Council - Regular Meeting

thing is people do last time you looked right there.

No, I'm just going to There's a lot of room under there. You can hide people. Oh, yeah. Okay. How you I was kind of counsel. They tried to tell me that they're like three blocks away. Somebody came with a gun. You could hide under here. Unless you just I don't know if that really worked. I might just get it. He said it's quarter inch steel plate under the front. That's what they said. I'm not I'm not sure I want to put the test. [clears throat] Yeah, we also I'll see him walking in. Oh, you find it super troopers. We'll see just how fast. Yep. Got power now, Mike. I mean, you could.

Yep, I do. You don't have a battery for that thing? Yeah, I do. Just ran it off camera for hours. I might have you come up and isn't there one on the other side? Cuz I don't know what about your um your sewer camera truck. Happy new year. Happy new year. I don't know. Happy new year. Happy new year to you. I was like talking to him too.

You see that?

How are you? Camera using power over here. [laughter] We don't have any over here. There. Well, yeah. When we hit that fast mount,

well, there's chairs over there. [clears throat]

I can scooch down [clears throat] and I moved over there anyway.

No, he'll sit over. He'll scrunch in by us. But we removed his chair. I don't know where it went. It's kind of tight over there. I've got a whole [laughter]

almost Wonderful. How about you? My kids are home, Grace. They just love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Practicing [laughter] and like a good switch over cozy and all the good stuff. You too. Did you travel? Yeah,

just [laughter] so many words.

That's perfect.

But they come to you now. Uhoh. Is it actually Halloween? And then went up to Fortune all that. So there you go. Secret. Bob's breaking his clock. [clears throat] It's running slow. But I have questions about that. Is it running slow or are you running fast? Comparing it to Verizon counter. There's a move behind 25. Yours is way ahead.

If you go in McDonald's China and you get lobster, That's awesome. Together now. Next time we fix it, it'll fall apart again. Oh my god. [clears throat] It's amazing.

I brought the computer, but now I come in. They got that big It was 24 hours. Teach you how to fly. 24 hours.

That's literally I was like talking this like 610. I was like, "Oh my god." He says, "What kind of room are you having?" about 45 minutes. [clears throat] Yeah. And I ate a peanut butter and jelly on my way over. That's amazing. Protein bread.

No, I'm I love peanut butter. This never gets old. Oh my goodness. She gave me It's still sitting there. Oh jeez. Oh, I love some jelly. Yeah, I can bring you a chair. Yeah, [laughter] I told her I told her, "Oh, thank you." But I don't really need that. I got home and she sent me home and chili and that was in there, was it? Oh my goodness. She gave it to me anyway. [laughter] She snuck it in there. Yeah. No, it's super fun.

That's awesome. It's just a whole lot. Yeah. Like, why is this moving on me? They do it so well. [laughter] You do it off the last You're just barking. I'm done next. Too bad crazy on purpose. [laughter] So good. We went to a little place over at Holiday and they had a cranberry raspberry jam and then I was like, I'm going to need you to like give me a

whole 30 years. It's huge now. They do a whole like light up thing I think you can drive through. Okay. At the holiday time.

They got a whole restaurant and everything. Just actually come into naturally. We haven't stopped there. We'll have to do it next time. That's exactly how we went up through New Hampshire and we stopped in there for dinner and then it's really good. So much fun.

One of the lobster islands really close like it's a little too know. else. [music] [music] Thanks.

[music] [music] All right. Thank you, Scott. Welcome everybody to the special city council work session for January 5th, 2026. Where would you call the role? Fritz here. Calio here. Lion here. Dora here. Vanessa

here. Tonight we have a presentation on our asset management plan. Uh let's see who wants to introduce this. I'm going to just call Leah up. Okay, Michael. All right. Tonight in front of you, we have our asset management plan presented by Leah, Miss Leah Beal from Avar Associates. Um very excited about this. The team's been working hard on it with her for the past six months to get this out. So here we go. All right. Thank you. Mike, good evening. Mayor on the council. Nice to meet you guys. Nice to meet you. Right. So, as Mike said, I'm here to Can you guys hear me? Okay. Closer. This is better.

Better.

Okay. I have the clicker tonight, too, so I can upgrade that. So, I am here to present on the asset management plan. So, this is for your water, storm, sanitary, and road systems. And I have my own slides as well. I'm going to follow along with some notes and I did print the presentations for you guys as well just because some of the maps are a little bit harder to see. So just going to go through some introductions, a project background, go through the asset management planning process, talk about the proposed capital plan that we have, additional recommendations, talk about the financial piece of it, maybe bring in MLA for some discussion, and then do some next steps. This is about a 35 minute presentation, but please feel free to stop me and discuss questions, comments. I I would love to have it be a dialogue. So, introductions. I did work primarily with public works office and then also with city manager's office on this for the past couple years. There we go. And then many members on the Avid Marsh team. So, um for the new members, our office is actually below public safety. So we're right in the city and we've been the engineer of record I think since 2014. So it's going on 12 years. So myself um Tim Burkeman is here. He's our vice president as well if you have any questions. And then Caleb, our GIS technician, he's out of our Grand Haven office as well. So a lot of members involved with this project. So project background, we're creating a comprehensive asset management plan like I said for the water system, sanitary collection, storm collection, and then your road network. So, these are all the assets that are underneath your road, not included. I do want to have a caveat. It's not your water treatment plant. It's not your wastewater plant. Any city buildings or property, parks, sidewalks, marinas, all that. We're really focusing on those distribution and collection assets. And then the roads on top. So, we've been working with the city since actually 2022. It's been, I think, three years since we've been working on

this to create five reports. We have the four systems and then we also have a combined report to bring it all together. Um this was a city funded endeavor and then we also had an eagle grant for over half a million dollars. So this was the department of environment, great lakes and energy. Um we received money for asset management planning and then also like lead service line investigation work. So it was a super big win for the city. Um Gren has a great history of capital planning. You guys have the plan every year in your uh budget, but this endeavor was getting all those all that data into a report that we can then show the public, turn into the state, and then have a road map for the next 20 years. So, NASA management plan, I'll try to keep it broad. I'll just call it an AMP from now on. It's kind of a mouthful. Uh takes inventory of your city's assets. So, your hydrants, your pipes, your lift stations, your manholes. Uh we evaluate what condition they're in. We developed some operation maintenance activities. What are the capital projects we need to do and then how are we going to fund them? I really like to show this slide. It shows just a great cross-section of a typical rightway that you have in the city. There are a lot of assets under the ground that we don't always think about that I don't always think about honestly. We have water mane hydrants, storm manholes, sanitary manholes. There's so much infrastructure that you guys are responsible for for maintaining in addition to the roads, sidewalks, curbs, everything within your right of way. Then you also have of course TV, telephone, electrical as well. So the why of doing an asset management plan, you want a plan that you can share with residents. Budgeting and planning for those dig once projects, you will save money. If you're digging up the road, we want to make sure that we are covering everything that needs to be dug up and replaced. Um, this will help extend the life of assets and it will save you guys a lot of money. So,

so asset management, I tried to keep it super broad. It's five steps. It's pretty easy. It's asset inventory. What do we own? Condition assessment. What condition is it in? Criticality rating. Okay. What is the condition of this asset compared to this asset? Capital improvement plan. what needs to be replaced and then financial analysis. How are we going to fund it? So those are the major five steps a lot of data in between though for us. So at a glance this is your asset inventory. I won't read all the statistics but you have water distribution system with almost 80 miles of main valves hydrants service lines and meters. Your sanitary collection system has 60 miles of sewer over a thousand manholes and then 13 stations. And then storm is over 40 miles of sewer with 800 manholes and then almost 2,000 catch basins. You also have almost 50 outfalls which are like to creeks and streams that end up in the Grand River. So, and then your road network. You also you have almost 60 miles of major and local growth. So, you guys have a lot uh within your city limits. So, we'll start with your water distribution system. Your water system was built primarily in the 20s. So, a lot of your system is over 100 years old. And then a huge push was in the 60s. The federal government gave out a bunch of money um in loans and grants for upgrading public infrastructure. So, you'll see that 1960s age a lot um throughout the presentation. It's cast iron man. It's 4 to 6 in, which is undersized for what we recommend. Um but we do have a good knowledge in GIS of where all the pipes are, age, material diameter. We have a good idea of what's going on with your water system. So, that's just a map of the system. The red are the transmission mains. So, you do have river crossings and it's a very large system. Part of your water system, I do need to know as part of our asset management activities is water service lines. I'm assuming you guys all know about lead

service lines and needing to replace lead. Um, so we have been working with the city to create a dashboard showing every single service in the city. Um it's on your city website and we were able to review records um go through investigations in the field and this is what we have today. You have 2,800 lines that are copper and plastic. So we're all set. 600 plus are lead confirmed. We've seen it and then 1,200 still need to be identified. So that's where your water services um are at. I'll just give an update on the water service line investigation. So you have 4,751 services, but you typically have to investigate one service at four spots. So it is a huge endeavor to figure out what your materials are made of. So one is at the corpse stop. So that's one in the graphic. That's where you find your lead. So it's right at the main. So it's typically underneath the road. So investigating it is super expensive and it you have to tear up the road to find it. So oftentimes we'll go to spots two and three and then we'll um use a hydro excavation truck suck out the dirt and then [clears throat] we can see what the pipe is made of. So additionally on my crew they go inside of a lot of homes and just see what the material is going into the home. So we do this just because material changes happen a lot in residential plumbing I guess. So I've seen I've seen it all. So we're trying to find the lead um to make sure we're getting lead out by 2037 is the EPA deadline. So we have 11 years. Any questions on water? I'm gonna move on to sanitary. So your sanitary collection system, it was built primarily in the 40s through the 60s. Most of it's clay. Clay pipe is super common. Um it can last a long time if it's constructed correctly. We have a pretty good idea of where all the pipes are, location, material, and diameter. I don't know the exact age of a lot of the pipes. A lot of it is just atlas maps.

We have like very old maps showing um the status of the pipes, but pretty good idea of what's going on. And then this map shows um all the lift stations in the city as well. Your storm system. This is the system I know the least about. Um it was built primarily in the 50s. Concrete very common. Um I have a pretty good idea of the location, material, and diameter, but the sanitary and storm systems used to be combined. So when they separated them, a lot of stuff went on that just wasn't written down. So there's a lot of mysteries um unfortunately below the road. So we had to assume a lot for the storm system. So for your road network, you have 59 total miles. 22 are major. So that's just based on the volume of traffic that you guys have. And then 37 are local. This is an act 51 map that we certify annually to the state. And then we receive funding based on this map. Any questions on what you guys own? I'm going to go into the condition of what you guys own questions.

I don't know what the lift station is. We'll get there. Would you like to elaborate?

Yes. Okay. So, lift station is when So, most of the sewage in the system, it flows by gravity. So, the pipes are at a a very minimum slope. So, most of sewage when you flush your toilet, it can do gravity all the way down. But eventually the pipes get so deep that you have to have a lift station which has a pump and it will take huge amount of sewage and it will lift it up to a higher elevation and then use a pressurized pipe to force it to the treatment plant at East End. So there's 13 around and I think the wastewater plant used to be where kind of where Culver's was. So a lot of the system was already designed to go there. So when you already have gravity going one way, you then have to put in a bunch of pumps to make the sewage go where you want it to go. So yeah, that's where all the the flushable wipes collect, all the grease, all the fun stuff collects at the lift station. So yeah, excellent question.

Do these most of these lift stations have u emergency power or does that be brought to them? Yeah, typically we do like an automatic transfer switch and we'll have an on-site generator for all lift stations. Um, just so that if there's a power outage, it automatically would do backup power because if your lift station backs up, I mean, that is a potential for sewage um to be Yeah. to overflow. Yes. Sorry, I know you're eating. [laughter] My dad. [clears throat]

Okay. So, condition assessment. How do we look at the condition of all these assets? Water distribution. We look at the age. If a pipe's 100 years old, unfortunately, we have to replace it. It's just beyond its useful life. Nothing lasts forever. And then water mane breaks. Um there was 127, I think, and there's some that we haven't even accounted for this year that the guys have been dealing with. So, I did include pictures in the presentation. This is Columbus and seventh water main break just to show you how disruptive a water mane break is and how expensive it is. For the sewer systems, we look at the age and then we actually televise with the robot camera in sewer pipes and then we catalog all the deficiencies and code them and give them numbers based on the severity of the defect. So, lift station inspections, we go to lift station, just look at how old the pumps are, electrical, how everything's functioning, um, and see what needs to be upgraded. And then for the road network, uh, we rate the road surface on a scale from 1 to 10. And then this was Fulton um pre-construction photos that we got. So that was probably a paser score of one or two. It's now a 10. So your water system, a lot of your water man unfortunately dates to the 1920s. Um so it is beyond its useful life or what we would recommend. Um and then we also have 127 documented water main breaks since 1984. So, it's great that you guys have all that data, but it just shows you unfortunately that like I said, assets just don't last forever and if pipes aren't buried to the correct depth, freeze thaw cycles can cause them to break and it can be really devastating. So, um, a lot of my recommendations for the capital plan overlay perfectly with this map because that's where the most problems are. It's not like rocket science. So, you'll see uh which areas need the most help.

Is that Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I say is that an average number of water mane breaks for you know materials that are that old or do we have like an excessive amount of water mane breaks? Mike, is there an average number that communities deal with? I [laughter] will say this is it's we hope for zero. It's normal. Like you're not alone. Every community has breaks. I will say that. We're I'd say we're in the normal range this year. Last year was pretty tough. Okay. Yep. Is it getting worse yearby year? You would expect that as tough ages.

Too early to tell. Too early to tell. [clears throat] Um we have our frequent areas on there that do go, but we are that is part of this asset management plan to get those taken care of. My understanding is that uh we we're on a big dune here and it's always moving all the time. So it shifts over a period of 20 30 40 years. You're going to have break you're going to have breakage anyways because of the what we have underneath being built on sand. You know for my area it was a big it was a big dune and my dad was younger. it was a lot taller is now they build homes on it and so you got pipes going up inside the sand. So over the years they do move and they do break.

Like Leah said a lot of our assets are cast iron which is very very brittle by nature where the ductal will last a lot longer than what cast iron ever will. So less likely to break. What is it called? Um ductal pipe. Ductal. Yep. It's It's actually really thick steel with concrete lining in in the middle of it. Any other questions for breaks? Okay,

I did include some pictures. I asked for Mike um just of some recent ones. So, Robins and Gillan was a pretty bad one. Sorry to bring it up, Mike, but I do want to show you guys just how uh disruptive it can be. And um once it does break, it will completely fracture. It's very I mean the water's still pressurized on the inside of the pipe. So it's a very disruptive. Um Albian Sllayton had a recent water main break as well. So you can see the pipe up there. Um so crews have to completely excavate the whole area. Um if the pressure falls, you have to do a boil water advisory sometimes. So it's just overall a situation you don't want to be in. That unfortunately happens late at night usually in the winter. So for the condition assessment of your sanitary system. So I talked about we want to televise, get a robot inside the pipes and see what's going on. I had about 25% of the system. I had televising data for about a quarter of the system. So it was about 10 years old. So we had a good amount of data, but we didn't have televising data on the whole system. So that is my number one recommendation if I'm ever looking at a system is to televise the pipes right away because you can then see what's going on. So we were able to make a lot of recommendations, but there's definitely some investigation work to go with the sanitary system. Couple pictures I want to show you that this robotic camera will show. So, this is fairy. Cracks are pretty normal on clay pipes. Clay is also brittle. I don't know why they picked clay and cast, but they're both brittle. Um, infiltration is pretty common in the city and just countrywide. Um, over time things just degrade. And then there's a ton of roots. Um, trees love sewage. So, they'll get the roots between the joints and then the roots will expand and then they'll eventually bust the pipe. So, it's a huge problem. Some other problems that we see, Grant has some crossors from other utilities that don't know that the pipes are there. So, that's the Grant storm

system. I think there's a crossore through there right now or if it's been addressed, I can't remember. huge roots that we're seeing and then just voids um coming into the pipe. So that's infiltration is water that you're paying to be treated at the treatment plant, but it's really just ground water. So you want to eliminate as much infiltration as you can for the lift stations. Um Kennedy Industries partnered with us and helped us do some investigations in 2024. Um we just reviewed the major components. So just site access, electrical, valves, piping, on-site generator, all that stuff. Um, pump stations and lift stations don't last as long as water, main infrastructure, and other things. They can have sometimes a 25 year life. If you take really good care of it, you can extend it, but lift stations are expensive, unfortunately, and they don't last a long time. Pumps just need constant maintenance. So for your storm system, we didn't have a lot of data. I didn't have any televising data basically on your storm system. So, this is something I really would encourage um seeing if we could televise it. I will talk later. Mike has purchased a camera truck for you guys um from the staff. So, I'm super encouraged that we can start to look and see what's going on with the storm pipes and get the data. So, storm is kind of a mystery at this point, but we assume that if we're doing a water and sanitary project, we'll do the storm pipe on that project as well, just to keep that dig once philosophy. And then finally, road network. Um, it's pretty easy. We have a paser system. It's pavement surface evaluation and rating. It's a really common rating system in the Midwest. We rate score rate roads on a score from one to 10. One is the worst, 10 is the best. So, uh, with your annual resurfacing, Cutler is looking a lot better, um, in front of the school. Um, your score technically citywide is 3.43, which sounds it's a fair score. I think it's a little higher. I think the scores were kind of

unfair on some [clears throat] of your roads. So, we're going to rerate the roads next year, but you're at a fair, which is it's hard to have a very high score in Michigan with four seasons. It just it is hard unless you're spending millions and millions on roads each year. So, like I said, uh Mike and I are going to rate the roads in April. And then you guys are spending half a million dollars on resurfacing. And you do a mile and a half to two miles a year. you have 60 miles. So 500,000 it doesn't go very far, but you guys just have a lot of a lot of ground to cover. Okay, any questions on condition assessment before I go to the next step?

Is that about the average of what cities usually do? Like 1.5 miles of roads a year based upon the amount we have. Is that normal or Okay, I'll say my thoughts and then maybe Tim and Mike can say their thoughts. A lot of communities I work with don't resurface annually at all. So, you guys I think are doing great. That's my perspective. But what do you think, Clay? Um, previous employer that I worked for, we didn't do anything. They did the bare minimum to keep them going. Yep. So, 1.5 miles of roads a year is adequate to keep us up with halfway decent roads.

That that 1.5 doesn't include some of the bigger infrastructure projects either. So that that helps supple supplement that number a little bit higher. Um because Fulton was I forget how long Fulton was and that's not included in that. Right. Yeah. Like a full reconstruct is not included in that. So is that what you see Tim or

Yeah. I mean funding for for roads is a big topic across Michigan. We know um and communities across the state struggle to keep up with the need. That's not a new topic. But uh I previously worked for the city of Grand Rapids. We had a special income tax dedicated just to generate additional funding to try to keep that curve up. Absent that, we would have fallen significantly behind because we did projections of, you know, based on a current level of funding, you know, scenario, what would that do? Um versus, you know, the influx of the income tax, which was which was significantly helpful. But um but Leah's right. It's a it's a a curve that you're always trying to push the ball uphill in terms of trying to maintain um a good or fair condition of your roadways.

Well, if you think about it, mile and a half a year, 60 miles of road, you takes you 40 years to get through them. Yeah. And the resurfacing is good for what, 10, 15 years at the most. Yes. You can't catch up. Yeah. Resurfacing is not the solution. And that just helps keep it going. A full reconstruct and redoing the layers is the ultimate solution, but it's very expensive. So,

this doesn't include crack sealing either because we do crack sealing also, which prolongs the life of our road, which when I first got on council, they was kind of like a not do thing and your roads would turn in like a mayor would call it a donkey trail. [laughter] And so, it was really bad. So, we started back when I first got on council, we started doing at least still cracking it a little bit and then trying to get some more roads in we could get done at the same time. It [clears throat] expends our time a little bit longer with them so we can gain more money and do more roads. So, it's just asset management. You just got to keep moving along, making sure you can stretch your dollars out as far as you can.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Leah's been very proactive in helping us get our bid out earlier so that way we get lower numbers so we can do more. Also, this past year we got it out early enough that we were able to do 2.2. We did a lot last year. We got some of the lowest prices we've seen since CO. So, I have seen construction prices really drop off since CO, which is very encouraging because it was kind of the wild wild west for many years after CO and during

Absolutely. I agree. uh by going out early also gives these uh a companies an idea what they can keep their workers working longer. So if you get in there, they'll give you a good price right away so they can keep them get their schedules going right. So I appreciate everything you guys done so far. So thank you. Yeah, absolutely. I think we're advertised right now for resurfacing and we're opening in a couple weeks. So I'm excited.

And I'll just add preventative maintenance like crack sealing is money well spent. The most expensive treatment of course is reconstructing the roadway and the dollars don't stretch very far with that. So it's part of the asset management strategy to stay on top of even roads that have been recently invested in to prolong their life because once it starts to slip down that performance curve, it's much more expensive to bring it back up. And so um sometimes residents can be confused with why are you touching that road? It's a lot newer than my road. Um but crack sealing even resurfacing in some cases uh prolongs the life and is is money well spent to preserve your overall system.

Okay. So after we look at the condition of all of your assets, we do something called a criticality assessment and we look at two things. So the first thing we look at is the likelihood of failure. So it's it's just how it sounds. It's how likely is an asset to fail on a score from 1 to 10. So we do this for every pipe and block segment for your water storm sanitary system. So a good example is a low score of like one to two would be a brand new pipe, no water main breaks. It's going to get a one or a two. A high likelihood of failure would be a 100y old pipe and it has a history of breaks. It's um just the equations that we use and it all gets um plugged into GIS and modeled. So the next piece of data we look at is the consequence of failure. So this asks if this water mane or this sanitary sewer fails, how big of an impact is it to critical customers, hospitals, schools, the environment, the railroad downtown, everything. There's so many factors we look at. Um low example would be if you have a sanitary sewer break in a residential area with like three customers, you can the guys can go out there and make the repair. But if one of your large trunk line sewers fails under a railroad, which you have many railroad crossings, it is a huge deal and very expensive. So that's how we quantify consequence of failure. So we take those two items, score of 1 to 10, score of 1 to 10, we multiply them together, and it gives you a matrix from one to 100. This is for every pipe um an asset in the system. So you'll see the reds are typically worse scores, the greens are better. So this gives us the data we need to say, okay, we need to look at this area of town. So going from criticality assessment to capital projects, we complete this assessment like I said for sanitary, storm, um, for water, the road network is already rated 1 to 10 score and we map everything. So all of this analysis

is done in GIS and it's all coded for each segment. We then map all the results on top of each other and find the overlap with the worst scores. Um it's uses a lot of data but it also introduces a human element of discussing what the city priorities are and where the worst segments are. So we then take those uh segments and come up with some projects. I do want to note for capital planning you can pick capital projects based on a lot of factors. Um today I'm focusing on asset management driven. So this is purely looking at the condition of your assets and then also how compatible is it with other road and utility projects in the same block. You can also do a project because of development. You guys have had a ton of development recently and your sanitary water pipes sometimes aren't big enough and they're a little bit old and they need to be upgraded. There's a a ton of reasons as you know why we do projects. So I try to keep the lens of just one and two. I will say these are not final. These are the recommendations I have today based on the data I have today. I always want more data but I take all the data I can find and we were able to find a lot of projects based on your water main breaks televised data we had and then the Kennedy lift station inspections were super eye opening. So I'm going to show you the capital plan in three groups. Um so I have a map and then you have the table the next page. So these are the first four projects that with my analysis then talking with staff these are the most pressing projects that I recommend. So Columbus and seventh those are already in progress we'll talk about and then grant and ferry are new projects that I propose. So seventh from Clinton to Beacon this has been on a priority list for how many years? a long time. So, this one I was already told is on the city's list to

redo. So, it also has older utilities underneath. So, it's going to be a dig once project. We will be redoing every utility underneath doing a false street screen streetscape from Clinton all the way to Beacon. So, I think it's seven or eight blocks. So, we have received a million dollars in MDOT funding. Um, and then we're also funding with city funds and pursuing grants for this one. So we are starting design this year on that project. So it's really exciting for the seventh street businesses. Columbus from fourth to beacon. I think this is more and correct me if I'm wrong a development driven project and an infrastructure project. There's currently a 4-in water man on Columbus connected to a 12 in creating a bottleneck. So we do need to upsize that main to a 12 in. So Columbus is in need of utility reconstruction and it's already 75% designed. So both of those projects we'd like to design in 20, excuse me, construct in 27 and 28. Uh we'd start right after Coast Guard and then construct into 28. The next project that matched up almost perfectly with all the results was Grant Street. So Grant Street from Beacon to Coburn is one mile exactly. And this doesn't usually happen that your water sanitarian storm the worst pipes all match up. That almost never happens. But Grant Street was a pretty good example where all the utilities are in very poor shape and your road is I think a score of one. Um it has a $9 million price tag because it's a mile long. It's very in it's a lot of scope. So we haven't determined the funding or the construction year. I just wanted to introduce the project to you guys. And then finally, Ferry Street from Robin Grant. This one I'd like to line the water sanitary and storm pipes. I understand that the township recently did a project on very street. So when you line a pipe, you can put like a resin pipe inside the pipe and then it expands and it becomes like a hardened pipe on the inside and extends the

pipe's life for they say 40 years, but the technology hasn't been around that long, but it is a really nice technology. So this means you don't have to dig up the road. So that is my unfortunately number four recommendation. And I I don't have the funding or the construction here yet. I want to discuss with you all very very project. How much of that was just redone? Like I can't remember how far it went. That entire thing you saw on the map was just I was going to say because I'm pretty sure I lived through that and it was really awful. So I little PTSD coming back. So we need to redo what was just done.

So the Ferry Street project was a township transmission main. So it was the township's utilities, not the city's, but it is in the city's right ofways, how I understand it. So because the township gets their water from the plant as well. So yes, that was a very disruptive project, but the the the type of work I'm proposing doesn't rip up the road. You go in the existing manhole and then you can just line it. So it's minimally invasive. So you're not we don't need to replace any of that pipe. Which pipe are you referring to? We don't pipe you just said you wanted to line. We don't need to replace any of that. Which pipe? I'm sorry.

You just said we're going to line that water sanitary storm pipes. I said so we don't need to replace any of that pipe. Yes, that's correct. Okay. Cancer I expected. Okay. Okay. Yep. So we use the lining option when we have situations like this where ripping up the road is not desired or a possibility. Sometimes if there's like a highway project and the pipe's in okay shape, we can line it underneath. So really good technology and it saves significant amounts of money. So So in your rating though, Berry Street still rated very low and the rest of it. So this is still like needed. It's in the priorities. Oh yeah,

it's in those four. Okay. Yep. These four like Seventh Street I do agree with as a project, but when we started this, this was already on the city's priority list. So that one is kind of a combination of and correct me if I'm saying this wrong actually, but it is development driven. There's new stuff coming in. Washington was done in 2014. Seventh Street businesses have been asking, I think, to have their streetscape and all that redone as well. So, yep, we've done a lot of those curin pipe. We've done quite a few of them here in Grand Haven already. Yes.

It extends the life of the pipe. The pipe is still pretty decent. Yeah, but it's got some wear marks in there. And they end up putting you can line them like that and you get another what 50 to 75 years maybe more out of the pipe which is really really good. Yeah, that's what they say. They keep extender. Yeah. Yeah. It performs really well.

So the Columbus project originally we were thought that would start in late 2026. Now it's pushed back another year. Yeah, that's our current plan. And Ashley or Mike, jump in if I'm saying this wrong, but we were thinking of because so Columbus and Seventh Intersect. We're thinking of bidding out the two projects at the same time so that one contractor hopefully would get it. And then we have four railroad crossings there, which are extremely expensive. So that's three utilities needing to cross the railroad four times to upgrade those pipes. If you do all the projects at once, you'll get f more favorable pricing. So that was our thought. Is that what we're thinking that we are just trying to do them at a similar time? So get in, get out. Yeah, I think that's that's exactly the case. It just presented when we looked at it logistically and from a budgetary perspective. It made a lot of sense to to combine that mobilization into one project

for minimal disruption. I understood they interacted because they cross. So now we push back the start of the club's job till the following year 27 because it was it was originally going to start late this year. Correct.

Right. I have a couple pictures and highlights for the two projects we just talked about. So Bryant Street I think has number two for the most watering brakes in the city. Um it's a 4-in pipe from the 1930s up to the 60s. So, it's over 100 years old and it's undersized. Um, your sanitary sewer. Those are the photos that we were able to grab just to show the the damage that we're seeing. And then the storm sewer, we're seeing cross pores, root growth, and then public works crews have noted that um failing joints are causing sink foils in the road. So, grant is is a concern. Um, and then this the road is a paser one to three. I think we resurfaced grant a couple years ago, but that still doesn't it means that you still need to redo the layers underneath the aggregate, the sand. It all needs to be reconstructed eventually. So, Fairy Street proposed lining of all utilities. So, Fairy Street's had a lot of water main brakes. It's a 6- in 50s cast iron mane. Um, I think it's shallow at some spots, which can contribute to why it breaks. um sanitary sewer is in decent shape. These um defects you see we can grout them like the robot has an ability to grout um remotely and then we can mine over it. So we propose to do that just to minimize the the damage to the new road. So any questions on group one before I go to group two? was the uh the storm sewer main on Robins Road. Was that recently redone as part of the county ra project?

I want to say yes. If we're thinking about the same segment, is that if we're thinking about the same segment, then yes, that's that's relatively new. Yes.

Okay. So, group two focuses on your lipsts and then your two storage tanks at Mulligan's Hollow. We have a 2 million and a 500,000galon tank there. So the lift stations, three of them I propose a complete rebuild and replacement. That's Brian, Duncanport, and Vilar. Um Harbor, Robbins, Wayman, and Grand need various pump upgrades, electrical valves. Um each one is a little bit different. I just tried to summarize it on this table. Um and then your last two, your storage tanks. um about every 10 years. You typically have to do an epoxy or paint coat on the inside and outside. So, it just costs money to maintain them, but they last over a hundred years. So, um it's about time for you guys to do the recommendations that we got from the the engineering subcontractor. So, this is group two. And then group three, this is my my next group of projects I'd recommend you pursue after groups one and two. I still think these are very important projects, but groups one and two were were pretty pressing um just based on the data. Um I'll go to the next slide for the table version. So Kfax, Woodlon, Fourth, Hillrest, and Taylor all have significant water main breaks that have been repeated multiple times um that we'd like to address. and then also upgrade sanitarian storm and then upgrade. Washington berry to LV does have pretty poor utilities and this one also presented itself as a possible development streetscape project. I know we have that block of businesses who'd love to also uh give them a nice new streetscape. So that's in the plan as well. So, the last two were brought to my attention by Mike that I had to add. Um, Doris is having some road stabilization issues. So, we'd have to do some sheet piling, uh,

utility improvements and road reconstruction. Um, that would be a hard project. There's only one access point into those homes on Doris. And then Tank Hill, it's not a residential road, but we do have I think a lot of utility companies, Comcast and all that that use the tank the tower for communications. So having that road available is very important and I think it's um it needs to be stabilized with some major sheet piling. So those are two that we did add just for time sensitivity. So beyond capital projects, sorry, I have a couple more recommendations that I recommend. Do you guys have any questions on capital projects now or we can just wait till the end as well to discuss?

Keep going.

Okay. So, additional recommendations. You do still have 1,200 service lines that need to be investigated. We do not know if there's lead there or not. So, I recommend spending some of the revenues from your water utility bill to cover the investigation work. I believe we can use funds to cover the investigations. Um, I recommend starting right away. um spending I think we were thinking around 750,000. Um it's just expensive to excavate them. So unfortunately just to investigate would cost a million dollars to see what the the pipes are made of. So once we've identified where the lead is, um I anticipate you're going to have a thousand lead service lines left. You have about 660 currently and I think you'll have another 400 when it's all said and done. So, I'm just estimating conservatively a thousand. Um, we estimate about $10,000 for replacement. So, I'm just for for discussion purposes, $10 million is needed in the next 11 years to replace all the lead. This is just the water service line. Doesn't include the main pipes. So, currently we're pursuing a state revolving fund loan. Um, and they have received word that the EPA has infused hundreds of millions of dollars in grants um into this program. and we've we're really encouraged that we can get a 50% grant. So, we applied for $10 million, so we're hoping for a $5 million grant. So, we'll find out in September. Couple more recommendations. Going back to your asset inventory category, I recommend ongoing GIS cleanup. There's a lot of unknowns out there in the system and the more we know about it, the more the guys can understand for mistakes. We're not going we're not having chances of crossors. Um reviewing those as builds and upgrading your system is very important. You have to know what you own before you can then figure out what needs to be up maintained and upgraded.

Um we do help you guys with that. Um or I I say a full-time GIS staff could be hired just based on the amount of work I've seen. Lead service line investigations. We talked about that earlier. Condition assessment. This one is a recommendation I would love to see. Televising your storm and sanitary system. Um, this is just to get the condition. Um, and it would be $3 million to do it. Um, I do know that Mike has recently purchased a camera truck himself. True.

Camera trailer. So, this is the entire setup that the guys could do. Um, then that was a cost of 165,000. If you were to hire staff internally, it would not cost $3 million to hire it out. So, you have options, but taking care of your system and knowing what's down there is so important. That will extend your assets more than anything. So, paser rating, so that's rating your roads. We're working on that. And then annual lift station inspections. Another item you just have to maintain lift stations. I think the guys are doing a great job, but if you can have Kennedy do them or train staff, that would be great. Okay. And then operations and maintenance. Um, based on the size of your system, I do see that similar cities have dedicated utility personnel for root cutting, jetting, cleaning of your sanitary storm systems. That's typically two guys full-time. And I don't think you guys have capacity now just with like the misb requests you get um and other um duties that you have. So the remaining lift stations need minor repairs in terms of rebuilding pumps, impellar damage, electrical upgrades that I did want to include that can maybe be done as an operations expenditure. Okay, so moving on to financial analysis. You guys last had a rate study in 2018 and I think Evelyn does rate increases per the state inflation rate multiplier. Um, so they vary your rate increases each year based on what the state says. So, I was able to pull from the Ottawa County Road Commission. They compile rates every year, and it's very fascinating to look at all of your neighbors rates. So, the city of Grand Haven, you guys are paying about $1,000 a year for your water and sewer together. Your NOS's customers, so like the townships around us and the village, the Spring Lake, all that, they're paying 975 a year on average. And then Ottawa County is at 972. So, you guys are right on with your rates.

I applaud you guys for pursuing those those adjustments because they have to happen. You can't not raise rates. You know, inflationary is is the minimum that you should be doing. Um it's a hard question of how much you want your rates to be just because you guys are different than Allenale whose system was built in 1980 versus you guys have a hundred-y old system. You support millions of tourists. You have a lot more properties and things that you support in Grant Haven because of who we are. So hard question for if we want to do a rate analysis, if there's any wiggle room to increase them, that's a discussion that would probably be best for you guys to think about and for Emily. So, and then I did want to just quickly go through the funding options. So, there's lots of sources for paying for these projects. Act 51 funds are given every year from the state about 1.6 million. Infrastructure millage fund, I think you have three mills total. So the first mill is 725 per year. General fund transfers can happen for road projects. Transportation improvement projects, uh you get funds every three years, about a million dollars. So you'll get a million dollars for uh Seventh Street. We can pursue water and sanitary revenues um after you've paid all of your expenditures um to pay for those capital improvements. And then Emily helped me with these last four debt payments you have. You guys have debt payments from 2028 to 2034 that are over $2 million. So, those are dropping off in the next eight years. So, it just it frees up options for you guys for the next projects. So, next steps, what do we take with all this information? We'd like to finalize the reports. Um, they should definitely be updated every year. They're not final. They're they're always living documents. Um curious to see what you guys think about the financial component

um and bringing in city manager's office and Emily. Um and then if you agree with the capital plan adopting any changes as you guys do your next budget season. Next for us um you will see in the next January meeting a proposal for our seventh street design fee. We did get the survey approved. So survey is all done. um DWSRF project plan that's for doing the report to replace lead service lines. So, we'll assist with that. And then if you do support some investigations of service lines, uh we would do administrative contract assistance for that. So, these are the schematics we put together in 2019 for Seventh Street. So, we're very excited to to dig these out and look at them. Um you probably can't read all those. I won't go through them all, but I just did want to note um we do have a whole grants team. Their job is just doing grants um for our core clients um at no cost to you guys. So Joelle has been working with the city for over 10 years. Ashley and Nick have been great. Um so we have 10 grants we're applying for you guys this year alone. Um safe streets for all. This was a road and pedestrian safety study. 100% grant 356,000 that we were just awarded. So it's super good news. Um, the rest of them I won't go into crazy detail, but I'm happy to answer any questions. Um, and obviously you'll see the resolution when it comes to you guys for the ones that require a match. So, I know you guys like to see all the ones we apply for. So, it'll be a busy spring for us. So, exciting stuff. Okay. Thank you so much for your time. I'm so happy to answer any questions. Appreciate getting to work on this project and work in the city and for the city. It's been really fun. So,

okay. Well, thanks. Any questions? Thank you. It's just a lot. It's a lot. Thank you. Just wondering where we get $30 million. It's only part of it. Yeah. Right. Just wondering. That gets us started. Yeah. And the three groups that they had listed up there alone and just quick figuring it's 55 million to just those three groups. That doesn't include all the other ones. Well, there's funding that's associated with that by a certain percentage of, I'm sure, but not anywhere's near 55 million. Yeah. So, that's a considerable amount that, you know, we have to look at that's going to be coming our way in the next six to 20 years.

Yes. And I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but I mean, there's more projects. There's there's other things that aren't even covered in here, I'm sure. Yeah. These are the most pressing ones. About 20 years ago when we started looking all the infrastructure projects and we tallied it up. We had something like $30 million worth of work and a couple years later it was $40 million worth of work. We've been doing those projects all along and it's still 40 to $50 million worth of work because every time you pick something off the list, there's something else on the other end of the list. It just keeps coming.

Yeah, it's really hard when you have an older infrastructure as a city to balance that. One thing we did do a few years ago was some of these funding options where bond matures and will free up money. We uh we rolled that into a permanent millage that will gradually absorb these amounts, turn them into an infrastructure millage that will will sustain itself over many years, but it was it's not going to generate $55 million. It you'll it'll have some money each year and then there's the capacity for how much can you actually do in a year?

Exactly. and how much can the residents take for construction every year? It's there's a lot of consideration. So, you guys have been busy the last five years to do and we did we didn't get here all at once. It it took many years of using this stuff, using the utilities to wear them out. Absolutely.

I just want to say one thing. I want to say thank you to the staff and and all our employees that work here because they maintain all this stuff for us and they do such a fantastic job of it. I know from the years gone by that it wasn't always was once it's broke, you fix it. Now we're actually doing pre-maintenance on it a little bit better than we ever done when I was younger. So I've been on I've been on council for 22 years and I've just seen it just great improvements over the year that the how staff and everybody has just worked dug in and made sure that we got things working very good. And having this plan here is going to be absolutely a fantastic thing for us because now we can actually see what we can do and head in the right direction. We did it before when we first started doing like Sheldon and that would first major project and wow that was deep trenching there. And so you're right when you got to have lift stations to move the round everything around. I remember the the old plant sitting down here at the end of Sixth Street. You know that's my old neighborhood. I grew up down there, so I know exactly where it went. You

got that big suck station down there, big pumping station.

I don't know how want to live next door to that, but it's it everything goes down there, then it transfers over to the other side. People don't understand how the host system works in a town. It's pretty complicated. So, thank you for uh all your hard work you've done here so far for us and getting us in a direction that we need to go. I just had a quick question but yes thank you so much for very well done presentation um just a clarification really so talking about the criticality assessment and then the consequence of failure in that consequence of failure is there an assessment on kind of that cliff financially so you know all of these assets will be kind of what you mentioned you're going to go and it's going to be a certain amount to fix it and then all of a sudden it's going to fall off a cliff. Do we have that way to define this or is there any data that we are looking at for that part of it?

I know that we do analysis for major components of whether it makes sense to rehabilitate it or the financial analysis of if we should just replace it. That does happen like with public works and um with certain assets, but some of them a lot of the pipes in the ground, it's hard to fully rehabilitate them when they're just like you said that clip of they're already at today they're already at past their useful life. Okay. Today they're 106 years old. So, so it's not that we're going to see all of this coming at us, but it's more it's already happened.

Yes. Okay. And I think the the what I was referring to was specific to the life cycle of pavement. So roads and there is a it's called a pavement degradation curve. But the longer you go without maintaining a pavement, the more expensive it will get to repair. And so early in its life, if you do preventative maintenance like crack sealing or eventually even just resurfacing it, it extends the life as opposed to if you just let it go, it's going to go so far down that curve that you'll be forced to reconstruct it um and not extend the life. The assets that are below ground um have a a different story of sorts, but like Leah mentioned, they're they're already beyond their useful life, so you're on somewhat of a borrowed time um scale with that. But um

and then I just want to understand better on that that ferry project. It sounds like there's combined municipalities involved in that. So they handled one part of it and then we have to kind of go back in and handle ours. Is that the case? I mean do we have a lot of those overlapping projects? This is one where there was a big transmission made for the township required opening the road. We ran a big new pipe the entire length of what she showed us on the map for that pipe. And then we had to redo laterals. Now she's saying we don't have to reopen the road. We have to align the pipes that are still on the ground that were already there. Okay.

Yeah. And I I think that to that extent they were two different projects. There were some budgetary decisions that had to be made but we're looking in the last few years here to better prioritize and strategize. So, as Leah said, we're not digging more than once, per se, and we're right finding those efficiencies and opportunities to only uh complete a project once that one day even when there's other municipalities involved. I don't know how many projects would even be in that situation, but well, thank you very much. Thank you.

All right. Thanks. Well, we have five minutes before we start our next meeting. So, we're going to take a break. Be back in five minutes.

Are you going to give me a second? Welcome everyone to this regular city council meeting for Monday, [clears throat] January 5th, 2026. Maria, would you call the role? Fritz here. Calio here. Lion here. Dora here. Manza here. Our invocation this evening is by Nathan Stro of the Ukrainian Church of God. Please rise and then remain standing for the pledge of allegiance.

[cough] [clears throat]

Precious heavenly father, we come to you tonight so grateful for your love and grace and mercy that you reveal to us through your son and by your spirit. Father, we ask now that you will continue to bless this great and grand city that we live in, that we cherish, that we love. Father, I pray right now that you will bless each of these commissioners. Father, as they go about making decisions for this city, that Lord, as this city is grand, that you have made it grand, that Lord, you will also give them the wisdom to continue, Father, to make this city the city that you have purposed to be here, to be now, to be relevant. And Father God, we ask right now that you would bring a mighty revival into this city. That Father God, you will revive us and make us your your children. That you will revive us with grace and power. We love you, God, for all that you have done and what you have brought this great city through. And Lord, we ask now that you would continue to pour out your favor and grace in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

Amen. [cough] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. All right, we have no appointments or reappointments this evening. So, we are to the approval of the consent and regular agendas. Can I get a motion? So move. Second. Motion by Fritz, second by Lion. Uh, any changes or adjustments to either the consent or regular agenda? No. Nope. No. No. Call the role, please. Fritz, yes. Lion, yes. Calio,

yes. Dora, yes. Manza, yes. We have concluded our work session, and so we come to our first call to the audience. This time, members of the audience may address council on any item, whether on the agenda or not. Those addressing council will are asked to provide their name and address will be limited to 3 minutes of speaking time. Council hear all comments for future consideration will not have a response at this time. Those not physically present who would like to call in may dial 616 935 3203. I would also remind everyone that there is a public hearing this evening on the principal shopping district. So, if your comments are in relation to that, you might save them for the public hearing. Who would like to address council?

Come on up.

Hi. Uh, my name is Zeb Bosal. I live at 1841 Waverly. Um, I've recently taken to uh talking about um holistic forestry uh pretty heavily on um Facebook. specifically pertaining to Grand Haven's uh urban forests. And I uh I've I've been a little bit frustrated because the way I see our forestry current our current forestry plan going is um is going to leave us with without a forest. Uh we're going to continue to cut trees down. They're all sick. We don't have like one disease. We have many diseases. And when every tree in the ecosystem is sick, um, we have bigger problems. Uh, I came here with a board actually. Uh, it's in my car still, but it's got essentially the history of, um, Michigan's, uh, forest ecosystems, pre-European settlement on it. And now, and obviously things were a lot different back then. We used to have elk, we used to have bear, we used to have wolves. These pushed animals around. Even having Lake Michigan right here, the animals would go and drink. That would bring excrement through the forest from other locations. The current system, uh, we have this idea that forests should maintain themselves and it it it's not really functional. Um, forest and the grand can maintain themselves, but forests surrounded by houses and roads um, they they can't do it. There's not enough input. There's not enough stimuli. So you can treat singular trees all you want. Um it's not going to do anything. Um we also especially with the oak wilt um it's unfortunate. It is a really bad disease. There are very few treatments for it. But there are um there are people using other methods of actually restoring the oak trees instead of just cutting them all down. Um it's kind

they're kind of new, but there there is evidence that it's there. There's also um once again the trees don't have what they need from a biological level in the soil to do what's necessary. So we're kind of in once again in this situation where we can continue to treat from the top down. But we will end up without forest. And right now there's I mean I I walk in the woods every day and it's it's devastating. I mean dead trees everywhere. our winter storm the other night, we had two uh two like relatively young um hemlock trees fall, you know, break right in half. It's not that's not great in one night to lose two already relatively endangered species. We really we have to do something about the soil. And you know, I don't know where I'm at time-wise, but uh I just I I feel really passionately about this. And you know, I spend time out there with my kids. I grew up in those forests. It's a, you know, like a second home type thing. So, just really important that we do something. Well, thank you. Anyone else? [snorts]

Seeing none, we will close the call to the audience. And that brings us to our consent agenda. Would you please read that? Item A, approve the special work session and regular council meeting minutes for [clears throat] December 15, 202 and the special work session meeting minutes for December 17th, 2025. And item B, approve the bill's memo in the amount of 2,22,810.37. Can I get a motion? So moved or second. Uh motion by Dora, second by Fritz. Any comment or question on either of these items? Please call the role. Dora, yes. Fritz, yes. Calio, yes. Lion, yes. Manza,

yes. All right, that brings us to our public hearing for the evening. This point, I'll open a public hearing regarding the resolution for the principal shopping district to continue the program established by special assessment districts 597601 604. This follows the uh procedures set out in chapter 31 of our code of ordinances for special assessments. So at this point we'll um let's see Dana or Ashley, do you have anything you would like to say before we open the public hearing? I do not. H no. Okay. And Shandi, I believe, is here. She's our DDA director. Would you like to say anything before the public speaks?

Uh not at this time. Okay, fine. Uh floor is open. Anyone member of the public who would like to address us on the principal shopping district um readoption? No one. Well, if no one would like to speak, then we will close the public hearing. And at this point, we consider a resolution. Marie, would you like to read that?

Consideration by city council of a resolution to approve the principal shopping district to continue program to continue program established by se special assessment districts 597 601 and 604. The results of which were submitted to the city council on October 19, 2015, November 2, 2020, and January 19, 2021. Can I get a motion on that? So moved. Second. Motion by Calio, second by Lion. Questions, comments on this resolution. Clearly, Shauna, you did a great job in your presentation and nobody felt the need to come talk to us about it. Nope. Appreciate everything that was presented. No questions for me.

No, I think the Principal Shopping District is one of the better things that we've done to support our downtown. thing is money well spent and fairly and fairly assessed and allocated. So based on that I say please call the role. Calio, yes. Lion, yes. Dora, yes. Fritz, yes. Manza, yes. Okay. Now, this moves on to our next step in the process, which we should see in a couple weeks.

All right. Brings us to our first item, our only item of new business. Would you please read that? Consideration by city council of a resolution to approve the proposal in the budgeted amount of $104,887 from West Michigan instrumentation for materials and services needed to update the Northwest Ottawa filtration plant supervisory control and data acquisition scattera hardware and software package and authorize the mayor and city clerk to execute the necessary documents. The now board recommends approval and administration recommends approval. Can I get a motion on this? So moved. [laughter] I'll give this one to give Mark Stereo. Motion by first, second by Dora, [clears throat]

Mr. Mr. Eric Law. Would you like to explain this? Yeah. Yeah. Good evening, council. Um Eric Law, superintendent for the Northwest Ottawa Water.

Um we've got a project that we're looking to launch here pretty soon. It is a project to replace the um the SCADA system in our plant. Um the uh important aspect about that is to understand that this is kind of equivalent to to what a pilot uses when he flies a plane. Um he's able to take in information from uh the inputs. He's able to uh give feedback into the system and that's allowed to uh to go ahead and uh control different aspects of that particular airliner. Now not trying to equate water filtration with flying a plane but it uh it's very similar. This is a a electronic system. Um we've got a series of of uh hardware that will be replaced. Um and uh that hardware is uh is aging at this point. Um the useful life for this particular equipment package is about 10 to 12 years which is the industry standard. We are now entering 10th year and so we're right at the the precipice of making sure that we stay proactive in in making sure this stuff gets replaced. In addition to replacing the hardware package, we are also going to be updating the current software program as well. And so essentially a turnkey direct replacement for what we've been using since 2016. So um we went out to bid on December 10th. Um I was uh delighted to see that we had a fairly uh large participant pool. So we had uh six uh proposals that returned to us. um mostly a tight grouping as far as the uh uh the prices that they gave us. Um one in particular stood out which was West Michigan Instrumentations. It is an organization that we currently work with right now from a service contract standpoint. We've done for well over a decade. So, I'm pretty pleased to uh to see that they had uh provided a proposal that uh was the lowest and so our

comfort level with uh recommending them to uh to take this project on and uh and update our system um was a very easy one for me. So, um, so tonight I'm asking for the, uh, council to approve the contract with West West Michigan Instrumentations for a price not to exceed of 104 $104,887. All right. Thank you. Questions? Every time I see a set of bids where one of them is very low compared to all the others, it gives me a little bit of pause. But um you say that the this is basically your incumbent contractor who's been ser supporting you all along. [clears throat]

That's correct. As a matter of fact, they're the ones that did the install in 2016 as well. Okay. So that gives you the comfort that they're their price is both fair and realistic. Yes. Okay. And um you know what you're getting? I do. Okay. Y All right. Sounds good to me. Okay. Please call the RO. Fritz. Yes, Dora. Yes, Lion. Yes, Calio. Yes, Manetsa. Yes. And that brings us to a report by city council. Who would like to go first?

Anybody? Yeah. And um Oh, no. Go ahead. Um I just don't really have much. Had a great time at New Year's Eve downtown. Thank you to all the city uh workers that it took to make that happen. It was a lot. It was cold. Um, but it sure was fun. Um, it was really, really well done and well organized and, um, really just familyfriendly. It was, it was a great time. Happy New Year.

Yep. Been a quiet couple of weeks. Enjoyed holidays with family and friends. The ball drop. Thank you, staff. Um, DPW, everybody that helped put that on and make it go off without a hitch. Um, couldn't ask for it to be better other than maybe another 20 degrees warmer. [laughter] It was cold. Um, thanks to the BLP for the use of their uh truck to drop the ball. That was also great of them to offer that up. Had a great time. Hope everyone has a good new year and looking forward to accomplishing many things in 2026. Well, you don't want it warmer. It's winter time, Mike. It [laughter] was worse than winter. You expect it to be cold.

Yeah. I hope everybody had a great New Year's and a very good Christmas. And don't forget, there's still a lot of people that are in need out there yet today. So, Salvation Army, anybody you want to make your donations to, feel free. There's a lot of need right now. And it's not going to get any better for them. U price of food is going up, everything's going up, and trying to figure out how you're going to support each other. So, if you have it, please pass it on to people that need it. anything. Just happy new year.

Okay, fair enough. Same here. Um thought we had a good holiday season, great celebration, New Year's Eve. Now we can all come into the new year with fresh energy and fresh outlook and high hopes. And so happy new year to everyone. Um report by city manager.

Um nothing for you this evening, but we'll look to have some public project updates for you at your next meeting. Okay, thank you. And that brings us to our second call to the audience. So, at this time, members of the audience may address council on any item, whether on the agenda or not. Please give us your name and address. You have three minutes to speak, and you'll not get a response at this time. If you want to call in at 616-935-3203, you would like to address council at this time. Okay. Well, you did not come just to look at me. All right. Then we will close the call to the audience. And at this point in time, I would ask council to I would ask for a motion from council to go into a close session to consider a uh confidential legal opinion.

I'll make that motion. No. Motion by Fritz, second by Dora. Would you please call the role? Fritz? Yes. Dora? Yes. Calio? Yes. Lion? Yes. Manetsa? Yes. All right. So when we come out of our closed session, we'll immediately adjourn the meeting. So you're welcome to stay here and wait, but there'll be nothing to wait for. Thank you.