Village Council - Regular Meeting

tonight. And out of out of respect to Mr. Mater, I'd like to give everyone a couple of minutes to mingle, leave if that's what you came for, and then we will resume. We'll resume at 6:05. It is 602. You can stand

Yes. Yep. I'm just gonna help this young gentleman. I know I said 605, but sometimes this council is like hurting cats.

Um, one of our councilmen is having a medical emergency. As most of you know, we just got served and that causes some people some anxiety. I will entertain a motion to excuse Councilman Ryan. We have a motion by Costco. Going once, going twice. I will second it. We have a second by Cole. Clerk, will you call the role, please? Yes. Yes.

Yes. Motion carried. I'm gonna hold off on entertaining a motion for Wendell to see if he makes it back in here or not, I suppose.

Okay. All right. This brings us to the approval of our consent agenda. All items listed under consent agenda are considered routine and non-controversial by the village council and will be approved by one motion. There will be no separate discussion. If discussion is desired, that item will be removed from the consent agenda and discussed separately immediately after consent agenda approval in its normal sequence on the regular agenda. Lisa, could you please read this lengthy consent agenda? I'm so sorry. Aval council minutes of February 10th, 2026. C acknowledgement of receipt of historic district commission minutes of September 11th, 2025. D. Acknowledgement of receipt of historic district commission minutes of November 13, 2025. E. Acknowledgement of receipt of historic district commission minutes minutes of December 11th, 2025. F. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of January 8th, 2025. G. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of February 5th, 2025. H. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of March 5th, 2025. I acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of April 2nd, 2025. J. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of May 7th, 2025. K. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of June 4th, 2025. L. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of July 2nd, 2025. M. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of August 6, 2025. N acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of September 3rd, 2025. O. Acknowledgement of receipt of

parks commission minutes of October 1st, 2025. P. Acknowledgement of receipt of parks commission minutes of January 7th, 2026. Q. Acknowledgement or receipt of planning commission minutes of November 19th, 2025. R. Acknowledgement of receipt of zoning board of appeals minutes of June 2nd, 2025. S. Approval of M's defined contribution adoption agreement for department heads adding the DDA director job description. T acknowledgement of receipt of planning commission annual report for 2025. U acknowledgement of receipt of zoning board of appeals annual report for 2025. V consideration of approval of the amended fiscal year 2025-2026 feed schedule. W acknowledgement of award of Ronald Tree trimming for services. Acknowledgement of receipt of groundskeeping request for proposal with the submission deadline of April 18th, 2026. Why? Consideration of resolution and proclamation 2026-8 designating Morris Fain day and Arbor Day on April 24th, 2026. Z. Consideration of the approval of resolution 2026-9 authorizing West Nile virus fund expense reimbursement request aa consideration of the approval of warrant 2026-3 in the amount of $319,5783. Got this. Is that all? Do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda?

I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. We have a motion by Wein Brener. We have a second by Ky. Clerk, will you please call the call the role? Pascal, yes. Wineer, yes. Cole, yes. Ker, yes. Wendell wasn't present at that time. Brandon, yes. We have a quorum. Motion carried. Presentations. That brings us to this evening's presentations. Could I please have the family of Tim Hart and Tim Hart and his friends approach the podium? Oh, did I say that? Tom Hart.

Is it Tom or is it Tim? It's Tom. It's Tom. Tomart. Tim. It is Tim Hart. Okay. So then I had I had it right. All right. Okay, Tim. Tim had it wrong. Buster, is Tim here? Yeah, he's here. Where's he at? Oh, yeah. Come on up to the podium. How are you, Tim? Okay, you can just stand at that podium right there. And any any friends or family you have with you can join you. One thing, I don't know if anybody else can't hear you, but I know I can't. Got it. I will keep that in mind. Thank you for that. All right. So Tess

Buster Wein Brener nominated Tim Hart for a key to the village of Holly. This means a lot to Buster and he's asked me to read on his behalf. But know that this comes from him. I didn't have the honor of knowing Tim or working with Tim. Tim Hart has given 44 years of his life to the village of Holly through his work at the Department of Public Works. That kind of quiet, steady dedication is the backbone of any community. Tim has more than earned this honor. On behalf of the privilege, On behalf of the village, it is my privilege to present him with a key to the village, a small symbol of our deep gratitude for decades of service, reliability, and care for this community. Tim, thank you for everything you have done for Holly. Buster, you and will somebody please take pictures?

Yes. Tim, in the recognition of 44 years of dedicated service to the village, Department of Public Works UTM art your steady commitment has helped build, maintain, strengthen this community in ways that will generations. respect. Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Here, I'll put it right there. My phone's on my chair. It's okay. We got Oh, now

here in case um but over the time I worked here, I really enjoyed it. I would come right back to work now. I love my job. And if I was late, if I wasn't in my chair at 10 minutes too, Ken knew I wasn't coming in and it was probably to go fishing. And I appreciate this. And thank you very much. Thank you,

Danny. Get his application before he leaves. Thank you for all hard work. We have one more presentation this evening. All right. Next, we have Lloyd. Will you and your lovely wife please approach the podium? Oh, I finally get to meet the man behind the name.

Tonight, we have the honor of recognizing someone whose service to this community has never been loud, but it has been constant. Lloyd Bingham III is a retired technical sergeant from the United States Air Force, serving from 1985 to 2012, including during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Just Cause Joint Force, and Enduring Freedom. After serving his country, he continued serving his community for more than two decades. Lloyd has been an active member of both the American Legion and the VFW. He has given 10 years to Dickens Festival efforts, seven years with the Holly Historical Society, 10 years supporting Friends of the Library, and has also served locally through church and volunteer work. Earlier in his life, he volunteered with the Holly Ambulance, even even worked as a part-time dispatcher for Holly PD. Lloyd represents something simple but powerful, the belief that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.

Oh, no. On behalf of the village of Holly and I am choked up, Amber will take it over. On behalf of the village of Holly, I'm soulless so I can do this. It is my privilege. That's good. I like that. That's why we like the truth comes out. On behalf of the village of Holly, it is my privilege to present Lloyd with this plaque in recognition in of his decades of service to his country and to our community. Lloyd, thank you for continuing to show up for Holly.

Thank you. Presidential recognition for community service presented to Ly Bingham the third in grateful recognition of your decades of service to both country and community and for your lasting contributions to the Holly community. Your commitment reflects the very best of public service. We're Trees. Thank you very Thank you, April. Thank you.

Sure. Thank you, Lord, for everything you do. Bud

Blade was one of the first veterans that welcomed me to town along with Joe Mishler when I moved here. I think Joe welcomes everybody to town. I think that's true. Okay, our next presentation will be by Robert Wittenberg from the Oakland County Treasurer's Office on foreclosure prevention. Good evening, everyone. Uh, do we have the presentation? Yep, there we go. Oh, man. It looks like it's all doctorred up. It the the font looks great. I didn't change anything. That's funny. Something happened to it. Uh, your staff did this. Okay. I didn't touch it.

They're playing a joke on me here. I can't I can't even see that part. Um, well, I appreciate you all having me here. Uh, I think I was here two years ago on this exact topic. Uh, I try to get to as many communities as possible. Um, it's impossible to get to all. There's 62 cities, villages, and townships throughout Oakland County, more than any other county in the state. Um, so I try to get to as many as I can to talk about our work and try to prevent foreclosure. Uh it's the you know I'll talk a little bit about the three-year tax cycle um the resources that we have to try to help uh and then answer any questions that you all have. So I'll try to be quick because I know you said you have a long agenda this evening. So um we'll move forward. Thank you. I'll I'll trust you here. So uh this kind of talks about the the timeline here. Um year one delinquency, year two forfeite, year three is foreclosure. So let me give you that in terms of uh actual years. So this year in 2026, uh March 31st, and March 31st is the foreclosure deadline every year, unless it falls on a weekend, but March 31st is the foreclosure deadline for anyone that owes 2023 and prior taxes. So in 2023, uh your taxes would have been build. Uh and then if you don't pay your taxes by So those 23s, if you didn't pay by March 1st of 24, they get turned over to the county treasur as delinquent. If you don't pay them by the next year on March 1st of 25, they're forfeited, which in essence means there's just a lean put on the property and the interest rate changes. And then if you don't pay, obviously by March 31st of this year, you can be foreclosed. But why I'm out here doing these meetings and talking to many as many people throughout the community as possible is that we are trying to prevent foreclosure. I always tell people our our jo our job, our goal in our office is what? We're gonna stay back at that last page real quick. Our our goal That's all right. our goal and our job in our office um is to collect taxes, not uh foreclose. So, we're trying to do everything we can. So, that kind of talks about the years and then on the right it talks about the various

notifications. Those are the statutoily required notifications that go to all the properties if they're delinquent in their taxes. Um we actually send more above and beyond that. Like I said, we're doing a real robust outreach to let people know that they're delinquent in their taxes and uh that there's help available and try to prevent foreclosure. It also lists the different fees that are added uh and interest that's added. It can add up really quickly. So, um you don't want to get behind. Uh the the interest and fees are all statutory. They are from state law. So, we have no control over them. Um so, we encourage people to pay it off on the bottom there. Real quick, it just talks about the uh claim the claim period. So, it used to be that if you were foreclosed, you lost everything. That was it. You were in the dark. Uh and then what happened? And I actually served as a uh before coming Oakland County Treasurer, I was a state representative. And when I was serving in the legislature, we actually voted to change the law so that if you are foreclosed, uh you can submit a claim form and then you're entitled to surplus proceeds. So if you were foreclosed and the taxes, interest, fees is $10,000 and then the house sells for $100,000 at auction, you're entitled to that $90,000. So there was a lawsuit prior to my time. Um, and so that's the way to make sure that people can get their, you know, equity in the house. So, uh, we'll move on to the next one. Thank you for that. So, this is to give you kind of a broad, uh, overview of what it looks like for the county. Uh, there are about 500,000 parcels in Oakland County. So, this here we're talking about 2022 tax year for TA foreclosure year of 25. So, last year was the foreclosure year. It's the last cycle that we have the complete data. So, in 2020 for 2022 taxes on March 1st of 2023, that's that top number, 41,000 nearly uh 41,498 turned over delinquent to our office. So, again, they didn't pay to the village, township, whatever it might be. Uh and it got turned over to us. 39,77,

that's the number that actually paid in full. So, they were not at risk of foreclosure because they paid in full. Uh 1287, uh that's the number of taxpayer uh repayment plans that we got people on. So we can't forgive your taxes, your interest fee, interest or fees. We can't lower them. What we can do is try to give you more time to pay and see if there are grants available, things like that, try to help you. So we do what are called taxpayer assistance meetings. Uh these are one-on-one confidential meetings that we do uh with people as they, you know, reach out to us, myself and six others from our office. Starting in December through the end of March, we are doing these meetings one-on-one with people to talk talk about their unique situation and how we can be helpful. Uh last year uh the foreclosure number um I think I got cut off the screen. Uh the foreclosure number last year was about 170. Um it was slightly inflated because there was one property owner who um kept going to the judge and it kept getting delayed, but she had 30 vacant parcels in Pontiac and those foreclosed last year. So it should have been about 140 parcels throughout the county. Uh and that was uh still relatively low. The lowest number we ever had was in in 2020 uh 2023 we had hold on I got to think about this was 23 or 24 uh 23 we had 90 foreclosures for the county. The overwhelming majority of what gets foreclosed is vacant. It's typically vacant land occasionally a vacant uh structure. Um so this kind of gives you a scope for the county and now we'll talk specifically about Holly. um the next page. So this is uh 2024 foreclosure data. So this would have been 2021 taxes that turned over delinquent in 2022. That's 188. And then March 1st of 2023 is when it was forfeited. So 140 something paid. There was a 41 still left. And then in 24 there was one foreclosed parcel here uh

that went to land sale. Uh we'll go to the next one. It should be 2025 data. So it was last year. So the the delinquencies uh ticked up just a little bit. So there were two uh 206 again this would have been 22 taxes so 206 turned over delinquent in 23 forfeited was 30 and 24 and then we didn't have any foreclose here last year so we'll go to the next slide uh again the kind of what I'm doing yeah this is not easy to read here um this is on our website or you you can share the slides with people but again I talked about it's the three-year process again this year for 26 anyone who owes 2023 three in prior year taxes is subject to foreclosure. March 31st is the deadline for them to pay or to reach out to our office to get onto a repayment agreement. Uh the old thing, the old adage is we don't know that you need help unless you tell us you need help. Um so you have to reach out to us because because again we're sending these various notices first class mayor first class mail priority mail posting the property uh twice. Someone's visiting the property twice. So we're making sure people know that they are at risk of foreclosure. Um within our office we also have I told you about those taxpayer assistance meetings. We also have our financial empowerment center. So uh this is in essence Rita who runs this department is like a financial coach. We'll talk people through budgeting household budgeting. Uh we'll see if there's grants available to them and and try to help them out. So please reach out. I'll on the next page I'll give you that information. Uh we're doing the outreach. So again I'm trying to speak to as many communities as possible. I was actually at the the Holly Library just before this um and waiting there if anyone wanted to talk about this as well. Uh so I think that's everything from this page. I went over this timeline just a little bit, but just kind of FYI uh through that process. Again, March 31st is the last day to pay or get onto a repayment agreement. Otherwise, the foreclosure happens April 1st. Uh there was a judicial foreclosure hearing. This is

hypothetically if you came to our office and couldn't get into an agreement or just didn't reach out to us and want to go direct to the judge, you can do that. Uh that happened last uh in February 18th, but that happens every year typically in February. Uh and then the bottom is when I talked about the claims form that people can submit if they are foreclosed. It has to be sent to our office by July 1st uh for them to possibly get their their surplus proceeds. We are very proactive. If the foreclosure does happen, we send them that form. We follow up. uh we want to make sure people are taken care of. So again, we are trying to prevent foreclosure, but in the instance that it happens, we want to make sure that they're, you know, they get if uh the surplus if they're entitled to it. So next page, please. So these are some of the resources. Again, I talked about the financial empowerment center within our office. Uh please feel free to call 2488580672. Our website is listed there, oakgv.com/treasurer. that actually has all of the information um for our office and how to pay taxes and search for property and things like that. Uh also the poverty exemption. So this is for people that are low income. You have an opportunity depending on your income uh to apply to lower your property taxes, but this is something you'd have to talk to your local assessor here uh about that. We don't handle that within our office, but just want people to be aware of that that it can save people money. And then the other one there is Lakeshore Legal Aid. Uh Lakeshore Legal Aid we are not affiliated with uh but they are a nonprofit that does really great work. Uh they are a free legal aid uh service for low-income families and seniors and they deal with everything but um criminal law and traffic citations. So otherwise you know if you need to call them about probate things like that they can help. Phone number 888-7838190. Their website is lakeshore legalaid.org. So these are attorneys who just volunteer their time. So encourage people to reach out to them as well. We send some some people over to them. Uh next page, I think this is just about

some of the things within our office. I'll just be brief on this. We we have our smart finance academy. So this is these are financial webinars that we do monthly uh that talk about various topics from we did one on uh household budgeting, debt relief, um credit and what that's you know having good credit uh how to build your credit. Uh we did a uh one with uh I partnered with Sheriff Buchard and talked about uh financial scams and what to look out for and how to prevent them. Uh we have one actually coming up tomorrow for anyone that wants to join in. It's actually about filing your personal income taxes. So your 2025 taxes, obviously April 15th the deadline. We have a CPA who uh I've been at other meetings where he presented. He does a really great job. So he's going to talk through things you should be aware of, any changes from the law at the federal or state level. So they are free. Uh you just need to go online uh to the oakv.com/smartfinance and you can register. Also uh we have a program which is a down payment assistance program for firsttime home buyers in Oakland County. And uh it's based on income. It's a $5,000 grant. You do not have to pay it back. Um but again, you do have to qualify. You do have to bring $1,000 of your own money to the table. and you do have to go through like a financial education program. Um, but we've had that number is a little outdated. I think we've now had about $300,000 in grants go to first-time home buyers here in Oakland County. And then the last thing is we have our uh uh education videos. That's J. Sorry, that that they're on the right. Um, these are just short videos on our website that talk about um important topics for homeowners that talk about kind of what I'm talking about today, the foreclosure process, talk about the pop-up tax, talk about your assessment notice that you get in the mail. Uh, so various topics that people have asked us about uh that we thought little short videos would be helpful to educate people. So again, that's on our website or you can go directly to oakgv.com/propytax

education. So um some resources for you and then I think that's it. We'll go to the next page. This should be contact information. So, call our office uh at 248858-0611. Obviously, the email's up there as well. If um if you weren't listening to a word I said this evening or didn't care, um the only thing I want to leave you with is that we are here to help. Um if you need help or if you know someone that owes 2023 and or prior year taxes, please reach out on their behalf, have them reach out. Um we want to try to help. Like I said, we want to try to prevent foreclosure and that's why I'm visiting as many communities as possible uh to do this. So, I appreciate your time uh and happy to answer any questions that any of you have.

Council, Madam President, go ahead, Jim. Thank you. First, thanks for being here. Yeah, I think it's nice to see Oakland County and I think Oakland County up here in our own little area. Thanks for coming up. You're a beautiful area. Um, so you mentioned most properties are vacant properties that are being forced on. Well, this more that's basically what I'm looking for is answers to this. So, I think it's Highland Park has a program or a stipulation. If you buy a foreclosed property, you have to turn it around and they have to see improvements within x number of months or something like that. Is that is that correct? Did you know about that? So, that would be different. Um, that's and and the law has since changed. Um, so it used to be a lot of times if they do they buy it from the land bank or do they buy it at the auction? I

think it's tax sale. So, that would be different county, right? So that's you're you're talking about Highland Park in in Wayne County. I know it starts with an H. I'm not sure. I I can't recall which one it is.

So there it wouldn't be here in Oakland County. Uh and if they did, it used So it used to be that the um the previous law and there still is what's called right of first refusal. So the the local community, hypothetically, Holly could buy a property before it goes to the auction. So the for foreclosure happens and then the local community could actually buy it before it goes to auction. And it used to be that you had to buy it for public good, right? It had to be have like a something that benefits the community. Uh and then if they were to sell it to a developer or something like that, then yes, I think that's how they did it. That is no longer the case. Um now what happens is uh and we changed when we changed the law so that people can get their their the surplus proceeds. Now uh if you want to exercise your right of first refusal uh as a local community, you have to pay two times SEV. uh in order to buy it and so that no longer has that public good aspect of it. So and and the auction so we'll talk a little bit about the auction because that came up. So the foreclosure happens on April 1st. Uh we're required to auction off any properties that foreclose typically in August. Um it's in the summer and then the the minimum bid for the auction and it's like an online almost like eBay. Uh the minimum bid is the taxes, interest, fees, and then like maintenance costs. And then it's literally online bidding. Uh local communities can actually also um register to bid on the property if they don't think it's going to be go up to like twice SEV. They can bid on it as well, but there's no longer this requirement that if you buy it, then you have to do certain with the land bank, right? We do have a land bank at the county that we started. That's a different story. So I think it you actually answered a question didn't even want to ask for that. But I think my main question was

I think the way I I've read it on tax sale is let's say I'm a bidder and I buy a piece of property. Yes. And it's a dump of property. There's all sorts of hazards and everything else like that. I'm required by the municipality x number of months to fix it. Otherwise it goes back to the municipality. Did you does open county do anything like that? No.

No. Because once you buy it it's yours. What could happen though is obviously the local community has their ordinances, right? Blight and whatever else. So they could then penalize you, right? Ticket you for things like that, but then it's it's your property if you buy it at the auction. Now it is your property and then it like anyone else that owns their property, the the the township can then assess, you know, garbage, whatever it is, right? The the different tickets. Two more items. Yeah, please. So you mentioned we were talking about tactile.info And we had said that there were no foreclosures uh in the village of Holly last year.

There were properties on tax hel. How are those properties on there if they're not being foreclosed? Is someone like I think the village had property up there for instance and there was some other vacant property. So it was on the sale last year I believe. So like I think the property behind the BFW it's a swamp that was uh sold. I think that was two years ago. Was that I think that was two years ago. I'll tell you. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And also things can go on the auction site. So again, and he's mentioned this, but there is a way where you can go that auction is online, tax-sale.info. They're a company that we contract with that does it. They actually do it for 73 other counties and DNR. So if anyone is actually looking to buy property in other parts of the state, you can actually go online and do that. But don't do that against me. Right. So, uh going to now, but um things can actually be on that website and then pulled up until the auction.

So, we by us by us. Yeah. Uh cuz we technically after April 1st, we're the owner. If it's going to auction, it's because the county foreclosed. Uh, but we could pull because what if if something comes up where there was another interested party that came about and said, you know, like here's my interest in the property that didn't happen in the title search. We would rather be cautious and withhold it that year, right? So we can pull it off the auction. Thank you. And the last one, uh, an expedited foreclosure process. Yep. So we sent that to you all. Uh, we sent that to all the local communities. This is a rare instance where this I don't think since I've been there, we haven't had this happen. Uh, this would be utilizes this.

No one in Oakland County utilizes this. So the ultimately this would be uh uh a property is abandoned, truly abandoned. Like it could be that there's a an heir that's like I don't want this, you know, I have no interest in this because you have to start this early. This this shaves a year off. So instead of doing three years, this is two years. But again, this is you have to know this like once it turns over delinquent, right? So this isn't like once you're in the second year, you can stop the third year. This is a lot earlier in the process. But this is someone who, you know, throws their hands up in the air and says, "I don't want this parcel." Um, or you you can't get a hold of anyone. Um, so if you're still in contact with the person, this doesn't apply then. Correct. Even if it's at three years, at three years, it's already gone through the process. Two years,

right? Yeah. You can't It has to go through the rest of the process. I got you. Yep. Thank you.

Um, I was wondering, you know, is there other services besides the tax stuff that the Treasury Department handles? cuz I remember um when before I moved to Holly, we had to have a well put in and the landlord went through Oakland County and had it funded and put on the back of their mortgage. And so the county does that. That's not our office specifically, right? But there are obviously various um resources at the county and various departments, right? So that would have likely been through the water resource commissioner. So there's there's six countywide elected officials, right? So there's the county executive, the clerk, treasurer, the prosecutor, water resource commissioner, sheriff, and treasurer. Um, each kind of elected official has their own kind of area that they cover. Um, anything that doesn't fall under the five of us that aren't the executive falls under the executive, right? So like the health department, things like that fall under the executive. So that's likely something that falls under our water resource concern.

Just be like if anybody in the village per se might have a problem because we're all on a y a city sewer system. Y if something happened to where they went down or something, you know, somebody might not have the

I can help out with that a little bit too. So I think it's um human services, housing and human services, they have it. And so what it is is if someone needs uh necessary improvements to their property, they will the county will could can help out and they'll pay for it and basically they'll put a lean on the property instead and you know really it's a zero interest lean and it just has to be paid back when the property transfers ownership at some point. We've used it before for people that had their lateral laid from the house uh to the um to the main that has failed. They couldn't afford it, but obviously they need water. So, the county has helped them out and provided them that service. And I will also add I was at the board of review meeting uh for the township um last week. We have one of the alternates, Diane, in the audience. And um for residents that have in the past tried to get the poverty exemption, the standards are quite um high in Oakland County as far as um the you know, your income has to be quite low to meet it. Um the board of review is looking at increasing that. I think it's like a right now it's at a one at the county. It's like a 1.5 they're looking at um within the township. So you talk to the assessor if uh your situation's like that because if you may have not qualified in the past, you might qualify now.

Exactly. Right. In the T and you set that that rate is different depending on the community. It's set by the community. And then what you first mentioned, and this is exactly what I was also going to mention, so I appreciate you doing that. I think it's the community housing and neighborhood initiative, CHNI. Uh the program he's talking about isn't just for that. It's for if you have uh roof repair, um if you have stuff with your furnace, things like that. um they actually loan you the money and like he said it is it is money that you do not have to pay back until the house is transferred or sold. They put a lean on the property. It's a lean and then they get paid back when the property eventually is sold or transferred. So we have I think it's for seniors specifically or or you talking about one that's

I believe it I don't think that it has been just for seniors. Danny, I know that you and I worked on it for one property and I'm not sure if it was, but we can if there's um specific people that have needs for that, we will make sure that we will um have that available information available on the website and also they can reach out to the office and I'll make sure that our team has that information. Yep. And I know it's on the county's website, so that's a different department, but we see that all the time because when someone's delinquent in their taxes, we're like, "Oh, there's a lean that's payable to Oakland County." And we know exactly what it's for because they, you know. Mhm. So, one other thing, Tim, our mics on. Yeah, we can hear you. Yours is. I don't know if yours is. They are. Okay. They weren't at the very beginning of the meeting because I can't hear you over here at all except for with you on the

I'll stay with my chest from now on. So, got it. Uh, thank you, Mr. Whittenberg. Yeah, of course. Thank you, council. Is that everything? All right. Thank you so much. We appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you. He doesn't often get applause. I was just going to say that. We've got a good crowd tonight. Take care. Our final presentation this evening will be by Joe Mishler, who will provide information regarding the township library. Mr. Michler, the floor is yours. I'm ducking because he said he's going to get me.

Good evening everybody. Uh this is anformational presentation. Uh we're not asking you to take any action. We just want to present some information. Uh the library board is considering going to a district library. Uh right now we represent Holly Township and um the village of Holly. We also have contracts with Rose and Groveland. And what we're looking to do is consolidate all of that and put it into one municipality. And that's the process we're looking at. It's called becoming a district library. And let me talk about the current library. Currently, we have 10,000 library card holders. We just crossed that threshold just recently. So, many of you probably know the library. You've probably been in there. Um, that building has been there since, I think, 1975 or 76. Um, it's been added to, I think, four or five times over the years. And we just went through a remodel of it. Um, and we made it much more open and a little more pleasant to be in. And we got rid of those old wood chairs, which really if you sat in them for more than five minutes, yeah, you'd be uncomfortable. So, uh, but the library is far more than its facility. We run a lot of programs. We do a lot of services. And uh just to give you some examples of that, recently um every year we do the AARP

tax program where anybody can come in and have their taxes done free and that that program is always booked up and it's one of one of our better programs at this time of the year. We also have other programs. Our little kid program and some of you I have seen at the library with your little ones going to story time and some of those other things. And I understand right now and this could apply to you if you'd like to uh they're doing a paint a duck contest. You get a little duck and you get to paint it and then there's going to be a contest to see I don't know if it's the cutest duck or the best duck or what. So, if you're interested in painting, I'm sure they probably give you a duck. Uh we also have uh uh Debbie runs that program. She runs the little kids program and they're literally bursting out of the building. Uh we do a lot of stuff outside when the weather's better. um that sort of thing. Our teen program has just gone crazy over the last couple of years. Uh Jessica runs that. We started out with three or four kids and now every kid in the high school and middle school has a library card. That's 1,700 kids with library cards. And as I understand uh the volume of books that go back and forth uh every two or three weeks uh from the library to the school um is pretty significant. Probably three 400 books at a time are going back and forth. So that program is another really great program. Um, we also do a lot of people that come in and do music, they do

poetry, they do a lot of other things, uh, a lot of other programs. Uh, we also, uh, do some outreach programs. We are currently doing an outreach program in Groveland. Um, and we're looking at Rose. The problem with all of that is that we are at that breaking point with the library. We're right there and we're there for a couple of reasons. One, as you know, this area is growing. Um, and a lot of people who are moving into the area are coming into the library and taking advantage of all of our services. that includes Groveland and Rose Township. Now, unfortunately, because of budgetary matters, we're really limited in what we can send out. If we like, for instance, our teen program, if we send Jessica to the schools, that costs. And we are looking at becoming a district library because if we become a district library, then we can get a different kind of an agreement with all the municipalities and possibly resolve those difficulties, the financial difficulties that might arise from sending programs out. We also want to we also think that uh Groveland and Rose Township, for instance, are underserved. Again, to send people out there, you have to send staff. That costs money. And right now, uh, Rose and Groveland

Township pay $2 a person to use our library. Holly Township and Village of Holly. We are we are those two municipalities are carrying the brunt of it. It's far more than $2. I didn't write the figure down, but it's far more than $2. So, we started looking around at different options. We could go for more millillage, but then again, that hits the village and the township. And uh currently we are at 1.31 mills. We just went up.31 at the uh after the last election which was enough to get us to do the remodeling and take care of some of those other things. Now what is a district library? Well, currently we are looking at four municipalities. the village, Holly Township, Rose, and Groveland townships. You might wonder, well, isn't the school district a municipality? It is, but that's a whole different ball of wax. And we're we don't want to get into that with them because then you get into funding issues and the state has different laws for them than they do for you. So, uh, to become a district library, um, first off, we have not made any formal action as the library board. There has been no formal action. We have been going through um, we have been to all three of the townships. Now, we've been to the village. We have held two

town halls and sometime toward the in April, I think, or I don't know Uh we are going to hold a town hall meeting out in Rose Township and Groveland Township. We're going to take it out there because we're gathering information. We want to know what people think uh in order for us to make a sounder decision. Now, how do you become a district library? Well, I'm going to condense about 30 pages of law down to about a half a page. And if you have questions, I'll be more than happy to answer them. Uh, first off, it's going to take formal action by the Holly uh Township Library Board to go for a district library. Once that's done and if it passes then we go to the municipalities that we want to involve and we ask them we ask each one to pass a resolution supporting district library. Now if let's say the village agrees and the other three agree we create the those people create what's called a district library planning committee. You the village Holly Township Rose and Groland get to pick representatives at least one or two to a planning committee. Now that planning committee meets and they come up with what's called the u district library agreement. Now the agreement it deals with all kinds of subjects and if your township let's say your township doesn't want to do a millillage but it might do a proportion or something all of that has

to go into the agreement if they all decide to go for the same kind of millillage. Okay. But the agreement is kind of the important thing. Everybody that any of the municipalities that have agreed to go to the district library, you participate in the agreement. This is not just something that the Holly Township Library is going to do after you agree to go to a district library. No, the state law requires that you participate on the planning committee. Now, once the agreement and the agreement can include property, it can it include um all kinds of different subjects that might affect the particular municipalities. And you can look this up. Just type in on your computer district libraries in Michigan and you're going to see pretty much what I just said. Now, once the district agreement is done, then the lawyers get involved. I'm sure we're all experienced in that. Um, and once they reshape the the agreement, then the agreement goes back to all the municipalities for the municipalities to agree. Once that agreement happens, we send it to the state librarian who has 30 days to decide. And really what they're going to look at is one thing and that's the funding. They're going to look at how is this to be funded. If it's going to be a millage or it's going to be some percentage or whatever of everybody's budget, okay, but they're going to look at that and they get to decide

whether it moves forward. If they don't like it, then it's not going to move forward. then you come back and you redo it. But if they agree, uh, a lot of people ask me, u, is this going on the ballot? Yes, it is. If you're asking for a millillage, the other thing that goes on the ballot, and this is part of the agreement, is how you decide to pick the board members for the library. You can either agree to appoint them, everybody gets to appoint somebody, or well, however the agreement works out, or you can go for an open election. So, anybody can run in the proposed U district library area. Right now, Rosen Grolin have no representations. So it one of the benefits to them would be now they would have a benefit. They might pay a little bit more but they were going to not the other benefit is they're going to have a say. Somebody from Rose or Groveland is going to be on that library board. And the way it sets now is the village would get to pick somebody or whatever to be on the board. Holly Township would get to pick somebody. So those two things would go on the ballot. Probably the most important thing is if you're going for a millillage, it's going on the ballot. And if the millage passes, you have a district library. If it doesn't, then you're back to the drawing board. Figure out what you're going to do. Now, we have looked at several different solutions. What if township A decides not to go with us, but the others do? Um, we've looked at that. We

have a kind of a contingency plan for that. Uh we would still offer the townships that didn't want to go with us a contract, but it's not going to be as cheap as it is today. Two bucks a person is pretty cheap. Uh I mean, a family of five is 10 bucks. So that's those are some of the things that that could happen. But the really important thing is the district is the agreement and how you negotiate in the agreement. And I I I behoove the municipalities that if they come into this that you come into the planning sessions with an idea of what do you want? Now once the mill passes and you have a district library then Holly Township Library will then negotiate with the district library over assets, supplies, buildings, property, all of that stuff and in the end probably the district library is going to end up with everything. But what benefit would that be to us besides representation? It's also going to give us greater autonomy. Right now, we are the Holly Township Library. Do they have much to do with us? No. They sign checks. And apparently, they wish they didn't sign checks. So, if we become a district library, we become an entity unto ourselves. We become a municipality and we can we can make our own decisions. Totally. Not that we don't do that now because if Holly Township just somebody got on the board over there and they decided to change things, they could.

But I'm just simply saying it'd be greater autonomy and it would be greater representation for everybody. And if you get a millage, let's say a one mil for the entire district, that would put the library in a position of being able to offer all kinds of services to those outlying townships and they would get a lot more services and a lot more benefits than right now. Right now, they come to us. Pretty much how that works. Mr. Commissioner, when is your next library board meeting and town hall? The town hall dates have not been set.

Okay. We are in the process of talking with u just went out of my head. Uh Brandon Libraries and Springfield libraries because they're the closest that we have and we're pro we're talking with them. Um will those town halls be posted on the library board website? Oh yeah, it'll be we we haven't we're just kind of waiting to see these other meetings and then we will do that. I don't think we're looking probably late April

and then um Great. So if um anyone's interested in learning more, keep an eye on the library uh website for their upcoming town halls. And could you also leave us with your email if you don't mind saying that out loud for us, please, if someone has any questions. jmm1967 atcomcast.net. Thank you so much, Joe. We appreciate your time. April, Madam Chair,

this brings us to public comment. Members of the audience may address council on any item not on the agenda. Those addressing council will be limited to three minutes of speaking time. After each agenda item, there will be an additional two-minute public comment period to speak to that item before council votes. Council will hear all comments for future consideration, but will not have a response at this time. Prior to addressing council, members of the public shall state their name and address for the record. Public comment, please. Bless you. Bless you. Any public comment? Hearing none. Oh, I'm sorry.

He's too tall. Yeah, if I might. Uh, good evening. My name is Mike Murphy. Uh, currently the Livingston County Sheriff. No, I did not get lost on my way home. Uh, yes, I realize this is not in Livingston County. Uh, been with the sheriff's office for 36 years, uh, in the middle of my third term. Um, one day I fell coming out of the shower and I said, you know what? I think I'm going to run for state senate. So, I'm here to introduce myself as uh, Lana Ty's replacement hopefully for the 22nd district. um found myself uh in a position I think where most folks are in that they're they look at state government and they're frustrated. Um and I said to myself, okay, I can either continue to be frustrated and be sheriff or I can try to go to Lancing and do something about it. So that's really it. I'm not up here to give you some big speech and a bunch of uh promises other than I promise I will work as hard as I have for the last 36 years at the sheriff's office and I promise I'll use common sense. My my philosophy is and will continue to be that problems should be solved at the absolute lowest level. Uh one of the straws that broke the camel's back quite frankly uh in my decision-making process was the state taking away the authority on uh solar farms and windmills, right? putting under the uh public service commission. That that's not that's not where that belongs. That's a local decision. Everything should be done locally. Uh and somehow the state figures not just with that issue, but with a lot of issues, they have the answers. What works in Holly doesn't work in Moskegan, doesn't work in Claire, doesn't work in even Livingston County, right? Um so those those things that should be handled local should be handled local. So if I may, I've got some business cards here. wouldn't mind handing out my my personal cell phone numbers on there if you uh want to have a chat. We'd love to love to have a conversation with you.

Thank you, Mr. Murphy. Thank you.

Is there any further public comment? Hearing none. Seeing none, unless James, are you standing for comment? Just checking. Okay. All right. That moves us to new business. Lisa, will you please read item A of new business? Consideration of council of resolution 2026-010 for the descertification of portion of Grant Street.

Do I have a first to consider item A of new business? I'll make the consideration to for the second oops the descertification of Grant Street um resolution number 2026-00001 the resolution for the descertification portion of Grant Street clarification that's 010 oh I'm sorry 010 even with classes I can't regret we have a motion by Wendell we have a Second by Wine Brener. Tim, will you please introduce this item?

Absolutely. And Danny will be my backup, but if if you have any questions. So, the next two agenda items are resolutions descertifying sections of road in the village. Um, this is in accordance with Act 51 as we can't collect money for sections of road that that don't actually serve as roads essentially. And so in the MDOT's review of our roads um and Act 51, we just identified some of these areas that we just need to descertify or vacate. And so that is this process that we're doing in order to make sure that we can still get money for other roads. Any public comment on this Oh, sorry.

Any public comment on this item? Hearing none. Seeing none. council discussion. This just means because it's no there's no homes on it or anything like that. It's just So this particular one, Grant Street, uh as you can see by the picture there, we redid that intersection multiple years ago. Grant Street actually used to come all the way through and go all the way across the tracks right there. But due to the strange nature of that whole intersection and railroad safety, it was redesigned for Grant Street to become a dead end. And um on our Act 51 map, it still shows Grant Street going all the way through. And they have identified that and have shown us that. And they they need us at this point to descertify that portion.

Oh, gotcha. Okay. We're only descertifying the portion from the dead end to where the other road where it used to connect to the other side. Is that where the depot used to be by? There's a map. Yeah, I know. I just I can't I don't see very well on the map. Yes, the depot set directly to the west of that intersection. That's what I thought. Okay, Jim, thank you. So, I went on OakGV uh the GIS mapping software. The road doesn't exist. So, how how does that work? Where is the road actually showing up as a

So, one So, one of the issues So, again, you're talking MDOT is the state, Oakv is the county. We've there are all kinds of issues with like property gateway not speaking to the not speaking to the um like the local municipality as well. So, I'm not sure on uh on the county on the county site, but I'm guessing it's just it's because we're the state is the one that we're talking about. INDOT's the one that we're talking to. And so, I'm guessing that's probably where the disconnect is. So, this is specifically for Grant Street. Yep. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So, both of them, they don't show up on Oakland County. It's just like there's no road there, there's no parcel there. other other sections like um for instance behind President Brandon's house there's a section very small section of an alley allegedly. So I think there's there are other sections in the community where it shows these things. It just doesn't show them there which is I thought was interesting. Does that make any sense? I'm looking up the proper gateway real quick to see if you know

so you're saying on on uh on the state website? No, not the state website. So, I'm just I'm just curious. So, when we vacate this, does that mean the railroad, for instance, will have a higher tax liability or the other community because someone's going to be having this land?

No, we're just we're just descertifying the road. That's all we're doing. It's basically So, Act 51 gives us money, right, in order to operate local streets. Okay. So, there's a portion of the road that no longer is a portion of the road. And so we have to descertify that with their records because the paper map that they have given us, we have to descertify that section of the road on the paper map saying that that is no longer a road and we won't receive money for that section of that road anymore. So descertify is the same as vacate. So when you vacate it, someone is the land is going. It's not the same as vacancy. That's a different

So it says descertify slash vacate. If that's Wait, does that say that on your actual resolution? Yes. Oh, okay. We need to correct that. It should just say the example they gave us was for descertification and vacation. We need to amend the resolution to remove the vacancy portion. Okay. It should be just for descertification. The example they gave us for either or. Okay. So, yeah, because we can do either action. We can either vacate it or descertify. The action that we're actually doing is descertification. I mean, it just seems weird that if there's no road there, like it must have already been vacated. So, do we need to amend the motion to say um to um approve the resolution as uh

approve the resolution as amended? Um Daniel, you were the Yeah, approve. I'll make the resolution to approve the the new business resolution for to be just to descertify, not vacate. And who was the second? I I'll second that. Thank you. Um, okay. Council, any further discussion? No, I just I appreciate that you guys did this because I have never heard of this, so I did some research on it like I assume you did as well. Just never heard of this. Thanks. All right. Um,

I do have one more question. Now, since they're not giving us funds for does that mean they go towards another road inside the village then or No, they give us they give us a certain amount of funds based on the length of our roads and so if we are not if that's not an actual road, we just have to take the 115 ft off of those calculations. So, I just we we this is just saying like we can't get money for something we don't have. Okay. So rather than hold up the rest of the money we'd receive because we have inaccurate maps or roads they we need to clarify these like clical errors that have happened within our system that just this just more clear. Gotcha. So okay clerk please call the role. Bunner, yes. Pasca, yes. Ker, yes. Wendell, yes.

Cole, yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. Lisa, will you please read item B? Consideration of council of resolution 2026-011 for the descertification of portion of Hail Street. Do I have a first to consider item B of new business? I will make that motion and then the same amendment as previous just to remove vacant from the motion. We have a motion. We have a motion by Costco to approve this as amended and we have a second by Wendell to approve this as amended. Okay. Uh Danny, can you please give the particulars of this descertification?

Yeah, very similar situation. Um Hail Street used to be somewhat of an alleyway um as previously way before us. Um that street is no longer um available. I believe there's a driveway in the in the way there. Um, we still own a uh we don't own the property, but we still have like an easement there. And so that will never go away. Simply we're just descertifying the road and we're not going to receive funding for that that portion of that road anymore.

Any public comment on this item? Going once. That was a stretch, right? Okay. Going twice. Hearing none. Seeing none council discussion. So the question is if there's a why don't we just get rid of that give it to property owners. I mean I guess it's something we can look into but

um but again we are that's that's a different conversation right at this point. We could always vacate it in the future. Um but for an immediate action in order to make sure our uh act 51 money goes through, we wanted to descertify and then um if there's areas like that that we decide to vacate, we could because this leaves us as the option that we could create it as a road in the future. I think it's it's a liability facility. We're not it's our property. Uh descertification removes our responsibility to maintain. Correct. Yes. Right. Because We're not receiving monies for it anymore. And the village owns it. The easement part.

I mean, the easement part is cuz I got easement in my driveway the village owns, but I still got to plow it and shovel it and salt it and cut it and Okay. Um, Lisa, will you please call the rule? Pascal? Yes. Ker, yes. Wendell, yes. Cole, yes. Burner. Yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. Thank you. Thank you. Lisa, will you please read item C? Consideration of approval of resolution 2026-012 adopting the National Incident Management System.

Do I have a first to consider item C of new business? I will make the motion to consider the approval of the emergency operations plan. I will second that. Motion by Kyer, second by Cole. Tim, will you please introduce this item? Absolutely. Um, this item and the next one are both part of our emergency operations plan that Chief Watson uh and Assistant Chief Nitski created. Um, he was actually supposed to be here to present this because he has a lot more information about it. However, he's out on mutual aid on the structure fire right now. So sending some interesting pictures as well. You should share them.

So um yeah. So the so this one is a pretty standard like so this um the national um incident management system is a standard resolution that you know municipality mun municipalities that are participating um would fill out. The emergency operations plan. The second one is how we as a community will react to an incident. Um and that one has a lot more specificity within that document. Um I probably chief Nar has a lot of experience in this too and he could answer any questions. Um you know this we've um altered this plan from previous plans where um you know Chief Watson would be kind of the primary incident commander for a lot of for for if an actual incident occurred. Pending any questions? Is there a reason that we're doing this

specific? Yes.

Um so every community normally adopts the and let's go to first uh C uh the NIMS is what it's referred to. Um national incident management system that's normally adopted. It's it's a stock standard plan. And what that is um all department all um public safety emergency uh heads uh go through NIMS training. And it's basically us adopting the national plan that says in the event we had a natural disaster like tornadoes, we work with FEMA. By adopting this plan, you get free money from from uh FEMA. So without the plan, you're not going to get disaster relief funds. So um every community normally adopts these this consider this kind of like housekeeping. Um we're adopting what um uh what we normally would do anyway. We were just saying that we're going to work with the state level and the federal level in uh incident management and operations and that's all this is.

Council, any other questions? No, you just need us to sign off that we think you're the expert here. No. Uh we're going to give that to Jeremy. Oh, so it takes all it takes all liability off your shoulders. The first one is just adoption of um or resolution supporting the national incident management system. The next one is about the actual EOP the AR procedures. All right. Any public comment on this item? Going once, going twice. Council, any further discussion? Clerk, please call the role. Tire. Yes. Wend.

Yes. Cole, yes. We burner, yes. Yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. Thank you. Lisa, will you please read item D? Consideration of approval of resolution 2026-13 adopting the emergency operation plan and authorizing the village president and the village manager signature. Is there anything you'd like to add to this item before discussion and comment, Jerry?

Um, so think of this as the step down from the NIM system. Um, this is twofold. Um, Oakland County has an emergency operations plan. We operate with under that. When I say we, it's public safety. What this is is every community has their section of that plan. So, what do we have that would be a risk or liability that we need to look at and communicate to the county? We have a dam. We did um we have an older community. We have a water plant, sewer plant. These are things that um could be in a natural disaster and issue. So, we adopt a local emergency management plan. And then once council approves that, that goes back to the county and becomes a part of the county emergency management plan.

This breaks down individual responsibilities. what I'm supposed to do in emergency, what chief is supposed to do, what chief Watson is supposed to do, how we notify the president, what the president's responsibilities are, um you know, at the HR side, how are we keeping accountability of our personnel, everything like that. So, it so you know, as anyone that's been in any kind of um uh crisis can tell you that it gets very panicky uh and um it's it's nice to have these set because at that time, all right, what are we supposed to do? and like refer back to it and say, "All right, this is exactly where the crisis center will be. This is who is the incident commander. Uh this is uh how we are what our chain of command is, and this is who we need to contact for this kind of emergency.

Okay. Well, do we need we still need to vote on the resolution first?" Right? motion. Well, I'll make the motion to uh for resolution 2026-013, resolution adopting the emergency operations plan and authorization the president and village manager to sign plan. I'll second that motion. We have a motion by Wendell. We have a second by Wein Runner. Any public comment? Hearing none. Seeing none, any further council discussion? So basically, Tim, that's just we're just dotting our eyes and crossing our tees.

Yeah, we we are we are meeting state and federal requirements in order to have an emergency action plan in case something goes wrong in order to um make sure if something happens to know who to blame. This plan, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. This plan has been here all along and your your public safety officials have been operating on this plan forever. We're just again doing kind of um housekeeping here and adopting officially the plan. Clerk, please call the role. Wendell, yes. Cole, yes. Wurner, yes. Pascal, yes. Ker, yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. Lisa, will you please read item E? Thank you, council.

Thank you, Chief. Consideration of resolution 2026-014 authorizing budget amendments to the fiscal year 25-26 budget. Do I have a first to consider item E of new business? I'll take consideration of resolution 202614 authorizing budget amendments to the FY25 and 26 budget. Do I have a second? I'll second. We have a motion by Wein Burner. We have support from Wendell. Tim, will you please introduce this item?

Absolutely. And I'll have Danny come back me up once again. Um but so this is simply that um we ran out of water meters and we need to purchase more um just the need as we've had to replace meters for one thing or another. We are running out and so we would like to uh purchase additional meters so we can supply our residents. Is that about right? Yes. All right. Okay. First public comment. Any public comment on this item? Going once, going twice. Council questions, discussion. Um, now you're saying this is to purchase more meters, correct? Yes. Now, when if somebody's like meter goes out now, do they have to pay to replace that meter or

um I believe that. So, when your initial when your meter is purchased um well, when you build your house, your meter is part of your tap and fees and all of that. If your meter goes out by no fault of your own, then we replace it as part of that. If it was for uh misuse or or any reason like that, then you would have to replace it. Um or you would be responsible for it. Okay. Yep. Correct. Council. And this amendment is just moving money out of one spot to cover it in another, right?

Yes. I'm taking it out of other water budgets. Um we have a budget line item for vehicles. Um, I haven't purchased a new vehicle this year. I'm not looking to. And so, I'm going to take some money out of vehicles. We're also going to be taking some money out of equipment. I have some uh leftover money in equipment costs and uh repairs and maintenance. Thank you, councel. So, there's no raising of any funds. We're just I already have the money in other budgets. We just need to properly move the money around now to be fully transparent. Okay, clerk, please call the role. Cole, yes. Lime Burner, yes. Pascala,

yes. Ker, yes. Wendle, yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. Please. Thank you, Danny. Thank you, Danny. Will you please read item F. Village Council discussion on budget work session dates and process. This will be a discussion item. No official vote. Do I have a first to consider item F of new business? I will make the motion to consider item F of new business. I'll second the motion. Motion by Kyer, second by Weinbrunner. Tim, will you start us off?

Yeah, absolutely. So, the first order business is that, you know, we usually schedule two dates in April um in order to schedule our budget work sessions. historically they've been on Saturdays and so we just need kind of the council's input and what dates they would like us to schedule so we can do all of the proper notices uh for those meetings. Um they don't have to be on Saturdays but that's usually worked out for schedules. Obviously, um you know, your staff would love for them to be, you know, during the day or uh on the weekdays, but we understand that, you know, the the needs and the schedules of council might not um allow that. And so council members have jobs. Thanks a lot.

What about what about April 11th and 18th, gang? I agree because uh parks is doing our cleanup on the 25th. So we can avoid that at all. I think we should do the 25th. I'm okay with the 11th and the 18th. What day? April 11th. April 18th. Wonderful. At uh would you guys want to plan at

um uh 09? I think that's what we've done in the past. Pardon? I'm sorry. 9 a.m. 9 a.m. Does that work? Yeah. Well, that's what he said. 09. All right. So, um, Jim, April 11, April 18th as of now. Yes. Okay, everybody. I have no problem with that. Stick that in our phones. Yeah. 11th and 11th and 18th. 18th. Yep. And we'll confirm with um 0900.

Council member Ryan, I know that, you know, he is now the uh the clerk in Ortonville, so I'm sure he's going through a lot of these um same kind of meetings with his community as well. So, all right. 09 or 9 a.m. on the 11th of the 18th. Tim started the 0900, not me. Was that a niner? It was a niner. 67. Oh, come on now. You couldn't resist. Oh, did you guys hear that? The the kids just retired 67 because adults at a council meeting said it.

Oh gosh. Please. Please. If only somebody could let my elementary school know. All right.

I can't wait to tell my kids at home. Okay. Now we're obviously

so and then the second portion of this um so you know we don't again there's not going to be any vote on this but um if there's anything I know that some council members uh I know council member Ryan's not here but he had requested that we just um if there's anything specific outside of what we normally discuss within our budget work sessions, if there's things that we want to focus on, I know that um Council Member Costa had mentioned something to me earlier. We said, "Hey, this would be appropriate time for us to kind of talk about um these things." Um you know, we can bring it up now. We can wait till uh that time. Um just anything that might require us to do a little bit additional research before we get to those budget work sessions. And we'll have a similar item on our April agenda as well that will just uh outside of reports that just allow some open discussion between council um if there's anything additional that we might not be thinking of that we want to add to our budget work sessions.

So I do have a couple things that I'm going to go into. We're not still in discussion. Have we even made a motion? We haven't made a motion. We don't got a vote on it. We made We made a first and a second. Yeah, it was you and Wine Burner, I think. Right. Yeah, but we don't have to vote on it. It's just a open discussion. That's it. Um, any public comment on this item? Going once. Going twice. Okay. Lisa, will you please read item G? Discussing. What? Oh, sorry. What? I thought we were done discussing. No, I think I think they wanted to discuss

kind of open it up for some things that we may be looking at going into this budget session. I can tell you two things that I'm going to be um hoping we can find spots for and that is going to be HA clearly. I want to make sure that we are trying to fund HA. And I'd also like to see something allocated out of and I'm not sure if this is because of special assessments, but I would like to see us have some notary publiclix at the police department to be able to perform some um services there that I think we can offer our residents and aren't. So, a notary and the training cost for that. And are you done? And those are my two.

I will say that with Hayatt, I did reach out to them. I've talked to them recently about, hey, if we could re reprogram some of the CDBG funding in order to um to cover some of these expenses, would you be willing to provide the appropriate documentation in order to meet those requirements and I haven't heard anything back. This is a week and a half ago probably. So, thank you, Daniel. Um, I was doing just a little bit of research the other day and uh with the budget financing stuff, we have some unclaimed property that the village and also the fire department are owed that the state of Michigan's holding on to. I don't know if anybody else got the copy that I sent out, but maybe we can look into that.

I did not, but I can I did No, I did not get it, but I did my own research and I've already on behalf of the village have um sent the claim forms and I'm just waiting I I wasn't saying I was just I just I was bored and I decided to punch it up like I do and that's what happened. So he he also submitted for it too. So yeah, I'm trying to pocket it myself. I was trying to beat him to the punch. As long as our address is correct. Yes, exactly. 108. I promise that because they had asked for both because again that's their part of their search. Yeah. Well, it was 108's the correct address this time.

Um I have a question in regards to parks. I know that we get like $5,000 a year from one of the dispensaries for and it was supposed to be earmarked for like kids playground equipment and stuff. We did not buy that in the fiscal year that it was awarded to us. So, I just want to see we haven't purchased any children's playground equipment. So, I'm just wanting to see what we can do with that money, like if that's going to roll over to this next year or what. Yeah. And any of those pledge amounts are not I mean there this is what we intend to do with them. You know it should be in the parks budget for that. Um but if you know I mean even if it's the idea is for that if you wanted to use it for something else. It's not like there's not like a grant assurance that says you have to use it for this. It's just what they pledge the amount for. Right. So if parks wanted to use it for something else, then you know they might be able.

But if they wanted to save their five grand for three years in a row and buy something that was 15 grand for playground equipment, it would roll over and that would be okay. That would be a question for over here. So that's where that um assigned fund balance would come in. And so if if you don't assign a fund balance at the end of the year, then it just rolls into the fund balance. Okay. You mean so it mean it doesn't stay in their their goals to everything else?

However, however, council could, you know, in the budget season say, "All right, this money that's in the fund balance, we know that it came from here, we will put it into park." I mean, that could happen. Yeah. Foster, anything? Jim,

thank you. I think this was um Councilman Ryan and I's uh goal to have this kind of budget open budget discussion open each month as we go forward. So hopefully we can do that and if we all put our thinking hats on and think of stuff we'd like to discuss. Um one thing to mention uh the I won't say we got a nasty about reaching out uh for contracting services for police and fire. It may scare some of our employees when we're doing that. We're doing that research, but I just think you hear a lot of uh communication from our residents saying, "Well, what about this? Can you save money doing it this way?" And I have a very high degree of confidence in our chiefs that they're saving and doing a great job for our community. But I think it was Ronald Reagan said trust but verifying. So, I think I think that's really what it boils down to is just having information for yourself and doing some research. And I think maybe because we're all not political operatives, we may do it more clunky. So, if it comes across that way to employees in staff, I do apologize for that. I'm not trying to just trying to find out information and be able to tell our our residents what actually is happening. So, um, uh, to that end, I think, um, there was,

before you continue, um, I think I'd like to clarify that the nasty Graham, as you called it, the nasty, wasn't necessarily in regards to, um, considering bids from other service providers. It was for council acting on behalf of village administration. I think he's referring to a different nasty gram. So I how many how many nasty grams do we have coming around right now?

I mean as council we're allowed to reach out to people and talk to people in the capacity that we want. So I think there's there's no reason we can't do that and it may rub people the wrong way but I think we owe it to our residents to actually do research and say yes our chiefs are doing a good job and here's how I can prove it. So,

back to your point. my point. Um there have been there have been some discussions about um uh Oakland County uh policing in the community and I think we've all been very very against that like our police department parking here and there has been talk of uh well which one's cheaper Oak County or US and it sounds like if we just went with Oakland County it is going to be more expensive is my take. Um, but what I'd like to do is I'd like to see if we can convene the uh public safety committee to just research that further. I thought we got an answer.

I thought the answer we got from the sheriff's department said, "I'm not going to give you a bid." I thought they said kick rocks.

The recommendation was That was their initial response essentially like if you're not seriously looking at this we're not going to waste our time in doing it. We looked at comparable communities how much similar it was a lot higher than ours but then did discuss with them. Councilman Ryan already mentioned we have a public safety committee. So there's no reason we couldn't just say let's get together and look at the comparable communities and say yes our chiefs are absolutely correct. Yeah. Set up a meeting. Who's on it? Come find out I am.

So how convenient. Who else? Not I. I do agree. I think that's a great idea. Is it just the two of you? I've got my cheat sheet right here. So let's just double check. While you're checking that out, can I ask a question to Chief uh Narsh? Yeah. of Chief Nurse. Chief Nurse, could you come to the podium, please? Not that kind of call you to the carpet for a quick second. Um, it goes along what they're asking. Now, I know that a lot of our officers are going to be retiring out in the next few years. Am I correct or incorrect? Uh, they are eligible. We have officers that have already passed their eligibility and so far everybody's staying on board. It's kind of their loyalty.

Something that maybe we should look into later on because of the fact that they might retire out. We might not get new ones in you. Um, well, we've The good news is we've been replacing Oh, okay. We we have been. Um, the question is, do you want to replace them at this rate or at a higher rate?

No, that's later on discussion. And that's something that we're going to I mean we need to as we move into our budget work sessions, it's also going to inform our um our our collective bargaining that we're going to have to continue doing with our police um and our our teams as well as our next year. And that's where because again if we want to remain competitive, we want to hire um new new talent or younger talent you know as our people are retiring um then we need to have those discussions.

I mean because as we have as we increase our cost of employing them it might be feasible then to switch over to Oak County. I not that I want to I don't please don't anybody ever take me like that but

well with with that comment I what I can make affirmatively on the record and we'll discover this and look at it uh there are 40 police agencies in Oakland County the village of Holly is the lowest paid police agency Oakland County the sheriff's office is the highest paid um there's like a $30,000 difference between the pay so uh even if we adjust um we're going to go from the lowest paid police agency are officers in Oakland County and they're the highest so by a considerable span. So I think what the manager is suggesting is that we look at it not in comparison to the highest but what what modifications would be fair.

I wasn't even talking about the high. I was just saying like we increased like $15,000 more for their payment you know hypothetically you know then we look at that and say okay what is our that's what we have to do every year is is to look at that. Um but and remember what you're getting from them is uh you're just getting a cop in a car as chief will always say that I'd rather have I'd rather have chief than have that. I'm just saying that way then they know people know

all of the the SWAT services, the traffic patrol, the things that you know are listed in the county that's already provided to us. We already have access to that um those services. Um so you know all of our capital, all of the things we have um already exist with I would like to say too um just because there's a million things we do and part of my research I looked at Springfield Township, I looked at Brandon Township, how much they are paying in their different mills for Oakland County and it was much higher than what we are doing. There's also um if you follow along with our Oakland County Sheriff, if you're looking at with our state right now, they're in meetings because our little corner of Holly is underserved in a lot of ways. Holly Groveland Township, Rose Township, they are all relying on the state police who do not have the same amount of cars available in this area and maybe this discussion when you guys go into your committee meeting can look at regionalization and maybe we can expand instead of looking at cutting. That is part of why I kind of want to add in some services and some talking in this budget like notaries for um private citizens to be purchasing firearms and different things that you might do at a county but we can here. I think we can do these things in house and

do you want to touch on that at all, Chief? Make that

I I do and thank you so much for those comments and I I kind of want everybody to understand something and it's it's kind of 101 on law enforcement. So, and and thank you manager price for sharing the comments that what you pay for with the sheriff's office and versus us or if you brought in White Lake or contracted a it's a police officer in a car. So, the infrastructure that you pay for you're going to pay for with the sheriff's office. If you were to contact with the sheriff's office, you're going to pay their contract rate for a police officer with a car. And what that includes is their training, their uniforms, all everything that goes with that. And it's pretty much the same in Holly. In every police agency, we base it uh on that. What you still have to supply is the police department, the computers, even the sheriff's office. So the the PD, that doesn't go away. That's not included in the price. It's a it's a officer and a car. So the infrastructure costs, all of that are the same whether it's with Alip PD, Sheriff's Office, or anybody else. So um all of those other services, the helicopter, the marine division, those are provided to every police agency in Oakland County. Troy has free uh use of those services because everybody in Oakland County pays Oakland County taxes. So those taxes pay for all of the support services that the sheriff's office pays uh or or pays for and provides. And that's equally to everybody in Oakland County. So again, what you're simply purchasing, we already have access to all of the other services is a deputy in a car versus a Holly police officer in a car. And then we all have the same exact training, the same exact um and that's the equivalent.

So what you're meaning is that the police department that we have now would still we'd still have to pay and maintain that because that's where Oak County would sit at. Correct. All those costs are still on the community. We wouldn't save any of that funding. You're not saving any of that. You still have to provide computers, desks, uh the building. We all agree when public safety committee meets to also consider the expansion of Holly police into serving our underserved surrounding areas. Thank you. That that's Yes, it was. Shannon, please don't take it as I was trying to say that you were not.

No, no. I I you know what this is always everybody's it's always a sensitive, but we understand it and I think it's a discussion we have to have. Um the first rule, the the first priority of government is its public safety, the protection of its citizens. That's whether it's federal, state, county, or local. It's always the first. That's why it's the biggest chunk because we're 24/7, 365. And so it's always more. Um but therefore, it is a discussion we always have to have. We have to have those discussions and they have to be in public. And trust me when I tell you, I've been having this discussion as a police chief for 25 years, almost every year. And I welcome those. Um, and I I and I welcome them because it gives us the opportunity to show you the quality of service that you get for the cost value that you get. And um, I can tell you as someone who has analyzed this stuff for my entire adult life, at least the last 25 of it, um, we're getting a tremendous value for the historical knowledge and the ability we have here in Holly. So, I'm very impressed with that and I look forward to presenting that whenever it's needed. I will say I will also add that the non-tangible, the non-financial thing that you lose is having these discussions. You don't have command and control anymore. You don't have your chief of police at your meetings that can discuss. If you don't like the way you're being policed, you lose the ability to change that. If you don't want to get, you know, if you want them to, you know, focus their efforts elsewhere, you lost that ability to have any kind of control over that. So,

and the pulse of the community indeed policing our neighborhoods. And the other aspect is whether whe whether you if you grab a larger agency, they're going to have contracts that they regulate as to how those officers rotate. Every six months officers can shift bump. They can move out of here. So you'll have officers that routinely would be like they don't know the community. You don't know them. Uh our officers are here. It's kind of like a marriage. Bob needs to stay. We're here for we're we're here for life. You you got us like a marriage. So we look forward to that conversation. Um we don't hide from any of that. and I actually get excited to have that conversation. So, I am really proud of what we have and I look forward to showing that off. Thanks, Chief.

Thank you. Thank you, Keith.

Lisa, will you please read item G? Village Council discussion on potential roads and sidewalks ballot initiative. Similar to the last item, this will be a discussion item with no official vote. Do I have a first to consider? Item G of new business. I will make that motion to consider item G on discussion of potential roads and sidewalk ballot initiative. I'll second that motion. Motion by Cole, second by Wine Runner. This is an item that I added to the agenda for discussion. So, the roads are

They broke my truck. We are all aware of this. Um I can say better than that.

I think I I've probably said enough, Buster, but thank you. Um our DPW has been busting their butts to do cold patches as winter permits, but um you know, as we've seen um in our neighborhoods that gets torn up when it snows and there's expansion and other things that that I don't understand because that's not my forte, but uh the roads are torn up. getting the patches are getting tossed into people's yards. I think it's from when the plows go by or something. And uh now summer is coming and it's just getting worse. And we don't have a budget item for for roads. So what do we do about it? I don't feel like this is an emergency situation where it's really a special assessment item. I think it's my opinion that this should be a millage item up to the voters. They want their roads fixed. They want new roads. Got to pay for it. We leave it up to them. So, um, council, what do you think?

The only thing I would, well, one of the things I'd say is that, uh, we make sure that people understand that village doesn't own the one that's next door to McDonald's. I hear about that and see that so many times pop up and it's just Yeah, I've seen that on Facebook so many times. I think it swallowed a car one day. It did. I think it took a Yugo. I would just say on that just is that we have active code enforcement on that right now. I don't I don't answer. No, I'm just saying I just I just wanted it out there. Thank you for saying that that is under chief to the council Dennis about what's going on with it. Code enforcement is on the McDonald's parking lot.

Well, McDonald's side street. I can say um you know public opinion wise people think that maybe none of us drive on the roads in Holly. I know I personally live on Sherman Street, which is one that gets a lot of traction. Uh it's had a ton of heavy equipment, building a new school next to it. It's torn up. It's been torn up. It's rough goes, right? I know that there's some other people who live on some of these streets that are getting named like Oakland and Cog all the way around. We we do live this. We understand it. And I love the idea of putting this to the voters as a village.

Um I live on Oakland. I have an option of zipping down and taking um north out. North is worse. It just depends on which axle I want to mess up that zipping out or traveling out. Yeah, it's carefully weaving around the potholes out. We have to look at how much more traffic we're having on our streets right now, too. Right. We have more residents. We now have a fully functioning middle school where people are zipping down every different Well, to get to

the I don't mean to cut you off. I'm sorry. Um the DPW though has when people do their repairs of their drains or sewers. There's on Bevans there is a I don't know how many squares. You can play tic-tac-toe on the street where they've just repaired it, but they've done a shoddy job. Well, I had a water man break in front of mine and the DPW did an awesome job. No, I wasn't saying DPW. No, no. I was saying, could you expand on that a little bit? I wasn't saying DVW did the badge. I was saying the contractors who did the work. I I didn't get a chance. I'm sorry. I stopped too fast. Danny, no. Not DPW doing it wrong. See what happens when you cut me off.

I know. Darn. Insert foot. No. Yeah. This is a it's a real time, real life situation that we are all facing. Uh in a village. This is housekeeping. You have to take care of your house. Whether it's your driveway cracking or the road that we live on, this is something we have to do to maintain our house. I have a question um on our roads and that the infrastructure under our roads that heard that goes along with

also roads repair roads just don't lay the foundation on everything else.

Correct. That that would that would be the right way to to really do this. Um it'd be a matter of engineering costs first and figuring out what it would cost to start uh upgrading some of the infrastructure under the roads because everything is very old. It is very patchworked. We do know that. um you know so the the thing with it is to upgrade the infrastructure. Our storm water management system is very um undized in most areas of the village and so all of those things really need to be looked at. Um I would highly advise against just repaving the roads. Yes, we would probably get some reprieve but it's not it's not a good idea. Um I don't always like to um uh speak to what Fenton has done but if if you do look at what they have done in previous years um they have redone huge amounts of their um side streets um including infrastructure and so that would be something to really look at and possibly research as to how they have done what they have done over there. Um they did get to a point where they were just putting asphalt on the road and they were dragging it with their belly blades down the road to fill in holes. Um this eventually got the residents attention in order to pass a millillage because there's only so much a department of public works can do to patch the roads.

So I I will just add on this. So we have a our last pacer rating our pavement asphalt surface evaluation uh was done I think 2018. Yeah. 2018. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's the last time we got quotes on our roads. Um I've talked to the V village engineer about this and Danny and I and he'll know that I was like I've been very adamant that like no like we need to start somewhere. We need to do a road and like we need to this you know what is the road where we start. We have a few that are shovel ready. We have um as far as shovel ready ones that we have Sherman North and college I believe are our three shovel ready projects. We already have the engineering done. We know exactly what needs to happen. Um, but that doesn't answer, you know, a lot of our questions. And so we've been working with municipal analytics as well. And part of it is to look over that pace rating and just talk talk about how are we going after roads? How are we going to start spending down some of our money? Because our the funds that we've used for major and local roads in the past have been I mean, it's supposed to be for the maintenance of them, not necessarily the the uh re repment or resurfacing of it. It's supposed to be just for repairs. And so we're looking at how we can do a plan. Um but it won't be as quick as you know doing a millage where we would be able to do it a little bit more comprehensively uh and quicker but we are looking at all right what is our strategy to go after some of these things because and just I don't know how long has it been 10 years since a road got has gotten replaced here I think 2016. Yes, we did. We did receive some grant funding and we rep we repaved um Holly Bush um Cogshaw and

it wasn't airport but it was um partner. Well, airport was done when they put the newer wasn't it? Yes, that would have been 06. Now I know we had a presentation also from plant man. This is probably two years ago, but that was more focusing kind of on bonds, talking about the sewer lines, but it was going to be in conjunction like we would do those and then replace on top of them. Yeah, as Danny mentioned, you we'd be very foolish to just do the road because you know we ser you have to tear out the road to put down uh you know any you know replacement piping.

So are we still looking into that? Yeah, that's I mean it is we would do it comprehensively like so when we were talking about like replacing Sherman, it's to do like the entire project. It's not just to uh redo the road. It's doing all the water and sewer portions of that too. I'll talk a little bit about that in my report. To do the water and sewer portion, the water enterprise funds can cover that. Do we have enough in there to use it? Uh

to do some of those to start somewhere. We we have some that we can start some of those projects, but the thing is we also have uh like we have lots of pump stations that are approaching failure that are an imminent failure that we're having to do. So like we have so much uh ahead of us that we're having to look at um and I'll talk about in the reports today. I mean Danny and I today sat down with Ro um engineering over at the water treatment plant

waste water I'm sorry waste water we did talk about water as well we're at wastewater and we were going over um essentially like for our capital improvement plan um we need to have a strategy about what are all the thing like you know our guys Tom does a great job of maintaining the system that's there and keeping operating it operating but he doesn't really have the that's not his skill set to look at you what's the longevity of this product, how long it's going to last, when do we need to replace it and do all those things. So, um, we have to look at this all compreh like comprehensively for, you know, our uh, not only what's underneath the roads, but our systems over there and make sure that we don't spend out all of that money or any of that money until we know, you know, like if um, we we have to

if if we have a cat Yeah. If we have a catastrophic failure of some sort, we have to have some sort of catch. Um and those can be in the multi-millions of dollars. So that is one thing we we do have to keep some reserve there and and people have to understand that portion of things as well. The sidewalks however we don't really have to worry about any kind of infrastructure underneath that. That's correct. For most for most of them for most of them. Jim brought up something about sidewalks earlier. We already have ordinance that stipulate the homeowner responsible for Yes. So we we do have a reimbursement program and it depends on your street frontage.

Uh yeah. So it's 9127 uh in the ordinance that covers um I believe side that's the the council can do a cost sharing agreement with residents uh at council's discretion in order to replace sidewalks. Ultimately the sidewalk replacement is on the individual resident. um you know we can do the sidewalk repair and you know charge the resident and there's different methods that we've actually had sidewalks we've identified and we've done notice to the residents through code enforcement that they have to do the repair on it um there's procedures again to do the cost sharing um with with the residents um because part of me is like uh I did a so three years ago Mr. Walker manager at the time asked me to do if I wanted to walk around the neighborhood find bad side so I walked around then I find my spreadsheet right now. So, I don't know where it is. I did most of the major streets, but there were some that could be just ground down instead of a complete replacement. I think you can do that. If there's a small gap, you just grind it down. And other ones were huge huge gaps. And if it's already in our ordinances to have the homeowner replace it, I think it would almost be like I think some people that don't have sidewalks. And I know I brought up in the past um people that live on airport don't necessarily care if the mill pond has kind of we're for right now because we have you on airport are paying for weed treatment in the middle.

I want no weed in milk. I think as I'm not sure there I I think that based on the discussions and attorney Gilner and I were just talking about this is that we've kind of got a consensus on like the direction the uh council wants to go. I think that we should determine which the appropriate what is the appropriate committee uh whether it's the public works committee is it um uh or charter and ordinance committee that would um public works

so how we how we should proceed um and so maybe that's going to be some discussion between us and council and then just to be in the appropriate committee to to make uh specific recommendations to council as far as whether it's a ballot initiative or um if they want us to start working sidewalks on code enforcement. We can do that. Um I think I live in a previous municipality that came by spray your sidewalk and it was either the home or replace it and if they didn't replace it then came by with their crew and can we um just as a consensus say yes get full code enforcement on sidewalks. We can um we can I'll re make that consensus.

I don't know that it needs to be a motion because we already I'm tired of talking about sidewalks. We already have code enforcement. We've already got ordinances. I think just passing along with the comm. Let's um I think I think let let me I would ask and let me speak to uh code enforcement inside because there are a lot of secondary effects that are going to happen with this because if um we're going to every resident that has it and we're you know we're saying there's a lot of sidewalks that be replaced. You're have a lot of angry residents coming in. Uh and so if that's the direction council wants to go um we can we can do it. Um, I don't know you guys. Angry residents. Oh, I don't think we have any of those.

No, I think there's I think that there's um I think that we need to have some conversations first uh before Well, they could do sidewalk lifting, too. Daniel, enforcement. We could hire someone. All right. We got to keep it to one at a time here. I think it's under the discretion of those manager who doesn't. So, it doesn't necessarily have to be code enforcement. So, it could be Yeah. I'm the head of code enforcement. Yeah. So, it could be anyone you want. So, So, I think what we're doing in this discussion is u maybe adding some ballot initiative for roads, but we're going to make sure homeowners are maintaining their sidewalks on a different issue. That's what I think.

I don't think it's necessarily fair to people that don't have sidewalks. You bought a house without I don't I don't have sidewalks. I don't want them either if we are repaving my street. Just saying. But no, I think just to get us back into the discussion on valid initiatives, we're talking maintenance on sidewalks right now and I don't think that's a valid initiative. The sidewalks are here. People need to maintain, you know, you just maintain what's in front of your house to the best of your abilities, right? But I would love to see a valid initiative to start talking about replacing our roads and what's

I agree, but um I do want you to come back to us with what that secondary fallout's going to be, please. So, back to the discussion at hand. Um, which subcommittee are you thinking would be the relevant one to discuss what um that initiative should look like? And um I I'd like Danny to be involved if he's um you know got this insight to if you don't mind Danny the uh infrastructure that would need to be taken care of alongside with the roads because why bother dumping a gold plate on a toilet if it's going to be crap underneath. It's not going to

I think that I think that what what will inform us a lot more is after we get the information back from municipal analytics that kind of shows the uh our roads like the the their their projection for how much roads are going to cost because again our numbers that we're using right now are 2018 numbers. We're going to have to look at new engineering numbers because uh you know for the replacement we're going to have to determine I mean the last number I think was over $20 million is what we would need

in order to replace the pump station. So I I know that you apply to all relevant grants and then if we get um get a uh millillage going to that hopefully the citizens back I can start adding to the savings and then um any other ideas that the subcommittees can come up with to recommend a council would be okay

something that's a lot of money any public comment on this item hearing none seeing none As item H will move us into closed session. We will first have reports as we will adjourn after the closed session. Tim, do you have anything to report?

Um, yes. Actually, I know this has already been a long meeting, but I've put together a pretty comprehensive report. I know that um a lot of uh you know, we talk about the things new, we don't always see it. So I wanted to kind of do a little bit of more of a comp comprehensive report than I've done in the past just to kind of give you an example of like some of the stuff we're doing and I'll try to go through it real quick. So um to begin with as you know some of these you're going to probably want to pull down to have discussions on to begin with as you know plant terminal contracted village for audit services and that's why tonight we didn't present the report. Uh I'm not going to speculate for the reason they're they did this right before they scheduled they were scheduled to present before council. Um, I had requested uh questions in advance from council about the audit. I didn't receive any specific questions from council regarding the audit. However, any if there are any questions, please let Lisa or myself know. While we're not auditors, we will certainly do our best to provide clarification where possible. However, it will probably require us to conduct some research to provide uh informed answers. We currently have an active request for proposals for audit services. It's my expectation that we receive responses this month so that council may consider selecting a new audit firm next month. Um the as I mentioned I went to the board of review at the township. I kind of already covered that. Still working with municipal analytics who has given us an introduction of what the product will be. Um we're very excited for you to see it. Um we are uh we are currently waiting on our assessor to provide some requested information in order to complete some of the projections that we've requested. Um we've been waiting for a little while obviously with all the um the taxes and such going on right now. Um he's quite busy, but we keep prodding him to provide us information. Um like I said, we're doing that in conjunction with our capital improvement program. I already talked about that Danny and I met today with Row at Wastewater. Um we're looking to get permission uh from council to conduct a study in both facilities to deter both the wastewater and our water treatment facilities to determine future needs to inform a capital improvement plan. Um

this will assist us in preparing shovel ready projects for future grants. as we talked about going after some of these grants um that will come before council at a later date. Main Street Oakland County has agreed to coordinate uh with Miller Canfield to provide public uh PA57 training uh which was requested at the last meeting in a joint session for both the village council and the downtown development authority. This training will help ensure both governing bodies remain fully informed regarding the statutory responsibilities. The DDA discussed this at their meeting yesterday and the dates they proposed were uh Wednesday evenings in April. specifically the ones that were mentioned I believe were the 8th, 15th or 22nd when I talked to uh Kevin earlier. I will say that the 22nd there are potential conflicts based on there's a planning commission meeting that date scheduled. Um and so on the 15th that the DDA design committee also has a meeting. However, they said they could reschedule that if needed. Um and also I reached out to Oakland County and we're make we want to ensure that these dates are available for Miller Canfield. These are just some of the dates that deviate throughout and I want to see if any of these dates work for council so we can get a tenative date scheduled. So that would be the 8, 15th or 22nd of April for this specific one. I was just saying if there's any kind of consensus of a date 15th for May is best.

What time? Uh, it would probably be a 6 PM. 6 PM April 15th was the suggestion. Does that work for me? I can do the 15. Okay. I will I will relay that back to Is that a work session or is that a That will be a joint work session where they plan um not Miller Canfield will be providing um PA57 training to both groups. uh 15th at 6 p.m. April 15th.

April the 15th at 6 pm. And so we will confirm with the DDA as well as Miller Canfield. Um I'm uh pleased to report significant progress from the Mil Pond committee which has now surpassed the number of signatures required to move forward with establishing a legal lake level. This effort has been entirely communitydriven and demonstrates the strong level of engagement and commitment among our residents and surrounding stakeholders. I would like to specifically recognize the leadership of Regina Caos who has been instrumental in coordination of this initiative. Her and her uh her and her partner uh came in last Friday and scanned a bunch of the historical documents that the water resource commission had noted they would uh need. Although the petition process now been successfully completed, I've also reached out to Oakan County Board of Commissioners to request consideration of the matter through a commission resolution. Uh the letter is in your packet um that I submitted. While the petition itself is sufficient to move the process forward, the additional step may streamline the county's administrative process and maintain momentum on the project. I recently spoke with the water resource commission and this item will be on the committee agenda, one of their committee agendas for March 25th for a vote um which I will then that which they will then escalate to the county commissioners if approved. Uh I informed them that I will try to attend the meeting to answer any of the questions that they may need on that date. Um staff has already begun planning our villages Independence Day celebration. This year's uh event will take place on Friday, July 3rd at Lakeside Park. Our goal is to and again I keep I have to remind myself every time I say Independence Day celebration, not Fourth of July because I don't want to confuse people. Same as last year. Our goal is to build upon the success of previous years while continuing to refine the event to ensure it's uh remain to ensure that it remains a positive, safe, and wellorganized community celebration. For example, we're trying to coordinate through Oakland County to get their show truck and actually have a band uh before uh before the events to, you know, just kind of bring the event up to the next level, especially 250th anniversary um

of the country. We will begin the annual fundraising process for the fireworks display as well as begin planning for holidays, which I have a meeting on Thursday to begin that those discussions. In February of uh 2021, the village entered into a land contract for the sale of the former fire station located at 313 South Broad Street. That land contract expired last month and in accordance with agreement, the final closing of the property occurred on March 6, 2026. The village received a check for the final balloon payment. Uh we are also nearing completion of the final details associate or the final details yeah associated with depot move and these efforts are expected to conclude this spring. I have convened a working group that will focus on determining the future use of the Union Depot. Our tenative plan is to begin community engagement in early April through both in-person meetings and digital outreach. Feedback from the community will then be used to develop a request for proposals that will allow interested organizations to formally submit um to formally submit concepts for council consideration. This process will help inform council's future policy direction regarding the building's use as well as guide staff's planning related to potential improvements and potential fundraising opportunities. Last Thursday, I'll put my first picture up on here. So, I attended the state of the county address, right? Uh when I walked in on the big screen, there was a picture of the union depot being moved actually. Uh so, it was pretty cool seeing Holly represented there at the county. Uh the countyy's executive speech was overall very optimistic about the uh current status of the county and the service that are being provided. Uh staff and I participated in the 130th Holly Holly Washington club lunchon. The village president I met with economic development director from the University of Michigan Flint to talk about potential areas coordination. This resulted in connecting director Rath with um their GIS team that we're moving forward for some of our GIS work we've never actually been able to accomplish within our village. Next Thursday, I have the Oakland County Main Street Breakfast Summit in the morning in Pontiac, followed by the Simco General Assembly in Detroit. So, I'll be out of

office all day on the 19th. Um, I am also now on the municipal mun uh mun Michigan municipal executives professional development board and we're currently planning the MME summer workshop in Bo Mau. Council member Cole has been working with the village parks and neighborhood forest program which provides tree saph saplings for children plant. I'll defer to her for a more detailed update, but the program flyer has been attached for council's awareness. There's a QR code right up there if anyone would like to uh get more information. In conjunction with the Arbor Day resolution that we did tonight um before council, the village will also be coordinating a community tree planting event. Additional uh details will be forthcoming. This effort is part of the continued particip our continued participation in the Tree City USA, a designation the village has proudly maintained for more than three decades. The environment committee met to discuss the MI green communities program and our potential involvement. I've been coordinating with MI works in order to provide an introduction to students to jobs within uh different um departments within municipal government. We're looking at doing a kind of a abbreviated career fair for them in early April. I met last week at the Chamber of Commerce in the Holly Township with a master planner and a couple uh local realtors to discuss some economic development opportunities within the community. The DDA is coordinating the village's participation with American and Bloom growing vibrant communities program which is an initiative that empowers volunteers and local leaders to enhance community vitality, beauty and environmental stewardship. It offers structured self- assessment tools, educational resources and coaching to improve areas like landscaping, urban forestry and heritage aiming to boost economic development and civic pride. Kevin will coordinate this effort with the village parks commission. We talked about that this uh morning. Many of the village owned flag poles are currently non-serviceable, which has resulted in inconsistent pole heights and flags in poor condition. Um, to address this, I directed the Department of Public Works to temporarily remove all the flags while the poles are being serviced and repaired. Our goal is to reinstall new flags on fully operational poles no later than Memorial Day that the village

presents a consistent and respectful display. We have also received some feedback regarding the recent tree maintenance work within the village and reviewing the situation. clear that we should have done a better job of communicating expectations to community prior to the work beginning. The village contracted a licensed uh contractor to provide professional tree maintenance services along the rightway at Lakeside Cemetery and on other municipal properties. The contractor's work focus on moving dead, dying, hazardous or otherwise designate trees. Village staff will be complete the stump grinding, cleanup and site restoration following the contractor's work. We are also working to improve our RFP process for items such as this. Um, Director Rasburg is uh also coordinating with the EPA on the get the lead out program to explore potential support of the villages lead line service line replacement program which is a statemandated program that we're going to have to be part of but the EPA is going to help us out. While these discussions are still in the early stages, participation in this program could provide valuable assistance as we continue addressing our aging water infrastructure. Uh, last week I submitted community funding projects to Rep. Rep. MLAN's office. One of them was also to assist with our leadline replacement program requesting surounts. We've also been fielding follow-up questions from Treasury in regard to financially distressed cities, village, and township grants which we submitted. Uh we've gotten several questions and we've been having return dialogue which is I feel like a good sign that they keep asking us questions about our program and what we'd like to do with it which means they're actually considering us which is uh kind of cool. Um uh speaking of that, I I see Blake is here. um him and I he he has some uh grant writing experience. His wife does as well. I've talked to him. I'm looking at um you know having obviously we we when we talk about the administrative team, it's you know me for a lot of this. And so um you know I want to find community members that have grant writing experience and I have talked um about you know getting some of them involved to help research additional grants um to you know because some of them that's the

hardest part is researching it. I can I'm pretty good at submission and review of them, but the research and um assistance with that would been great. And so I just appreciate he was actually brought that up to me as an idea and offering their services. And so I just want to thank him for that and I'm going to definitely take advantage of that. I want to recognize the continued dedication of the public works team. Um they've been working extended hours responding to demands created by our aging infrastructure and the day-to-day needs of the community. I mean, I've seen almost every weekend I've been out I've seen Danny in a hole uh fixing a water man. Um, you know, that's our our utilities director in a hole working on projects. Um, and just, you know, just he loves his job. Yeah,

he loves his family, too. And we got to keep that in mind. Um the the fire department uh we saw based on the CPR saves last um uh last month and you know previous and you know how the impact that's having on the community. The fire department has launched a free CPR awareness program for the community. I think I've got a slide on that too. Yep. Um the first class will take place on Saturday, March 14th at 8 a.m. Residents who are interested in participating are encouraged to contact the fire department to be added to the roster. You have to call in advance if you want to attend. don't just show up. Programs like this are important part of building a safer and more prepared community. Um, this is just an awareness to get you training so you can do the uh do the uh perform CPR uh while you know emergency responders are coming there. If you actually want to get certification, you can pay additional to actually get the full certification program. Um, but this will this will get you some training that would be uh very useful. Additionally, Chief Watson has been actively engaging with the community members and local businesses to secure donations that support the department's training and equipment needs from CPR training medicines AEDs for public buildings. These partnerships continue to strengthen the resources available to our emergency emergency services. I really appreciate Chief Watson being proactive and his leadership in pursuing these opportunities. Um, finally, on March 4th, 2026, two members of our fire department, uh, Assistant Chief Kurt Nichki and medic firefighter Grant Burgger were recognized by Henry Ford Hospital for their exceptional exceptional care of a stroke patient. I've got that little award up there as well. Um, their response resulted in the fastest door to needle time recorded for the month of January. Recognition like this reinforces the high level of professionalism and skill demonstrated by our first respond responders and reflects very positively on village poly. And that concludes my report and I

know that Lisa and Mike may have some things as well perhaps. There's there's a ton but I've got some matters tonight for you and that's going to run long. I'm kind of labor providing everything else adding to an already long Lisa. Um, mine won't be as long as Tim's. However, I feel I've been just as busy. Um, so

yeah, I'm going to again, as I had stated before in our last meeting, I'm going to um come every month with a update on our FOYA our foyer request, Freedom of Information Act requests. So in the month of February, the village of Holly has received 12 foyer requests. We have completed and closed two of the requests. Two of the requests are awaiting payments of deposit. Three are in the process of being reviewed and one request is in the lawsuit status and four requests are in the um appeal process. So that that's our that's just for the month of February. Um I'll be working with the village manager and department heads preparing information on the budgets. We have our meetings coming up this um next week. Uh MMRMA, which is our insurance provider. They um it's renewal season. So I'm working on a very comprehensive um questionnaire that they are looking at that they they do every year. So I'm reviewing them our policy for any items that will need to be deleted, added or revised. The village in DPW are currently working on upgrading our computers. Um we finally got BC3 in here to um replace our computers. Our computers have not been Windows 11 compliant since September. Um they finally got us on the list and so he is in all week updating those. Um the personnel committee uh we need to have a personnel committee meeting um because we have upcoming benefit renewals coming up and we have to make a decision on those. not only for for June 1st but also for the union negotiation contracts as well. And also I sent out a review. Um we had updated the personnel manual. So I'm just waiting for the personnel committee to come back with comments. Um myself and the village manager will be opening a money market account with Choice One

Bank. That's who we're with right now. Um I just want to read a quick excerpt that I wrote. Um, the village of Holly currently has a bank account with Choice One Bank. This account is only uh federally insured up to $500,000. In an effort to ensure all the funds at Choice One Bank, I met with Lisa Wood. She's the vice president of Treasury Management um to discuss a solution to this deficiency. Miss Wood stated that there are accounts called ICS which is um Intrify card in Intrify card services. This money market account would be fully FDIC which is is Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured on all the monies that um that would also give us an interest rate of 3%. Right now we are currently only gaining 0.05% on our monies. So, I am going to be meeting with um her tomorrow to set up these accounts.

Thank you, Jim. Yes. So, um real quick, do we council need to authorize? I thought that was one of the things that council needed to actually say. So, we were discing that and look through the charter. We didn't see anything in there. Um, we can we can review it further. I know that when we looked at it previously that, you know, when we're referencing that was PA57 for um I think it was in I think it was actually in the U treasury documents. Okay. Not in our chart.

So, not in our chart. Um, and we can look at that further and we we can postpone action on that and we discussed it. I mean, that's why we said put in reports issues.

Okay. Um, first, thank you for uh staff and DPW for taking down all the flags, making sure we're honoring the flag appropriately. I think we're we're right next to Great Lakes National Cemetery and I know a lot of veterans come through and it's it's pretty disheartening when we come through and our flags are are not serviceable. So, thank you for that. Um, little little surprised by Plant Moran's um decision to not present. they had not presented before and they were always ask questions, ask questions and then finally they do a report that's I would say not like the other reports they've given us and they say no questions no questions goodbye goodbye no more questions so I thought that was uh that was a little um sad that we can't get questions answered um regarding Danny working so much do we need to hire more employees I think we have I think I saw 160 overtime hours. And if that's something that uh uh municipal analytics can say, well, you're have 160 hours of overtime. You could hire a new employee and then you're not paying over 10 hours.

We definitely need to discuss that during our budget work sessions because we've uh we for perspective, we used to have 12 DPW workers. Now we're done. Now years ago, it decreased to six and the workload has decreased. I mean, our infrastructure, our our needs have grown uh within the community as far as our infrastructure and supporting uh water in the township and such. And so, um we don't want to lose an institutional burn out. Yeah. I mean, I And so, that's some discussions we we need to have some more. I know Danny would love to hire a whole another six guys. Um whether or not we can afford that, that's what we have to We did have some money here that volunteered.

Yeah. So, I told him to get Tim's application before we left. Yeah. So,

I had another one. Um I liked I think it was one of the the consent item I sent consent agenda items um for the tree removal. I like seeing that we had two local companies apply. I think it was two um put their bid in. Um one happened to be my neighbor. Um I don't I don't talk to that much. I just I just recognize the name. One thing I'd like to see us do if it's I think it's legal to do as long as it's not involving federal money is give priority or preference preference or extra points to businesses from inside the village of Holly. So if there's some way we can do that with our process going forward that would be I think I think there is something even within our purchasing policy on our bid procedures actually say additional I'd have to verify that but I know that language like that is out there.

I think that's in there too. Okay. Um that's it. Buster

on the meeting and go ahead and team again this year and also meeting I mentioned about your CPR and also gave them and on that there's organizations that would like to, you know, arrange special training for, you know, a softball team or, you know, your business, um, then, you know, contact, um, the fire department and we might be able to coordinate training like that as well if it's going to be a large group.

Wendell, um, thing I want to say have to say is, um, I couldn't make it to the, uh, HC meeting this past month, so, and I tried to watch it on YouTube, but you couldn't hear nothing. So, Unfortunately, I missed that. But I'd like to also just give just a thanks to all of our employees, first responders, residents, just everybody to thank them for everything they do for us, including our residents of our village because even even though we think sometimes that they're just out to get us, I think they're just giving us constructive criticism. Shannon,

uh, yes. So, I did have a little flyer up there. I um had learned of this opportunity called Neighborhood Forest where they are giving out trees to local schools, libraries, different things. I was like, let's see if we can get the Holly Village Parks involved. I contacted some people. They're like, do you think we can? I'm like, well, we're going to throw our hats in. And they did accept our parks program for this. So, residents of the village of Holly, student age, are able to sign up. Parents can sign up their toddler group through 12, whatever. And um you will be receiving a sapling. We are aiming to give out those trees on the parks cleanup day. Amber will have a little bit more about that. But um that way maybe as people are coming out, we're giving out saplings. We're going to clean up some parks and that would be great. It is a free program for the village. So the students who are signing up are receiving a free um they just ask that you plant the tree. There are other options on there if you don't have a yard to plant a tree. They have indoor plants as well. So, that is also an option for some people in case you live in maybe one of our apartment buildings and you don't have a spot to plant a tree. You can sign up for an indoor plant, which is a very cool program. Um the deadline to register is March 15. So, if you haven't done it yet, this is our last week to get your name in that. After that, they are going to start sending out emails on when those trees will be delivered here. Right now, it's looking as if we are going to be receiving a cedar tree that is native to Michigan because it is a um program that is trying to replace trees that are native to the area. And we haven't gotten full confirmation yet that is going to come out at the beginning of April on which exact trees

we're getting. But last year and the year prior it's been replacing of cedar trees. So hopefully we'll get some native cedar trees in the area. I don't have um any commissions to report on. I would like to say that I am still very much following along with our area's policing and what is going on there. I appreciate Chief Narum letting me ask questions and about mutual aid and different things. Um, we got a great little corner here in northwest Oakland County, but that's where we're at. Amber, perfect.

All right. Parks met last week. Uh, just to reiterate, we will be doing our walk through on March 22nd to identify um any kind of deficiencies we have. Again, if you are somebody that visits our parks regularly and you have a complaint or something you'd like us to look at, um, we are all available by email. We will also have our park cleanup on 4:25 at 9:00 a.m. It'll go all day, but we're not if you want just want to come out for an hour or two hours, you don't have to commit yourself to an all day thing. Um, appreciate Miss Shannon Cole for coming through for our kids for the trees. We also have CDBG funds that are left over for trees that are available for anybody in the village. You have to be north of Elm Street. there is a a map basically of the locations that we can put those. But if you are north of Elm Street and you want a tree, please talk to our DPW or come to our village offices and we can get you a tree.

Is that for uh east and west of Sageno? It's north of so yes. I'm asking because there's a map. So, there's a certain specific map. So, that if anybody's interested, they should probably come in and we can let them know if they're in that area. Thank you for the assist. And that is it.

Um, DDA. Um, besides what Tim said, I was impressed with the DDA director last night. He has found and received authority from the board to utilize a resource called C Legacy, which will streamline event planning, volunteer coordination, local business involvement. It's intuitive, efficient, it's affordable, and sustainable. uh marketing and advertising and there was so much more. If you're interested in more details, reach out to Kevin, the DDA director, or watch last night's DDA meeting on YouTube. And um let's see, Lisa, will you please read item H of new business? Consideration of village council to enter into close session to review the village attorney's written legal memorandum. Discuss pending litigation. versus the village of Holly. Holly village council case number 26-CV-10537 and Matson versus the village case number 2025-21800- CZ and review the close session minutes from February 10th, 2026 pursuant to the Open Meetings Act 276 of 1976. Do I have a first to consider item H of new business?

Memorandum was written under the attorney client privilege just to be specific and it concerns redevelopment options. Thank you.

So I would like to make a motion. I'll make the motion to enter into close session to review the village attorney's written legal memorandum which is under attorney client privilege to discuss pending litigation Matson vers village of Holly Holly village council case number 26-CV-10537 and Matson v Holly case number 2025-21800- CV and review the close session minutes from from February 10th, 2026 pursuant to Open Meetings Act 276 of 1976.

Thank you very I'll second that. Thank you for reading it. We have a motion by Cole. We have a second by Wendell. Uh clerk, will you call the role, please? Ky, yes. Wendell, yes. Cole, yes. Wine Burner, yes. Costca, yes. Brandon. Yes. Motion carried.