Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone. We will call the committee on appointments to order at 8 a.m. We have a short agenda this morning. Ms. Bosker, if you could please guide us through a discussion on the current board and commission vacancy list.

Yes, obviously not much has changed. We're still working in the background. I know that the mayor has somebody in mind for the land bank and that you all have someone in mind for Vital Streets. We're just working through getting vetting wrapped up for those. So hoping as soon as those are ready, we'll get them on the next agenda. And then in addition, still just working on the end of year, this week I will be getting a draft of end of year agenda item to the mayor just to have in one spot everything to expect and I'll get that to you all as well to start thinking about those appointments and vacancies and reappointments and then in addition we're getting applications in for some of those corridor improvement authority vacancies so we'll keep that moving to even though those appointments those terms aren't ending with the year end we'll still try to fill some of these vacancies in the next couple meetings

Thank you, Ms. Bosker, and thank you for your work on this. Questions, comments, concern, colleagues? Commissioner Isasi?

Thanks so much, Ms. Bosker, for that overview. Could you, when we look at these in the future, I know for the corridor improvement authorities, each body can have up to two resident members, is that correct? Or is that, you know, is that more of our practice that we've had or the requirements of that body? I think the requirement is that, one,

At least one has to be a resident. And I think it's just sort of been the practice. My understanding is to not have it be a majority be residents if they do like to have the business interest. But I think the requirement is just to have the one.

Just to have the one. Okay. And then... Could we include that detail on this sheet as well of, you know, not necessarily one is for a resident, but if you could list the makeup either as we add the current or as we add or as we lose people of what is that makeup of how many residents to property owners. I should say it's property owners, not just business owners. Yes, property owners and business owners, I should say.

Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you for that note, Commissioner. All right, any others? All right, you all, well, happy September. It's crazy that it's already September. What a fun year it's been. I hope everyone has a wonderful morning, and we will adjourn the Committee on Appointments at 8.02 a.m.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Good morning. The time is now 8.30 and we can go ahead and call our fiscal committee meeting to order. Hope everyone had a nice holiday. And yeah, we have a fairly short agenda for today. I swear that was for something that... I don't even know what I'm doing.

I need the Gen Zers to help me.

Just to let you guys know, I was not watching videos. I was looking up this postcard that we got, and I was like, what's this organization? And apparently they turn it on, so I'm not going to that. No, just kidding. All right, so first is a resolution recognizing Beer City Dog Biscuits as a local civic organization. Do I have a motion? So moved. Support. Moved and supported. I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Hartman to do an introduction to Ms. Hookers, who is here on behalf of the organization.

Yes, this is, as Commissioner said, a resolution to recognize Beer City Dog Biscuits as a local civic organization for the purpose of obtaining a license from the Bureau of the State Lottery. And Ms. Hooker is here, and I'd like to have her come up and say a few words about the organization. Thank you.

If you can push the button right there. Perfect.

Gotcha. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to get a license for Beer City Dog Biscuits. We're a nonprofit located on the northeast side of Grand Rapids. And our mission is to provide work skills, life skills, community, and employment for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And currently, we have over 350 50 individuals who come to us four days a week Monday through Thursday about half of that group is from the ISD the empower you the transition program and Grand Rapids we have AFC homes individuals that just come on their own with supports and we'd love a license just for fundraising. About 80% of our budget is through fundraising. The other 20% is through the creation of the dog biscuits that we make. And I'd invite everyone in at some point to come tour, see what we're doing. I think we're probably one of the largest work skills programs, life skills. We have about 20 different skill levels that you can choose from to do. And just invite you to come and tour or volunteer. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Questions, colleagues? Hearing and seeing them? Yes.

I just want to say, I saw this organization a long time ago. When you actually first started putting the biscuits in different stores. So I see them at Pet Supplies Plus and that story just really resonated. So I commend you on the work that you do. It's fantastic.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Treasurer. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. Thanks so much for being here. Next is a resolution accepting $720,000 grant award and approving an agreement with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, MDHHS, for the fiscal year 2027 Michigan Medicaid CHIP Lead Hazard Control Community Development Grant Program. Do we have a motion? So moved. Support. Moved and supported. Mr. Tucker?

Good morning, Fiscal Committee. This agenda item deals with the acceptance of a $720,000 annual grant from our state partners through the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. This is an annual award and it authorizes our city manager and mayor to accept the award and enter into sub-award agreements with our sub-recipients.

Thanks so much. Colleagues, questions for Mr. Tucker?

Yes, Commissioner? This is less of a question and more of a comment. I just want you to know that this program really makes a big difference in people's lives, helping families address the lead issues that they have in their house when they have young children who have tested very high, and I've actually talked to someone recently who had participated in the program. Their child is just turned three, but they're doing well, and they had a lot of good services from the testing, the investigation, the window treatments, the painting, and even siding. So it's very helpful, and I'm really glad to see that we're accepting quite a sizable amount here today.

Thank you. I'm going to go ahead and call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. Thanks so much. Item number three is a resolution accepting the continuation of a grant award of $834,595 from the Auto Theft Prevention Authority, ATPA. Do you have a motion? So moved. Support. Moved and supported. Mr. Weibel, nice to see you.

Good morning, commissioners. This is a grant we receive every year from the state for the combined auto theft team. We primarily use this for salary and overtime for two officers and one detective that participates in the team. Two things I'll note about this grant. It's significantly lower this year because the city of Wyoming doesn't participate. It's just Grand Rapids and Kentwood. Previous years were around 1.1 million, so this drops down. And then the state also changed the matching. Previously it was 40% state, 60% local. Now it's 35% state, 65% local, which we easily hit with salaries, but I just wanted to point that out.

Thank you so much for that update. Questions, colleagues? Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. Thanks so much. Item number four is a resolution authorizing a budget substitution in the amount of $485,000 for the lead replacement phase three project. Do we have a motion? So moved. Moved and supported. Thank you. Ms. Claren?

This is budget substitution simply to get bond proceeds out the door. The LED project is something we've been working on for years.

At least since I've been here, seven years.

Yeah, so it's been a while. This is phase three. We've been issuing bonds every two to three years to keep up with the project. This is to use up the remainder of that third tranche of bonds we've done, and this should be, I believe, the remainder of the work.

Thanks so much. Questions, colleagues? Hearing and seeing none. Oh, yes, I'm sorry.

That's okay. I just want to say it looks like according to the memo that we're at 99% completed with the LED replacement. Is that correct? Am I in the right place?

Okay. I didn't see you back there. Go ahead.

I'm Timmer, Energy Light Communications. Yeah, we're at 99, over 99%.

Put the microphone.

Sorry. Yeah, we're over 99%. These are non-standard fixtures that didn't really fit into the other projects. It took additional engineering and acquiring different types of fixtures to fill these locations.

Do you happen to know if... I'm assuming that we've had a calculation on the carbon emissions that we're saving by switching over to... or the energy savings. Does the sustainability office have that or is that something you would have?

I think we could definitely follow up on that. Yeah, I could get that to them. They should have the previous projects, and then I can get them the information on this.

Yeah, it would be good to know how much money and carbon we're saving.

Yep, we can follow up.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for coming up. Thank you. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. Thanks so much. Next two are salary ordinance, but the first one is number five, salary ordinance for supplemental classifications, election aid for levels one through five. Do you have a motion? So moved.

Support.

Moved and supported. Ms. Eddy?

Good morning, fiscal committee. Michelle Eddy, deputy HR director. So on August 25th, HR department took two classifications to the civil service board that was reviewed and approved. So today I'm bringing them before you to approve the salary ordinance for those two classifications. So for the first one is the election technician aid. And so for this one, this is a classification that we use for internal staff and returning retirees that come and assist during election time. And so the last time those wages was increased was like 2017. So we reviewed that and just asking for your approval today to amend that ordinance.

Thank you. Mr. Clerk, do you want to say anything about this one? No, she's got it. Okay. Noted. Both of these were reviewed in our civil service meeting, as noted. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. Thanks so much. Item number six is the salary ordinance amending section 4.4 of ordinance 2025-22, creation of a new classification utility valve specialist. Do we have a motion?

Oh, so moved. Support.

Moved and supported.

Thank you. And then the second one is a new classification, and we titled it Utility Valve Specialist. And for this one, previously the work was outsourced, and so we've decided to bring that work in-house and created a classification to be able to staff that role internally. And today I'm just requesting your approval to amend that ordinance, that salary ordinance.

Thanks so much. Questions on this one, colleagues? Hearing and seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. Thanks so much. Item number seven is the bid resolution list for September 8, 2026. Do I have a motion? So moved. Support. Moved and supported. Ms. Claren, any ones that you'd like to highlight or questions?

You know, just 11 items this morning, all fairly routine. I wouldn't say anything's worth pulling out unless there's any questions.

I don't think so. So I will call the question. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Item carries. And this next one is also you, Ms. Clarence. Item number eight is a report of a bond sale, $39,540,000 limited tax general obligation bond series 2026A. Does this need a motion or is this?

This is simply just a report of the bond sale, so it's not, I don't know. I'm waiting for my clerk to respond to me. No? No. Okay. Thank you. So as we do after we sell bonds, we like to come back and report to fiscal committee how we performed. And with this one, we got quite a sizable premium on. We priced very well. So our power amount was 39.5 million with proceeds 41.5. This is to satisfy the remainder of the Fire Trading Center campus work. as well as the final gap with the Scribner, which is a Scribner, we call it the Scribner Project, but it's the public work facility up on Scribner Avenue. We're very pleased with the outcome. Our bonds are double A. They price very well. So, you know, again, just very pleased with the outcome. These bond proceeds you'll see in some of our other fiscal committee items. that when they note bond proceeds, we have to get them spent down in two years. We're confident we're able to do that. Overall, if there are any questions, please let me know.

Thank you. Thanks for this overview and highlighting it. Questions, colleagues? All right. Mr. Treasurer, do you have a question?

No, although I'm thrilled the fact that we see these bonds being issued at this type of rate and that, you know, as investors look at us, it's oversubscribed, which means people believe in Grand Rapids. They believe in our growth and our development. It's outstanding for our debt and the capital projects that are going on. It's just something I can't invest in.

Just for clarification, I probably should have explained that. I do note that our bonds get oversubscribed. What that means for the public is banks or investors basically will all bid on purchasing our bonds. We get more than one bidder, and then so we're able to buy down that interest rate against them. So it's great when we can be oversubscribed. Like I said, we trade really well.

Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, okay. I was told that I was picking on you guys today, but I think it's this thank you for adding comments because you know, I had a boss that used to be like, you know We're great Just ask us and not only ask us but ask other people right and so we have these checks not you know We're not checks and balances but different departments that work together and especially as we're trying to sort of show our the transparency that we engage in, the kind of fiscal health of this organization, that we take it very seriously when we borrow money. So thank you all for your comments on that. All right. And then the last, no, actually two more items today. Number nine is a Comptroller's Warrant Report for the period of August 11, 2026 through August 24, 2026 in the amount of $69,426,965.73 And the monthly travel report. And I'm going to turn it over to our deputy comptroller, Ms. Kirkland.

Good morning, commissioners.

Good morning. Nice to see you.

Good to see you all. Cash payments released totaled the $69 million, which includes $6.4 million for payroll, $181 million for income tax warrants, with a total of 772 income tax refunds and $1,141 accounts payable tax issue as a warrant report.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That report is received and filed. And our last item today is our Treasurer's Report for the period of August 12, 2026 through August 25, 2026. Mr. Treasurer?

Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning. With our report today, the interest rates have held at 3.5% to 3.75%. However, just last week, we saw 162,000 jobs in the jobs market hit. That actually increased the probability now of seeing a rate hike later in September. They're putting that probability at 60%. But again, as each of these little economic data pieces fall into place, those probabilities change. What doesn't help, it doesn't help that the administration is putting pressure on a rate cut when we're staring at a rate hike. So the independence of the Fed is something that is truly crucial in this in our market that if something like that were to happen it would really signal to all the investment community that our Fed is now politically motivated by whatever the administration is trying to accomplish and that might fly in the face of all economic data and economic outcomes. So I My concern is that we need to make sure that the Fed stays independent and follows the data. If they do that, we'll be absolutely fine. If they start making decisions of a political nature, then all bets are off at that point in time. So I would be staring at higher inflation and other things that could really shock the market if we were to lower when we're staring at increases. With that, our portfolio is very strong and stable and in a great place. We are at $670 million, running 3.26%. And one other caveat, I saw the Hail Mary on Saturday. I was at U of M cheering on my Broncos, so I was a little disappointed with that, but if you want to watch somebody really control grace in a tough situation, the Western Michigan president and head football coach gave a YouTube video after the game, after everything was settled and done, and it's spectacular. It's about a three, four, five-minute clip if you want to watch Grace under adverse situations. It was amazing. So I'm thrilled with the Broncos. I'm thrilled with what their season's going to look like. They were the conference champions last year, and they should be frontrunners this year.

Well, thank you for that report. I think our colleague here, Commissioner Kilgore, is a proud Bronco, too. And I'm a Michigan State fan, so I'm supporting you guys, too. We were all Broncos on Saturday. I redeemed myself with a clerk now. That's right. Thank you so much for that report. And, you know, thanks for sharing that. I mean, both of those things. I'm going to look at that clip. But I think even today when I was listening, getting ready, I was listening to NPR on a show about the increased use of, like, a CLARNA credit. Or these, you know, pay-as-you-go or, you know, split it out over for, you know, payments. And it's because, you know, typically people who are not able to maybe get a credit card or get credit, but just the increase of that since COVID and the increase for things like groceries. And just, you know, this is not a very regulated market, a lot of unknown. And so, yes, I was getting ready as I was straightening my hair. I thought about you, Treasurer, and like, I want to talk to you about this because we have continued to see this. And it's just a challenging environment. We all, you know, up here, and those of us, our colleagues who aren't up here, We hear this consistently from individuals. You know, today we'll have a review of the corrections millage. And so, you know, those are the questions that we'll continue to have is what is this ultimately going to mean in the pocketbooks of individuals in our community and our own? So I just thought of you and appreciate always your commentary on these topics.

It's always there. When I went to, I took my son, I'm staying with my dad a couple days while his girlfriend's out of town and so I took my son to the grocery store and we went through and I'm just picking out stuff for him. He's putting stuff in the basket and next thing you know I I go to the checkout lane and I have the smaller cart, the top level, not overly full, and it was $70. And so you start seeing that. You start seeing when you go fill up your gas tank and it's $75 for 16 gallons of gas. And, you know, we... Our public is being challenged. I'm going over and looking at all of my cell phone and cable bills and Internet bills, and I'm going to start squeezing people to get lower rates myself. I mean, that's what we do to make sure that we have enough for our families to get them into school, school clothes, books, you know. Today's the time where all the kids are flooding back to school, and those expenses aren't going down either. And now we're going to turn around and stare at Thanksgiving holiday meal. How expensive is that going to be for a family this year? And then the Christmas holidays. And it's, you know, we talk about... All this stuff and and really as an organization we we try to focus on what is the best value and Keeping costs down because we know that every every rate increase we ask for whether it's water sewer Whether it's refuse whether we see the the millages And taxes go up because housing values and millages interact it's all stressors on our community and and It's real

Thanks so much. Well, with that, we're going to go ahead. That report is received and filed, and we will go ahead and adjourn at 8.50. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye. Thank you.

Commissioner Perdue will be here shortly, so we're just kind of in a holding pattern for the moment.

It's 918. We're going to get today's Community Development Committee meeting started. Happy belated Labor Day. I just want to express my thanks to the labor movement of this country, past, present, and future. So with that, our first item this morning is a resolution setting Tuesday, September 22nd, 2025. It should be 2026. At 7 p.m. as the date, the City Commission will convene a public hearing to sit as Board of Review to hear appeals on special assessment. Nuisance Roll 8808.

Support.

Support. Good morning. Good morning. So this is for the nuisance roll. On July 21 of this year, the commission issued an order for the assessor to create the special assessment roll number 8808. This is for unpaid charges for services and code violations issued between January and June of 2026. So these charges stem from miscellaneous services such as housing violations, yard violations, rental certifications, and blight monitoring. Property owners were affected by these charges were sent the notices on August 14th that included the amount of amount of the charges as well as information on the appeal process. The roll is available in the assessor's office and has been open for inspection. The city's charter requires a public hearing to allow property owners affected by the special assessment a right to appeal and this proceeding today is to set that date for public hearing for September 22nd and this would be to hear any additional appeals.

Thank you. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Ms. Post. Item two this morning is a resolution scheduling a public hearing for September 22nd, 2026 to consider an obsolete property rehabilitation district pursuant to PA 146 of 2000 for 1956 Eastern LLC at 1956 Eastern Southeast.

So moved. Support? So supported.

morning good morning yes so we have several Oprah items today each one will be taken two at a time so there's the district and then their certificate so this first one is for the district again this is a property at Eastern and Burton this is to rehabilitate an 800 square foot structure that will result in eight one-bedroom apartment units and the estimated investment from the from the builder is $1.5 million. This is an emerging developer, Mary Malone, that we've been working with quite a bit. So any other questions on that project?

I'm curious, just as an aside, because I know she was in the Emerging Developer Program and then was paused. Is there any update on that and how that might relate to this project?

So currently our office is looking at other funding options for the Emerging Developer Program. So those applicants that were in the queue will likely be the first ones that are looked at for when funding opens up again. So she is in that queue. We're looking at this specific abatement because it is sundowning at the end of the year. That's why you're going to see several of them today because this is basically the abatement that we can do to help and incentivize this project.

Great. And I think your office has been working with hire since. I think she said 2017. Long time. Yeah, long time coming. So glad to have us here today. Yes. Any other questions, colleagues? All right, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item three, companion item, is a resolution scheduling a public hearing for September 22, 2026 to consider an application for an 11-year obsolete property rehabilitation exemption certificate pursuant to PA 146 of 2000 for 1956 Eastern LLC at 1956 Eastern LLC.

So moved. Support?

Motion supported.

Any additional questions or comments?

Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Item 4 is a resolution scheduling a public hearing for September 22, 2026 to consider an obsolete property rehabilitation district pursuant to PA 146 of 2004 1024 MLK LLC at 1024 Martin Luther King Jr. Street Southeast.

So moved. Support?

Motion supported. Tell us about this one.

Yes, so this one is to rehab a 5,300 square foot structure that will create a space for a childcare facility as well as flexible areas for after school programming and community uses. This is the developer is Latrice Hampton and they have also applied for a facade application from one of our corridor improvement districts. The investment will be about $1 million and they have a 20% goal on their inclusion plan. And it will also create eight full-time equivalent jobs.

Wonderful. And the last property also applied for a facade grant. Okay, great. So, yeah, we're happy to be moving these projects forward. Any questions or comments, colleagues? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Can you give me a little scroll, please? Thank you. All right, we are on item number five. A resolution scheduling a public hearing on September 22, 2026, To consider an application for a 10-year obsolete property rehabilitation exemption certificate pursuant to PA 146 of 2000 for 1024 MLK LLC at 1024 Martin Luther King Jr. Street Southeast.

So moved. Support.

All right. Any additional questions? Seeing none, all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed? Motion carries. Item 6 is a resolution scheduling a public hearing for September 22nd. We are going to be very busy on that day. To consider an obsolete property rehabilitation district pursuant to PA 146 of 2000 for North Quarter Development LLC at 2130 Plainfield Avenue Northeast.

So moved. Support.

Then support it.

All right, so this one is with the developer Andrew Staub. He is also an emerging developer recipient and is neighbor to this property, so he lives next door. This will be rehabilitating a 3,000 square foot structure that will create four one bedroom apartments and they will also create a new 1,600 square foot commercial building that will be white box space and the courtyard will be shared by the residents. And this will be, again, those four units will be at 100% AMI. And something that we want to highlight on this one is this developer has an 82% goal on their inclusion plan, which is the highest that our office has ever seen. So they have already identified a micro local business to be the contractor. So we're pretty excited about that one.

That's wonderful. Any questions or comments, colleagues? All right. Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Companion item is item 7, which is a resolution scheduling a public hearing on September 22, 2026 to consider an application for a 10-year absolute property rehabilitation exemption certificate pursuant to PA 146 of 2000 for North Quarter Development LLC at 2130 Plainfield Avenue NE. Motion. Support. Moved and supported. Any additional questions or comments? Seeing none, I'll call the question. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. We are on item 8 this morning, which is a resolution requesting the revocation of an existing industrial facilities exemption certificate under PA 198 Hudsonville Products, LLC. So moved. Support. Moved and supported.

This one is pretty straightforward. The recipients of that IFT are no longer at that address. They have sold the property and they no longer occupy it. So we are just cleaning things up and revocating it.

Good.

Seeing no further discussion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item nine this morning is a resolution authorizing execution of a memorandum of understanding with Commonwealth Development Corporation of America regarding the future conveyance of green space at 863 7th Street Northwest.

Support. Good morning. Laura Claypool with the Parks Department. So Commonwealth is in the process of acquiring this property from Grand Rapids Public Schools. And through extensive community discussion around the upcoming development, the issue of maintaining public green space is something that the neighborhood and the surrounding community are very concerned about. So this MOU formalizes the shared commitment between the city and Commonwealth. Once Commonwealth successfully acquires the stocking site, they'll convert a designated space, about .6 acres, to the city and the Parks Department will maintain and develop that space as parkland for the community. The green space will preserve a long-time community asset, staining some youth development and outdoor public space usage. And the city will assume long-term stewardship of the space.

Thank you. So 0.6 acres, how large is the site?

It's about where the existing play structure is. So if you are at a stocking site, it encompasses that general area.

Okay, so we're kind of preserving about this amount of space. Yes, correct. Wonderful. Well, thank you for your work on that. Your team and everyone else I know wants that. sale kind of move forward at the the school board level folks were really um upset because they don't want to lose that long-standing asset and so um you know we know that our intention was to work with them and i'm glad that the developer came to the table to do that to allow that so thank you Any other questions or comments, Commissioner Bilshek?

Yes, thank you. Yep, this is in our neighborhood. We happen to have had a presentation by the developer at the Westside CIA meeting last Friday, and so they did have some maps and things. It is worth noting that the part that the city will be taking over is the northwest quadrant where the existing play structures and fences are. That the front lawn will be kept green space and that's separate from the city engagement or... MOU because they're going to be applying for historic federal funds for the building and then that requires the facade and the approach to all remain the same. So that will be grassland or grassite lawn. But the green space that I think some of the community is still concerned about and may not be something that's completely in our control is the middle green space between the building and the alley that has been basically like a football field size worth of green space. And that's going to be developed into housing and parking lots. So I think there's going to be a lot of work for the Planning Commission to work on when it comes to how that layout actually gets finalized. But it is very exciting to know that we will be in charge of the playground and some green space there and that the Parks Department has worked so hard on that. So I really appreciate all that work and I hope that we can adjust because we need the new housing as well.

We were very pleased. I think the entire site is only three acres so to be deeded .6, I mean that's a pretty significant percentage and so the Parks Department was very pleased with that.

Thank you for that additional context, Commissioner.

Seeing no other discussion, all in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. Engineering, it's your turn. Item number 10 this morning is a resolution awarding a contract with J. Rank Electric, Inc. for installation of gateway signage at various locations in the amount of $1,198,991.50 with a total amount not to exceed $1,700,000. Support. Support.

Well, I'd like to start by saying I kind of enjoyed economic development having more items than me this morning. It was very fun. So this item for the Westside Gateway signage has been in the works for quite some time. A lot of collaboration with staff and Westside CIA. There will be three gateway signs going into the business districts on the Westside. On Leonard, between Broadway and Hamilton, and that sign is... being branded in blue. The west side worked on their branding and their colors for the different business districts. On Bridge Street between Mount Vernon and Summer and that sign will be green. And on Fulton between Seward and Lexington and that sign will have some red. So a lot of it will be metal but they'll have a bit of color just to show the different business districts. And I really like their words that this helps establish the visual identity, marketing presence, and overall sense of arrival in the corridor. So we're excited to award this project and get it moving. They're looking at working on foundations. Likely the final signs won't be until next year, but getting the project moving forward.

Thank you. And so looking at the drawings, I noticed that they are gateway signs and that they do connect over the street. So I know we were talking about something similar in another CIA district, and there were some concerns from fire around height and just emergency vehicles. So can you talk a little bit, do you know how they resolve those issues around design and actually having the connection overhead?

Sure, absolutely. So engineering and traffic safety work with the gateway signs to set the height. I believe the height on these we set was 16 feet. Part of that is that these are major roads connecting to highways, so we're anticipating there could be large trucks. The other thing with the signs is they can be removed, right? I think we've all seen those moments where something very odd moves across the state and we remove power poles and everything else so they could be removed should something non-standard come through. So yes, there are standards that they met that they submitted and were reviewed with the city. Thank you.

Commissioner Belshaw?

Yeah, I just feel, since I sit on the Westside Corridor Improvement Authority, this was a topic of discussion this last Friday as well. This has been in the works for four years, so the Westside Corridor Authority is very excited about it. I can't take credit at all for that. Former Commissioner John O'Connor is our chair, and he's looking at this with great interest. anticipation I think but we did have a lot of discussion and a little bit of delay in bringing this bid forward because we had as the board discussed the additional amount was about 30% higher than we had originally estimated and we weren't sure where exactly that was coming from and a lot of it is the pressure on the timeline and And in the end, we as a board decided that rather than delay and rebid, it is better to go ahead and take the additional amount. We don't know what construction costs will be in the future. And with this approval, we will be hopefully holding, and that's the goal, is to hold the timeline firm with the overages and the contingencies already built into this dollar amount that we can have the footings, the foundations, the storm drains The original goal was October 27th, I think, in the bid, which is still pretty tight for contractors at this time of year. So, you know, plus or minus a week or two, but we are really, as a board, intending it to be done so that we can get the signs up while they're being fabricated over the winter inside. So it is possible they could go up in February, April, May, May for sure by the end, maybe in time for the soccer stadium to open.

Very cool. Thanks again for that context. Seeing no further discussion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item 11 is a resolution approving a construction agreement and accepting a public utilities easement for Lakewood site condominiums. Have a motion support Luton supported.

This is a private development in Kentwood with a private road and this is near 52nd Street and Wing Avenue and this is Public utilities and the private road and on private property and then those utilities will be maintained under our utility service contract

Seeing no discussion, all in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Item 12 is a resolution approving a construction agreement and accepting a sidewalk and utilities easement for Jars Cannabis Development.

Salute. Support. So Jars Cannabis is at 1947 Alpine, which is near Anne and Alpine Street. In addition to the sidewalk and utility easement, this also involves some work at the traffic signal because of how they want to locate their driveway. So they work closely with traffic safety to make improvements to make sure that entrance and egress are safe. And then also working with the city to improve the sidewalk. The sidewalk right now is very close to traffic. So trying to make that a more pedestrian friendly space.

Wonderful.

Seeing no discussion, all in favor?

Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Our last item this morning is item number 13, a resolution accepting a sidewalk and utility easement at 915 Leffingwell Avenue Northeast in connection with Leffingwell and Bradford Reconstruction for $1.00.

So moved.

Moved and supported.

So this is the ongoing project where Corwell is our partner and we're putting in a path through this area. This is an area with questionable soils entering a wetland. They just need to extend the easement for the structural anchoring of the bridge.

Any questions or comments, colleagues? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. Motion carries. All right, we are adjourned, 936. Thank you.

Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. guitar solo .

I'm going to call this meeting of Committee of the Whole to order. And I'm going to, our first item of business is a proclamation regarding welcoming week. So I'm going to go up to the dais and read that. And I don't know that I see Mr. Davis here. Ah, okay.

Can you come down, please? Sierra, can you come down to the podium, please? Okay.

So I will preface this by saying that I'm going to read a proclamation on welcoming week but this is part of our larger framework of what I'll say is our commitment to making it very very clear that everyone who's a resident in our community is equally valued and respected and And we have a vision, at least, that everyone in our community is equally supported. And there's always more work to do in that space. And we all know from personal experience that it's one thing to have someone say that you're welcome. It's another thing to feel welcomed and to feel real inclusion. And I don't know that I want to say ownership because I'm not really all that into owning things. But feeling like you're an equal member of the community and you have an equal voice. How we know people in Grand Rapids are entitled to that is if they are residents Not if they are we don't have passports in Grand Rapids, and we don't have citizenship requirements we have Residency and so people everyone who is a resident of our city is part of our welcoming vision and of course welcoming means that We want other people to join the party. We are excited to be a city that really says to people out everywhere in the world that we would love to have you join us here. We're proud of our city and we're working to make it better, but we hope it's inviting and welcoming enough that other people will want to join us and be residents of our city. So I read the proclamation. Whereas the success of Grand Rapids depends on ensuring that all Grand Rapidians are welcome, and that new Grand Rapidians remain a vital part of our community, and alongside our longtime residents, they bring ideas, start businesses, serve in civic roles, and contribute to our diversity. And whereas in January 2019, the City of Grand Rapids, in collaboration with the immigrant community, organizational partners, and with support from Gateways for Growth, embarked on a journey to create a welcoming plan for our city. And whereas to fully embrace diversity as an asset, our community must create policies and a culture that ensure that everyone belongs and thrives. This includes addressing disparities, countering hate, understanding history, and helping neighbors come together. Whereas Grand Rapids stands against racism, xenophobia and all forms of othering that threaten our collective well-being, health and prosperity. We acknowledge that by fostering a welcoming community for all, we enhance the city's prosperity and social well-being for current and future generations. And whereas during the last year, the City has partnered with refugee and immigrant organizations to implement a range of initiatives that reduce barriers to integration, strengthen community bonds through events and festivals and foster full participation of new Americans. And whereas the City of Grand Rapids is a member of the Welcoming Plans Steering Committee, and during the last three years has committed financial and staff resources to support the West Michigan Welcome Plan, and in its current year has reaffirmed its commitment to support immigrant and refugee-focused initiatives to build trust and understanding between government and neighbors who may face cultural, linguistic, and institutional obstacles to civic engagement. And whereas the theme of Welcoming Week in 2026 is stories we share, the courage to connect, and its focus on the courageous, work of being together in vulnerability to welcome others to be seen and make our community stronger. Now, therefore, I, David Legrand, Mayor of the City of Grand Rapids, do hereby proclaim September 10 to 19, 2026 as Welcoming Week in Grand Rapids and call on residents and stakeholders to join together to build stronger communities and relationships with all our neighbors, renew our commitment to our common values, and take actions in the spirit of welcoming. Right on.

Thank you, Mayor, and good morning, Commission, City Manager, friends and family, community. My name is Sarah Hatfield. I'm the Equity Systems Manager in the Office of Equity and Engagement filling in for Mr. Davis today. Just wanted to say a few words. First of all, it is an honor to join everyone here today as we recognize Welcome in Week here in the City of Grand Rapids. A welcoming week is a national opportunity to celebrate the many backgrounds, cultures, languages, experiences, and perspectives that make Grand Rapids stronger. Being welcoming is more than simply inviting people into our community. It means creating a place where people feel that they belong, where they can participate, contribute, access services, and know that their voice matters. This is why we support the West Michigan Welcome Plan and other community partners and networks that help make Grand Rapids feel like home to a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. Welcoming Week also reminds us that building an inclusive community is something that must happen over time and with many hands. It is something we build together through our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our schools, our businesses, our community organizations, and our interactions with each other. For that reason, we are excited to continue working as a city on the language inclusion policy and other tools for staff to build our cultural competency as public servants so that we can have more meaningful interactions with all of Grand Rapids' diverse communities. I do have some information here about some upcoming opportunities that I will leave outside, but we have an upcoming partnership with the Disability Advocates of Kent County and some programming with the Michigan Local Government Latino Network Employee Resource Group for Latina Heritage Month. Grand Rapids is at its best when everyone has the opportunity to belong and participate. So finally, I encourage all of us to take the spirit of Welcoming Week and the stories we share theme beyond this celebration. To be curious about one another, to listen to perspectives different from our own, and to look for opportunities to make our community a little more welcoming for all. And at this time, I'd like to invite Mr. Omar from the Chamber to say a few words as well.

Thank you so much. Good morning, City Commissioners, City Manager, and City Attorney. Omar Cuevas at the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce. I'd like to thank you all for the support that you've provided to our Kent County Welcome Plan. We're in the ninth year of this Welcome Plan, this work that is challenging work. But it was always done with the intent to ensure that we align our priorities around population growth, economic vitality, not forgetting about the human element that's at the center of all this. A welcome plan that was created with immigrant and refugees, making sure that their voices were heard from the beginning, identifying even literacy issues, technology literacy, to ensure that we're having focus groups, working with centers of influence in our community, and making sure that we heard different voices as we put together this Welcome Plan. It's about educational attainment, economic prosperity, safe and connected communities, equitable access to services, and the work that the Welcome Plan steering committee and the different work groups have done has moved this work forward. We don't want to let perfection be the enemy of progress. We know there's still so much to do. We are in a journey. But the goal has always been to make sure that Kent County and the city of Grand Rapids is best in class when it comes to making sure people feel like they belong. And this work is never ending. And we want to thank you all on behalf of the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce for being collaborative partners in this work. This morning as we celebrate this moment in time, a welcome week. But it's a reminder that it's just not limited to one week. Welcoming is done in the small moments. It's where we shop. It's when we interact with individuals to make sure that we do something, an act of kindness to make sure people feel like Grand Rapids is their city. Because it's always greater here in Grand Rapids. So thank you so much this morning.

Should we do a picture? Yeah. All right.

I think I missed you sir

Okay, this brings us to more of the

nuts and bolts works work of our group so next up I have a resolution in establishing an industrial development district for city-built brewing at 1560 Taylor we got briefed on this pretty extensively last Commission session but this is a resolution to establish the district can I have a motion support oh sorry And you want to go ahead and refresh our memories on this?

Absolutely. Good morning, Commission. Rachel Gray with the Economic Development Department. This is for an industrial development district at 1560 Taylor Avenue. Right now, there are buildings on that property, but they are vacant. They've mostly been used for storage space. And City Built Brewing, which is one of our local businesses here, they are looking to use that property. that property for a beverage production facility, tap room, and complimentary commercial destination. Happy to answer other questions.

Great. Everyone recall this? Then if there's no discussion, I'll ask for a vote. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

All opposed? Motion carries. And the next resolution is regarding exactly the same project, and this is a resolution for a 12-year industrial facilities exemption certificate for the same project. Can I have a motion? Support. Any discussion, colleagues? All in favor say aye. Aye. Thanks. Ms. Gray. And next we have a resolution revising the downtown social district to add another location to the commons area. And Mr. Clerk, you want to? Yeah, thank you. Support? Support.

Yeah, so this is adding on to 115, 117 South Division in that area to add it to the commons, and the next item will be to allow for a social district in said area.

Great. This is 115, 117 Division, so pretty close to the office here. I'm sure all of us know where that is.

Sorry, it's the old Rockwell Republic?

Right. so this is a core sort of an anchor very visible project downtown that's currently unoccupied so this is exciting you've got a motion any further discussion colleagues all in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries and then the next is the resolution on the social district for the same project kind of motion support any discussion no thank you all in favor say aye aye all opposed Motion carries. And that brings us to our briefings. Yes. Before we get there, our city attorneys ask that we go to a closed session to discuss litigation matters. And can I have a motion?

So moved.

And roll call.

Commissioner Kilgore?

Yes. Commissioner Knight?

Yes. Commissioner Sasse? Yes. Commissioner Perdue? Yes. Commissioner Belchek? Yes. Mayor Legrand?

Yes. And that will be in? 601.

601.

Okay, Mr. Clerk, give us an update on election work. With slides and pictures and arrows and paragraphs in the back of each one.

Thank you, Mr. King. Good morning, everyone. Glad to be here to give a little update on the past August primary election and then looking forward to the November 3 election season. Not one day anymore. It's over several days. So even though we say the election day, it starts much earlier. To recap August 4 primary election, we had up to 153,000 registered voters in the city of Grand Rapids, 47,000 plus voted, giving us about almost 31% turnout. If you look at the The grid low hand shows that that's a 7.36 higher turnout than two years ago, and that's 12,000 actual voters increase it. in an August primary. So obviously there was some more interest in this election. This was the first election since the direct election of U.S. Senators. So that's been a while. We've had an open U.S. Senate and open Governor's seat on the same ballot. So there was a lot of interest in this election. Anytime there's an open Governor's seat versus that Because you can see the difference between the 2018 and 2022 turnout when Whitmer was the incumbent governor. It definitely declines. And we see those presidentially, too, between the 2008 and 2012, you know, between the first Obama election and the second Obama election. If you look at any time there's an incumbent running... turnout dips down a little bit. So we'll probably see a little bit higher turnout this November with an open seats as well. The highest percentage precinct turnout was precinct 25 at Encounter Church, which is in the second ward. 50% turnout in only one precinct under 10%. So in 2022 and other elections, we've had a lot more precincts at under 10% turnout. So that's really good that it's not good that it's under 10%, but only one precinct is that.

And if I can interrupt you a little bit, Mr. Clerk, just for the public's perspective here, what's really, I mean, there's two things that stand out. One is we had great turnout, but the other is since 2018, we've had an almost 15% increase in registered voters, and our population did not increase 15% since 2018.

Correct. So a couple of factors with that, I'll get to how we got to that factor. And then you can also see that just barely, over 50% of voters voted absentee or early than voted on Election Day in the precinct. But the precinct turnout was higher than what we had definitely anticipated. So there was great interest at the end. And we'll see how... what happens with early voting, absentee voting, and we'll talk about uncertainties here in a little bit. So that's the turnout. And if you can notice, the registered voters, cause as we're getting closer to 2030, as we're talking about census and If you can see, the registered voters are still pretty close between the three wards. The second ward has a few more voters, but the three wards are still dispersed pretty evenly, even with lots of changes. So this video I'm gonna play in here, this was on election night. Actually, somebody from the county office sent it to me. Because if you look on this board, there are no results here. There's nothing on the board for Michigan. So if you're familiar with Steve Kornacki, He's kind of the numbers guru on NBC. So he's going to show some results that pop up on the screen here in a minute. This is going to be our first batch of absentee voters. So the first results in the entire state of Michigan came from our absentee counting board, that first batch. Now, I'll give the caveat. We were also the last batch that came in at the end of the night because we had all the end of the night. So we were the first and the last, which is okay. But his excitement here of getting election results started coming in. This was, if you notice, it says... 56 minutes till the polls close because you remember the UP is part of the UP is central time They actually go with their time zone not Eastern time. So that's why it says so within four minutes of The polls closing we get results in a number of house races to that will be keeping an eye on in Michigan But oh and we do look at this.

We have our first results. Oh Oh, okay. So this is from Kent County, Western Michigan. This is where Grand Rapids is from. Those are the results statewide. They're also the results that we're seeing here in Kent County. So I think one thing we need to figure out right away is are we looking at early vote? Are we looking at election day vote here? That's going to be key. Adam is taking a look at that. But one thing I can tell you about this county here is this is a place where Syed has to do well, okay? His support in polling, and the support of these progressive insurgent candidates.

So that shows that we, because of early tabulation, we could have those results ready to go to send to the county so they can upload them right at 8 o'clock and then they upload them right to the Secretary of State's office, which the wires and everybody else grabs from there. So that's one of the things I've been wanting forever is to get election results Quicker and early tabulation has really helped with that. Just a little bit on election results, because this is one of those misinformation things from 2020 as people were watching what was happening on the screen. This goes back to 2000 as well. For those of us who remember the 2000 election when everybody was up and down with Bush-Gore, we get into this thing of we're watching the scrolls on the bottom of the screen. This is all unofficial. Until the County Board of Canvassers and the State Board of Canvassers do their work and certify the election, the election results are unofficial. Things can change in between that. Military and overseas ballots, as long as they're postmarked by election day, we have six days, they can return those. Those can be added. If your signature doesn't match or you didn't sign your absentee ballot, you have till three days after the election to cure your signature. That goes over to the Board of Canvassers. So votes can be added. between election day and the canvas and the certification of the election so we need to remember that on election day when we're watching things that are on the tv screen or on websites those are all unofficial there was an issue in in milwaukee where they uploaded the they downloaded the wrong files and got up and they didn't have them so they had to add those during the canvas things happen Elections are still, even though we use election equipment that's computers and tabulation, it's still a very human process, which is great because there's still people that are monitoring things, making sure things happen, but errors or mistakes can happen. They're rare, but if they do, there's a way for them to be fixed, and that's how that happens through this official part. So just remember that you can go to kentcountyvotes.com to see unofficial results. We send all that stuff to the county. When I post results, it's a couple weeks later after the canvas is all done, and I post official results onto the clerk's website. So just wanna make sure the public is clear that there's a difference between unofficial results and official results.

And clerk, what's the amount of time between the election and the Board of Canvassing?

The county has two weeks, and then the state has another week.

Okay, so you say about three weeks.

About three weeks before it's done. So just a reminder, I always like to throw in these couple slides of what the proposals in 2018 and 2022 got. So you have a constitutional right to a secret ballot, straight party voting, no reason to absentee, automatic voter registration. That's the one that gave us the tool to have this really high voter registration. We still have a lot of groups that are out registering voters, but you have automatic voter registration So anytime you're doing something at the Secretary of State's office, they automatically register you. You have to opt out if you don't want to be registered. Same day registration, up until 8 o'clock on election night, you can register to vote. Military oversee ballots available 45 days before the election and election audits. In 2022, still a fundamental right to vote. Gives us early voting, photo ID or sign an affidavit on the back of your application. Single application for absentee ballots. You don't have to pay for postage to have your ballots mailed back. We have to have drop boxes, one for every 15,000 voters. absentee ballot tracking. You can go to the state's website to see if you got your absentee ballot. If we received it back here, you can check that there too. There's the postmark for the military and overseas. Allow private donations so we can accept grant money. Some states don't allow you to take any private money to grants or various other things, but we are allowed to do that. And then audits and certification. I'm just looking at past November elections. You can see the ups and downs between gubernatorial and presidential years. You saw 77,000 in 2018, about 77,000 in 2022. I'm going to say, because of the interest in this election, we'll probably see that tick up a little bit. So we may see percentages go up a little bit higher than we've seen in other gubernatorial years, but nowhere near probably a presidential year. In 2024, you can see the interest that was in early voting and absentee voting. We'll see if that holds true going into this November election as well. We used a lot of this data when we used to... to change the precinct lines and the polling locations in 2025. And I did not hear a lot of consternation for the August election of people finding their new locations. I think people found that information. And so we'll see as we go, as more people are engaged in the November election, we'll be getting information out there. Make sure that people know before they go to go to michigan.gov forward slash vote. So this upcoming November election is a federal and state partisan, there'll be a federal and state partisan section. This is where you can vote the straight parties, the Republican, Democrat, natural law, working party, only people understand there's like seven different parties here in Michigan. You can vote a straight ticket, a split ticket, or you can pick candidates however you want. one candidate from this party here, another candidate from another party in a different section of the ballot. We also have judicial, city, local education boards. Those will be all on this ballot, and there's five proposals. the Constitutional Convention money out of politics made this so there's gonna be state to state proposals there's a third one out there that was that did not make it because of the did not get certified by the state they went to the US Supreme Court got denied they did not take it up in it went to the state Supreme Court. They're not taking up either. Then we have the museum zoo millage, the corrections and detention facilities millage. And for 19 of our voters, they have the Kennewa Hills public school millage. So no other major school bonding issues there. So those are the five proposals. Most of our voters will be seeing four proposals on their ballot. Early voting. So we are going to have 13 days of early voting. So the Constitution mandates that we have to have at least nine. We're going to add four more days, starting on Tuesday, October 20, and going through Sunday, November 1. The reason why we added the four days is in 2024, after... Seeing the February turnout for early voting and the August, we thought, oh, people aren't really engaging to this. And they did engage into it. And we started on a Saturday morning. And we were overwhelmed. We weren't overwhelmed. We were able to serve people. But we didn't anticipate how much people were going to turn out. And we had to get people ready and acclimated to do their duties at the early voting site. And then if we had any computer issues, we had a couple little computer issues. IT departments aren't open on that Saturday. Also we're running out of toner and paper and it's the weekend so we're running around to Staples and Office Depot and stuff to So we've learned some lessons, and one of those lessons is we're not going to start ever on a Saturday in a major election. We're going to start on a Tuesday. Give us some time, and you can see on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we go 11 to 7, so we have that morning to get into the flow and then... After day one, everybody's going. Because we generally have the same election inspectors every day. So by day nine, they are a well-oiled machine. By day 13, they're going to be either really tired or really great. So... No, it's 8 hour days, so it's not like the 14 hour election day, so it's different. So every day, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays we do 11 to 7, the other days we do 9 to 5. Except on Saturday, October 31, which is Halloween, we're going to be going 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. so people can get out and do their... whatever their fall festival slash trick-or-treating. Get our election inspectors out. I'm not expecting a lot of voters after that time. Also, we're adding a fourth location at New Hope Baptist Church. So that gives us an early voting site in all four quadrants of the city. And New Hope Baptist Church has their Fall Fest that evening too, so working with them, we decided let's make sure it's uniform, that we're not having different times at different places. So Halloween is 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., and that matches the hours that we have here at City Hall for our clerk staff as well. Absentee voting military overseas ballots must be sent at least at the latest 45 days before the election Available 40 days for all our voters, so we're anticipating ballots around September 19 for us to receive them and start preparing those to be mailed Our permanent ballot envelopes are being Produced right now We get everything screen print on so we're getting we're very getting very close to to ramping up to prepare absentee ballots to be mailed and Election day, polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Anyone still in line can still vote. All 59 precincts will be open. Kenosha is still under construction. That was a major construction at Kenosha Elementary, so they'll be across Kalamazoo Avenue at Brookside CRC, but this will be like the third election where they'll do that. Those voters have been contacted. by mail. The other thing that happens on election day as well is same day registration. You can register up until 8 o'clock on election night. Because the massive amount of people that do register, and because of the interest in this election, I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of college students that are going to want to register that are don't live here year-round, but are residents here for their 60 days, so they're eligible to vote in Grand Rapids, I think there's going to be a lot of interest in that. So on the Monday and Tuesday, so November 2 and 3, the city clerk's office is actually at DeVos Place in Exhibit Hall A, so it gives us much more space. We don't have the room here to have long lines of people, so we are using Exhibit Hall A across the street, so we're going to direct everybody on Monday and Tuesday to go to DeVos Place. So we'll be producing some videos that also show that. We shot a video the other day that shows me walking from Mayor Park's statue and walking across the street to DeVos Place to show how that will work. So that video will be showing on those days. My tagline is know before you go. So this is three good websites to go that is factual, governmental information. issues, or issued election information. So Grand Rapids elections, you can go to grandrapidsmi.gov, GR votes, Michigan Bureau of Elections, michigan.gov forward slash vote, and then Kent County elections is kentcountyvotes.com. So any of those election results, campaign finance, you'll find at Kent County. Who's supporting, who's paying for campaigns, you can find that locally, you can find that at the Kent County elections. And also, so this gives you a good information areas to go so that you're prepared that you make a plan to vote. All right. Executive Order 14399, Ensuring Citizenship Verification, Integrity in Federal Elections. So this has been in the news a lot lately. There's been court cases and injunctions and Supreme Court rulings and various other things, and U.S. Postal Service rules. We're watching this very closely. So the big parts of this is Department of Homeland Security has developed a state citizenship list. So they would have to... Homeland Security would develop a list of... of citizens. Then there's USPS mail guidelines. We generally follow this already. Where this would affect is more rural communities where they're not using like pre-printed envelopes. They're just mailing their ballots in a regular envelope. This would say election mail. So this one wouldn't affect us too much. We're already doing these things. But the next part is a state-specific mail-in and absentee participation list sent to the US Postal Service. So the Secretary of State's office would have to send a list of all the people that we're mailing ballots to and it would have to go to the post office and then they would have to match that mail to that list which obviously would probably delay in mailing because they have to go through and and match these now there's some talk of what does that actually mean If if like one of the batches gone is the whole batch so there's a there's so much unknown in this and we're you know 60 days less than 60 days out So there's an injunction there the the president has asked for on the Supreme Court to rule on this latest injunction so we're following this real close the other part that's In this law as well, it says if a state official or a local official issues a ballot to an undocumented or, in their terms, an illegal alien or an undocumented person, then we could face criminal charges. It might not even be something that I did, but if I sent a ballot to somebody who was not supposed to get a ballot, because the state, remember I said the state automatically does automatic registration? I didn't register that person. Or they send me a form. Everybody likes to use the student from China in Ann Arbor in 2024. he filled out an application and marked that he was a US citizen. How am I as the clerk supposed to know that, because it's a self, you're self-declaring that you're over 18 and that you're a U.S. citizen. If this law was under there, then the Ann Arbor clerk, because they found out, the Ann Arbor clerk could go to jail because they issued a ballot to someone. So that's got clerks a little antsy right now, if that part of that goes in there. So as I said, we're monitoring very closely, watching what's happening with any injunctions or that. So our plan is to mail out ballots. North Carolina already mailed their ballots. They're one of the first states that mailed their ballots. There's going to be others that are going to be starting to send ballots in the next week. Ours will be by the 24th of September. Obviously everybody's watching this very, very closely. November, so like I showed you before the August election, these are our posts that we're gonna be doing for social media. We are doing social media buys. So we'll be putting out carousels and various other reels that will be out in English and Spanish. And we will be buying Instagram and Facebook ads as well. So to boost that traffic of it going out. And of course everybody else can help share by sharing anytime anything comes out from the official City of Grand Rapids website or Facebook or Instagram post as well. And please share that as well so we can boost traffic. This is an example of the absentee voting social media carousel to give people information. We're also doing, we have a billboard, if it's four or five billboards, that we'll be doing as well, but one of the billboards will be in the Cesar Chavez corridor and that one will be in Spanish. So we are doing billboards around the community as well. This is another one of those what it looks like, the same information in English and Spanish that would be put up on one of our add-bys. And then this is a video that went out on election day. We'll probably have this on election day itself.

Hi, I'm City Clerk Joel Hunter, and it's election day.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. As long as you're in line at 8 o'clock, you can still vote. And also, if you aren't registered to vote yet, you can still register by going down to the city clerk's office and register.

Know before you go, go to michigan.gov forward slash vote and vote today.

I was either selling used cars there or mattresses, but it was a little quick. But try to keep high energy and get these out. So there's other things that I'm doing to prepare for this. I'm doing a shoot with... a video shoot with ACLU on Thursday morning. They're doing some video series with some clerks that they work with, so we'll be doing some more things. So there's other groups that are out there doing stuff, but some of the groups have reached out to me so I can review their information as well to make sure that it's factual. There are some groups that are election protection groups, but they don't exactly get the nuts and bolts or details right as well. So we don't want misinformation from people who are trying to assist us as well. So there's a concerted effort by the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks to make sure that we're reviewing, working with our trusted partners and our not trusted partners to make sure that factual information is going out and So as you're how the city commission and the public can help to let us know if you see something that you're like, I don't think that's quite right. And that that can be misinformation. And it's not even like they're trying to they're trying to mislead. They just have some old information from some other way. For example, they're going to say early voting starts in Grand Rapids on October 24th. Well, that could be the case if we did the nine days, but we're starting October 20. So I'm going through, making sure everywhere, anybody who I've talked to is saying, no, we're doing 13 days in four locations, not three locations. So it's going to be that it takes a village on this one to make sure that we're giving out good information and making sure that we're doing our due diligence to make sure voters are well informed and ready to go. Questions for me?

Questions, colleagues? Commissioner Sasse.

More of a comment than a question. I just wanted to say thank you to our city clerk for this presentation, but also thank you. Representative Grant hosted a few of us, was that last month, city clerk? Right before the primaries, I think. Just to talk, brought in some of the staff from the Secretary of State's office, so if we could probably share that with their office too, I think it would be good for for them to know all the things that we're doing and just staying informed. So thanks for going to that forum, sharing what we're doing. And thank you to all those that work on those days, needing and recruiting election workers. I have a couple family members who volunteer as well, not in the second ward. But really, the election workers take a lot of pride in what they do. So I want to say thank you. I know there's a lot of coordination that goes into that as well. Thanks.

Commissioner Perdue.

Thank you. Thank you so much for the update clerk. Happy to see some of the positive trends for turnout. I do want to reiterate colleagues that Election Day voting still is our most popular mode of voting and so this was a big conversation last year so just want to reiterate how important it is to have access to someplace local that you can show up on Election Day. So that pattern remains as well. Clark, I'm just wondering, I think that particularly the ABV, the absentee ballot, lack of clarity around what we can expect with the executive orders. Do you plan to come back to us to give us an update on where that lands between now and Election Day?

Yes. So if anything, I'll make sure that we have memos. And I'll probably do a couple memos between now and the election under the updates from, you know, memos or communications from appointed officials. I'll probably just keep you in the loop on that and any other election preparation as well.

Thank you. I think we would all appreciate that because that is I see situation for sure. Lastly, just want to say thank you for thinking about the I mean, logistics galore. Okay. But particularly around anticipating the amount of new registrations that might come and getting to a bigger venue so that we can handle that. Just want to, you know, plant a seed of, you know, with a lot of things we know that coming downtown can be a barrier for folks. which is why we do commission night out and a lot of things out at community locations and so just ask you to consider if we still can for this election to do some outreach whether it's partnering with community organizations based throughout the city but just try to meet people where they are to help them register easily and even if it If we're expecting more college students, getting on Aquinas campus, getting on Calvin, and those who are local as well as in some of our neighborhoods, I think that's really important around access and ease. So thank you for all your work. I'm looking forward to getting through this midterm and hopefully seeing some positive results of really good leadership to kind of lead us through these really difficult times, quite frankly. So thank you. Excellent.

Yeah, so Mr. Clerk, I guess one question I have is, and this is piggybacking off of Commissioner Perdue's comments. I, in the past, in the last few elections, have gotten my absentee ballot what feels luxuriously early. So early that I sort of turn it around, mail it out the same day usually, and then I kind of Like, it's done, and it's done a long time before elections. So a lot of us are getting used to that. Have you given some thought to communications? If the feds slow this process down, I just want to suggest we may want to have something really, really prominent on the city website saying something like, You know, hey, you know, ballots have been delayed seven days, don't panic. Something that stops our 311 system from being swamped when people don't get them or people worried that they got dropped off the list. It seems to me like, I mean, if I didn't get a ballot about when I expected to get it, I might think, Did I do something wrong? Is the system completely broken? So I think it's really important not just to get this information out now to at least two-thirds of the voters who are watching this hearing, but also that we get it up on the website.

You say two-thirds or two or three?

I'm sure we've got 100,000 viewers right now. But you get my point. I guess I and city manager maybe work with the clerk to make sure that We may have to sort of take over our home landing web page if things get weird here because this is going to be a big deal for our voters if they start not seeing ballots that they expect to see. We want to be able to manage updating people.

So we do monitor that closely because we had an issue in the 2024 November election where there was a whole tray of ballots that... went awry somewhere in the postal service, and the postal service tried to push it back on our vendor and us, and we're like, no, we have a proof that we delivered it to the doc at the post office. And so we reissued that to those 300 voters, new ballots, and then like a month later, they got that original ballot delivered. So it was a postal office issue. So we do monitor, even without this, we monitor this closely and let people know if we see an issue. So yes, we continue that.

there's banner ads and things that we can do on the website so yes okay thanks so let's keep let's keep thinking about how to make sure that if there's if the federal government slow rolls this that we tell voters before everyone freaks out yep thanks all right thank you I'm not seeing any further questions from colleagues thank you mr. clerk and that brings us to one of the things that's on the ballot and that is the Kent County Corrections and detention millage and I see we have our sheriff here to discuss this.

You have it on here?

Oh. You have the land bank one. Deputy Chief Maycroft is definitely not a sheriff, so are you going first?

Land bank.

Good morning, commissioners, mayor. Mike Maycroft here, and it's my distinct honor and privilege to introduce Sheriff Michelle LaJoy Young, who, it's kind of a bittersweet day. She's announced her retirement after 37 years of service to this county, and she has been awesome to work with, especially for me for the last 30 years, so we appreciate everything she has done for us in the city and her leadership team. It is bittersweet. I know we're in good hands under Sheriff Muir will be assuming this role in October and I just wanted to tell her how much we appreciate the working relationship we've had over these years. She's going to brief you now about the corrections of detention millage. I'm a member of AdjustGR, which you guys were briefed on, along with Commissioner Perdue, Chief Deputy Cole, Mr. Davis, and I think part of what we learned over the last couple years is how important the role of corrections of detention is here. I think sometimes we get caught up of arrests, just the arrest factor. But I think what the sheriff will show us is how much goes into that afterwards and the amount of resources that we do to try to reduce recidivism in this county and in this city. It's a very important millage and we appreciate her doing this briefing today. So thank you.

Good morning everybody. So my very first job with the county was a corrections officer. I started in 1989, which was a number of decades ago. So I'm going to talk a little bit as we roll through this presentation how much change there's been in corrections as an industry overall, but really specifically how our own community has changed and grown and adjusted to the needs of the community. So the The topic is our corrections and detention millage. Okay, and I know you told me which way to go. There we go. Okay. So I'm going to put up this screen first. You may or may not remember that there is a millage that is currently being collected. It has been collected since 1990. The original millage was .84. But due to Headley, that millage has adjusted down to 0.733. And we are asking for a renewal and an improvement to 0.98, which would commence 26 through 2045, which seems unbelievable to say out loud. Okay, so what we're specifically asking for is a 20-year renewal and increase. It would provide for operations of the correctional facility and also improvements to any facilities that may need to be improved during the course of that time. So let me give you a couple examples. The beautiful round buildings that are on the expressway that have the brick fascia. A number of years ago, we had to reattach the brick to the outside of the building, which I understand is a pretty normal thing. We've had to put new roofs on. We've had to do chillers and really exciting things like that in a correctional facility. We had to spend over $3 million to replace doors in a correctional facility. So things that have that kind of strength and that application are very expensive and often have to be done outside of the normal capital improvement process within the county because honestly they'd spend every dollar on the correctional facility and no other resources would be updated. That's the kinds of things you normally would see and not only for the jail but also for the juvenile detention facility. So both of those are covered. What this isn't a specific millage for is a specific building. We're not asking to add on to the jail. We have no need to add additional beds to the jail at this point and don't intend to do that. You know in today's day and age it's always that concern that we have developed a partnership with ICE and we want to build a facility to improve our ability to hold for ICE. That is not the case. It's not on the radar at all. This would not increase our gel bed space and it would not lead to any contracts with any federal entities or state entities for that matter. So the jail is a shared county resource. Back in 1990, one of the things that VOTE did was to create a central booking process. I don't know how familiar you are with other organizations throughout the state, but it's very uncharacteristic that we have a central booking process. system here in Kent County. Uncharacteristic and very helpful to all of our budgets and to the process of justice here as a whole. Many years ago, every city that had a certain class of court had to maintain their own lockup. This meant that arresting agencies would take somebody into custody, they would have to go to their own lockup. They would have to provide for security for that person while they were being held there. They would have to do their own processing, which would include fingerprints and mug shots, all the technology necessary to do those things if there were a medical need that had to have been done at the lockup. And so many years ago, they thought this would make a lot more sense if we did this all together, especially since many individuals are arrested for more than one charge. They may have outstanding warrants from Kentwood, for example, and be arrested by the city of Grand Rapids. So instead of processing at two different locations, again, we go back to a central booking and we can do it all at one time. And I would say, I would be throwing an estimate out there, but it costs us about $250 per person to do that booking. And if that were distributed over every agency for every charge of every person that would add up to millions and millions of dollars that as communities we have already saved by having this millage. Our current framework also has a per diem cost that is assessed for every charge that a local agency would have for per inmate. and also a booking fee that would be. And more on that in a second because that's part of what we're proposing to change. So currently, with that 50.42 per diem rate, the City of Grand Rapids is paying 547,000 and change in per diem costs. And that was based on a 2025 billing, which was our last full billing. And you are also paying 1828 booking fee per person that you book. Under the proposed millage, if the millage were to go through, we're advocating that this becomes simplified and reduced. So the city of Grand Rapids would no longer have any per diem. No city would have any per diem cost, saving over a half a million dollars a year. The booking fee would be held to 10% of the booking cost. So right now, it costs us about $25 per person to book them. And again, that's likely on multiple charges across the whole area. That booking fee is $25, so that's 10%, and you would end up saving a substantial amount of money as a city along with every other city in the county. And again, I've been over this. The original funding was at a .84. In 2008, that was renewed and put in place for another 20 years. This technically expires two years from now, but if this is not renewed, it would cause such a major hole in the county budget that we thought it necessary to have some planning time if this were going to be the case. And this is just a little bit about our operating costs. About $56 million a year to operate the jail. So it's a pretty heavy lift. And you might know that a jail is a mandated function of the county. It's constitutionally mandated. But again, the booking process isn't mandated, only the lodging after arraignment. We get just under $25 million a year from this millage to operate both the jail and the detention. So there's two facilities. And we are still paying about $3.8 million in debt service. That's largely the juvenile detention facility that was built and some smaller improvements that were made to the correctional facility a number of years ago. Current rate that we are now collecting is 0.73. I started this with saying, this is near and dear to my heart, I started as a corrections officer at the county, and Mike talked a little bit about the importance of it, but 90% of the people who are booked in our jail will rejoin our communities as active, participating members in our community. So it's important that we do everything we can first to keep them in community if that's where they can be served. If they can't be kept in community and they are being lodged in the correctional facility, we have to do everything we can to stabilize them, to improve their success when they're released back into our community. We do this a number of ways, largely through much programming that happens within the correctional facility. But a substantial part of what we do is to provide wraparound services for everybody who's incarcerated. That means community equivalent medical services while they're in the correctional facility. If you live in the city of Grand Rapids and you get sick, you go to many world-class hospital options or doctor options that are in the community. When somebody's incarcerated in Grand Rapids, they also have the ability to go to many of the same doctors that you would see. And providing that care financially is the responsibility of the correctional facility. one of the most significant costs that we've seen rise, just as you have in the community, but one of the most significant causes we've seen rise is that medical cost that we're providing. I'm going to get to a little bit of how we can attack that further in the presentation, but the other thing I want to talk about is psychological care. When I started in 1989, there were no counselors in the correctional facility. There were no psychiatric services in the correctional facility. If somebody needed to receive psychiatric care and it was severe enough that they weren't able to stay in trial, they had to wait long, long, long periods of time to get to a psychiatric bed generally in the state system. The state system still takes a very long time to get somebody there, but one of the things that we've really strove to be able to provide in community, in the facility, are those very psychological services that somebody needs to stabilize. This is wrapped into our medical cost, but it's a significant cost for us to do, but I would advocate to you it's a more significant cost if we don't do it. If somebody's not stabilized, they're more likely to commit an offense soon after they're released. That offense causes them to continue to be justice involved, but it also creates additional victims in our community, people who then have needs that have to be met in other services. So our best approach as a community is to continue to pitch in together, to work to make sure everybody has the tools they need to succeed, and that they have the right size care when they become justice involved. so that they can re-assimilate back to our community and be proud of how they're participating in daily life. I'm going to give you a small example, our MAT program. This is a medically assisted treatment in the correctional facility. One of the few programs that we have very specific stats on, when somebody is opioid addicted and they're incarcerated, without any treatment, they are 48% likely to come back to the correctional facility within a very near term. 48%. So half of them will come back. Over and over in many cases. With treatment, with the right care, with the right psychological services and medication, that drops to 23%. Half of those individuals are getting out and being successful and re-assimilating to life. And most of them stay in the treatment program that they are introduced to while they're in the correctional facility. So many lives are impacted by having these programs. And it's not just that program. We have many, up to 20 different programming. Some of them orient around just functional things like do I have an ID when I get out of the building so that I can engage in services do I know where to go if I need Medicaid enrollment do I know where to go if I need case management or assistance getting my medication for mental health. And those things make a difference if somebody's going to be successful. So matching those people up so that they know where to go when they walk out that door is a significant portion of what we do. A few stats to just keep in your mind. Almost 18,000 people come through our doors every year. Most of them will be released soon after they're arraigned. The vast majority of them will. But we have a daily population of almost 1,000 people in custody every day. I know it's a lot of people. I wish it were lower. Trust me, we all have the wish that we didn't have to incarcerate people. But I'd say the thousand people that we do have incarcerated for a community our size is significantly lower than many other communities our size. And that's because of the programming. That's because of the warm handoffs. And that's because of the wonderful organizations that work with people incarcerated in our correctional facility every single day and are out in our community helping to support those individuals when they're released. It's 20 plus programs. We also really facilitate the visitation and connection with community by providing a tablet for every person incarcerated to carry out their personal visits, to have personal phone calls, to talk to their attorney, to review any documents they need to, participate in some programming or educational services, or watch a movie and enjoy themselves for a minute. So that's part of what they would see while they're incarcerated. We do have some very specific physical needs in the correctional facility. I'm hoping you may have seen some of that in local media. But our medical facility, and this is a very hard picture to read, but the little section that it's trying to point to is a 1972 portion of our facility. It's the oldest portion of our facility still standing. And it is actually where medical and psychological services are being housed today. So improving those facilities is something we very much hope to be able to do over the course of this improved funding. The bars that you see in the upper left-hand corner, they're literally the last bars that exist in this entire correctional facility. It's not how facilities are built anymore, but this is how it remains in that area. The nurses station are old cell and guard stations, and it's just not conducive to the type of medical treatment that our clients need. Many of our clients are very challenged medically. may be not pursuing medical treatment on the outside and many of them have very long-term illnesses. One example, we have a number of people who need procedures that have to happen multiple times a week and because our facilities look like this and can't can accommodate all those treatments, we have to take them out of the facility to go to local service providers. Every time I do that, we have to send two corrections officers with them for the entire time. So if they need to be at the facility for treatment for five hours, Then I have two corrections officers. You have to sit with them for five hours. It also creates a security risk for many of them. And just as I can imagine, you can picture somebody you know who has serious medical challenges. It's a lot for them to get out of their surrounding, get ready to go, get transported to receive services, endure the services, come back. It becomes a very long operation for somebody who is doing this multiple times a week. So part of what we'd want to do is to be able to bring those services, competent local services, into the facility. to be able to do the medical care where we can manage much better. The current medical wing has capacity for only 10 people, but generally, depending on the medical needs and separation needs, realistically, it's between five and seven for that correctional facility. So we really need to improve those. And then again, I talked about psychological services. Often what we see when somebody is severely mentally ill, which is about 10% of our population, is they become worse while they're incarcerated because of the loud doors and the close proximity and difficulties in getting good treatment spaces for the individuals. they become more challenged as the time goes on. So having appropriate medical facilities for psychological services is something that we plan for, we hope for, would likely happen with this improved millage. we would need the support of the millage to be able to pay for that. That service provided in the right moment can significantly reduce the amount of time that person's incarcerated and absolutely improve their transition back to our community, supported and healthy when they transition back to our community. So this is just kind of a summary page. Approximately 28 million in annual operation and debt service support would need to be absorbed if this millage didn't pass. So that could be a challenge to county. But frankly, due to the relationship we have with a central booking facility, that impact would be felt in all cities, all portions of our community because we wouldn't be able to receive people until after they've been processed, arraigned, and then sent to the correctional facility to serve time or be held pretrial. It would impact our courts, obviously our detention staffing and our viability of our organization, and certainly other services. I have on here sheriff's office services that are general funded, but in the county context it would be parks, it would be health department, it would be all general funded services that would be impacted. We do have some information that is available for additional questions, but I'm open to whatever questions you guys might have for me.

Thanks, Sheriff. And since this is where I've spent most of my life working, I think I'll kick off. And I just want to say thank you. I've had a lot of conversations with you about this, and I really appreciate your focus on rehabilitation and getting people back into the community. And I think that was maybe the first conversation we had ever about the jail was, you know, the fact that our, you know, properly understood our mission is not just to keep these folks safe, but to like, you know, be part of a safe return of the community. And I really appreciate that. So I guess what I want to throw out, at least publicly, since we're having a public discussion here now, some challenges or hopes. You said that we haven't determined exactly what programming is going to come if this millage passes and exactly the complete precise landscape. couple things that I would either urge or ask. And I'll say this for our new sheriff too, I guess. I am sort of, I'm haunted, frankly, by, I mean, I've been going out to the Kent County Jail for 30 years, and I spend time there every month still, and so I'm very familiar with the place, and I think my history there is about as long as your history there. And we've had real improvements in a lot of these services for people in the jail over that time. But one of the things where we took a step back about 15 years ago was we used to have in-person visitation. And we don't anymore. And there's a study from the Vera Institute, which is an operation that I respect, a careful study that indicated that actual in-person visitation has a real effect on lowering re-offense rates. And your MAT program, it's great that that reduces recidivism. I think any program where we can see reductions and recidivisms are things where we really ought to be thinking about investing. And the way I always put this is, you know, if I got locked up, you'd want to have my mom come out and yell at me. And you'd want my kids to be able to come and see me so that I'd feel ashamed and want to change my behavior. So I think that having people see their people, I mean, when they get back out in the community, The number one thing that helps people not reoffend is a support system, a community, the people around them who love them or even if they don't love them are willing to help them. And so I would love to have conversations about the viability if you're in fact going to get more funding. I know the rooms are still there. They're sort of ghost rooms, those visitation rooms, and I know that it takes officer manpower to get face-to-face visits. But I think that the data is there that that makes it. The reason I want them is because I want to keep our community as safe as possible, and I want to do everything we can to lower recidivism. So I'd like to at least challenge all of you as we go forward on this to think about reinstituting face-to-face visits. The second thing is I would love to have a continued conversation about the, let's call it aftercare, but the transition back into the community. You're obviously leaps ahead. I mean, when I was a state representative, one of the things that haunts me from that experience was finding out that the Department of Corrections aftercare facility was basically don't let the door hit you on the way out. They didn't connect people up with community resources. They didn't ask questions about where are you going to sleep tonight? You know, if you've got medication needs, how are those medication needs going to get filled? If you don't have a job, do you have any idea what resources are? But again, we all know then, you know, the number one of the top three ways to stop people reoffending is by having them have their needs met, and then another one is by having employment. And so I really would love to focus on going conversations about how we can not just provide services, but stress test people's answers. And again, as I spend time with people inside, a lot of them have sort of optimistic plans for reentry, let's put it that way. They think, oh, I'm gonna go stay with my brother. Well, maybe your brother doesn't want you to stay with him, and maybe he's not gonna let you stay with him. maybe that housing plan's gonna fall through. So I would love to think about stress testing inmates, reentry programs, their own ideas of where they're gonna go and making sure that they've really got all those dots crossed. I mean, T's crossed and I's dotted. The third thing I'd like to just air is, and I think this is probably not feasible, but it's a dream. I hear a lot from Kent County inmates who are facing a choice between incarceration here or incarceration in MDOC. I hear what I think is sort of tragic, which is they say, well, I'd like to go to MDOC because they have exercise yards. So they're people who are sort of asking to leave our community, crudely speaking, so they can get exercise facilities. And I know we have chin-up bars at the jail and we have some internal stuff, but it's pretty minimal. And I don't know if there's any way to think about giving folks better exercise facilities. And again, on the re-offense and the mental health part, My sister-in-law, who's a nurse, said, well, if you've got mental health challenges, you've really got three options. Therapy, medication, and exercise. And you should do all three of those. So I would love to have a conversation about how to get folks there better physical activity opportunities if the millage passes. And I know that's really, really, that's the biggest and hardest thing because we'd be talking about making new space or different space. Yeah.

And I will just say, so keep in mind a correctional facility, local jail has individuals who are largely pretrial. That's the biggest category of individuals that we have. So they're not convicted of a crime most times. We do have a very small part of our populations that are sentenced to jail. And so those are the individuals that you're talking to if you'd rather be here or go to the prison system in Michigan. The prison system, because everybody has the same status, has a lot more freedom. to move about the facility, their infrastructure is set up for everybody to have very similar needs. Where a jail has to be set up for every security type, every status in terms of pre-trial, pre-arranged sentence. We do have substantial workout facilities that are in the correctional facility, full workout areas. And we have fresh air workout facilities. And especially the individuals who are going to be there for a longer duration, if their security level allows for it, then they are generally moved to an area where they have the fresh air facilities. They play basketball. They play other games. They do have some weightlifting equipment. But it's a challenge, right? Because... It's a closed facility. I don't have a park outside that I can supervise them being moved to. I don't anticipate that even with additional funding we would get to that point. But I do want you to know we strive to allow the most day room opportunity, the most recreational opportunity that we can for everybody who's incarcerated there while still meeting the challenges of security within a jail with a variety of people who are incarcerated. But thank you so much for your comments.

And I guess you triggered a thought for me there, which is I know you let prison ministries come in. I know you have lots of community partners come in. But I've never seen anybody teaching an exercise class in the jail. So I'm just thinking. It's one thing to give people the option to use a facility. It's another thing to induce them. If we know exercise is good for people, that might be a community partnership idea.

Yeah, that would be one we'd be open to.

I'm sorry. I saw Commissioner Kilgore-Fortsman. Maybe it's just because he raised his hand higher, Commissioner Knight, but I'll acknowledge him first.

Thank you, Sheriff, so much for your presentation and being here with us today. I have two questions for you. First is in regard to the most burning question we had. I know I personally had a few county commissioners reach out to us before this was really public to They felt like it was very much rushed through and very quick on them because it didn't go through the usual committee process I can't speak to that County because I'm a city commissioner, but once we got once I received that and talked about in community the most important thing that folks are reaching out to me about is what is the average annual cost per household that residents can expect from the proposed millage increase and So that's my first question.

About $24 per year increase per $100,000 of taxable value.

Thank you so much. That's really the burning question of, I think, you know, I have so many constituents. It's not that they don't care, but they're working two and three jobs, and they're like, I'm barely affording things. Gas is $5. What does this mean for me? I want a health. You know, neighbors want to help, but the dollars and cents are so important right now. So thank you for your answer on that. And then lastly, I'm a proud son of a juvenile probation officer. She just retired 30 years from the county. So congratulations on your retirement. And I'm sure you'll be like her and not retire for real. and still want to work and things and help people. But that's a good thing. But we talked about some of the specific needs that you could foresee the sort of adult facility needing, but are there any more details on what the juvenile detention facility needs possibly moving forward in the future?

Yeah, so they share our medical services. We provide medical and psychological services to both facilities. So this is a major need for them, although they don't have a facility need in terms of providing that that service they you know, obviously the function of it is going to have ongoing changes that will happen over time as medical procedures improve or as psychological needs may develop so They will be served by the operating cost and again much of the Building that they're currently operating out of is relatively new within the last I'm gonna say seven years, but I'm guessing on that so if anybody's checking the math But it's the last handful of years so this bond this bond is still being paid and would continue to be paid with this detention millage and So repairs to their facility would also become something that they'll start to see. Really at about the 10-year mark, some of these facilities need to be improved and repaired. But beyond that, I don't see a specific expansion for juvenile detention.

Thank you very much, and thanks again for being here. Of course.

Thank you.

Commissioner Knight. Commissioner Kilgore actually asked the question that I had, so thank you.

Right on. Commissioner Sasse and then Commissioner Perdue.

Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. Thank you Mayor and colleagues for asking those questions. Those are those are as well the questions particularly about the visiting for those that might be there for you know understand it might not be for everybody because of the time frame but those longer periods. So my question is could we go to the slide It had a little caveat and said this is not on the ballot language where it relates to the municipal booking fee structure that is being proposed in this. Maybe this is more of a question for my colleagues up here with the city attorney and city manager. We got that question, right? There's a cost savings, but again, I think the The concern I, too, have is what does that look like for an individual in our community, for my constituents? I don't think this is the slide. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. So the proposed municipal fee framework is separate from the ballot language and will be subject to separate county action before implementation. So for me, this is concerning because – so we have something right now. We're saying this new proposal, should the voters decide to approve it, would replace this, but then I see this here. So that's what I'm struggling a little bit with, colleagues. How do I know what I can count on if this is going to be subject to different action? So that's one. Do you have –

Oh, I was going to say maybe we want our city manager to weigh in on this too and answer your question.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. This actually might be more of a question for them versus the sheriff. So what does that look like? I also wondered if we could go to the slide where it has what are, you know, the $500 and something thousand dollars. Just going to round it up, you know. If I had $500,000 in my pocket, but that $547,000, what has been the cost over the last three years to the city of Grand Rapids? Do you know what the previous two years were? Relatively similar. They're your phoning a friend. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yes, Commissioner, I came prepared. I looked at the last two fiscal years, fiscal year 25 and 26.

Okay.

We budgeted $471,000 in FY25 and $646,000 in FY26. Okay. We exceeded the budget both of those years with a grand total of $637,000 in FY25. Okay. This is about $166,000 more than we anticipated. Okay. Okay. And FY26, we spent a total of $764. That's both the lodging and the booking.

Okay.

But about $118 over budget.

Could that be shared with us, too, just as a follow-up? Thank you. That's helpful. Okay. And then, you know, my question, and this is, again, maybe this is more for our county colleagues or for the administration. And I know, City Manager, you stay in close contact with the county administrator. But if the county is a mandated function, if the jail is a mandated function of the county... Mm-hmm. What has Kent County supported year over year for the last couple of years outside of this? Because I'm thinking for us as a city, we have a capital fund, right? So we make a plan that we know our assets are probably going to need some replacement. Now I understand obviously there's this co-work here, but there also is this mandated function of the county because I'm thinking about our mandated responsibility of the court system. which has gone up increasingly, at least in the last seven years that I have been here. I think maybe even before then it was we were in the single digits. You know the numbers?

It was $1 million a year when I was on city commission. It was $1 million, wow. Now we're up to like 13 or something.

Yes, we're close to 13. Those are some of the questions that I have for myself as well as a colleague up here is we also have mandated requirements. We have not sought out any additional support outside of what is in our general operating fund. I would say thank you to those courts that have, you know, worked to try to reduce expenses. So I'm really trying to understand where is the county – what has been that – contribution of the county year over year and how does that reflect because I think sometimes we get stuck in the binary this either gets approved or it doesn't get approved right but I also understand what you're saying about um the need for mental health facilities the the the challenging environment those that are probably coming through and if they are coming through on a regular basis as you said you're seeing these um you know really consistent health issues that, I mean, that's no surprise at all to any of us, I think, up here, right? I can only imagine. I've had to work, and I've worked with you in the past when I've had an individual in my own family who was trying to understand their mental health needs as they were being held in the facility. I can only imagine what that looks like for the 1,000 people every single day. But I also am trying to weigh out what are our responsibilities as a city. So if you have that, or if that can be a follow-up with the administrator?

See, on the screen right now, I have our current budget. It's about $56.93 million annually goes to operate the county jail, and roughly 43.7% of that is collected by the millage. All other resources are the general fund. So, and I will also say this has been in place now since 1990. So the facility grew up based on having this structure in place. It was intended to be the fund to develop the programming that met the inmates' needs. 1990, probably not too many of you guys were around at that point, but we were under a federal mandate because we didn't have a facility that was substantial enough to house the number of inmates that we had. We had no medical programming. We had no psychological programming. Somebody took us to federal court. They mandated release of inmates or transfer of inmates to other locations. When I started at the correctional facility, every day were lines in the halls with people with their bag of personal items that were being shipped. to places other than Kent County because we couldn't house them in the county jail. So with this millage being passed, they built the 92 facility, which are the round buildings that you see, added the capacity to house the number of people that we needed. Also did the central booking that we talked about, which again is a substantial amount of money that we're paying to centrally book people and that's part of why we had a millage because that was not a mandated function to do and then added the services and ongoing operating support and at the time it was intended to be roughly 50% of the annual general operating that has now slipped to 43.7 as and I think I showed you a graph of This is what we're seeing with health and food costs in this last several years Just like we are all at our home budget seeing those increases. That's what we're seeing so the county has done quite a bit to try to make sure that our services are sufficient for the people who we serve within the walls of Kent County Sheriff's Correctional Facility. But there are only so many resources to go around. So this would, if it didn't pass, remove funding that has been there for the last 38 years.

Mayor. Thank you. This is just a follow-up on your point on that slide on slide number seven. Can you go back to that one, Sheriff, please? Thank you for being here today. Can you just clarify that amount of the millage support again? So what you show is 24.8. You mentioned the 50% intent when it first passed, but that last part of the chart where it shows the current millage rate of 0.7332, the narrative shows 28.2%. Almost 28.7 million. So reconcile the 28.7 with the 24.8, if you could.

You know, I want to just say first that I went into law enforcement because I can't do math. So making me do math in front of all these people. I'm just going to start there. So if I have an adjustment in my adding skills. So if you see our general operating budget, 56.9, and take away from that the 28.67 million that is currently provided. And then account for the $3.8 million that is servicing current bonds. That's how we got to the percentage that is currently coming from the millage to go to general operating. And then, of course, the balance then comes from county general fund. Very few grants, I will throw that out, that there are, you know, like the straddle cells that you talked about, if somebody might have a choice, a SCAP grant that pays for that. probably total about $1.5 million annually in different grant funding that would go to some programming, some DOC responsible inmates, but largely this comes out of the County General Fund.

But I just want to clarify, when you take the operating support for the millage and the debt service combined, then that's roughly half of the total operating budget. But when you back out the debt service, that's how you get less than 50%. Yes.

And again, that debt service largely right now is the juvenile detention facility.

Great. So to... Commissioner Sasse's point, we issue debt service sometimes without millage-funded revenue, and I think that point well made. Thank you.

Commissioner Perdue, but before I do that, Sheriff, you threw out a technical term there. So since we're for the folks at home, straddle cell means people who have sentencing guidelines calculated at whatever point in the process that indicates that they could either be housed in the jail for their sentence or go to prison. So those are folks that inside the industry we refer to as straddle cell people. But that's Some people have to be lodged in the jail. I mean, that's just mathematically what's going to happen. And the break-off point is more or less than a year on their sentence usually.

Right.

Commissioner Prude.

Yes, thank you. Thank you, Sheriff, for being here. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you, colleagues, for the discussion thus far. I want to second Commissioner Yasasi's. I noticed that item on slide four around the municipal fee framework as well. So I think that's really important that it wouldn't be codified if this passes, right? Especially given some of the other changes that have come from the Kent County Board of Commissioners related to millages. Um, the other thing I want to point out related to finances is though this will be projected to save the city around half a million dollars a year. It would cost our residents an extra $2 million a year. So it's really a net loss or net, you know, increase for our residents as a whole. Um, whether you account kind of what we save or not. So I just want to make that clear. Like this is that, that this will be a significant increase on residents, particularly related to property tax or our homeowners. And I think the increases in property tax in many ways are a really good sign of a healthy economy, but particularly in our urban core are really posing challenges around affordability with such drastic increases. So I want to point that out. Relatedly, or I guess that leads to my question for you, Sheriff, you talked a lot about the medical needs. And, you know, it's interesting. There's only two places that medical care is mandated in our country, the emergency room and when you're in jail. Right. So I appreciate that that the model for corrections and detention has not just included it or mandated it, but that you're thinking about quality and comprehensive services and really meeting the current needs and our trends of folks. So with that, I'm wondering, have you all discussed in an aspirational way or in a more committal way, if this millage passes, how much of that will actually be allocated to those wraparound services, those diversion services, and that comprehensive and even complex medical care that you've highlighted today?

So... Aspirationally, I don't have an exact percentage except for to say as much as it's going to cost. We are providing the service to the fullest extent that we can given our physical challenges. But we've worked very closely with providers to try to develop strategies to improve that service delivery even given our physical issues. But one of the examples I'll give, dialysis. We're providing the dialysis within the correctional facility right now. That's actually new this year. And that's one of the examples of a treatment procedure that has to happen multiple times a week for several hours every time. So no improved funding, I can manage two dialysis patients within the correctional facility, which then keeps them from having to go out, get out for the day, be kept out for the entire day, be brought back to corrections officers. But any given time, I might have five people who need dialysis that are incarcerated in our facility. Often we do. So the other three people I can't accommodate within the correctional facility. So we're left to choose who are the most fragile health, where going out of the facility is probably going to impact them the most. We choose who we can serve in that way within the facility, but every single person gets served regardless. They're all treated, yeah. But reasonably, if our facility was optimized, after the investment, we expect a million to $1.5 million reduction in costs because of services we won't have to contract outside corrections officers' time. And that improves the system for more services, but more specifically, it slows the growth of the cost that eventually is passed on to the taxpayers. And so I think that's what a taxpayer would expect to see that Improvements will be very carefully evaluated. They will center around the facility improvements for medical psychological delivery they will also center around some logistical improvements for video courts and visitation with attorneys because we do have some gaps there too although they're not significant enough to be the the subject of this this detention millage conversation they are there so you'll see us making some of those improvements all of which one improve the care to improve the operations of the facility but three also save future growth dollars yeah

Thank you. And related to that, so we've had the, I was going to talk about the specialty courts, but I'm reminding that we hold that at 61st District. However, I know the county, through our dollars, are very supportive of that. So as those dollars look to sunset, do you see kind of support for those specialty courts continuing through millage dollar.

So I certainly hope that specialty courts continue to grow. We've seen tremendous success. Also other specialty courts that are in the area, mental health specialty court is one. Veterans Specialty court is another, but detention millage dollars don't contribute to those funds. However, general fund dollars can, and that is one of the impacts that might be there if a hole is created in the general fund dollars by not having the millage that supports the correctional facility the way it has.

Okay.

Yeah.

Thank you. I think, you know, my thoughts on that, I think, again, like particularly that medical care piece is so important. Some of my concerns with the proposal as is, well, first I want to remind everyone that in the presentation the sheriff said that if this doesn't, I mean, this is set to end in 2020. So if it doesn't pass, there will be another opportunity to take this to the voters. And we've heard from the Kent County Board of Commissioners, a decent segment of them, that they feel like this was rushed and there wasn't extensive planning and engagement with community around this. particularly given that we still have another three years. So I share some of those sentiments, and I think about the voters in Grand Rapids who are used to kind of like the GRPS millage or the zoo museum millage, and there's typically a pretty specific plan for those dollars. There's still some flexibility, but there's a pretty well-defined plan and goals with those that I don't necessarily see here, and that's what I've heard the feedback from Kent County commissioners, and I think that probably won't bode well within the city limits. I'm curious, Sheriff, if this passes, what percentage of that round up to $25 million will actually be coming from the city of Grand Rapids proper? I don't have that total, but we can get that total for you. Yeah, I'm just curious. Is it 30%, 10%, 80%? I'm just thinking about population size. So I think that will be an interesting data point to have. And when I think about our residents here, D.C. Maycroft mentioned the JustGR work. I've actually not been on that committee for the last year and a few months when I left my last employer, but I'm really invested in that work still. And so when they... They presented it to us recently. They pointed out one of their findings was really an over-reliance on arrest and pretrial custody. Specifically, their analysis revealed that 45% of all admissions to the jail are booked, placed in custody, processed, and released within 24 hours. And within the city of Grand Rapids, a third of our jail admissions are concentrated in seven neighborhoods. Many of them are in our ward, Commissioner Kilgore's. including Sika, Madison, Baxter. So it begs the question of, and I will also say one of the findings from that report is there's not a lot of options and alternatives outside of arrests for a lot of those kind of non-violent, low-risk offenses. So I think we have some real gaps in our system that is causing high expenses, right, and should be addressed. And I think could and should be part of this more comprehensive conversation around corrections and detention. So I guess that's the majority I wanted to share. I guess the other thing financially that I wanted to point out, because we're You know, we're talking about the financial impact. And, you know, I am concerned about the lack of, you know, I think, again, I asked about aspirational versus committal because I think that's really important, particularly what just happened with the county and the zoo museum millage. The county decided not to honor the 50-50 share that we had brought to the voters. And so that means that our general fund, our museum, is going to have a $27 million share production and what we would expect from voters. So though we'll have this small savings relatively of half a million dollars, $500,000, our residents will be paying $2 million a year and we're losing $27 million over the course of this other millage because of decisions. So I think that some of these public conversations and the framing and particularly the rush around this has really eroded some of the trust. And particularly given the three-year horizon, my encouragement is that our residents really take a look at that and decide if this will best service our needs. And do we want to say no now to get more clarity around the use? How much of it will be dedicated to these comprehensive wraparound services? to make sure that folks can be successful when they come back out and they're not further traumatized from being incarcerated. So those are my concerns. I guess my ask and my call to action for this body is I wonder if we might consider taking this up in legislative committee and see if we want to issue formal support or not for this proposal for this fall.

All right. Commissioner Belichick.

Yeah, with that, so I just, yeah, so we can hear more on that later. And I'll be curious, colleagues, if that's of interest to you. But those are my concerns. Again, I appreciate the presentation, and I appreciate kind of the thought around how do we make sure we have facilities and care that meets the needs of folks. But I think there's a lot of kind of outstanding questions that are really important, particularly from the Grand Rapids point of view. So thank you.

Commission Belcher.

Before anyone speaks on the last part, I just ask the city attorney to assess feasibility of that since that is pending ballot language at this point. It's not?

The ballot language, I think, has been set.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Commission Belcher.

Well, thank you for that because that was kind of one of my questions. I can't find the ballot language right now because it's not on the Michigan website yet. Is it publicly available somewhere? I can't speak to that directly, but we'll get you it. That would be very helpful to see specifically since we do have these questions. I think that Commissioner Perdue covered a large amount of what I was going to bring up. I, too, have the Adjust GR presentation in front of me and was looking at these numbers again with the – the way we are policing in Grand Rapids currently and utilizing the jail. You know, it is something where, you know, residents do need to consider carefully what their plans are or how they would like to vote because in Grand Rapids, you know, we're paying for policing. So that's part of, you know, people's taxes. And then also then county taxes. sheriff through this as well. And that's not always true of every property owner in the county since rural areas may or may not have their own police force and then use the sheriff instead. I don't want to say double tax, but sometimes it feels like it. We have two different services getting, you know, therefore we're paying twice. And I share a lot of these same concerns that my commissioner fellow colleagues have brought up. And I think, like I said, Commissioner Perdue covered quite a lot of it. I would be very interested in knowing what kind of plan, what kind of budget, what kind of, you know, I think people are asking those questions when I'm hearing that out there in the community right now. And it's nice to be able to say we would like money. I mean, I would like money, too. I would love to do some home repairs and fix up my 1880s home. You know, I don't really have a plan on what that would cost yet, but... You know, it would be nice to have my bank give me some money. And the people are the bank here. So I care a lot about making sure that inmates are treated well, that they get the care they need, that they have facilities that are not run down, that we have our sheriff officers back. You know, working in facilities that are safe and that they have the pay that they need and whatnot. But I do think that it is incumbent upon the county commission to be able to say this is how we plan to spend the money and to have had some sort of preliminary approvals of that bill. to be able to go to the public. And as an elected official, that's what I would ask my fellow colleagues at the county commission to do. And anything you can do from your department to be able to facilitate that would probably be a good thing. So I would second what Commissioner Perdue said about having this be something we discuss further in legislative committee. And I will leave my thoughts there for now.

Sure. I just want to clarify because perhaps I didn't cover it thoroughly. There is a very specific plan to improve the medical delivery space, the psychological delivery space. Those are the physical locations in the correctional facility that have to be replaced. So although I can tell you there was a study done that was $38 million-ish To fix it at that point in order to actually come up with plans to do the facility It's several million dollars to have those drawn up and obviously we're not inclined to spend several million dollars Towards a goal that we may or may not be able to accomplish without the improved funding So I don't want it to seem as though well we'd like to do some stuff here and like to do some stuff there and Specifically, we have a gap in physical footprint to provide services in the most appropriate, efficient way. And that's the physical need that is part of this question. The rest of it, there's a lot of... budget history and trending that we can show. We have a public budget every year that I have to very specifically outline not only my aspirational goals but my actual feet hit the ground. This is what we're spending our money on and that budget is already projected for next year and will be passed likely in September. I do appreciate that Some people maybe feel like this is more of a rushed process. I'll assure you though that the numbers have been vetted over and over again by financial staff at the county. A number of commissioners, in fact every commissioner sat through very specific presentations before this was ever brought to a question and we're not just swagging at how much we need. We can show a growth trend that we predict will very much be there in the future and will cause a gap in services that we can effectively provide to include wraparound services which aren't part of our mandate. but very much cost money, but are necessary and there are tremendous investments for our community. So I advocate that you consider the investment for the community that is served by our correctional facility and try to understand the services that won't be there for them beyond the mandated services if we don't, as a group, collectively make a plan for how we want our community to be served. So with that, I'd say thank you for your comments, both of you.

And thank you for the clarity. That's actually helpful. I think that this is part of what happens when things do feel a little rushed, is that the community, and even in the conversation like we're having here publicly, isn't necessarily as clear as we want it to be. And it is also the kind of thing where when we look at how that ballot works, proposal, the actual wording on the ballot will be given, people will be reading that, and whether they understand it or not will be another thing, you know, but when you can say we're asking for X number of mills, but, you know, this many of those mills is dedicated to this project that is already a known quantity, then it's clearer, but again, this is part of what I would hold the county commission to making sure that it's done. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Mayor, I did one other remark. I didn't get to finish my thought. So again, Sheriff, thank you. I was not expecting this level of in-depth conversation, but this is very important. I just want to clarify for the commission the fiscal impact that we've been talking about, certainly for the voters, but for the city. To, again, remind the, I think the point that's made earlier, we subsidize our general use of general fund dollars for the courts, almost $10 million a year. We have overtime costs in the police department, partly due to transporting of people to the jail. And this would certainly provide some fiscal relief. What I do appreciate about the model, after speaking with the sheriff, is at least my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, the revision of the no per diem and the increased booking fee, Somehow, I think there's plans to more equitably allocate the costs of jails around the county and not just right now. There's a large portion of which the six cities are picking up as a fee that the other communities are not. So would this help to offset some of the costs the six cities are contributing and spread additional costs around the county to help support jail operations?

Let me hit that for a little bit. So let me just talk specifically about the per diem first, which is the part that's going away if this model is passed. Per diem basically provides a portion of the bill for the entire stay for the duration of time that you have a local charge. So let me put that into a real life application because it doesn't make any sense. it doesn't make any sense without that. So if GRPD arrests somebody and they're charged with a local offense, anything under the city statutes instead of the state statutes, they're lodged at the correctional facility. When they get there, we find that they have a number of warrants. Some of them are state charges, some of them are from other jurisdictions. Let's imagine there's five total charges. One of them is the city of Grand Rapids. So the city of Grand Rapids pays one-fifth of $50.46 for every day that they have one of those charges. Well, they don't all come and go at the same time. So now they go to the city of Kentwood and they clear up their charge. with Kentwood Court and now they come back. Well now you're one of four agencies, so your bill goes incrementally up a little bit. And then maybe the state charge is dispensed with. You're the only person, the only entity left with a charge. You're paying the whole bill. Please explain to me how you would predict that and how you would budget that. Because I haven't been able to figure out how to predict it and budget for that. Those numbers swing wildly. $150,000 from one year to the next year. It's very complicated for a local entity to impact it, provide for it. Because again, this is a lagging indicator. You can... make a change to your city statute, but you have outstanding charges from three years ago. So you don't know when that person's gonna be arrested and all of a sudden now they're paying this per diem. I think it was a very good effort of trying to come up with a cost sharing strategy when the county was essentially taking on something they didn't have to take on. They don't have to lodge local charge inmates at all. And in fact, in many locations they don't do it at all. Meaning you would, you would have to lodge them in your own lockup to a great expense. It was an effort to try to cost share equitably, but really over the last 40 years it's become so complicated to apply, predict, manage, that we're advocating your city's already paying their share of a millage. They should get this as part of their share of a millage. That's why we're advocating it goes away. Now there is a booking fee. The booking fee is the cost that it takes to get somebody fingerprinted, mug shotted. The original booking information process, which are required, it's that seed that then goes back to your police department that creates their police report, saves them from having to reenter that. goes to your court to start that charge. So they don't have to wonder, I guess, who's gonna show up for court today because we don't know who got arrested. So all that booking process, it obviously takes a bit for us to one, support the technology to do it, supervise the individuals to do it, but also be available for surge needs that might arrive. I'll give an example. You have a large event where there's a lot of people in the city of Grand Rapids, and because there's more people, there's going to be more arrests. Guess who has to staff up every time that happens, the Kent County Jail? You don't get a bill because I have people on standby. We charge 10% of the cost, booking fee, the rest comes out of the county general fund. as part of our budget. Now we can, with all the communities together, we can budget a lot better because I know there's going to be a surge in one community every weekend. I can guarantee it. So we provide for that, but it's not something you can easily provide for on your own. If you had your own city lockup and you have large events, they're going to have to staff up to provide security outside. At the same time, they're staffing up to provide security for the people who are being processed. And whether you're lodged or not lodged, you have to be processed. There has to be a set of fingerprints taken and a mugshot taken in the state of Michigan to create a charge that can go to court. So that process has to happen regardless. And looking for a way to do it well, do it with the right services for every human being that comes in contact with the justice system, doing that well, it does cost money. It is somewhat predictable when you do it en masse, and I'd say it represents a value for your community. That will cause a gap in value for your community if somehow a detention millage isn't passed to make sure that we can continue to do that. It is the financial obligation of every local community for the booking process, $250 per person, just as an example, and that's what it cost me. I bet it would cost you more because you can't serve as effectively in one community. It is your financial responsibility to care up until that time of arraignment, and then obviously if it's a city charge, even past arraignment, it's your financial obligation. Again, that's part of the value to your citizens. By participating in the millage, that fund is collected on a county-wide basis, it's proportionate for the entire county, and then we're able to supply that service without an itemized cost for every community. And again, we're trying to improve that formula, modernize, I might use the word, but I will say I talked to other sheriffs and who don't have centralized booking and they wish they did. Other cities who are running lockups, if you have any contacts of your counterparts throughout the state, ask them what it's like to run a lockup, the cost of running a lockup where you have to book and process your own individuals and keep them safe and cared for until after arraignment. It is a huge cost and again I welcome any further conversations on what more we can do to divert individuals so that they're not incarcerated but keep in mind that processing part of it is still always going to have to happen. We still need to know what's the name and identification of the person that we're dealing with in front of us so that they can be properly diverted to after court. Did I answer your question, Mr. Manager? All right, with that.

Thank you. So I want to close with one more thing. We talked about voting today, and we talked about our welcoming policy, and now we've been talking about incarceration. And I think that those three things all sort of touch each other, and so I want to... read briefly a statement that I made to the, put out to the media on Friday, at least in part. And I want to point out that I also want to note that I spent, we talked about welcoming this morning, but part of the, part of welcoming of course is addressing real feelings of safety. And I spent a good chunk of my weekend actually out with an African diaspora community's observations and celebrations because they asked for people to be present there and address their concerns about safety at this point in our history. So I think this is a stressful time in the United States. It does feel to me like we are a long way away from the dream of the Statue of Liberty, that immigrants are welcomed, celebrated, and respected by everyone. Instead, I think it's real that immigrants are constantly the focus of fear and hate-based attacks, falsely scapegoated on issues as different as crime rates and election results. I think that since becoming mayor, I've been trying to be very clear that my top priority is to keep all of our residents safe and keep Grand Rapids a truly welcoming community, particularly for immigrant residents, and I know that those are concerns and foundational values of everybody up on this diet. As we do the work of supporting each other at this time, there's bad news and there's good news. The bad news is that we're sometimes unable to stop the actions of our federal government since the federal government can sometimes simply override the wishes of our residents and our city policies. The good news is that we can continue to try to craft city policies that implement our welcoming values. There's been a lot of misinformation in the community and online recently about Grand Rapids policies as they relate to federal immigration activities. That misinformation is causing fear and uncertainty in the community, particularly among those who need the truth the most right now. We all have the same goal, to protect our neighbors. They deserve clear and accurate information and real support. So I want to be clear about some key points in Grand Rapids policies that affect our immigrant neighbors and all of our residents. caught up in a national campaign that targets immigrants. Grand Rapids does not take action on federal civil immigration warrants standing alone. We have a specific policy on this. It's GRPD policy 7-12.1. Grand Rapids will not enter into any 287G agreements to have our public safety personnel deputized by ICE. We have three policies that would prohibit any such agreements. City Commission Policy 600-17, our Grand Rapids Human Ordinance Policy Title 9 Chapter 176, and Grand Rapids Police Department's Foreign Nationalist Policy. Grand Rapids does not operate detention centers. While we cannot control federal actions with zoning policies, the city does not operate detention facilities for violations of local, state, or federal laws. Moreover, we have a clear policy closely mirroring policies of other cities such as Ann Arbor and Chicago preventing our public safety employees from assisting ICE agents in ICE investigations. Our employees do, however, have a duty to keep our city and our streets safe, but our policies prohibit them from engaging in investigative work with ICE. There will always be more work to do to make our city feel more welcoming and open. I'm happy about the recent progress we've made in defining and restricting surveillance in our city around license plate reading cameras. Any surveillance raises the risk of misuse over surveillance or information being shared too broadly. In the past few weeks, I and we have engaged in conversations with advocates and experts, and I have argued that the first step in addressing concerns is to place license plate reading cameras under our city's surveillance policy. which we first crafted to control the use of drones, among other things. The city will now place license plate readers under our community surveillance policy, effectively placing a moratorium on new cameras without commission approval and limiting use, requiring reporting with clear channels to report concerns about misuse. In the coming months, I hope we'll craft a clear city policy limiting the sharing of license plate information and explore alternatives to the current vendor. Grand Rapids is a city for everyone. Everyone deserves to feel loved, belonging, and in safety. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, dignity, and have their rights protected. So if anyone in our community sees anything happening that they believe does not align with our policies, I ask you to report it to the Office of Oversight and Public Accountability or to GRPD itself. Speaking up allows our policies to be protections people can actually rely on rather than words on a page. believe that we are doing our best and we will continue to try to do better. Thank you.