City Council - Regular Meeting

Ladies and gentlemen, the time is 6.16 p.m. and we are going to go ahead and call to order the Special City Council study session, study meeting for June 3rd, 2026. The meeting is called to order. Roll call, please.

Mayor Byron Nolan. Mayor Pro Tem Stephen Chisholm.

Present.

Councilwoman Rutledge, excused. Councilman Bishop.

Present.

Councilwoman Scott. We'll be here shortly. Councilwoman Howard. Here. Councilwoman Richardson. Here. Mayor Pro Tem, you do have a quorum.

Thank you. Moving right along down to item number three, approval of the agenda. Has everybody had an opportunity to review the agenda? Yes.

So moved. Second. Second.

It's been properly moved and seconded. Is there discussion? Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye.

All opposed? Motion passes. Darren Carrington, treasurer, study session of fiscal year 2027 budget. Mr. Carrington, I yield the floor to you.

Thank you. Good evening, council. Good evening. So just wanted to kind of do two things. One is pick up where we left off last week. We had gotten through the police budget. I did want to circle back and discuss one item that has come up within the administration over the past week or two. We've had some clarification on that. And then before we get into that, I did have a few responses from last meeting. Just wanted to go over those. I'm kind of collecting these responses to give them to you at the end of the study session. I can share these with you if you want. But we just had a few items, a few questions from last time. One was about the pilots. The second was about the budget, the memberships out of the city council budget that were being paid for, and then a question about the cybersecurity grant. And so right now we've got four pilots that we're collecting on, and I think we may have covered three if not all four of these. So that's Thompson Towers, Cherry Hill Square, Cherry Hill Family Apartments, I believe it is, and then the State of Michigan building, the HHS Department, I think that's Department of Social Services, on Michigan Avenue. And Jerome, remind me again, Cherry Hill Square, is that the one on Henry Ruff?

Yeah, that's one at 213 on Henry Ruff.

And then Cherry Hill Family?

That's the one on Middle Valley and Cherry Hill.

Okay.

So we have Middle, Cherry Hill Family also, did you say?

Yes.

Yes.

Mr. Chair.

Go right ahead.

I know you did mention this, but for the pilot, how long or is it for life?

So generally, they are for a set period of time. On average, it's like 30 to 40 years. I wasn't able to locate the contracts, but I'm trying to get that clearer because I know that was the second question about the length of it. And so I'm going to continue to research our records to see what exactly is the period of time for those. Because, again, the research that I've found is that generally those are considered contracts, and they do have a defined period for them.

Okay. Thank you. Yes. The DSS building? Uh-huh. Is that the one that's on Michigan near? Down the street from me. Well, yeah, down the street from me. From the fire? Yeah.

Because that's Bogey's building, yes. Who? Ron Bogey developed that.

Really? So all of these have leases, I take it.

Is that what we're talking about? Justice Center.

Justice Center.

Yeah. From Bogey. Really? I didn't know that.

Something new every day. OK. All right, thank you, .

Then the next item was about the memberships that were being paid for out of city council. So we have four that have been paid. First is Michigan Municipal League, the MML. Then we have the National League of Cities. We have the Conference of West and Wayne, and Simcog are the ones that are paid out of that account.

Repeat it, please.

Michigan Municipal League, National League of Cities, Conference of West and Wayne, and Simcog.

That's another one. One that I forgot about that needs to know what our emails change to. CWW Conference of West Duane.

And then lastly, oh, I'm sorry. Lastly was just a question about the cybersecurity. So there are three main items for that. Migration to the .gov emails, some cyber risk training for IT professionals as well as city employees, and then we're also budgeting for a full refresh of computers for city employees. of that that was on a list of grants that we reviewed last week okay as I mentioned we had gotten kind of gone through the PD budget did want to circle back at the next council meeting we're going the administration is going to be submitting a proposal, and I believe there will be a demonstration for, it's a company called Flock. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, if you've had any exposure to that, read about it, heard about it. But it's a type of, Security, information technology, cameras, different type of data and the like that is used by a number of communities, not only across the state of Michigan but across the country. And so, as I said, they're going to be here on your next meeting for June 15th. Administration is going to be proposing a specific arrangement with them. It's going to be a multi-year agreement for us to purchase this equipment that they proposed. And the first year would be for the upcoming fiscal year would be $76,000. But we'll be having more details of that, I guess, next week when we get the agenda set and have the proposed agreement presented to council.

I'm glad you brought that up because I know looking at the old contract, we must have been at like some type of super low entry level. Because that rate versus what it's going up to now, and I'm assuming it's far more advanced. For sure. And then we had a grant from the government, too, that paid that.

For the cameras? Yeah.

That's what that was, just for the installation and stuff?

Yeah, that was just specifically for that. So this is a much more expansive, comprehensive type of service. It involves the cameras. It involves... What are those things that they – what is it? Drones. Drones. It involves drones. I believe, like, gunshot detection equipment and software. So it's a much more robust offering that's being proposed here. Gotcha. And so – Again, the idea is to bring that. The first year impact is going to be $76,000. After that, it's going to be about $240,000 annually for a few years to pay off all of this technology.

So that's coming out of the police department budget?

Yeah, so we would be looking to add $76,000 to the PD budget. We will be working on some grants for payments of the following years, because this is a couple million dollars obligation that we're talking about. So we would be looking to secure some grant funding for this. But again, the plan is to present this and move forward with it at the beginning of the next fiscal year. so you said the startup is 76,000 the police budget requires yes so so 76,000 is year one so we will be adding we would propose adding that to the budget we didn't have that included in the budget last week And so we will be adding, proposing to add an additional $76,000 to cover year one of this contract.

Based on the startup?

Exactly, yeah. So that's for fiscal year 27. Following years it's going to be about $240,000 per year. Per year? Per year.

Does that number include, like, the current, I know there's currently flocked, like, license plate readers in the city. Is that, like, on top of the current, like, lease, or is that, like, incorporated in there?

Yeah, Councilman, I honestly don't know if... If that's going to be adding to what the ones that we already have, I believe the ones that we already have were just for more of a demonstration, a short time. So I don't think we're going to be keeping those. I believe the contract will be replacing the ones that we currently have. My understanding that was for, and I don't know if Mayor Pro Tem, if you recall, but my understanding that that was kind of a limited demonstration type of project.

I'll have to look back at that contract because... I was under the impression at that time that was just, you know, that was the system at that time, getting it and, you know, being a member of it. But understand the technology, it enhances overnight. Because all the stuff that you kind of sort of alluded to this evening, none of that was even available at that particular time. It was literally the black poles with the solar cameras on it. But seeing the demonstration that they gave and the maneuvering and everything like that, I'm like, our cameras can't do that. But that was something they didn't even, you know... as far as presentation a couple years ago. So this had to be some type of entry level startup.

Okay.

And then you know how they do with the cell phones. Right, right, right. And everything else. Yeah.

I was just wondering if it was like, it was already incorporated in that price. So if it was like, we're already spending, let's say, $100,000 already on block, then we're just kind of adding an extra X.

Yeah, we'll have that clarified next week with the proposal and everything.

I know like the chief is here, but just kind of like talking about her budget. I know she's doing things to also cut her budget, like to kind of help offset some of these other asks. Like I'll let her mention it, but like I think you got your take home car request done. Councilman Howard. Yeah, I think she's doing that and like other stuff.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so we did As Councilwoman Scott was alluding to about the take-home cars, we did, over the last couple weeks, take a look at specifically the people and police that were taking home city vehicles. None of these were really new vehicles. A lot of these were more of our older vehicles, but to just kind of better manage the program i believe it was six or seven vehicles that we made a decision to not you know keep city ownership so the idea is to liquidate those we offer them to the employees because they are using them in their line of responsibilities but a couple things when they're taking them home we're paying for the gas and we have some liability because they're covered by the city so You know, they do have the opportunity to purchase those vehicles, and the ones that are not wanted by those employees, we're probably going to auction those off. The focus is on, I think, more so than the sale, because some of these are not really that valuable just because of the mileage and how old they are. But we won't have the maintenance and the gas and the liability with it. That's a disabuse.

They used to do auctions and stuff back in the day, and they made a lot of money.

Yeah, yeah. So I think the idea is to, you know, go that route.

But they had a lot that they had confiscated doing raids, and it was big. Yeah. It was huge, so that would help. And they did it every year.

Yeah, yeah.

Question on the security cameras. Are these like body cams or?

No. So these are cameras that are kind of posted around the city. And they're, you know, if you, they're, may not notice them but they are around in a lot of communities once you become aware of the new you start to recognize them a lot more but they're just kinda on the street uh... and the way that it works is that uh... it allows the police department if a crime is committed and they say oh you know we suspect it was you know x type of vehicle certain color they can then because basically these cameras will cover the entire city so they're able to say okay we saw this vehicle at this location and then they drove over here and if they go to a neighboring community that also has that you can then you know continue to follow them um and so it's it's uh you know, not body cams, but it's basically stationing cameras around the city to provide the ability to record, you know, crime or record crimes or whatnot, vehicles and the like, because basically I think it's kind of a license plate reader type of technology.

I do want to add, like, we borrow other cities, like, stuff already so like we utilize their drones um like license plate readers like i think every city around us except wayne has um this system yeah do our offices wear body cams yes yes

Darren, real quick, as far as going here, I know we circled back to police. Are we under, what is this, 301? Yes. For appropriations? Yes, correct. Okay, cool.

All right. So that was the update that we wanted to provide, along with... So yeah, so I think that was it. Like I said, we'll be looking to update that category for the flock in line with the upcoming presentation and everything. That's $76,000.

All right, so, Daniel, let's go ahead and take a brief recess real quick. Where's our food? I just said. We're going to take a brief recess real quick.

You know what? You're fine.

Entertain the appetites, and we'll be right back.

I ain't hangry.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, that's the new one? Oh, that's your one.

Thank you.

So I was going to call back. Thank you. Thank you.

We got the Asian fusion restaurant, modern Greek and Malik's wedding.

So are we ready? Okay. Yes, sir. We wanted to pick up with the fire department. That's going to be Fund 301.

301? I'm sorry, 337. 371? 337. 337? Oh, okay, okay. Okay, that's the very next page. Here we go.

under appropriation.

Then you got an hour and a half for the game start. I know, right? I already told you. So we got to account for getting there. We got the TVs. We have to cut the budget off the TV and put the games.

We got to account for getting there. But the first category is our salaries. As I mentioned last week, we are in negotiations with all of our four unions here, two police, one fire, and one DPS and some City Hall employees. And so anything that's negotiated in the contract for the first year is not included here. We didn't make any assumptions about what may be added, what may or may not be added in terms of – salary increases. So essentially what you're seeing here is funding the same number of positions at the same rate. So if there are any changes, we'll need to add that in either before the contract, before the budget is adopted or more likely via some budget amendment when the contract is adopted. I did just want to let Chief speak to kind of the current staffing levels and what's budgeted and where you are from a current staffing position.

Currently we are fully staffed, 21 uniformed firefighters. This time in two years now, so that's good. 80% of my budget is towards the defined benefits that they get, whether it's through the salaries or their contractual benefits as well. My operating budget is typically for vehicle maintenance, building supplies, equipment, all my high-priced items as far as vehicles go. Fortunately, we've been able to get grants for those. fire engine, rescue, all of their turnout gear, SCBA, so all their critical equipment and also the highest price equipment has been purchased through grants. So again, my largest numbers are for their contractual benefits.

So, thank you. So we've got 1.475 million that's budgeted for salaries and then we have $125,000 in overtime. Right now we're tracking a little bit below the 1.475 because from a budgeting standpoint we generally just put in there the number of budgeted positions at the full term rate. So anytime there's a vacancy, if someone leaves and it takes time for them to be replaced, that will mean over the course of the fiscal year we'll end up a little bit below. But again, we are budgeting for those same number of positions at the current rate, and so the rate as of this current fiscal year. Overtime is tracking pretty well. as it has over the last several years. So we're maintaining that same assumption there. We've got a few items in there for Social Security. We've got some insurance. And then going down, and I did, in reviewing this last week, there was one update. The pension number, that should be 640 instead of just 40,000. For the pension, that's going to be 101-337-7108. Right now, I think your numbers show $40,000. That should be $640,000. $640,000. Can I ask a question? Yes. Okay, I'll come to the holiday pay. You don't have anything for January, right? So I think we had a similar situation with the police. I think it's the way in which the pay codes have been entered from a payroll standpoint. With us moving up to BS&A payroll, I'm going to make sure that we are coding everything correctly. And as we go through, we're kind of digging into those costs. But I think it's just a matter of it not, when we pay that out, us not putting it into the correct code. So each Holiday Pay has a specially assigned GL account, and when we paid it out, if we didn't put it into that GL account, it would have been caught, captured somewhere else. We paid it out, it just wouldn't be, you know, we generally track it separately, and if it's not put into the right GL code from a payroll standpoint, we won't see that. That may be something that gets cleaned up during the during the audit, but like I say, for us going forward, we'll just make sure that those GL codes are assigned correctly.

Okay.

So as I mentioned, we've got the pension. That number is 640, and that's why the totals are off from last year to this year because of that, basically because of that $600,000 there. And then we've got clothing allowance, ALS. These are all contractual bonuses, advanced life support, or ALS. Clothing allowance is another bonus that the firefighters will receive. And then we've got some smaller categories for office supplies, that supplemental community emergency response. Can you speak to that?

So that's for our Western Wayne Mutual Aid Association that we're a part of. We are required to have a member on the urban search and rescue team as well as the hazmat team. So anytime there's an incident anywhere in Wayne County, doesn't matter where, every department of Western Wing will have an individual or multiple individuals on that team to respond to those locations. So there's a annual fee for having, for being a part of that Western Wing Association.

Can we go back real quick to the advanced life support? Because I know that kind of...

So that's, again, that's a contractual issue, and it's changed to an education bonus. And what the education bonus is, so there's a handful of individuals at the fire department that are maintaining their paramedic license, and the cost of maintaining their paramedic license with the amount of CEs you have to have, the amount you have to take these classes off-duty, they'll get paid overtime to do it. So the ones that have paramedic licenses are the ones that get the education bonus.

Gotcha. So that is, excuse me, that's tied to Advanced High Support. That's directly tied to them, not necessarily the RIG?

Correct.

At this time, it is, yes.

Okay. We're basic. So we used to have paramedics. Everybody, you know.

That's why I was looking at that.

And, again, we are still looking into that. It's going to take a little time, but we are not going to let that go. We are going to try to do that.

It's just tough. I mean, it's not just us. No, it's not.

So a lot of people don't have that now? A lot of fight?

You can't find them.

You can't find paramedics. Period. Wow. So a lot of the guys that have the license are maintaining it because they're extremely marketable.

Yep.

Okay.

Is that it, Mayor Pro Tem? For me, yep. Anybody else? I'm sorry.

So there's no grants or anything available to help? No.

So we have gotten some grants for equipment over the past couple years. We are currently working on a FEMA grant for staffing, is my understanding.

So we have two that I'm currently working on. The AFG, I'm trying to get another rescue. So it's about $450,000. And the safer grant, which is for manpower. So we're looking at an additional six personnel There is a caveat to that. There is a cost share to it. If we can get a cost share waiver, which we can apply for, if we get awarded that cost share waiver, we will absolutely apply for the safer, for the manpower. If we don't get that cost share, it just becomes too expensive. to pay for those additional personnel. There's an AFG grant, assistance of firefighters, and we are applying for another rescue. So we have received grants for a new engine, We, and this is within the last two years, a new engine, a new rescue, brand new turnout gear, brand new SCBAs, and we're working on radios right now. So all of our main equipment has been purchased through grants. Wow.

The radios that you were talking about, is those the same radios that the police are getting, the upgraded ones? Right. Okay.

and then also I think longer term we're trying to address the fire station so we've been working on on that trying to identify multiple sources of funding we don't believe necessarily one person is going to fully underwrite that so we've been trying to you know put together a package of different funding sources at state federal and private sources so I don't know if you want to kind of Give a quick update on what's been going on with that.

We're moving along with that. We had just presented to the state. Again, as the treasurer mentioned, we're looking at multiple funding sources, and we are receiving feedback regularly from different individuals, and it has been positive so far. So we'll keep our fingers crossed that we will be able to get to the station. We're looking at the same place, same spot, possibly a larger footprint, though.

Yes, you saw your fire chief testifying in front of the committee up in Lansing.

Oh, we're going to put that up. Yeah, yeah, you got to put it up. Put it on the public access channel.

WE NEED TREE CANADA. YOU SAY HE GOT BUDDY, CALL ME.

JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY, WHAT'S THE DOLLAR AMOUNT FOR? 7 MILLION?

WELL, PROBABLY 7 MILLION IS WHAT WE WERE LOOKING AT. AND THAT'S JUST GOING OFF OF WHAT BASICALLY WESTLAND HAS BEEN ABLE TO BUILD WITH THEIR FUD. WE'RE LOOKING AT 7 MILLION. AND THAT'S NOT ONLY the perfect size station for us, but as well as training equipment and training ground. And then, obviously, with the library right there, it opens up for the community, and it just, you know, definitely a good thing for the state.

I still harp on, just because when I was at the state in Garden City, it was right before COVID hit, and the state snatched every funding source back. Their main thing was they were receiving the funds, and the main thing they had put into theirs was to – I can't think of the term, but they were renovating it to make it for male and female because it was primarily male for all these years and they had a female fire chief. Is that something we're looking at doing too?

Absolutely. There's so many different things that we're looking at right now, especially where our technology is nowadays. Obviously, our fire safety was built in the late 70s, early 80s. Wow. The amount of things that we are aware of now with the hazards of, you know, every time you're at a fire, you know, all that's coming back to the organization, right? So there's off-gassing, so you have to have hot zones, cold zones, you know, extractors for cleaning your equipment for cleaning your vehicles absolutely there's going to be facilities for men for women all right thank you can you go back up to the employee health contributions because I'm having a brain freeze why are they why are they in the negative all the time so that's that's the amount that we

that we take out of the employees' paychecks. So basically, under the state law, employees have to contribute a certain amount of the healthcare costs. So the way that we generally are required to reflect it, they want us to show how much the employee has withheld from their check to go towards medical coverage. So it's It's a situation where we're paying for the coverage, but part of that coverage is covered by the employee, and we take that out of their paycheck. Okay. So that's why it's shown as a negative amount because it's used to offset the expense from the city's perspective.

All right. All right. All right. Thank you.

So I think that is kind of what's going on there. We've And Chief K touched upon a couple of the, you know, vehicles and our approach to the building. I mean, for the last year, couple years, and for next year, our approach is to try and offset some of the larger ticket items for asset acquisition. like maintenance repairs HVAC those types of things we're trying to identify sources outside of the general fund so that we can use the general fund resources want to fund the operating cost the day-to-day cost and then leave the bigger ticket items for some of the grants and the like that we're getting. So that's why we're not, fortunately for the last year or two, we haven't had to put a lot of money into some of the larger assets, building and the like. We do have some things that we're proposing for City Hall, but for some of the other things, fire, police, I mentioned about the flock trying to seek funding for that, some of the things going on at the rec center, we've been focusing those efforts on trying to get funding for that because, by and large, we don't have the internal revenue to cover those expenses. Okay. um so then just going through the rest of the the um uh budget for for uh fire three fund three uh department number 337 again we you know just have some some of the other categories that they use for operations their medical supplies the building maintenance our equipment and building maintenance is just, those are just a small ticket item. There are some pretty serious capital needs at the building. But these are just kind of smaller ticket items that they use just to kind of literally keep the lights on over there. And then we've got vehicle maintenance, repairs, and education and training, which I think is really the bulk of what is going on there within the department. Any questions for fire? That will keep moving. Next is 371, which is our building department. And as a reminder, our building department is largely contracted out to Pucelli. They run the building department. They take a certain percentage of the revenues as part of the contract. We do have one city employee who is still on our books. On a month-to-month basis, Buccelli will deduct the cost of that employee from their consulting revenues. So that's why you see the employee there. That's the one employee that we have that's, again, still on our books. But Buccelli is covering that as part of the contract with them.

So, Darren, I know at one time we had it in-house. So is it still cost-saving by having it farmed out because of the legacy, the health care and all that?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think the thing is, one is that, you know, the building department revenues are restricted.

Correct.

And so, you know, even if we save money on that, we can't. We can't spend it, you know, elsewhere. So the idea is just to, you know, and on top of that, you know, and we are doing this, we should have our rates set at a, you know, it's not supposed to be a for-profit thing. It's supposed to... you know, cover the cost. And so the idea is to have a department that can be done efficiently, effectively. You know, we don't want to stand in the way of anybody trying to get the permits. We want to make that be as smooth a process as possible. So I think in that regard, just given how much of a challenge it is to find a building official, inspectors, people who know how to run a department, Then we can also leverage other employees within Bucelli, particularly given the fact that those revenues are restricted. So if it was like, well, we could save $100,000 doing this, put it into police or fire, but we can't do that. And so I think it, you know, the argument is that we just want to run the department as effectively as possible. And I think that's being done.

How many employees we had in here at one time before we? Because that was, I'm not sure how many we had at one time.

Because if you've got any part-time inspectors, it could be four, five, six of them.

Okay.

Along with the building official.

Carolyn's out. She's just had surgery.

Yes, she's on leave right now.

She'll be out for a while. Then she'll be working from home for a while until she rehabs. Okay. Then she'll come back. Okay.

So all of those costs are associated with that. By and large, they generally will cover the other expenses. We do have costs in there for office supplies, because that is kind of the city's responsibility. But again, by and large, we're looking at the cost of the employee, and then the remaining stuff is covered by the consultant, Buchelli. any questions on that. OK, next we have. 373. What is this? You've been here the longest. And we are working on adding those names. I know that was one item that was pointed out.

Board of the Cleaners is at the end, so is that a bill for it?

What the hell is 373? What, 373?

Not a bill.

Yeah.

What was that?

No, I was just saying, she said, the clerk was saying after I said boarders and cleanups, it's like the last item in that 373 she was showing that it was being taken out of projected was. That's in 441.

I thought it was part of the board.

Oh, it's also in 441. Because it's in 373. 373?

Page before. 373. But it's under 373 as well.

Yeah, so y'all, this is moving completely out of 373. It's going to be solely a 471.

I don't know what 373 is.

373, he just said it was the building department. It's not?

No, 371 was building.

Where do we put boarders? What category do we put boarders? Huh? Okay. Okay.

You got a lot of money. Salaries, yeah.

No, I got a lot.

I know. We need a 441 now. What side? We're on 441 now. 373. 373. You don't know what it is. I'm on a ghost department.

Shouldn't have fed me.

It's like the government has something in the Pentagon that they don't. It's there, but you don't get to discuss it. Yeah. Oh, OK. Code enforcement. OK. Should have knew that.

Okay, so 373 is our code enforcement. It's kind of operationally works out of the fund of the police department, out of the police department. So we've got... I believe it's two full-time and two part-time, three full-time and one part-time.

You said three full-time?

Yeah, so we have the code enforcement supervisor, our animal control officer, a code enforcement officer, and then one part-time.

Sumlin part-time, right now.

So those are the employees that are staffed out of there. I think we... uh... we did not so i was just think so we did not make any uh... budgetary slots for the animal shelters of animal shelters going to be getting started uh... at the beginning of the upcoming fiscal year We had that contract before you guys, I want to say March or April, I want to say. And so it's going to be down on Trow Bridge, but I believe it won't be completed and up and running until we haven't, we just had our kind of initial meeting a week ago, but I believe we're probably looking at a 12-month timeline, and it's a ground-up building that we're talking about. there aren't any costs tied to the building operationally in this year's budget.

Is this going to be up under the code enforcement or the police department?

Well, I just thought about it because of the animal control. We have the animal control officer. How we fund that, I think it's an open question. I don't think we've... really made a determination. The discussion is to have some of this staff with volunteers, but we expect there will need to be some paid staff for that. But we haven't made that determination of where they're going to be. Is it going to be a standalone department up under police, code enforcement, exactly how all that would work. But I did want to just bring up that we don't have any operational costs in the budget for that.

So we were, the animals were going out of the city at first, right? To Romulus. To Romulus. So now we're bringing them back, we're picking that back up.

So, and Mary, you... Yeah, we lost that, they canceled the contract last year. So we've been keeping these animals in the police station.

So that's when I drive by, they walking out, walking the animals out?

They've been in our bays. So the bays we have for cars, that's where the animals are. Okay. And, you know, so we're walking them, cleaning them, feeding them.

Yeah, okay.

Not an appropriate place for the animals. Luckily, you know, we're going to get this thing built. But the Ramos canceled us kind of suddenly and said, hey, you can't bring your animals here anymore. We were like, whoa, what are we supposed to do? Something like 30 a month for that one. It was a lot. I think they needed the space, or maybe they had somebody else who was going to pay more. I'm not sure. It was all shaky. I called the mayor over there, and it was all gray. I didn't get a straight answer why they canceled the contract.

So who else has had animal shelter?

Westland.

Westland. They have a humane society over there, and I think they got a shelter, too. But nobody wants to take other people because they have so many animals. They have so many animals. So, I mean, ours won't be big enough probably to have too many contracts with other communities either. You know, because we have to have some room for the veterinarian to spay and neuter and take care of the animals that are injured. And then we've got to house the ones until we find a home for them. Us doing a no-kill shelter, it sounds good, but it takes more resources. Yes. If you said kill, it would be a recall.

Yes. Yes. So how many do you, I mean, off the record, how many do you have over there now?

Oh, I have no idea. I don't want to mess with them. You want to go there afterwards? You want to go pet the dogs?

I want a dog. You want one?

They can adopt them all the time.

I want a new dog. I mean, I've seen them walking.

They got to be trained.

Okay. All right.

Okay. Excuse me. So that's pretty much it for 373. Like I said, it's really just the code enforcement team. We fund those salaries out of there. Everything else operationally is done because they work out of police. All the other costs are captured within that department.

Okay, so during the overtime, is that because they have to work on Saturdays and Sundays, or are they like around the clock?

Yeah, it might be they work past, for whatever reason, past their regularly scheduled hours, or it might be something on overtime. I know they also have to spend time in court. Okay. Okay, next is our 441, which is the general fund for public services. We have two employees that are allocated here out of the DPS team. DPS is going to be between general fund, we've got two employees here, and then obviously in the water fund and then in the road funds. But we have two employees that are allocated. We kind of refer to it as building services, and that's to give us the ability to deploy them around city-owned facilities. So that includes City Hall, Recreation Center, the Justice Center, Fire Department. If there's some type of repairs or maintenance, you know, we have them available to address those issues because otherwise we're having to call in outside people any time the need arises. So we find that it's just more efficient and more cost effective to have dedicated employees that can serve in that role and that, you know, can also do other stuff with DPS when it's necessary. And so that's the $80,000 in salaries that you see there. The other big thing we have there is the tree trimming and lawn maintenance. A lot of that is for our grass cutters out of that category. So that's going to be the vacant lots that we hire some outside vendors to handle for us. That's a big emphasis for us is to handle the grass cutting of these lots and everything. And then we have some weed cutting. Remind me again the difference between the tree trimming and weed cutting?

Oh, three trailer covers. Three trailer covers of vacant lots and vacant homes. We cutting covers, my guys, when we have to go out and cut stuff. Okay, okay. That's for in-house.

Yes, so that's more of the in-house stuff. So as Jerome was saying, so weed cutting, so the tree trimming lawn maintenance, excuse me, that's going to be for outside contractors. The weed cutting is going to be for our team when we have to use them. If they have to cut city hall, if they're cutting parks and the like, we will cover their costs outside of that because that's time that's being taken away from them from roads and water. Then we have our board-ups and clean-ups. Board-ups are going to be just that, when we have to board up a home or some place of business.

Those lot items right there are part of the mayor's budget. But in my budget, those are discretionary funds that I go with the mayor with every year. He determines if he wants to keep them or eliminate them.

Keep what?

Keep them or eliminate them. Those are outside contractors that do that board up and clean up. So I go, those are at the pleasure of the mayor. So I talk to him about that. And we look at the numbers and he says, okay, we'll continue this off for this year. He said, no, we're not going to do it. He says every year, yes. So that was put in probably... Was that your first term, Mr. Mayor? Yeah, his first term, we determined to do that.

He asked about the tree trimming. Now, that's city property, so is that the homes with the trees that's in the medium?

No, that comes out of my road fund budget.

Your road fund.

Because that's local major roads, so that comes out of my road fund budget, which is $100,000. When we get to that, you'll see $100,000 in there for that.

Oh, okay.

So that's in turn. This covers grass cutters. This covers our contractors for cutting vacant homes and vacant lots.

Vacant.

Right.

around the city yeah so it's a lot of it a city on properties or maybe properties that are not yet owned by the city but they're vacant and so we you know just want to make sure that we're cutting it so that they don't become eyesores and nuisance and so we you know it's a combination of you know properties that are owned by the city or lots that are not you know, actively being maintained for whatever reason.

And DPS took care of that lot that Sandra King was complaining about. It's clear. Oh, it's clean. That's good. It looks good. It looks good.

Who poisoned the dogs, those over there?

Yeah, I've seen that. They did what? Somebody poisoned a resident's two dogs.

Two dogs?

Those two pit bulls you're talking about?

Yeah. In the bed. They did. What was he just talking about? Two pit bulls. Where'd you hear that at?

On Facebook. Oh, I'm not on Facebook.

It's your pictures of them. That's why I didn't see them. They were poison. Y'all think one of the two guys who talked about an implication?

I was going to ask, like, they just brought them up Monday, and then y'all were talking about.

It's a coincidence, and then she showed pictures of her dead dogs on Wednesday. I was over there, too. Gangster.

That's what I would do, come complain about it and go kill her. Right. We need to do an investigation.

They said they're going to call the TV, so you better be prepared.

People love calling the news.

Yeah, well, I'm just telling you.

Wow.

And so this happened after Monday's meeting? Yes, it did. Wow.

Yeah, because when I went over there, too, it was about 6, 3 in the morning when I took those pictures. Yeah. I didn't see them, no. No, it was dead.

She got pictures of them.

Wow.

Yeah.

So the next item is street lighting. That's cost, you know, with DTE for all of our street lights. Years ago we did an upgrade, or we did a couple phases, two or three phases to upgrade to LED. Our recent bills are averaging just around about $60,000 a month. We've had some high activity, and we've done some digging on that. I think some of that was just late, you know, some over bills that had not been paid. And so as we go through the audit process, we'll just be making sure that those are – matched up to the correct fiscal year, but we have confirmed that, again, you know, we're right around $60,000 a month. That's going to vary because some months, obviously, during the winter, we've got, you know, streetlights are going to be on longer than they are during the summer, but, you know, we think that that $750,000 is a sufficient amount to capture the cost there. Okay. But again, we're trying to sort out exactly how much of this activity is going to be attributed because we did have that $1.25 million in FY25. Some of that may get moved to another year or maybe moved to a different category, but we are not tracking at that high of an amount. The... capital outlay that you see there is that's tied to the um i believe that's for the uh senior center You see there's $1.617 million and $2526. Generally, we don't have anything, but for purposes of the grant that we have, even though it's being done on behalf of the Commission on Aging for the Seniors, the city is the fiduciary for that, and so we're reflecting those numbers within our budget here, but those dollars are being offset by a grant. And then lastly, we've got $50,000 in capital improvements for things to get done around City Hall.

Hey, Darren?

Yes.

Do you have a copy, so you just...

Page 10. I got mine. Oh, yeah. Let me.

Yours is colored, too. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. It's good to be here.

Well, he gets special treatment. That's what I know.

That's what I want to know. That's what I'm talking about.

See, that's discrimination. He printed them up on his copy. I have a book. I got one of them. I make these prints.

It's discrimination because ours is black and white. We don't have page 10. But we used to have color-coded stuff. We used to have a booklet.

We used to have a beautiful booklet.

We're trying to hide all the money we're spending on page 10. Beautiful booklet. You all can't see it.

With everything on it.

So...

I'm going to have to go find one, dig up mine, because I'm putting them shredding. I'm going to have to dig up mine so I can show you what our books used to look like.

Darren, can you repeat what 721 is? Huh? 721 and 727? What 727 is? 721 is planning, and 727 is economic development. Thank you.

Did you tell them what police asked for in the raise today? I did not.

You didn't circle back to that yet? You ain't ready for that number.

I know that.

We asked them what they want.

They said they want a 45% raise.

45%? What does that dollar equal to? Over three years?

They asked us in the meeting, they said, what do you think about that? He said, well, after I get up off the floor and got help, you know, from passing out.

All I do is I hear them 24-7. They have my sympathy. Oh, yeah. It's a tough job. They're running, I'm telling you. It's a tough job. It's a real crowd out there. These idiots don't go to sleep. when the street lights came on.

I was asking some of them, too, because when you said that, like, they asked for a 45% raise. So I was asking some of the personnel, do your command or department has actually discussed or go over a breakdown of the city's budget with you? I said, because it's great to always throw that ask out there. I said, but when the city denies it and then there's no common ground to come back on, You all as employees are mad and upset, and we over here saying, how are we supposed to honor that? Because if we give police, and I'm just using this as an example, 45% raise, fire's going to want a 45% raise as well to be made whole.

They should be knowing what our budget is so they can lease.

The fire department does. They really go into there.

I mean, police, I mean, she can tell them where our budget is.

They don't care about that. They want a raise. And not even them, sometimes just the unions themselves. You know, like, are they the ones presenting it? Because, I mean, when I used to be in the CWA, the union would say all this stuff, this, this, this, that, and the other. They pitched this at the company. They asked for this, asked for this, asked for that. And the next thing you know, the contract was voted on. And you're like, well, wait a minute. What happened to the negotiations? And it was just approved, so that's why I was just wondering.

Our employees are involved in our process. I think it's pushed more so by the employees. There's two or three of them who are really into it, and they research it and compare it to other communities and say, this is what we want.

Well, we understand.

We are underpaid, too. But we got, yeah. I'm just saying.

We got four new ones this week. We got four new ones. We got to keep these kids in. We got four or five? Five. One of them didn't pass the test. She got to retake. Oh, okay. All right, gotcha. I hope she'll pass, so we'll have five.

We got some good people this year.

Oh, yeah.

I saw some very positive information from Westside Community News and even just residents, because they posted, you know, congratulations to our five officers. And in the comments, it was probably only two or three negative ones. Everybody else was leaving positive comments and saying congratulations.

So where?

Westland Community News, their media outlet, posted it on Facebook about our five officers. I didn't know they were even covering us like that. They will on certain stuff. Certain stuff? I think either you do have to, one, send it to them, and then, two, I don't know if they're actually watching because they say community news, so kind of like the surrounding stuff. I think they do watch.

I think they watch and they'll repost what they see. So we're at 721 for planning. Oh, okay. You hear what he's saying? I'm prepared. He ain't got no hands. So we're on page nine. I printed out page 10. Jerome is grabbing that so we can finish the bottom of page nine. So 721 is going to be our planning department. Yep. We have two employees that are in there. One is our city planner, and then we have a planning assistant that's in there. I don't know how many of you guys have met Gina. She sits outside of Alicia. She's on the planning side, sits right outside of Alicia's office.

Somebody said if her name is Gina, she don't have no choice. To be good. To be good.

Oh, we got color. Oh, girl, look at him. Look, we done moved up. We done moved up. We done moved up. We done moved up.

Asking you shall receive.

Oh, that's right. Thank you.

They didn't say anything last week, not but two. Thank you, sir.

Kim, I was on top of it. She's like, where's my paycheck?

They didn't say anything about the black and white last week.

Yeah, the black and white. See, look, I want yours. You can't mine.

So again, that's our planning. And we've got also some consulting services in there for special projects and for our, anytime we need an outside planner in there, that's the consultant that's down on that line. And then just some small costs associated with their training and workshops and everything. So moving down to 727, which is economic development, the main cost there is going to be the first right of refusal program. That's the $500,000 that you see. For the most part, that expenditure is going to be offset by revenue from the sale of that land. So we purchase the land from the county and then we sell it to the developer. So this is where we show the amount that's being sold. On the revenue side is where we show the, I'm sorry, here's where we show the amount that we're purchasing it at. And then up top on the revenues is where we show where that money is coming back in when we sell it to the developers. So we got the money coming in from the developers to cover the cost that we pay to the county for those properties.

And we add a little administration fee. There is an administrative fee on that. We make a little something just for the time the staff has to spend on it. Yeah.

so that's pretty much it for seven to seven as we as we add on any city projects that will need to be in any grant funded city projects that would need to be on the city's books we would we generally add those here We bring to you guys any grants that have to be adopted. One of the things that we are going to do in the next fiscal year is tie a specific general ledger account along with the acceptance of that grant so that it's kind of explicit, not only that we're accepting the grant, but that you're also authorizing the expenditures. What we're going to do over the next couple of weeks is to, even though you have approved all of these grants, we want to just collect them, identify the general ledger count that's been associated with for this fiscal year, and put that on your agenda so that there's no question. Even though you did approve it, we just want to make sure that for anybody going back, taking a look, that we were very specific in terms of where those expenditures were coming out from whatever grant that you guys had approved. know again because we you know there are times even if a grant is for another uh another fund because the city has to be the fiduciary we have to reflect it on our book so whenever we accept it we want to make sure that we're um getting down to the general ledger detail with the acceptance of the grant okay um Next, I wanted to pause at the Summerfest. As I discussed with you guys last week, we have plans for Summerfest next month. I think it's the third weekend in July, if I'm not mistaken.

17th, 18th, 19th.

Okay, thank you. And we do want to, you know, we are out raising funds, but we do want to propose having some funding for the Summerfest for this fiscal year, for next fiscal year, because we are, you know, trying to do it as cost effectively as possible, but there will need to be some funding in addition to the, we're raising funds in two ways. One is we're getting sponsorships, and we're also selling spaces for vendors. But on top of that, we're going to need about another $30,000 for this year's Summerfest. And we have this line item in general fund, and there's also a line item in parks and rec. And so we've been working with that. Nicole Scott is our chair for the event. Nicole Scott. Oh, Nicole Scott. But we do want to get some funding so we can go ahead and move forward with the sufficient funding that we need. Again, right now we're looking at about $30,000 that's needed. There's a line item in the Parks and Rec. We may not get there this evening, but... You know, that's one option, as well as, you know, general fund, as you guys know, is limited. But there is that line item there. But, you know, we do want to make sure we present that and address it during this process.

So let me ask you this. Okay, you're saying that we're going to need $30,000 for this year for the Summerfest. So it's going to come out, is it on this last budget? It's going to be a budget amendment?

No, it's going to be in July. So it's going to be next fiscal year.

It's going to be the new fiscal year. Okay. But when you get down to the end, that's what I'm looking at.

She's got those parentheses.

Yes, yes, yes. And I'm like, really, really, really?

Okay, so, and I think we're... A couple other things I wanted to touch upon is we've got the... Transfer out for Brownfield, we've had to subsidize our Brownfield debt service payments. We are at the end of that. I've been having some conversations with the consultant. My analysis is that $510,000 will not be needed next fiscal year, so we'll be able to remove that from the budget. I should have confirmation of that by Monday or Tuesday.

That's going to increase our budget $510,000 per nation. Revenue side.

Revenue side. That's money that we don't have to send out. So it's going to save us $510,000.

You know, since I've been on council, we've been doing this. That is great.

Yes. The TIFA. My research shows that that one is continuing. And again, I'll have confirmation the first part of next week just to confirm that my analysis is correct. But that $510,000 should no longer need to be subsidized by the general fund. And just as a reminder, the bonds were initially set up so that the debt service would be done by the brownfield via a property tax capture. Taxes went down, property taxes went down, and the city has been having to subsidize that. I believe we've made the final payment. We'll no longer need to subsidize that. The capture would just be the capture. The subsidizing is needed because of the debt service. The city basically served as the guarantor of making sure those debt service payments got paid. So that would be $510,000 that we would be pulling back out of the proposed budget here. Okay. Okay. Now in terms of the, last week we talked a little bit about the audits and kind of where we are and moving forward, working on the FY24 and FY25 audit. We expect to get the FY24 completed by late summer. And the FY25 completed shortly thereafter because we're kind of running on a dual track. We do have some pretty good numbers. If you go to the far left column, we have the 23-24 activity, and we've got some pretty good numbers there. These numbers are still being finalized, but we've gotten, particularly for general fund, I think we've gotten everything that we've expended in there, and we've got all the revenues that are – you know, all the revenues have been captured. Right now, we're showing about a $530,000 surplus. Now, that is very, very preliminary. But again, this is after us putting all of the cost in. The one factor is we do have a lot of grant funds. If you guys will recall, when this council's term started, one of the things that we had as a top priority is that we had a lot of overdue grants that had not been collected. And so we've been collecting those things through FY24 and FY25, catching up on all those back-due grants. Now it's just a matter of what year they're going to apply those grants to. But based on kind of our pre-audit work, these are kind of the preliminary numbers. Again, that's subject to change, but as you can see, based on these numbers, we had the You know, we were in the negative with the fund balance, and then with these preliminary numbers, that's getting us back to a very, very small but positive fund balance for the general fund.

So that would be the $293,000?

No, I'm on the far left column. Oh, you're on the far left. I'm on the far left column. So for FY24, 23-24, right now we're showing a surplus of $530,000. which we started with a fund balance of about $400,000, and based on those numbers, we would be at $129,000. And I think I was just looking at it before we met, because there was something going on with that fund. that fund balance. I thought our fund balance was coming out of FY23 was lower than that. Okay, so we had, coming out of, for general fund, coming out of FY23, we had the fund balance at 348,000. This one shows a little bit higher number, 401. But again, as we are kind of wrapping up FY24, moving some things around, that number can change. And so even with the higher number than what we had at the last audit, the last audit, our negative fund balance was 328. or 348. This one shows a negative 401. But even with that number, again, with the current projections, we're showing us getting back into a small positive for FY24. After that, We're still dealing with getting the data cleaned up and everything. So those numbers are just kind of, after that, it's somewhat of a moving target. We'll have a better handle on FY25 probably in about 60 days. As we start, we're starting to go through and make sure we've gotten all the costs captured, got all the revenues allocated and everything. We're literally moving things around now. We've been working on that this week, getting revenues. reallocating some things amongst general ledger accounts. So that's a very moving target. I know that we're showing for FY24 about 13 million in revenues, and that number's off because we're having to move around some of the revenues. But again, I think it's a good sign that we're not showing for FY24, and I know we've got a lot, almost everything captured right now in there. We're not showing anything in the red for that fiscal year.

So are we still in the deficit elimination plan at the state?

Yes, technically we're still under the deficit elimination plan, yes.

So now, not trying to...

Let me see what I'm trying to say.

Okay, being on how I was here when we was in a deficit elimination plan and it wasn't pretty, whatever. So if we're going to do the Summerfest and we got to give $30,000. And I know we're trying to raise money. How does that look when we do our deficit elimination plan to the state?

So my suggestion would be we have a parks and recreation fund. I would consider this Summerfest to be part of the programming for Parks and Recreation. When you look at other cities, when they put on festivals and the like, they will fund that out of Parks and Recreation. My recommendation would be for us to take that money out of Parks and Recreation.

If I need, so if general fund needed $30,000, we can take it out of, I mean, I know it's some funds that we can move around.

No, I'm saying we authorized the $30,000 out of the Parks and Rec budget. Okay.

I'm sorry?

Let me see that before we, like, because you're going to come, like.

And this is what I'm saying, and I know everybody is, you're trying to clean it up. It's been messed up. I understand that. But at the same time, it's a lot of reports that we used to get so we can kind of know, you know, the budget to actual. And I know he's busy. I mean, can we add another person so we can?

So it's not a question of, and I tried to address this last week. So we, and the ideas we will be able to start in next fiscal year in August, we will be able to start with the July. Because we have not had consistent and clean numbers, we weren't in a position to give that information. Now we've gotten up through FY24. We should be up through FY25 within the next 60 days. FY26 is a lot cleaner. And so we just, we didn't have the information in here that we could give you to say, hey, here's a budget to actual, here's a comparison. We look at the budget to actual, and we look at this year compared to last year, and that information just was not available.

And I understand that because, like I said, a lot of things was messed up. But we still are proving stuff. We still are spending money, and we don't know where we're at.

Yeah, I mean, so we...

I mean, so we in the cloud right now.

So we bring the annual budget, and our objective is to stick to that. But by and large, we're just trying to manage what we're doing from an operational standpoint. That's why we've been very limited in terms of anything that we spent outside of expenses related to it on a day to day basis. We haven't done a lot of long term capital spending. We've been fortunate that we've been able to capture those things via grants and the like, but by and large, we've been just maintaining our services from a cost standpoint at the current level and trying to run that as efficiently as possible while we're trying to do two things. One, we're trying to You know, get caught up on that financial information and then trying to operate as efficiently as we possibly can. And that's where, you know, Chief K is not here anymore, but, I mean, if you look at our two biggest cost centers in general fund, it's police and fire. And so, you know, if we're going to cut, if we're going to try and save money, it really would be coming at the cost of public safety. And that's, you know. I don't need that. not something that we want to do so we're just trying to you know utilize it as effectively as we can you know managing it looking at it closely managing the expenses and we're you know we're not the only entity, the only city or entity that's in a similar situation. And, you know, once you kind of get off track, it takes time to get back on track. And a lot of time and money outside of our department, I mean, we've been paying our accounting consultants a lot of money to, you know, and they're dealing with stuff from 23 and 24 and 25. You know, we're halfway, almost halfway through 26, and we're, you know, we're cleaning up data from two, two and a half years ago. And so it's just the, you know, it's the reality of, you know, once you kind of get off track, it's going to take time to get back on. So, as I said, you know, I think the, you know, the fact that we've, you know, gotten through 23-24, the preliminary figures appear to be, you know, pretty good. We're continuing to work on that over the next 60 days. I think we'll have a better handle on 24 and 25, working on getting all that data cleaned up. Some of that is going to be moved around between fiscal years, but I think we've got a pretty good process in place to get those things captured and identified so that we can come August, we'll be in a position where we can restart that financial reporting because we'll have the information available to us. 25 and 26, particularly like the last seven months or so for FY26, has been a lot better. We've made some changes. As I mentioned, we split the accounts payable and payroll. We've been really diligent about documenting all of our expenditures. going back, capturing, because part of one of the challenges, we had a lot of transactions going through the bank account, things that were authorized, but they weren't being captured timely and accurately. We've been rectifying that, along with making sure things are put into the right category at the time that we incurred the expenditure. That's one of the other big findings that we've had, is that things, authorized expenditures were not just being put into the correct category.

And this is something that's off the record. I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. Off the record, not dealing with this, but in our charter, is this something that we can put in there? Because the mayor is the daily operation.

But what if the mayor...

put people in place like we had that wasn't qualified. So we need to put something in that charter to protect the city at all costs.

Well, you got it. We got a veto power. The council has veto power that they never used. Oh, he tried. So if I hire Bozo to climb to be the treasurer, You could veto that.

Right. But sometimes, I mean, we're not in the use of it.

You said amend the charter. You talking about amending the charter?

No, he's saying we have veto problems.

No, I know what you're talking about putting stuff in the charter.

But, yeah, something to protect, not for me, but something to protect the city where we won't have to go through what we're going through right now. And it's been a mess.

The problem is, the reality is, like, the mayor, especially if he comes in and has good relationships on the council, which the last mayor had good relationships on council, except for two people, you know, you typically follow the mayor's lead. Now, the mayor leads you down the wrong road.

And no matter how much we argue, you know, because, I mean, you know, not saying because people are not here, but the most important person in here is that treasurer. And we didn't have that.

The problem is it's so hard. First of all, treasurers don't grow on trees.

No, they don't. And it's cost.

Even if you can count, it doesn't mean you can be a municipal treasurer. Correct. Because there's only so many jobs. There's only so much experience. So when you're reaching and you're hiring people who are not even working in that sector.

So that's what I'm saying. It doesn't really matter if we veto something. Something needs to be in that charter to protect the city. To protect the city. But you're still talking about we have to amend the charter.

We can amend it. You just can't put nothing in there. You can do one or two things without the charter commission.

I know we can't just put it in there, but we need to sit down with the charter commission or whatever and try to amend it. I mean, it may take time.

Two or three things without the charter. I didn't think it was a good idea. By two-thirds voting, we said, hey, we want to put some sort of requirement. There are certain things you can't do. I think there's an argument because we've been doing a lot. You can't put requirements for the mayor. A lot of people say, well, let's require the mayor to have a bachelor's degree.

No, no, but I'm just saying, but employees working in essential that keeps our city running.

But even if you put qualifications, like our last treasurer, he had a master's degree in accounting, but he just never worked in government. So what kind of qualifications are you going to put in? Chair.

All right, hold on one second, guys. We got three conversations going on.

I mean, what can we do to protect the city going forward?

Hold on, where were we at on the agenda? Because you were down with this part, right?

That was it for General Pond.

And I still had the floor, so I was just asking a question. You know, something that we can put in place to protect the city from this ever happening again.

Let's say you said, okay, if the mayor hires certain positions, treasurers and Do they have to get ratification from city council? Would that help? So, like, if Joe Blow comes in here as the treasurer, would that help? You don't know him. You're reading the resume. You won't know about reading the resume whether they know what they're doing.

Isn't that what HR is for, to give, like... We used to, we used to, council used to look at resumes.

I mean you can have guidelines. We used to have all of that. We used to have all of that. We had, what was that Jerome that we used to have?

For every department, we would have, I don't know if we have that now.

We still got the salaries.

The salaries. In his first year, we had salaries and job descriptions.

We had job descriptions.

But if you hire somebody, it doesn't mean they qualify.

They qualify for that.

We had to revamp all our job descriptions, bottom of the code, up to the standard code. All of it doesn't matter if you don't have a majority vote to outrule or go against.

And that's why I'm saying maybe we can try to amend it.

But it's already in there. If you have veto power, then technically it's already there, right?

You can have veto powers, but if you don't have all of us to veto, that veto is nothing.

But the veto is majority, right? You need four.

But if you don't have four, you're out.

You're trying to protect us from us. That's it. You're trying to protect yourself from yourself. At the same time, if you're saying four people can't agree to do what's right within... Doesn't that take away from the whole quorum aspect of everything? If we can't get four people that's been elected to sit up here and make the best decision for the city, we want to set something in play to overrule them, overrule ourselves. You know what I'm saying?

You can't overrule yourself. You can overrule the mayor at any time. I don't think it's ever happened. I mean y'all almost got me one time when I hired a certain Parks and Rec director everybody on council turned and looked at me because they did not like my decision and out of respect for me they didn't veto me but they had the votes and it turned out they were right When, you know, later on we found out that they were actually, that would have been a good decision. What are you talking about? You know what I'm saying? Because we've had problems in Parks and Recs. It's not just one person or people skimming money. Now we don't know who it is. You're talking about embarrassed. And each one of them came to me and said, I told you not to do it. And I couldn't say nothing. You know what I mean? You're right.

I just feel like that's kind of like an HR thing. You know what I mean? Because not every person comes before us anyway for hiring, so then we would have to, like, Even in the charter, the only people we really approve are with the treasurer and the attorney. So we almost have to pull resumes and be like, oh, we don't like him, and now we have to go through. You got the clerk and the city attorney. That's it.

But that's what I'm saying. That's the only thing I'm saying.

So I understand what you're trying to say, but you would have to like... like they said, like amended the charter to almost bring every like department head in front of council in order to approve.

Yeah. DPS is key. Treasurer is key. You know, that you could say, okay, council is going to hire them, not the mayor. You can do that.

Yeah.

Because we used to hire. We only have like... We used to have resumes for the city manager.

We used to hire the city manager, but he hired everybody else.

Yeah.

Yeah, but we can say. And how can we. I'm not in the mix. No, all you can do is fire. All you can do is fire the city manager. You can't say city manager can hire whatever treasurer you wanted to.

Yeah, but we can fire. You can fire. We can fire the city manager. We did fire the city manager.

And I think because of, yeah. But still.

But I think that, I mean, but even so, you know, like you said, treasure HR. You know, because we have had not even good HR. Sometimes.

These are conversations that we're going to have to have because I think you're technically like the third term under the strong mayor. It is. So it's like these are kind of growing pains that are going to come with our newer form of government that we chose with the charter.

And it's hard because... Each election, some people feel, you know, the employees, you know, some may leave, some may stay. You know what I'm saying? So we got to turn over.

You know what I'm saying?

And that doesn't help the city at all.

Turn over on the council.

the people got unions in the other city not just here that's common that's when a new mayor comes in he brings his people in or whatever yeah he decides to keep the people some people he has to make up so just have to pray so he has the final say or who his apprentice dad is. I have a question. In critical areas, he really needs it. Ma'am. I'm sorry.

I got off to something. I'm sorry. I do have a question. Like, when we, okay, my question, you know, like when we have people that come before us, like housing and different ones asking for money or whatever, where does the expense, where does that money come from?

It will just depend on the particular ask.

I mean, out of which, where? I think historically that was what I asked for the first meeting. It came out of, like, council funds. It was like $1,600 we gave for Easter egg baskets. Oh, yeah, you're talking about something like that.

Yeah, so it will depend upon the request. And generally... you know we'll make we'll make sure that it's clear like with the request it's like i think it was a christmas party or something for for housing and it was saying hey back school I'm sorry, what was that?

I mean, they have multiple.

Yeah. Yeah, so, you know, so it'll just depend upon who's making the request, where, you know, where it needs to come out of. Community policing does a lot. You know, there's the Community Policing Fund. They cover the National Night Out, the Easter Egg. They cover the cost of the float for the... Memorial Day Parade. The Memorial Day Parade, thank you. So it's kind of event-specific. Yeah, the event it is, where you can take the money.

Susan, are you finished? I'm sorry. Just one thing about the server fest. So you're submitting funding for that.

Yeah, so my recommendation is that it comes out of the Parks and Rec Fund. And the reason being is because I think it's two things. One is because of, you know, Parks and Rec has not had a lot of programming. This is kind of a recreation. This is the types of things that parks and rec departments around metropolitan Detroit, around the state, these are the types of things that they do. So we want to look at doing some programming because it does provide a recreation outlet for the city's residents. And then secondly, particularly over the last fiscal year and going into next fiscal year, We've gotten a lot of money for the Parks and Rec Department. We're renovating a park, Wheatley Park, where we've just replaced the roof for half a million dollars. We're putting in a new HVAC system.

So when you're talking about like Wheatley Park, are you going to be going through, I assume there's various other parks throughout the city?

I mean, right now, there's no plan on that right now in this budget. But again, the thinking is because we've covered a lot of things that the Parks and Rec Fund is benefiting from. taking thirty thousand dollars out of there because we've we've you know basically avoided a million dollars worth of cost uh... by that fund uh... the money that you talk about for the summer fest what are you are we doing rights and so would you tell me a little bit what yeah so it's it's um... primarily focused around the music uh... music uh... so friday is kind of a hip hop uh... focus night Saturday is like more R&B and jazz kind of thing and then Sunday is generally like gospel thank you so we're paying people to perform paying people to perform then also paying like the stage the sound engineering that those types of cost fencing porta-potties You know, those are kind of the, I would say, the main cost for that.

So we do have extra policing for that?

There is policing, DPS also. Primarily our police officers, I believe, Inkster Police and our reserve officers.

That's it?

I believe so, yes.

If you ask for a share for a state, is that extra?

I don't know. Jerome, do you know the answer to that Councilwoman's question about support for security for Summerfest by Wayne County Sheriff?

No, it's not that.

No, we don't call for that. They send it to the state.

They send it to the state?

They send it. I mean, you've got to remember, too, Summerfest is on Instagram.

I know. Okay. Okay. I'm just asking because you got so many kids now running wild.

We're going to be deep, especially on Friday night.

Friday and Saturday. And Sunday, whatever. It don't matter with them.

Sheriff said they're going to support.

Okay. Sheriff going to support. What kind of gummies you over here eating? You getting high? What you doing? He's taking his son's candy.

Discretionary funds.

So, Councilwoman, that was kind of the thinking with the Summerfest.

Okay.

And then the other thing that I did not cover, there will be some activities geared towards kids.

I mean, are you having rides?

I don't think we're doing carnival rides, but I don't know, like bounce houses or something like that. But I know generally we do have things geared towards the kids.

um that application i'm going to bring it back up since um councilwoman um the actress brought it up um can we put like

10 to 15 max in the budget for community events sponsored by the city. And then we can make it an application process. Like we talked about spread the love to everyone. It'll just kind of, I think cover our butts. So then it kind of eliminates like these asks every year. And then people are like, well, you got to know somebody to, to get my, it's like, no, just submit the application. It opens July 10th or whatever. And then we select, you know, Either throughout the year or in the beginning of the year. Like, y'all should kind of know, you know, what you're going to have for the year anyway.

I got an addition to that. Since what you said, it depends on the event and where the funds come from, correct?

Yes.

So... With that being said, does it directly need to go into the budget how much funds we're going to allocate for events, or can that just be something we outline? You feel what I'm saying? We say, hey, this is what we're going to contribute this much. That way we don't directly limit it to a certain budget. You get what I'm saying?

Well, as long as it's general fund, like sometimes at the end of the day the general fund – It doesn't matter. Yeah, because, like, we just try and apply it to the specific department, but if we know, hey, this $10,000, we can find somewhere to put it, it's labeled as a general fund item, all those things will come out, you know, those types of things will come out of there, and that would be it. Now, because there's not really any set money for an Easter egg hunt or, you know, Christmas party or something like that, we try to find where it can best go, but if we just say, hey, this is $10,000 for these types of events, Halloween and that kind of stuff. Halloween's a little bit different. We usually do that via the rec center. But if there's something that needs to get done from a community standpoint, then I think it would be best just to set aside that money, have it in a general fund, and you know everything's going to flow through there.

Because even just for, let's say, Inkster housing, if you were like, OK, Inkster housing, y'all get three thousand dollars for the year five thousand dollars for the year like do what y'all have to do you know i mean do what you have to do we're helping support you know our events these are our residencies are our kids but um like you know whether you spend 1600 on easter egg or two thousand dollars on you know your christmas party like that's not our business but you know i mean like this is what we're contributing for the year you know it's our business you said what it is our business

and how they utilize it? Absolutely, I was just saying.

Okay, well. Gotta use it the right way, though.

Right, okay. So, I mean, obviously you can put parameters behind it, and it's for community events, but do we ask them to come in front of us every community event to support our, like, they are our residents?

We can eliminate that. I mean, I like the idea of having them set them out, and then people apply, and it's the same people coming every year for the same event. Exactly. So, if we decide this is what we're giving, and that's that.

The only reason I say that, because some of the loans and grants committees I've sat on, especially for the Episcopal Church, there's millions of dollars to divvy out for different stuff. But they want it spelled all out, because I sit on one trust fund, and we know where every dollar is allocated, because if someone says, well, we decided... not to fund this particular part. Well, where's that $2,000 go to? You know, are you looking to roll that over? Are you going to send that back? Are you just going to spend it and not tell us?

That's where it could be a problem. Okay, I hear you. But that's what I would like to propose.

And that's more like how we implement it. And we can work on that.

But yeah, just for the budget purpose, can we put some money aside? And I just want to like, I know I mentioned it last time, but since we're wrapping up the general fund, I just want to agree on the amount, whether it's 10, whether it's 15, whether it's 5, for all I care. I just want to agree.

So the application, have y'all started working on that yet?

No, I just wanted to get it approved first. I didn't want to start something, waste my time, and then we say no. Oh, I got you.

I was just going to say, too, a follow-up with that financially, just ask for, is it required that they provide a report? Of everything, because in the following year, you can always say, well, this is what they do, and it's great. We see this, boom, and we good with funding it again the following year. But if it's something that's just like, oh, this was terrible, and we gave you how much money, and y'all trying to do this again? Like, we need to hold on.

I don't want to make it more work for other people. I just know, like, I mean, we all know my mom, my family business, but, like, when we apply for money, especially from municipalities, they ask us to provide, like, just kind of, like, Use of funds. Like, you know, like, how many people did it serve? Like, you know, if you bought the food, like, kind of provide those kind of – if you are a nonprofit, provide your letter. Like, all those different things just to make a process and just because, you know, any and everybody have a nonprofit, but is it in good standing? You know, like, so we can have those requirements in place just to kind of also help. ourselves, you know.

What did you give to non-non-profits? Because Inkstar Housing is a non-profit. What did you give to non-profit? I mean. Residence counselors.

Or I was going to say, like, you know. And we can give the, but it's just if you're going to claim you're a non-profit, then be a non-profit. If you're going to claim you're a 501, then maybe we can get the write-off. I don't know. But, like, it's just to have the proper documentation when it comes to those, you know.

We need to talk about, too, because, you know, Eastern Housing gives resident council money every year, too. I mean, so, you know, even though there are residents, they have their own funding.

Right, right, exactly.

You know, it's not like it's millions of dollars. Right, right.

I feel like that's what's going to be the hard part. It's easy to figure out, okay, we're going to set aside this much money. Then the hard part is going to come, who are we about to say no to? No to.

I think also, too, then— Give them a budget. You can always— Like she's saying, $2,000. That's all we've got to allocate because we've got too many nonprofits in the city.

And then we can have like— Oh, my God, the word is skipping me. But pretty much like we can have our— targets like for each year so if we're like if we want to give back to i don't know like kid-based events i mean usually they are all kid-based events but like then that's that funding for this year if the next funding is you know like parks you know what i mean like we can kind of talk about like each council person has the things that they care about and so if mine is after school activities and we want to give to We Rise more money this year than we do get Inkster housing, then like that can be our prerogative to do so. You know, but I just would prefer, and like, I mean, obviously no shop, please, like, y'all in the recording to um inkster high you know picnic but so we can know you know what i mean like when you come and ask we can know every single you know what i mean every year and then we can say we always help out with the event but it's we don't we like we bought the lights and we put the fence up and we do certain garbage cans but we don't we don't give money money to it

I mean, that is real money.

I mean, that is money. Rights are real money. Yeah, that's real money.

We just gave them a non-profit, though.

And there's nothing wrong with it, but I feel like that's the things that we need to keep better track of. Even in-kind has a dollar amount behind it that costs the city something. You know what I mean? And then if they ask for in-kind stuff, you probably get approved a lot faster than it is financially. So I'm off my soapbox.

Did we get to the good stuff?

Do we give money? I don't think we give it directly.

I mean, you gotta buy tickets. We give to the good fellas and we stand out there and freeze.

wow good great conversation um so that that's it for journal fund um i do have uh you know one more thing before i forget because you know i'm senior um this way westland school thing about the grads

Mm-hmm. I have a problem with that.

Wait.

I mean, because we give the, we do.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Your counsel comments.

Communication. If we didn't put this on the note, we can't even discuss it.

Right, we can't discuss it.

All right, so is that it for the budget? Oh, you didn't add it, okay.

Did that come out the budget, though? Is that part of the budget? She didn't ask for no money this year. No, she missed it, but every year we were giving something. Is that part in our budget?

We spent some money last year. I don't recall. We gave him pens or something. It wasn't money. No, I spent it. You paid for it.

And then the other stuff was individual assets.

I got the cake, she got the juices.

These are the things that we can allocate in this. fund so we don't have to, you know, come out our own pockets. Spend our $600 every month.

So that's it for general fund. It's eight. Eight, 18, or 12 minutes from tip-off, depending on how you look at it. And so we've got – we're going to put a pause right here, put a pin in it. We've got the road funds left and a water fund. Those are going to be the three biggest ones. Road funds, I don't think we'll be spending a lot of time on that. The water fund will take some time, but I think we can get everything covered in one session. And then Parks and Rec, that's the other one. So I think we've pretty much gotten all those numbers in, so we can get that sent out to you along with colored copies of this here.

You're spending more money, isn't it?

But I think we'll just need one more session for us to get completed here.

You know, we're under the gun.

At the next meeting, we have to approve a budget.

We do Monday the 8th at 6 p.m. That's Monday? Yes. Monday the 8th.

Yes. That's next Monday.

That's Monday. That's 6 p.m. Council's a week after that.

A week after. 15th. The 15th.

So Monday, that's for our study session?

I don't want to do it early. You can do it early.

I can do it early.

What is early?

Five.

Five. Four. Four.

I mean, it don't matter because I can get my stuff. You can start early because I can just get my stuff and go through it.

So it don't matter what every time we get to the water for you, I'll be tired.

And that's when we used to have that. We used to have it on Saturdays when everybody was shot in the morning. We used to have our budget meetings in the morning on Saturday because everybody But you saying no, but just think about the people, like you said, you get up and at certain point in time in the day, your brain checks out. You know what I'm saying?

Well, he's still young.

He's brand new. Yeah, yeah. He okay.

He got a two-year-old to get him.

Right.

But no, but that's when we used to have our best times, because everybody was fresh in the morning. They didn't have to work or whatever.

So we do Monday the 8th. I ain't suggesting it.

What time?

What time? Monday the 8th. Can we do 5? I'm going to go with 5. Can we do 5?

5, so I can notice it up. Yeah, that's fine. I'm going to be late, and it depends on when I get off, but go ahead. I'm not going to hold you up.

I'm going to notice it up for Monday the 8th at 5 p.m. All right, cool. Thank you.

All right. All right.

Thank you again. Thank you.

Thank you. What did you bring your lens to?

It's a pretty service. Let's go ahead and complete the agenda real quick.

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

All right, so we're down to item number four, public participation. We have anybody from the general public that wishes to speak at this time? Madam Clerk, do we have any?

No, we do not. Public comment submissions, okay.

No public comment submissions. Moving down to item number five, mayor and council communications. Anybody to my left at this time have anything for mayor and council communications?

No, I would just say from the last communication about the Wayne Westland, if we open it up for graduates, we have to do all graduates in Inkster. That's my comment. Not just one district.

Anybody else to my left? Not this time. Not this time. Anybody to my right? Just two things real quick, guys. Board of Commissions... bylaws ask went out today so if you received an email that's because you're on a board or commission or multiple ones and we're just trying to document that put all in one drive some things have been updated and everybody Some things are updated and adopted, and they did not get submitted to the clerk's office, or they weren't digitized, let's put it that way. And unfortunately, people have transitioned in and out, whether it was life or death, or they moved on to a different community, and we can't find what we need. So if you did get that email, please respond to it as best you can. If not, let me know. I'll just forward it to all of you guys as well.

You can give me a city phone number.

Four. You want some equipment?

Right.

You on the phone now? What? Okay. She moving up. You guys changed your email and all of that. I have to have it on the phone now. Everybody changed. On my calendar, I have a different phone number. I have a question.

Can I ask a question? Yeah, sure. With all the boards and commissions, if their bylaws is over 10 years old, can it be suggested that they be updated? Absolutely. They should be. And follow some of the protocol and Robert rules of order?

And the state statute. And we've got to get the DDA and the TIFA going again.

Please do.

I thought you picked those, though.

What did the charter say down?

I picked them. We all picked them.

I thought the mayor was in charge of the DDA back in my day. It just died. I don't know. It just died? So you're just going to bring it just council and mayor?

Yeah. you're gonna have to look into it a little more i look i asked some questions about that and i think there's something that's keeping that like some type of either like debt or something like that i know tiff is broke i feel like it's like something along something ask shardae she'll give you the answer tiff is supposed to raise money for the city i think it is both we pay tiff's bills yeah and i think that's what was part of the problem

They can get in there and get it going, though.

We've got to get somebody who knows what to do. Other communities, they do signs on the bridge and walkways. They raise money and they actually do stuff. I tell you, as far as I can go back, never really.

So the Tiffin District, they do pay a little bit more in taxes, though, correct?

They pay?

What was that? It's who?

That was it, yeah.

And we're paying that bill. And we're paying that bill. And we're paying that bill, right.

So they're not existing, but the people, they're still paying the higher bills?

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, we should have captures. Right. It's pennies, because, again, we're paying the bill.

Right, right, right.

But when Michigan Avenue gets completely developed, then it should be more money coming.

Yeah, coming in.

Oh, and I got a presentation for our next meeting about the Michigan Avenue Corridor. I met with the other mayors. We were up in Mackinac last week. So I want to lay out everything that we're talking about doing so we're aware. You don't have to hold on to anything. But we're at the point now where we need to form an authority with the other communities. We need to appoint someone, probably from this body, to sit on authority for Inkster. to make sure that we get what we need resources-wise. And I think we're going to benefit more than the other community because we're underdeveloped. We're going to win in this one if we get this going. So the attorney is in place. Plant Moran is working on it. We have an opportunity to do very well with this authority.

That's good.

The only other thing was the email that went out regarding IHC requesting them to meet with us. So you guys get a chance to take a look at that email so we can sit down and get together and have that public overview.

I did talk to the chair today, so I feel a little better. I heard from his perspective. But we should still get a report of what's going on. They have over $200 million in development going on. So we need to just kind of keep our finger on it. And I told him, I said, you're not using us as a resource as well as you can with these hiring and firing decisions and these development deals. We didn't even get asked to read it over, nothing. And I think they took a little bit in the development deal, but it's already a done deal. So we don't want to blow it up in the community because that's a bad look for us.

Do they have a director now?

They're going through the process now, so they're getting ready to hire somebody soon. And that was part of the discussion we had, too. But, you know, I mean, I feel better now that he talked to me. It was a lack of communication going back and forth, you know, and people telling you this and that, and he has a different perspective, and they're doing this because of It's hard when lay people are running something that big. Who's done a $200 million development deal? I haven't. That's a lay person board. And now we're asking them to hire an executive director. We've been through five executive directors in 10 years. I mean, we're not doing a good job.

So what's our authority?

Or we can remove the board. That's all we can do. We don't have anything to do with the day-to-day. We have nothing to do with their money. I talked to the feds. It's like, can we bring it under the city of Inkster and make it another department? They said absolutely not. You have to keep it separate. They don't do that. Because I thought it would function better maybe if the executive director reported to me as any other department here. And then they would be subject to us. But we cannot do that. So all we can do is appoint the board.

Did you...

I appoint the board, but I can't do it without y'all. It's tough, because it's a volunteer position. We're asking them to make million dollar decisions.

That was my word when I saw the email. And I'm pleasantly surprised by the email responses, but it's kind of like, I was like, that's not your place. You know what I mean? Because it's kind of like.

But they can't say that. You know what I mean? We can take it.

It is our place. We've done it before.