Council - Regular Meeting

Uh, good evening everybody. Uh, I'm going to open the Franklin regular council meeting of Monday, November 10th, 2025. Uh, can we start with the pledge of allegiance, please? Pledge 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.

So before I call to order our roll call, I need to make an announcement and read something. So uh [clears throat] I wanted just to announce that before we start today's meeting that trustee Michael Seltzer has uh officially effective today uh retired and resigned his seat as trustee. Everybody might know he had sold his house and moved and was renting here in the village but he's now officially resigned. So, uh, before we go, I Mike had asked Mike couldn't be here today. He's hoping to be back in town in December, but he asked that I read something on his behalf that he presented to me. [clears throat] It has been my honor and a privilege to have served our community for nearly 30 years. First as a member and then as president of the Franklin Community Association and since 2010 as a trustee of Village Council. I've served proudly and I'm grateful to many who have placed their trust in me repeatedly and I'm honored to have been a part of our local government and community. My decision to leave Franklin coincided with the challenging state of local affairs. I pledged to continue until a moment when I felt I had done all I could to help guide us through the process of transitioning from a vacated staffing position towards the place where we are now with a new administration in place. That mission was accomplished completely two weeks ago and we are now fully restaffed and the work of our Franklin community can be properly managed [clears throat] by a new team of professionals. Thus, as I originally intended to do by year's end, I am effective November 10th, 2025, announcing my retirement and resignation from village council. I am hopeful of a successful transition. Given my commitment towards the process, this feels like the right time to complete my journey and move on from a

great and very proud history of Franklin volunteerism. I wish all the best to our president and friend David Goldberg to the new team of people who have joined our village and deserve our support and respect. May the town the time forgot prosper. I will always be a cherished part of my life and a shining example of the great volunteerism that makes this community unique and inspiring. Michael Seltzer, trustee 2010 to 2025 village of Franklin. And I just want to personally say to Mike that I want to thank you for the countless hours and Tyler's commitment you've shown the village the last 20 years. You have been an inspiration and great influence on my volunteerism. I will miss having you here on council. So, with that transition, uh I guess I'll also Evan will post on the website, but we now today begins the 30-day period to uh replace a successor trustee. [clears throat] uh the way our charter operates uh Mike's seat once it's filled and we hope to do so if either if not before with a special meeting at least by our next meeting which will fall within those 30 days. Uh the way our charter operates um Mike's seat since it's in the first two years of the term uh the appointed individual will just serve from our December meeting through November of 26. And then in November of 26 that seat will also go up for election. So technically in November of 2026, we will have four council seats on on the ballot. So that's how the process operates. So, any individuals that are interested in uh putting their name in for consideration

for the open uh trustee spot, uh please get an application from Evan and submit it to him within the next 3 weeks so that we have [clears throat] well, I would say within the next two weeks in case we do a special meeting. So, we'll we'll set a twoe deadline to get anyone who's interested in uh applying uh an opportunity to get an application in. Sorry. Um, so the seat goes up for election next November. Correct. They don't fill the seat for the remainder of the term of the vacancy. No. The way the charter reads, if there is another village election outside of 40 days prior to it, it gets done at the next one. Okay.

When I was appointed, it was in the second half. So, I just finished out the term. But when it happens in the first two years, that's how the charter reads. But I'll have Peter obviously confirm that. So having said that, Evan, roll call please. President David Goldberg here. Trusty Pam Hansen. Trusty Daniel Ferris here. Trusty Abigail Gates here. Trustee Angelina Salaka present. Trusty David Sally here.

And I did hear from Pam. Pam is recovering uh from medical procedure. So she'll uh be here and back on her feet next month. uh adoption of the agenda. Anybody have any comments on the agenda before we move forward? Um can we move public requests before consideration in case anyone here wants to or no? It doesn't matter. I'm just saying I didn't know there was no seats and I I always feel bad people standing. I I we we thought that many of the people would want to be here that are here because they wanted to hear the DNR presentations. I just want to make sure

I figured during public comment people could then ask questions and Carol will still hopefully be available. Okay. We might even push the flock down into okay old business. Yeah. And then uh I do want to make one matter of clarification because I know Angelina you had submit submitted something today that talked about deer sterilization. So we have on the agenda we've used the term DNR presentation on deer callull.

So the I I think we're I at least myself am learning as we go. Um, I was under the impression that the word call was more [clears throat] of a deer management term, but Cara was kind enough to confirm the the deer call is that the term that that is used when the means of control [clears throat] is lethal. A as as you know, there's non-lethal ways of doing it. And I know there's people that advocate non-lethal as well lethal. So, for purposes moving forward, even though our surrounding communities have approved to do a deer call in 2026, we're going to call it until we've made a decision on what, if anything, we're going to do, we're going to call it just urban deer management, which addresses all means of controlling the uh the population of deer. So, I apologize if we've been using that term wrongly. There's definitely not ever been anything at this council any type of decision to use a call as a means if we are involved at all. So I just wanted to clarify that and I do know that as part of Cara Colton who is here from the DNR to give us a presentation. Uh her presentation does also address that the DNR does not take any position on means of urban management. They're more of a sounding a sounding place. Then of course it's something you want to do. of the permitting agency, but uh the presentation that we're going to get today is to cover all aspects of urban deer management.

So, will there be room for the non-lethal presentation from the wildlife Michigan? I mean, as there's someone here from them. Yep. Oh, okay. Nice to know that two weeks ago.

Okay. Uh yeah, that's fine. uh depends on how long the presentation is. We've got a pretty full agenda. Again, the presentation that is being done by the DNR is not based on either side of the means of being used. So, if the presentation from the DNR is lacking in to some areas on uh sterilization, maybe we can get some a supplement. But I wasn't really prepared and I didn't see it come to us uh to be on the agenda. So that's the only comment I have on the agenda. Does anybody else have any comments? We do have a consent agenda. So if there's anything on the consent agenda that you want to discuss, uh we would pull those out and move that into old business. the outdoor lighting ordinance. Was that the same one we did like six months ago?

Right. So, if you could see uh the outdoor ordinance was actually approved in 2024 and uh I don't know for reasons unknown it never was officially codified here in the offices. So, the process of cotification never took place. So, uh, our our village attorney has and and our village planner have have felt that based on the fact it was a 2024 ordinance, uh, it would not be appropriate to post it as if it was a 2024 ordinance, it's going to actually be a 2025 ordinance and not effective for 20 days after today. So, uh, we can't adopt it as of 2024. So, the purpose of having on the consent agenda is to uh officially reapprove the second reading of the outdoor lighting ordinance and to have Evan officially post it, but the ordinance itself has not changed from what was approved.

So, the last clerk just never like posted and codified, but it's the exact same wording. Exact same wording. It was more the post decision of ours application that was missed. Okay. And then we'll post it. so that the residents know when it goes into effect and right Evan will go through the official process like we do when any ordinance has been adopted or amended and it goes into effect 20 days after today. Uh so even though we had hoped that it was going into effect a year ago uh it's still not uh applicable until 20 minutes from 20 days from today. Yeah, I agree. I think the 25 is just better recordkeeping,

you know. Yeah, I mean yeah, I agree. it has to be done. And then anything else, uh, if anyone has questions, uh, we could discuss it later when we get to administrator's report if you've got questions for Rachel. So, having said all that, uh, can I get a motion to adopt the agenda? Motion. Second. All right. We have a motion by Sally, second by Gates. All in favor? I opposed. [clears throat]

Okay. Uh, we have minutes from our October 13, 2025 meeting. Anybody have any comments? None from me. Yeah.

Uh, oh, mine was good. I only had one page four Evan uh treasures report just a 2025 Ford Explorer otherwise these are great again you and Sophia are doing oh I take that back I have one other comment uh on page 10 under F so I think the term we're looking for and it can be confusing. So I was asking whether the historic district commission had been consulted. So HDC is the historic district commission. HRC is Hubble, Roth and Clark who are our engineers. So that should there we were talking about the historic district commission and should not come from the H DC not HRC. I know that's confusing. That's all I have. So, if you guys are okay. Uh, hold on. We don't have a motion. So, I those are my changes. If I can get a motion to approve the minutes with my suggested changes.

So, moved. Second. Motion by Si, second by Saka. All in favor? I oppose. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Uh, reports of village officers. Chief, how are you, sir? Good. [clears throat] We have a big crowd tonight, so I'll be brief. Are there any questions on the report that I submitted for the past month? Okay. Thank you. One question. [laughter] One question. Does the head feel lighter with less hats on? Yes. All right. Yes. I'm enjoying it. And uh Rachel's doing a great job so far. So, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again for everything. Thank you, too. So far,

all right. Thank you. Uh, other chief Tony. Hello. Number two here, uh, you also had our copy of our written report. The only thing I'd like to add is that with, uh, the change in weather

and the change in lights [laughter] here. Uh, please, uh, please take note of fire safety in the fall, especially now that furnaces and fireplaces are starting up. Uh we we do tend to have one fire a year and I'd rather it not happen this year. I'd rather you put me out of business. So uh with that said, if anyone has any questions with regard to fire safety, you can always call the fire department. I've also emailed Evan. Uh you hit me up about every two weeks for something for the uh newsletter for the village. So if you haven't signed up to have that delivered to you, please uh please see the village offices because we'll look forward to adding more and more content. Depending your questions, that'll conclude my report. Any questions?

Thank you. Thank you. Teresa, [laughter]

good evening.

Um, I also, um, just wanted to ask if anybody had any questions on the report I submitted. Nothing different. I I'm still keeping in with the um format that we've been using for a while until everything falls in place, but um be happy to answer any questions. And I think the next item on the agenda um in part of the treasures report is the um approval of the check runs. So um I could just stay up here in case you have any questions on any of the checks. Anyone got any questions from the bills list? Good. Thanks.

Thank you for everything. Thank you. Have a good night. You as well. All right. So, next is approval of the consent agenda. Uh we have uh slight modification to the fee schedule, the village council meeting dates as well as the dates of the other boards. Uh I'll let each of those boards if they have a conflict on for any holiday reason to uh request an adjustment of their agenda accordingly. Uh the approval is for the an annual uh

what's the term Rachel for the annual disclosure? [clears throat] It's oh is is that part of our audit? The annual it's called the annual disclosure. Right. So we're changing the company that does that for us. That's what's on the agenda for that. It's basically the [clears throat] same group of people actually doing the annual disclosure. He just moved his offices from one company to the other. So you move, right? Okay.

And then the purchasing policy resolution, that's what uh Rachel and Teresa have put together. So anyone has questions on that, we would pull that off. If not, that's the policy that administration wants to use for how our bills are processed as well as the fact that we now have uh uh two office credit cards, one for the administrator and one for the chief of police. So there's that policy also addresses how uh those credit cards can be used and for what can be used. So for the purchasing policy, I had kind of two non-material changes of just consideration. So I don't know how we want to handle that.

So let's uh let's we'll we'll pull it off we'll pull that off of the consent agenda and when we get to the end of new business, we'll we'll put it in there. And I just had something um I I think it can doesn't need to be pulled out for it, but at the bottom of the um calendar of meetings, can they put the YouTube site that way? Oh, yeah. Um sure. Like after um the meetings are held at this location, but you can also access it remotely. Yep. Thanks.

All right. So uh with removing item F, can I get a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Okay. Thank you. Motion by Sally, second by Gates. Any further discussion? All in favor? I opposed.

All right. Thank you. All right. Presentations. First, we have two personal presentations that I would like to read. The first is uh on behalf of the village and us as the council, but it is also on behalf of the entire village of Franklin Library and its board. Uh Terresa Natsky, the the library director of over 22 years is uh just retired and we uh that almost four weeks. Is that Oh, four more weeks. Five more weeks. Not till before Christmas.

Oh, all right. Well, great. We still get to have you with us. So, this is in proclamation of recognizing the long-term service of And Teresa, do you want to come up here while we read it so everybody can see who you are? You don't want to. Where's Heather? We need her to take a picture. That's all right. Take a picture. Thank you.

So, recognizing the long-term service of Terresa Terresa Natsky, director of Franklin Public Library upon her retirement. Whereas, the village of Franklin wishes to honor those individuals whose dedication and service have made a lasting impact on our community. And whereas Teresa has faithfully served the Franklin Public Library and the residents of our village for over 22 years, demonstrating exceptional professionalism, vision, and an enduring commitment to literacy, learning, and public service. And whereas throughout her distinguished tenure, Teresa has worked tirelessly to expand library programs, modernize services, foster a love of reading among residents of all ages, and create a welcoming environment that has enriched the culture and educational life of all of Franklin. And whereas her leadership and compassion have strengthened the library as a cornerstone of our community, supporting education, civic engagement, and lifelong learning. And whereas upon her retirement, Teresa leaves behind a legacy of service, innovation, and community spirit that will continue to benefit the residents of the village of Franklin for years to come. Now therefore, be it resolved that the village council of the village of Franklin hereby recognize and honors Terresa Natsky for her 22 years of dedicated service to the Franklin Public Library and to the citizens of our village. And be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution, an expression of civic appreciation be presented to Terresa Natski on behalf of the undersign and each of the council will sign and we will get this signed and presented to you. Thank you again. The library will miss seeing you there and I'm sure that uh your replacement will

choose the bill. Should we have her hold it? Lawrence will appreciate you. Rick, do you want to pass on? [applause]

Right. Right. Angelina's gonna take a picture. I got one. Oh, I'll send it to Florence. Yes, you better send it to Florence. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a privilege. Thank you so much. Enjoy your real retirement. Thank you. Few more weeks. can have. [laughter] Okay, we have one more and this is in proclamation. This is recognizing Lance Vanic for his services as the treasurer of the village.

Hello, sir. Thank you. Nice to see you here as a regular old resident for the first time in a while. Whereas Lance Vanic was appointed as the village of Franklin treasurer in August 2012 by village president Jim Kokenparger which role he served with support by trustees in conjunction with his professional career. And whereas Lance has been a resident in the village since 1997 with his wife Sue and three children which he has found Franklin to be a small town with a historic feel that he cherishes. And whereas he has served as president of a local money management firm since 1996. in addition to traveling worldwide, supporting his daughter as a competitive skater with the International Skating Union. And whereas Lance has been active with village budget negotiations, attending meetings, and working on approaches to actively monitor village expenses as well as plan for the future. And whereas he has advocated for the village and in earning optimal interest rates on short-term cash deposits by setting up arrangements with local brokerage. And whereas Lance is committed to making sure the pension program for the Franklin Bingham Farms Police and Fire departments were in order, reviewing and recommending means to reduce liability, including obtaining grants and advising trustees on prioritizing the pension program. And whereas Lance has worked extensively with the Streetscape project to guide the complicated funding process over a three-year project. And whereas Lance regularly attended council meetings and was always available for consultation on pertinent issues each month and was a regular member of the finance committee. Now there be it resolved that village council of village of Franklin hereby recognizes and honors Lance Vanic for his 13 years of service to the village of Franklin and its citizens. Be it resolve that a copy of this resolution, an expression of civic appreciation be presented to Lance Vanic on behalf of the underside. Thank you.

[applause]

pass. Well, uh, Lance, again, we've, you know, we we've thanked you a couple times already, but, uh, you, you know, we wouldn't be where we're at right now [clears throat] without you. And thank you. We hope that as long as you're available, that we can still, uh, pick your brain when needed. Absolutely. Just because I got another angle. He looks taller from this angle. [laughter] Thank you. Thanks. Thank [applause] you.

All right. Okay. Next, uh Evan, if you've got it ready. So, everyone, I would like to introduce Cara Colton. Cara is with the Department of Natural Resources. She is a wildlife biologist and amongst other things I'm sure that keep her busy at the DNR, [clears throat] uh, urban deer management is one of the areas that she has background in. [clears throat] And as we've been uh investigating the process and trying to catch up with our neighbors who have been asking us to determine whether or not we're interested in being involved, we've asked Cara to be here and give us some background on urban deer management. So

yes, the floor is yours.

Thank you. So, thank you for having me here tonight. Um I will take a little more time than other folks, but hopefully everyone's okay with that. Thank you for the introduction. Uh my name is Cara Coloulton. I'm a wildlife biologist with Michigan Department of Natural Resources with our wildlife division. And tonight I just kind of want to give a brief overview on urban deer management in general, breaking that up into three different um segments. So talking about biology of whitetail deer, um processes that communities can take towards management of whitetail deer and then options. And I think that's probably what most people are interested in. Um and so the options can vary depending on the goals of the community that are identified and that can then be used to guide what management options would be best for a community. Um so we won't talk on one thing specifically but kind of all different things. Um you can tab it a little more. Sorry made it difficult there. [laughter] Um so a little bit about biology of whitetail deer. Um specifically characteristics of urban deer in general. Um, so typically we see higher survival survival rates of urban deer compared to their rural counterparts. Um, this has to do a lot with life history. Um, it's very different for um, if you walk outside your house here and see a white tail deer, typically it's probably going to stare right back at you, might even walk up to you if it's been fed by a neighbor, that kind of thing. If you're out on one of our state game areas in more of a rural setting, that deer is probably going to hightail it the other direction. So, we see a lot of behavioral difference even though they're still the same species. And that has a lot to do with the environment that they're living in. Um, like I've said, we see typically higher survival rates in urban deer reported as high as 87%. Um, we also see higher reproduction. Um, this is increased in urban areas and we've seen reported um 1.8 fs per adult dough. I'm sure a lot of you see deer around here that have fonds that are um twins or triplets even. So, it's a great

place to have babies. Um there's no reproductive scinessence either. So um in urban settings, we've identified that deer essentially don't go into menopause, meaning that they're bred throughout their entire life. Um another thing that we've documented or I should say that research has documented is that fawns of um of the year. So typically first year fawns are not being bred. However, if they weigh enough going into that first winter, um they can be bred a lot in urban settings where you typically wouldn't see that in a rural setting. So, you're seeing really high reproduction rates. Um and then that coupled with home range size. So, these animals don't have to use a large amount of area to make a living. They can get by just living in one little, you know, small section. Um they can get their caloric intake from just being in one little neighborhood sometimes. Um, and this can lend itself to seeing higher deer densities in urban areas. So, all of these things combined um make it a great place for a deer to live in an urban setting. So, I don't know if anyone has heard of the George Reserve. Um, it's a research area owned by the University of Michigan. Um, it's been known historically in the past to produce landmark studies on deer population management. Um, it was a research facility put in place that's about two square miles of a fenced enclosure. And there was a deer study started in 1928 where scientists took six deer, four females and two males, put them in this enclosure. And then within six years, so fast forward to 1934, the deer population grew from that six deer to 180 deer.

A lot of deer. Um, and then one year after that, it grew from 180 to 222 deer. Um, so we're seeing a lot of deer in a small period. Um, the population was then wiped out. Fast forward a few years later, we're into 1975, another deer study deer study started. Um, they put 10 deer in this enclosure. And by um, another six years later, 1989, the population grew from 10 deer to 212 deer. Um so nearly identical growth rates between those times. Um and it just shows how um the potential white tail deer have to grow in a specific area when they have optimal conditions available to them. So another thing I want to talk about is uh changes on the landscape. I'm sure a lot of us are aware um over time the landscape has changed. So this is an aerial imagery um of some spot in Indiana. You see a lot of kind of rural farm fields. There's a river corridor going through there. Not a ton of development. Um this aerial image is from 1999. Um urban or deer have the ability to adapt to changing landscapes. Um so this is now that well this was in 2008. So fast forward now to 2008. You can see that the landscape changed drastically from what it was. um you're seeing housing developments gone up, you're seeing golf courses, there's that still that river corridor, but not really that rural setting anymore. Um I would say from the viewpoint of a deer, um this is probably an improvement. Um so while deer love corn and soybeans fields, um and they can make a living on it, that typically comes with traditional management for deer, which would be hunting. Um in a lot of these types of areas, hunting is not going to be a management tool. So, this kind of acts as a refugeia for deer and they can make a living off of um people's hostas and clover and other plant species and

all those kinds of yummy plants that everyone puts in their yards. Um and then they are also not being hunted. So, this probably, like I said, from a deer standpoint might be a favorable landscape. So, there's two types of carrying capacities that I want to talk about. I don't know how familiar anyone is with the word carrying capacity, but the first one I want to talk about is the biological carrying capacity. So, this is basically how many deer that the habitat can support. Um, this is when urban deer management becomes very polarizing. There's it's a very contentious topic. There's lots of different viewpoints. Um, I would say that we typically don't want to manage deer to the biological carrying capacity. Um, animals are living, but I would say they're not thriving. um we typically see like declining body condition, reproductive um success with decline. There could be potentially higher fawn mortality, social stresses, sickness that could potentially come around when populations are at their biological carrying capacity. The second carrying capacity that I want to talk about is the social carrying capacity. Um you might have heard it called social carrying capacity or cultural carrying capacity. Um, but this is the number of deer socially that people will tolerate um in an area before they're considered a nuisance. Um, so this graphic here was pulled from um a MSU professor that he used. I think he's in the human dimensions department at the wildlife um group there. But basically what I want to get out of this is that no oneizefits-all. Um, there are people, I'm sure, in this room that think there are way too many deer. There are also probably people in this room that think there aren't enough deer. Um, so we have different social carrying capacities or on this graphic they're referred to as acceptance capacities. Um, and what this is to demonstrate this

curve over time is essentially the growth rate of a deer population. Um, I would say that people typically get fed up with the number of deer before we reach that biological carrying capacity that I discussed. Um, that's just how efficient white-tailed deer are living in an urban area. Um, and it would reach this at some point with no management. Um, and you will see that population decline. Um, and so we need to make sure that communities are focusing on the impacts that animals are having and not necessarily the number of animals themselves. Um, so this green bar down here, let's say this represents people in the community. They like the number of deer the way they are right now. They're happy with the way things are. Everything's good. But that population starts to grow. You see the white line go up and you move into the blue um acceptance capacity. Those people in the blue are so happy there are more deer on the landscape. They thought when it was in the green, we didn't have enough deer. There weren't enough. I wasn't seeing anything. I'd love to see more of them. So we get once again differing viewpoints throughout a small area. Like I said, social carrying capacity could vary for everyone in this room. Um [laughter] perfect. Um so why engage in deer management? Typically when communities come to us about deer management, um they come to the table with some things already in mind. Um there are concerns about disease. So um tickborn diseases are a concern. Um we can get into that later, but I understand that as a concern. We see habituation is a concern some communities talk about. So the picture of the gentleman taking the photo of the deer. The deer is pretty close. That animal is clearly accustomed to being around humans and doesn't have a fear. Um landscape damage is something that we hear a lot of. People have to put netting over their pretty flowers. their hostas can't grow. Um they can't keep a garden because the deer eat

everything. They're eating the bird feeder. Um another thing we hear is um folks will look at their their parks, their natural landscapes, um and the the picture in the center here, the deer in the um understory of this forest. You can see that there's basically nothing growing underneath that. And that's probably because the deer have eaten the majority of saplings um regeneration. Um, so the understory, there's not a lot of nutrition available to deer. Um, and lastly, one of the big things we hear about is deer vehicle collisions. So these are all um, reasons that people hear over time that are problems potentially um, negative impacts for from the deer population in their community when they come to us that we hear about. So the next thing we want to get into is the process of community- based deer management. Um, this is adapt adapted from a presentation um, from Emily Pomerance. She's a professor at MSU now. She used to be part of uh Michigan DNR's human research um department, but she's now with MSU still doing human dimensions work. Um so you are thinking of community based deer management um and don't know where to begin. Um this graphic will hopefully bring it all together. [laughter] So the big thing we want folks to think about is um like I said, there's a lot of different human values. it can lead to a lot of different interpretations of desirable outcomes um and acceptable means for achieving them. So the big thing we want communities to to kind of engage in when they start this process is to think about these four phases. Um so the first phase is identifying the problem. Um this is when potentially community leaders like yourself or someone else asks to set up like a task force group um to inform a deer management committee that type of thing to better understand the impacts that are occurring throughout the community. The f second phase would be decision-m. So this is when the deer program would develop goals and objectives that th those are determined and then the actions that would need to be taken to

address those um cons and considered to address the objectives and the goal of the plan. Phase three would be implementation. So when the community develops their management plan, it's carrying out the action of the program. And then the last phase is evaluation and adaptation. So, this is really important for communities to evaluate their deer management goals and objectives, making changes if there needs to be changes that happen. Um, and also making sure that you're meeting your objectives and working towards some sort of success in the end. So, do we have a problem? Um, most of the time we get the call of we have too many deer. How many should we have? I would push back on that. Um it's not necessarily about I don't want people to focus on the number of deer that should be there. Um like I've mentioned before, we seen a lot about um different social caring capacities of folks. Um so we want communities to make sure that they're focusing on measuring the impacts that the deer are having, not the number of deer themselves. Um once we identify those impacts, which most likely they're probably negative impacts, um that can guide the problem. Um, so if there's a tolerance with what's going on, there is no problem. Um, and that depends on who you talk to, I'm sure. Um, once all of this has been determined, so like when you're looking at the problem, what is the problem? Where is it occurring? Who is it occurring to? When is it occurring? What's the severity? And then making sure that you're gathering data that you need to support that impact that you're having. So, this is seen typically um reaching out to residents, asking a questionnaire um their thoughts on the deer population, tracking if there's been tickornne illnesses, tracking deer vehicle collisions. I'm sure I'm sure that's probably being tracked already. Um potentially the number of complaints coming into the city um by residents, whether it's just there's too many deer, landscape damage complaints, all of that. Um or even potentially monitoring

brows that's occurring in your natural parks and landscapes. Um but all of this then can be used to um address how you would move towards making your management plan. [cough] So I want to kind of give an example as far as when we want communities to develop goals um and outcomes. We want to make sure that it's measurable um and being as specific as possible. So for example, this is hypothetical situation. If you all said we've seen an increase in deer vehicle collisions by 50% in the last 10 years, um our goal is we want to see a reduction in deer vehicle collisions. Perfect. You want to see those reduced. We want that refined more when it comes to the objective. How are you going to do that and make it measurable? Um so that refined objective could be we want to reduce deer vehicle collisions by 30% over 3 years. Um, it's a measurable outcome that you can monitor the efficacy of whatever program is implemented. Um, and then you can make those align with your management goals and objectives. Um, we're here to provide flexibility as a management response. Um, but we do want to make sure um, you consider all the different options out there and that's to protect us and that's to protect you for your actions. Um, and we want to make sure that each idea is thoroughly vetted. Sorry. No, you think. So, now the fun stuff. [laughter] Um, management option. So, there are pros and cons with all of these. Um, if it was a one shoe fits all, one size fits everything, I wouldn't be here right now. Um, if it was quick, costefficient, everyone liked it, that would be what everyone's doing. That's not where we're at. So, different management options, we're just going to touch on all of these. Um, like I said, there are pros and cons to all of them. Management option is no action or

response. A a pro, maybe it's a compromise. Maybe people need to increase their tolerance. Um, it's also inexpensive. Cons with that, some would say you're not doing anything. It's considered inaction. Um, the other thing is is that if there are a lot of deer on um the habitat or on the landscape here within the urban community and you're already seeing negative impacts, those are going to continue to degrade. um the habitat and those conflicts are going to continue to be there. Um this picture was chosen because it um shows what we call a browse line. So basically it's um how far a deer can stand on its back legs and eat everything. So you can see the deer have eaten everything they can from the bottom of those trees essentially down. Um so like I said, if you already have too many deer there and you're seeing those negative impacts, um those would continue to be there with no action. Another option would be hunting. Um, so the pros of this is it's typically inexpensive to communities. Um, most hunters will pay to participate in a hunting program. Um, it can provide economic stimulus to the local community and it is typically supported by a lot of individuals um because they see the deer being used um for meat most of the time. Cons of this is that um some types of hunting programs that have been implemented in the past may not be appealing to many um depending on what those hunters are um targeting. So there have been programs that have been implemented where hunters come in and they're shooting what we would call trophy deer. So those big bucks um and they're not targeting females, which is typically what we suggest folks to target because they are the ones reproducing. Um that could be a con to a hunting program. Um, the other would be local concerns, just having folks hunting within a community. Um, and then

question on the hunting. Nope. So, hunting, at least from where I'm from back when I did it, was based off of licensing through the state. So, how is that controlled through local government?

Yep. So, DNR would work with you on that as far as there are communities right now in Michigan that have like archery hunting programs in place. So, they still require like a license through Michigan DNR. um whether the city decided to also require something that would be something that they could decide if they wanted to implement themselves. It would be up to the community to decide how that program went about. Um some communities that have implemented, you know, archery only hunts, that type of thing are very regulated, very restricted. Um they require like background checks, um proficiency accuracy testing done, that type of thing. Um so, but it still would require the license and would be done during typical hunting season. through DNR's regulations, but the community would have the availability to tailor

additional the Yeah. the program. Yeah. Yep.

Um, another con is potentially access issues. Um, so a lot of private land ownership. Um, if folks aren't willing to participate, it might restrict um where folks would be able to target deer for removal. Um, as well as um depending on what type of hunting was implemented. Um, if a deer was removed, let's say via archery. Sometimes they don't necessarily expire right on site. It could run off and then expire um if it was on a different landowner's property and they didn't have access to get the deer. That could cause problems as well. One of the things we talked about in past meetings was there had to be um enough space allocation in order to make hunting an option and I believe there's only one parcel of land in Franklin that could facilitate that which would be like our downtown area. Is that an archery specific hunting as well?

So that would be up to the city to decide where how if there was a parcel requirement, a size requirement. Um you could collectively pull people together properties or if if there wanted to be an acreage say um aotment I guess but that would be up to the city to decide if that was something that they wanted to implement. But that's a that's a city level determination, not a state or correct. Yep. Because it's legal in the state to just shoot a bow and arrow at a so deer.

Yes. So we have we man DNR typically manages wildlife populations through hunting trapping regulations. Um local ordinances typically prohibit that type of act activity in urban areas. Um, so I would assume that there's an ordinance in place that prohibits the discharge of a firearm, potentially archery equipment within the city. Probably. Probably. [laughter]

Correct. So people then can't use hunting as a management tool. So if hunting were to be considered an option, that would be something the city would have to address would be the local ordinances in place. Um, but we do have seasons in place, licenses available to folks. It's the local ordinances that prohibit people doing it as an activity. Good question. Um, another management option I'm sure people have heard of is sharpshooting. Um, so this is where um, typically hired professionals are brought in to remove deer. Um, pros to this are seen to be that it reduces deer populations quickly. Um, so these are very highly managed and are um, what I would consider to be very safe. Um there are set organizations or companies that do this type of work. Um a con is that it can be very expensive and it also can be seen as controversial. Um I would say a lot of these options whether lethal or not non-lethal are pretty controversial depending on who you're talking to. Um but that is another consideration that the city could look into and I know that's um been a discussion as well. Uh another management option would be trap, relocate andor remove. Um, pros are you're not firing a lethal projection. Um, which I know a lot of people have concerns about a lethal projection being fired in a urban area. Um, it allows for deer to be removed sometime in difficult areas. You can set up a trap in a very small piece of property um to do kind of a targeted removal. Cons are that this can cause high stress to deer. It's also very expensive um and very labor intensive and timeconuming. Um, and then this is also not an option in Michigan. So, I'll put that out there. We will not be relocating deer. Um, so if we were to relocate animals, you're taking that entire deer, all of its biological

contents, and moving it elsewhere. It's extremely stressful to deer. Um, and the survival rates for deer that have been moved in other studies is typically low. So, um, there is concern with that. Um, so looking at some non-lethal options, um, contraception or birth control is one that's been talked about a lot in the past. Um, another pro for this is that it doesn't fire a lethal protection or projection as well. Um, it prevents future fawns from being born into the population. Downsides are it is very expensive. Um, it doesn't actually remove deer from your population. So, it's reducing the growth rate. It's not reducing the population. Um and it's difficult, if not nearly impossible, to achieve results in freeranging deer populations. So um deer don't know borders. They move where they want to move. Um and so typically in open settings, this is not um a

Oh, this is not seen as a um successful I guess option most of the time in open um habitats. And this to delineate is not physical sterilization. How was this administered? We will get there. Next [laughter] slide. Can you speak loud please question? Sure. I was asking whether is this physical sterilization or is this administered like a medication?

Correct. So this is a medication. So there are two drugs out there that are federally approved um drugs in our country. One of them is called Gonocon. Um they are registered through the EPA. Um Gonicon is a hand injection drug. Um so meaning you have to trap the individual. You have to inject them with the drug. It al also requires a booster. Um typically administered within one year. So that means you're catching the deer again. You're hand injecting it again. And typically most places you're um marking the deer so you know who has and who hasn't received this drug. Um, although these are registered for for use through the EPA as a pesticide, they have to be approved through MDARD and that has not been done in the state of Michigan. So, this is not an option. Um, the way this drug works, just to kind of give a little bit of information of that is it um blocks the stimulus hormone. Um, so basically it leaves the animal in a non-reroductive state. The second drug out there is called Zonastat. Um this is also can be hand injected, jabstick or remote dart delivery. Um it also requires a booster at two weeks and then each year. It is also not registered for use in Michigan through MDARD. Um and so the interesting thing with this drug is that it prevents um basically the sperm cannot attach to the egg. So it prevents fertilization but it leaves animals in a reproductive state. Um so if a deer's not bred, it's going to come back into reproductive state in 28 days. Um, and it leaves deer in this state over and over and over. We're in rut right now. Deer get a little woo or whatever when we're in rut. Do crazy things. Um, all the bucks are running around chasing. Places that have administered this under I would assume scientific studies. I've been told they've seen seen an increase

in deer vehicle collisions because deer are running around. Um, bucks are trying to breed females because they're constantly coming into a reproductive state. sterilization. Um, another pro for this one is that it doesn't fire a lethal projection. Um, it once again also prevents bonds from being born permanently. Um, so this is often referred to as it can be done as a tubal liation or an ovarctomy. Cons are this is also very expensive. Um, labor intensive. Um, you're typically darting deer, moving them to a predetermined location to do the surgery, then putting them back, reversing the drug. Um, so it it require it's major surgery. Um, it doesn't remove deer. Um, that once again may be a problem. So you're reducing the growth rate. You're not reducing the number of deer on the landscape. Um, and it's often seen as difficult to achieve results with this management option. Um, Ann Arbor did a sterilization program. Um, some of you may be aware of this. They contracted with um, um, White Buffalo, Inc. um as part of a research project where they looked at deer sterilization. Um they had two study areas, so a southern study area and a northern study area. And they noted over the four years of this study that there was a 47% decrease in the population in the southern study area and a 60% decrease in the northern study area. Um if you dig into the numbers a little bit more, they were doing sterilization um and removing deer lethally. So across those study areas, they lethally removed 432 deer. Um, and 78 doese's then were sterilized in this study.

So I have a question. If you sterilize deer Mhm. and deer produce um dough all their life, then aren't you reducing the population of the deer because those deer that are existing are no longer reproducing. So you don't like initially where you're at. You're not killing the deer that are currently in existence, but you're preventing. Correct. So, you're not reducing the population with where it's at right now. The day you sterilize, you're reducing the growth rate over time in the population. So, they can't have like So, if a deer lives 15 years, say, they would not be able to reproduce

or the last 13 years of their life. If you sterilize them at [clears throat] 2 years old and if they're having twins or triplets per deer, that's potentially 3 * 13 39 deer that you're preventing [clears throat] from being born. Correct. So you reducing the population deer. No. So again, it goes back to what you were talking about that the overall goal needs to be what is the impact you're trying to achieve as the community. Correct. Right. [clears throat] What you're saying is I get what you're saying. You're saying in 13 years you will reduce the population and that's if you're sterilizing. We're looking at places where this has seen to are what we would consider like a closed population. So they're not free ranging. Um

which is why I'm guessing they did a combination of call plus sterilization. Correct. Um so they did see a reduction but the majority of the deer were lethally removed. Um but like the very next year you'd see a reduction. Correct. But all those doe's that were not sterilized in theory could be bred and reproducing still. So you a lot of places that they have seen positive results are closed populations and you're sterilizing almost 100% of the deer out there. How far are deer traveling over the course of their life?

It depends. It's a great question. So home ranges I would say in an urban setting are going to be a lot smaller, but I can't say specifically what it is here. Um it depends on the resources available. It's going to be a smaller home range than it would be out in a rural setting, but I can't give you an exact exact number for this particular study. Um, are there what was the cost to call and sterilize?

I don't have those numbers. No, no, I'm sure it's available on their website. I bet that information White Buffalo's got a pretty detailed website if you were to look it up. Um, you can see a lot of the research that's available. So calling just kills the deer and then you have to call again. Then you have to call again because the deer that are alive are still reproducing at twins or triplets. So like both of them it depends on your management objectives. So once again looking at the impacts and that's where [clears throat]

it it isn't like a oneanddone type of thing. We want people to know this is like a long-term management whatever you decide to do. Um it's [clears throat] not going to be we did it once and we're good to go. But you only have to sterilize a deer one time in a lifetime. Correct. Mhm. Yeah. Um, if I understand you right, with regard to sterilization, you were saying it slows the growth rate, but in a community like ours, it would not put it into a negative growth rate. Correct. Because we probably wouldn't be able to sterilize every single deer unless you got every dough out there and you had no deer coming and going,

right? Which which wouldn't be realistic. So, if I'm understanding you, like if we're going like on a growth chart and we're going at this rate, it would slow it over time, but we'd still be increasing. We wouldn't actually ever decrease the population potentially. Yeah. I mean, if you were if you were to sterilize everything, real quick, from a logistical standpoint, you may or may not know it from the report, but again, big logistics person, so it seems to me it would make sense to perform the call before the sterilization reduce, right? That way you're not calling potentially sterilized deer, plus you're reducing that total population that you have to sterilize. And that would be something that the city could look. What did they do at the same time?

Yep. Mhm. And I don't know all the details with this study. Yeah. Um, one more thing. If if the cities around us are callulling deer and deer don't know boundaries, will Franklin's deer population be managed because we're only 2 miles big by the culling of the nearby neighbor. I wish I had a crystal ball, but I can't. [laughter] But like if if you're saying that deer don't stay within the boundaries potentially, but potentially not. I mean,

well, they stay within the boundaries, then sterilization would be more effective. But if you're saying that they move beyond boundaries, then the minute they crossian hills, they could get caught. The point that was made is that they're going to adapt to survive. So if they determine that this 1.5 mile by 2 mile space does not require them to go any further, they're not going to go further, right? Like they can make a living where they're at and what they're doing. Regardless of what the size is, they're not going to move. Like year over year, you're probably seeing the same deer in your yard. I'm sure they have the same daily movements. It's the same group. You could probably say at 5:00 p.m. those six deer are going to come through my yard,

right? and then it's eight deer and then it's 10 deer or whatever but yep 12 with us [laughter] but it's probably those same family groups that you're seeing. Yeah, they're going to be very habituated to their movements and that probably changes with the seasons. What is the lifespan of a deer in our urban population [snorts] longived? I'd probably say probably 13 so years. Aside from uh the carrying capacities that you'd mentioned, are there physical symptoms and signs of a deer that indicate that overpopulation has happened like wasting? We talked about wasting disease or you know just so wasting disease wouldn't have to do with like a population number.

Um so there there are dis I mean diseases are concern for people's tickborn diseases. I'm sure you've heard of chronic wasting disease, EHD. These are all diseases

typically manifest when there is overpopulation. So like EHD is like a MIJ that's presented. So the MIJ it's a biting MIJ that bites deer. Um and it we saw a huge die off this season. EHD was pretty rampid throughout the country. It's very localized and so you can see localized die-offs of deer. Um and then as soon as it freezes outside that MIJ dies and it doesn't affect the deer anymore. I guess I'm trying to get some idea of we're determining what's our goal and like how are we determining whether overpopulation is a factor there ways to gauge like physically and I guess that's where I'd say I would focus more on impacts

don't try to get tied to a number um because you don't have a number unless maybe you do if you're doing surveys but it's really hard to do surveys to me in general it's like before even we state there's like a management problem. I feel like we have to identify whether there is a deer issue. Correct.

Because to me, it's like, oh, Franklin has a tree issue because, you know, they fall on homes and they take our electricity out, but we all love the trees. We're not going to cut down all the trees because it's like the benefit we get with the burden. Like to me, when I talk to people about deer, they're like, "Yeah, they eat my plants, but I love seeing them in the morning. They're majestic and I would not want to kill them." Like so it's is there a inconvenience? Yes. Does that mean you want to kill them? Like that's a far stretch. And same thing with trees. Like you have to bag your leaves. You have to uh you know landscape every few months. But we enjoy seeing the changing of the leaves and we love having treeline streets. So we take on the loss of electricity. We take on the fallen limbs. We take on all the extra yard work because that's how we want to live. And so like I think that is like something that we haven't put out to our residents like do you enjoy seeing the deer?

In fairness, she's not advocating one way or the other. That's up for us from a policy standpoint to Trusty Gates's point is like what are our goals? Yeah. So I think like I said at the beginning defining is there a problem and if there is a problem what is the problem the severity and looking at the impacts that the deer are having whether that's through a community survey looking at deer vehicle collisions complaints made to the village that type of thing those are all things that could be looked at. Um but yeah that's very good point. Can we move on another

Yeah please. [laughter] Um, another option. I agree with the laughs. Um, reintroducing predators. Hit that hit that space button. [laughter] Um, pros, I guess, an opportunity to restore historical species to an area where they once were. Um, I think mountain lions. We do we do love historical preservation.

So, cons are uh we would say it's probably very socially unacceptable. If we think we have a deer problem, we don't want to get mountain lion and wolf problem calls. Um, so I will say right off the bat, this is not an [snorts] option. Um, but I did want to mention it. [laughter] Um, and then lastly, another non-lethal option would be fencing and repellents. I'm sure a lot of folks are already actively participating in this. Um, you pros, you can exclude deer from problem areas. Um, it is relatively inexpensive. Um, cons are it requires a lot of maintenance. Um, and there's no guarantees that it's going to keep the deer from eating your plants. Um, and it does often not solve the communitywide problem. So, typically these are band-aids for um, specific individuals trying to keep them out of a garden with fencing, that type of thing, putting netting over your pretty flowers. All right, so to wrap it up here, um, vin diagram here. Um, so we have cost, efficacy, speed, and controversy. Um, there is no one-sizefits-all. There is no magic solution. Um, if, like I said, there was, we would all be doing it, and I wouldn't be here right now. Um, but there are four major components that communities should look at when they're deciding um, if they want to move forward with management options, um, that will best suit their area. And there's trade-offs to selecting one management option over another management option. Um, these all play a part in whatever management strategy that is selected if this the village decides to move forward with a management option. Um, but you're never going to be able to have all four at once. Um, and so you might have to choose between having two or three of its components. Um, and the city will have to um, make a decision. Like I said, you can't have them all. It just depends on where the community's values lie um, and how [clears throat] you guys want to go about solving a a potential

problem. And with that, we are done. If anyone has questions, I will hopefully be able to answer them.

All right. So, Cara, and I appreciate that you have another minute. Uh, our residents in the crowd, just with a show of hands, how many people were here just to hear the presentation? Let me go the other way. How many people are here that actually have questions they'd like to have asked? That's not too bad. So, would you mind if a couple residents uh so we're going to we're going to open up public requests and comments right now. Uh those of us that have questions or comments regarding the urban deer management, let's have them go first. Uh if it's a statement to us, uh go to the back of the line. If it's a question that you specifically have for Cara, then we'd like those individuals to go first and try and keep your time to about three minutes.

Do we have to come up? Yeah, you have to come up. Thank you.

Um, so my name is Beth. I live on Carol Avenue. I lived here for 16 years. Um, I appreciate all of the scientific information, but what I'm hearing is a lot of how do we remove these deer? I work in medicine. We look at the root cause. So where my mind goes is um as you mentioned deer move from population to population or from geographic area to geographic area. We've seen so much um uh degradation of forests and woods. Bloomfield Township took out acres by the Pickering Barn. There's a house on Charles Lane that was one house when I lived moved in 16 years ago. Now it's four and it took up the whole block and it just keeps taking out woods. I'm sure there's urban sprawl that goes to Farmington that wants to do their call. um Birmingham, all these surrounding communities, and the deer are going to go where they have habitat, water, something to eat. Um, in taking out all of this habitat for the deer, we've taken out habitat for the coyotes, which are natural predators. So, I know everybody laughed at that. Certainly, we're not going to reintroduce mountain lions. However, I think we need to realize where is the root cause coming from that we are taking away their habitat. We're taking away their predators habitat. So, has the DNR done any kind of study or consideration for giving back the deer places to live or limiting human expansion? I mean, there are cities that limit where you can build and they don't allow a sub bigger than a a certain population size in a geographical area. Portland, Oregon, or outside Portland or the suburban areas of Portland has done it. Um, because they don't want to take away their habitat and their wildlife because we do. I mean, I love seeing the deer. Yes, they eat mahas. Well, the the problems that I've seen it with are the past 16 years are three very traumatic situations that all had to do with fencing and fencing killing deer. So, I was ecstatic when we outlawed the spikes on the top of our fences because that was killing the deer in my eyes and I would rather see them come and eat. I mean, they were eating my sedum this year and they don't eat sedum. Um, so I guess my my my viewpoint is I don't want to see any of the deer killed. Sorry, I

set my timer. My question is, has the DNR done any studies or consideration for limiting urban sprawl and where we build? And is there like countywide or multiple countywide like limitations on taking out taking out the habitat? Like that's where they're that's where it's coming from is that we're taking away the woods.

I don't think we would have the ability to do that as an agency since everything is local government ordinances. We don't own that. So, I just think it's a bigger picture that maybe this spurs like a small community saying we don't want to kill these deer, but we need to look at like us as humans like not just taking over everything. I bought an old home because I didn't want to build a new house in a new subdivision that took over land. So, that's my that was my main question and I think that should be a consideration before we just say let's kill the deer. Let's think about giving them back their land or at least [clears throat] living with the risk of it versus benefit. What is our goal? I hope that our community's goal is not to kill a bunch of animals. I hope our community's goal is to say maybe there's no change. Maybe we just [clears throat] kind of live with it. Well, thank you.

Thanks.

Hello. Uh [clears throat] I'm a doctor. I'm an anesthesiologist and I also have been an OBGYn before. So what I want to talk about is one is there a problem? You can see there's a a lot of gardening club people here. We if I give you anecdotal uh information is that I moved here 30 years ago and I seldom see a deer. Now I have a herd of deer chasing my dog and I have giant hostel decimated to almost nothing. So my whole garden is totally decimated to an extent I never seen. I see fawn dying in front of my doorstep because they are so thin like and they have this kind of bubalic disease with the tongues sticking out and drooling all over. So you can do a survey that's number one is there a problem. Number two is what we're going to do. So there is sterilization and I would like to know how much it cost for sterilization because we need capture, handle, surgery, recovery, all that versus how much it costs to do the shop shooting. Uh cost is a big thing. You can be do looking at a thousand differential. So there goes your decision. Number three is about sterilization. No sorry chemical injection in a form of contraception. So deer are mammals just like us. They have the gonadotrobins, they have the axis, they have the ovary and yes, we have to do the dose. So if we do the dose, there's nothing that give you lifelong contraception. So you got to mark the deer, capture the deer, multiple booster with the freeranging deer, you would be hard to think what is your objective and how long would it take to achieve your objective and cost. But for us to worry about the humanity or the humane treatment of the deer, the problem is this kind of hormonal intervention in

fact will give them a ovelation. So they just drag it out without overlating and they had all kinds of issues not only with infection the sight of injection. They also will have feminization with kind of odd anger coming out and you totally disrupt their social hierarchy, their biological hierarchy and in fact you're hurting them. You want to be really contraception by chemical is infeasible and also inhumane. You want to decide whether sterilization or killing really just two and out of that how much can we afford. So I want to know how much is it to cost? I think it's to the cost because I don't have that information. You would have to find a veterinarian or somebody that do the surgery and get a cost estimate from them where it's happened. Um, and then as far as like a sharp shaving removal, there are specific entities that do those as well. That's not something that the DNR does. Um, so that's information we can provide to the village if they're interested in obtaining that information from the will the DNR.

Excuse me. So, We're trying to keep time limits to three minutes. So, okay, I'm leaving. Yeah. Okay. Either either a question or or a statement. You don't get both. [clears throat] And two questions. The first question is to follow up on what you said because my concern about the chemical sterilization would be that what is the risk of damaging the surrounding population? So, if a coyote eats it, is that going to sterilize the coyote for example? Is that going to get if the animal who's been sterilized dies and is eaten by other animals? I mean, where is the where are those chemicals going to go? And could it get into our groundwater because we have well water. So, will those chemicals harm us? I don't have that information.

Okay. But that's something I think is really important. Not approved. There's no choice here. Neither are neither are good. We just wanted to make sure we talked about. Very good. Okay. So the second question has to do with you only talked about sterilizing the females and I was wondering if there's ever a consideration about the men and I understand the men but the other so whether it's sterilization or is there when you're talking about a call do they focus more on the males because the males are the ones obviously impregnating the female

typically most communities will focus on the females because they're the ones reproducing the offspring. Um not to say that there aren't areas where they don't selective, it's whatever were to come in um for removal. So um Goldberg, the presentation um by the other uh residents addresses the female verse male sterilization and why they do females over males and then also um the cost and the price and the procedure of the sterilization that

Okay, we'll give these ladies an opportunity after everyone else is gone. Um, my name is Anne Reinhardt and I'm concerned about the safety. Uh, in November of last year on November 30th. I was and and you really should stay off the road in from November to January um when it's dark out because that's when the males their testosterone are really, you know, going. And I was hit on Franklin Road and Maple and it was a busy day, busy street. I mean, there were a lot of people head on and my bags did not even deploy. That's the other thing. The cars are not that safe. So, fortunately, I was not hurt, but the car was totaled, so I had to end up getting a new car. So, these are things that have to be addressed. Um, and on my street, it was last week, there was a herd of deer, female, going down my street. And I'm talking 12. I counted them. And we can't have that. Um, and I believe that sharpshooters, they kind of end things. And then if you really want more deer, it's probably pretty easy to get them. And uh, a lot of people will give them to you for free.

Yes.

The other thing is that people say, well, you know, they'll use the deer meat, the venison. Well, there's a problem with that because many of the deer have already been shot um and or the ones that have been shot, there's lead in the bullets. So, we can't prevent lead in the meat, then what do you do? So, my whole thing is that, you know, you do the thing now and maybe in the future we have better things. Uh we found on our property, we have now taken a lot of trees down, diseased trees. We've opened up the property. Our trees are just like thanking us. And when you have less trees, you have less deer. We know not noticed it. We don't have the 12 deer going down our street anymore. So, these are just things that I would like people to think about what we can do as residents to help, you know, and we're not given anything. We're not, you know, they're not saying, "Well, this is what we're going to do or here's where you can go." Uh, this is the first time that I've heard a meeting that, you know, talked about this. I've learned a lot. I have learned a lot. So, my thing is that you just hire the sharpshooter, you know, get it done. And I understand it is very, you know, and I'm sorry. I I never wanted to kill a Bambi ever. You know, I know you look at this and you think, but what else are you going to do? I certainly will never go through that again where a deer hit me head on. And I was very careful because you have to be careful between about 6:00 p.m. and 8:00 at night

during those two months. Period. Thank you, Miss Reinhardt. Okay. [clears throat]

Hi. I just want to say thank you for bringing Cara in and anyone else that's from the wildlife community to really talk about this. And yes, I have been challenged by those in my own backyard three times just in the last couple of months. It's kind of terrifying. But um in talking to Brian Farmer, who is the deputy director at Farmington Hills, um I would only urge that we consider his recommendation of forming a Franklin Village deer management committee to work with the council. um that committee can work toward hostingformational forums, gleaning information from our our residents and assisting in any future partnerships that we might consider with Southville and Farmington Hills and Farmington. Um and also um encourage bringing in speakers including someone from the food banks because that's a very important point she made. But that's not the only advantage in having the food banks. People call the food banks to say, "When is the venison ready?" So that's just something that um I would ask that you consider.

Thanks.

This is a super quick question aimed at you. [clears throat] Uh just from a data standpoint, your study in the beginning said you put six deer into two mile radius. Five years later, you had 216 or something like that. Is that right? 180. 180. And then they repeated the study in the early 70s and it was also a man. Right. Um where was Al deer population 5 years ago? Where does it stand at today? And if we don't do anything, where is it going to be in five years? Number one. Number two, I was driving on 14 mile this morning. Two deer missed my car by about 1 foot going about 45 miles an hour. So it it is a a safety issue as far as I'm concerned, but I was just curious about the data.

So the state doesn't have like deer wide estimates. Um we typically glean information from hunting. Um so harvesting that comes from hunting population. So we wouldn't have information specific to that region. My next question is if you took the the six deer and went to 200 and you didn't do anything in 5 years from there, where would it be in five years? Does it does it level out at some point after they've eaten everything or

so? Like I discussed the biological carrying capacity. So deer are going to grow at on like an exponential growth curve. So they're going to start and it's going to increase exponentially until they were to reach what we call a biological carrying capacity which is going to be based on the habit the resources available what that could support and then it something will happen as far as you know disease climbing reproductive success survival rates will decline and you'll see the population drop. I can't say a time reference for that. Okay. But they do grow at an exponential, but we don't have any figures from 5 years ago to today. Okay. Thanks.

I'm Steve Braftoft. I'm the administrator for the cemetery. I'd love to be able to tell you my point of view, but I don't think that would help. I'm here to tell you what we have seen at the cemetery so that when you ask questions, what's happening in regard to tier population? I think seven acres sitting up here just north of just south of us. I can tell you what's going on because we are seeing it. Uh the population has exploded in the cemetery. Uh I would say when I went on uh to be the administrator in 2016, we would see two or three deer. We'd maybe have um a birth in the cemetery. Well, I remember one over a five year. We're now seeing eight or nine births in the cemetery right now. Uh the deer are um there's about 40 deer in the cemetery at this point that spend the night there and they're eating everything. They're eating stuff that we didn't think deer ate. So, when people come in and put flowers in or plant stuff, it's gone. Um, I'm getting phone calls, just personally, I'm getting lots of phone calls thinking that someone has either vandalized their graves. Uh, and as one guy said, well, dear don't read. She put up a sign, stop vandalizing this grave. And, [laughter] and this guy put up says, "Dear don't read." uh my experience just in watching what's going on and having to clean up, pardon my the afterbirth that is all over the cemetery. Uh things like this, it it's costly. No one's talked about at this point the actual cost of dealing

with the numbers we're dealing with. If you're going to replant flowers or in the case of the cemetery, I have to clean up or if a deer gets impaled on the fence because they have wasting disease and can't get over a fence that is that tall. Okay. Uh then we've got we've got to get them removed. We've had um I won't go into it. I'm just telling you that the numbers have exponentially increased at the cemetery in a way that's costing us money. Sir, the [clears throat] communities that have already made a decision surrounding us, a number of them, right, that they're they're going to call. Is that correct?

Correct. Southfield and Farmington Hills, their board or councils chose to use a call as the means. And I assume they investigated the many ridiculous things that are just obviously, you know, there's no way that a community is going to be able to afford to do all the things, you know, to make it nice for the deer to go away. I mean, that's the operations and, you know, come on. We're going to have an army of vets in here and we're going to track down the deer and we're going to isolate them and it's going to be a wonderful thing and we're not going to kill any deer. Give me a break. [clears throat]

And if you've if you've not had a friend who was killed by a deer like I have, when somebody's going one way, the deer hits the car, the car the deer flies over into my friend's windshield, goes right [clears throat] through the windshield and kills them instantly. So until you have that and you want to save a few deer, how about saving a few lives and property damage and doing the right thing? I mean, these other communities, I I [clears throat] assume they're not crazy. They've investigated this, had presentations, and [clears throat] we're wasting a lot of time. You know, we need to call the deer. Otherwise, all those wonderful deer are going to end up here, and we're going to have an increased population. And even if they don't, and if not one of them comes, if we don't do anything, obviously, we're going to have, you know, a

[clears throat] uh a serious serious deer problem. and and and we're we're we're visiting this topic because obviously we have a problem and there's enough people and you know I don't you know hostas and everything else. I mean I'm worried about [clears throat] you know my car every night that I'm driving around town and I've got to have the brights on. I've got to be going so slow. Deer are all over the place. Come on. It's a safety thing. Let's see a question. Do we have the numbers for the costs that the other comm the other cities approved for the call? How much it will cost them per deer or anything? Do we even have the space in Franklin to do it? I thought we'd establish we didn't have open enough space a plot of land.

You do as the cemetery. [laughter] We have seven acres. My question is to you, [cough] can can neighbors band together and form enough space in because we have big properties here.

You can't hunt in Franklin for the charter. So, this would have to be a charter amendment to begin with. I need call. We'd have to change the charter. No hunting in Franklin.

It's on the first page of the chart. There is lots of definitions. There is a form that Farmington sent out Farmington Hill sent out allowing neighbors to collaborate. Yes, David calling. Yes, sir.

Can I speak? Okay. My name is Rohit. I'm actually from Farmington Hills, so I can speak about what's been going on over there. The reality is the city has done nothing. They themselves admitted. I've talked to the council members myself. So when I say done nothing, meaning when um when anybody thought a vehicle crash or something is an issue, they didn't bother putting up signs. It's been done everywhere else. You can see there's these big signs that warn people exactly where they are cuz it's always the deer are near a body of water and things like that. They have not sent education material about, you know, telling people to be more aware because we put up wildlife crossing signs and we saw that people slow down when you actually have when you see that otherwise everybody is speeding. You can ask your police chief everywhere. Majority of the vehicle crashes are from distracted drivers, drunk drivers, people who speed. Nobody seems to be upset when you when you have a multi-car crash. Everybody and you have insurance that covers everything and you move on. Nobody dies from deer vehicle collisions. It's you when you wake up in the morning and drive. That's the chance you take when you're around I don't know thousands and thousands of cars. You just accept it's accident. One accident doesn't mean that that everybody I've been living with deer for 15 years. The families of them. I'm a motorcyclist. If anybody should be worried about hitting an animal, it's me. Not once. And I I I I travel all across the city. I know this Farmington Hills very well. I go to Lancing a lot of time. I've been down I7569. I don't have this problem that people are saying this is an overreaction. Nobody has done any of the pre-steps that you do that's educating residents about, you know, even plants that there is stuff out there in 2025 with the internet age. I'm surprised people don't know there are sprays and all these things that are weather resistant. They stay all year round. You have to let's find out which one you have first cuz I when I tell people about the brand

time out excuse me sir.

Yeah I'll I'll talk. Yeah. Um so what I'm trying to say is you have to do the work before that and and even with the example B where it's concentrated in one area. People don't do apples to oranges comparisons. They think that when you're trying to manage the populations everywhere. No. If there's a c certain um area one particular area you can work on sterilization. And that's what actually the city now, believe it or not, after everything is over, now the discussions have started because they've realized once they started getting all the complaints in from the people and the residents, they're realizing, hey, we actually didn't do anything because like somebody said here, this is the first time deer are being talked about. It's being with all the wildlife we have around here. This should have been talked about long ago. This is a reaction. This is not being proactive. So you guys have to because it's going to cause I live there. There are neighbors that won't talk to other neighbors now because of this. It's going to divide the community pretty badly. So, what I would suggest is you guys do all the work beforehand. Don't do the mistake they did because now the city is scrambling. Now they're now they're bringing in like a wildlife people in, you know, to get both sides. Brian Farmer is a hunter. He's that is so he's a he's a citizen. He's um employee of the Farmington Hills office.

I think you would. So, I [clears throat] just want to make sure you understand where the source is of this information.

Thank you. Can I make another comment? I'm sorry. I don't feel sorry. I just I have a tidbit sorry tidbit of information. Um I know that people talk about the culling and there's you know benefits of giving meat to a food bank. So about a month ago I had to assist a neighbor with a deer that got caught on her fence and the police had to come and put it down and our question was can we give this meat to a food bank? Um I would hope and assume if that's the direction that Franklin wants to go and I would hope and assume Farmington Hills and Southfield did this. I don't know. But what I was told with animal control when he came to pick up the deer was that the state regulates um you have to have like a license to kill the deer and bring it. It has to be tagged. It has to be cleared of disease before any food bank would take it and give it to the statemandated food pantries. So if that's if that's not something that you're aware of and people go forward with killing all of these deer and there's a huge populace thinking that this is going to be a good thing so we can give food to food banks and it doesn't happen then that would be a severe like just a sadness loss of life for no reason thinking that they're going to be able to give it away. So, if that's something that Franklin goes towards, I would implore you to make sure that whatever food bank it gets donated to, that's set up ahead of time and organized ahead of time because otherwise you're going to have a bunch of people signing up to come and hunt and give it away and then it just goes to get disposed of. So, I think that I forget the gentleman said this should be like a multi-year study to figure out what we want and where the population is going to go and not making a decision like Farmington Hills did and just say we're going to do this and actually get input from residents. So, the deer so the meat's not wasted. So, thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So, Cara, thank you for your time. We appreciate it. Uh before we close the and let let let let let let me explain to everyone today's purpose was the beginning of ourformational study. I don't care what our neighbors did because they did it their way and whatever information they obtained they did it on their time frame and in their process. We'll do it our way. I know that there isn't even a availability to allow a call in our area until 2027. So, we have plenty of time to research all of the issues as well as hear from various residents on their pros and cons, including getting a survey out there in the near future. So, this is the beginning of the process. This is not the decision making process. So uh there there is no urgency at at this level. Uh I know there's urgency at your level. We also sit and live where you live. We also are suffering the same way you are. But the decision on how if at all to address urban deer management is something that we are not making in the immediate future. So the last bit of it today, we do have I don't know if it's all three of you, but we have three ladies that if you guys can I I don't know if we have a time for a full presentation, but if you want to give us uh if you've got a how long is your presentation?

Six slides. Sure. So if you want to give us a few minutes on on on the sterilization perspective because again this isn't we're not at the advocacy stage yet. Everybody wants to advocate their positions. is we're at the information gathering stage and once we've gathered information then we'll listen to the advocacy piece but until we're educated everybody's advocacy does nothing for us. Can I just give a quick background too? Sure.

Okay. Um thank you. back in June, um the entire council was emailed by Advocates for Michigan Wildlife and then you had asked me to get on some phone calls with them and Zoom and discuss um the issue before it came to council. So the last uh three months we've been having meetings, discussions, um different um sessions about you know options, grant opportunities, um management avenues, methods and then the last two meetings when um a lot of public comment was about deer, I figured, okay, I think now is the right time to bring it to council. And uh these ladies curated a short but uh important uh presentation to give today. And everyone has their emails if you check back a few months ago.

I hope I have enough time to present. I'm going to be very quick as quick as I can. First and foremost, I want to thank you for the opportunity to come in and present today. We are here on behalf of Advocates for Michigan Wildlife to share facts, research, and proven alternatives around managing urban deer populations, [snorts] specifically in our sub in our suburban communities like Village of Franklin. What the public really thinks majority of residents value living alongside deer. The perception that deer are a widespread nuisance is largely driven by vocal few. According to the SEMCOG public opinion survey from 2022, 73% of southeast Michigan residents enjoy seeing the deer. In densely populated communities, and as urban development continues to grow, loss of habitat increases deer visibility. A small minority frequently complain about deer, shaping policy through pressure. Most complaints center on landscaping damage despite proven deterrence already available. Majority of residents oppose lethal deal deer control methods. The primary goals of the DNR is to increase the number of hunters in Michigan. In the last six years, the they have dropped by approximately 200,000 uh um sales in licenses and it has um hunting has reduced drastically in Michigan. So their primary goals are to increase the number of hunters, to increase hunter satisfaction, to increase access to hunting on private lands in urban areas, and to promote deer hunting as the primary management tool. DNR's deer management plan. It excludes non-lethal solutions from consideration and intentionally ignoring the method of sterilizations, which they already approved. recommended only lethal measures even after they they recommend only lethal

measures even after they concluded that sterilization has been scientifically proven effective in reducing [clears throat] deer population for freeranging deer and I will I will show you moving forward about Clifton deer which is a perfect example of freeranging deer and how they decrease their population by 41%. and they reduce um their deer populations at a localized scale based on scientific studies. The DNR is going around to different communities and and that is not I think you did a beautiful job but we've seen other presentations from other DNR representatives and they fabricate a crisis even online everywhere you look there's a crisis that it's an overpopulation narrative. This is not about overpopulation. It's about using suburban areas to create more hunting opportunities, often under the guise of safety. They have a biased agenda, and that is to promote urban hunting. The DNR's policy is to approve culling permits in all communities without requiring not even a population counter density. No data, no science. Even with a ban on hunting over bait, the DNR is spreading chronic wasting disease and allowing cities to callull deer over bait. The DNR admitted in its own publication that deer population is not the issue. As Cara had mentioned, it is focused on monitoring the impact such as deer vehicle crashes rather than the number of deer. As stated in their publication and the link that I've provided for you, they use fear tactics messaging, not facts. But dear vehicle crashes are rare compared to total crashes, and none have been fatal. According to Traffic Safety Control, there has been no deaths, no fatalities, and vehicle deer crashes.

In addition, the DNR divides communities. So, sorry. um cuz I know I I want to give you the platform to have a presentation, but to the extent that we're doing advocacy, yeah, I it shouldn't exceed that that the public's given. And so if you want to present on facts around sterilization and why that makes sense so that we can educate ourselves on sterilization, please focus on that. Yeah, I was just about to thank you for that, David, because the we're under I'm under the imp again, we are not advocate we're at the advocacy stage and we're certainly not in the position to be

uh criticizing the Department of Natural Resources who's only here to give us information. So, to the extent you're going to provide us information on facts about call uh uh sterilization as an alternative means of controlling deer population, please focus on that and not trying to advocate why you think it's better than another. We just are looking for factual information about sterilization. Cara gave us some information to the extent you can supplement that. That's what we're that's what we're looking for right now. Okay. No problem. If I'm I'm glad that I provided you with the other information for your review because I wanted to just give you some other data. You need to give us a source as well. Oh, absolutely.

You don't have to respond. No,

you don't. Okay. Um, can I just mention something about the Lyme disease if that's okay with you? Um, before I go into sterilization. Okay. And then there's other wonderful non-lethal options. Um, but the deer do not cause Lyme disease. The CDC position as the source. They did um mention that the deer are not infected with Lyme disease. What causes Lyme disease is when you've got climate change, warmer temperatures, there are more ticks. And ticks that are infected with a Lyme disease, the only way you can acquire Lyme disease is by being bit by um it's transmitted through um a a blacklegged tick that has been infected. And a deer is just one of many hosts and mostly small mammals that that they um that their primary hosts are. Just really quick, there's and I have backup information if you need a list a countless list of deer resistant plants. There's Trico who is extremely um it's PA registered. It has been proven to work all year long, even in the winter. It's rainistant and and lasts long term. Not only Tricco, but it's called another product, dear out. It's an extremely great product. Um there's also microexlosure fencing and it's really important to have city ledge education programs. So now that we're moving into that's another great piece that I hope you guys have an opportunity to read um since I I can't go over that. In any event, um I'm I'm going to be going to the Clifton Deer. Here's um um where it says success Clifton Deer. It's couple slides forward. There we go.

So here we have the successful improved alternative of sterilization. It's the Clifton Deer science case study. Clifton's approach is a model of sustainability. The results are real. Cost decline over time. It's a successful long term and the community supports it. Clifton deer is um again it's a free there um this scientific study was done on freeranging deer for the last 10 years from 2015 to present they reduced by fertility control they sterilized over 95% of their deer adult females it's a one-time treatment and they the annual decline was approximately 6 and a.5% the population was down by 41% % and the the population continues to decline for two reasons. The immigration is kept low because it's a their their method is to sterilize and fertility control but not removal. And because they're not removing the deer, there's no opportunity for them to rebound, which if you eliminate a deer from the deer from a certain area, they begin to because of the access to food, they begin to populate with repopulate with twins and triplets. So, because they still exist and they're not removed, the control the um sterilization is effective. And also they're not they're also in that area and it reduces the immigration. So there is no immigration of other deer coming in to look for resources.

Yes. You see in one of your slides that you indicate some costs around the killing, processing, removal, and disposing of deer carcasses. Yes. Um and it was in 23 24 in two uh geographies for 100 deer in Ohio just shy of $74,000. and 115 deer in Princeton, New Jersey for um just under 80K. Yes. What is a what is a uh for a similar amount of deer? What is the cost projection for sterilization?

Okay, so the the first year because that's where the majority of the cost and that's what happened with Clifton Deer due to bringing in white buffalo because white buffalo also calls and then they also sterilize. They're the most soughtafter company for sterilization. They're well known all over the country. And I gave you a list of I provided you with a list of all the communities they've been working on for sterilization. Um, but do you know the cost per year to sterilize? And I understand there's an upfront cost here. The longer term projections are far lower. What is the cost per deer on sterilization?

The sterilization is approximately $1,100 for the first year per deer. However, there's the there and you only provide the the sterilization in DVC hotspots.

Okay. But after the initial year of sterilization, their subsequent years will be significantly reduced because the majority of the cost in the first year they they get trained by White Buffalo. They also trained other veterinarians. In fact, in Ann Arbor, the same veterinarian that used that was working with White Buffalo in Ann Arbor, they also learned how to sterilize. They trained they were trained um they also have local volunteers that become darting specialists. So, their their um investment is uh into skilled local volunteers. And then after that they also begin to purchase their own capital equipment for surgical and darting equipment. They also um offer uh veterinarians will volunteer their services. So because of the first year is the initial expense. Anytime after that it drops significantly because you have trained the volunteers in the first year and as the time goes by there's less deer less cost and with volunteer involvement it reduces it dramatically and u significantly. It's a one-time one-time uh procedure and that's the great thing about um the sterilization. that sorry um had a a question that you probably are most educated on around benefits to doing sterilization of females compared to males.

They do offer it for males. So, and it's just that many communities um they choose to sterilize the females and we never really there are some communities in the states that do um have have done uh neutering of males but I don't I at this point I really can't give you a straight answer as to why. So there's not like a strategic

No, there isn't. And the difference is that when you go in out and spay a dog, a female dog, they remove the uterus and the ovaries. Whereas with the ovarctomy o um of sterilizing, they only remove the ovaries. So it's not as invasive as a typical spade program that they have for dogs and cats, but they still are. There's an incision like an abdominal wall. I just wanted to add what she said. Um I talked extensively with the white buffalo in regard to this topic of the males versus the females and essentially female deer they said tend to live more in the same area or their home.

So if you have a hot spot where there's a lot of you know deer activity um it's going to be mostly the same females where you have the males traveling through the area from other areas. Um, and also just in general because the females are the ones who are actually we get a little quiet back there actually having the babies they can um end up having them from any bucks that are traveling through. So they they just do the females that are in the areas like unless you're in an enclosed environment like um they did it I think it's Staten Island where it's like an actual island and they they did both you know but um just because of the cost involved right

capturing each of the deer is just more effective to do the females and that's why they do that and then the surgery itself is actually done with within an hour they capture the deer. The surgery itself is only about a 20 minute procedure and then they return the deer back to where it came from. give it an a agent to wake it back up and watch it, you know, as it comes back to make sure that it's, you know, fully awake before it gets back out on the road. And um so that's why they typically do just the females because they just want to get the ones that are in those key pockets. [snorts] Okay. Yeah. The the DEC hotspots and that's where the focus is. And by the way, uh deer have a range of about one square mile, female deer. Okay.

Last question for me. Is there a tipping point of sterilization where if you don't achieve enough sterilized dose, let's say, um the remainder of the population locally will start to pick up the slack and and breed exponentially. Is there is there a a percentage of sterilization you'd have to achieve in order for it to be It's ideal to have approximately 95% of female deer in those certain hot spots where there's high DVCs. And then once you do that, since they don't travel beyond one square mile, there's no immigration because they the deer exist. They're not being removed. Just one more thing to add on that too. Sorry.

No, please. Because I'm forgetting. I'm very [laughter] [clears throat] um so yeah. So, sorry I'm not I wanted to say um migration patterns. Yeah. Yeah. So, because Franklin is such a small area, you're not going to have um like a high volume of deer that would actually need to be, you know, sterilized. It's um I think 2.6 square miles. So, even if you were at the maximum number, like Farmington Hills said that they have up to 80 deer per square mile. Most of their square miles are really, if you look at their actual deer map, it's like one [clears throat] deer in this square mile. There's like five in this square mile. And there's like literally two square miles out of the 36 square miles that actually have the 80 square mile.

Um so um you know Franklin's going to fall somewhere in between there, you know, either at the 80 or they might be at the one, you know. So but if you assume they have 20 deer per square mile, like a 40 deer per square mile, out of those only half would actually need to be sterilized. So, and then the incremental cost difference between like um calling the deer, which would versus sterilizing the deer um just for the first year alone is about a 300 maybe dollar difference per deer. So, if you multiply that out by 10 or 20 deer, it's going to be like a $2,000 or $4,000 difference the first year, but then going forward is where you see the cost benefits because, you know, the first year you might sterilize 20 deer where the second year you might only have to sterilize three.

Yeah. Last question too and this would be this would require capture of deer potentially on residents properties. So we'd have to and and like if you're trying to find these hotspots, you would have to get pretty wide participation from a large amount of residents within Franklin, I would assume. Well, actually what happens is subdivisions, it's only 25 miles per hour. So you don't see DBC's in subdivisions. You see them on a main road and the the the areas they have 45 55 miles an hour. That's where the highest DVCs are. And that's those are the hot pockets that we're talking about. Deer vehicle crashes the deer vehicle crashes. So that's

mean like to achieve to to capture a deer in a village like Franklin, you would have to go and it's largely neighborhoods. So you'd have to get how much participation would we have to get from our residents to achieve the level of sterilization needed for this to be effective? And would enough residents want to participate in that if capturing and sterilization of deer would happen on their property is my question. I'm not I'm not advocating one way or another. I think it's you know for me it's it's a it's a cost consideration. It is an effectiveness consideration. It is also um would we get enough residents participation in order to make this a viable solution either way whether it's calling we do nothing sterilization whatever it might be I'm just asking these questions to understand is this truly a viable situation if we need more participation than we could feasibly get from residents in in Franklin

that's that's all I'm getting at no

a great deal of residents based on the public survey that we've done a number of people do enjoy seeing the deer so No, no, I we understand that and and we probably need to move on. Um and and this is great data. Again, we're in this capturing of information stage that we can we can decide what is a feasible solution. But to to answer your question about getting information in front of residents in order to make this decision, those would be the questions I would want to know as a resident of Franklin on is a call a more viable solution, is it a cost-effective solution? Can we even substantiate that line item in our budget? Would we get enough participation from residents to make this even a viable situation? And I would love to see that survey data. We're not going to solve for this tonight is the point. This is all wonderful information, but this is just we are here to ask questions on behalf of our residents.

There's no advocacy position tonight. And I would imagine, sorry, I just have one last question. I guessing I already know the answer to it. Because it's a year-over-year activity, are they tagging ears for the deer? Tagging the ear of tagging. Yes, do tag the years so that they know because which ones have been sterilized. Yeah. They they keep track of them. And the great thing about sterilization, it's a one-time procedure. Whereas, if you look at examples with Metrop Parks, they've been doing it for over two and a half decades and

and they haven't been successful at reducing DV um DVCs and they haven't been reducing um the population. And if you even look at there was one other uh slide if you don't mind which is so important that I wanted to to run by you. If you look at the percentage in perspective only 5% of the car dear accidents involve deer with no fatalities reported. That's the the one where it says uh do we have a problem in Oakland County? So in Oakland County only 5% out of 35,951 crashes only 224 were deer related. And when you go down to if you look at hunting um vers in rural areas versus urban areas, if you look at statewide DVCs, it has increased over the last 5year increments by 10%. And in rural counties, there are 83 counties in Michigan, 53 rural and 30 urban. In the 53 rural counties, their their DVCs are 52% of the total crashes. Whereas in urban counties, the 30 urban counties, only 13% of the DVC's um 13% of DVC's out of the total crashes, total crashes. So I think this is really important to just understand that hunting and calling is not effective in reducing a population.

All right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks.

I just add a couple things. I don't know if I can add them on. I was going to go up for my three minutes, but I wanted to wait till she was done, so I didn't give up today. But um I just wanted to mention that um in Franklin um in 2023, there was actually only six car vehicle collisions in the the city. And that was actually down that was lower than six out of the last 10 years um deer vehicle collisions for the city, the township. Um so um there's been no trend because I analyzed all the data. um the time of increasing trend up here vehicle collisions in Franklin. Um also I wanted to mention that um there is a project going on in Ohio in um February that some of the communities around here are sending representatives down to go see in person if you guys are interested in sending anybody down to see like how the sterilization works, what the process is. It's going to be it's about a 2 hour 2 to three hour drive south of here and they're going to actually be doing three communities down there where they had previously done one but now they have two other cities joining the project where it's a sterilization project. So if you guys are interested in that just let me know and I can get you in contact with the um the person in charge of doing that.

There's also veterary going down there to get trained paralyzing

even re rehabers. And then the last thing I just wanted to say is like again with the size of Franklin the number up here that would have to be sterilized is would be very small and um the company that does it white buffalo they've done communities for instance like in Tika case South Carolina where they've sterilized over two to 300 deer in one week. So it's not like it's difficult for them to find them or difficult for them to capture them. They could probably do it in two days in Franklin, you know, I mean they could probably catch all the deer and and do it. It's not like we don't have to know how to do it. We just write them a check. They come, they do it. They have experience 25 years of doing this. So, it's not like it would be difficult to implement or anything like that. So, I just wanted to mention those in case you guys

Thank you very much. Thank you for giving us the opportunity. Yeah, of course. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Okay. Uh so again we're not anywhere near in the even discussion of making a decision. Uh I think in the next month and maybe in as we move towards next meeting we may decide because this is not going to be something that's going to get vetted out at the council level. Correct.

Uh we're going to have to create a subcommittee. We'll probably include some residents and uh maybe begin getting more information as well as getting some more uh interaction with the residents through some type of surveying to see what the desire is to even address this as well as spend any of our residents money on this subject. So everybody, thank you very much. uh this is the beginning of a of of a process and uh we'll we'll keep having uh additional discussions in the future.

All right. Uh we'll take a second let everyone get out. But next on our agenda [clears throat] is our last presentation I'm assuming. Is this from you Kurt? More public comments. It's going to be we have one presentation and then public comment. [snorts]

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Uh, so Evan sent a second agenda.

I think that may discrepancy. Thank you. Have a good night. So, I'm here to talk a little about the flock cameras. The last time I spoke to you last month, we you asked me my opinion of where I thought the two fly cameras should go, but we wanted to check with flock so they would do uh some data analysis for us. And uh basically, they did come back and tell me that uh where we thought we wanted to put those cameras is exactly the right place to put them. The only thing that they said different than what what I was thinking is they want to capture the uh vehicles coming into the village, not leaving the village. And our thought process made a lot of sense because uh criminals these days a lot of time are using stolen vehicles and so we will know once they enter the village we'll be notified that there's a stolen vehicle within our village limits instead of leaving the village limits. So it makes sense to me um and if you have any questions or any concerns let me know.

Sorry. Why would you enter the village with a stolen vehicle um to do a crime here and not their own personal vehicle? They will it bring a stolen license plate or a stolen vehicle because if a vehicle was stolen, you wouldn't know it was stolen if it was leaving Franklin. Yeah. My understanding talking to uh Bill Dennett was that we didn't need any special permitting. Uh both cameras will be on the easement as long as the board is good with that. They're solar. They don't need electric sources. They're solar. Okay. So, it's just installing the pole and putting the apparatus.

Correct. I had a resident um mention [clears throat] to me is are there any privacy concerns about this sort of equipment? Um does this create any opportunity for u that level of exposure for residents? So courts have continuously said that uh license plates are public, right? So uh we're just capturing license plates. There's no facial recognition. Even if there was that capability at this point, I wouldn't recommend it to to the council. So um all of the data will be kept on the cloud and only we will have access to that. I'm surprised the privacy attorneys are not

well no I mean like [laughter] actually I completely agree because from a legal perspective anything that's in the public view is not considered within the right of privacy. The other thing is like I I think from a even if you take a step back from a public public advocacy standpoint, I know Chief you and I have talked about that Europe relies very heavily on cameras in in this type of activities to monitor crime and yet they're significantly more stringent on privacy rights. So there's not really been a conflict either from a US legal system or even from a public policy standpoint um with the conflict between the two.

I meant process around data storage within the cloud and access. Oh, that's that's yes and so I guess to that point I'll ask questions following up on exactly what you're saying which is when there's storage within the database is it purely based off of the license plate and then you have to access additional databases to tie that license plate to an individual. So essentially you could avoid the exposure of PII p sorry personal personally identifiable information if somebody were to access that database by essentially segmenting out the two identifiers from each other. You may not know that but

I don't know that I know that the uh data is stored on an Amazon government secure very secure cloud. Um, I know that the license plates are continually run through the law enforcement information computer, which is a state-run computer system, uh, which is also goes to the FBI database. Um, so that's just continually happening. So, do you provide any information to flock? You have access to their database, they don't have access into the state database. Correct. That was my understanding that we're not maintaining keeping data. We have access to their data manage data management system. The data that that the cameras capture will be kept for 30 days and then be purged from the cloud at 30 from our

Yes. Okay. And who's doing the purging? Is it automated block? Okay. Yeah. So they're managing it for us. Yes. And as far as like privacy, what's the privacy? Same thing where like when you drive on a public road, you're a billing yourself [clears throat] too. I'm curious. Is there a privacy issue that either anyone here on council or the general public is concerned about with this apparatus? Someone asked me about this. Yeah, they saw the they saw the article in in the paper and said, um, wow, this feels like a an invasion of my privacy mentioned.

Yeah, Berndale right now is having this conversation. I think it's it's fine to have that conversation concerns. Um, I'm comfortable with it and as long as you're comfortable with it. Um, I think if if we realize down the road that this is not something that we want to continue to partake in, then we can we can look at that. But the the information that's being gathered, it it's not any it's information regarding someone's driver, their uh their license plate and their vehicle description is what it's capturing. Correct. Right. So unless someone unless that one of those two factors triggers something that would cause an investigation, nobody's personal data would ever be

I think it wasiction. was it like where is this information kept? Who has access to it? Um and what information is being none of this is going in can neither of these devices have the depth or distance capacity to reach someone's home. Correct. Even someone's point in the middle basically they're pointed in the middle of Franklin. So again, if you're driving on a road in the public, you're open to the public. There's you don't have any privacy entitlement. Someone can take a picture of you anytime when you're

We have uh multiple residents right here in Franklin where their personal cameras are pointed in their neighbor's yards towards the neighbor's house. As long as they're not going into their bedroom or their bathroom, there's nothing that we can do. And I respect the question. I'm not diminishing the question, but this is not anything where like it's going you could see to someone's house. It would literally be you drove past the camera, whether you're a resident of Franklin or not, it's going to pick up that information. Correct. Okay. So, all right. It wasn't to be clear, it was not me asking the question. I don't mind the question. No, I understood that. I just was I wanted to make sure none of us up here really were concerned that there's this is a privacy issue. So, for this location, it's Alexa,

it's going to be on like up off of the intersection rather than at the intersection. Correct. Do you uh have anyone to show the where the camera is on Evelyn Court? Yep. So, they have to look at, you know, the trees, how are they going to grow to make sure they get enough solar power from the sun, things like that. So, that's what they're kind of looking at. And when will these be installed? Like in the 30s? Um, there's so many cities that are buying so many of these cameras that we're probably looking at three to four months. And these cameras are spin 360, correct? They're just they're just focused straight ahead, one direction,

taking continual pictures um when the cars go by. And this system is not only in Michigan, it's I mean it's all over the country. So, does the contract start at installation? Is that when we start paying? Uh I already paid the invoice. So, um I'm sorry, I already signed the contract. I'm not sure if the invoice made over to get paid yet. And we'll be able to access the existing cameras in the next several weeks. So, we start paying right away. And that again was paid out of foreure. So, if a plate is registered in the system as stolen and a a Franklin, Michigan camera happens to capture a plate registered in another state within the flock um network

network like someone would be notified. So, Bloomfield Township Dispatch will be notified directly by Flock. Okay. Um it could be an Amber Alert. Um it could be, you know, a suspect wanted for a major crime. Um those are the type of things that we're going to find when they're running the plate. Yeah. So that camera up there that you've got the picture of and now you're saying that it only points in one direction. So if it's only pointing in one direction and we only have license plates on our the rear of our cars because you don't have to have a license plate on the front. Is it

that's why he was talking about entry into the village rather than right leaving. So the obviously there's potential we're going to get the maybe the front of the car leaving the village, but we would really have to buy two more cameras to go both directions, which I don't think we're ready to do at this point. Will you let us know like how many times you use them and stuff? Sure.

So one quick question though, I guess again if you don't know the question that's or the answer that's totally fine. So back to kind of the the privacy related question. How is there the correlation between this vehic this license plate belongs to not maybe stolen because you can report [clears throat] stolen but somebody who's dangerous. Uh so they have a warrant for their arrest that would be tied to that particular vehicle but that's registered to them. Got it. Okay. Okay. But [snorts] this question I think was right on. You're only getting the front of the car. So no, the back of the car. The back of the car.

Yeah, it would be pointed. They're coming into Franklin from Bloomfield. You're getting the front of the car. We're getting the rear of the car. So go past it. Capturing data of vehicles coming into, you know, Franklin and 13 and Franklin and 14. Coming into our jersey. So this one here, a car that's going southbound that just came into Franklin, it's going to catch the back of its thing. the back of the right and the same. Okay. And just to

the whole reason we had to do this isn't as much because we're getting necessarily great benefit from the two cameras that we installed. It's so that we have access to all the cameras and that's was where we got cut off from the system. So for your guys situation, car stolen out of your driveway, it leaves if it goes up Franklin, one of our cameras will do it. If it goes out to Telegraph, you know, so I would say West Bloomfield, Farmington Hill, Southfield, Beverly Hills, and Bloomville Township there, they have at least 250 cameras with those jurisdictions. So we're pretty well covered around us.

So that's what we were doing it more for again is they sort of played our hand to force us to spend this in order to get into the system.

Yeah. I'm also interested though again understanding the value of entry entry to not have it on 13 mile is losing a lot of the potential benefit to you all to say there is a stolen vehicle that has been within the proximity of where we're at to the point of if somebody steals not only are we catching everybody coming across 13 mile but we're also going to if somebody steals a vehicle out of Franklin and then proceeds onto 13 mile, it's a 50-50 chance. But at least I just think that there might be more consideration around

13 mile because it's such a major thoroughare compared to 14 mile probably not going to get that much traffic um compared to, you know, the policy benefit. But isn't the hope that because of our surrounding communities, if a car flees westbound on 13 mile Unfortunately, there's not one at Ingster, but let's hope that there is at least one by Northwestern and 13 Mile Road. So, before they're going to get to the next major thoroughfare, it's going to get picked up there. I don't see anything at 13 in Telegraph. So, is there isn't one because that's far.

So, we're we Franklin are paying for these two and they're going to go in Franklin. Is Bingham Farms considering? So, I'm working with the HOAs over there to try to get them to purchase uh additional cameras and I just talked to Rachel and I just talked to the village president uh Lisa today about, you know, our interest in additional flat cameras. So, they haven't committed to that, but I think it's just a great tool. That's a good question because when our vehicle was stolen, we were told that the reason why um our [snorts] street was easily accessible is because you could get right on 13 mile um head street to telegraph gone

and be gone as opposed to like 25 mph road and you have to stop and stop and stop and it's easy in easy out and so like the ne the streets it seems like have the most breakins are around the 13 mile area. Are there any restrictions on it being on 13 mile like uh Oakland County road? Uh well, there would be additional restrictions that I have to get permission through Oakland County. We'd have to make sure that the the tree canopy was not going to impede the solar panels, things like that. We certainly can I can ask them flock what they think about that. Would you want to get the the traffic going eastbound or westbound? And then you got to remember we have to be able to

it's going to go up to dispatch. It's going to be reported there's a stolen vehicle going eastbound. 13 and by the time we even get the message from dispatch, they're already going to be in arms or farther. Do you know where the cellfield cameras are? Uh I know where I don't know where they all are closest, but I know that there's one at 12 and Telegraph. Several near the Meer and the gas stations like near the Meer and the gas stations. Yeah, right at that intersection. And there's one uh Bloomfield Township has 14 in telegraph flocks requirement that that quote unquote we join. Is that done by police department or jurisdiction like communities? That's a great question

because theoretically you're a police department that covers two communities. Only one of the communities is buying in. That's sort of the where I was getting at with Bingham Farms, which is why aren't they buying their own two so that the whole department gets four? And then we can get one at 13 in telegraph which is in their jurisdiction and maybe one at 14 14 Inglegraph just get one each you know well that's what I'm trying to get at is it by police department is locks requirement like they came down on you trying to access the system but do they realize that you represent two communities they do okay okay we can ask Bingham Farms

oh yeah for sure I if they're willing to do that. That would be great. I'm just curious if at some point Fox's going to go, "Hey, we didn't realize you guys owe us two more cameras in order to have two communities getting the benefit of this." And um when you talk with Flock, the cost of a relocation of a camera, so if we ultimately after a year look at the data and say we didn't get that many, like we had X amount of breakins and we had zero hits, probably means go to a different fishing spot, right? Um, so what is that cost going to be to move them? I'll find out. All right. Thank you. Shouldn't be bad because there's no electrical connection, right? So that's just finding better Johnson.

Good solar areas. They'd have to do that whole calculation, but shouldn't be too costly. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Chief. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Uh, all right. Now we'll open public comments. Bashier, do you have something? Yep.

Good evening everyone. It's been a long [laughter] was falling asleep out there. So, good evening. I want to start by thanking uh Trusty Salaga for uh continuing to ask very good questions. Last meeting, she asked a very good question about uh Johnson Landscaping and why we pay him on average $22,941 a month. If I look at the budget and uh the the established budget for 25 26 and if I go ahead and add all the line items anything relevant to building maintenance to winter uh maintenance to landscaping to taking care of this building we total $169,000 and change. Yet, if we look at the $22,000, $941 or not 22,000, almost 23,000, we're almost paying him $275,000 a year. We're exceeding the allocation was allocated for him. Now, when I look at his contract, his contract expired in April, so he's operating on a an expired contract. And if I look at the bidding and how the contract was established, he bid 25% less than the other two biders, which is concerning, right? The other biders were 1% of each other. So, um, we need to look into here, see what's going on. And according to chapter six in the uh in the charter, you know, you have to send out another bid and open up for bit and and get that re-established. Also, when I look at the invoices, there's it's very poorly accounted like I see multiple attempts of um invoicing for the same amounts over and over again. And constantly where the villager notes, it's like okay, this is paid, this is paid, this is paid. Also, it's not clear. I look at the invoices,

it's just not clear what's being invoiced for there. The details are not clear, you know, just just make sure we're not being nickeled or dime there. And if you're interested in knowing why, I started looking into Dawson uh landscaping in September. We had an unfortunate incident where he showed up to my property and start doing some work in the village right away in the name of the city or in the name of the village first until I verified that was not the case. Also when I explained tried to explain to him why it wasn't done that way why the village made me do it and put sod in that area he just dismissed everything okay and he went on to say that he knows better than I do because I'm not from here whatever that's supposed to mean also he start dropping um names my my daughter's lawyer I'm friends with uh yourself for example or friends with Mr. officer he's not here I cannot verify this but this is not an acceptable behavior of a supplier in the or a contractor in the village okay yeah so I wanted to share that I requesting an audit simply that's audited and if the contract expired we get that resolved that's all I have

thank you right on time right

okay I've got paperwork here if you're interested so thank you chair Anybody else have public comment? All right. Uh, next is old business. So, uh, Peter and, uh, Rachel, we included in here the updated Metro Act application. At our last meeting, we voted to approve the application subject to Peter getting comfortable that [laughter] some of the questions that Pam had presented concerning location of the belowground structures and the lids that would be installed as well as whether they would be installing any permanent electrical transformers in the village. So, I'm under the impression you've had communications with them and they've answered those questions.

I have. Um, what they're going to be installing are underground conduits and that's reflected either in exhibit A or B. And they confirmed that they will not be installing any equipment cabin I should say cabinets or boxes or transformers that are above surface. And I put that in the permit under 2.1.3 that they cannot do so. And if they wanted to, they'd have to come back to village council. And uh I spoke to the representative from Easy Fiber and he was comfortable with that. He said Franklin is too small of a municipality to include one of those cabinet or above ground cabinet or uh boxes, but we'll still be able to access fire optic services providers.

Correct. Yeah. And there's a map there. So yeah, which is the which is the map that is showing. We got two maps. One which is this redder one that's got a couple dots. I'm assuming that's the location of the blow ground. The second map is what they included in their application. The first map that he had sent through email. Uh the first they did confirm that it will be in all the right of ways and it's for both residential and commercial. So the second man there. Yeah, there you go. So they're going to they're going to blanket the village.

Correct. So just to again clarify outside of a couple very small pockets th this reflects everywhere where we where we will have fiber optic available. Correct. Okay. What small pockets would that So you can see some of those roads, right? Well, I guess that's even a residential area. The the light green reflects the extension of the roads. So there may be homes that are Oh, the driveway is a lot of that. Okay. That's pretty much So look at that end. Yeah, because that's where I cut myself off is I see like the village uh like the village property for instance. You can see there's no red there. However, there's no homes there. Same thing with I think the Romney way up there. That's just going to be the school.

I mean that's the cemetery that one area there, right? So I think it does cover most I mean what to big success because I think fiber optic will improve services for our residents. So he used the word we will blink it. U Franklin with both residential and commercial fiber optics. I mean that's street right there. No like single provider that we'd have to use. This doesn't monopoly. No, this is easy fiber. This is one carrier stop. It stops right there in Frank. That's not the end of Franklin though, is it?

For on the bottom of this map where Franklin turns to go toward Southfield, right? The map is cut off. Yeah, the map's cut off. It goes all the way to the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. It goes all the way down to Rosemont. Got it. Right. Got to say curious how if you look at Rosemont Drive cuz I've been This is part of our you and I working on. Yeah. Yeah. Pete Hock claims still claims that that is actually been a was a road at one point and it's funny how they seem to have picked that up but anyways I digress.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the end of Basher Street but um unless it's just it used to be a road. I Pete Hick says it well used to be a public road but that said it could also just be an easement a utility easement. Right. Right. But it's just funny that if it was already [clears throat] for sure. Um, all right. So, we don't really have to do anything. We We've approved their permit. We wanted this information. Is everybody satisfied? I mean, this seems like an excellent permit approval to go ahead and sign it. I think your name is stated there. Uh, President Yeah, we didn't have a choice either, right? We had to get some conditions, but the choice wasn't really ours. Correct. We already had the motion. We voted on it at the last meeting. Thank you, Peter. Pleasure.

Yeah, we just wanted Peter to get comfortable. So, I think we're good. Okay. Another opport another option, I should say, for right internet. Okay. Uh, new business. So, and we have Stuart here. Uh, we don't have uh the benefit of Chris Dusen like you do. So, either Rachel or Stuart, you want to just fill us in generally on the site plan? We didn't we have a site plan in our pack? I didn't.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh included in this pack. I think we sent a memo. Um I don't know if it was included in Chris Den's memo, but I don't see a site plan that Yeah. Uh actually, that might be You don't see Yeah, if you don't see them if you

said his right up, but that's okay. So, just give us generally what is it that they're doing? This has to do with the old with the with the with the building. Okay. Yeah. So, the there's an alleyway between the two buildings on the same property um by the u what was normally known as the Franklin Grill now is um the uh Oyster Bar. Um they purchased the property um next to their facility um and were originally had a site plan review to turn it into um to have a purpose of um sandwiches and coffee and some other things. And um after in further investigating they realized that they don't have the um they need more prep space and so they'd like to repurpose it. And so that triggered a um a site plan um review for uh for the planning commission to approve the basic change of purpose for the use case for that building into being a food prep and storage. And they're adding a a bathroom as well um that um for that for that area. Um after several meetings and as well as back and forth in a public hearing um we uh we've confirmed as a as a planning commission that we think that the change change is um acceptable um for the planning. Um there was some concern about how um we still would like to have a coffee bar or something like unto it in the village and um you know they as a business owner we business owners we in a village we'd like to encourage them to be successful and if this will make them stay and be more successful then that outweighed the our desire to keep it as the purpose of a um of a c of a coffee location or a or a snack location. So that's kind of the thousand foot 2,000 10,000 foot view of the of of how planning perceives the the site plan review. So um but yeah, we we support support the site plan um and re make a recommendation to council to to

accept their site plan review the site plan for from the review. Yeah. So I'll chime in. um I was able to attend and again I think the the big thing that the residents who are opposed to it had to say was that there's so little commercial space that's available on Franklin Road. Um however I think there was as many people in the audience saying that we need to support our business. So personally um I'll just roll my opinions into this comment as well which is same thing that was reflected by the planning commission. We need to support the businesses that come in. So, I fully support

any any any questions about I mean you don't have the full site plan in front of you unfortunately. Um but um it's been in our last couple packets. So, if you had a chance to look at our um previously, do you have any questions for me or things that you might think that we didn't investigate enough of um with regards to this? Thank you, Sue. So, what are what do you what is need of us? We need to do we need to approve the site plan and the business owner is actually here if you want to ask questions to him directly. So hung out. I want you to just sit there.

Oh by all means you sit there. How are you guys? Good. All right. So you guys recommended approval. Is there any special land use approval going on? I see it's I see the word special approval, but there's no special land use approval in Kjak. This is just a site plan approval for an accessory building that already exists. It's just a change to the interior of the structure for rent interior renovations. It's already been to the HTC. There's no exterior impact other than a new door, which I'm sure they'll chime in on what material you use. So, uh, I mean, does anybody have questions for the applicant?

Otherwise, I mean, I'd entertain a motion to approve the, uh, the site plan for accessory building parcel number 240622604. So, move Goldberg. There's just a one small caveat there. Um, that Mr. introduc and is recommending that they approve it but with um the facade be maintained in good condition perpetuity. I think that's a given with the ordinance but uh it does include that in perpetuity just maintaining good condition. Yeah, it says in perpetuity.

What's the would they I mean do we define facade? I I don't understand why this building would be held to any higher standard of historical appearance in our historic district than anybody else would just because we're giving them a site plan approval. We site plan approved buildings in in the in the down in the historic district all the time and have never put any type of mandate on it maintaining some level of appearance. They're bound to keep a level of appearance per ordinance given in the ordinance. Correct. So, I mean, again, we don't have a motion yet, but I'm not a big fan of putting any limitation outside of what our ordinance generally requires.

It's within your perview to also modify our recommendation to whatever you feel that's necessary. You don't feel that there's a concern that's already covered, then yeah, then there's no need to support to support that. Oh, that was what the special approval meant. That's where I got confused. That was the extra thing. So, all right. So if we want, we can just have a motion to approve the site plan and be good at that.

I think in general, the Franklin has like brought a huge level of vitality to the village. They've donated to local um causes. I know like I just attended an auction the other day. They had donated um to West Maple PTA. They have a lot of PR going on. uh the Birmingham magazine had a whole photo shoot out outside with all the Lions um wise and um it was just all shot in Franklin and all saying how you know great this village is and I think like promoting a business is great for the whole community. So I've been really impressed and agree with you know the planning commission what's going on.

Got another one coming out in uh January too in what magazine? C magazine. See? Yeah. Uh, so I'll make a motion to approve the site plan. Uh, as for accessory building. For accessory building. Second. All right. Motion by Sally, second by Gates. Any further discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Thank you again. Good luck. We look forward to this next step in the process. All right. Thank you guys.

Have a good night. Okay. So, uh, next item on the agenda is community development block grant discussion. Uh, it looks like, uh, Rachel and the staff have put together a pretty detailed presentation on CDBG. So uh historically each year we are allocated CDBG money and then we have although it's an option of ours to keep it for our own purposes we have historically always passed that through to varying 501c3 organizations that are affiliated with the village. Last year we chose um the baseball league. We've given it to Next in the past. Birmingham Youth Assistance, Haven. Uh this year with the transition in the office, I think we fell a month behind. And as it turns out, we need to give an answer to the county by

December 5th.

Yeah. which is 5 days before our next meeting. Typically in the past, today would have been the meeting where we would have discussed the subject matter and made the decision and allowed the various organizations that typically ask for the money to uh have an opportunity to speak. [laughter] So, uh this is a presentation which we can have a discussion on or everybody can take it home with them and review it just for their own edification. Uh I'm going to probably have to schedule a special meeting between now and our next meeting to accomplish a couple things. Uh we need to address this. Uh if possible, we could use that same meeting to appoint our replacement trustee so that that individual gets an opportunity to get integrated before the December meeting as opposed to doing it right then. So uh does does anybody want to hear anything on the subject matter right now? How long how much advanced notice do we have to provide? Like is there a we need to balance if there is a notice requirement that we would balance the notice requirement against

there is a notice requirement. Um do you remember I don't know 10 days 15 days. It's in here somewhere. You already received people's requests. Not really. No

because we haven't really put it out there this year. Um, I mean, we know a handful of I don't want to say handful, I would say one or two people that have already asked the village for money on other matters, not necessarily CDBG. That's something that we're have to discuss is to what extent are we going to have CDBG money as well as to what extent do we have other money in the budget for allocated other places that we could shift to assisting some of our other community partners. I'd like to announce that the today I opened up our post office box and we got our notification from the IRS that the FCA has been reinstated into having That's great to hear.

That's wonderful. Congratulations. Yes. Good job. So, we're [laughter] going to bring that up in infrastructure. So,

we're recommending like 4,000. So, just a couple items that are out there and things that we need to discuss as a council with regard to things that didn't get into this year's budget that we have considered in the past and are we going to consider them for this year and if it's an issue of yes, there are we have allocated money in the budget for special projects which if we had to use that if we wanted to consider some of these other items special projects but just to give everybody a 30 secondond uh refresher on where CDBG has evolved over the last few years. So uh the amount we get has been pretty much so the same about 7500 has been about the number we've been getting the last few years probably based on population or something. If you recall maybe five or so years and prior to that o almost predominantly there were only three organizations that had really been coming in regularly to ask for money. It was next which is the our senior center that represents the Birmingham community including Franklin. There was the Birmingham Youth Assistance, which is uh another organization that assists youth within the community, usually youth that have that are a little weward and um have found themselves into various types of um criminal or civil types of infractions. And then the third was Haven, which was an organization that was dealt with uh abused and and women that were in need of help. Uh it was always an unfortunate thing to have to deal with because there'd be three organizations all of which were very needy. Uh and we only had 7500 to allocate to one. We had talked about and

in times in the past had worked at bifurcating it and the the amount when you split it up is so limited and the the the extra workload that it we were told it put on the staff to do that bifurcation made it not fair. So or made it not worthy uh not worth the the the money that we were spending on Alex allocating it was more than what we were giving away. So we made a decision about five years ago that next couldn't keep getting this every three years. We would give it to next one year and then Birmingham Youth and then Haven and then it would sort of rotate. So, our next representatives were telling us that's not working for next. We may need to have a little more regular um uh financial support from us. So, we have regularly for the last few years been putting in the budget a $10,000 allocation to Next. Uh when we started once we made that allocation, Next was still coming in and asking for CBDG. That was when we kind of told them, well guys, you guys are getting your 10,000. That's your annual stipen. We're not also going to be in a position to give you any more money. So, they've sort of and respectfully I don't I I don't want to say respectfully to them, but they Haven I think found themselves getting the short end of the stick a lot and after a couple years ago just kind of stopped applying. But when Haven stopped applying, other groups began coming to the forefront. I know the FCA has asked for support for benches and things like that constantly. There's always uh up improvements that could be done to the FCA.

So, there's always things that the FCA could use money to assist with. And then more recently, the Franklin Baseball League uh has gotten involved. Then re this last year uh the preschool another charitable organization who maintains from the church's perspective is the one financially responsible for the playground they've asked us for money. So, and then on on and so we've got the baseball league and now the playground, but there's also Birmingham Youth Assistance, which two years ago when they had come here to speak with us and we're, you know, Kurt sits on the board. Um, you know, they're a major part of the the particularly the high school community both and Seome uh are you know where majority of the cases come from. They've been asking us for some regular contribution and at one point we had discussed also making the Birmingham Youth Assistance a standardized uh allocation in our annual budget like Next was to eliminate those two organizations from having to require coming to us and getting an occasional CDBG grant to being a regular part of our budgeting. This last year that I believe Rachel and Teresa will confirm, but I believe we only the next allocation found its way in the budget. Nothing allocated to Birmingham Youth Assistance. Uh

to Franklin Baseball last year and we gave to the Franklin Baseball League last year. So in the course of the next couple weeks as we have to come up with a decision we have to decide on a couple things which is one what are we considering for this year's um allocation let's assume now that the FCA has regained their charitable uh stature that we'll have at least three organizations the baseball league, the FCA and the Birmingham assistance. Do they have to apply in order to receive the Birmingham youth assistance from the organizing Birmingham Youth Assistance?

So, do they have to apply for the funds in order to receive them?

Technically, not really. We could allocate it without someone asking. I don't think we've ever historically given someone money who didn't take the time to ask over somebody who took the time to ask. We've even been using one when there's no real factor to determine one over the other. If you didn't bother to send somebody here for the meeting that you know maybe it wasn't worth enough for you to figure out. So, um, I don't love that as being a a determining factor, but to cons what we need to consider is one, does Birmingham Youth Assistance need to in some factor become a regular part of the budget or do they have to just be ask for it on an annual basis? is does next continue to have its standard uh allocation in the budget and then what are we going to do with our CDBG money and to the extent that we're not giving it to one of our other community partners to what extent are we going to consider allocating money in our budget to still assist them outside of money that we get for free. uh the church in numerous capacities are huge partners of the village. We've been I think we've already all agreed that their playground serves the entire village, including the entire baseball league because for every parent, I want to say every, but for a majority of parents that go to a game to watch their kid play, they have two other kids that they brought to the game that aren't watching the game that are playing on the swing set. So, uh, we have to be cognizant of, uh, the preschool and the church's playground and the church's baseball field. And

then on top of that, uh, historically, the church and the village have had a contract regarding the parking lot. Uh that contract expired in 2019 under which we were giving them money on a regular basis to maintain the parking lot as well as do regular fixups. That contract has not been in place for six years now and we have not been contributing to the church. Um Kathy might know, but I was I thought that in the same agreement that we had with the church, the FCA and the little league at some time had the same they were their license agreements. The license was you give us a money to contribute towards maintenance, we let you park in our parking lot, whatever.

And it also changed into a donation, right, many years ago,

right? So now we're not contributing anything to them. Uh I have a I think I mentioned at the last meeting we got a letter from the church saying hey thanks for the four grand that you guys contributed although I don't recall I don't think we ever approved it. I think I think our prior administrator might have made that promise which is is okay. But clearly that group is also in the need of some level of financial support or do we go back to some type of arrangement with them because in theory they could any day say stop using our parking lot all of you and that would be as we know catastrophic to to the village. So,

also bad optics. Would they ever do that? Would they do that? No. Uh, but and that's the same thing for the preschool. Like, there's there's equally bad optics if we continue to ignore their needs and we continue to use their property unfettered. And I'm still probably pretty sure that overall there's probably more residents and preschool parents and uh others using the parking lot than just their parishioners that come one or two days today. So park up just today for this meeting.

And the same thing with the playground like they're not going to put a fence around it but their preschoolers are only in two hours a day during September to May and they're two-year-olds but they're not using the majority of the time. I guess the bottom line is we can't just rely moving forward on CDBG money is the only way to contribute to our involvement with all of our community partners. So even though CDBG might be one free means of helping a particular organization in any given year, that doesn't mean that during that same given year, we don't have these other organizations that need to be in consideration. And I'm not asking for an answer today, but something to think about when we come back here in a special meeting in two or 3 weeks and have to do have to make a decision. And Evan will send out, you know, Evan and Rachel will send out notices to the the the our typical partners that have been here in the past and we have to suffer through that painstaking because you want to give them all money and and and you can't. So

one of be prepared for that's what's coming down the pipe. Again, one of the discussions that the infrastructure committee had was like and aligns with the new procurement policy was not making contributions to charitable organizations but paying for something. So like paying for the mulch or paying for the resurfacing. So you're not actually contributing but you're like and you're not and you have control over what they're spending it on. So you're not just giving 5,000 to the church or 4,000 to the principal, but you're paying for $3,600 for mulch and sand. So that way it goes towards that and it's not being stockpiled. Uh we felt more comfortable with.

Agreed. And to the extent that we are giving an organization money, most organizations as well as the grant war themselves can specifically allocate where that's going to. I don't know if CDBG money once we give it to an organization we can control what happens to it once it touches their books. Uh but yes absolutely we need to consider that exact situation is what type of arrangement do we need to have with the uh [clears throat] excuse me with the the preschool on a regular basis? have an ongoing relationship with the baseball league and then you know our an ongoing relationship with the FCA.

Uh a couple questions for Rachel if you know them. If not we can follow up after. But um if we as the village took the CDBG funds to pay for something, would we still have to post public notice for a hearing or is that if we're only looking to take the third party? Yes, we need to post the public notice. It's a 10-day notice before the date of the hearing. Okay.

And we do need to post that we've held a public hearing and have decided to keep the funds for ourselves. Okay. Then the second question is is if we award it to an organization, do they have to have like a proposal that has some specific thing or can it just be for like I'll use the example of Birmingham Youth Assistance rather than saying directly for mulch just general operation of services. I will verify that. That's totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. Totally fine. Thank you. based on what we've done with Next and Birmingham Youth Assistance in the past, we've never put any specific use towards it.

Yeah. The only reason that I'm bringing that up is um granted I was looking I formerly worked at HUD and when I did um we would have to do reviews of like almost audits of the projects that were being funded on it. Now, that is a completely separate thing where you would actually be coming with a proposal to receive funding compared to just allocation based off of a local municipality. Um, but just that's kind of what spurred the question. They definitely should answer I mean get the answer, but I don't believe historically that that's been an issue. Now, we have always follow the rules, right?

Who knows? Um, okay. So, uh, I'll reach out to everyone kind of separately just kind of get a straw straw poll on when everybody's schedule works, whether it's two weeks or 3 weeks from now. We got to have 10 days notice no matter what. [clears throat] Uh, maybe I'll Rachel, you and Evan can maybe reach out to the the couple organizations baseball league, see if there's a particular day that works. What have we usually We don't do We have not gone back to Mondays, have we? On our special meetings. Does any day work better for people is mindful of the holiday Thanksgiving coming up?

Maybe not two weeks from now. Oh god. Yeah, I forgot Thanksgiving holiday, right? Unless you want my whole family to show up here. I think that it was during a regular council meeting that we heard from the CDBG. It's not possible. Oh, I know. I'm just saying last time it was during a regular council. So, hold on. Let me just look at the calendar for the month. So today's So the next week is the week of the 17th. The week of the 24th is 27th is Thanksgiving. Yeah. So I mean the week of the 1st,

right? So we have to have the answer by the 5th. Our next meeting is on the 8th. So yeah, we could first, second, or third of of December maybe with that Wednesday. The 3rd. Yeah, we're out of town for Thanksgiving. You guys are for the third. No, we're back the second, right? Right. That's why. Right. Wednesday is the middle of the week. All right. We'll tentatively look for about the third to do a special meeting and cover uh CDBG. I'm going to be out of town. You going to be out of town? Yep. Grandp. All right. In the 4th.

And the 4th. Probably the sec the night of the 2nd through the 4th. Okay. You guys are out of town, too. We leave the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Uh, and we need 10 days notice no matter what. So, even if we did something today, we couldn't even do it before the 20th. Okay. Uh, 24th. Yeah,

it might be the day because that gives them all week to get the notice together, get it out on the 13th for a meeting on the 24th. This is a single agenda like Yeah,

correct. Okay. Uh so the discussion regarding nuisance abatement at this stage really all that we were looking at. So uh planning commission gave us a chart. Uh the chart circulated for a little bit. I know Dan did some homework and had it updated a little bit. Uh Chris circulated a new memo uh from September which with the addition of these red items were was for the most part the same. The that chart right there leave that leave that right there for a second. So Stuart Planning Commission, you identified all these as areas that either we cover or other communities cover and we as a council and what we're going to get submitted to Evan hopefully with all of us separately within the next week or so is at this stage it's really more of a yay or nay for us. one inoperable junk or abandoned motor vehicles explanation of what it's designed to cover. It tells us whether we currently cover it. that next column which is blank. What every one of us needs to get to Evan is for one and at this stage it isn't it's just very more generic yes or no is yes I think this is an area we should continue to have ordinance that cover not getting into the details of how it's covered but just yes we should continue to do it or no we don't

need to cover this anymore and in the areas where we don't cover it are these areas where we want to begin covering it. Uh once we've identified the the subjects that we want to address, then we can do deeper dives into each one of them and determine do we already have an ordinance section? If we do, is our ordinance section sufficient? If it isn't sufficient, does it need to be amended? or the alternative if we don't cover it at all, do we need to, you know, and we want to cover it, we're going to have to write language to cover it. And then the last item is do we we might have to defer to how they do it in other communities, but it seems like ours is scattered all to the wind.

Yes. And do other communities bottle the edges and bring them into one or two ordinances that cover all these subjects, right? So, so um a member of the community could go to our sheet and say, "What are the nuisances we have to look look up for rather than read through the fence ordinance or read through the vehicle ordinance or what anything and then have to then cipher out what is considered an alerable or abandoned vehicle or something like that, right?" So, you guys would recommend

We would recommend consolidating. Yes. But I think one of the things that I'd like in this discussion that council has is to discuss also um enforcement of what is already um an ordinance in the village. The challenges that we run into sometimes are just they're not being enforced. And so if we have a ordinance that covers inoperable junk or abandoned motor vehicles and that's happening in the village, is that is is that happening in the village and are we not enforcing it? But then at the same time, you know, there's a hole with recreational vehicles. They're not included in that um in that same ordinance. And so in that case, um you know, that then there then there's no um strength for enforcement because there's nothing to enforce.

I think that's something we've talked about and we've talked with Don about. Uh we're primarily a complaint driven ordinance village. So if your neighbor complains about it, you'll get it. and if your neighbor is good with it, you vote. But to me, that like isn't fair because um it puts a lot of power in a neighbor that you may not want to give them to and we should just have more. Rachel and Kurt will attest that within the last year, Don has evolved from that, from being entirely

complain driven. uh complaint driven. And a lot of that was based upon the amount of hours that he had to work. [laughter] So when he's only here for x number of hours a month, he had to focus on the complaints. Whereas now when now that we've upped the budget to allow him more time here, okay, he's less working on actual complaints, which then opens up the time for him to go around. And again, he's limited to things he can see from his vehicle without trespassing onto someone's property and things like that in order to

balance of complaint driven incidents or or issues that he's uncovered versus proactive enforcement. Do we have any idea his allocation of time you're saying? Yeah. I mean, if if we have issues in the village, what percentage of those are based on resident complaints versus what percentage of issues that he might uncover through? We could definitely we could could definitely get him to to kind of take a snapshot of a week or two and determine how many of how how many hours in his day are spent reacting to an actual complaint versus [laughter]

so I do know that he uses community connect on all the things that he enforces. Um, a lot of times what he does is, uh, he will, if he sees a violation, he'll send out a letter and try to, uh, get them to voluntarily take care of the issue before writing a citation. And before he writes a citation, he usually either checks with myself or with the administrator. Um, but he does go out and patrol. He does go out and look for signs and and different violations. So, I know he does that. What the percentages are between complaints and found on patrol, I'd have to look in Community Connect or or talk to Don.

The uh, this one's for Stuart. um when you all were coming up with what we currently have in the section, I know we there's some commentary around like the objectivity of enforcement, but was that driven through him or through McKenna making an assessment that there No, it's actually driven actually it's from Don and um from um um Bill um

Den um because um both have had um to cons think about the ordinances that we write and enforce them whether it's building or whether it's um in this case nuisance and baitment. Um they want to make sure it's clear enough for them to be able to tell a homeowner. Yes. And these are the this is this is a clear-cut dry use nuisance and and but also it'd be nice for them to be able to say however this is also acceptable if you do this because having it clear for them to be able to give the homeowner an out is probably a kinder way of approaching nuisance than it is just saying no you've done something wrong fix it. Um, yeah. So that's that's partly why we want them to be involved in any changes that we make for the ordinance to make sure it's clear for them from the other thing though I'd be I I I believe that if you were to do a poll of um complaint driven versus obs observation by dawn um they're probably all during the day cuz a lot of the challenges that we've seen lately have to do with light um between neighbors yards and backyards and sideyards and you might not be able to actually measure the light trespass between neighbors because he's either not working in the evening or if he is then he's only targeting complaint driven homes. So,

I don't know what the expectation is for next steps, but I'll advocate on behalf of the planning commission that we not send it back to them yet. Um, and instead what we do is we pull together the matrices so that we can see collectively how we compare in our thoughts and start to narrow and refine what's in what's out and then get them a final answer. I agree. So I would ask that just to give staff a couple weeks before the next meeting. Today is the 10th. So let's just say by Thanksgiving,

that's two weeks from today. Let's just take your list and again yay or nay. And you can say, you know, yes, needs to be updated, you know, yes, needs more teeth, but definitely yes or no at least in there so that we can straw poll, you know, are we looking at 25 items or are we looking at, you know, 15 items, right? Yeah. And this, you know, good job. Look, ordinance enforcement's always been an issue here in the village. You know, it's not Birmingham where you can see a lot from the street and you don't have forests blocking people's backyards.

Uh, unfortunately, the law doesn't allow code enforcement people to just fly everywhere or I mean walk anywhere they want. Uh, and we don't we haven't invested in drones, but not sure we're quite ready to go there yet. Although I do know communities using that as a means of enforcement, but you know, it's always been an issue. My neighbor put a shed in, never pulled a permit, put the shed in the sideyard. What I mean, what are you going to do? [laughter] Well, no, and that's my biggest thing. It's like you just want to save face with your neighbors, so you just don't say anything because you're like at the end of the day, it's my relationship with my neighbor is more important than the shed.

Correct. And unfortunately when the neighbors don't care, that's the ones the only ones that we hear about.

So I think there are I mean I've run into this as well um with my neighbors um when they re landscaped their yard. The neighbor across the street had a bright lights shining in their kitchen window at night and um it could have gone the route of you're in violation of our ordinance, clear violation um and just reported them. or we said, "Hey, by the way, the people that installed your lighting angled it too high up. It's now shining in." And there was several hundred feet between the houses. So, it was a pretty big distance. It was able to brighten their kitchen and um and all they did was just turn it down and the neighbors are not h upset with each other anymore and it was just a matter of communication. But that would be the ideal situation. ideal way and I think that's the way Don starts on all of these is to approach it from a more practical [clears throat] way but when that practicality gets lost by emotion

Yep. that's when unfortunately the village gets stuck in the middle. Yep. Okay. All right. So yeah, thank you. Um regardless I think after you're done with your work um I think then then we'll kick off the exercise of um co uh loc collocating all of the nuisance ordances in the same section or in the same within the same ordinance. Um, so I it even if you don't want us to rewrite a specific ordinance um or touch it other than just to relocate it to um another to the section of nuisance um abatement then then that that'll be I believe an action that we can take after this as well. So that'll be the next step after we get feedback from council on what to do. So that makes sense.

Yep. Okay. Thank you Stuart. Thanks Stuart. Uh so before we go to reports, David, you had asked to pull purchasing policy out. Yeah. So uh to the extent that we have discussion, let's have discussion questions. If it's more syntactical or things like that, I would say

what we've done in the past, send it to Rachel. Let her incorp let her review and incorporate it, contact whoever sent it to her with questions, and then let's bring it back for um bring it back for approval. Unless there's something that's driving that's just going to say,

well, I did tackle this immediately because I really do want to start delving into our contracts. I've heard a lot of people talking about them and I really want to start reading them and figuring out what's going on with them and I feel like without having this in place I can't bring you anything because [clears throat] we don't have a specific policy that I reviewed it. Do you think there's anything that's subject matter driven? Could we approve this today and then revisit it next month? That's what I was going to say is approve it and then we can I can provide my discussions. I don't think there's anything material that I'll just say it right now. Yeah. Um the two things is one in the intro.

Um I think having something in conclusion and again this is a non-material change which is why it if it's going to inhibit you administrating then I can cut it but I was just having uh language to the effect of like any requirements or authority set out by this policy shall be interpreted consistent with so as not to conflict with the chapter and ordinances of the village. Right. And it's just a when we're putting out written documentation, just having a clarifier like the reason it's nonmaterial is because that's true anyways. It just stops villagers from becoming confused between what the chain of authority is, right? So like the ordinances have a provision that say that that can't conflict or override the authority of the charter, right? And so it just creates the layers, but it's nonmaterial. So it's certainly not anything that I would hold it up on. The other consideration that I feel comfortable moving forward with but I think would be helpful would be for emergency purchases having a definition around emergency purchase so that you're establishing a threshold for when that provision would trigger.

Okay. So let's do emergency purchases first because I feel like that's a little bit easier. Cool. If if we can. Is that okay with you? Absolutely. Let no maybe we can get through this real quick. If we can, then that would be great because I want it approved one way or another. Whether it's conditionally or not, I want you to be able to be operating with this for the next month. So, emergency purchases under I, which is the first paragraph, is specifically emergency purchases that are related to the Oakland County Emergency Operations Plan. And that is the Yeah. Then that resolves that. But number two, public health, safety, or welfare threats.

Okay. [sighs] like a power outage or a snowstorm or something like that. Yes. And I mean, we can discuss whether or not this needs to be defined further. I I don't know how I would I don't know if Peter has anything that he can add to this, but it is for emergency or disaster situations. So that do not fall under the Oakland County Emergency Operations Plan. So I guess I could create it like X of God.

We could add a qualifier that's like reasonable emergency expenses that require 48 hour decision making. Something like that. Like if if we don't have a contract for snow removal and there's been like a snowstorm, you without convening the council have to approve a snow company to come in. Or if or snow companies, you know, trucks are out of service, something you may have to contract with a snow company immediately within 48. You know what I mean? Something like that. We could put a timebound

um some some language that's time bound on there, right, Peter? Yeah, I think you can do acts of God and um inhibits the ability of the village to act in the ordinary course. Yeah. Or a course of business. I was thinking that same thing. And as soon as possible, notify the council or something like that. That's already in there. Over. Yep.

All right. acts of God and something that impedes the village ability to act in the village's ability. Yeah. In the ordinary course. Ability to act in the ordinary course. [cough] [clears throat] Okay. Okay. And then let's go back to your first comment if you will. Are you talking about under the policy objectives just adding a statement that says nothing in this policy shall so it wasn't in the policy objectives sorry I the the place that it felt like a more natural reading was in uh application essentially the LA it would become a last sentence to application

so

which is 21A Okay. Okay. So, we could just change the second from last sentence to say nothing in this policy shall prevent the village or any public agency from complying with the terms and conditions of any grant, gift, or bequest that is otherwise consistent with the law. nor shall it prevent the village from complying with the um villages charter.

This is under application. Nothing in this policy to prevent a village or any public.

I'm going to let the lawyers take this one. [laughter] So we could also put an authority section at the very top before application because everything in this policy is restricted by the charter. So you can say it was restricted by the charter chapter 2 section 2 subsection 1 2 section 3 and then there's an entire part of the charter that lays out procurement and that's where the authority comes from which normally that's how you start policy by the authority.

So then if we were to do just under that it would be general a authority. Yeah. The authority capture that last sentence regarding the ultimate responsibility shall be under the administrator and then the language. Yeah. such as again any requirements or authority set out in this policy shall be interpreted consistent with so as not to conflict with the chapter and ordinances of the village prefer like chapter 2 set out some procurement and then chapter 8 is specific to contracts or are you saying

like chapter 8 of the charter governs contracts this entire thing has to be subjected to that as well as I mean that's what I'm saying though is that our chain of command goes charter ordinance policy. Yeah, but there's no authority in this policy and normally when you like where does the authority come from for um Rachel to even write the policy that should be at the top. Oh, like that's just how you write policy. Yeah. I mean, the only thing is is I don't we kind of need to get this out today. Inherent in this that charter and ordinances have to be complied with. Like you said, there's a pecking order, right? So,

yeah. I mean, the references in here do say in accordance with law, right? I mean, the charter is law. Ordinances are law. Yeah. And again, the the my qualifier was this is a non-material change, so I don't want this to become a focal point. No, no. And the comment is that that's why I think that we can approve and then come back to it. Approve this subject [snorts] to providing Rachel and Peter with non-material comments.

Yeah. and then I'll let Peter and Rachel determine whether any comment that any of us gives them falls elevates to material. If it's material, then incorporate it, don't incorporate it into the policy until we come back next December to ratify it. If it's immaterial, then add the language and continue to operate this month on that basis. Okay. Yeah. If somebody reads through this and is like, whoa, and something jumps off the page then and you read that and you're like, oh yeah, that is a little messed up, then just don't follow that one particular thing until December. But in the meantime,

I do just have some material things, but it mostly has to do with periods of performance.

So there's nothing in here that says what the period of performance should be for a contract, you know. So, so normally like you would do a 12-month contract for option years not to exceed 60 months and then we'd have to exercise the option year, but there's nothing in here. So, like what are we going to say is a um period of performance that council is comfortable with or like when you're reviewing the contracts, you know, you can't just have a three-year period of performance without annual review or are we saying that's okay? you know, where it can can be reviewed. Like normally the federal government, you're going to do one a 12-month period of performance, four option years, not to exceed 60 months because the idea is that after that, you need to reperform market research. Fair market value has changed so much. But there's nothing in here to talk about like rebidding um or uh valid periods of performance. So that's But from your background, I'm fine with like what you think should be good. Well, it really depends on what the contract is for. So, let's say it's a contract for legal services. How I I debated this in my mind and left it out because

we don't necessarily follow follow a three-year budget right now. Our budget is approved on a yearly basis without looking out into the future so much. So oftentimes when contracts have dates like that, it's based on the budget of the community. So I would ask Peter, you know, or I would say in my RFP, we're looking for a contract for the next three years. Okay. And all of that would be governed within whatever was decided in the RFP. Um

that's good. So, so do we have any contracts with anybody that exceed the our fiscal budget year with the exception of our legal consultant, our planning consultant, our engineering consultant? I mean, and our uh public services contractor. Do we have any do we exercise contracts every year? Those are all contract specific like this flock. I'd have to look at it again. I think for three years, right? So, it's all depending on the services, you know, with our fire department. I think it's three or four years. The fire department is from the 2022 to 2027. Yeah. Okay. Five years.

But normally, you wouldn't be able to obligate funds beyond like to your point a budget year. So, we really shouldn't be having contracts that exceed 12 months if every year we're approving a budget because if we didn't approve that amount in the budget, we'd be obligating and we against a deficiency act. But most of our contracts are based upon us requesting the services. They don't just with the exception of waste management and Jerry cutting lawns and plowing streets. All of our services are based on an init somebody has to initiate.

You know, you could do an addendum to this. You could do a purchasing and procurement policy and then you could always do an addendum to this policy and like as you go through the contract review, you can be like, "Oh, I want to add this. I want to add that." You know, you could do that. Sorry, I just I write policy. So, this is like that was just something that jumped out at me. I am concerned about approving a legal contract or or an engineering contract or a planning contract for one year at a time because that means we have to go through the RFP process every single year. Not if you have optioners. You can just exercise the option. And that's another thing in here. we could give you the authority to exercise an option above your warrant authority without even coming to counsel.

Mhm. And that was another thing I wanted to give you. Um if you've done the RFP and you've gotten approved, do you could just exercise the option year? Mhm. That works. That works. And yeah. So So how do you want to handle that in the policy? Is that something that we need to address in the policy or every contract will come to the board for approval the first time? [clears throat] Yes. Yeah. Well, not every contract. So, contracts under $10,000 do not need to come to the board. So,

yeah. So, that was another thing I want to know. Can we have notice of spending even if you just like because what happened the other day was we got a letter, thank you for giving us $4,000 for the parking lot, but we didn't know about it. So, then we were going to give another $4,000. So just can we have some sort of notification? So I did cover that in this policy and it is under one second here after RFPs.

It is number four. So, it's on number four on page seven, and it's the authorization for non-standard use of village funds. So, I would consider me telling the church, you can have $4,000 for paving. That's an author's non-standard use. You know, legal contracts, that's a standard use.

Um, [snorts] painting a village hall, that's standard. But what I've added in here is that these expenditures shall require prior prior approval by the village council. You could add something then just why don't we just say option years can be exercised by the administrator when the base contract has been approved by council not to exceed three option years right or four option years. Are you guys good with that? or or if she has to come back every year or we allow for contracts that go beyond a 12-month period before months.

I don't have a problem with options. I don't have a problem with her entering into contracts if it's within an an approved budgeted line item. What I mean, we'd have to decide what we want or an approved percentage increase like if those contracts increase over usually when they give you an option, the vendor is going to already add in the percent. So they'll like option year one the base contract will be and then it'll be like 4% every year. So we'll we'll have seen the original contract as all the options. So as long as she's operating within the confines of the contract once we approve the contract it's good. Some of the contracts might not have bumps some might have bumps. Some Yeah.

Depends on the say not to exceed 60 months and then you'd have to rebid it. Yeah. I don't think we should be entering into any contracts beyond that type, but there's nothing in the policy right now. So, we could put that, right? Did you remember the language you said? Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. And you the administrator has the authority to exercise optioners under previously approved. So long as the base contract of our previously approved contracts was approved by council.

Okay. Not to exceed a total of 60 months which is 5 years. So that means the base plus four option years which usually is built out. Don't you? Yeah. I just do we want to put village council does not object. So then I have to bring the council the contact. Yes. or they they would say we want to take a look at it when we object to it. So they still have the authority as opposed to you saying I don't need to bring it to village council you guys already approved it. Does that make sense? She would now still have to bring it so that we would have the opportunity to object which then creates a burden for her. Right. Well I I think you've given her the authority to go [clears throat] ahead and enter into those successive year contracts.

Yeah because we already approved the base unless you guys say you know what I I want to look at it again this year. Let's take a look at it. And she could say, "No, here's my policy." I think there was already something in the policy that said council could review contracts or something. Council reviews and this is only things that exceed the 10K. Yes. Correct. Yes. So, we already would have the authority to I think so. We look at it. I think that's how I read it. We'd have the authority to look any contract above 10K, but she has the authority to exercise the option here

if we've already approved it. Can I make a suggestion because this is relatively complex that this would be one of the things as you suggested, David, where we approve it and then we that allows you to continue to operate because I don't think in the next month we'll run into anything where we're exercising an option. That way the three of you can connect on language that you're comfortable with because I don't want to just kind of air draw what that provision will look like. What we could do is work on all of these revisions and then bring it to the special meeting that we're going to do for CDBG anyway.

I mean, I certainly don't mind addressing it at that meeting. uh if you need something in place between now and then. I think I'm okay. It's going to take me a while to go through everything and figure out how I'm going to address all of these. I mean, I can start writing an RFP without having this done. Mhm. And then I mean, we're only talking a couple of Yeah. Right. So, be okay. Okay. All I'm saying is I don't want you to bring contracts to us every year. Yeah. [laughter] I really don't want to do that anymore. really have to [clears throat] contractors don't want to have to be on rec reconsideration annually. And and you usually get the benefit of a vendor pricing out their cost.

Yeah. In a five in a 60-month, you know, time frame. So like we're paying their hedging risk and we're yeah committing. It helps us with our budgeting practices to know what we're looking at three years in advance rather than doing it every single year and just waiting to see what they come up with. Plus, it saves me a bunch of time on the whole RFP process. Yeah. And that's why I want to give you that authority because if the contract's over 10K, you could exercise another option here. You good? I'm good.

Okay, perfect. Uh, council reports. So, we're getting late. I actually don't really have anything to report. My comments were I already addressed in the CDBG part about having our mind set on some of these other uh entities that are looking for support. So I don't have anything else to add for under my report. So council report, we'll start with you, Angelina. Um, I just wanted to say uh recognize that tomorrow is Veterans Day

and thank you to all the um families and the spouses and the um veterans who've served and who continue to serve and protect our freedom. Um this is National Kindness Week. So um do something kind for a stranger. Um and then to the um new administration and the village staff like the accountability, the professionalism, the um thorowness, the the packets, um the outreach has been great. I love the digital copies. I feel like we're saving trees. Um and appreciate your interaction with us.

Thank you. Uh for me, just a real quick note, one of the things that we may need to consider in the future, just with all the conversations, while I do believe that people are passionate about the deer population and the potential danger on the roads, I think a lot of the angst is probably the destroying of landscape and vegetation. So, I think we need to revisit our fencing requirements or what alternatives we have to help prevent that to reduce some of the noise.

So, that's it for me. I can't agree more that the village of Franklin is not suffering from DVC's. We have first of all all of the roads that surround us aren't our roads which are the major thoroughares. I almost never see a dead deer on Franklin Road. It's 13 Mi Road is probably the one area where we're we suffer from that. And no, it is our residents concern with their

with their vegetation. And I've been saying this for a while. I mean, I would have no problem moving heights of fences and rear yards from 4T to 6 feet. We don't live in a bedroom community where you meet your neighbor at the fence and chitchat over the fence. Uh, two more feet is a huge [laughter] Is that what a bedroom community is? I just mean, you know, just like you see I don't even know what that means, but you know, like, you know, back watching movies in, you know, the 50s where, you know, you'd be out in the backyard and your neighbors would meet. All right. Well, that's awesome. So, if it's 6 feet tall and you're talking with them, you're not, you know, I [clears throat] Yeah. So,

I think that that would go a long way. We've already done it to address Yep. the gardens. Yep. But those are still limited in size. And that's really for real real specific vegetation that gets destroyed that you can eat. The kind that we're really talking about is the kind that we like to look at and maintain. And when you can't look at it and maintain it anymore, that's where the frustration arises. So I don't disagree that there are might be other means of that are more practical to address the situation. Uh, I need to get a whole lot more educated on it because it seems to me if one deer goes here, he's going to get replaced by another deer.

The the only other item um, as a follow-up related to the deer is every year we allocate all of our grant funds in a specific area to the mosquito cakes for stagnant water. I'm wondering if we could equally or just allocate that towards deer repellent that we make available. Granted, I don't know we'd want to store it inside of the building because that stuff smells, but at the same time, again, if that's one of the availabilities, I don't know if it is. Yeah. I don't know. Do we buy mosquito cakes? No, we we get a grant and you have to allocate it towards certain requirements and so we allocate it towards the mosquito cakes every year. Oh, yeah.

And people could pick up like a deer repellent spray bottle. know if that has the impact that mosquitoes do from an overall health perspective. Yeah. And so if there's any way to get ourselves out of the crosshairs of um the deer conversation about it's the first time hearing of it. Is there data available? Is there you know this is the first I'm hearing of it. Are there any widely available studies or information we could put on our website to say like Evan has been Evan? Yeah. I think this I think that DNR link was available.

Uh the the the ladies that were here today if they if they wanted to email the presentation to Evan, Evan can put that link on the website. You can create a what's our new terminology? Urban deer management. I think there is an Oakland County something because there is like some sort of Oakland County community going on and and Brian Farmer's given me a couple links. Again, I don't know if they're uh biased toward any particular aspect of urban management, but yeah, I think we probably could create a little second on the website and just have links available for people.

I could just see this taking on a life of own. I mean it already has in past meetings like it has been a a topic that has taken on more and more traction and if it's a matter of giving educational materials as a way to say we are taking this seriously and here are some things that you can read up on easy little liftway um also this Rachel this is your first meeting [laughter] so can we take a moment to recognize that [applause] thank you for pointing that out I even think about That's right. Yes. It is nice to have you here. Thank you. It's been very good. It only took us uh nearly How many hours? What are we on? Math isn't three and a half.

Yeah. So, three and a half hours and recognized it being your first meeting here. All right. It's been a nice meeting. Anything from you, Dan? [snorts] I think we've had enough for tonight. Yeah. [laughter] Uh Stuart, I don't know if there's anything specific. All right. Good. Thank you. Uh, I think Mark bailed on us probably 2 hours ago. So, uh, I'll take a motion to adjurnn. Second or I'll move I'll move to adjourn. Motion by Goldberg, second by Sally. All in favor? I. I. All right. A job.