City Council - Regular Meeting

We're putting all this pressure on Joey.

Right. Pressure for a fast meeting. For pressure for a fast meeting.

I'll call the order of this meeting of the Escanaba City Council, July 16th, 2026. Mr. DeMay, please call the roll.

Council Member Moore. Here. Council Member Beauchamp. Here. Council Member Dubois. Here. Council Member Flanagan.

Here. Mayor Hamill. Here. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

At this time seeking approval and or corrections to the minutes of the regular meeting of July 2nd, 2026. So moved. Support. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. At this time seeking approval and or corrections to the minutes of the special meeting of July 7th, 2026. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. At this time seeking approval and or adjustments to the current agenda as written. So moved. Support. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. At this time, is there any conflict of interest needing to be declared by members of Council pertaining to items on the agenda? Hearing none, we move on to brief public comment. If you wish to make comment pertaining to items on the agenda, please approach the podium, state your name, place of residence, keep your comments to three minutes or less. We currently have no public hearings scheduled. We have no unfinished business on the docket. Moving on to new business item number one, approval resolution number 26-09, State Disaster Contingency Fund Grant Resolution. City Manager.

Administration is seeking City Council approval of resolution number 26-09, naming the city controller as the authorized agent for the State Disaster Relief Grant. This is a requirement for me to be able to submit our reimbursement request for the snowstorm in March.

Move approval.

Support. Discussion?

Mr. Dominguez, please call roll. Council member Moore. Yes. Council member Fogg. Yes. Council member Beauchamp. Yes. Council member Dewart. Yes. Mayor Emile. Yes.

New business item number two, approval resolution number 26-10, a resolution to accept and approve the City of Escanaba master plan as adopted by the Planning Commission. Planning and zoning.

At a regular meeting on July 10th, 2026, the Planning Commission passed Resolution Number 26-04, recommending the adoption of the 2026 City of Escanaba Master Plan as prepared by Beckett and Rader in cooperation with the Planning Commission. Administration is seeking City Council approval of Resolution Number 26-10, a resolution to accept and approve the City of Escanaba Master Plan as adopted by the Planning Commission. And Joey Walker is here to speak on the master plan document.

Good evening, Council. So we could take a lot of time going over this whole master plan, but it has been a very long process, and I'm very excited to get it off of my desk. I was not here at the start of the master plan process, but I was here for the end, which I'm very proud to have been. But as you all know, the master plan is not law. It is not fundamentally changing anything. So this is just the start of our work. I'm just going to go over a few of the guiding principles in the master plan. There are eight total. I'm going to touch on four of them because you're going to be hearing a lot of these from me as we go through changing a lot of our zoning ordinance and actually making some of these concrete changes. So I'm going to point to the map a few times. If you can't see it, I apologize, but I assume you all know the general shape of Escanaba. Starting with the first guiding principle that you're going to be hearing a lot of, support a range of quality housing options with access to public and non-motorized transportation. Everybody knows that we have a housing problem. The country has a housing problem. In Escanaba, it's actually probably not as bad as everywhere else or as we'd like to think. Housing here is still quite affordable, especially when you compare it to the rest of the state. Our average rents are consistently the lowest. That presents a lot of great opportunities for workers and families. But what we don't have is a lot of housing diversity, different types of housing, different options that people who want to live in different ways want to have. What we want to do is promote a lot more infill, things like duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, things that create a little bit more affordability in some of our single family areas. Specifically duplexes I think will fit really well into our single family. Nowadays, when the size of a household has shrunk so much, there's barely any fundamental difference between a duplex and a single family home. You probably have roughly the same amount of people living in those two structures that you would then compared to you would many years back. We also have as our second guiding principle, preserve and enhance connected livable neighborhoods. This touches on the same point and something that our consultants pointed out that I thought was until you move away or until you hear from people who are not from your town about the good things about your town, sometimes you don't appreciate them as much. But one thing that they kept speaking to is how great our grid system on this side of town is. It keeps everything closer together. It makes neighborhoods walkable it makes them easy to explore as a kid I always knew that the streets were numbered and I could find my house could find my friends houses, when I was a kid it also makes it easier to walk to certain services we have South side. a great convenient market that you can walk to within your neighborhood. I live a couple blocks away. I use it all the time. We want to promote more uses like that within our neighborhoods, allow for some light commercial uses in those neighborhoods. That way you have more convenient things located close to you. That grid has been really well planned out in these parts of town, not so much on the west side. It limits us a lot in how much housing we can put over there. It limits us a lot in specific streets for long ways, whereas over on this side of town, it's obviously a lot more dispersed. It's a lot safer to walk on. It's a lot safer for pedestrians. In the master plan, there's actually a map of all of our traffic accidents, including pedestrian-involved accidents, including cyclists-involved accidents. And what you'll notice is while there's quite a bit of activity over here, most of it is very minor because those cars are moving slower. They're more dispersed. This overall is great planning for our town and it has served us very well since the surveyors and planners laid it out however long ago that was. The third guiding principle I wanted to touch on was advanced place-based economic development rooted in Escanaba's unique assets. We have hundreds of millions of dollars in legacy infrastructure, specifically in the place I want to talk about on our North Shore. We have talked about the North Shore for decades. When I was an intern over at the county, I was looking at plans from the 2000s for our North Shore. Nothing has ever advanced there. A lot of them have been for mixed use developments, restaurants, condos, a bunch of service establishments, things like that. And while I think there could be some of that in the future, realistically, We have deep water ports. We have rail infrastructure. We have transmission lines. We have cooling infrastructure from the coal power plant. There is hundreds of millions here that is currently not being tapped into. Jim McNeil and I talked a lot about this before he left, about how we thought it was much more realistic to have an integrated working waterfront along the North Shore. That's something that we want to focus on in the future, using what we have. are very few cities on lake michigan with deep water ports far less than you'd think we have a lot of unique great assets on the north shore that hopefully we can use rather than just creating a boardwalk district um for our for the fourth and final guiding principle i wanted to touch on is strengthen the vitality of commercial districts and corridors We have seen a lot of activity along North Lincoln lately. There's new stores coming in, new developments, a few that I probably can talk about, a few that I can't yet, but a lot of activity. And that's great because we all know North Lincoln and US 2, very busy intersection. We draw a lot of people from outside town passing through. We capture a lot of those dollars. That's great. We're doing great there. Our downtown has historically or recently not done as great. It's harder to draw in those passerbys into the downtown. What we need to do along with our previous points is create more of a captive audience in the downtown. We need to promote density and walkability down here. We need to provide for more types of housing, more opportunities for housing, lift some of the restrictions on the housing that we do have down there, Most of our multifamily C zone, which is supposed to be our densest residential zone, is focused around the downtown. But a lot of these lots are very small still. They haven't been redeveloped. The houses, the single family houses that are there have remained there. It's hard to develop in that zone. It's not as... It's not as easy as it should be to develop an apartment building. I don't think we're going to get a ton of new apartment buildings, but we need to create the opportunities for them to exist and hopefully create more customers for our downtown, people who can walk from their apartment down to the restaurants and bars and retail, people who can use it on any given day of their week because it's a block away. But those are just the guiding principles I wanted to touch on. Things you're going to hear a lot about as we go through our zoning ordinance and make changes. Those are some of the grand ideas that are guiding me as we go through and edit things. That's all I got.

Thank you for all your work and your wonderful ideas. I can't wait.

Did anybody have any questions? Mr. Walker, briefly, how long have you been in this position with the city? A LITTLE OVER A YEAR. OKAY. SO THIS WAS STARTED PRIOR TO YOU COMING, AS YOU MENTIONED. YES. AND THIS IS BASED OFF OF INPUT THAT WE HAVE SOUGHT FROM THE COMMUNITY, CORRECT? CORRECT. SO THIS IS CITIZEN INPUT THAT WE'VE GATHERED FOR WELL OVER A YEAR.

CORRECT. THERE WAS A SURVEY. WE HAD SHRETS AND OBVIOUSLY ALL THE PUBLIC MEETINGS AND PUBLIC HEARINGS. THERE WERE LOTS OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR INPUT. I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO DO EVEN MORE. We were behind schedule when I came on and we're still behind schedule now.

Thank you.

Mr. Beauchamp.

Comment. You know, the city goes through this every four years, I believe.

It's supposed to be five to 10. Will you update it?

I believe I've been through this several times, three perhaps. Anyway, I do commend those that are involved looking at the report. It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort, research. There's a lot of statistics with sources cited. But one thing that always seems to get me is that the takeaways or conclusions seem to be written in a way that are vague in some cases. And I guess that's to allow council when it comes time to make a decision to interpret what the master plan really intended. I could cite examples. I flagged a few, but I guess there's no need to at this point.

Yeah, I think part of that is down to form of master plans. You'll find it in every one in every city. I can't really speak to why exactly that is. I would have to say you're right. It's so that there is some leeway for council to make decisions. It's also as things change. A lot of things in Escanaba could change. The market in this country could change, and suddenly you're just working with different tools. but i i also think it's you're right it's it's leaving that leeway so that council and the planning commission and the citizens can make decisions based on those guiding principles but not necessarily be stuck in one specific path now i guess i'd ask everyone you know residents council alike to keep that in mind you know when interpreting the master plan we do have that leeway

Just on that note, again, your statement in the beginning was that this is not a binding document of directives, correct? Correct. Correct. Thank you, Mr. Walker. Seeking a motion to approve.

I'll move approval.

Support. Got that, Phil? I think so. Further discussion? Mr. Dumei, please call the roll.

That's for Beauchamp. Yes. That's for Moore. Yes. That's for Newborn. Yes. That's for Flath. Yes. Mayor Emmer. Yes.

New business item number three, approval Washington Avenue North Curb Public Works.

Administration is seeking City Council approval to hire Arrow Construction to replace approximately 550 linear feet of curb along Washington Avenue North at a cost not to exceed $14,850. Arrow Construction will be doing the sidewalks and curb for Five Star along Washington Avenue as well. So there wasn't an actual formal quote attached as backup. The contractor actually met the Public Works Director Kent Dubord on site and provided the quote verbally because he was already working in town. And the curb they're looking to replace is curbing that's really beyond repair. You can't tie into it because it's crumbled so severely. Kent is here to answer any questions you might have.

Is Five Star not able to do it? Is that why we're doing Arrow? I know we don't.

Arrow is the subcontractor for Five Star to do the curbing work. Okay, all right.

Motion to approve. Support.

Further discussion on this item?

Mr. May, please call the roll. Council Member Dubois. Yes. Council Member Flah. Yes. Council Member Moore. Yes. Council Member Beauchamp. Yes. Mayor Emmer. Yes.

Number four, city manager employment contract, human resources.

Administration requests that the City Council review the proposed employment agreement negotiated by the hiring committee with Mr. Brian Chapman and consider taking formal action regarding the agreement and the appointment of Mr. Chapman as City Manager for the City of Escanaba contingent upon the successful completion of a background check. So this proposed contract was negotiated earlier this week. After that negotiation, Heather put the changes together. We sent it off to Laura for review. There were several edits and comments that were incorporated into the agreement. Once that addendum went out this morning, there was a minor change as highlighted on the fourth page of the copy that was presented to you guys at the desk tonight. It just added language referencing the Emergency Sick Time Act. So I believe Mr. Chapman did have some correspondence with Heather today about a couple of items in the contract that he was looking to change, so that may require some additional conversation with the committee that negotiated, but there's also a proposed language for approval if you choose to go forward with it tonight that would allow for some of those changes even after the approval if they're non-substantive changes. So that's kind of where we're at there.

the committee felt we should get um mr chapman's tweaks to the contract we felt we should get them to council as soon as possible in case there were any major objections give council time to look at it. I forget, we discussed with Mr. Chapman how soon he could start. You know, do we insert whatever start date? He seemed very flexible in that regard, but if there are other changes that need to be made, do we need to approve it tonight, or should we?

You know, I don't think that council has to approve anything tonight. We could certainly you know, tidy it up with him and bring it back in three weeks at our next regular meeting and approve it then. It won't delay anything. You know, there's still background check that's happening. There will be a physical and a psychological evaluation. Those things, I think, are yet to be scheduled. So, you know, we're probably, you know, four, five, six weeks out before he could start anyway.

If that's counsel's pleasure to wait and see if there are additional changes. We can certainly table this until the next meeting.

I don't think there's any... What we have in front of us, we can approve today. And if he decides he wants to change it, then he's got to come back. You guys can't do it. That's my opinion. So you just want to move forward?

Mm-hmm.

I'll go ahead and make approval of the city manager employment agreement subject to any non-substantive revisions or corrections recommended by the city attorney and contingent upon the successful completion of the background check. Support. Discussion on this item.

Does that work for HR?

Mr. Chapman only had one concern with the employment agreement, what we discussed in the hiring committee, which was on page one, number three, with that probationary period being the one year. So it's up to you guys how you wanna, you know, we could talk to him after and see how to change this. We can also get Laura's advice.

Yeah, I think on that item specifically, Heather and I did discuss this today. It sounded like Mr. Chapman might want three struck completely. I don't know that I would support that myself, only because item number two references how you would remove a manager after one year of service, but nowhere else in this agreement does it reference how you remove somebody prior to one year of service. I think we all understand that it's just gonna be you know, a majority vote of council, but if we're going to address after a year, we should also address in the agreement what happens before a year. That's just my opinion, I guess.

I think we need to keep it as is.

Opinion from our attorney. I was going to say, Laura's on, so.

Sure thing, I agree with keeping it in for two reasons. One, the point that was just made that it needs to be clear what the severance payment situation is if there's termination in less than a year. And obviously hopefully Mr. Chapman will be here for a very long time, but if there were some reason why it was a much shorter term engagement, the city would then be in a position of having to pay severance for someone who wasn't here very long. So ultimately that's a policy question, as drafted, there would not be severance within that first year. If that is your intention and desire, then that language should be in there. And I think while the charter doesn't speak to severance, the charter certainly does recognize the importance of one year with the city manager in terms of it taking more of a vote to remove the city manager after that time.

Let me ask you, I'm gonna just lob this up here for you. BEING THAT MICHIGAN IS AN AT WILL STATE AND THE CITY MANAGER WILL BE AN AT WILL EMPLOYEE, WHETHER WE HAVE THE LANGUAGE THERE OR NOT, NUMBER THREE CAN STILL OCCUR. THAT TERMINATION CAN STILL HAPPEN, CORRECT?

YOU CAN ALWAYS TERMINATE BECAUSE IT'S AT WILL. THE QUESTION IS WHETHER THERE IS SEVERANCE OR NOT. AND WHETHER YOU WANT THERE TO BE SEVERANCE WITHIN THAT FIRST YEAR OR NOT IS ENTIRELY UP TO COUNCIL. But whatever council's pleasure is, we wanna make sure the agreement is very clear.

Thank you.

I go back again. There's he's not starting this month. What's the urgency? To approve this contract now. I think the committee's intent was to get it to Council in case there were any major.

I would consider this a substantive change that's not going to be handled strictly by the committee. We would definitely be bringing this back. So at this point, I would recommend tabling this until we have this worked out. If we approve it, we're going to have to go back and then approve it.

What major change are you saying? Item number three. Yeah. According, we keep it as is. Yeah. So that's why I'm wondering what change you're asking when the change is being requested by.

He's requested to remove that.

Correct. But we're saying we approve as is based off of our recommendation by our attorney. So we're not changing it.

There's no intermediate, some other wording he might propose that we'd be comfortable with? You're insisting that it has to be this paragraph?

Well, I'm basing it off our recommendation by our attorney that if she feels that this should not be removed, it should stay based off what it states as protected for us. Then I don't know what other wording we're going to use to change that unless the attorney. I don't know. I'm listening to what our attorneys tell.

I guess that's right. And my point, to be clear, is it's drafted for no severance pay within the first year. If a majority of you want to offer severance pay in the first year, then you could do that. But assuming that you don't want to do that, then I think you need to leave it in that there's no severance pay in the first year. And for what it's worth, and I think everybody worked very hard to get this together, if there were a little more time, we may be able to clean it up even a little bit more.

Is that what you think?

That's what I'm suggesting. He's not starting this month. There's no need to rush this. Whether the committee or HR needs to talk to him a little more and see if he proposes something else that's a little more...

Okay. Does Council feel like they're going to be inclined to approach this any differently in three weeks time if we change the wording do we still want it to mean the same thing i think that's the hang up here is i don't think council wants to offer anything different than what's written here it's only two sentences it's not a paragraph there's not a lot of language here to to move around it

really just says terminated without severance pay without any severance pay but you know there are other whether you know you want to say well we'll pay your health insurance for the remaining month that you're here or or does that fall under accrued benefits would be according to the terms just thinking because i believe that covers it i mean that's really is

So what that would cover is it would pay out any PTO that he might have in the books. It would not address any insurance. If he, you know, did something egregious in six months and you all chose to dismiss him, he would get paid out his PTO, but his insurance would stop the Saturday after his termination without any additional language. You know, if that was something that council wanted to consider was, you know, offering him a month of insurance after a potential termination after a year, we would need to add that language in here. Because that is not addressed anywhere else.

Have we offered anything like that to any former employee in the past?

No.

And again, it's... Very unlikely scenario. Correct. We try and stress that too. Right.

I'm comfortable with it the way it is. My feeling is most of council still would like to have this in here. This protects the city financially.

Very much so.

And I think that's part of our job. Are you concerned, Mr. Bosho, that things could potentially come up before the month?

No. No, not at all. But I hate to, I guess, slam the door in his face and say take this or leave it.

Well, that's what I'm saying. So you're just trying to keep it open in case he comes with other concerns. There's no urgency.

Adjustments or something. There's still the background check. There's still the medical evaluation and what have you.

I do still have a concern, though, because in that meeting with yourself and myself, we already addressed this item once and changed some of the language. And this was the language that we agreed would be OK. We walked out on Tuesday assuming that we were OK with this language. I'm not sure why it's changed. Bill, do we have, is there support? Yes. We're on discussion? Yeah. Any further discussion on this item?

Please call roll. Council Member Newberg? Yes. Council Member Flod? Yes. Council Member Moore?

Yes.

Council Member Beauchamp?

Yes.

Mayor Emel? Yes.

Moving on to appointments. I'm gonna read off appointments here and note something as well. We'll start with the bottom this time. Zoning Board of Appeals has two alternate vacancies. The Planning Commission has one vacancy. The Housing Commission has two vacancies. And we currently have three vacancies on the newly established Escanaba Tree Advisory Board, which we just put together last meeting. I believe there were a couple of... application sent through email. I don't know if everyone got a chance to look at them. I believe we may want to wait a little bit, given how new the board is, to give more folks the chance to see if that's something they want to get in on.

I agree.

I believe one wasn't a city resident, if I'm not mistaken. The first one we were given, I think, was outside.

For the tree one, I don't remember. I didn't recall it this time.

But certainly I'm willing to wait.

Okay, well, we'll wait a little bit, and because it's new, we will advertise a little bit more. Moving on to Board Commission Committee Reports.

The rec board met on Tuesday. Most of the discussion was about the questionnaire, a recreation questionnaire. They had 500 people that responded. The last time they did this, I think there was 700 and some. So they're looking for more people to respond. It is the first thing that you see when you go to askanava.org. And so they agreed to continue it till the end of August to try to get more participants. So most of the time was spent going over the details of the plan that has been, that is loosely being put together. It's not finalized or anything like that. And then once in the fall, then there will be a public hearing and then people can make suggestions on what they would like to see in the plan. And then it's either it's added or it's not. And then the importance is rated one, two, three. So that has to be done. And then the other, there was a, quite a few people there, I think 12 people that really want pickleball. And so there was a very interesting discussion about the city courts. The courts originally were all tennis courts and Kim at the time decided that to be fair, that all the courts are double marked. In other words, they're marked for tennis and they're marked for pickleball. And so that's seems to be the fair way to do it. And that was how Kim has chosen to do it. And, but the pickleball people would like their own set of courts that are designated specifically for pickleball. So that is to be addressed right now. There's nothing that is planned, but they have, um, they have, uh, there's a spot over at rice park where the boards were for the hockey boards. That would be a good spot for them. Nothing has been planned. I think maybe in the future, Public Works is thinking about it, but right now, there's not a plan. But there's very vocal group of people that really would like to see this happen. So I guess that was basically. Oh, and then the splash pad. That's the big news. The splash pad is open. Kids are enjoying it. They've gotten lots of attendees. The kids are having fun. But it's not without its problems. There's kids riding their bikes through it and breaking the sprinkler heads. And so that has to be addressed. It's not quite finished yet. They have the cement pads poured for the pavilion. But the pavilion is not up, so they're calling it a soft opening. But so far, so good. And with anything like that, there's always issues to deal with. to start out with, and she's dealing with them, but it's a great addition to the city.

The Planning Commission met last week. The master plan was the big thing on the agenda. There was also a site plan for a bank going up on Ludington Street out past Lincoln Road. I think we all know what corner that is, where the old bank was demolished not too long ago.

I have nothing at this time.

Tuesday, I attended the housing commission meeting. The board had some Big discussion as the employees did have a request for the board for a pay increase or salary increase. They wanted a total 10% increase in regards to their pay. Discussion did take place. I'm not sure what decision was made at that point. I did have to leave early while discussion was going and I'm not a voting member. I did give my opinion and I did just remind the board that it is the responsibility of due diligence and responsibility to make sure we are fiscally responsible for the budget in regards to the Housing Commission. At that point, I do not know your decision. In addition, they did pass a 43,000 some dollar cost for a masonry inspection, which takes place on the outside of the Harbor Tower building to look at the masonry Durability on the outside that has not happened for a long period of time. And so that was also approved to get that work done in regards to that.

Nothing this time we'll hear general public comment. If you wish to make comment, please push the podium. State your name place of residence.

Good evening. My name is Dave. I'm the operations manager at Delta landfill. I'm here to discuss the millage that's up for renewal on August 4th. For the last 10 years, Delta County residents have paid .3 mils under taxes to support a recycling program, household hazardous waste, and composting programs at the landfill. The millage is up for renewal on August 4th, and the ballot will be at .297 mils. So for example, and it'll be for another 10 years. For example, a household that has a taxable value of $100,000, they would pay $29.70 a year or $2.50 a month. If it doesn't pass, we will be forced to increase our tipping fees because now we got to somehow support paying for recycling to go to Marquette and our household hazardous waste program, which is pretty costly. We get some grant money for it, but doesn't cover even half of it. So just looking to get info out there. I've got some pamphlets and some, sheets here if you guys are interested. I don't know if you got a place you can put them. We've been doing the recycling program since 1992 and we've kept probably about right around 60,000 tons of recyclables out of the landfill. The household hazardous waste program has been around since 98 and we've kept 540,000 pounds of hazardous waste in the landfill out. So to get rid of a program like that, isn't beneficial, it'll hurt our leachate program and the city water plant isn't gonna be happy with us. So that's the big thing on that. The last five years we've increased through Marquette because all of our recyclables go to Marquette. They have a big automated system that sorts at all. They have increased their cardboard intake. We were just taking just general cardboard. We weren't taking like pop boxes and beer boxes and cereal boxes. We weren't taking those before, but now we are. Our plastics have increased, so we've been able to take more recycling than we did before because of Marquette, what they can handle. Yeah, just trying to get the info out there to get it to vote yes. I mean, if it doesn't pass, I really think if we end up doing the $10 or more on the tipping fees, it's just going to cost the public more than what this millage renewal is going to be. So have any questions about it? All righty. Thank you for your time. Can I leave these somewhere? These are just back sheets about it and then these are pamphlets saying what we take for recycling.

Further public comment at this time? I'm going to announcements. You professors at the fairgrounds. So if you're you for you. Go up there and fest.

Have a good night everyone.

You too.

Thanks.