Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

[Music] Yeah. You said 500 applicants for 82 units. Is that what you said? For eight units. Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. Did she have not received anything? Did she know something that I missed? Not recently. She wasn't able. Oh, yes. You're right. All right. Here we go. I'd like to call to order the East Point Planning Commission special meeting for June 10th, 2025 at 6 PM. Secretary, please call the role. Mrs. Hall Raford here. Mr. Stokes here, Mrs. Moody here, Mr. Sassic here, Miss Yolinsky here, and Chairman D Hunt here. Moving on, can I get a motion for approval of tonight's agenda? So moved. We have a motion. Do we have support? Support. We have motion in support. Secretary, please call the role. Commissioner Sassic, yes. Commissioner Moody, yes. Commissioner Hal Rayford, yes. Commissioner Stokes, yes. Commissioner Yulinsky, yes. And Chairman Dant, yes. Moving on to new business, Mr. Meyers. I'll let you make the introductions if I may. Or should we let Kim do it? I'll do it. Um so we wanted we're very pleased for tonight. Um they have a a very thoughtful short presentation. Um but I wanted TPMA um the consultants that are doing the master plan and the

economic development and placemaking strategy plan together. Um we've had some incredible uh sharing of resources. Um they've already done a large amount of research as you guys will see. So hopefully if you guys maybe the planning commission if you would introduce yourselves first um they can as you can see what they can see and they'll be doing some screen sharing but maybe if you guys introduce yourself and then if you do have questions maybe just mention your name so that they know who they're talking to. All right. And then are we going to see you folks in person at some point? Yep. In September they're coming for a whole series of meetings and yeah when I'll be out of town se September 22nd probably 23rd. No probably you don't have a choice. Tell that to my customers. Okay let's start at the end. Sheila Yolinski, Wanda, Wanda Moody, Mary Hall Raford, John De Hunt, Gary Sassic, Alex Stokes. Well, he can't see me. So, I mean, Richard Albbright, city attorney. Look at him photo bombing. Your turn. Oh, yeah. Very good. Well, very nice to meet you all. Thank Thank you so much for having us uh today. My name is Aaron Finley. Uh I'm the director of housing and community development at TPMA and serving as the project lead for the master plan components of this project. Uh Teresa, I'll hand it to you. Hi, good evening. You all sound like you have a lot of fun over there. Um I'm Teresa Nortillo. I'm the director of economic development for TPMA and I will be uh directing and managing the ED uh strategic plan. So I'll turn that over

to Mariah. Hi, good evening. My name is Mariah Taft and I'm going to be the engagement lead kind of for both of these projects. So excited to um kind of get these efforts aligned and engage with the community there in East Point. Very good. So, who's going to lead us off? Yeah, I'm happy to I'm happy to get us started. Um, I I'm going to try to fight some technology, but I think I've got this working. Can everybody see our slide deck right now? Yes. Somewhere. And will you be providing this deck for public consumption? Sure. We'll be happy to provide the deck. Yeah. When we're uh when we're done today. Not a problem. Good. But everybody can see it. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Wonderful. So, just a real quick start. We already kind of introduced ourselves, so we can move somewhat quickly through some of these first handful of slides. Our uh mission today is to kind of just introduce ourselves, introduce the project, what we're looking to accomplish uh in our uh you know, the coming months. Um and uh as we already talked about, we'll look for the opportunity to be there in person uh in September. I do want to talk just briefly uh of course is uh they would like me to do about TPMA. So we are 35y old consulting firm. We're based in Indianapolis Indiana but we are fully uh remote national firm and we've kind of always existed kind of intersection of economic development, workforce development, program evaluation and uh you know and also community development which is what brings us here today. Um you know I'll keep moving along. Uh we are to introduce the three of us. We do have three other members of the team. Uh our urban planner joining us from our friends over at Arcadus, Connor Wadell and Aaron Brown. You'll have the opportunity presumably as we can plan to

meet with you all regularly to be introduced to them as well. So to get us started, I'll hand it over here to Teresa and Ort to talk about the economic development components. Yes, thank you Erin. So as as you know this is a big piece of the master plan process is the economic development and placemaking strategy and there you'll see the components of the plan. Um just real briefly, we look at what we call quantitative benchmarking data, which is the hard numbers and where we go to uh BLS and census and we get some really hard numbers to look at what is really happening economically on the baseline for East Point. Um and then we look at some community engagement which is the qualitative piece and that's where the holder engagement and the uh placemaking questions start coming around. But in terms of the quantitative, I wanted to address what we feel is probably a bigger uh focus that we're going to be looking at is the retail component that East Point has. And we'll look at voids in the retail market. um and where we can address those voids, how we can address those voids, what the demand for um certain uh products look like, certain retail comp um companies and and and businesses look like. And then we'll put some strategies together on how to attract those retail components. We'll also look at other areas of the land use, maybe some mixed use and small sections of of other commercial corridors and we'll look at

where what businesses might fit there as well. Um and then from the quantitative data points and then the qualitative with the community engagement and the placemaking we are pull together and look at the SWAT um the strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and how that how our data flows into those the SWAT and then from there we'll make some recommendation recommendations based on our findings and implementation strategies. ies and I I want to say that I think what we've found in our client um outcomes that our implementation strategies really are key in um producing a report that doesn't just sit. So we are very mindful of producing and developing some really um uh strategic and um useful implementation strategies for our clients. And that's something we really put a high value on. So those will be in there as well. I don't mean to interrupt for a second, but I just like a little kid passing notes. I had to pass a note to Sheila. The last time we did this, nobody ever talked about any of this when we put our last master plan together. And now I'm hearing things that are kind of making my heart heart hurt from seven years ago. Um TPMA is well aware of the short balls of the past plan. One of the things we're really excited to do and as Teresa kind of mentioned as we think about the economic development strategy, placemaking strategy, but also as the master plan is and we're about to kind of go over our approach to that as well. Um, one of the things that we take pride in quite frankly is, uh, doing everything

we can, even though we are fully remote firm, uh, none of us live there in East Point, but, uh, we really take pride in doing everything we can to understand a very kind of specific quality and character and needs and obstacles and all the kinds of things that are specific to East Point. um because we feel quite frankly that we can't really put together any kinds of meaningful strategies, meaningful plans for you without doing that. And so if uh there was a situation in the past where maybe it didn't feel like there was an attempt to really kind of understand things on the ground, that's really one of the things that we really focus on in our approach to this. Um so thank you uh for for saying that. Hopefully we can uh not make your heart hurt anymore as we move through of our process. So just to look then uh that was the kind of economic development strategic plan and placemaking strategy. Those are some components as we've heard uh a lot of you're very kind of well aware and very interested in economic development. We didn't maybe you know dwell on every single component of of that part of our project here. Uh but we do also have a master plan. There's a lot of components in the master planning process of course that are, you know, mandated by the state of Michigan and we're going to touch on all of those things, but also we have reviewed your existing master plan uh and really uh want to think about how we can understand where East Point was maybe the last time we went through this process, where we are now, where we want to go, and how we're going to get there. And those of course are the components of the master plan which is the document and policy guide designed to help communities create a vision. And that's the really important thing, right? And that's why we're talking to you now. It's why we're going to be there in September. We've got surveys and uh interviews and lots of engagement. Again, Mariah will share with you about that. But really, it's about understanding and helping to create that vision. Understanding, as I

said, where we are now, where we want to go, and how we get there. These are the main main points that you're going to kind of keep hearing those kinds of questions come up in a variety of different ways and wordings and about different subjects. But ultimately, these are the the core questions that we're trying to figure out. What are we going to look like at the end uh you know at the over the time frame of this master plan? What is success look like as well? you'll we'll give you a chance to answer a lot of those questions even here today just as we're getting going uh on our process. So the components of a master plan just as we looked at the economic development strategic plan um we'll look at of course public facilities community services transportation I know there's been a lot of changes uh recently projects under underway thinking about transportation in and around um the East Point area of course economic development which we already heard about infrastructure environment and national natural resources obviously we're going to give a a good data overview of that community profile. We'll look at just a just the the surface level a couple uh data points here today and then really kind of I think importantly one of the major things that we're hearing that is an issue is uh that we want to take a real deep dive and look at is of course land use. Uh obviously we know um the zoning map was recently updated but really just looking at that what I like to call the housing ecosystem right it's not just uh maybe whatever affordable housing or workforce housing but really all of the components of housing understanding that's a big uh area of focus as we think about the master plan we think about the kind of future and how we can uh enable it and enact it in East Point. So with that being said, Mariah, I'd be happy to hand over to you to talk a little bit about our engagement efforts. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so really when we're looking at the the master plan, engagement is a really important part of

that because ultimately we want this master plan to reflect the community's desired direction for the future, right? So how are how are the people who live and love East Point envisioning their community in the future and how and then how do we get there? And that's kind of our job is we can't do that without talking to people. So, a couple of the ways that we're going to do that, um we are going to be doing a community survey, so open to the public. Um we are going we're hoping to launch that uh late August, early September, sometime before we're there in person, so that we can kind of help build some of the um buzz around it while we're there in person. Um we're going to be doing open houses. We'll do two open houses when we are there in person. in September. Those are going to be um open to the community, but again, there's going to be some targeted outreach to make sure that we have some key stakeholders available at those. Uh we're going to be doing some in-person focus groups to make sure that we get um some depth of understanding on some um tricky topics. Uh the two that we're going to be focusing on are housing and land use and then economic development. And again, we will touch on those topics in those open houses. We just want to make sure that we can get um some really focused conversation with those as well. Um also while our team is there in person, we're going to be doing some site visits. So I, you know, we're kind of the audience for that, making sure that we understand um some of the physical places around East Point. Um we'll be following up with some key stakeholders with one-on-one or maybe small group interviews. Those will be some of the subject matter experts. uh for example, maybe transportation or um infrastructure kind of as needed. Um and then looking towards the end, um we're looking in early 2026 for being back on the ground and um having another um check-in towards the end of the process with um stakeholders.

Thank you so much, Mariah. So with that, u we do want to just kind of take a a little bit of uh not a step back necessarily to the old plan, but want to just kind of look at just a very quick overview of a couple data points that we thought uh might be of interest to share with you today. A lot of the data does come from uh the US Census Bureau, the American Community Survey. Um the 2023 numbers are the most recent ones. uh at some point in this process, I think the 2024 uh estimates will come out and and we can kind of take a look at where to incorporate those as well. And then really importantly, and we'll look towards the as we look uh through the data, SEMCOG, I'm sure you're all very familiar with SEMCOG, they do a fantastic job, especially in kind of maintaining and presenting a lot of this data. So, some of the data comes from there as well. So, as we look over the last 13 years, we do see a change in population that is positive. Uh you'll again probably don't want to tell you but there was declining population for quite some time but we're on our way kind of back up 5% growth um over that 13-year period and forecasted growth to continue. So even though kind of landlocked I guess if you want to say there in East Point uh you know we have a lot of the developable land is kind of already spoken for already developed still expecting the possibility of continued growth into the future. This is of course a majority minority district. Again I'm sure you're all well aware. Uh also majority female uh uh area there in East Point as well. Median age 36.4 before relatively young uh actually by comparison to some other markets that we work with. Uh but a couple things that we definitely want to kind of hone in on as we think about economic development, which also of course has that workforce development

component. We're also going to think a little bit about uh uh some wages and household incomes as we look at some of these numbers. But just about 15% of the 25 year and older population has a bachelor's degree. Uh you will see that correlate in a lot of cases with uh higher or you know bachelor's degree correlating with higher wage jobs. And so we want to kind of notice some trends in this and see if there are uh some goals we want to put around maybe uh trying to attract higher income higher wage workforce. Um there has been almost a 30% change in nominal household income, but that's over a 13-year period. So that is growth. There's no doubt about it. Like to see that continue to climb. Uh but you know how that compares the kind of cost of living and and the change of housing costs, which of course is is my kind of uh pet project, I guess, is housing. So we're going to take a look at that here as well. looking at some of the economic development metrics uh things that we're going to look at. Um again, we are seeing a forecasted growth in jobs in the coming years and decades. Uh as Teresa mentioned, at the front end uh we are looking at an industry mix that includes mostly you know uh the highest industry by employment are the retail trades. Of course, you see medical facilities and hospitals as well employing uh you know about 1,200 people there in East Point. Uh leisure and hospitality uh the kind of uh grabbag other services. Uh not much I guess to say quite about that just yet. We'll have to you know kind of pull that open a little bit. But those are the top industries uh by employment. Uh that those are projections for this year of course as the year end numbers aren't

out yet. um looking uh yeah please Teresa jump in you're muted you're muted I just wanted to jump in and say that in our economic development strategy and looking at some of the quantitative data points we'll also look at what we call labor participation rate which really is the key compon or the key data point in terms of um labor and unemployment and that is hovering around 62% which is good but the median income in the jobs are 58,000. So that that's not so good. What what that means in in in summary is that we have a lot of low-end jobs uh lowincome jobs. And so in terms of our our strategic plan, our goal is to um address how do we raise that median income and thus raise the disposable income into the community. So that's one point I wanted to to really hone in on as well. Yeah, absolutely, Teresa. Thank you. Um and you know, some of there's just some interesting statistics that might be worth noting here. We look at this jobs per acre. This is a 2019 number. uh some of these uh the our access to data is lagging in a lot of cases. We do the best we can with the most recent information we have available. This one comes from the Michigan labor market information from the state there. Uh it's 3.14 jobs per acre. Um that is higher than the region and the county the region is just at 1.01. Uh make them county there is at 1.48. So much more kind of jobs per acre than uh you know some of the comps we would look at which is the region the county as a whole. Um the uh unemployment rate is 10 and a half in 2024. Um this is you know in some ways a number we want to pay

attention to. The county's unemployment rate is uh less than half of that. It's at 4.5%. So this is a relatively high unemployment rate. Something we want to pay attention to. Uh and especially in line with a lot of things that Teresa said about kind of looking not just at the jobs but also the kind of jobs. Uh poverty is up. So, in 2010, which was a while ago, we had poverty rate of just about 13%. It's up to 18.2% here. I do want to caution a little bit um about looking at some some of the numbers you're looking at, kind of the vintage, some of the years are are a little bit all over the place. You see 2019, 2024, 2023 can be quite tricky and nuanced to try to compare almost like precoid, I guess, if you will numbers to our current numbers. So, we'll always want to kind of give you an idea about what those numbers are, you know, when what the vintage of them is. Uh, but nonetheless, we are seeing almost one in five uh East Point residents living in poverty as of 2023. Uh, so it's pretty high number. Uh, and again, one of the things that hopefully a master plan can start to hone in on and think about strategies for addressing. Um, so that's a quick look at the numbers and I but we wanted to we didn't just want to completely just talk at you this whole time. So we did want to pause and kind of get a little bit of your response to what you're seeing here and think about what we want a master plan to look at. So Mariah, go ahead. Yeah. So, u figured this would be a good opportunity to u get to know you all and kind of what some of your priorities are going to be. So, one of the first questions we have is just as you're thinking um through like economic development and looking through some of the the brief overview of things that we just shared in the next 15 years, which is kind of what we're going to be one of the chunks of time that we're focusing on in this master plan. what would be your number one goal um in terms of

economic development for East Point? So, in 15 years, what would what's one thing we would hope the master plan could help us accomplish? A social district. A social district, better housing, community place or community district. Community social or unpack that a little bit more. Um, more social like where it's uh walkable, people can go for, you know, to eat or to have beverages kind of like gathering spaces. Um, you know, uh, walkability seems to be the great thing for neighborhoods. Um, I love walkability. Um, I I I think if people can get where they need to go and especially if you're going to earmark on that poverty, a lot of those people don't have cars either. So, uh, you know, transit systems and, um, just places for them to to gather um, socially. Yes, understood. Thank you very much. And good parks, you know, things for for them to do, which we have been working on, which are really coming along very nicely. Um, and people to behave, but we can't control that. But there there is a great example of social districts that do not disrupt the flow of traffic. uh in Bay City, Michigan, you will see that they roll up parts of their curbs and they will take a few parking spaces, but they do not disrupt traffic flow. Uh and it does not appear to create any sort of difficulty where they're able to park on side streets and things of that nature. uh because I know that there's been some discussion of the narrowing of roads and things like that when you can in fact see that certain

communities are able to affect social districts without narrowing roads and taking roads away. And I think in the past too for the social social districts it has been touched upon for the um Kelly road area um like from nine mile to 8 mile that you know that's kind of like a gateway And uh I think there's projects going on working with Detroit and Harper Woods to really revitalize and and and get that, you know, up and running and and make it a great gateway all the way down. So to keep improving on that, um I think is a good thing because people want places to go. They want to have activities to do and they don't always want to travel too far to do it. That brings up a question for me about retail. Um, because we don't have a lot of retail stores uh where people can run out and get closer. I can hear you just fine. Okay. I'm I'm I'm trying to move closer to the microphone. No, it's fine. We can hear you. Um, but you know, just little things um that people need other than groceries. um that makes it easier for everyone to take care of their needs without especially for those who may not have transportation. Um to grab a neighbor and something and go get what they need. But that's important. I know it's important to me because I can't find anything I want without driving outside of Roseville. Actually, another thing that's important in my my and we will yeah part of the uh strategic plan and the quantitative data collection. We'll look at those nodes of

of um retail and what areas do they serve and where is the gap more like a is there a desert somewhere of certain um items or like a grocery store like you mentioned or um some other like pharmacy or something. So, we'll look at those, you know, concentrated retail sections and find out what's missing there and looking at the the trade areas themselves and how do we address those those gaps. As I was mentioning, one of the things that's can be very important here within the city is uh we can see here that the median age is 36.4. So that means that there's young families here that they are more than likely in the childbearing stage. So we need to have some form of recreational facilities within the city that families can bring their young children to when they get to be that age. So that that's very important because you don't want the the young families to have children of well we want them to have children of course but uh we would not want them to just go to the surrounding cities for recreational uh experiences. So that's very important too. Yeah. Absolutely. I think one of the biggest things that crosses my mind is how to draw these businesses in. Um because if we can get them here, I mean there's all kinds of places I'd like to see come in. Like we used to have this great market on Kelly and NMI that you know was always busy. Um but he retired and closed the place. No one's ever replaced it. um drawing in in business I I think is the key to keep moving forward with a lot of things. I would go so far as to say that the

businesses that we draw into this community need to be targeted towards the community at large, not targeted towards certain demographics, not targeted towards one specific thing. You know, when I was a kid, you could go down Grasset and go to a butcher shop. You could go across the street uh and go to the dime store, if anybody remembers what those are anymore. You could go across the street and buy a decent pair of shoes. And we were cutting edge. We had an adult theater down there, too. I mean, if you were old enough, but the little old church ladies ran them out of town. So, you know, but we you've got to be able to, to be clear, we don't want that back. We don't want that back. No. Nor do we want an amusement park. Um, but we need businesses that have the chops and the longevity to sink roots here. Uh, so often you see these small businesses that will pop up for six months and then on the seventh month, the windows are are are butcher blocked and they're gone because they don't have a business plan. They don't know who they're marketing to. they're targeting whatever the demographic is and they're not succeeding. We need businesses that come to the city to talk to everybody and to be successful for everybody. Uh and that's not an easy task right now. Yeah. And one thing we do have a a lot of is um the the uh social halls, the the party places. Um we don't need more of that type of business. We need good traditional foundation growing businesses like an ackets pie. I would love an ackets pie here. Uh any before we kind of move on and look at land use and housing next. We

wanted to give a chance if anybody had anything else to share uh about economic development successes. I don't know if this is appropriate at this time, but also linking back to the businesses, we really need businesses and community residents to take pride in what they're offering to the community. I So many of these businesses come in right now and they let the property fall apart. And in order to be a viable community, you have to be a pleasant appearing community. And a lot of times we don't have that right now and that that mindset has to change in the process. Gotcha. I would I would echo a lot of the same uh comments that the other commissioners made. Specifically the business growth and development is what I'd like to see happen. Wonderful. This this is all really helpful. Uh so thank you so much. Okay. If you're looking for a comparative community to where you are in now, think of the Beach Grove area and the south side of Indianapolis. That's what you're dealing with. You're dealing with great opportunity u but a lot of empty spaces. I guess it's helpful that I know the area a little bit. He he travels if I may, Mr. Chair. U TPMA. You thought there was going to be no, you know, involvement. You You were worried about questions. These guys have opinions. We love them. Well, we wanted to give an opportunity. We didn't want to just be the only ones talking. So, we I'd really appreciate it. Um, so again, get to kind of my my favorite topic, uh, which is just land use and housing. Um this is a really kind of a always fascinating and always

challenging uh subject to talk about. Um but we want to just look a little bit at again a very high level couple little data points that maybe uh and then hear more about kind of your goals in this space. Uh but over 75% almost 80% somewhere in between there of housing built before 1960. probably not a surprise. We understand when the area really kind of was booming and a lot of these homes were being built. Uh the area was growing. But this immediately when I see this is a big number of uh housing that's you know over essentially 60 years old. Uh so we want to think a little bit about the condition of the housing that exists both for sale and for rent. uh and think about, you know, opportunities to uh potentially create an improved quality of a housing stock if that is in fact an issue. Again, we're at the beginning of our process, but also understanding that preserving a lot of um the kind of neighborhood uh character, neighborhood quality, and also the kind of affordability if and where it does exist. We want to make sure we're preserving that as well. Uh we have seen an increase almost 30% of gross rent in the last 10 years. That's a significant number. Uh our median for 2023 for uh the median gross rent is over $1300 a month. Uh and of course as we know the the kind of gross rate there is only a portion of what housing costs are. Uh, and as obviously we'll continue to talk about housing, we can talk a little bit more about all those things that make up our housing costs because it isn't just the mortgage or the rent. Home value has been skyrocketing uh in the last 10 years. In some ways, this is good. Maybe in some ways this is bad. Uh, it's kind of a double-edged sword. At some point, we like to see home

values go up, especially for those of you who maybe already own their homes. But what we don't want to see is it becoming a barrier for opportunities for younger families, for people who have the opportunities to maybe think about home ownership. Uh so we do have a median home value in 2023 uh right around 130,000. Uh we're going to have some access to more recent information than that. My guess is it's going to it's climbed even quite a bit more in the last uh year and a half, two years. uh as well. We do have about 70% owner occupied units there. Um you know, which isn't really up in that danger zone, you know, sometimes, which we see some of those numbers creeping up in the into the 90s. Some people like to see that, but actually that's not great for kind of a good active balance of your housing stock there. Uh but and that is a decrease that has come down a little bit in the last 10 years. Again, let's remember that um you know, quite a bit of our world has changed since 2014. Uh and then percent of vacant units here. In 2014, the vacancy rate was about 10%. So, it's been cut in half in the last 10 years. That is a good thing. We don't want to see a lot of vacant homes around. That's not necessarily good uh for neighborhood character in some cases. There's a lot of things that maybe vacancy can offer. That 5% is not a terrible number and especially as we see that's trending in in a good direction since 2014. So again, uh Mariah, I'll hand it back to you. Yeah. So here we're going to do the same things. I have the same question for you. When it comes to land use and housing, what's a number one goal that we should be trying to accomplish with this master plan in the next 15 years? I have a question first on on the um

increase in medium gross rent and I know that's since 2015. Um does that include section 8? Um this is no. So this would be mark this is market rate. Um, so this is not this I don't believe this would involve or include subsidized rents. Uh, so section 8 vouchers or anything like that. This should be the market rate. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. And my question about the 68.9% owner occupied. Um, is a rental company considered owner occupied or what is the because I know that we have a whole lot of rental people companies not being good neighbors. So, uh, this these are based on units. So, these are owner occupied like how many housing units and what percent of those are owner occupied. So again, according to these estimates and one of the things that we can appreciate is that some of these estimates are not always great uh don't always paint the most accurate picture of communities and that's why you know we lean so heavily into engagement to make sure that we are getting uh hopefully a full accurate idea of what kind of experience there is on the ground. But this according to uh these would be census bureau numbers um here almost 70% of the units have the people who own the units living in them according to these estimates Mr. Chair sound accurate Mr. share if I may. Um so so that you know TPMA has all the GIS data um regarding our infrastructure and our properties but they also combine it was combined with the assessor's information

on PREES um and ownership and and things like that. And of course as you know John Myers is working because we know not all the vacants and rentals are registered so he's still working on that but they do have all of our data. So, it's a work in process. And then I have a question. All the data is Yeah. Go ahead, please. And I have a question about the increase in medium home values. So, in 2007, my house was worth $160,000. Of course, we were also at the at the apex of the bubble. And then two years later, the house next to me sold for 26,000. and I watched my $160,000 house go down to 40some. And I we all knew that it was going to take a long time for property values to come back. Um Yes. And it was this this community specifically was gutted uh more so than any other community in Mcome County. We we bled and bled and bled and a lot of these I'm going to say it. These bottom feeding rental companies swooped in like locusts on a verdant field and picked all these homes off for pennies on the dollar. So I the that number looks impressive, but in in my heart of hearts, I wonder how accurate it truly is if I look back to pre207. Yeah. Again, the home value thing is is tricky, right? And I think that um you know, while there are um

the terrible situation that you kind of that you're speaking to right now. Um, you know, it's a really difficult situation. We know East Point how hard East Point was hit, right? Exactly. And and actually, we don't know quite how hard. It's stories like yours that are going to help us kind of fully get that idea of that information. I think to your point, I think some people see 124% in 121% increase as a really positive thing. And you know, to your point, even in 2015, we're still kind of in a moment of recovery in in a lot of communities uh from the market collapse in, you know, 2008, 2009. Um I that's why I'm almost hesitant to put a number like this on the screen for you today because it's a number without the kind of context and nuance that that again your kind of experience can provide with it. I don't necessarily see this and think, "Oh, this is great." But I also don't necessarily see it and think it's awful. In some communities, a home value increase of this, you know, of this magnitude is really damaging. You know, puts a lot of things out of reach for a lot of members of the community. Here, I think to your point, some of that feels like recovery maybe in some cases. Um, and so, you know, this number, especially in a community like East Point here, has to have a lot of context and nuance with it. And it's a really it's a difficult number just to look at and again just to go back a lot of our data collection which is not just quantitative and the information you're seeing in front of you uh but will be matched with qualitative and that's the really important thing that we want to do um is to try to continue to add a more nuanced a more contextual understanding to what we're seeing here. We're just kind of at the beginning a lot of these processes. So already hearing that kind of reaction is really helpful. Erin, if I can throw two cents into the pot to this afternoon, this

evening. Um, let's give some other This is John Myers. Um, just to give you some numbers in your heads as you're thinking at the 5% of vacant properties, if that number is accurate, that's 735 homes that are vacant in your neighborhood. when you see empty spaces, that's the kind of house number you're thinking of because our population of residential dwellings are somewhere just over 14,000. So, you have to think that's your number you're talking about. Number two, we just dealt with a company that has bought three houses in the community that are in the six the the 1950s and they bought them all between 120 and $131,000. anticipate putting uh $30,000 into it, aka and intentionally or now because they're going to invest their own backdoor, their mortgage payment is $910 and they're going to rent for 1345 and so they're going to hold it as a rental for the next five or seven years to co collect back of what they put into their investment. So part of what Aaron's task is and this team is going to be is help us to sort all these numbers out and help us develop a strong uh residential economic developed program. I mean, in in the master plan for our housing stock, whether that is in vacancies that aren't registered and and I would pretty much overguess that we're we are over 31% uh rental property, which makes that means and it's reason because developers are are finding it very comfortable to buy $140,000 house that's really not marketable to the average income economic household medium of our city. they'll gladly buy it and then rent it out for 5 to 600 more than the mortgage will cover for them and they'll pick up that piece. So,

that's what we have to borrow this team to help us um navigate through as we go forward. But those are some real facts numbers in the last two weeks that we've dealt with on the street. And so, if 5%'s right, that's the kind of numbers you're still looking at. And some of them have been vacant for 10 to 15 years. Yeah, I appreciate that. your comments there, John. And I think that's exactly right. You know, try to like again try to move from a number like this or an estimate like this, try to really like what does that look like, right? What does that feel like kind of on the streets in the neighborhood walking around when we talk about affordability because I think you brought this up briefly. Um I just want to say so we see that the median gross rent we talked about over $1,300 1335 and again my guess is it's it's maybe even gone up since 2023. um the 2023 uh median household income for a renter occupied household. Right? So renters uh the median income for a renting household in 2023 was 43520. Um the one of the things that we can compare that to is this rental number here. So the median renting family is bringing in 43520 based on what we consider to be an affordability threshold. So you know may maybe you already know this but the the target I guess for uh what they call a houseburdened uh household is a household that spends more than 30% of their household income on housing costs. So that 30% threshold is really important. If it goes over 30%. That is when the ability to afford uh transportation uh food, clothing, uh maybe education, some of the other kind of uh necessities of life become

kind of threatened by how much housing is costing. So does everybody kind of follow what I'm saying there? That 30% threshold is what we're looking for for that median household that earned 43520 in 2023. That affordability threshold for all of housing costs, not just rent. So that also might be uh utilities, right? It might also be renters's insurance in this case. All of that uh would be affordable at essentially $1,000, almost $1,100. So the median rent was just rent as only a portion of housing costs was already over $200 more than the median renting household could afford. And again that was in 2023. Uh we are going to pull more recent data to try to get you know an even more accurate picture on the ground today. But, uh, you know, that kind of difference between what families are earning and what families are expected to pay for their housing costs is something that we want to really take a special and close look at for East Point and try to define and put into terms that is hopefully kind of usable, right? What does affordability really mean for East Point? We're going to look at those jobs. Teresa was already talking about kind of average wages. We're going to look at the jobs. We're going to look at housing costs. We're going to look at what families are earning and try to get a sense not only about what affordability means for East Point, but also what's available at an affordable range for these families. It's not just establishing that threshold. What does it look like? what kind of jobs can earn, you know, essentially a comfortable rent, you know, ability to rent comfortably, to live comfortably, but also on top of that, how many units in those areas kind of exist? So even as we think about

maybe trying to attract and bring in the higher earning workforce, we also want to think about what housing exists both as an opportunity to kind of bring families in, but also we want to make sure uh you know that there is affordability across the board and we're trying to focus on making sure that that's attainable for people as well. Mr. Chair, if I may. Yes. Um, one of the not not to speak for John, but one of the issues that we're finding is he is finding is that so many of the rentals are subpar that people are, you know, too many people in a house um just so many conditions that are bad. So, um, you know, we're looking for support. We're we're moving forward to uh propose changes to the ordinances to council um to have better hammers, but we're looking for support from planning. Well, it seems to me this is the prime opportunity for us to make ordinance changes to correspond with future development and what we're doing forward. So, we need to be able to put some tools in the toolbox to affect change now. Absolutely. And to set set the table for the future. And I don't know what everyone's time frame is like. I don't know what your your time frames are like, but if we were to stick to the true meeting of one hour, we have 10 minutes. So, let let me poll my peers here before we I just want to say something real quick, Kim. Piggybacking off of what you just said. So, what I've noticed and kind of I don't know, pay attention to lately because it cracks me up right in a sad way. uh that when you're driving around, you see these houses that um look a hot mess with overgrown lawns and, you know, porches that are deteriorating, but that car in the driveway is shiny. And and I just wonder why people's priorities

I shouldn't say backwards. I you know, you do you, right? But I guess that's what makes me sad that when you put more pride in your vehicle than you do your investment of where you live and yeah I do will ordinance changes take care of that and do we have the manpower to enforce it? Mr. Chair, if I could add to the subject, and Aaron is right about what he's describing, but many of the homes that we're now discovering in the city have been built prior to 1960, probably in the late 40s after the war. They were matchbox design, hurry up, get a lot of people home from the war and get them back into factories uh for building American product lines. And this was a great part of the country to do that in. Um, but in it we've now discovered that his numbers of 13 something for rental are closer to 15 to 17. And many of these homes, and I don't mean that cas cavalier, are are being rented for four bedrooms when by law they're only illegally allowed to be two. And they're taking that stack. So, what Aaron's talking about is right. We have to figure out how to clean up our our houses now while we're waiting for this process to get through so that we can prepare for a more accurate um affordable income affordable housing stock that's in our city at that we have presently. And yes, whether we have the manpower or not, it's still a job we have to do if we're going to take care of the people that want to live in this city. Life, health, and safety. So, are we okay going past 7 o'clock? I'm okay if it Okay. You know, keep keeps it on track and we need to cover everything we need to cover. Mrs. Moody, how do you feel? I'm good. You're good. Miss Rayford, I'm good. I'm good. Okay.

I appreciate that, but I I also promise we're going to move quickly the rest of the way. Okay. Yeah, we got big mouths, so you might think you're going to move quickly, but you do you. Well, I'll do my best and then you know, but uh you're in good company if uh if you're talkers with me in the room. So, let me just say one of the things that when we think about placemaking both uh you know, kind of in in in like the land use and the commercial corridors and the economic development, this is a really big thing. I know that it's been a focus of the city as we've seen just we just kind of pulled two quick examples of of some efforts that have been really focused on kind of public art placemaking as we talked already about kind of walkability right communal spaces gathering spaces when when we looked at the uh survey results from the nine mile corridor plan uh these were the top five desired developments for that uh for that district for that corridor. What I see here is what we've already talked about a little bit. I see uh opportunities for people to be in spaces together supporting local businesses but also kind of having you see parks, we see kind of breweries, maybe nice restaurants, farmers markets. These are places we're hearing people want to have places where they can convene, they can be together, but also have small businesses, right, that are like kind of built there with uh an eye for the community. Uh maybe those business owners would live in the community as well. So I see a lot of the things that we've already kind of talked about when we talked about economic development here also uh in some of the priorities uh that were established during the survey for that as well. Um so I think if it's okay with you Mariah and just in the interest of time maybe because I think we heard quite a bit

about placemaking already I think in some of the answers we've gotten. Um, just want to see Erin, real quickly, we just got a warning on the screen about five minutes. Does your stuff does your teams go over? Okay. Oh. Um, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We shouldn't get kicked off if that's if that's a question. Yeah. It's just it's just telling me to, you know, let's keep it moving. That's what they're trying to tell me here. Um so the other thing that we want to think about we don't want to completely pass over and are going to be parts of a lot of our process here is also transportation and infrastructure and community services uh natural resources and environment um as well. So even though we didn't kind of touch on those here today it was in an interest of of keeping things moving. Uh but those are obviously things. So, what we're also going to want to talk about is what some of those priorities might be moving forward in those spaces as well. And we're going to have an opportunity to do that. So, just really quickly, there is a lot of this data is available on SEMCOG's website. Uh when you get this uh uh slide deck distributed, you could click here or of course you could just go to Sencog uh and if you go to the community explorer map uh or there's just so much data at the at the SAMCOG website. Highly recommend you check take a look at some of that for yourselves. Um, as we released a a press release for this project, we asked a couple of questions um, that I think we want to keep our eye on. And this is just in that in that vein of creating this notion of of vision of a shared vision trying to understand what it is that you as the planning commission, what residents, community members, elected officials think about what is working,

what's so great about East Point. we don't want to put a plan together that kind of, you know, makes significant changes to some of those things that everybody already loves about your community. Um, and these are just some of the questions we we put in front of people. We didn't have a huge response uh to this survey. Uh, but really it was just kind of in a press release. We have a much much larger survey that's going to cover a lot of these bases as Maria kind of already touched about uh on earlier. So, uh, moving forward then we're going to meet again. I think the plan is to meet monthly with this group. Uh, we're going to keep trying to check in. We're not going to take the full hour every time, I hope. Uh, but one of the things that we are going to do, we're we've gone through, we're already kind of digesting the last master plan. One of the things that we're going to work on is we're going to put a worksheet together for you. And we uh, so we're going to give you a little bit of homework. look for an email from us here maybe in the coming days, maybe sometime next week. Uh we're going to kind of start to track some of the goals, some of the strategies that we're seeing in that plan and maybe some of your other plans. And we'd like for you, if you have the time, to kind of go through and work on this worksheet for us, and we're going to try to see how are we doing with some of those goals. uh where are we making the biggest strides where maybe we haven't made the biggest strides are those goals still some of the goals how would we tweak them now that it's been you know a number of years here so uh we are going to send you with some homework after today uh and then um you know we'll look forward to meeting you again next week and that was it look I did my job it's 6:59 right now so I'm just saying and you dropped homework on us. Mr. Chair, if I may, the homework was my request. So, don't blame it on them. Can you do my projections for the next

two years taking in tariffs from China? No. No. Maybe they can help you with that. But um real quick, yes, homework was my idea because you guys, we have been praising all of you as a commission and everything and how dedicated you guys are and how thorough you are with every project that you review. So, so boots. So, um, yes, one of the things we talked about with TPMA was, um, setting up perhaps a special meeting before every regular planning commission meeting. If we could do it at 6 p.m., it would not be as formal. Um, and of course if there are members that can't quite make it, but the goal would be that at 6 p.m. those t uh Thursdays Thursdays Thursdays um that we would um have it have work with TPMA at 6 p.m. if there was something that needed to be voted on or more official. We could then add it to the 7 PM agenda where we would, you know, ensure that we have a quorum and um and have of course Rich here. Um, but that way it would give sort of a work session, enough time for that, a little bit of time for a break, and then we would start at 7. So, we're hoping that uh that would work for this commission, please. I can make that work. No, we're good. I'm good. I I'm definitely good with that idea also. So, I have a request because Sheila and I are the only survivors of the last master plan. the tedious, long, painful meetings, hours, hours and hours. However you approach this, reasonable chunks.

Don't speak over the heads of people because that deck that you're going to provide us. Hopefully the city will be able to get it onto the website and we might have an audience of five or six people somewhere out in the in the darkness like you know Gueria Swanson and Sunset Boulevard, the little people in the dark. You never know. But we we need complete transparency. small chunks of in small chunks uh speak at us like we're idiots. You you know you know the legal ease is wonderful. The planner speak is wonderful. We're average Joe's here. Bottom line is dumb it down. Thank you chair. I you know it's funny you say that because I was just sitting here a moment ago and I was saying my anxiety level just blew off the chart because we are new to this. We are new to this and of course we had the the training with uh Michigan State. However, when it comes down to the real deal, it is very important that in my opinion that everything is addressed in blocks as you stated and speak to us like we are naboose. No, I don't want to say ninkaboose, but yes, we just Exactly. Exactly. Mr. Chair, we will have a a page on the website that is just devoted to this um but also to the groups. What about oldfashioned canvasing? Hey, engagement. You got to engage in in whatever ways people are already there. So, I uh I have thick skin. And then the music in the park. I just want to add that for those who are new to this process. Um there's always a starting point, right? So I would encourage you to

you could call us up on the side if you've got a question or email us and say, "I don't understand this. Please can you can you explain it to me?" Um please don't hesitate. I guess what I what I want to say is we're also here help you learn about this process as well. We're not here just to feed you everything. So, um we're we're we want to come alongside you in this process, not you know, have you have pull pull you with us. So, um if if there's a way we can um help you in the education process and um please just be transparent and honest with us if you feel like we're going too fast or if you need some information that we don't have. Just just give us a holler. We'll we're there to help. TPMA, will you guys please you have all their contact emails. Will you create a group that they can then contact you guys? Yeah, absolutely. We'll follow uh we can follow up with these uh with these slides for you. Send those out an email and then that that we you'll have all of our contact information and we can continue to kind of circulate things uh as we go. I think maybe way to kind of combine maybe some of the things that Kim said and some of the things Teresa said. And this is going to sound cliche, so you'll just bear with me for just a minute. We very very very sincerely mean that we are looking for partners throughout this process. Okay, there are um maybe you've already encountered them, maybe you haven't, but there are, you know, not everybody loves a consultant. Okay, I'm open to that. I hear that. Um and I think part of that reason is maybe that talking over your head, talking

down to you. Maybe it is um you you might have encountered people who show up on day one and then they show up when the report's ready and they hand it to you and you've never heard from them in between and maybe won't hear from them after. That's just kind of not how we want to operate. And so whether that is I used to be an English teacher, okay? So, uh I don't mind a little interruption. somebody say, "Hey, excuse me, Erin. Can you say that again, but like in a way that makes more sense or something like that?" Like, I'm good with that. And I And please, I hope that we earn your trust and earn your interest in partnering with us in this process, helping us to communicate, helping us to build energy around this plan, helping us to get the survey out there and show up to events. uh you know we really really truly feel sincerely that we our success is the only way to measure that is your success. You know we get you a plan that means nothing to you that has that is not implementable that doesn't make sense for your political climate or your resources or your staffing and capacity. Nobody wins that way. like nobody wins and and the last thing I want is you know whatever it is five years from now uh for you and Sheila and maybe hopefully the whole commission is still here if that's where you want to be um to say oh god those last consultants like can we please do better than them that's like that's the last thing that we want so please feel free to be open with us ask us questions and and you know we're going to be very feeling free to do the same to you and hopefully like we could really work together on this. I'll just say last thing. I'm a talker. I'm sorry. But one of the things that's so exciting for us

about this project, about this community, is Kim and Sean and Wanita and all of the excitement and the optimism. And everybody we talked to so far has said, "This is East Point's moment, right? We need to make sure that this is our time, that we don't just kind of blow through this opportunity, and that that's what this master plan is about, should be about is making sure that you know, like we absolutely seize it. And so I think it's absolutely like just really exciting for us. I can't wait for you guys to meet the rest of the team as well. uh because there's a lot of enthusiasm for this project here on our team and and I can't wait to come meet you in person. Erin, I want to ask you a quick question. Um when we first started out tonight, it was four. One, two, it was four questions and I don't know if you would answer this or John, but when we start the process, are we going to do it in stages and are we going to address it according to those questions that he presented earlier like where are we now? Are we going to spend time on because it's four one to four of us here that we have no idea where we are now. So we're going to start out with the where are we now and then we're going to go to the next stage and say where do we want to go so that way everything will eventually you know come together like a a jigsaw puzzle that will make it the process much easier for for some of us. I hold on for a second. I we're all in the same place. We all want one thing. So don't don't think that you're not Oh, I agree. I agree. We're all We all want There's only We're all of our ores and all of our boats are going in the same direction and we're all going to approach this as noviceses because this is a brand new day. It's a clean slate. We're all starting at the exact same place. So just

absolutely, Mr. Chair, if I can. But to answer your question, I love it. Yeah. Yeah. So sorry I didn't sorry we ignore John all the time. I just I just that yes um that's how we are approaching this on both the EDSP and the master plan is where are we now and um we'll give a very clear what we call a benchmark. This is this is where the the line is and where are we going right? So in each step we will ask that question. Okay. Mr. Myers, would you like to make a response? No, not you. Mr. Myers has been waiting. So TPMA learned very early on that one of the rules we have at city hall is if you're trying to leave the building, don't stop by John's office. And they haven't even been here. Mr. Myers, thanks for the setup. Listen, I just want to coach for a minute because that's my teaching mechanism and many of you are new to this process. TPMA are the professors with the expertise background. You need to come to the table thinking you're the student that needs to pass, but you're the student that needs to study and prepare yourself for each of the questions that needs to be answered. And if we stop at where are we going, we've failed the class. We have to get to the next level that says, "How do we get there?" And that's what they're going to help feed us and lead us. You're the students. You don't have to have the answers. You just have to be able to clarify what the question is so that when you have to take the scoring test at the end of the day, you can

answer the question where are we really where are we and how where do we want to go and then how do we get there? So it's not an energy of how do I figure out the answers they already have all the skill sets for us. We now need to be able to make sure that we speak wonderfully for the future of this city and all the generations and all the ethnic groups that are going to live here in the next 15 years. And so excitement is about what you get to learn in the journey of helping your neighbors that you haven't even seen because you live on the other side of town and from the people that need help differently than your side of town. You're the student body that needs to help it and they need to know and you they already know we don't need another zoning map. We need a road map. How do we get to the future and successfully get there? All the good questions and comments you made are the questions that you entered a a class tonight and said, "I have these concerns. How do we answer them?" You'll make it as long as you remember that your students every week, every month when we get here for a half hour earlier to get questions answered in SE that gives you a chance to brainstorm and study and prepare for the answers that need to fix and strengthen this city in the next five years, in the next 10 years, and in the next 15. You'll do well when you remember you're not an idiot. Blooming idiots, you are students that are being invited to accelerate your knowledge, wisdom, experience from a professor that wants to make you succeed. And the only way they succeed is if you've learned how to play and take the test and succeed for the city behind you. You can now drop the mic. Why do I feel like we should be clapping at this point?

Right. Exactly. Well, if it's helpful, I was notoriously easy grader. So, you know, don't need to go there's been enough failure. It's time to succeed. You mean you're not grading on the curve? That's that new math. Oh, no. No. All right. Anything else from you folks? Not I don't think from us. This this this was a joy to get a chance to come talk to you today. Um you can ask him. I I offer. I said, "I'll drive up there if that's what it takes. I'm happy to be there in person." And she said, "Not this time." We'll have a chance to see her just in a couple months. We got We've got a lot of work to do to get ready for that as well. We'll look forward to seeing you all uh next month. And uh you know, similar situation to this, but we we really excited and and so so happy to meet you all and participate in this conversation today. Well, we kindly thank you. Yes. Thank you. And you'll have to pardon us and put up with our humor as we're trying to get through things. That's how we cope. See, if you were here, you could go to the bar tonight with us. We'd be there if we weren't here. We'd be there. And by the way, just so you all know, I'm a Michigander. I grew up in the Grand Rapids area and I have a lot of close friends who who are from the Detroit area. So, love it. I'm glad to be a part of this and and uh be a part of the team in the Michigan area. At least you didn't tell us you were from Ohio. Um that would be Oh, uh oh. Aaron, black out your screen, Aaron. Oh, Lord. Talk about where I'm calling from right now. It's okay. Don't need to get into it. All right. Oh, come on. Inquiring minds want to know.

He's in Columbus, isn't he? I'm here in Dayton, Ohio. I was in Columbus, but I had Erin, you're our favorite. It's time to call this meeting. All right, moving on. Thank you all. Yeah, thank you so much. Really, this was great. Kim, John, will talk to you soon. Let us know if you need anything. And again, we'll get to work on getting that worksheet over to you guys. Get an email from us here uh pretty soon. Thank you. Thanks so much. Be well. Moving on to the hearing of the public. You have three minutes to speak. Be nice. The podium is yours. Does anybody wish to be heard? Does anybody wish to be heard? Please write your name on the sheet of paper that should hopefully be at the Mr. Chair, we need one minute. Okay. Electronically. Hold on for a second. We have technical difficulties. H I don't read this. Reworking. Reworking. Yes. Okay. How about them Tigers? How about then Tigers? You know, I was really a little upset because I have Saturday's game and it was supposed to be Scooble and then um AJ Hinch decided to switch school and Mai's and now I'm sad. Not that I don't like Mai's. Are we good? Okay, you have three minutes. You have three minutes to speak.

Okay. Ah, now you can hear me. First of all, my my apologies. I completely forgot about the meeting. I was just on my way up here um to do my compost and I've been doing yard work all day and I forgot my mask. So, that's why I've got my hand and my shirt covering my I'm in a high-risisk category, so that's why I always have a mask on in public um uh venues. Anyways, so my comments are I saw some of the questions in regards to the survey again. I forgot about that. Sadly, I've gotten to the point if I don't write stuff down, I forget. um where would I want to see or what do I want to see uh happen for East Point 20 years from now? Gosh, you know, wouldn't it be nice if it was uh you know, peaceful um civilized um that we, you know, were were able to attract people with disposable income that um you know, East Point had extremely wellpaying jobs. in fact, not just jobs, but careers. Um, we don't have that right now. And uh, unfortunately, we we have the antithesis. Um, yesterday morning, I was over at 30th District Court as key witness for our city attorney, and we heard the call come in over on the radio, and at first it sounded like it was just somebody having a meltdown in the drive-thru at McDonald's. you know, didn't get their order, was melting down, wouldn't leave. Well, unfortunately, we found out the manager was stabbed to death. This is what we have going on here in East Point. And I've been here 18 years. So, yeah, I bought my house in 2007, and when, you

know, the market and the economy crashed, so did the value of my home. I've also watched my block go to hell in a ham basket. Um, I mean, my block is overrun by renters, bad renters. We Yeah. You know, like you mentioned, you had investors come in and just buy up all the houses like Locust and they could have cared less about who they rented to. And so now you have all these, you know, rental properties. They treat 38th District Court like it's, you know, a revolving door. They have tenants that don't pay their rent and like within two years they've already been evicted four times for non-payment of rent, but they're still there. So, you know, I don't know how East Point is going to be able to turn all this around so that we have a thriving suburb with, you know, we're able to attract people with disposable income. And oh, there we go. Jennifer Nicholas, East Point resident. Um, I'm impressed with this company. They seem like they know what they're doing and asking the right questions and seem like they'll be very helpful for the master plan. I just had two points. One, um, I noticed the slide in there of the nine mile strategic corridor plan and is there any way that that can be removed or redone? I mean that survey was done several years ago. I always felt that it was a little skewed toward

the result that our planning firm wanted us to have. And I feel that this new firm um maybe it would be more helpful to them to not piggyback off of data from several years ago. Let's start fresh with everything. Um, second thing with that survey, that three question survey, I did find it on the city website. Um, I don't know, is there any way to publicize that more? Um, just letting people know that you are working on a master plan. And those three questions on the survey were um were good. I mean, they were very insightful. And I think it would if there's a way to figure out to get that out to more people um either, you know, post it continuously on the city's Facebook page or the residents page or um you know, some way that people are more aware of it or I know you said canvasing, but maybe flying like you said, you know, music in the park or some other events like that. Um you know, with a QR code or something. I don't know. I don't have a smartphone, but I guess that's what people do. But whatever way to get people involved as early as possible just to get more information to help guide this firm um so that everybody's represented and not just a few people. And that's it. Thanks again um for all your hard work. system that is working and not working. Sorry, that was innervoice. Bad John. Moving on to commissioner's comments. We'll start with Mr. Myers. I have nothing for you this evening,

sir. Miss Hullman, nothing. Thank you. Mr. Albbright. Uh, thank you, Chair. I just want to let you know that uh as the commissioners are all aware uh the city council uh denied special land use approval for MPX common citizen uh at uh its meeting back in uh June. Uh the following week on Wednesday, our office was served with a lawsuit from uh MPX Common Citizen. Uh that case uh is currently in litigation. Uh uh Tim Fran's office who handles the uh MMRMA appointments um he's providing the defense. our office is assisting him with that. Uh I'm happy to provide any updates as the case goes through the litigation process. Typically, you know, I I keep uh the city council updated, but as the planning commission had an active role uh in the events leading up to the city council making its decision, I'm happy to provide uh this commission with updates as well as they come in. We only make recommendations. [Laughter] Duly noted, Mr. Stokes. Good seeing you all. I look forward to working with you all on this master plan. Miss Yulinski and laugh. You always put a smile on my face. Wait, you saw boots? Yes. Um I don't have anything work. Well, looking forward to working on this new one. Excited with this group. um they seem to be a a good cheerleader and a a a good fit to really put something in in action. Um and a little more and hopefully it's not as tedious as the last one was. Um I thank you too for all that you do and finding the right people and and always guiding us. Um Lord knows

we need it. Um but yeah, hope everyone's enjoying their summer. Miss Moody. Um, I don't have anything. Nothing today. Thank you, Miss Rafford. I'm just looking forward to getting started. I have a lot of ideas and I will not be quiet. [Laughter] So, I'll let other people talk, but inside voice. I won't. No social media, Mr. Sassic. So, I just would like to uh inform the commission, the planning commission that last night at the parks commission, I did mention to our commissioners that we were going to be moving forward with the five-year master plan and that commissioner D Hunt had reached out to me feeling that um parks and green spaces within the community, whoops, I'm sorry, are a vital part of any good master plan and that We would be coming to them not only because they are commissioners but because they are residents and they live in the various neighborhoods and they can reach out to their comm their resident their neighbors I'm sorry and so hopefully they will also be able to bring some valid ideas and recommendations to us as well and that's all I have tonight. Thank you. Oh chair I'm sorry. May I add something? Yes. John, can I ask do you have an update on auto clinic? I don't have I don't have an official one. We are in the middle of a negotiation with as we speak. So, let me give it to you as soon as it comes in. I'll be glad to email that fact to you. Yeah, just curious only because as you know, they've not listened to one thing and it just continues over there and

more and more cars are on the gravel business. That's correct. So, it's it is now we we've elev elevated it. We're still ticketing them. Every time they park something on the property, we ticket them at least twice a week as of coming this next week. We'll go to three a week uh and identify uh sec next steps with the city attorney as we meet next week. And do we what is going on with that lot on 8 Mile where the old evergreen used to be and they turned it into a grocery store and it burned down and the van that advertises junk cars, you know, that lovely space. Two things are happening with it. It needs to be cut at a reasonable rate. Number two, we'd want to write violations against them for parking junk vehicles on it. But right now, the building department is still working towards getting the rights to residential driver's license of owners of properties. Once we have that, then we can go to the 38th district court aggressively with many property owners that don't have any um code uh any permit requirements. So, right now, if the city doesn't have a permit against you on your on your property, whether it's rental, vacant, or uh a building permit, we don't have your driver's license access. And so, what we're doing right now is working with the city to make sure that we can have access to a legal method of finding someone's driver's license who is in violation to our ordinance, such as this parking lot, and then begin to file against them. Okay. Thank you. Short answer, ordinance changes. We'll get on that. So, cheer, before Go ahead. Go ahead. Before we before I want to use my train of thought here, uh, with reference to

um I'm sorry, I'm out of order. I know. When we were speaking of ways to get the information out to to the residents, I was thinking of a couple of ways that the uh administration may want to consider um being in contact with the neighborhood watch groups. that is a way uh they may want to consider a cost-effective mailing with the the the water bills or something like that or in addition to canvasing like you mentioned earlier it's it's a it's a plethora of ways that we can get the word out besides just um being straight line to social media. So it's just I was just thinking about that when Mr. Sassic says something that we can go with the neighborhood watches and then go to our other uh commissioners and um get those chairs or the other commissioners to get something out there like that. So, there's a number of ways that we can do that. We all should brainstorm uh later today. Wouldn't it be fun if anybody running for office this fall would get those surveys while they're uh out there canvasing for their election? That would be great. that would that I mean it's not a bad idea and we are lucky that they have um um Wanita's counterpart on their team and the two the two ladies are working really well together in putting together a really comprehensive plan for outreach. Yeah, it's great. Okay, I'm sorry. So, I have homework for both of you since you're heaping homework on us. That's right. You can hide behind your piece of paper. Please outline the most significant ordinance changes that need to be affected immediately and let's get on this immediately and whatever we can do to assist to recommend whatever because we don't

make decisions. We just recommend uh whatever we can do to assist the building department to assist city council to give you the tools that you need because all of this is lovely. It means squat if we don't have the enforce forcibility and and the tools. So this is the single most important thing that we can do in this city. um you know the procedural stuff, the site plans and all that. That's all great. This is the single most important thing that we can do. Uh and if we get it right, we're golden. If we screw it up, we have what we have now. Um and you're never going to change hateful people on those vile Facebook groups. You're never going to change um the the negative Nellies, the naysayers, the ones that the sky is always falling. You're never going to change them. But we have to find the people that see the sky for being blue as opposed to being black. We need to find those individuals that are going to be willing to step up. So, if anybody knows anybody that wants to be part of a steering committee that will probably happen in the future, we need to get people on this. The sky is not falling. East Point is not the hell hole that the residents group makes it out to be. There are plenty of people that love living in this city. Are things perfect? Absolutely not. But you name me one community that is absolutely perfect. You will not find that place. Maybe Nirvana, maybe up above, who knows? But on this planet, no place is perfect and you cannot control bad actors. Thank you for letting us know about Common Citizen. Saw that one coming, didn't we?

Oh, yeah, we did. Um, thank you all for everything. I know we said an hour and it's an hour and a half. So, we're done. Can I get a motion to close the meeting? We have a motion, support, and a third. Can somebody tell me who did what, please? So, motion. Yes. And a fourth. We'll say Miss Moody. Motion motion from Miss Moody, seconded by Miss Raford, thirded by Mr. Stokes. Commissioner Moody, yes. Commissioner Hall Rafford, yes. Commissioner Stokes, yes. Commissioner Sassic, yes. Commissioner Yulinsky, yes. And Chairman De Hunt, yes.