy down rents, uh, whether that's for retailers or residential. So there's a lot of applicable ways that does not scare me about creating what that could look like. Um, that is the incent part that could be a part of a fee. Anyway, I just wanted to try to capture that from prior conversations of what I've I've stated.

Mr. Whalen, go ahead. I do appreciate all of the work from the staff. I appreciate the discussion. I do think the intentions of having the diverse housing ordinance was good. I think the intentions were to diversify the downtown area and the previous councils that put that in, I think the intentions were excellent. I don't know that it did accomplish what we wanted it to. I think what it did accomplish is it It prevented development. It put too many barriers up. It put too many restrictions, and it didn't really provide what we were really hoping. And I love the idea of having a very diverse community. I proposed a 10% quite a while ago because the 25% is just so high. I have kind of come even further than that saying that if it's not, if the diverse housing requirement is not meeting our needs, then that we should consider eliminating it. That's kind of where I've come to. I went from the 25 to the 10, now saying let's have responsible development. Both projects that we've talked about have made adjustments to get around that. So rather than making it so difficult, let's open up responsible housing and responsible situations that can help. get us where we want to go, and that is a welcoming, healthy, strong, and larger community.

I have a question. What does responsible housing mean?

It's easy to campaign on that, isn't it? Right? No, I'm responding. Responsible is housing that fits, housing that meets the needs of our community, Housing that is, again, the incredible needs of all different people to live here. In my experience, that's not all need to be downtown. The different communities, around further around outside of downtown area are thriving communities even though they're not right downtown. More affordable and responsible. communities, I think, to welcome that. Some of the DDA situations downtown on the west side, I know the problem is that funding has not been available. So I don't think that downtown's the only area that we need to look at as far as development, and I think that that's part of our solution is looking at development over the entire town, not just downtown. And I think this is restrictive. and preventing that.

Mr. Meadows.

Okay, well, you know, we were on the council when this was approved, and one of the reasons that we put it in was because we didn't want the downtown to turn into just dormitories. Because there's the beach. and there's what where the money is made so it is diverse housing it isn't just low to moderate income housing it allows senior housing it allows condominiums and allows unique housing that is not otherwise available in the downtown area the that's a phrase that's also used within the zoning ordinances relating to parking and other ability for us to reduce or change things when someone comes forward with some kind of unique housing in the downtown. The objective of the ordinance was to make sure that we didn't have just one thing. in the downtown. And the objective of that ordinance, as the mayor has mentioned earlier, would also diversify demand for retail in the downtown. Different age groups demand different type of retail. Whether it's worked or not at this point in time, I'll just say, based on Mark Bell's comments, which I thought were right on, There's been a huge change here. I mean, somebody said here we haven't had it built in 10 years. Well, that's not actually accurate. You know, I think the last construction unit relating to actual housing, I think the Abbott was finished last, and that was probably 2018 or maybe at the end of 2018. And then COVID hit. And COVID changed everything here. The construction project that was pending for Evergreen, which was office building when we learned we no longer need office buildings apparently, that everybody can work from home, that changed the nature there and that developer backed out of that particular project. In the meantime, MSUFCU built their building in the downtown, so we've had further construction in the downtown, but that type of building does not require this diverse housing requirement. So from my standpoint, Part of the problem is that we're just coming out of COVID. I mean, we are really in terms of the increased building costs that have resulted from that. I mean, people can look around and take a look at the rise in property value because of the demand from people who didn't wanna live in the city any longer when COVID was going along. has changed everything within the state. So we're no different than any place else which saw a reduction in building and demand for building and development you know throughout the COVID years and we're just really coming out of that and we're seeing more projects being proposed. The Howard is one of them. The Bailey lot, now in its third iteration maybe, is also there. We've had other conversations with other developers with regard to development within our community and specifically in the downtown. So things are perking up. I don't have any problem, you know, I'd like to, you know, I'll just go through the bullet points from the changes proposed by the Planning Commission and just give my own view with regard to it. I think there is room to reduce the diverse housing requirement. I don't know if 10% is right. I think probably more 15 would be a better one. When we picked 25%, we were looking at other communities in the state who had a very similar percentage required, mostly larger cities, confess to that. And we have an area from Collingwood to the western part border of the downtown that this only applies to. So it is a small area. I don't have a particular problem with the idea of a fee in lieu. You know, when when the Howard was originally proposed, it was five thousand dollars a unit that wasn't going to cook, you know, simply stated. So I'm OK with a fee in lieu, but I want it to be meaningful because I don't want to take 45 years for a council to accumulate enough money to actually make a difference for any kind of diverse housing and specifically if we put these guidelines in that would sort of target that money towards diverse housing within our community, I think we would all be positively benefited with that. The last diverse housing project that the city promoted was the housing project just off of Burcham. That is about half low to moderate income housing and half market rate housing. And we could do more of that within our community and types of housing, especially addressing some of the homeless issues that were mentioned at the microphone a little bit earlier. So having a significant amount of money in a Fialu account, I think, would be a positive thing for us. As far as how that is computed in the proposal of the Planning Commission, I don't care for it, frankly. I'd like it to be a flat fee in some ways so everybody knows what they've got to do and not just a percentage of the total cost of the particular project, although it doesn't sound like much when we talk about a million dollars. In 2018 we had half a billion dollars of construction going on in the downtown and we may be headed in that direction again. I think there is a value in expanding the area in which the diverse housing could be located. And I can't remember whether – I think they do have a bullet here that says any place located south of Saginaw Highway. And that would be okay to me if we had some limits on that because Saginaw Highway kind of, you know, swerves up and includes a whole chunk of property that maybe we wouldn't want to locate those in. And I'm very – cognitive or concerned about where this would be located. The last council before 2023 anyway, had talked about using the 26 acres that the city owns up off of Coleman Road, which I think does ghettoize the idea of affordable housing. I'm not in favor of that. I think So allowing the transfer of credits from areas outside of the downtown as long as it's south of Saginaw is something that I think I could support. The devil's in the details and I don't think we have the details yet. I think that this council should probably direct staff to create a different ordinance than the one that we introduced previously so that we can move forward. and have further public input into what we're trying to do here. But I think we do need a diverse housing requirement in the downtown, so we do not turn it into just market rate housing because what that means, at least based on the reports that we've received or the proposals that we have, is So you have an apartment with no bedroom in it for $1,800 a month. That's a proposal. I mean, think about it. Are only the rich going to go to college now? I mean, over $4,000 for a three bedroom apartment? Go buy a house. I mean, some of us can't afford to pay $4,000 for a house on a monthly basis. I mean, we are not building, and I don't think that any of the building that's being proposed here is going to increase the ability of low to moderate income individuals to locate into the city of East Lansing. So however this works out, if it can get us towards that objective of providing this type of housing, the low to moderate income housing or more diverse housing then i'm going to support it but what i have in front of me right now is not something that i think i can i just i should take this moment though to to mention that that Elise Hodges was actually elected to the board of directors of the capital area housing partnership last night. So I don't think you knew that, but you took our new city managers or interim city managers position with regard to that. So congratulations. Congratulations.

Thanks. Mr. Grigsby, any comments on this?

Yeah, I think I'm just in a situation where I need more to hear in regards. I know that I don't want to get rid of the incentive to have diverse housing, affordable housing. I know I'm listening to some of the comments from developers of how challenging it is to work around that. For me, I'm kind of up in the air. I'm just being transparent in regards to how flexible that is and how feasible it is When it comes to where we are in 2026 with with that and so I YEAH, I THINK I NEED TO HEAR MORE FROM THE PROFESSIONALS AND FROM THE COMMUNITY IN REGARDS TO KIND OF WHERE MY GOAL POSTS ARE. I KNOW ORIGINALLY WITH COUNCILMEMBER MEADOWS, THEY TALKED ABOUT 15% TO THE 10%. I WAS A LITTLE BIT MORE FLEXIBLE WITH THE 10% AND THAT PLANNING COMMISSION'S PROPOSAL IN REGARDS TO TRYING TO BE FLEXIBLE AND WORKABLE WITHIN THE NUMBERS TO MAKE SENSE. Like I said, I think once I hear the secularization of what we're doing and how we're going to go about that and a little bit more input from the public, I'll be a little bit more comfortable with kind of where I'll be with this.

Can I add one thing?

Yeah. I should have mentioned the one-year review. We're here 10 years down the road doing a review of this and making a decision as to whether it's working or not working. I don't think one year is enough to do that. So I think that we should be looking for a longer period of time. I don't have any problem with periodic reviews, and I think pretty strongly that it's a good idea to do that to see if it's still functioning. I really believe that with almost every ordinance. So I think it should be longer. And that's it.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about sort of the process tonight. So this is a little bit of an unusual situation that we're in because we have the ordinance that we introduced a long time ago, which is what's attached to the agenda. And then we have an extensive set of recommendations. for something different, but those different things have not been implemented in an ordinance yet. So we don't have an ordinance in front of us that implements the things that the Planning Commission has recommended. So this really is in some sense a hybrid of a discussion only item with a public hearing and an opportunity to provide some direction. So I think our task for tonight is to see if we can get closer to some concrete guidance for staff to translate some or all of those recommendations into an actual ordinance that we could decide to vote on. So that's one process issue. The other thing for me in terms of policies, substance, I think the comments from the podium sort of highlighted that there's different directions we could go in and for me I don't see that one of them is clearly the right direction. I think there's different things we can try and some may work and some may not. From that perspective, sort of putting those two things together, what I did is I drafted three different motions, each of which would direct staff to draft a revision to Ordinance 1559 that implements certain things. And they occupy different parts of the space. And I could imagine going in any one of these directions. But what I figured I would do is make these motions that could focus our discussion a little bit. If one of them gets adopted, that's great. Then we get clear direction. If none of them get adopted, then I'm not sure where we head at that point. but it's an opportunity to sort of pull ourselves on some specific policy options. So I'm going to go ahead and make the first of these motions. They're roughly ranked in my order of preference, but that in this context doesn't mean a whole lot.

Just so I'm clear, so you're making three motions for us to hear or you're making three motions for us to think about?

Well, so I'm going to make one motion if it gets a second.

Okay.

then we can discuss. If it doesn't get a second, then that's great, right? And then it goes away. And then I'll make my second one unless somebody else would like to make another motion. I don't want to hog the floor. And then if one of these motions ultimately passes, it will be in the form of directing staff to draft an ordinance that implements certain things.

I understand.

That makes sense. Okay, so let me let me start with the first one. So I'm going to move to direct staff to draft a revision of ordinance 1559 that changes the current diverse housing requirement from 25% to 10% in the downtown and makes no other changes to the existing zoning ordinance. That's my motion. And that fails for lack of a second, which is fine. So then I'm going to make my second motion. If somebody else would like to make a motion, please step in. It's what? Sorry.

Forgive me.

My second motion is to direct staff to draft a revision of ordinance 1559 that repeals the current diverse housing requirement and makes no other changes to the existing zoning ordinance. That's my second motion. I'll second. Okay. Motion by Altman, second by Whalen. Discussion?

I plan on voting no.

Okay. Any other discussion? All right. So I don't have to do math. Councilmember Whelan, did you want to weigh in on anything?

Again, it's the same thing. Again, there's a lot of great other things that we can do. My concern is sending mixed messages to planning. They've worked so hard. at trying to read where we're at. I think it's great that we're finally kind of going to clarify exactly where we're at. And I'm great with wherever we kind of land. I don't want to send, each one of us have our own seat, right? We don't speak for each other. And that's the beauty of having five. So I think it's good to make sure we give the staff good direction of where the whole council is. whether it's 3-2, that's 5-0, I don't know. So I think it's good to kind of clarify where we're at, and that's why I think, that's why I seconded it, just to see where the council is on this.

Okay, good. Any further discussion on this particular motion? Okay, so I don't have to keep track of stuff. Let's do a roll call vote, please.

Council Member Whalen. Yes. Council Member Meadows. No. Council Member Singh. No. Mayor Pro Tem Grigsby. No. Mayor Altman.

yes so that motion fails two votes to three okay so then let me make my third one um so this is so i moved to direct staff to draft a revision to ordinance 1559 that implements the following provisions recommended by the planning commission number one reduce the diverse housing requirement from 25 to 15 percent Number two, establish a fee-in-lieu of providing diverse housing units onsite in the amount of 5% of total residential construction cost. Number three, creates a staff-administered process for dispersing funds received under the fee-in-lieu program with disbursement limited to housing. And number four, allows transfer of diverse housing credits from any property south of Saginaw Highway to the area subject to the diverse housing requirement on a one-to-one basis. That's my motion.

I'll second that.

Okay, motion by Altman, second by Meadows. So let me briefly address this. I THINK THE WAY THE PLANNING COMMISSION CHARACTERIZED THIS VERSION, THIS SET OF RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE MEETING WHERE THEY DISCUSSED THIS, THE IDEA WAS TO PROVIDE A MENU OF DIFFERENT OPTIONS. SO THIS PROVIDES AT LEAST A COUPLE OF DIFFERENT OPTIONS. YOU CAN EITHER BUILD SOMETHING OR BUY OUT, ESSENTIALLY. When I was listening to the Planning Commission discussion of this, I was just struck by how overwhelmingly complicated it was, the ordinance was. It was just really complicated. And I think that throws up barriers, it makes it hard to understand, it creates work. I appreciate all the effort that went into developing all those different parameters and all those ideas. And I may be throwing out the baby with the bathwater here, but these seem to me to be the key elements of this menu of options approach. So my idea was to keep it simple, avoid exploding the amount of staff time that needs to go into administering it, and I think that's better done by having a staff-administered process than staffing yet another commission. So that was roughly the logic behind the set of four items that I picked from the recommendations.

I have a question on your motion. You picked 15% in that 10 for the planning commissions. Yep.

Why? I think that if we allow a menu of options, then we could tolerate a higher threshold was basically it. But if someone wanted to move an amendment, then that would be fine with me.

I do have a question. You used the bullet point, fee in lieu, providing diverse units on site, 5% of residential constructions cost. But I'm not clear, and maybe staff needs to answer this, but Why wouldn't it be the project cost? Because the residential units are really connected to the retail that might be on the first floor as well. So it's the entire project that is connected. So why would we separate out residential cost from the total project cost?

I'd love to answer that. I would say that in our discussions amongst staff and with the Planning Commission, the idea was that it's a residential requirement, so we just stick to the residential uses in the building, assuming it's a mixed-use building. That was it.

I will say when we did the analysis, we didn't, because we looked at it from a residential cost, we didn't look at it from the total. I think that would significantly increase the 5% potentially. So our calculations and our projections would then be more. I don't know, we didn't get a lot of developer feedback, but there seemed to be a sweet spot of the fee in lieu and how much developers might be able to pencil. And so that's just a consideration. If you're including all of the costs, that's going to increase the the total fee, which may not make it, you know, an option for them to do financially. That would be my only concern. And we didn't, because we didn't look at what the commercial part of that is, or our calculations were just the residential units. So.

Well, I would ask that if we do pass this and send it back to you that we get a report that would analyze that in some way, all right? Because I really can't see, you know, the project itself. Even the development of the retail, which, you know, let's just say the first floor of what used to be parking lot number one, was an essential component, but it considered the fact that we had a 55 and older project that was going right over the top of it. And the landmark going behind it. So it was all part of the sort of the consideration. So it isn't just residential cost in these projects. Assuming we haven't, for instance, waived the requirement of the first floor retail, which under certain circumstances we could do so.

Mr. Bartley. Just one other potential, I guess, impact of doing that would be that what we don't want to do is unintentionally disincentivize a broad investment in the ground floor or the commercial uses, which could happen if you were going to base your whole fee on the whole project, not just residential. Although I could see it being the same thing as we're going to try to cheap out on residential to limit your fee in lieu, so we'd want to watch out for that too.

Mr. Whalen. so i'm interested in doing an amendment if this is an appropriate time i don't want to restrict development that is stores and commercial i think the this whole concept is all about residential that's why i think it's good to separate those two and really i think that the planning commission really worked hard on this to align so my amendment is to go back to 10 percent of the residential 10% diverse housing requirement with the 5%. Did you include the 5% total residential construction?

I did, yeah.

I'd like to make an amendment to make that back to the 10 and not the 15. OK. I'm not sure how to word that.

Yeah, so motion by Whalen to change 15% to 10%. Is there a second for that motion? Second. Second by Singh. Any discussion on the amendment? Okay. All those in favor of that amendment, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Okay. That motion carries four votes to one with Meadows in opposition. So the motion is now to change the diverse housing requirement from 25% to 10%. Any further discussion of the motion as amended? Okay, let's do a roll call vote on the motion as amended. council member whalen yes council member meadows no council member singh yes mayor pro tim grigsby yes mayor altman yes okay motion passes uh four votes to one i think we have delivered some direction is that helpful okay uh any anything else on this item i think we've taken care of the public hearing Okay, great. Thank you, everybody who contributed to this and also for all the work that everybody put into the ordinance and the discussions.

This brings us to close the public hearing.

I believe I closed the public hearing. Yep, I think I did. In case I didn't, now close the public hearing. Belt and suspenders, right? Okay, so this brings us to item 5.1, which is now consideration and adoption of ordinance number 1578, amending chapter two, administration. Article 5 Boards and Commissions, Division 6 Human Relations Commission, and Chapter 22 Human Relations, Article 2 Civil Rights. Mr. Young, would you be able to give us a brief overview of what's before us?

As you know, my office as City Attorney was requested to review chapters 2 and 22 of the City Code of Ordinances relating to the City's Human Resources Relations Commission for possible legal issues and conflicts with state and federal law, including the delegation of judicial authority, due process, standards of review, conflicts with other reviewing agencies, and several other tasks. We did that and we extensively reviewed all those issues that were raised and we provided some guidance with regards to that and that is all summarized in the document that was released in your May 26th meeting. Basically the public summary of the issues that were raised. The primary issue that was raised was giving a power that you do not have to another group that should not receive it. And that is the judicial power. What we recognize in the ordinance as written in its current form, uh... provides a judicial power that was provided to a commission within this community uh... that should not have been provided and should not have been received and because of that it runs afoul of uh... some of the issues that are referenced in our summary uh... i think it's very clear as as reference in that summary uh... that judicial power does not rest with either the city council or this uh... commission also uh... it exceeds uh... it exceeds uh... what is recognized to be uh... the type of Activity, decisions, or rulings that should be made by this entity. So that was presented on May 26th. And since that time, there's been some activity with regards to that. But again, the reasons are set forth very clearly in the public summary for the basis for those changes.

I want to welcome Ms. Gopi Patel, who is also with Rosati and has been working with the HRC on this particular ordinance and has attended the meetings. And I want to invite staff or counsel to ask questions of our attorneys. Any questions for our attorneys?

I do have a question.

I'll just ask you to address the issue of excluding city employees and elected officials from the review that the HRC could take.

So what the proposal does in its proposed form, it will no longer recognize an in-house review of an employee from in-house making a complaint as it pertains to that individual through the HRC. So the HRC would not review or make any decisions regarding any individuals that are within the city.

No, I understand. That's the intention.

Why and what is the legal basis for that? Well, one, again, there's an inherent conflict of interest that arises in that if you have an entity that is taking to make a decision about a group. internally, and we also have some obstacles that arise to preclude the investigation from being completed properly. We have individuals within the charter that oversteps the authority of an individual, for instance, the city manager's position to deal with issues with regards to individuals within uh... the community within the uh... shooting within the city as well as other departments within the city including the image resources department to deal with those types of issues so what happens is you have another entity that's coming in there uh... that is uh... making decisions that by charter or by uh... the practice are not It's not part of their task. Another issue you have is you have the existence of union contracts. You have union contracts that preclude individuals from participating in these types of investigations, these types of matters. And because of that, what you'll have is a lacking investigation or an inability to fully investigate some of these issues, quite simply because an individual by contract cannot participate. Is there anything you want to add to that?

No, that's it.

I do have one more question also. It was brought up at the microphone that an individual felt that there's a change by clearly stating that an individual can't be forced to participate. In other words, actually true for the complainant or the respondent, but that the respondent can't be required to attend a meeting or a hearing with regard to the HRC. Was that requirement a change or did the original ordinance provide for a requirement that an individual who is a respondent actually participate in any of the review by the HRC.

Thank you. In the original ordinance, there isn't a requirement for an individual to be required to participate in either hearing or mediation. This ordinance amendment now now supports the idea that mediation is voluntary and we cannot require an individual to participate in any of the proceedings, just like in any other kind of proceedings before any other board or commission in the city. You can't require somebody to participate.

Okay, so there really is no change. It's just a recitation confirming that that's the case. Correct. Is that right? Okay. All right, that's it.

Mr. Wheeler. Thanks, more semantics. People reach, we were talking about HRC, sometimes it's referred to as a human relations commission, sometimes it's a human rights commission. Could you please clarify that? I know it's talking about civil rights.

So when the ordinance was initially passed, the commission was related, was titled Human Relations Commission. And I believe in 2020, the term was amended from Human Relations Commission to Human Rights Commission. So essentially the same commission, just a small little change and any reference to Human Relations Commission is a reference to Human Rights Commission.

So the accurate term is Human Rights Commission.

Correct. I believe the ordinance still states human relations commission as a heading of some kind, but within the body it is a human rights commission.

Thank you.

Good clarity. Mr. Grigsby.

Yeah, I was chairing the commission at the time. And it was a suggestion that I made because we were dealing with issues that involve individuals' rights and advocating for that. And so I thought, we thought that it was more representative to name that commission the Human Rights Commission. I just had a couple of questions. So when the law firm made some of these amendments and adjustments to that, these were compared to other human rights commissions in the state of Michigan, is that correct?

That's correct.

OK. So I guess my first question is, of the other HRC commissions that you observed in these amendments, Do any of them have judicial power to be able to make those decisions within that structure, in that framework?

No. OK. Mr. Young, could I ask you to speak into the microphone?

No. OK. I'll get used to this.

My other question is, In those other frameworks or other commissions that you looked at, when it comes to the complaint process and the referral to MDCR, was that the standard process that they were doing for the complaints or was there other ways that complaints could be processed or reviewed in regards to advocating for their mandate?

Well, there were some commissions that the ordinance permitted the commission to make recommendations to city council. And then there were other handful of commissions that also permitted the commission to refer matters to MDCR.

So just so I understand, so you're saying you observed two different ways or a combination of both where they're making recommendations to counsel, and then the others were MDCR, correct?

Correct.

Okay. One of the things, and I talked to Mr. Joplin about this a little bit, and I just want to understand and have this conversation in public in regards to the definition of review and investigate. And to my understanding, there's a big legal distinction between the two in regards to what investigative process is or who is the investigator in regards to these issues. Can you explain the difference between the two in regards to how it works in this framework?

Let me just turn that on. That is a great question. So the ordinance does make that change, removing the term review, I'm sorry, investigate and replacing it with the term review. When you look at the ordinance amendments as a whole, you'll see that the commission can review, receive complaints, review them, evaluate them based on the information that is presented and hear from both the complainant and the respondent in a public hearing and consider the evidence submitted by both parties. That is a form of investigative fact-finding that the Commission will be enacting in terms of their authority. So while investigate was removed, I believe that there is still an inherent ability to investigate through those confines of the proposed amendment.

So that doesn't help me. So let me ask this then. So in order to be an investigator, is there a requirement for a particular background or expertise in regards to someone who's reviewing it that does not necessarily have to have these? Because what I'm trying to understand why that was taken out and changed.

I believe that it The change fits more into what the Attorney General wrote in his opinion, that these commissions should be advisory, educational, and counseling. They should play those types of roles rather than an enforcement role. So the change, I think, accurately reflects the commission's role in terms of that limited authority under the opinion.

Can I ask a different version of that question, Mayor Pro Tem? So is investigation a term of art?

Yes, I think it has, as evidence here, it focuses on the reviewing aspect to come to the conclusion that's consistent with the law. As Zogopi just talked about, it's the educational counseling and advisory roles. And it takes away, it focuses on that aspect and changing the language to focus there, as opposed to investigation where you come to a conclusion that ultimately is inconsistent with how it's supposed to be. under the law again you're giving it that leans more towards that power that is not within the group that within the scope of services or activity that this group should be handling okay so that's really helpful because now it's because the investigative

title or process is to seek a conclusion that you're saying the HRC does not have per the Attorney General's opinion, correct? Correct.

And it starts going back into that investigative to come to some sort of judicial decision, which again is what is inconsistent with the law as we know it and as we understand where that conclusion would ultimately arise.

Did you have a question in between there? Go ahead, go ahead.

Microphone.

I wanted to touch on timeline, because I know that's been, we've heard concern from the commission in terms of reviewing changes. What was the first conversation that our legal team or, I know you are the counselees on Mayor Pro Tem, if you could give me a timeframe. Was it just late May or was it prior to that?

In terms of when... Any perspective changes. Regarding when the changes started?

The ordinance language. Was it just late May?

I'm not entirely sure.

We discussed this, so we provided advice of this in April, I believe. April. We provided this in April, and we prepared a legal memo, and we had discussions, and we had this presented at the late May meeting, yes.

And just, this is picking up a little bit of a thread on where the mayor pro tem was, but I know I, and we've heard from prior public comment, and we always like to talk about Ann Arbor a lot in this room, unfortunately, unfortunately. So one of the as I understand it and looking at a comparison between the proposed language in Ann Arbor's language is the Ann Arbor's ordinance Does have language that talks about reinstatement of lost wages or other relief deemed appropriate but the ultimately for those recommendations to move forward from staff, because they have an actual human rights director in a department versus a voluntary commission. They have a voluntary commission as well. But the court ultimately has to order those things, those, what would those be called? um i'm sorry i'm word finding issues right now remedies is a great word thank you peanut gallery thank you does that sound familiar that's the difference key distinction between ann arbor and but it's still the courts ultimately have to yes order the remedies right which is very similar to the path that is recommendation because Is counsel a judicial body?

No.

Counsel is not a judicial body. And therefore, we can't extend those powers to the commission, correct?

That's correct.

OK. So I wanted to tease that out because I think there are some key pieces that are different from Ann Arbor as form of government and structure on this versus ours. And I just want to reiterate and for clarity's sake, the Commission can still receive complaints hold public hearings. Correct. Um, speak publicly about it. It's findings. Correct. Correct. Okay. Sorry. I'm seeing nods for the record. Um, now there's no requirement to publish a clear referral pathway. not within the ordinance that would be something that either staff or the commission would have to take upon itself that just for clarity of types of complaints that they receive the how they can help network and provide resources to complainants that's correct that's correct okay those were a couple of mine i don't know if you had more

No, I just, I mean, you know, we've heard a couple different comments and we've had inputs about urgency and, you know, why this now in regards to where it's coming from. And I'm under the understanding that this just comes down to being state law compliant with the ordinance. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think the urgency is with regards to we have to make this compliant with the law as we know it. And we're aware of this issue now. And these changes would make this compliant with the law that we know it as it is and allow us to not be inconsistent with that. I think that is the... That is the primary focus at this point, is that we were provided the task to look at this, and we looked at the law, and we looked at it consistent with the law as we know it, and we researched that, and it is inconsistent with the law that's out there. And therefore, that is why these recommendations, again, are set forth in more detail in the public summary to lay out the issues that are present with the ordinance language as is.

I got another one. I know HRC recently issued an order for remedies regarding a complaint that is also being sought remedies through the federal courts. Does that create conflict potentially? Or who's got precedence? I assume the federal courts, but...

I'm limited how we should answer that question in lieu of pending litigation. But to answer, yes, it causes some conflict. It causes some concerns. It causes some issues. But the extent of that detail is not the appropriate time to engage in that, but it does create concerns.

this it may not be a question for city attorney maybe for the council liaison I would also assume that it potentially could create confusion on where to seek remedy yeah I mean you know I came in after a lot of the stuff was in play in regards to some things that are pending and there was there is a lot of confusion about

what takes precedence as far as the legal authority and what the city's stance is. And you have a commission that is making decisions and doing what they feel is right to then we have a federal pending case that you have professional investigators and civil rights lawyers and things like that who are weighing in on all these different decisions. When I chaired the HRC and we were REALLY FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE AND SOME OF THE DIFFERENT ADVOCACY ISSUES THAT WERE PRESENT WITH USE OF FORCE, TRAFFIC DATA THAT WE WERE LOOKING AT. WE WERE LOOKING AT ARREST RATE. WE WERE LOOKING AT ALL KINDS OF DIFFERENT THINGS. AND IT WAS REALLY DIFFICULT TO BE ABLE TO WORK WITH the city in regards to transparency and data and just really being able to get our heads wrapped around what the facts were and you know that was many years ago and we had a great group of people who were working on those commissions and we were really effectively able to work around a lot of barriers that are put forth in front of us and um I THINK WITH THESE AMENDMENTS AND THE WAY THAT WE HAVE THIS FEDERAL ALLEGATION ALSO JUST REALLY CHANGED EVERYTHING IN REGARDS TO KIND OF HOW AND WHAT WE SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT IN REGARDS TO ADVOCATING. AND SO, YOU KNOW, I'M REALLY SENSITIVE TO THAT. I'M REALLY SENSITIVE TO THE COMMISSION IN REGARDS TO THEM FEELING LIKE THEY have had their steps impeded every single step in regards to what they were doing. They were following the ordinance to what they felt like they had the right to do in regards to the way it was written. And with these revelations of the federal litigation and some of the conflict of interest, according to our city attorneys, IT JUST REALLY MADE IT A VERY CONFUSING PLACE, NOT ONLY FOR THEM, BUT FOR THE COMMUNITY IN REGARDS TO, YOU KNOW, WHO WE LISTEN TO AND THESE ISSUES AND HOW WE CAN CHAMPION FOR A POSITIVE OUTCOME. SO THIS IS REALLY A DIFFICULT thing for me because I do have bias in regards to hopefully having them have all the tools for them to be successful in what they're doing. But when it comes down to complying with state law and working around that, I think that There's room for that. I also feel like this is not a one and done decision. I feel like we still have the opportunity as we move forward to make adjustments to this ordinance and really make sure they have the tools to do what they do best in regards to representing the underserved and the silent people in our community. You know, I looked at the amendments. I struggled with them. I struggled with kind of really with where the commission is and some of the challenges they've been dealing with. And so I just... I JUST THINK WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE HAVE A PROCESS THAT'S LEGAL. WE HAVE A PROCESS THAT HAS THE PEOPLE INVOLVED UNDERSTANDING THE RULES WITHIN THAT FRAMEWORK. Again, I just don't feel like this is the only conversation we're going to have about this ordinance and being able to make it stronger going forward in regards to what we can do in a legal manner. Sorry, that was a little bit long-winded, but I was just thinking out loud as I was talking. Any additional comments?

Is there a motion? Mr. Whelan?

I'll make a motion. I move to adopt ordinance number 1578, amending chapter two, quote, administration article V or five, boards and commissions division number six, human relations commission in chapter number 22, human relations article two, dash, quotes, civil rights period. Motion by Whalen.

Is there a second? I will second that. So motion by Well and second by Altman. Any further discussion?

I do want to talk about it a little bit if I can. Because I look at these potential changes and just so there's apparently I'm not sure everybody knows that I asked for this to be looked at. What I did is when I saw that there was potential for restitution being ordered, I asked that there be a review because it struck me that you can't do that, that that's not something we could authorize, and that that's not something that a Board of Commission, probably in any city, could actually be authorized to do. The state commission, of course, has the statutory authority to do a number of things. And the state legislature does have the authority to grant that kind of power to a board of commission that's created at the state level. They just never have given us the power to do anything like that. All of our power is handed down to us through a state statute, and we're limited to that authority at a city level. But this, to me, this commission is very important, I feel, in the history of this city in a number of ways, because of its date of adoption, the way that the public has supported it. The changes that it has recognized or the councils have recognized that needed to be made to broaden the scope of this ordinance. So I'm supportive of these changes because I believe that they do, they are required by law for us to bring this into conformance with what the state has actually authorized us to do. But I want to mention a couple of things that are in the ordinance itself. Because in the, what I'll call the original ordinance, the chapter two, especially 2.362, which talks about the duties of the commission. There are two things in there. One is to establish procedures to mediate disputes between individuals and it talks further about neighbors and others and it doesn't talk about civil rights disputes, it's disputes period. When I first moved to East Lansing, the city had an ombudsman that worked through the commission to mediate disputes within neighborhoods. When I planted flowers too close to my neighbor's fence, the ombudsman showed up at my house and asked me to move my flowers, which I did. And then it also talks about establishing and implementing procedures as a duty to receive and review complaints alleging a violation of Chapter 22, Article 2, which is what I believe is almost a complete recitation of the Elliot Larson Civil Rights Act, which we incorporated into our ordinances at some point. I seem to remember that I was on the council when we did that. I was surprised when we talked about restitution most recently because I thought I've overlooked that. I don't know why I didn't think of that at the time that that was incorporated. That act was passed in I think the mid 70s and so it was after that point in time that we would have adopted that language. But it also goes on to hold hearings on such complaints, make determinations on referring such complaints for mediation to federal or state administrative agencies or courts, as provided in 2238, which is also amended to reflect that. And then in terms of the procedure, I know that there was a question regarding review or investigate, and you know, I see them as the same thing. Because the authority that's provided to the Commission with regard to its review is pretty broad. It involves offering the respondent and the complainant to provide evidence to the commission. It requires them to hold hearings and invite people to be in there. And like a court, You know, I've had cases where the other party didn't show up and the court ruled in my favor. So the commission has the right to make recommendations based on that. All of the things that are in the Elliot Larson Civil Rights Act that were stated in here are basically retained. But as part of... a conciliation agreement which the Commission will work towards when they have two parties who will participate. And frankly, if there's a party who decides, a respondent in particular, who decides that they're not going to participate, that respondent is referred to either a state or federal agency that has the authority to really do some harm to that individual. So I think that that's a pretty good incentive for people to participate in the commission offerings, which are a little bit less judicial in their nature so because I think that the Commission will still have substantial authority to make a difference in East Lansing I'll be voting in favor of of the motion so mr. Williams you have any comments briefly I think just to make sure the separations of powers the judicial executive

legislative is very, very critical. I also want to recognize the many years of incredible work for the HRC, my good friend Tom Weibert talks about how he really worked very, for many, many years worked with this and it's a really valuable group that we need to continue to value and to listen to. So I appreciate those that have served for the many years and will serve. Any further discussion?

I just, I've been reflecting on two points, as I mentioned earlier on the timeframe. Since I've been on council about two and a half years, two of the commissions I'm liaison to have updated their ordinance. One, the Arts Commission, which took, it felt like a year, but I would need my partner on city staff to confirm that timeframe, but it was a lengthy process. the USC was a much faster process and my staff partner is here was that about three months about three months for that just to give context in terms of timeframe and working on changes I think when I've looked at this and heard from, you know, residents and the public during public comment, I think the statutory pieces in terms of council's powers and this narrower question on, you know, what are we authorized to give to commissions? I think is the one that will be driving my vote on this. And I think also as we've heard and as we've talked about in terms of proximity to the Ann Arbor ordinance and how they function, having the courts drive remedies, but also helping navigate complainants to entities like MDCR, EEOC, or the courts, venues that have subpoena and enforcement power that is not contested within the umbrella of law is why I'll be supporting the changes this evening.

Any further discussion? Okay, I'll call for the vote. Please turn on your mics. Some of our votes don't actually get recorded because people don't have their mics on, so I'll ask everybody to turn their mics on. All right, so the motion is to adopt Ordinance 1578 as presented. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries unanimously and Ordinance 1578 is adopted. That brings us to item 5.2, consideration of proposed ordinance 1567, an amendment to division eight, building height overlay district of the East Lansing zoning ordinance to allow council to approve a building height exceeding 160 feet when doing so is necessitated solely by the use of specific construction materials. including but not limited to mass timber, does not result in additional floors or units and is subject to the review and approval of City Council under the special use procedures of Section 50-94. Mr. Bartley.

Thank you, Landon Bartley, Principal Planner. This ordinance was brought before you for a public hearing at your May 26th meeting and there were no comments. But there was a request from the mayor to add language to require confirmation by the building official that essentially confirms that the construction materials are what are causing the excess height required. So we've added that to the ordinance and tonight we'd look for a vote if you're ready to adopt or deny.

Is there a motion? Can I ask a question first? No. Yes, of course.

Can you think of any other construction materials other than, say, mass timber that this would qualify for?

Not off the top of my head. We tried to leave it open enough that said including but not limited to mass timber to allow for some other materials that aren't contemplated right now. But mass timber was sort of what spurred the discussion, so we started with that.

And in the sort of consideration of this ordinance, should we pass it, the council would be allowed to consider certain whatever construction materials as allowing us to increase the height under these circumstances.

I think if I'm understanding you correctly.

In other words, it's not defined so we can define it during our work. Is that correct?

The applicant would be bringing forward a request to you to approve a height above what would normally be allowed because of some construction material that they are proposing as part of the development. So it would be up to the applicant and their proposal, whatever construction material that might be that's requiring them to have additional height. It might be an estimate or it might be something else.

So we would make that decision at that time. Right.

Yes.

Okay.

We don't have to have a definition of all materials is my question. Oh, I see. No, no. The decision would be based on the project case-by-case basis. Okay.

So I'll go ahead and make a motion. I move that City Council adopt Ordinance 1567, an amendment to Division 8, Building Height Overlay District of the East Lansing Zoning Ordinance to allow Council to approve a building height exceeding 160 feet when doing so is necessitated solely by the use of specific construction materials, including but not limited to mass timber, does not result in additional floors or units, and is subject to the review and approval of City Council under the special use procedures of Section 50-94. That is my motion. Second by Meadows, any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries and 1567 is adopted. Thank you. Item five point, consideration of a request from Evan Williams on behalf of Harbor Bay Ventures for approval of a site plan. for a 12-story mixed-use development consisting of one, two, and three-bedroom dwelling units and ground floor commercial space at 401, 421, and 427 East Grand River Avenue. The property is zoned B3 City Center Commercial Business District. Ms. Wrighton.

Lisa Wrighton, Planning Department. As described, it is a multi-mixed-use development. The zoning district allows for multi-family dwelling units with three or fewer bedrooms per dwelling unit above the first floor, provided that one or more of the principal uses allowed in the district are located on the first floor, up to eight stories. The proposed project does include mass timber construction and targets LEED Gold certification. Mass timber allows for two additional stories by right above eight stories, and lead gold also allows for two additional stories above the eight stories by right, and these incentives apply to the whole building. There is a bonus allotment to allow the applicant to utilize the entire site for impervious coverage. They are meeting that bonus allotment for 100% coverage by providing outdoor dining, which coincides with their two proposed restaurants on the first floor. They also have an amenity space on the first floor. The building does include 296 efficiency, one, two, and three bedroom units with an occupancy of 748 beds for the residential units. The drawings do show the two restaurants and amenity space on the first floor. One of the concerns that was relayed in the memo from the building official related to the exhaust ventilation system plan We did have a meeting on Friday with the applicant to discuss the ventilation system. Additional information was provided to the building official at that time, which seems to satisfy the code requirements. Additional paperwork or documents were presented to staff on that Friday, which has not been reviewed. So there still may be some additional information that came in. from those elements. Um, in addition to that ventilation concerns was a concern related to the turning radius of the fire apparatus to access the alley that also was discussed. And then today we got an, um, I got an email from the fire Marshall that, that appears to have been satisfied. Um, there are, They had been proposing a 42-inch railing for their upper story amenity spaces. And the police department had requested an increased height for safety. And the applicant provided that height to be 48 inches. And the police department would still like there to be a taller option for the safety. The main entrance of the building is off of Charles Street through a residential lobby. There's stairs and a freight elevator. Parking is prohibited in the district and they are not offering any for this project. They do provide adequate bike parking. They have provided lighting information which will need to be finalized at the permitting stage. Landscaping has been met for the minimum requirements for street trees. The site is less than the city's requirement to trigger stormwater requirements because it is less than one acre. However, they have offered to provide an interior stormwater detention and holding area, which will help provide runoff. The calculations were provided by the applicant and routed to the engineering department. Engineering department provided that per the calculations, they'll need to provide 4,961 cubic feet of storage capacity, which will need to be confirmed. They have indicated that they're committed to satisfying the public art requirement, They have added a 56-foot curb cutout on Charles Street adjacent to the building for loading and unloading. This will need Transportation Commission's recommendation, so that'll come in the future. The building official had also indicated some concerns related to their dead end corridors and life safety, which we also discussed on Friday. Those items appear to have been addressed In addition, there is a detailed schedule for construction and staging that are required. They have provided a more detailed schedule, but a staging plan is still necessary. They've provided that the rates for the residential units will range from 1,200 to 2,200 and will adjust based on the market. They provided intended hours of operation, which could fluctuate depending on the businesses that are proposed. As the project is essentially zero setbacks, there are no additional natural elements. There is an item that did pop up in the latest iteration of a five-foot minimum clear sidewalk that is not verified on Grand River, but that's a technical issue that they can correct. The building will be fully sprinkled. The proposal does not exceed the 75% limit of available parking spaces per 50-593 in the development standards, where if in the B3 district, a proposal is gonna exceed 75% of available capacity, then a parking plan would be necessary, but it is not necessary in this instance. The applicant is proposing that 157 parking spaces will be needed for the 748 beds that are proposed for the development. The municipal parking department has indicated that there are 215 that they're willing to provide for monthly rentals. They've raised that to 220 so they can provide for the other development as well. A parking agreement will be necessary. That would be reviewed by the city attorney and approved by city council at a future date. planning commission did recommend approval subject to 30 conditions on May 27th. Um, the DDA had made a recommendation of approval on May 28th. Um, some of the conditions, there were three conditions in the planning commission's recommendation that the applicant did satisfy related to the mechanical screening. Um, and the one moment, the legal description and an unmarked water surface being removed, but then the building department and fire department and mechanical code requirements put three back in. The building officials' concerns, as I said, we discussed them on Friday, so the documents and items that were provided after that meeting were not incorporated into this. I would also like to note that there were the updated plans that were referred to by the applicant today having addressed all of the items were received on June 8th and routed to all of our city departments. i have not received any of the comments back from our city departments related to those comments other than from the building official because we did manage to schedule a meeting there are still items that i'm i'm not i have not reviewed i have not had the opportunity to review that have come in since the writing of this report i'd be happy to try and answer any questions i have

Questions for staff? Council Member Singh?

So the items that you have yet to review, are there four items that were lingering?

Well, they submitted documents on Friday that they asked to be added to the agenda packet, which I believe are in your written communications. I have not had a chance to review that. The other departments within the city, such as engineering, parking, police department, have not reviewed the documents. They may have reviewed them, but they haven't gotten comments back to me from the plans that were received last Monday, a week ago. OK.

Just making sure what's lingering. OK. Sorry.

I could just add one other thing. I'm sorry. So of the 30 conditions, there are about eight or nine that we traditionally have for approvals for site plan related to following the rules, state regulations, building permits, and so forth. They have an additional four related to the LEED certification and mass timber. We've also got two conditions in there. Well, one is for the abandonment of an existing driveway, as well as the lock consolidation. So those 15 or so will continue on through because most of them are standard, and then they're specific to this site that wouldn't be addressed until the end of the project. But the remaining 15 or so could be addressed.

Mr. Meadows? Yeah, just a couple of questions. Did you say 748 residents? Yes. Okay, and how many bedrooms? 240.

Excuse me just a second. 296 units for 748.

And can you just break down the units? How many are one bedroom?

I would have to defer to the applicant. I don't have that information at hand.

OK. So there's one bedrooms, two bedroom, three bedroom?

Efficiency one, two, and three.

OK. And you'd say the parking requirement is 157 spaces?

So they're saying that they would only need 157 spaces based on the calculations that they provide, indicating that they anticipate that their residents would have a 0.2 to 0.3 parking ratio per bed. And so they've calculated that information to indicate that they only feel that they would need 157.

But our ordinance has a different calculation, like one space per one bedroom and half space per efficiency.

It's zero because parking is prohibited in the B3 district.

No, but the B3 district says there's parking that we don't do on site, not that there's not parking.

But they don't meet that requirement of 75%.

So there is a calculation that's in our ordinance. Do we know what that is?

No, they don't meet the 75% of occupant load for parking need, based on 593. So the way that the ordinance is written is, Applications for a building or occupancy permit to construct or expand a building or convert or extend use of a building which would result in an increased parking demand as determined by the standards shall first be submitted as planning a zoning official. If the application would result in an increase of 10 spaces, I'm sorry, of more than 10 spaces within a two year period or would exceed the limit of 75% of available spaces described above, the applicant would submit a parking plan to the planning commission for review at a public hearing. The proposal does not exceed that 75% limit of available spaces.

Okay. But the, I'm asking about the ordinance requirement or provision to calculate the parking spaces. So what would be that calculation based on our ordinance, which sets it out in terms of bedrooms?

We wouldn't calculate that because parking is prohibited.

Okay, I think we're talking about two different things here, but I would like to see that calculation.

Mr. Whalen, did you have?

So there's a lot of things that are not quite cleaned up yet. Is it standard procedure? And I appreciate how hard your office works. You get things at the last minute. So is it allowable within our purview that a building get approved with conditions to meet the needs that you're requiring? So saying there's still things out there that they would have to meet your requirements Do you understand my question?

They would be required to meet the conditions of the ordinance. But again, there are plans that not all of the departments have had a chance to respond to that may or may not impact the information that we have. I just don't know. And then the items that came in on Friday, I have not reviewed. I believe they're related to the building officials concerns, but again, it came at the last minute after the report had been submitted.

The building officials have to be satisfied. Yes. Regardless of our vote. If we vote yes, the building officials still have to say yes.

Yes. They still have to meet the code, the 2021 Michigan building and mechanical codes, the 2015 fire code.

So we say, we say yes on this property. Theoretically we say yes on this property. they still need to meet the other requirements, correct?

They do, and staff has to keep track of those.

And originally, it was going to be four bedrooms, right?

That was what they had proposed, but they removed that.

They removed that. Originally, it was going to be taller.

So the original iteration was for 15 stories. They had requested a variance to the height as well as to allow for four bedrooms. They did not receive those variances. Once that plan was determined to not qualify for their requirements, they came back with this proposal that you have in front of you, which is the 12 stories using LEED Gold certification and mass timber construction incentives to go four stories above the eight by right.

So they adjusted the original proposal based on the situations? It would seem so. Yeah. Thank you. Further questions?

So this is maybe a comment. I think in terms of I just tried to go through email that came in late, plus so the 30 conditions the Planning Commission already approved and the 30 conditions. They approved with the 30 conditions. as well as there's additional like alley with temporary meter loading zone spaces, draft parking agreement for 157 permit spaces.

they they want 157 the parking department has indicated 110 would be available and i would just like to clarify so some of the items that they did get in the conditions for recommendation of approval from the planning commission were satisfied and the ones that are in there from the building official are only because he had the opportunity to look at the plans on six eight that came in so last monday when those plans were updated and reviewed Those were added. We didn't know that those questions hadn't been answered that he had asked before. And so the plans that were updated answered some of those on Friday. It was kind of a moving target.

So what you're saying is some of the 30 conditions were already remedied. We wouldn't have to do conditional approval. Is that what you're saying?

no well the conditions that are proposed in the motion should council be interested in doing a motion of approval includes the building officials comments because again this already includes these it already includes them reading from a separate email right and then there was an email from the fire marshal today indicating that the 30 foot turning radius was remedied but again this is late in the game so it wasn't included in the report

Okay. So let me ask the question a different way of the 30 conditions listed by the planning commission. Some have been taken care of. Others may not have been, but they are a comprehensive list that would cover all worries.

That I know of because I don't know what the engineering department might have to say. I don't know what they haven't already identified. Right. Because there's a new set of plans that they haven't commented on.

Okay.

Mr. Bartley, did you want to say something? I did.

To Council Member Meadows' question, you had been asking about the parking ratios, if there were a parking requirement, and there's not, which is why I think there was a disconnect where Alicia was saying zero. With 98 studio units proposed, 31 bedrooms, 21 two bedrooms, and 147 three bedrooms, If there were a parking requirement, the requirement would be for 503 spaces under our current ordinance as it is. 503. But we prohibit new parking in the downtown district.

Do you have questions? So I have a couple of questions. How many plan sets have they delivered to you at this point?

for this version, I believe it's four. Five if I count Fridays.

So five counting one on Friday, okay. Do we give developers an expectation for turnaround time for plan review?

Our typical plan deadline for a new application is five weeks in advance of the meeting. Because our meetings are so close together, we try and allow for an opportunity for an update, a comprehensive update, In this instance, they provided multiple updates instead of just one, not allowing for the other departments to have full time to review. We don't, after the first deadline submission. There isn't a hard and fast deadline, but we do try and allow for some improvement. If there are very clear corrections that are necessary to allow them to do that, usually the Monday of the week that the reports would be due. But then that doesn't allow the departments, like, Engineering typically needs two weeks to review a plan set to have time to get comments back. I think that falls the same for our environmentalist. Parking, depending on how busy they are, can do it within the week. Building department, I have the benefit of being in the same building, so I can reach him directly. But we don't have a policy in place that says unless anyone wants to add.

I mean, we typically will accept. You have the deadline, the application deadline, which is typically a Wednesday, five weeks before the planning commission, as Alicia said. And then we'll accept, you know, if we have little changes to make to make sure that that application is complete and the invoice has to be paid by the following Monday. So that's about four and a half weeks before the Planning Commission. And then the week that the Planning Commission packet is due or is to be published, so the week right before the Planning Commission meeting, the Monday of that meeting we have to have all our changes in so that we have time to review. And that's been the issue with this one is that we've had a lot of sort of... A lot of rounds of different plans coming in, a lot of versions. Many times, seeking to remedy the issues that we've noticed in Alicia's plan review, it's just been a lot of versions and hard to keep track of what changes are being made with each plan.

And I do have to re-review the entire packet each time, because they could theoretically have, on a electronic version have left off a layer by accident.

How long does that complete review take you?

A single review to get it to council is usually, for me, about 20 hours.

They've dropped four plan sets on you, so that's 80 hours of time. I am very concerned when we're talking about a 12-story building in our downtown and we're characterizing it as a moving target. That concerns me a lot. And so on that basis, I'm going to move to defer decision on a site plan request from Evan Williams on behalf of Harbor Bay Ventures, located at 401, 421, and 427 East Grand River Avenue for a 12-story mixed-use development consisting of one-, two-, and three-bedroom dwelling units and ground floor commercial space to July 21, 2026, because this is a complicated project and staff have not had sufficient time to review the plans. That's my motion. I'll second that.

motion by altman second by grigsby discussion mr well when you look like you're thinking this has been a long term i heard about this building a long long time ago um i did it seem like this The package that was given to you on Friday, it's a pretty significant package, right? Significant changes or?

I didn't review it, I didn't have time. I'm sure that's Monday. But I believe it probably incorporates some of the comments and questions. and answers related to the planning commission comments as well as the building officials comments from our meeting. But I have not reviewed to see what's in there. Just I haven't had time.

Was it new plans or was it answers to the concerns from the past?

I honestly don't know because I haven't had time.

We're probably finished asking the staff.

OK. Further discussion on the motion to defer? Council Member Singh?

Yeah. I've sat at tables on large projects when I worked for the state EDO and Understand how for these large projects their updates, you know significantly complicated challenges that come come around and So I my heart goes out to you in terms of the review and then also I know a constant theme I think since I've been elected in terms of becoming a redevelopment ready community has been an important one because it helps standardize pieces of this and provides clarity for both developers and for staff so I just want to make that point to my colleagues and for those in still with us at 1026 so I just want to give that shout out I think It is challenging with a project this large, feeling comfortable, even though I think I came into this meeting wanting to approve with conditions tonight, but recognizing some of the moving pieces and some of the concerns expressed, at least from this table, it feels like we may need to take more time, so.

Further discussion on the motion to defer? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion, was that an aye? Okay, that motion passes unanimously and that site approval is deferred to July 21st, 2026. That brings us to... Item 5.4 consideration of a request from graduate East Lansing represented by Lee coat for approval of a special use permit located at 133 Evergreen Avenue. The applicant request is to add a private dining area and expand the rooftop deck with alcohol service. Mechanical rooftop screening is also proposed the property is owned B three city center commercial was right and

Alicia Wright and planning department. This project actually originated back in July of 2025 and on July 9th, 2025, the planning commission had made a recommendation of approval for the request to extend their rooftop occupancy for the rooftop deck and lounge to 268 residents. Um, on August 12th, 2025, the, uh, city council had held their public hearing and no action had been taken to, um, make a decision. Um, at that meeting, it had been discussed about concerns related to their, uh, parking valet parking, if you will. And it's a, continued conversation with the applicant they had proposed several iterations of road configuration Leading them back and forth to the Transportation Commission which we will see in a separate application for the plaza conversion as a site plan for five spaces plus an ADA space and they have one cutout space in front of the building, but that will be a future application that you will see and The application before you this evening has been modified to allow for an occupancy of 199 individuals for the existing rooftop deck, indoor, outdoor, and then it includes an extension into the outdoor area. to the east. They provided several iterations of options for seating because they would like the space to be allowed to be used for a fluid such as they might have a boutique wedding or they might have a reception. They might have a sit down luncheon and so the seating area would vary. They did have some items that they provided that exceed the 199 seats. I know that Mr. David did indicate that the items were resolved, but the plans that were submitted yesterday for these revisions, I have not had a chance to review. So they may have been, but again, I have not had a chance to review them. Some of the things that should also be of note is that their proposal, just as a refresher, and some of the members weren't here before, was to expand so they can extend their alcohol service and add a private dining area. To do the private dining area, they were required to add additional lavatories, which they have satisfied the police department had asked for an extended wall height again for their outdoor seating and they've provided glass wall of 54 inches which are reflected in the current drawings that you have the The original special use approval was from May 11th in 2020, which allowed for on-site consumption of alcohol in the rooftop restaurant for 96 patrons. The memorandum of special use provided that seasonal seating for up to 48 persons may be provided on the outdoor, but the overall total could not exceed 96 for the rooftop. Their hours of operation are Vary from 4 to 11 Monday through Thursday 4 to 12 a.m Friday 12 to 12 Saturday and 12 to 10 on Sunday, but the Planning Commission's recommendation did include include Increasing the Sunday closing time of 11 p.m The hotel is a 10 stories 194 guest rooms with a cafe on the first floor the Fire Marshal had concerns that were included in the report related to the distances between doors to determine if the occupancy could be satisfied. I got an email at 520 this evening that says that they have provided that and satisfied that requirement, which I believe is because he had a conversation with the applicant. not sure what additional items are included in the plans that were submitted yesterday. Um, and also the DDA did recommend approval of the 268 requested originally on July 24th of 2025. Um, I think that covers most of it.

Questions for stuff.

Um, just so, cause you know, it's late and I think everyone knows I start slipping. Um, You said there's material on this one as well you haven't had a chance to review.

Correct.

Okay. So, I mean, just to be consistent, I think I support deferring this, but...

I'm gonna go ahead and make a motion to defer decision to move to the, I move to defer decision on a special use permit request from Graduate East Lansing represented by Lee Cote located at 133 Evergreen Avenue to add a private dining area and expand the rooftop deck with alcohol service with increased patron capacity not to exceed 199 persons to July 21st, 2026 because additional information is needed to determine occupancy.

support motion by Altman second by Meadows any further discussion I'm going through this for the first time and I apologize I mean is it I mean is this normal where like I mean we get to this point where we haven't had a chance to look at it because of the way the process is can you help me understand from a beginner's perspective, because I'm like, what the heck?

Typically, there's one set of plans that are traditionally pretty complete when they come in that have satisfied, if it's a special use, their discretionary standards that the city council can use to make a determination. And the applicants usually address those as part of their initial application. This particular project went through several iterations trying to sort through what their occupancy would allow for, the concerns that were expressed at the meeting from City Council last August. So they reevaluated several times what they wanted to do. And in addition, some of the concerns that had been indicated related to the valet situation on Evergreen Avenue. So they were trying to find a solution for that as well. Several rounds of meetings with the applicant they met with the Transportation Commission I've been to the Transportation Commission as well to try and find a solution for that because they kind of go together but they are actually separate and so again the amount of information I typically don't get from, these two projects are the first that I've received these last minute changes that I just haven't had a chance to look. It's unusual.

Okay, thank you.

I appreciate the question. It's the key question, right? It's like, what the heck? Heck, we'll call it heck. Mr. Whelan.

So on the transportation commission, we have had many, many conversations. We went to having it one way. Now we don't want one way. We want two way and six spots. Will that be coming to council?

So the applicant has to submit a site plan application to modify their existing site plan, which was approved in 2018 to allow the plaza to be converted for outdoor seating because it was a approval of the plaza use for outdoor seating. Now they want to take that seating away and make it parking. The requirement triggers the site plan approval process, which will start at the Planning Commission with a public hearing and then come to City Council for a final decision. The application deadline is tomorrow for our July 22nd meeting. And then if the...

So they wouldn't come, even if the other one was finished, they won't come together?

No, they wouldn't necessarily.

Because it kind of seems like they're connected.

They are, but they are distinctly different paths as well because special uses for the alcohol service and the occupancy where the site plan is specifically for the ground. And just for clarification, when it does come, the transportation commission recommendation will be included. It may be provided by the engineering department specifically and we'll give you more detail when that application comes in.

So it's with the site plan for the parking, but it has not, that can't be part of our discussion with the alcohol use.

Can it be part of the discussion?

Because if there's two separate things, it's kind of hard to require someone, but wait a minute, let's solve this problem before we have this problem. Does that make sense? Because I think part of the discussion is, wait a minute, where are these people going to Valley Park and all these one-way, two-way, all these things. I'm afraid that will become part of the discussion. But yet, if we're not discussing it yet, it's kind of maybe unfair for them.

So if it's two different paths under the code, One option would be to, if you get one that comes to you before the other, is you can condition approval on the one on approval on the other. That'd be one way of doing it because I don't know that you can require them to speed up one end to come together with the other so it's before you on the same date. Or you can defer decision on the other when it comes to you to allow for them to be at the same meeting. There's ways to approach it without requiring them following the same path. Because I don't know, because of the way the code requires it, It's just going to happen differently unless you modify it through a motion or conditioning it on approval of the other, if that makes sense.

That does, yeah. I'm just trying to prevent the leapfrog. So it could be conditional on the other being approved. I don't see why not.

It is an option.

Lots of options. Thank you. Further questions?

I have a question.

Because it's a special use permit request, it triggers, one of the standards of review that it triggers is concerns traffic congestion, correct? Yes. Okay. So I would just like to request that the next agenda item packet include a draft motion to deny approval on grounds that the project will increase traffic congestion in the area, which doesn't mean that we have to vote on it. It just means that I may want to make that motion at the time. Any further discussion on the motion to defer? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries unanimously, and that consideration of that item is deferred until July 21st, 2026. Thank you, both of you.

I have a quick question. Yes, please. When we have a motion on it, and we're doing a discussion, it is appropriate Then follow up with asking questions to staff. Is that correct? Of course. Okay. I just want to make sure.

Of course. All right. So we have discussion, open-ended discussion. Then if somebody makes a motion, that is also an opportunity to have more discussion. With staff as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. Yep. Okay. Brings us to item 5.5, consideration of a fiscal year 2026 budget amendment of various funds in the combined amount of.

All right.

$4,789,000. Could you read the number for me, please, Audrey? It's a little late. $4,789,285. There we go. Thank you. Our CFO, Audrey Kincaid.

Good evening, Audrey Kincaid, CFO. This is our final budget amendment for fiscal year 2026. We spent a lot of time talking about the 27 budget, but this is our closeout of fiscal year 26. This is just our standard amendment in June to make sure that we're fully in compliance with our budgeting for the fiscal year. So there's a couple little cleanup items, some tiny little cleanup items. But then the two main things that we are updating are related to income tax. That touches a couple different funds, as we talked about during the budget presentations. We have some carryover dollars from fiscal year 25 that we can allocate to general fund and infrastructure. And then we also have some improved revenue estimates for the income tax fund for fiscal year 26. So we're allocating additional dollars related to those dollars. So again, to general fund for public safety and then MERS in the income tax fund and then infrastructure for local streets. So we amended all of the funds that are receiving those dollars as well, so that kind of duplicates that dollar amount. So when you're seeing the $4 million, that's really kind of doubling up the increase from income tax. And then in the general fund, we're actually doing better this year than we had anticipated because of the BWL settlement. So that also increased our revenues, and then we have reduced expenses. So we have increase of income tax revenue in the general fund, the BWL money, and then some reduced expenses from personnel savings. So one of the things I tried to include in this agenda item was I like to say that we are doing all the cleanup work to make sure our budget is in compliance, but we're not making the budget Exactly where the fiscal year is gonna end because we don't need to amend everything to make it match But I did include a section about fund balance specifically for the general fund so we can kind of document where that big swing is from where we originally budgeted for and then where we think we're gonna end the fiscal year and It's all of those things that we've talked about a couple times during budget was personnel savings deferred capital outlay improved revenue from income tax and BWL settlement

Questions.

Questions for staff. Council Member Singh.

I have just, and I hate to do it this time of night, but it stuck out to me. The crossing guard increased $75,000 for the police department. Do you have background on that?

We did increase their wages this year. They used to be on a tiered scale, and now we just increased everybody because I think we were having a difficult time getting people to come in.

And they were getting yelled at from people driving by.

Yeah, I actually saw someone physically get out of their car and get yelled at. Like a couple weeks ago.

Our old one quit because of that. Okay. Anyway. So, okay. Thank you. We gave them a well-needed pay increase. Yeah. Okay. I'm content with that.

I have one question. So use of fund balance. The original, I'm reading now, the original budget included a planned use of fund balance of approximately $2 million, right? Yes. With current estimates anticipating an addition to fund balance of over $500,000. Is that addition to the consumption or we're actually putting money into the savings account? The latter. Okay. So that's actually good news. Yes. Okay. Huge. Yeah. Huge.

But I will say one of the biggest things is deferred capital. So we're still planning on doing that in a future period. So I will probably, to use accounting terminology, assign it at the end of the fiscal year so it doesn't look like it's in just the free-for-all pot because it's a planned project. It's just out in the future.

That sounds really important. So it's not...

It's not up for grabs. Right.

It's not up for grabs, and we're shifting the expenditures to a later time. Correct. OK. Thank you for that clarification. Any further questions or comments on the budget? OK. I will move approval of FY2026 budget amendments as identified in the attached schedules in the combined amount of $4,789,285. I'm happy to second that. OK. Motion by Altman, second by Grigsby. Any further discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion carries, and that budget amendment is approved. Thank you very much. Okay, that brings us to item 5.6. I will make a motion concerning that which is to enter into closed session to consult with our labor attorney regarding collective bargaining negotiations as allowed under subsection eight sub one sub C of the Michigan Open Meetings Act. That is my motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by Singh. Roll call vote, please.

Councilmember Whalen. Again, first, yes. Council Member Meadows? Yes. Council Member Singh? Yes. Mayor Pro Tem Grigsby? Yes. Mayor Altman?

Yes. That motion carries unanimously, and we are adjourned to closed session. We are back in open session, having been in closed session. Next item on the agenda is adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn? I'll move. Moved by Grigsby, second by Whalen. All those in favor of adjourning, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned. Thank you, everybody.