Council - Special Meeting

Call to order the Village of Franklin Council special meeting of Tuesday, February 10th, 2026. Uh, let's do the pledge of allegiance

to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Uh, Evan, roll call, please. Here. Here. Here. David here. Jeffrey D here.

Okay. Uh, hopefully those two will be still rolling in. Uh adoption of our agenda. Pretty straightforward. Anybody have any comments? Get a motion to adopt the agenda, please. Motion to adopt the agenda. Second. Motion by Sally, second by Gates. All in favor say I. I. Opposed. Motion carries. Public comment.

Hello. Thank you for having me. My name is Emily Hutcherson and this is Mabel King. We are residents of 32800 Brandingham in Franklin. And I know today's meeting is all about discussing priorities for the plan for the village. And so I just wanted to speak at the public comment to um give a couple of suggestions and um ask that we back any priorities with things like census data and maybe a survey. I know Birmingham, I think, recently did a survey of their community to see what their community priorities are. Um, so I would love to just put a plug in for child-friendly priorities. As you can see, I have two little ones and I know that the city and the village is um be quickly becoming like a a family a a hub for families in the area um as the demographics turn over. So, I'd love to have a discussion on things like splash pads, sidewalks, crosswalks, uh, and ice rinks, stop signs, um, Wi-Fi tables, outdoor dining spaces, public art. I know there's grants available through the DIA for public art. Um, and so many more. I'm happy to join a committee if there's like a family-friendly committee or something like that. Um, so, thank you for consideration.

Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. All right. New business. Uh Rachel, any thoughts on how you want to tackle this? Well, I can explain. You gave us Yeah. If you want to start with the documents you gave us. Exactly.

So, the sheet that is front and back plus one extra page. This is the collection of all of the suggestions that everybody sent to me. So, sorry. Since it's so much, what I thought I'd do is put it into a table and kind of put every all of the ideas in certain buckets where maybe they seem like they could be collected well for you to discuss. Okay. Like that. So, my plan was that you would all just maybe start focus on

column from column and maybe strike things that maybe aren't the best choice for us right now financially or we just can't accomplish it for one reason or another. and narrow this list down to a few reasonable goals that we could accomplish in this next upcoming budget year. Um, can we call out the elephant in the room? Yeah, please. Uh, there's the the money issue which like might affect so many of these. So, pretty much everything

I Yeah. So, I just want to maybe start with what is actually reasonable. Like, we've got our pie in the sky things that we could save for or start allocating funds toward and create a short list, but for the purposes of next financial year, it feels like a stabilization year. Um, so maybe like level setting on near and long-term priorities and making sure that we're being realistic

is where I'd like to see this. There are certain things that we could tackle that are more that don't require a lot of funding. Like one of your ideas was to make sure we put together a great list of policies and procedures and things of that nature. So that's not going to cost us any money. We can do that internally. That's something that we can handle. Um, I would probably have a law firm just take a look at them but not draft them. Um, we can do like internal cleanup things like go through our m municipal code and go ordinance by ordinance and make sure that these things are even still reasonable to require of people or maybe we need to update them, things of that nature. These are all things that we can do internally.

Yeah. Um, they should be done anyway and they don't cost a lot. No. Yeah. I like how you did this. Sorry, Abby. Were you done? Oh, no. Okay. I like how you uh bucketed these because I think if we agree that these five or even we even pick three are priorities then we can make sure that any discussion project or investment we make fits in one of these buckets and if it's outside of these buckets it needs to be put on a future list

because you know It's not necessarily like we have to I think we have to stop focusing on like a single project, you know, and like does it fit into one of these three priorities and if it does, let's not so much focus on the project, but what we have the money to do now. Let's not forget that there is grant funding available. So, that is something that I can research. If there are specific things on here that you really want to focus on this year, I can look for grants to help us cover the cost of those.

And as we've learned, as many grants can be out there, whatever funding is available, if we don't have projects ready to go, you're not going to get not in all cases. Often times when it is a construction project, that is the case. But um there are lots of grants that are available. SMCOG is a grants for infrastructure type stuff. We could definitely use upgrading Wi-Fi, upgrading and for like the ice rink, that type of stuff, right? That's like $5,000 to buy the equipment for the ice rink. So if we had like a $5,000 grant out there, right, we could easily buy the supplies for the ice rink. You know, I can look for something like that. We have a spot. That was like one of the things

that's I guess that's one of the questions when it comes to a lot of these great ideas in with regard to improvements is where where do we put them and to the extent we're again spending money in improving the FCA property is where we you know where are we proposing to put these I think on our property on the village green you're saying behind the library. Yeah. Yeah. Hi, Pam.

Uh, okay. So, do we want to go through each of these lists? What What do we Cuz these these buckets are in and of themselves pretty deep. So, is the idea to pick three buckets to focus on or I I don't think we can do all items in a bucket, right? Well, right. But are there particular buckets we want to focus on or do we want to pick and choose items from various buckets that are the maybe the lowest hanging fruit for the time being? I mean, we could short how about we all short list some things that are important to us and we can identify themes across all of the buckets. Yeah. We're all identifying, you know, if like three of us choose

budget stabilization and addressing current budget challenges, it becomes a priority. Yeah, I like that. And then we determine feasibility. Is it a near-term or a long-term goal? Are there grant opportun Is there a budget um a budget impact? Is there not a budget impact? If there is a budget impact, are there grants available? So, it becomes like when are we doing it? Yeah. Who what do we agree on? When are we doing it? Um and how are we paying for it if that's necessary? Okay. So, maybe take a few minutes to just circle I don't know. Yeah. Oh, that works. What's important to you and then we'll talk about it.

So, you suggesting what's important to us across the board versus a certain number in a certain number needs no certain number though in every bucket. Your top like no more than three needs. Yeah, top three. Top three. That sounds good. They don't have to be in a particular one right now. And also some of these are likely pretty similar.

I was literally going to say the same thing. Like some of these things are could probably be combined. Yeah. So I'm sure like if you upgrade the mean technology, you're going to be able to have remote participation. Right.

Right. Sorry.

Of course you brought a highlighter. I only have this because Gigi stole it out of one of my drawers and I took it from her and threw it in my briefcase. I can't remember today. Usually I feel like now it's like pass to the person on your left.

I'm sorry. It's like pass to the person on your left so they can check your answers. Do you want to like I don't know if you guys want to Oh, there's stuff on the back. Yeah. I'm still list and then maybe write some like notches next to common themes and they become our Can you put this in Adobe and edit it like like you know circle things so you can use like uh oh yeah color coded. Yeah, you can just put next to highlighter. Dan has a pink highlighter in case you want to just

You also have a copy of the um planning goals and community values from the master plan. So now might be a good time to take a look at that and think about how you want to in implement these ideas that the village came up with in their new master plan. I baby done.

Huh? So, what what was the next going through each bucket? Yeah. So, we'll go I'm sorry to go ham on this. Slap my hand. Um, I was thinking we'd go person by person, name our three priorities, and then we in each column. Yes. Yep. Your favorite three in each then. Yeah. Yeah. You ready? No. Start on the other side. Do you want to start, Jeff?

Sure. I will say that I think we need to theme these eventually because a lot of mine I think could I can list another one that I think falls in the similar bucket but I will just for the sake of pro let's go column by column. Yep.

All right. In governance I said basically policies governance and compliance. Um the next one council standards and practices and then meeting flow. Although I think that you know potentially processes and meeting agendas could go together. Where's meeting flow? Uh it sorry it was on the formal agenda meeting. It's right under this one.

Wait. Um, sorry, Evan. I think you should put his initials because um I would give everyone a different color. Oh, okay. Perfect. Okay, you're good. Okay. So, um and then do you want me to list them all? Yeah. Go column by column or go column by column? Yeah. Okay. column by column. Okay. Next one. additional revenue sources. The first uh top one right below it budget stabilization

and then I had the audit and implement this one. The top one seems reasonable plan. Uh incentivize small businesses right below it. Number two and then commercial vacancies on infrastructure. I think that there's a lot on that are similar in this one, whether it's pedestrian lights, parking, or walkability improvements. So, I'll call it the walkability improvements because I think that covers a number of things. Um, crosswalks at 13 mile and then the pathway project. complete approved bathroom project.

I think it's on the next Oh, no. It's the third down. Never mind. Don't listen to me. Right. Bel. Yeah, there you go. Is the approved pathway project? What? What is that? Which pathway project are there? There's only one which is what Irving. Is that what you meant? I was just trying to say like walkability. Like they seem my theme is improved connectivity. So maybe it's already as far as that third one. We're still in the running for that money from Rashida. From Yeah, from Rashida. It's it it's at it's the Senate, I think. So, my main theme is just connectivity.

Yeah, got it. And it's in a couple places. So, yeah, connectivity in general because Yeah, I mean, three of these are connectivity. And then on the last one, um, seasonal programming, gathering spaces, which I think is also the third, and then back. Make sure it didn't uh the creative use of underutilized spaces. I know it's necessarily not ours, but I think thinking about partnerships is important.

Good. Yep. Anything else?

Um for the first column, governance, uh remote participation in village meetings. Um, two userfriendly automated tools for information engagement. Oh, actually no, sorry. Complant tracking tool and data driven decision- making. And then three, um, policies, governance, and compliance, which to me includes like agenda, flow, read, pre-ereading, all that. maybe like highlight a portion of it in a different color. Oh, you did. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Same color.

Uh the second bucket, um, budget stabilization and addressing current budget challenges, audit and implement internal financial controls. And then my third is seek additional revenue sources or the first one

budget stabilization uh audit implement internal financial controls. Yeah. Oh, not the analytical one. Not deep dive analy. So I had the same ones as him. Not the third down. Yeah. Um for the economic vitality first is identify barriers to new business. modern family-friendly gathering places and then revitalize, retain, and incentivize small businesses or recruit retain. Sorry, I said revitalize instead of incentivize. Um fourth column, walkability improvements, tutor easement, mile 13 mile sidewalk, pedestrian lights, parking. I mean, it's all the same thing. And then um safety for walkers, families, all generations. Then the last one, um, improve everyday community spaces, seasonal programming, and create a cultural recreation. This

is my question. and government services hub. By hub, to me, it's like a tool. Is that what it meant? Like a hub where you can find cultural, recreational, and government services. Yeah. Is this like that was my word? Oh, okay. And what I meant was a geographically identified place where those things happen. Oh, I thought activities that are similar would probably go in that that zone or that space. Okay. Sorry, not that then. I thought by hub you meant like a sign or an interactive like tool. Um, so people could find all that. Um, common space improvements.

Oh, so that's not a that's not for which Yeah, I was thinking hub like a a platform or Yeah, like a platform like a hub. Got it. Okay. Not like a physical hub, more of a technological hub. Got it. Which I mean it's important both. But so which ones were used, Angelina? Improve every day. Improve everyday community spaces, gathering spaces, seasonal programming, seasonal programming, and then uh common space improvement. So all the same thing basically. Okay. I can I I think improve everyday spaces and the one that I listed is Okay. Then just highlight you don't have to highlight that one though. Is that what you were saying? I was saying the one above uh not

there's three that are similar. Improve everyday community spaces, gathering spaces, and then the last one, common space. Right. I think those are all agree the same thing pretty much. So, okay. So then I'll use my last one for the um a wreck plan with Oakland County.

Okay. Um let's see. Um I would like to um under governance I would like uh the last one modernized community engagement tools. I would like a uh complaint driven complaint tracking tool and data driven decision making. and I would like um upgrade meeting technology. The second column I would like additional re revenue sources the first one budget stabilization the second one and I would like um I'm going to say address budgetary issues generally on v vitality I'm going to say a village plan a village center plan um that's going to encompass a lot but Um I would like to uh recruit, retain and incentivize small businesses. And the third one is this is next fiscal year. So the scope of this is 2000 July July 1 through June 30th. Is that the scope?

Yeah. All right. Then I then I want to put staff the main street director position on the infrastructure. I would like to um uh walkability improvements. Um which one best describes where we want to go with 13 mile road? Um the tutor easement or uh multi-use path planning on 13. Let's do that one. Basically, we need to finish. We need to do 13 mile. Make some progress there. I don't care which one you pick. Hey, Evan. I think Pam's second one was recruit, retain, and incentivize small businesses, right under Yeah, she had the top three. Oh, am I going too fast? I'm sorry.

He had No, one of them was like kept on highlighting and un highlighting for him. So, he got stuck on your first one. Downtown and economic vitality. That's why you heard us laughing. The second one from the top. Recruit retain. Recruit retain. Recruit retain. That was the one that gave me trouble, too. Yeah. the top three under downtown. Okay. On the list. Okay. And then infrastructure. Did you get that one for me? I only got one of those for you or the other two. Um I said walkability improvements.

And then I asked the question, which one is the strongest one to support 13 mile? Um, so I pick tutor easement and then I then um I'm going to say multi-use p multiuse path planning connect connectivity projects in general and on community uh spaces I'm going to make a pitch for a recreational plan that will allow a lot of other things to happen. um create the hub and I would like to um do seasonal programming. No, never mind. Common space improvements.

And you wanted the first one too, right? The first one was a wreck plan. Okay, sure. Uh okay. So two items. First of all, uh the first item in governance communication address severe roading. No one said it. That's not a goal. It's a absolutely has to be done. Find the get get a cost. We just allocated $20,000 or $30,000 for for special projects. Our employees cannot be working in a building where the rodents are getting into their food. So it's not even a goal. It's just do it. Yeah, I agree with that.

Can I ask a question? Don't we get money for those like mosquito things? Can we use them towards rodent? This is like a sick five or going to be a couple thousand. We get like a grant for those things. That's like $400. Do you want to just borrow my chihuahua? I wrote cat next to it. Getting cat. I did write cat on the paper. It is actually very serious. Is the mess still on the floor upstairs? Yep. If you want to take a look at something that happened last night, go on upstairs and just take a look at the floor. Is that why you want to come back downstairs? Don't waste one of your three on that. I'm not wasting. I'm telling you it's not a goal. I'm telling you it's just do it. Just get it done. Seems reasonable. Okay.

All right. So, my my goals in column one are all on the back page. uh improve village email communications, complaint tracking tool and datadriven decision making and modernized community engagement tools and grant identification. In the second group, uh the first one seek additional revenue sources for the police. The second one, budget stabil stabilization. And the third one, deep dive review to cost savings. And then in the third column, uh the second one, recruit, retain, and incentivize small businesses. Identify barriers to new businesses entering vacant spaces and develop incentives or streamline processes for business attraction. And then in the third one, again, I'm not sure what that top one is as far as a goal. That's more of a can you just tell us what how how much it would cost and what its main purpose is and see if it's something we could identify because I don't really see that as a goal. What the develop the plan

by? No, a PD drone request. I mean, what's the purpose of the drone? If it's, you know, something we can get a grant for or it has a real purpose other than I mean, I thought it was for like that. Sure. Yeah. I'm still trying to understand what that was for.

Um, so I was approached by the cable board um because I had mentioned I think in 2024 in our annual report that that was something we were going to do. I had a resident that gave us a uh drone. So, we were going to send uh some of our officers uh to get the certification required. So, they were very excited about it um until we found out that the drone didn't work. And obviously, I don't want to use general fund money or taxpayer money for a drone that we're probably going to only use four or five times a year for major events for, you know, if there's children lost or someone walks away from our memory care center in Bingham Farms. Um, but the cable board said that they were willing to purchase uh a high-tech drone for us as well as for them. It would be a partnership, a shared service that we would keep at our police department. Obviously, they could use it whenever they wanted to and we would be able to use it for the events for Overwatch and things like that. So, I kind of thought it was a winwinwin. Um, but some trustees have talked to me a little bit about maybe that money could be used for something else that you would rather do and I'm fine with that as well. I just need some direction on uh because we're supposed to go in front of the cable commission in March. The cost of the drone is uh it's it's consistent with what all the other departments around us have. It's about $30,000 and the cost to the police department will just be for the training and the certification. Uh so I'll answer some of your questions.

Is there an ongoing cost for um like subscription or services or anything beyond the cost of the drone for like server data or etc? No, the only additional cost and we could I'll talk to the cable commission on how they want to do it. If we had to get more additional batteries um if we had to get more rotors somewhere down the road. Um, we have a pretty healthy forfeite fund, so I probably could supplement it with that. Okay, cool.

So, yeah, I just wanted to I I speak to or I spoke with chief on this one um in particular, and I don't have any uh in I wanted to speak on the tradeoffs of the drone verse one of the other things that I support. Um, so what I was saying is that I don't inherently have any issue with um seeking funds for the drone. Um, but I want to be mindful of the potential offset that if we get a $30,000 grant for a drone and then we turn around and we want enhanced uh upgrade to meeting technology such as a smartboard, we would go to the cable board for that. And so they're not going to turn around and they there is a probability or propensity that they could turn around and say, "Well, you're asking for an additional 30,000 after we just gave you 30,000 for a drone." So, I think while we shouldn't knock either of them off, I think we need to decide the priority of what we want to see funding for.

Okay. Um, I know we just purchased those two cameras, correct? And and it seems like there's not a lot of, you know, children walking away in Franklin. Um, could we keep my inclination is keeping the drone on like a future list but seeing how those work and then if the money is this like a grant that has a time frame like why did they approach you now and ask if you wanted a drone? Uh, I know that Rachel had talked to Carrie at one point and then Rick David got involved and they agreed that it was a good idea.

Okay. Um that was before I heard that there might be other priorities. Okay. Yeah, because um Okay. I wasn't sure if like the drones were running a sale or something and they were like, "Okay, so what what's happening?" Let me just $30,000. Get our 2005 edition. The future The future of drone technology is very similar to where we are with cameras now. There's cameras all over Oakland County, all over the state of Michigan. That's going to continue. Drone technology is the next thing. Um, we will never by ourselves have first responder drones like they have at Dearbornne or Canton or Sterling Heights where the drones are launching off the buildings

and they're the first ones on scene. Now, we may partner with Bloomfield Township or the county at some point down the road after well after I retire, I think, um, to to do that because I think it's valuable. I think it's an officer safety issue. It gives you that, you know, 200 foot view of what's going on. And I'm not saying that we're doing that now. This is just something that I thought, well, if they're going to they want to buy us a state of the art drone, I'm all for it.

Yeah. Okay. So, yeah. I mean, to me, it's like an enhancement, but not something that our residents feel is lacking in our police or law enforcement. Like, I definitely feel like yesterday with like the fact that we couldn't have a closed meeting without it leaking outside and like the fact that, you know, people can't like there's other cable board I think priorities for the meeting. But I agree with you like it's the future and so I feel like in 2 years we may be like the only you know municipality without a drone and at that point we may be like yeah we need to get one.

There's no doubt that we have great relationships with the the departments around us. If I need a drone they're going to bring me a drone. It's just something where I'm trying to engage my officers also to give them something else to do besides drive around 12 hours in a car in circles is that they they can they can learn they can operate the drone. They're going to train on it and that's another reason for them to be here. Now, this is more of a want than a need. Okay. We're going to survive without it. Yeah. Okay. Yes.

I was also speaking with the chief about the drum and uh had a reaction somewhere between the two of you um Angelina and David. Um so, so what I I'm I'm I'm generally not in favor of purchasing a drone because it's a great idea. chief knows this. Um we are and he also knows that I'm very supportive of the PD. So that's off the table. My question is really for us. Um I don't understand the money flow from cable to the cable board back to the village. I don't understand how we wrap that money back into our planning and budgeting process and how we use that money. I don't know if it's it's whipped cream on top of a sundae or it's the actual becomes part of what we use to operate this village. My mindset right now is unless something isn't going to help us remain solvent through the next fiscal year, I'm not interested in it. We can put it on the deferred list. That's my that is my mindset. So that's driving my comments as much as anything. It really Yeah, that's it. So,

could I throw out throw out a uh maybe a suggestion that we defer this uh later down the road and see where we land? Um if you want to ask for something else from the cable commission, they want to give it to you instead of the drone. I'm okay with that. I I have a question. Sure.

And I haven't gotten an answer if we've looked into other sources outside of Exfinity. We cannot stream a live meeting. That's ridiculous. It's embarrassing. It's functionally impossible. And any of these upgrades of live remote meetings and anything remotely of the sort isn't even going to be in the equation until we can get fast enough Wi-Fi speed to allow that machine to be live stream. So, we have Xfinity. It sucks. They've told us it's going to be a significant amount of money to upgrade to their um fiber optic, but there is AT&T fiber optic. I'd like to inquire into whether that is available to us. It should be on Wellington or 13 Mile Road or Franklin Road, I'm guessing from what I've understood in communications with them. So again, as far as if the cable board is offering money out, although I didn't get this as an offering $30,000, it was do you want a drone? We wouldn't mind having a drone, too. So since we were going to buy a drone, we'll share it with you. To me, that shouldn't be eating up our $30,000 types request, but I wouldn't want to know that before we made that deal. But if it was a, you know, a a co-de with them and they're just going to store it here because we were the lucky, you know, the lucky the lucky winners, that's fine. But the biggest issue right now is we we can't even live stream. That's bad. So, um, anything else on this subject? So, we'll get back to where All right. So, thank you, Chief.

You're welcome. All right. So, I was on the fourth column. Uh, mine are actually the second, third, and fourth. Storm water project phase two complete approved pathway project walkability improvements. I mean again when it had the word sidewalks in there so to me that's that one and the 13 milei sidewalk are the same. That's the sidewalk. We only have one sidewalk that we can do. Uh yeah.

So that's it. Um community space is the last column. Uh the first one develop a recreation plan. Uh the fourth one seasonal programming and then the bottom one there gathering spaces. David, what was your last choice in infrastructure? He's got in the top three. Yeah, he's doing like the circle. Three circles. Storm water completed walkability. Okay. Oh, he gets he's getting creative. Oh, and I got the pen out, too. That was it for me. Thanks. Wait till Aby's turn.

All right. So, beginning with the governance column, I've got the policies, governance, compliance, and then on the next page, the single village calendar, and then the complaint tracking tool. Okay. And then my next choices are pretty easy. It's the top three. First three ones. There you go. And then you can make another one over the the first three in the next column too, please. Trying to make this easy for you, Evan. Okay. And then moving on, I have walkability improvements. uh the crosswalk on 13 and then the general safety. The final column I have the recreation plan.

Okay. Seasonal programming and then common improvements. What is what's Abby getting? Oh, let's see. He's going to freehand Abby. We're gonna get blue circles. All right. Do I get like a screen saver when you click on it?

I think you're going to get a smudge. um policies, governance and compliance. Oh yeah, good. Um modernize community engagement tools and grant identification. Next page, last one. Last one. And remote participation in village meetings, but I think um upgrade meeting technology. I'll go with that one instead because I think it's more pretty much all the same. Yeah.

Upgrade meeting technology. Um second one uh two three and four. Uh downtown economic vital vitality. Um identify barriers to new businesses. Um the one right underneath it, develop incentives. And then modern family-friendly gathering places and chats. And then um walkability um safety for walkers and I mean it's all walkability, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I So I think walkability kind of captures everything. I'll leave it at that. Um and then in the last one um creative use of underutilized spac spaces second page. Yeah. Um seasonal programming and gathering spaces. The one under it. I'll say Dave, it's uh cat for the first one.

That's right. That's just a solution. That's not That's right. That's not a goal. That's a solution. Cat. Get a cat.

Uh so in the first column, uh my number one is policies, governance, and compliance. My number two is upgrade meeting technology. And my three is complaint tracking tool and datadriven decision making. And the next column uh budget stabilization and addressing current budget challenges. Uh my two is deep dive analytical review to identify cost-saving opportunities. And then my three is to explore diversified revenue streams. Period. Yeah. I don't I don't know that.

Yeah, I I would have loved to have stopped it there as well. So, I am clarifying that mine stops there because again um and specifically in that one again I think there's more revenue options than what we're currently taking advantage of. Um next column for downtown economic vitality, modern familyfriendly gathering places and shops. Two, identify barriers to new businesses entering vacant spaces. And I think that one can even be again I'm not to amend it but um entering the village rather than just vacant spaces. Sure.

Uh three develop incentives or streamline processes for business attraction for infrastructure and connectivity. Um, one, Explorer lowering the speed on 13 mile, two, walkability improvement, and then I think that really just covers it. Um, and then community spaces, recreation for quality of life. One, gathering spaces with Wi-Fi, seating, chessboards, pop-up installations. The bottom one on that page.

Yeah. Two, creative uses of underutilized spaces. Three, seasonal programming. Though for me, seasonal programming is more long-term than a near-term. Okay. Excellent. Uh, all right. Let's take a look at it. Let's go column by column. I was Can we Can we delete the ones that no one selected so we can try to get all the ones that were selected on one page? If you could do that, that'd be good. Probably just a redaction. Yeah. Use the redaction feature

and that way we're not ignoring anything. Um before just a process question before you do that. Um it seems to me that there's some opportunities for some consolidation here. we've all talked about. We'll do that as we go column by column for sure. Okay. But but before we delete anything, well, she was deleting suggest one that nobody and nobody commented on it. But that's what you're saying. They could become part of something else. Yeah. Yeah. Like the communications plan was kind of a big deal in 25 last year and there it was had a big reach that covered some of the concerns that people were talking about tonight. So we can take it out, but

maybe it becomes like a sub item. Is that your point? Yeah, work product could be a communications plan. But I think Yeah, but I think that the communication plans, to your point, it had a lot in it. But I think what we've done here is narrow down what type of communications are priority to us. I'm fine. You know what I mean? So that way instead of going back through the whole plan, which is like social media and all of that. I mean, we flashed the second page so we can see if what kind of overlap we have on page two in that column. So, and there's a lot in complaint tracking. I think we need to move it to one page. One, two, three, four, five. And the bottom one has three,

four, I think. All right. So I on the second page, it looks like complaint tracking is definitely one in our group and and that's already in that's already underway with community connect. So that's just getting that. But I don't think I we've done a real I'm gonna be really honest here. We've done a really poor job of talking about it and making everybody aware. Like I haven't been updated and none of us have. They're working on it. The point is it isn't there is

hang on. We still need to understand what's going on. like raise your hand if you confidently if you've ever seen the tool or functionally know what it's doing and what the village is doing with it at this table and if the answer is one two three of us that's a problem um the is that a homegrown app is that like a is someone developing that here well Mark Hanky has has been developing it

could is there a offtheshelf product we can just buy and Well, he's developing it. So, he's developing it and we're a pilot group. So, that's what I'm saying is like I just like yes, it's happening. Yes, it's underway, but no, we don't have any visibility into it. We can't let Okay, no problem. It was a comment off the it was just a it was a comment. So, it's irrelevant. We're going and identifying our collective goals. So, that item is a collective goal. How we get to that is irrelevant at this point then. Okay. Does that make everyone feel better? Complaint tracking tool and data driven decision making is one of the items that we've identified.

So we've got three checks on this second one. What's on the first page again? Policies, governance, and five. That one's that one's definitely got five. Can you put numbers next to them? I think just can't we just hear them like policies has five like put the priorities at the top that we've all agreed. So like complaint or someone just take a clean one and circle the three that we've identified. Poor Evan. Sorry, bud. What do you guys Okay. Sorry. Can you insert a number just so that we can focus? Yeah. So if you um there should be ability to put like a one, a two, a three,

maybe in the row across the top or next to the item or you can freehand it. Can I use your pink highlighter? I don't have any highlighting on mine, so I'm going to do it. Policy and compliance upgrade me. Oh, what was the second one on the back page? It's on the back. Modernized engagement tools. It's got three complaint tracking was the one on the back, right? So, complaint tracking identified and then there's a tie between modernized community engagement tools and what was it? It's tied with uh it's tied with upgrade main technology. I mean, isn't that sort of Well, it's not. No, I feel like so well I think I think modern what was the second one? Modernized community engagement tools and grant identification.

I think we have a clear one and two. So three and four are tied. All right. I'm going to I'm going to highlight the meeting technology because that seems more immediate. So, do you want to just can you save this version and then we'll just and in complete tracking and community engagement might also again be sort of similar in that we're trying to get feedback from residents and have a means of I mean I think if we have a tie for three and four it's fine keep three and four yeah like have four priorities clear and votes. Yep. Okay. Okay. So this next group go to the second page. Is it just the top three?

It's the top three. Yeah, it's the top three. That's the second. Well, no, there's the the bottom. The fourth one has four people and the third one has four. The third one has five, right? One audit and implement internal financial controls. And then audit has four, too. Okay. Because mine is like just dark. Audit has four. Yeah, I mean audit and implement internal financial controls is also these are like the same things. Yeah. So let's just do one, two, three, four. Yeah. The budget the budget challenges are the fact that we need to implement internal financial controls.

Want to keep going. Uh two two is four. Two, five. What's that? What if there's only one on the second? Oh, there's two on the second page. That's three. That's probably not a good number. Two, five, and four. I think that one has four, right? Or no, three. Uh, identify barriers to new business or did we already say that one? That has five. So, then there's a tie again. Does does barriers have five? It has four. Recruit, retain, and incentivize small businesses has five. Yeah. So, you want two four? Which one?

No, two and five. And then there's a three-way tie between develop a downtown plan, develop incentives, and streamline processes. And then the one on the back page, what's the one on the back page? Modern familyfriendly gathering places and shops. Tell you what, let's I think we can we can on the same principle as setting aside the communications plan. The elements that would go into a downtown plan would be the ones that we would talk about today. So, let's I would vote for setting that aside. The downtown plan becomes the master goal and then yes, a byproduct or goal of that is familyfriendly businesses. That's right. Have new businesses coming downtown. Yeah,

that's fair. So two, five, and six. One, one, two. Are we including one then or are we just using? No, we're just we're not taking so two, five, and six. So one, two, three, four, five, six. What about the family friend? See, that's a that's a big goal of a downtown. So honestly, I think five and six are almost the same thing, right? because you have identified barriers to new businesses and then develop incentives and streamline processes for business attraction. Well, two and six are the same thing then I think and incentivize small business are almost all the same thing. So let's do two, five and six and one on the back page.

Yeah, the familyfriendly gathering. Yeah. I mean recruiting businesses is the clear underlying theme. What means of doing that seems to be these are all like words to do a very similar thing. Yeah. And that becomes the village center plan if we're being honest. Right. But this one is four. Can you go on the back page? The safety has three. And then there's a I mean Yeah. And then we all chose a smattering of things on 13 mile

walkability. Yeah. Let's just let's keep it the tutor one, I guess, right? Because it says pedestriment. That's a good one because it covers a lot more things. The tutor easement. Yeah, it does. It's got the 13 mile sidewalk in there. Yeah, I agree. And if pedestrian lights is the same thing as flashing lights across 13 miles. If we're doing a 13 mile sidewalk, we're going to do a pedestrian crosswalk, right? So, so two, five, and I think safety for walkers. I mean, I'd be happy with two, but you guys want two three or sorry, you have it right.

So, this one is seasonal programming, gathering spaces,

and then I think there was one on the back that had a lot. Yeah, it's got three creative. Go to the front page again. What was that bottom one? I'm sorry, the top one. Gathering spaces is has four on the bottom of the first page. And what's the top one plan is a village center plan. Yeah. So I think that this is a similar situation, but it seems I agree like if you're going to say that one, two, three, four, five, and six are all in sort of the same bucket, which is whether it's passive or active seems to be the biggest difference. Go to the back page one more time. What was six? Creative uses of underly.

So let's put four, five, and six up there, right? Because then we essentially have one That feeds into Yeah, it all feeds into each other. So, it's like a unified goal. I think that's easier. Okay. So, can we clean this up now? Like save this and then clean it up and delete everything else. Just an observation on the second column. Number four is at the top, but I think number four only has three votes and the others have more. Number four has four votes because that operating is mine. Yep. One, two, three. It's three. Oh, you're right. It's mine over. Oh, yeah. So, delete four.

I also really think in terms of between number three and number four, it's I think they're very I mean, they're virtually the same. They I think they're similar. Yeah, the one that we just deleted. Yeah, I think four is pretty similar to to deep dive analytical review. Yeah, one's just using the term deep dive at the end of the day. And one is forecast and controls. Well, it's that one becomes a sub becomes like a action mechanism for policies, governance, and compliance. So, like that's what'll end up happening here. Okay. So, what's the quickest way for us to see all the ones? Abby, you're PDF queen. A PDF queen.

Adobe Canva for sure. Well, can we just make a new copy and then delete everything but what's listed up there? You can pull up the word document that this came from. We need a whiteboard in here. There it is. Smart techn. It's almost like it was on there. A smartboard. You know, our taxes are going to getting a smartboard in every BPS elementary room instead of every village office. and just just delete everything except for the ones that were Do you have two screens?

No, but I written I was like hope you have a good memory.

Do we need to do we have a time constraint? I have a babysitter conraint. Yeah. 8:30. Ideally, well, let's let's let's say this. Once we've ident we've now identified our top goals and priorities in each column, are we now going to spend a few minutes discussing implementation? What or are we just going to Well, we're adding that cost. Is there a cost attached to like if there's a cost in a near versus long? Is this realistic or not? should be a thing that we do because if it's not realistic, we can just put it on the next fiscal year when we have

or we just say we're going to have to plan for it. Like if we're if we're really saying we're going to invest in I don't know like a village green plan and it costs many millions of dollars or sidewalks on 13 mile, it becomes like we need to save x amount of dollars year and also apply for grants like yeah like what Bryce said like that community was stashing away money every year for five years. So, like we can say every time we have extra money, we put 50K towards this.

I I wonder um I like those ideas. I wonder if if we should just take a step back and reflect on what we didn't pick or what and and what patterns we're seeing in these items. I'd like to hear from um you Rachel because you're the person who hands has her hands on the the day-to-day operations that aren't very pretty and creative and community engagement.

Um the other thing I'd like to make sure we talk about before we move on is things like the storm water project. Uh that's an infrastructure project. It's really easy to ignore because it's it's bulky and we aren't done with it yet. But I'd like it I'd like it I'd like us to talk about that before we don't we abandon it for this coming year. For the purposes of today though, I do think we should short list things and then maybe give some time to those things when we've got Yeah. other time because I mean we're with all due respect like we were here for five hours last night and we're

and Pam the infrastructure committee is meeting Friday at 9:30 if someone wants to brief us on the storm water project sometimes infrastructure so we can absolutely do that I just mean for the purposes of tonight we need to short list this figure out what's feasible and what are we going to plan for in the budget for next year would be my vote okay but but the point I was trying to make and maybe I didn't make it very well is that that's that's a project that's going to take resources and time

and it's underway. Um and is depending on where you live in the villages as important as some of these other things. So I still agree with Angelina and Abby, Trustee Gates and Trusty Salaka that one, it's an infrastructure thing. Infrastructure can get briefed on it so that they can start to prepare things for us broadly, particularly if it's underway. And then to the point Trusty Gates was making, we have a limited time tonight, at least I do, um, and want to be respectful of everybody else's time. So, keeping our priority of talking about the things that we prioritized first and then we can follow up on the things that we're not talking about, but we should be moving the most important parts of our conversation to the front. Otherwise, we're going to get exhausted.

Um, I'm with you. Um, I would So, is is everybody's expectation that that whatever comes out of this meeting is final or are is it still up for discussion? Because I would imagine the work product that we're after is a list a short list of goals that are attainable in the next fiscal year. Is that true?

Yeah. I mean, I was thinking some of these will be near-term opportunities because they require little funding and are universally supported like policies, governance, and compliance. Whereas like walkability improvements, we might say that's a goal, but underneath that it might be that the sidewalks on 13 mile are the goal. There is no way in hell that's happening next fiscal year, right? Yeah. So, it becomes like, okay, so grant funding, we explore how much money would we have to save toward that? Mhm. And when will it be feasible and at what point do we say all right in FY29 that becomes the number one priority? Because we've been talking about it for Yeah.

Yeah. We've got a plan and that's you know assuming the plan still fits the need like that becomes money that we'll deploy for a larger scale project. So, and and it's also feasible that to your point, Pam, a lot of these will become sub bullets underneath some of these. Like we may say, um for downtown and economic vitality, if we're identifying barriers to new businesses entering vacant spaces um and you know, let's say a part of that is we do need someone to spend time as a main street director to do that. It might be that that becomes one of our goals for next fiscal year because we need we don't have the capacity or um the capability on the team today to do it. That might be you know depending on what we decide. So it is absolutely feasible some of these become just sub bullets on the bigger

Did you Are we done? Yeah. Okay. Okay. This is new. Okay. Okay. I can um I can live with that for tonight. Okay. So, let's put should we put money signs like which ones cost money and which ones just require focus and organization? Are you talking about of our goals or of all of them? No. No. Like column by column. We just narrowed the one we just narrowed like in the first column like having a meeting flow and pre-ereading processes that just go back and highlight the three then do that. We got to laser in on our

They did. He did. This is what he There was a tie. Was there that big of a tie in common or so remove address severe road infestation because that's not something we're gonna talk about. We came to agree. And what about the bottom one? I'm talking about modernized community identification. I thought he had numbers written across. Yeah, we only had three numbers. So for the first group it is complaint tracking policies, governance and compliance and then upgrade meeting technology and modernized community engagement tools for TAI. Let's delete everything else. Okay. So council conduct standards that goes away.

Yeah. Formal agenda meeting and that one goes away. And this is it, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. Is there a budget implication to number one? No. No. That just requires I mean nothing is free, but Yeah. But that's prioritizing staff tasking, right? Staff time. That's staff time. Not a It's not a line item implication, but the the downstream effects could be what? What else doesn't get done while I'm doing that? Yeah.

Correct. Also, I mean, I think that we just need to utilize AI and MML a lot for that. Like MML will give you templates and I mean, you know, MML is just basically going to hand you over, you know, whatever they have and then you'll have to customize it. Y and I think if like we give time to like how you brought the policy for procurement to us and like once a month or once every other month you bring us a couple policies for us to review. I think that's how we do it. Like we chunk it out. Yeah. Or even just like department policies how like finance policies, accounting and finance.

We need a lot of those and that those are at the top of my list to complete next. I'm sorry. I was just say is are there other costs like attorneys and so there will be minimal attorney costs just to do the review I mean yeah so so one of the things that I mean even for policies governance and compliance again to the extent that you want any assistance I am happy to help because like at the end of the day anything government is a wonderful world for AI because it's trained off of the public domain and all things are public related to government and we can put information into it without having to worry about data leakage because it's all public. It's all public.

Um, so I think we can get a lot of base frameworks to get to you to be able to start to massage and carve away at it to what you want. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, one is basically staff time like so should we put like ST or something or I mean that's a near-term. Yeah. So, nearm. You're right. Let's use near-term. It's a near-term vote. It's a 2020. It's a So, let's put green, right? That means it's a go. Mhm. Are we sifting through these now or what are we trying to get done? Yeah. We're trying to identify

identifying which costs money and which we just got what is within this fiscal year. So, two clearly is money. So, can you use a different color? Yeah, I think that but that could also be a cable board request. Yeah, it requires money. Well, there's ours already there. They have money to give because they wanted to give it to us,

right? There has to be we have to have be able to have the nuance of like if this if we can't we can get a proposal to the cable board. If they reject it, then yeah, I think it defers down into the is this something that we're going to spend money on? But I think we have a very clear path for where we're requesting funds from. So, it wouldn't be the same thing as something else that specifically requires an investment. So, the call to action on this one would be Yeah, I was going to say, can you change it to blue? Change the color. Yeah, just because red is like a stop and I think blue is like out of our control. You're getting into elementary like the ocean.

Just a career option. Think about it. you know how many kids we have? I do. That's what I'm suggesting. Um, okay. So, this one would be again like I consider it more green

because the service that we're receiving. So, again, just to be clear, the work that Mark is doing on this as of now is free of charge. So, I'm going to put it in a green category until we have a reason not to. Can I just speak to this? Like what what I think I wrote this, but what I would mean by data driven decision-making is we would be able to export a report from whatever tracking tool was on how many people talked about deer in the meetings from the past three years and how many people called about deer in the meetings from the past or called the office and then aggregate that with how many deer incidents there have been. Dude, let me jump in real quick because

that data would drive our decision making. Slaka, you know very well that in all these circumstances, you need to have a plan before you have a tool. So to me, we would have to like complaint tracking tool. You're not talking about the acquisition of a tool. You're talking about the formation of what we're looking to track. Yeah. Like a medium. You'd have to have tags and like a mode. How long um how long has this tool been under development? almost two years. That's a really that's an eternity in in AppLand. Well, but the office is using part of

but remember but remember that it stopped last year because everything stopped in the office. Yeah. So So it got it it it was it hit the staff in March of 20 four five. It doesn't you know I I I think we got to take Community Connect out of it. What we're talking about is what do we want to what toolbox do we want to have in the office? What's important to us? That's what we already we've already talked about that and that's I I and I get that. I think what I'm saying is like with community connect, it's not just launching the product is not the end of the game. You have to maintain it. Yeah. You have to have staff continue to work on it and yes

bug like it and if it's already taking two years, it's like a No, but please don't latch on to that. It's not important. So my point is like are there off-the-shelf products that exist for other municipalities that would help us to track this stuff? Can I ask Hang on. I want to address the elephant in the room. Why is this such a touchy subject, David? This time you've gotten frustrated at us because it's irrelevant. It's not irrelevant. It's a tool that has to track. We want to learn about the tool.

I I I agree. And the the the the way to learn about the tool is have the person who's been working on the tool, I've been asking for in ages now to come in and give us a presentation. The point that Pam was making is is during its test phase, the office was using it. Dana was getting great value out of it. Uh Susan was getting value out of it. They were tracking complaints from beginning to end. They were showing how things started, how it went through the process. Then it, as Pam said, everything broke down and the whole new administration has had no education on it. So it's it's been just sitting there. So when Abby says it's taken two years to implement, Mark isn't have like two years worth of bugs in his program. He's been adding to the program as it goes. I've only seen it in action once over a year ago. And at that point, I was like, "This thing can be amazing because of the survey piece and the complaint tracking piece and the hotspot piece and the getting data on every single resident in the village, meaning their address and their email." And when somebody complained about deer and if or whatever, it it was set up where every single person's address was in there. So, like you said, if you wanted to know where deer complaints were, you would just go see where green is.

But what I'm saying is where's the MVP? Then if those things are in operation, then they should be in production. Minimum viable product. Minimum viable product. You get you don't like wait until everything is completely built in order to ship the entire app. You start with using it. They had been using it until July. But that doesn't make any sense because we were told that was using it and Gemma and those two people haven't left. All right. This isn't productive. Mark just needs to come in. Agreed. And provide us the capabilities of this tool and then we can make a determination of whether or not it satisfies the needs. That is right. So what's the need? What's the problem we're trying to solve? We want to know what is happening in the community complaint wise. That's right.

No, that's really not what we're doing right now. What we were doing right now was so we can get out of here was identifying what costs money and what doesn't cost money. Aby's means of doing it is costing money because we have to go buy something. Mark's product doesn't cost us money. So, let's just leave it at no money right now. Yeah. Because if it doesn't cost us money, but it doesn't get us to our goal, then it's not the best.

Hang on. No, no, no. But this is my point. We have to move on to the next issue because because exact. We could be going back and forth on the smartboard technology because there's no guarantee that cable board's going to give it to us. Let's learn about the capabilities of what Mark is saying and if it doesn't satisfy what we want or we want to materially increase our cost to get one or two additional widgets into a tool fine but let's start with the thing that's free and then we can determine the rest and then so I think we have a clear to me we have a clear logical path forward rather than dismissing the tool that's at our disposal for I say we move on to

Yeah. And the third one doesn't cost money either, I don't believe. Can I add one more thing? Is it possible that we would explore alternatives like through an RFP process to say yes, we have this free option, but are there additional capabilities that would be really powerful that might give us some modernized community engagement tool options? That's what I was saying. That don't exist with Mark. I'm saying yes, there's no cost implication to this, but B, are there better opportunities for a better technology to get us closer to where we want to go both now and in the future. That's all I was saying. Agreed. But the first step is learning the capabilities of the tool that is free before we write it off as not meeting our needs. I'm not writing it off. Are you guys still on the third one or you move to the fourth?

Okay. So, tell me this. What is we mean by modernized community engagement tools? What? I don't know who wrote that, but what does that int I know what grant identification is, but what is a community engagement tool? What are we talking about here? To me, that could be like social media. That could be like QR codes, telling people to like any sort of thing that engages the community. Okay. Um, and I'm guessing the grant identification is tools for that community engagement, right? So like there's a lot of tools I mean and community engagement tools could also be a sign

that is digital good you know that tells the community what's going on. Would you guys be open to dropping and grant identification because it doesn't seem like it matches? I think I think it's with I think No, I agree. I think every Yeah, every one of these to the extent we could get a grant to help us do it would be Yeah. I also think in didn't we have grants or identifying new revenue streams somewhere? We got dropped off. Where was that? It was on the

It was the last one on the second on financial stability. It was dropped off because it only got one vote. I don't think anyone would. Where is that? It was on the It's right here on the right here. Diverse side. Yeah. And then David said, "Let's get Let's drop off the historic values thing." But it still just got one vote. So I I mean I think none of us are going to be like we should not identify grants or I think that's uh that has to do with how you address the current budget challenges. It should be a a standard operating procedure. We should be constantly looking for grants.

So maybe we'll um put that as a sub bullet under the first one. We we have never assigned anybody the responsibility in the office or among council or anywhere to to spend a part of their time running, you know, looking for hunting for grant money. Did the treasurer have grant on the PD or additional revenues or any of that? I think it was more like um I think we could add that if we're going to she had there was some accountability in in the treasury. I remember us including Grant in there. Yeah. or at least seeking creative budget revenue sources. Yeah. Okay. So, is modernized community engagement tools is it agreeing?

I think it's it's kind of a scale. If it's like a new sign that's digital, that's probably money. If it's improve our communication through social media channels and operating procedures of emails, that's a few hundred bucks a month. That's that's green. So I think there's definitely things that can be done in that capacity in the near term. Yeah. So the rest of the statement for modernized community community engagement tools says to ensure all village updates are communicated effectively to residents where everyone can access them. Okay,

that was the rest of that idea. Okay, for the next column, I mean, I don't know if any of those cost money, do they? This just seems like operating stuff. Wait, I have a question. How much How many did transparent public reporting of expenditures get? I think we have one too many. Yeah, I don't think that one I mean that's obviously a requirement. Hang on. So, two. Okay. So, didn't get or didn't get on.

They you originally had audit and implement but then you took it out delete because you decided it's essentially the same as the deep dive. No, but we never had that maintain transparent public reporting of expenditures. Oh. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. So, it should be here. It should be seek additional revenue sources. Yeah, that's the grant one. That's the That's That was I was like I feel like we had it on. Yeah, we did. That's the top one. Okay. Yep. So, move seek additional revenue sources.

So, can I ask a I didn't vote for the first one and it made the list. So, can I just get clarity because it's seek additional revenue sources to address police and fire. Why are we limiting ourselves to police and fire? because those are key things that we need to address right now. Well, because police and fire the only really means that we can join we can we can increase revenue through a millage or a bond. We can't bond for just what we want to spend money on. If we get a police mill, then that frees up the general fund. And as far as fire, we need to figure out how to generate additional revenues in order to support our fire department.

I thought that was more like find creative revenue sources. I thought it was too. So, so hey, um, Evan, if you could put that item back in there. I think there's a punctuation problem. Seek additional revenue sources to address police, fire, and operating costs. That's what I thought it was. Yeah, it's a goal. It Okay, that makes sense that they're That's why three different items. There you go. Police, fire, comma, and operating costs. But what you just said, David, we can't do a millage just for operating cost. No, but this is just seeking additional revenue sources. The first two would be through millillage. The other would be

cost savings. Yeah. Or grants or Yeah. cable boards and things like that. I think we need to talk about this because this has come up. What has come up? the the whole millillage thing and no one's really everyone just keeps on push cooking the can I don't feel comfortable I think that's the point of this you feel comfortable voting what I'm not following if we are going to go for a millillage we have to put it on an election yes so we have to decide in the next 60 days but that's what this would do okay so let's talk about it because it's on here now no we're never going to get done with the meeting if we're all going to express opinions about.

So I think I I thought this wasn't a millage. I thought it was seeking additional revenue sources. If it was seeking a millage to address police, fire, and operating costs, that's what it should have said. Well, couldn't isn't it exploring several? I I know. I didn't. Or is it just the millillage? Do you know of other sources to generate revenue besides a millage increase? I don't know. That's why I don't know. It didn't say millillage. If it had said mill. So, here's a perfect example.

The fact that we're grouping in police and fire implies that we're going to pursue millig increases for both police and fire. Those are two separate things. Additionally, fire. I don't know the current status of whether or not Bingham is staying with our fire department or not. But then there's the do we do we explore the possibility of other municipal joining up with another municipality still got to have sufficient money our revenues in that area. That's my point. That's what I'm saying. That's an that is something outside of millage. Yeah. If this was millage I think we have to go back to see how many people prioritize that and how many people didn't. Okay. Can I just say that it has to be a priority. It's not a choice.

Yeah. There's no way you're thinking that that's not a means of revenue. Like, do you really think there's a another way to do this? I'm just curious. Just curious. Can I Yeah, please take on this.

So, when I started, it was already made clear to me that by 2028 or 29, we were going to be in the red because of police funding. Take the fire out. Okay, that's a whole separate situation. Let's just talk about police right now. So, we were going to fail if we did not run this millillage to pull our police services out of our general fund and fund it entirely with this millillage. Now that we've had this issue with the treasury, um it's even more important. We will be we will need to move forward with this millillage sooner than later. We don't have an additional year to wait.

Completely agree. That's why I was saying that again I just think that it is written the right way. I interpreted revenue sources to mean that's why I specifically called out it clarifies police and fire because that entails a police millage. Yes. I do think though for purposes of streamlining that the scope of this should either be separated or remove fire because we want to be targeted in the approach. Okay, so let's go back.

The key is the police. Fire can become an entirely separate conversation, but we really can't even have that conversation until we know what Bingham Farms is going to do. It does look like there's a really good chance they are going to move to Bloomfield and I think we need to talk about that because that means they've done a costbenefit analysis seek an additional source of fire protection that right now we can't because they have public water. So they can

I know we've talked about it on our end that there's a means to doing it, but the the the way it's easy been easier for them to break off the fire piece. Honestly, their bigger concern isn't the fire piece. If you look at our budget runs, we don't have a problem getting fire trucks out and we rarely have fires. What we have a problem is is getting to residents that need medical attention and that the medical runs are 10 times a month more than the fire runs are a month. And we have a police we we we have a department that doesn't provide that at all. That's one of the main reasons that Bingham is leaving is their is their concern of the fire of the medical alert responsiveness and the fact that Bloomfield can give that to them. Now our surrounding communities can give us that irrelevant regardless of our water situation. So we have to look at it separately. Is there someone that can help us from a fire support if we wanted to go away from what we have and is there someone that can also help us from wall from a fire or can they do the the both? Bingham is just looking at one place that can provide both services for them.

So my recommendation in this category would be to remove the third one which is deep dive analytical review to identify cost savings opportunities because that folds into budget stabilization. I understand. We'll just put them together. Let me just back up. Sure. And then separate out police village and then fire. We I don't know how we categorize that, but I think we separate out the two separate issues so that again we can be targeted in we're allocating bandwidth and resource towards figuring out police and then intentionally we're allocating separate bandwidth towards fire. is

the fire department is not currently operating it anywhere near the shortfall and it has no immediate impact on our general fund because we're not using it at all. Right. I think we can remove that even then. Why don't we put No, I don't want to lose sight of it cuz the second the bigum farm domino falls, we got to figure it out. We still have to do with with a revenue issue because we're still whatever way we go, we're still short on revenue. But that one can be a simple headly roll back. We don't have to do a millage for them. just roll back there. So the first one is green, right? It's going to take money. Number three is basically a a subroduct of number two. So green and then two and three just require

a a a treasure. You know how does one cost money? Green means doesn't check. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, my bad. It's okay, guys. Regarding the deep dive analytical, what we done there was com I think we said we were going to combine deep dive analytical review and the fourth one which is not on that list which is audit and implement internal financial controls, forecasts and budgets. Both of those items received four votes each. So how are those different than budget stabilization? Uh they may not be

they're the vehicle. Okay, but really quick it we just make a note that these go into the treasurer PD because they're clearly our priorities. We put a we create a new position to get them done and so the treasurer needs to address these three things. That is the staff time and costs and these should be priorities for the next person. And addressing current budget challenges is one. Isn't Isn't that what we're doing? What's going Nothing. I just have a thing where there's no alarm that he has like ADHD, so he can't like the noise. It's like sensory.

Oh, no problem. Um, so what are we what are we trying to do here? I think we we it's bud they're all budget related. It's all budget green. Yeah. And they're all budget related stuff. We need to deal with the budget. However we get there, whether it's millages, whether it's saving on expenses, whether it's it's kind of all the above alternative. Yeah, it's all we need to deal with the budget. One, how we save money in what we're spending and how do we generate more revenue.

Only two things you can ideally really do. The third one. So, recruit, retain, incentivize. I almost think that's a green and a money because we can incentiv we can retain small businesses by looking at our code and figuring out how to make it less burdensome for businesses to advertise get uh pedestrian traffic. Let's define I mean like what constitutes free like lowlevel opportunities like low hanging fruit there to recruit businesses and what are retention strategies or incentiv or incentives that require

well I mean Rachel would know the budget dollars the various means of incentivization so that's there's actual money there's tax incentive tax tax abatements there's ordinance eastments streamlining identify barriers to new businesses entering vacant spaces. Actually, I think this one is more of a green, right? I think that's just like a data call in a conversation. Like when um Jay came in, he

talked about three things. Have we thought about our easier? You know, have we thought about city water? Have we thought about this? So, I think like we just identify the barriers and then we have our list of like should we be prioritizing these? Are these really preventing new businesses from entering? I think they are. They are. And I think Well, I know, but I mean I think that's We've never looked at that as a whole. Yeah, let's identify, but there are definitely barriers out there. Yeah. Well, we might want to I think that one might potentially will have a dollar sign on it depending on um identifying a barrier could be um looking at building conditions and addressing building conditions.

But see, I resolution. Yeah, it's free because that's just us passing a code saying you're saying for the commercial district we have a higher, you know, blight code than we do. So I I think like the identification of it and the like holistic focus on the there's no reason that identifying should not be

Yeah. So, I think take off the money because we talked about um there's creative ways that you can structure you can make nonerviceoriented businesses, you know, you you can you can only incentivize commercial businesses downtown. Like, we don't need more doctor's office and more lawyers and more, you know what I mean? We need more consumer businesses. I think what I where I was headed um was uh uh is that a skill set that exists here? Do we need to buy some skills or or do we need to is that something an existing staff person can do? I think work on incentives for I can do that. No, no, the identify barriers section.

Oh, I can do that. Okay, fine. Then I'm agreeing to take off the dollar. I'm not presuming that you are going to be an on the ground person on all this stuff. Yeah. So, well, I kind of think that isn't really anyone else. Develop incentives or streamline processes. So, there's no I mean, this is number one to me. Yeah, I think the third is a money. No, I'm saying the third is basically the same as number. It's just a category within number one. Yeah, it's it's a money and a check. And incentives or processes is again barriers, right? Yeah.

All right. Here's our big ticket items over here. Okay. Um, so let's start from the bottom. I think safety is a check. It's not necessarily a um I think it's might maybe a plan like what what constitutes exactly like the stop signs. I think there and what's not. Yeah. Were like a few hundred and that improves safety, you know? So, allegedly, yeah, we never did a study.

I mean, it's been 60 days. I I know that there's been no incidents with the ice on Wing Lake since that stop sign came in. And I I've looked in the police reports, too. Um, the first two is gonna be money. Two dollar signs for number one. Yeah, maybe three, maybe four, maybe $5 million worth of dollar signs.

So, the last um quote that we have from the HRC study said uh 2.3 million for the 13 mile sidewalk. And then that was in 2022. Littlefield just got like what 16 or 17 to finish theirs. Yeah. And you can like look at SAMCOG, you know, there's there's and and Beverly Hills got some money from the state. They got a lot. They got it from several different sources. But yeah, but like so I think that's a big thing for Grant like putting uh I mean isn't this just like a focused on it for the future and figure out ways we can do it eventually? We might have to do it in parts phases. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, even the planning for this is going to cost money, right? Like a lot of money. No question. Yeah. So, that's that's the biggest thing is like there's probably three phases. It comes down to the line of the whole kind of project ready and project ready could be the plans we already have in place would be sufficient for that because they just would need to be updated. But I mean, as far as like project ready money, we should be seeking. We should be seeking money for our sidewalks on a non-stop basis. I have a question. Our surrounding communities that are far richer than us. Yeah. As far as their c their revenue sources, uh have all gotten monstrous grants to do their sidewalks.

So, what about phasing this one out? So, for any large dollar, it's like we understand that the sidewalks are going to be the big ticket item. Easements may be smaller. We've got crosswalk lighting. So, it becomes like tearing. I think the two door easement is not going to be a lot of money. No, that one's cheap. It's literally like two houses we would need an easement from and then I think there's five. How many? I think it's only two. We talking about the one. It's the one on the one side, the one on the other. Yeah, I think it's two. It's two or three. It's not five. Yeah, that's it. The one that come through. Yeah, if you come down the river drive along 13 mile road. No, two door ement. Two door is the landlock. Sorry. I was thinking that pops out on Suzanne. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I was thinking 13 mile road because Yeah. And this is where river goes up those people's driveway. Yeah. Making those people's driveway the pathway. Yes. So there's two people that have to give us an easement. So I think two door easement you can put a I'd like to put a check on that. I think that enhances a huge portion of I don't know infrastructure that's like next on infrastructures list just because it's very low cost. Is it a cost if we have to buy property from them? Potentially. I mean, if we get an easement, I would imagine. Okay. So, there would be two in there. Yeah. Yeah. You can put two both. Yeah.

But it's not nearly what like a 13 mile sidewalk. That's why I just didn't want to have 13 their driveway, right? Um, okay. Making Franklin place seasonal program food trucks. That's clearly money to me. The first one is a lot of planning, right? Like we can organize a food truck. We can organize drive-ins and ice rink. There's lots of people that want to do it. It's just a matter of like planning and giving some community organization. I mean, do we have any like

I don't know. I know we have the FCA, but I mean like volunteer volunteers like just general volunteers like we want a community garden like do we have any people who will volunteer their time to specific initiatives outside of like we do trucks and dragons we do we do they just need money like they went to the FCA for a proposal for the ice rink

I mean real tangible things could get donations you could get a business to go give you five grand for an ice rink and we surround all the boards with Joe Schmo's ice cream, Joe Schmo's ice cream, whatever. And they give you the five grand and then just and then on the inside like they do with the Red Wings and you got the whole inside lined with advertisement and now all of a sudden your ice rink is paid for. Yeah. David, when you when we organize the Woodside, we pay for the food trucks or No. No. Yeah. It's free.

We don't generate we don't generate any. So I could actually set up that connection where if we have a spot to put the truck, I could get it weekly basis because I already do that for Woodside. It won't generate revenue for us, but it's not going to cost us anything. To do what was the question? To do in the summer uh a food truck every week, a weekly food truck. That'd be awesome. I mean, I know FCA was trying to do that. It's I already have my vendor so I could I can just get it organized. Yeah. There's a company that oversees all of them and you just tell them which one you want. Go get them. Yeah. And if they don't have the truck you want, they just fill it in with a sub. With a sub. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the thing that for the FCA, the reason that it was not consistent is, and again, no criticism of them, but they were looking to generate the revenue. So, they had to go out and do the recruitment of the food trucks itself rather than using the vendor. So, so on something like this, I think there's a dollar sign, but we do have like at least two community groups, maybe three, because um the FCA and the Main Street people that do community those are all of the community events we have are owned by one of those community groups. So, um I'm not sure I mean, are are you thinking in in terms of Yes, these are good idea. they're going to be delegated to the the groups that already do them or are you thinking the village itself is going to be in the business of doing seasonal programming?

I think that well one just full disclosure I was the one that was like this probably needs to be a future thing but um the food truck thing for me is like very low lift which is why I'm like that's fine I can do it. Um, but what I would want to do, for instance, would be like there's no reason that we wouldn't do a coordination at least in the near term with like the b the softball baseball league. Yeah. Right. Cuz like people are already downtown now. We have a food truck there. Like that's how we start to get the the food truck guys would love it if we were doing it on a because they'll make money way more money off of it. Go on a Tuesday in the in the spring. There's three fields, right? Hold on. Okay, people.

So, let's put a check there and talk about the ones that are low lifts, no money. If it's a low lift, no money thing since we can't do a lot this year because we have no money. I think that's what we need to do. I would leave it at communicating to the FCA guys, we're really excited about your plans for your summer events and not get in this business this year. It's that's what they do. Ball ball league h the historic society has done some FCA and Main Street. So, so I my my thinking and I would urge us to this is a good goal but it would be carried out by somebody else other than the village outside of some support which remember we have a budget for next fiscal year if everything works out okay at some point we may will likely decide to restore that 20k line it expense budget that was part of the main street budget which this kind of stuff came out of

but for I I mean, yeah, I think that we could talk to the FCA and say, "Are can you do an ice rate? Can you do a food truck? Can you do a drive-in?" Yeah. And if they say yes, then we don't do it. If they say that's not a priority, then we say okay, then we're going to do it. Oh, okay. Because that means that if they don't do it, we don't get it for our residents. Who though? That's where that's kind of where I'm like I'm not Is that where I want to spend our our village staff's time right now? No, but a food I mean I wouldn't mind spending five hours figuring out how to get an ice rink going. That comes up every single year.

Does this community have an optimist club or Rotary or anything like that? We do have a really It's the optimist club right here. Yeah, we do have a really good population one. um are the the local boy scouts. They do a lot within the community so we can partner with them. So in Independence, the Optimus Club builds a ice rink in the village in Depot Park every year.

So if we can just find a group that to work with like that. I mean, but what this could become is instead of trying to actually figure out how to implement these things right off the bat, why don't we use this item to build a plan and then turn that plan into implementation a little bit down the road? Completely agree. So, the next two are money, right? For this last one, was this a mistake? It seems like two like these are two things together. These are two things. They're not related. I when I was voting I was just thinking creative use of underutilized spaces is what I was

senior community programming partnership with nearby cities is a separate thing. Yeah. Correct. I already have that for creative use. Yeah. So I think people were voting really for the first one, right? So could we delete the Okay. Before you take that off, um, just heads up, I mean Dan and Jeff are our our liaison with Next. We currently do make a contribution to Birmingham Next, right? So, it doesn't need to be a goal. We're already It's already This

is already being done. It it may be um what we we we don't know what the financial expectations of Franklin and Bingham and Beverly are going to be. Maybe next year, maybe the year after. Right now, they don't ask us for much, but

But does that need to be for this fiscal? Um I think that we should for next budget we should maintain the contribution level in the budget pending what business model they're going to end up with uh in next. It's all very fluid. I just don't want to pretend that there's not a problem there. There is. And I don't see us doing senior programming because of our relationship with Nex, but I do think it's a potential cost item for

So, could I could I uh just repeat back there given the the state of next and the the ongoing conversation between them and Birmingham, we don't have to do anything as far as decisions, but exploration of secession planning if something bad like if they can't figure out uh the relationship with Birmingham or they come back and basically say you need to make significantly more of a financial um commitment in order to participate. We're going to need to look to options. So having secession planning in place maybe that makes a lot of sense to me. Are we putting 10,000 in the budget for 2026 for next?

I don't know. But we're not doing the budget right now. I know. But Jeff and what was said today was it's already in the budget so we don't need to talk about well I think we just presume that it's there and then if budget stabilization says that no we can't make that work or we talk about priorities but again we don't need to I just don't want to get into the minutia of what is our budget going to look like. Okay. So then delete. So the question is does this stay in at all under in language like or do we take it off? Take it off. I don't think anyone Okay. Okay.

Okay. So is there a cost attached to creative use of underutilized spaces? I mean it feels like I think that's more of a plan, right? Yeah. That's like exploring what what else we could possibly do. It could cost money. It could not cost money. Okay. Okay. This looks good. And I mean it could also fall into the I mean creative use also could be creative use to do seasonal stuff like I think it's fairly similar. But I don't think that this is a terrible guiding principle. I uh I mean I don't know if we need to do this tonight but it feels like the next step is for each of these things like what would be our northstar for the year?

What are we trying to achieve with policy governance and compliance? Um and like when will we commit to completion? Could I make maybe one step before that and uh if you disagree by all means let me know. um assignment out to subs. That's my number one. That's I agree. Before we do that, we have to allocate these to who's going to put their brain on it. Yep. It can't just be Rachel and Evan putting their brain on everything. That's not going to work. So, right, policy, governance, whatever. Maybe that's, you know, legal committee where, you know, so that would be the beginning, which is to start dividing these up. And it doesn't even have to be specific committees. It could be as individual, right?

Yeah. I mean, policies probably legal and financial. Yeah. I mean, one of us that has any if there's anything on any of these that you have in your regular life, some background on that would be assistance that would also help. Yep. So, I I think those two go hand in hand. Let's identify um who can vet them out and then once they've been vetted, put a Yep. these are priorities. Then we got to prioritize the priorities. Yeah. So for one, I want to be involved in that. Um so whether that's legal or just myself bringing it to legal, but I think one of the things at that

I would look at um is Rachel if you just want to identify things that you would like me to work on and then I can start to work bring it together and then um either bring it directly to you first so that you can go through it, provide feedback, get it to a more a better form, then bring it to legal as a subcommittee. We can all discuss it and then bring it to council. Okay. The upgrade mean technology. Can that be a staff thing if like that's something we want to invest money in and it might have to be a proposal to the cable board?

Well, somebody needs to tell them what are some of the specific things in that category. I mean, we have one example there which is smartboards. what are the types of things that we're talking about? I mean, I think live streaming would be a part of that too. I mean, those concerns over and as I mentioned earlier, yeah, before we focus on live streaming, we got to focus on internet. Um, but yeah, so that is I mean that seems more like the infrastructure even. Do you want to talk about on Friday? Sure. I would also argue just we had some discussion last year over like room setup.

Yeah. I mean, this is still not great. When we have a lot of people here, there's not a ton of room to sit. Like, that was a relatively small cost for new tables and chairs and like using this space a little more optimally. Do you want to put that to the infrastructure committee? We'll talk about it Friday. I don't know that I'm on the infrastructure. Oh, Dan. Sure, Jeff. Sure, me. Okay. Can someone ask Mark to come to Yeah, Pam, you've been working the closest with Mark. Uh I think the time has come that we would love Mark to come in and show us where things are. Unless he's not ready.

No, he's ready. I'm I think um Rachel, uh when you met with Mark, didn't didn't you agree that it he should be here either in March or April? Yes. So, I'll get that set up with him. And but he did say that he can meet with anyone anytime. So it doesn't need to be a meeting. If you just call him, he'll come here and set it up and and and run it through by you. Yeah. And that way we don't have to pay our attorneys to sit through it. Would the infrastructure committee like to hit up the cable board for our dollar ask or should we wait? Um Friday at 9:30 if you're available. We're going to talk about technology

and a proposal to the cable board. Here we go. Um what was this one? Community engagement tools. This is again almost the same thing, right? People can remotely participate or you know in meetings that's a community engagement tool. So we can just kind of take it up. We talk about tools and technology. Is that what was meant by this?

Yeah. And to that whole idea of the whole live streaming and not live streaming remote participation by uh residents to some extent we do need to get understand the legality of it and to what extent we're allowed to do that and what are the barriers and rules associated with it because there's a huge OMA implication to that. Yeah. All right. for all infrastructure. So we'll put that on the agenda. Yeah. So we have for infrastructure we're doing the meeting technology and community engagement tools.

Okay. Okay. For the next one. Um, just for the record, you guys, the last year's communications plan did have a lot about tech upgrades in it. You might want to refer to that as you guys as you're thinking about what you might want to do. Some some ground work has been done. Okay. By Meg. Um,

so do we have a date that we as a council would have to vote on whether we're bringing a police millage to the residence in 2026? I have that on my desk. I will email you tomorrow. Um, we have to have the language, I believe, by March 16th. So that means we have to vote on it next meeting. March 16th for a village. When? In November. November. So it has to be on the agenda next month. July. Seems more like June to July. No, I think let me email you tomorrow. I I am trying to remember what my notes say and I could be wrong. Seems early.

I might have that confused with something because we'd have to vote in order to bring that on the agenda. Yeah. The reason that I was thinking is because filing deadlines for candidates is July. So I would imagine it would be similar like I think it's July or August because it has to go to the Yeah, we've done this before when we've had to get charter language on it. It's it's more the end of the summer. It's not the spring. But either way, I definitely check that out, but I'm pretty sure it's not that early. If it is, then we're scrambling.

Has to be a vote. So, um, u just I I think we're on we're we're at the place where we want to act on some of these things. Let me just throw out a couple of items that I didn't include. I don't think it doesn't look like anybody else does, but have appeared in the last five years. We've already talked about storm water system. I do think we need another look at that. If infrastructure wants to take that on to do an assessment of what we might or might not want to do, great. Otherwise, I think it's something that um Rachel could look at based on there's a lot of documentation. Are we set on do we think wireless is going to be an issue coming up or are we are we is that stable? What about contamination of the building in the village center, the brownfield? Um, is municipal water going to pop up? Again, it does periodically. I don't think it will this year. I don't think we're ready to take it on, but

I know people looking to develop or invest in the downtown would love to see that. Well, and that could very well become part of that barrier identification um outcome. Uh but that was an issue with Van Avery and also the church and the and and the the restaurant. Um we've tackled trails. We've got one we've got a master plan that's got about seven sidewalks we've talked about and u potential for municipal water in the downtown area. So those are things that were carried over that are

honestly like I think we just stay the course on these ones because like municipal water could very well become identity identify barrier to new businesses there may be a lot of businesses that are like it's going to come it is a barrier right yeah so I think we just keep it to this um and let kind of that exploration identify okay so for the second column the first needs to go to who? The finance committee or does it need to go to chief to understand a one pager on why she's already done it. Do can we can we share that one pager?

She's already done a five in or an eight-year long-term can you recirculate that? Well, I think I think one I think police and then fire both of those are the finance committee. Would they not be? Okay. So, I think we just allocated to that. Okay. And then the next two is that for a treasurer?

It's a treasurer. It's an administrator. It's you and me and anyone that's looking at the budget. I think what I do is work with the treasurer and put together a report and bring it to the board and we'll discuss the issues and ideas that we have direct by them. Maybe a financial consultant. Yeah. And I think that we have I think uh that offers free services.

My thing is on this one too like I know we've gone through budget stabiliz. done budgets before where we always talk about being lean. Um but the truth is is that we're at a period where we need to make hard decisions. Yeah. And so we need a budget that reflects hard decisions.

I like what Trusty Gates said last year about like we need to explore benefits our healthcare. Like I don't know what you know evaluation was done. I I never saw it. I was told it was done. But like we do need to understand what we're spending, what we're matching, what we're giving. If there's a cleaner, more tech savvy way to do that and still be a competitive employer because there's a salary and benefits take up a lot of our operating costs. They're number one and two. They're always one and two. And you've said that and we have the expertise. kind of I thought we're we're locked in a three-year we already negotiated the police

four years contract. But I mean for employees too. Sure. But what about benefits? Is that is that roped into the Yeah. So I don't know on the police contract. Yeah. Benefits are we can't touch that employees get the same as police? No. No. Just the one's union. Oh yeah. Yeah. So we can Yeah. So last year would have been the time to do benefits discussions, but we've visited in the past converting to a to a moving away from pension. We've got a traditional pension program here. How about the police? Pardon?

Yeah, for the police. And in to Aby's point, we just signed the contract. So there's But it's going to take more than two years to get that done because they don't want to change. We tried it. And do does anybody have any appetite for that? Not this year. Yeah, not this year. Okay. That feels like a good long-term item. So, is that going towards a committee? Finance, right? The whole thing is finance. That's finance. Okay. Unless the benefits piece, but not this year. I mean, yeah, HR wouldn't do benefits this year. It' be a waste of your time.

Do we offer any other like fringe benefits or like can we trim any? We offer small life insurance policies, a a disability, uh 401k, all of it. 401k like do we cut the match pension? We don't have a pension for our employees, but we match. We match. The match is different for different levels of employees. All right. Well, we can look at but yeah, those things are in place.

Yeah, it is an option. I mean, it's a low stakes option because we're talking about a handful of people, but I mean, if hard decisions are what we got to think about, I mean, that's places to start. What was that? Is that not following what you guys are saying, but the hard decision piece? Like, I'm looking at Rachel talking about cutting her retirement contribution. That's a hard decision to make. That's a hard decision to make for suggesting doing that. We are right now. Yeah, we're saying that we need to evaluate our benefits and determine if we need to save money by being leaner. I'm not. So, I mean, you guys might be saying that's the case, but I'm not following.

Well, maybe the the You're suggesting that we would re-evaluate how we're compensating the employees. Yes. Okay. That's what Again, this is solutioning, right? Can we just put allocate where we're going on these? We're already at 10 after 8. So we're on the third column now. So the wholesaling column is going to finance. Yeah. Yeah. It's money.

Okay. So identify cost-saving opportunities is where we were at. And we're saying benefits and salaries as number one and number two for operating costs. And that's why those need to be analyzed, reviewed, and addressed. And if hard decisions need to be made by the finance committee then that's what has to be made. Yeah. And I think and again like you all are empowered to to your point this is the thing that I think without getting into solutioning there is an element of the people committee in this as well that needs to be consulted similarly with like policies governance and compliance. Yes. Like I want to take the pen on that. Yes. I think some of it goes to legal. I think some of it goes to people, right? Because we're going to have people are affected.

Exa what? Exactly. And there may be things about our conduct, our processes. There may be things about the administration's processes and that would be more appropriate in people. Okay. Third one. Um, one and two. Rachel, can you take those? I mean, two two we will all take because we're all sit here and we listen to what businesses say and we hear and we visit and we patron. Yes. But I mean I think even if you just create a shared word document like put in the barriers that you've heard of. I think I do all three of those.

Okay. Yeah, I think that would be awesome. Okay. The fourth column I think is all infrastructure. Fourth column is all infrastructure. Okay. And then the fifth column partnerships.

Yeah. So I think uh the first is do we want to Okay. So who's the first? Uh the second almost seems like it could be infrastructure, right? Wi-Fi installation, chessboard seating. Um, and then the creative use of underutilized spaces. But the first one definitely is going to be partnerships. Could that be uh creative use of underutilized spaces? Because that could that also be considered like an incentive for businesses in the village like the cider mill. Mhm.

Is that something we could do like model with our biggest anchor business? So move the third one to the third column kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean it could be a part of the strategy which is like could that underutilized space like spur on small businesses like who want to see if we have a popup art market or something in the cider mill like it becomes or if someone wants to organize like a farmers market and then they get some of the cut or something. Yeah. underutilized space or like Tangerine used to do tastings and stuff that like Okay.

All right. So, we have our priorities and it's allocated to committees. What did we say for seasonal programming and gathering? Should that one with the same thought also go in the third column? Which which one? Seasonal programming. Is that also kind of like business revitalization? Yeah. Could we get like partnerships or incentives with even businesses outside of Franklin? Oh, for like an ice rink idea or something like this? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, we'll just combine all of that into the third column. Well, the gathering spaces can go to infrastructure. Infrastructure. Yeah. So, we'll talk about that on Friday. Okay.

Yeah. I I I agree with that. I think you could just rename it. I mean, it's revitalizing the village center and making, you know, and making Franklin a good place to stay. At least it allows us to assign it to a an existing group.

Okay. So, just on um milestones and tasks, every committee that got a task, can they please discuss that in the next month or two? Then bring it back right by the end of March. So that way we can see like, hey, we've priced out smart boards. This is what it is. We talked to the cable board, you know. Yeah. I mean, I personally think that our subcommittee should be on the agenda and then they would be expected to provide a report in the March meeting each month. Okay. So there has to be some update given in the March meeting. Correct.

Okay. Evan, uh, or Rachel, you guys have been keeping track of this that you'll be able to circulate something that has what we just agreed on. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to read this tomorrow and keep it on. There's got to be hieroglyphics down there. But yeah, if you can, you know, uh, then, all right. Anything else that we need to discuss? The budget needs to come to the council the first time at the April meeting, right? Correct. Charter says we have to have a draft budget in place by May. So it has to come to April. So by April we should definitely

So March needs to be an update meeting April needs to be so okay. So everyone just know the next 45 days. We don't have a track. whatever we're going to pay for it needs to be in the budget. Um Rachel, I'm just double checking something that I think you said. Um looking for a budget planning calendar.

I said that. No, I'm picking up on a comment that you made about the it was we have typically in the first part of the year begin be we we work on gathering facts and creating a budget for the coming fiscal year. Are you doing that? Yes, I will create a budget planning calendar for you. Okay, that was my question. Okay.

Okay. And um uh my other question is that I think it's been asked but I didn't quite get the answer. Um we need the conversation about uh going to the voters for a charter change and um a millage in a millage increase. What are we where where is that being managed? Is it legal? Is it in a Rachel's office? What charter amendment? charter change. Well, if we're going to raise taxes, we have we're already taxing at the maximum 3.5 mills. We have to ask the voters for a a charter change.

No, we're asking for we're ask police. You're asking for a separate mill. Okay. And that does not require a Well, we have to discuss going for a second mill. We already have a small police mill. What I'm s what we're discussing is one pulling it out of the out of the general fund and then putting it into a millillage. But the question is do we do we have one millillage and use that millillage to buy buy out the existing millillage that runs out in 31. Okay. And have a new whatever it would be a new eight or 10 year millage. Okay. or do we is it to

keep the one that's in place till 31 because it doesn't require a vote and it does generate a little bit of money. Yeah. And then base our millillage on a lesser amount. How do you see us getting to that decision? Can can we talk about in the finance committee? I mean yeah I mean that's that was all I'm that's what I'm asking. Is it going to finance? All those are Yeah. All everything in the second column is going to finance. Okay. I'm I'm I'm I'm worried about time. Yeah. All right. We're going to have a meeting to discuss like right away. Do we have a meeting on the calendar for finance committee? We next week. Is it next week? We talked about 1:30 or 2. I thought

No, no, I don't have one on my calendar. No. See, I had I blocked it, but I don't know. May have been just what we talked about. All right. Let's adjourn this. You can't make everybody wait while we schedule ourselves. So, uh, motion to adjurnn. Someone motion to adjurnn. Second. And all in favor? I thanks everyone.