Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Jackson County Board of Commissioner study session for January 6 to order. At this time, Madam Clerk, could you please call the role? Yes, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Bear, present. Commissioner Walls here. Commissioner Kennedy here. Commissioner Duckham, Commissioner Pleski, Commissioner Willis here, Commissioner Williams pres. Commissioner Snell here, Chairman Shwell present. We have a court.

Please note that Commissioner Pleski is listen is on but not voting. At this time, we've arrived at public comment. Public comment is three minutes. You'll step up. You'll address the board after you identify yourself. You'll have three minutes to speak to us. During that time you we will not answer questions nor address issues. The first time for public comment is right now.

Good evening. John Wilson, 1045 South Durant Street, City of Jackson. John, good morning.

Just a few questions regarding Gro Jackson's farmtop and food hub that hopefully can be answered by Mr. Overton, county commissioners, or even uh Jacob and Sencio. Number one, since this is a county owned land, will Gro Jackson be under a county lease? And if so, how much monthly or annually will Gro Jackson be responsible in rent lease payments, and how long will the lease be for? two. Last year, the county parks department applied for and received a state grant for approximately $650,000 to reconstruct the two outuildings that will be used for this Grow Jackson project. Since the parks department initiated this grant and oversees this grant, will the county owned Armory property be under the opice of and be managed by the Jackson County Parks Department? Also, does the parks department have any plans on applying for any other grant funding for this property or for this Grow Jackson multiaceted project? Grow Jackson is a nonprofit and will have its nonprofit Jackson Farmtop and Food Hub located on county-owned property. With that being the case, Mr. Sensios Gro Jackson will be exempt from paying property taxes, personal property taxes on equipment and the buildings that will house his farm stop and food hub. If anyone is here from the Chamber of Commerce or Exac Accelerate Jackson, can they explain if this is fair to all their private sectorowned business members that do pay property and personal taxes? As a county resident and taxpayer, I do have an issue with unfair competition created by government, which this is. If anything, Gro Jackson's lease and rent

payments should reflect as though Mr. Ensensio is paying all the taxes that a local ger such as Keys produce or even pollies have to pay. Thank you very much. Any other public comment? Any other public comment? Public comment is now closed. Approve the minutes for the October 7th, 2025 study session. Make a motion to approve the minutes. Have a motion and support. Any questions, comments, corrections, or deletions?

Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. I. I. Those opposed? Duly carried. We've arrived at the strategic plan. Administrator controller Overton. See that we're online. Is that a Zoom meeting? We have Sarah's here. Uh Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself and take us through the program?

Yes. Good morning. I'm Sarah Bonjouro. I'm a director uh here at Planning Next and appreciate the opportunity this morning um to present the uh Jackson County strategic plan. I'm going to um and I've got Ethan with me as well, my colleague. He's been helping on the plan. Um let's see. I'm going to share my screen. Um should I do window this one? Okay, let me put it into All right. Can everyone see the screen? Do you want questions as we go or do you want me to wait till the end to ask them all?

Um, I'm fine if you want to if as we go through I'm going to talk about process first. Um, but yeah, I'm fine if you want to interrupt and and ask questions. We are going to go through at a high level each uh chapter of the plan. So if you've got specific questions around um you know that chapter or the objectives or the specifics um we'll feel free to give them as we go and then at the end I have a slide kind of next steps but we are um offering uh if you if any of you would like to have a you know 20 30 minute follow-up call with Ethan and I to discuss anything in more detail one of the chapters one of the actions whatever we are happy to do kind of a one-on-one follow-up call with any of you um as well. So, um, just keep that in mind. But we'd love to have any, um, yeah, comments, questions, uh, as we go along. That's just fine. Okay. So, just as a R, our agenda, we're going to go through a summary of our process and engagement and then we are going to go over each chapter of the plan um, at a high level. And I think you were all provided the the actual detailed um, uh, recommendations uh, as well. So if you you have any specific questions um we're happy to do that but we're going to keep it kind of high level for this morning. So our process uh for developing this uh county strategic plan was that we started by auditing the previous strategic plan with key leaders and the um d uh department directors uh to understand what was working you know which actions might need to follow come forward what things might need to change. So we understood that that strategic plan as a base. We also interviewed um county commissioners, elected officials of understanding priorities, issues and opportunities that they saw for the county, you know, for the next 10 years. Um we also did an online survey and we had a hundred more than 100 staff uh take uh the survey and provide us input on the county's goals and values and

progress. And then we also uh surveyed the directors for feedback on the drafted strategic payment. So once we got the uh draft recommendations in place, we did put it back out to those department directors to fine-tune that a little bit more and make sure uh we had um the recommendations covered. Um we also engaged the general public um through the drive Jackson initiative. Uh we were kind of sharing one public engagement process. So we were able to engage over 1300 people across two rounds of engagement. We collected over 5,900 pieces of individual input or ideas or comments. Um we heard from residents from every township, village, and within the city of Jackson. Um, round one engagement focused on asking residents about Jackson County's sort of current identity and the future, trying to understand those vision and values and getting those highle aspirations um, articulated and understanding like where you know the focus of the the county should be for the next um, 10 years. And then round two, we kind of dove a little more um, detailed into specific priorities. So we were understanding um the ideas that were shared in the first round um economics, public safety, housing, education, health. Some of those topic areas. We asked questions around those to understand a little bit more so that we could draft recommendations that reflected the community sentiment. And some pictures you see here are from some of our engagements um across the county. So as you know, there were dual plans going on. There was the drive Jackson which is the communitywide sort of 20-year large scale kind of high level vision and strategic plan which was informed by the same engagement process. Um it had a key leadership committee and a stakeholder group that was kind of guiding that and again they offer sort of a bigger picture and then this this Jackson County strategic plan really

focuses on the county's work as a form of local government. Um and so they're they're coordinated but obviously the county has certain things in their purview and so that's what this plan is focusing on. Question on this one. So oh we have a question. Yeah.

On this sheet um who is drive Jackson. So, Drive Jackson is uh kind of been managed or organized by the chamber and experience Jackson, but it's got many partners. Um the the community foundation, uh some of the major employers like Dawn Foods and Consumer Energies have had um they're part of the stakeholder group, so they've um kind of been part of the process and and funders of it. Um the city of Jackson as well was was part of that group. So, it was really a collective of different community organizations that came together, but the chamber and uh experience Jackson were um kind of spearheading it, if you will.

Okay. I was last meeting I was going through our county websites. Yeah. Particularly looked up all of the boards uh that the county places persons on. Um, and it lists all of the various boards. Um, Drive Jackson was not on there. So, Drive Jackson doesn't So, the county doesn't appear to place any persons on Drive Jackson. But yet, this organization Drive Jackson is going to

Commissioner Bear, myself uh was on the committee at representing the board of commissioners. Mike Overton represents the county at the chamber meetings. So, we've been involved since the get-go with the information on it. Okay. Well, would you then please would you please add Drive Jackson to the list of boards and commissions that the county places personnel on so that we can know who those persons are and u when they meet. So if a citizen wants to show up at one of the drive Jackson meetings just to observe what's going on um they can do so. that that committee is uh temporary. It should be over here very very quickly as they finish the strategic planning process. It's uh no different than any committee, a strategic planning committee. This is initiative is not Jackson counties, it's the chambers and they brought together all of these different organizations to participate across the whole county with the master planning if you will uh strategic planning I should say. uh across the county. Uh we added on to that element which we talked about here before. Remember we uh were basically uh adding a writer so to speak under the agreement with uh uh planning next uh to do our strategic plan. So we're a subset of that greater strategic planning process for the county and uh and that's what you have before you today. the focus, the elements that directly involve Jackson County.

Who is the organization? Who is a subset of that? We are we are Jackson. The county.

Okay. So, the county is the elected officials representing the citizens. The drive Jackson is not representative does not reflect the citizens. that Drive Jackson is not elected by the citizens to represent them. Yet, we've got Drive Jackson making decisions that's going to impact all of our citizens. So, we've got a unelected, pretty much unknown board that is uh handing out taxpayer dollars. Well, I wouldn't say they're handing out any taxpayer dollars, but I would tell you that this all became came in front of the county commissioners and I'd have to check the minutes, but I believe you were there and and voted for it. So, we'll have to go back and look, but this time for front of the board.

You should have voted for what? Drive the contract with the chamber to do drive Jackson. Yes.

Yeah. And uh Tony, do you remember back during the summer when you and I attended the chamber meeting and they met with us for 45 minutes inside their boardroom? I was there first, you came second and we sat there and that was that was that meeting. So you and I as county commissioners were the only two commissioners to show up and talk to them on that day. I know other commissioners spoke with Drive Jackson at other times and shared their concerns and other commissioners like Commissioner Duckham I know shared his concerns through the administrator controllers's office. So every county commissioner had an opportunity to speak with Drive Jackson and to represent the county as a whole. So, so we did we did have a voice in this and we did have effectively two voices because they also went out to all the townships and spoke to them and all the school districts and spoke to them and then they went and had a volunteer attendance meetings also.

All right. So, I still have my request on the county website. We have a list of all the boards and commissions. I understand. But this is all over with. Yeah, this is all over with. Well, you're Yeah, you're your committee assignment part of this has come is coming to a conclusion. And so now you'll be implementing the plan through the administrator controllers's office. That's what we're talking about today. Yeah, it was an ad hoc uh group that got brought together to help, you know, uh champion the planning process. So it was just a not even a year long about a ninemonth process.

Okay. Thank you for your explanation. Yeah. And the only real um overlap was the engagement, right? This we were using one. It's efficient. It's a lot better use of funds to use one public engagement process to then feed into both plans. So the Jackson County strategic plan is really specific to the operations of the county and we developed that you know separately but we were using that community broader community input process of drive Jackson because it's a lot more efficient to use one you know one opportunity to engage with folks and then use that input in two different ways. Thank you.

Okay now that's important. I know it can be a little confusing all the different um planning processes going on. Okay. So, the next few slides are some charts showing our um engagement. So, this is the larger countywide um engagement process. Uh and we're looking at different demographics. So, the blue bars here are our participants within the engagement or community engagement process. And the red line is the US census. And so what and this one looks like there was nobody, but we did have at least one person from every township um and the city of Jackson participate um in our uh process. So we feel good about that. Um obviously city of Jackson, some of some of the larger uh townships in the city there, you know, have have more representation, but we at least know we had somebody from every township. Um age. Um similarly here we've got uh the red line represents the census uh percentage um of each age cohort makeup of the overall county. And you can see here that we're really close. We really heard from all age um cohorts across the county. So we feel good about that. Um in a lot of communities we really miss this 25 to 34 year old like kind of the young professionals. Um and here we're only like a percent off which is really we're really close. um we're a few percents off in the 65 and older, but generally like we feel really good about the age spread that we heard from people in all age cohorts as part of this process. So they're rep there are different viewpoints are represented. Um same in race and ethnicity um and uh this is the Hispanic um group over to the right here. Um but we we hit these um marks pretty pretty close here. we got, you know, 8% a black African-American in the community and we we had 8% participation. So, we feel really good about the race and ethnicity

participation as well. Um, the one area of demographics where we did have a considerable gap and we we knew this and we were working towards it, but it was still hard to close this gap was folks with a high school or GED. Um, that represents 34% of the county and we reached 10% of them. Um so that is a pretty considerable gap. Um but we did go back and look at the input that we received from folks in this in this cohort and we feel like their um you know their ideas and their repres their um comments and and things were are represented in the plan. So we we you know we feel good that we heard them. We just wish we had heard from more of them. Um but uh this was really the only demographic where we didn't uh get close or meet that um you know that that goal.

Question on this one? Yeah. Any questions before I go on to the input summary? Go ahead. Can you tell me what accounts for the sometimes extreme difference between the numbers from the US census and the numbers for the people you interviewed? Why are they so inconsistent? Um, you mean why there why this is 34% and we're only at 10%. Like this gap here. Well, if the census for the uh okay, look at the bachelor's degree

and the and the US census only accounts for about 40 40% of what you're counting. Why are we so much higher than what the US census indicated? Do you do you have an explanation for that?

Well, we had a more um educated group come out and engage with us. So, in this case, there's 15% of the county has a bachelor's degree, but this blue bar is who participated in our process. So, we had 35% of people in the who come who participated in the process like came to a meeting, filled out an online survey, um came to one of our pop-up events. um we ask for in for um demographic information from folks who partic who participated in any of our events so we could track kind of the participation. So this just means that our the folks that participated with us were a little you know they they had the bachelor's degree and master's or doctorate degree. So that's where the the gap is there if I'm understanding your question right. So the the red line is the percentage within the county and the blue line is our this blue bar is our the people who participated with us.

Okay. Well, does that mean that the persons with bachelor's degrees counted in the US census? Does that mean they showed up at two or three different meetings to express their opinion that you had more people show up?

Yeah. I mean, um, I mean, we we we hope people come to both rounds. I don't think that they came to multiple meetings because they were all like the same format. I just think we had more people in the community, whether that's because they heard about it, it's because they felt comfortable coming out, um, it's because they're just maybe more engaged through different organizations that they got connected or plugged in. That's usually what happens in communities. Um, some folks that that do have the higher um, degrees sometimes are already plugged into different organizations or groups. um so they might have participated through that. Um, so I'm not exactly sure why. This is a very um similar trend across a lot of communities that we work in is sometimes it is harder to reach the folks uh that that have the um high school or some college students. This one was hard. So before we get into the recommendations, uh we have a few bullets here just at a high level. Some of the summary of input or ideas and feedback we heard from uh the residents of the county. And so you can see here some of the sentiment share. We did hear from folks about, you know, they want economic opportunity and public safety.

We're really top two priorities for improving the community. Um people appreciate Jackson County's value compared to it sort of neighboring communities um but still experienced some barriers to housing. So having access to quality housing and affordable housing was still mentioned. Um there was some concerns about healthc care access specifically mental health um and addiction treatment. Um but people love Jackson County's outdoor amenities. um want to see, you know, more, you know, expansion, more uh water hiking, biking trails expanded, parks and lakes enhanced. Um they really like what's there now and want to just see that continuing to be bolstered. Um and people really like the public art like the bright walls and want some of that expanded into other parts of the county. Um you know, rather than just it was in the city. So we heard um you know, a lot of different things and I think you'll see hopefully these things reflected within the plan. Um we did uh look at just those residents with the high school degree of equivalent. Um and they did have a little bit more negative picture of what the county was known for. You know, listing the crime or violence. However, those residents also shared economic development and safety as those key priorities. Um 96% of county staff said their work was important and 91% felt pride in their work. So we feel, you know, your staff really cares about what they do and cares about the county, which was is great to hear. Um, we also heard from county staff that retention and attraction were critical to improving county operations and um, you know, county staff shared a lot of the same priorities as the community. Um, that you know, making more progress towards economic development, safety, education were a high priority. Um, and then also, you know, we they felt like there was some progress made towards arts, culture, recreation, public health, government efficiency, and work environment. Um but obviously, you know, still, you know, continuing to evolve in those areas, but felt good about where the county was relative to those. So

that's just a highlevel um kind of input summary that helped feed into the recommendations. So we have six sort of chapters or goal areas. Um first one's economic development um focused on a diverse economy and skilled workforce. And then we have a chapter on public safety which is helping to um you know prepare residents for emergencies, help with preventing crime, interdep departmental collaboration across different organizations. We have a community health and well-being chapter um focusing on like the totality of well-being. We have arts, culture and recreation where we put all that outdoor amenities and other cultural offerings. Um we have public services um which is really about the county government delivering those essential public services and then internal operations that's really more inside the the county kind of operations about being efficient and effective government operated by committed and capable staff. So that's kind of your internal chapter. So these uh were very similar to the chapters from the previous strategic plan. Uh a couple things got merged and we made sure that it felt right for this round. But um there was some continuity there because staff um felt like the chapters generally were serving you know the the county well. Okay. So I'm going to take it through each um each chapter. Um so if you have any comments around you know any of the specific recommendations or just general comments around this goal area uh feel free to to jump in after I um hit this slide. I'm going to hit it very pretty high level here and quickly. So again, the goal is a strong diverse economy powered by infrastructure investments in a skilled workforce. And there's four objectives that then um organize more specific recommendations underneath them. So the objectives are around economic promotion, workforce development, infrastructure coordination, and housing. And I just these are not all the strategies on the

bullets. These are just sort of a summary of the types of strategies that are in this chapter. But it's about coordinating with Accelerate Jackson on business retention expansion side acquisition things your kind of meat meat and potatoes of the economic development um increasing enrollment for in demand workforce training apprenticeships and technical degrees to make sure you got the workforce to deliver on those um jobs. Coordinate with partners uh to fund key infrastructure upgrades needed for those economic um development opportunities. and then improving um data on housing and understanding how where the county is relative to housing and then supporting home repair for older adults and strengthening the land bank to keep those um older homes still in uh good working order for folks uh within the county. So, I'll pause there and see if you've got any uh questions or comments um on the economic development chapter. Commissioner Bear.

Thank you. I've read through all of this in detail and many things in here. I read it and I think we're already doing that. Uh your bottom bullet point, support home repair for older residents and stren for older residents. Uh we just got a $400,000 grant uh $62,000 to administer it for that very purpose. and we've hired the community action agency to administer that grant. So there are many other things throughout here that I look at it and say, "Yeah, we're already doing that." Um, so I'm some of this plan of what we should do, I look at and think we're already doing that.

Yeah. That's correct, Commissioner Bear. But the objective of a plan is to put in place that either you continue doing those things or you choose through the priority process that those projects are not relevant or pertinent to Jackson County anymore. So we don't do them anymore. Okay. So what we're doing is we're we're looking at what we're doing well and want to continue it. We're looking at the things that have finally run their course and we need to look at different ways to be innovative and help the different organizations in Jackson County to improve themselves to make Jackson a better place to live.

That's the idea. I agree. I just don't want this I don't want this report to be taken as the county's failing in all of these things. we are doing many of them and yes we should continue to do them. So thank you.

Yeah. No I think that's right and um I think it's great that the sentiments we heard out in the public you know when we went out for engagement reflect some of the things you're already doing which I think means you you're already doing a lot of things that people care about. So that's a good thing. Some places we work there's a mismatch. And so I think you guys uh are doing a great job of continuing those key um initiatives and focuses uh that the the folks out in the in the community really want to see as well. Okay. Any other comments on economic uh development? Anyone would like to share? Okay. I'm going to go on to public safety. So the goal is a safe community that prevents crime, prosecutes offenders, and prepares residents for emergencies through interdep departmental collaboration. We also we have five objectives under this chapter. Um one around law enforcement and recruitment, crime prevention and enforcement, improvements to the jail, the collaboration, um and then community empowerment. Um and so then the summary around this is about recruiting and retaining, you know, the best law enforcement. Um helping to prevent crime through education, deterrence, mental health, substance abuse, uh treatment resources, increasing that collaboration between county offices and local jurisdictions, and then building a positive relationship between law enforcement and the community through public events and data-driven communications. Um it's that whole kind of, you know, perception versus reality piece here, um within the county. And I think um this building that positive relationship and making sure you're sharing good stories out um will help with that. So there's some actions around that. Any questions or comments on public safety? I think our public safety is being handled well at this time. Um, our sheriff's department

and township law enforcements, I believe, are doing a good job with the money they have available. Um, if we want to increase recruitment and retention, that's likely going to cost more money. So, I agree with all these. Um, but we can't do them all without more funds to do so. Is anybody considering raising the tax dollars that we collect from our citizens? Um, if we want to improve increase the training, we're already doing it, but it'll cost more money to do more of it. Um, so there there's a financial issue to this uh that isn't expressed here. I I like the way our law enforcement is performing. I support them totally. Um, okay. That was my comment. Going to take more tax dollars. All right. Any other comments on public safety? Okay, next chapter is community health and well-being. Um the goal is a culture of continuous health improvement in the community that enri en enriches the lives of residents. Um five objectives in this chapter as well focused on education and awareness, healthcare access and affordability, behavioral and emotional health, family health and wellness and older adult health and wellness. Um so the summary of sort of strategies in this chapter focus on really understanding assessing the community's needs and providing maybe more targeted health education. Um

providing free or lowcost mobile clinics for different kind of health screenings. Um provide resources for mental health and substance use disorders. Support mothers and families through enhanced W programming and build age friendly programs for the growing population of older adults. I'm reading bullet point three and it says provide resources for mental health and substance use disorders to county employees. Yeah. Does our health insurance not currently do that? No, we have an EAP program. Okay. I'm just cur I'm assuming our employees gave you that bullet point or is that

Yeah, I think you heard some stuff. It might be more about um this is a good question. It might be more about promoting the EAP program a little bit more. Okay. U maybe folks don't know about it or unsure how to take advantage of it. So maybe it's a more about a promotion piece than actually like that you're missing a critical component there. Uh we can look into that and make sure the language is right on that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Make a note of that. Corey, I kind of take that as getting out the information that Lifeways provides to the whole community, not just our staff. Why? No, but that Yeah,

that was specific to the staff. That's why I'm like, "Wow, if that's what they think, then that's not the case. We we need to let them know that they do have coverage for that." Yeah. I looked at all these bullet points and I I said to myself, we're already doing every one of these. So, as Steve had mentioned, the plan is to take what we're doing, make sure we continue doing it. And so, from that perspective, to continue doing these, I support this. I don't accept it as an accusation that we're not doing these things because we are doing every one of them,

right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll check the the wording on the the reference like the resources for the county employees and the EAP program. We'll check wording on that specific recommendation. Any other comments on this chapter? Okay. arts, culture and recreation. The goal is vibrant arts and cultural offerings and engaging outdoor amenities. We have three objectives kind of organizing the object the specific recommendations around arts and culture, parks and trails, community events and engagement. And some of the the sort of summary of strategies for this one is about expanding more public art out into the villages and more of the rural county areas. Um additional or enhance events at county parks. So programming I think some of those assets a little bit more. um upgrade um parks, campsites, lake amenities uh with different um you know upgrades, infrastructure upgrades like maybe bathrooms, lighting, peers, improve and expand trails, offer safe access along hight traffic corridors as well as rural roads. So I think it's about trying to just create more connections into those um already great trail network um that you all have. Any questions or comments on this chapter? apparently not.

Okay, great. Um, and then the public services chapter, the goal is a county government that delivers essential public services with responsiveness and integrity. um objectives uh two objectives uh focus in on data and technology and then infrastructure and transportation. Um the summary here is about you know looking to maybe deploy new technologies and service delivery and provide better county data to the public. Um and then continue to make infrastructure improvements, you know, around, you know, safety improvements along key corridors and leveraging the airport as uh a uh county asset. Any questions or comments? continue.

Okay, great. And then the last chapter is the internal um operations. So the goal is an efficient and effective government operated by committed and capable staff. So this is really that kind of inside the organization chapter. So objectives uh there's five of them around efficiency, staff retention, career development, workplace culture and internal communications. Um so the summary around these strategies are around collecting data and evaluating employees and programs on an annual basis. Um attract and maintain exceptional staff through compensation review, leadership tracks, internship programs, foster a healthy workplace culture, and share success stories and emerging trends with staff and through the public through annual meetings and the media. Well, in this one, I guess what explains it the best is your second bullet point here. Attract and maintain excellent staff.

Um, we don't have the money to offer our staff that the state of Michigan can offer them. Yeah. or or consumers can offer them. When our employees have left county, gone to the state and with a 50% pay increase, the county doesn't have the money to match the pay grades for the state consumers. So, our HR does a good job of recruiting exceptional people. Mhm.

Um but if our exceptional people want to have pay that matches what consumers can offer them, um that's going to take a tax hike. And who wants to support that? Um we just get outbid by these other agencies and I don't think there's anything we can do about it. Other questions? If not, I would make a comment. Um, you know, I people ask me frequently how the county's doing. Hey, how's the county? You know, it's one of those things. And I always tell them, we don't have problems money can't fix. Um, the problem is, you know, always financial. And we're not alone. It's across the state. Uh you've heard me go on before about uh how the state funds uh government, county government. Um I I personally think it's it's broken, but regardless um we do well with what we have and uh and it's true, as Commissioner Barer indicated, uh sometimes we lose people uh because there is a better opportunity for them. And uh we wish them well. In all honesty, we we don't want to try to hold people back. if they can do better for themselves and their families, we would encourage that, of course. Uh at the same time though, I would add that um the people that we do have uh uh that stay here, uh it's obviously not exactly for the money. I think most of us could go somewhere else and make more money. Truth be told, I could too. But we fell fell in love with Jackson or always love Jackson or grew up in Jackson or whatever the case may be. Everybody has their own uh individual thinking reasons for why they continue to do the work they do here in Jackson. Uh I'd like to think that it's um that it's more than a job here. We um I always say we make a difference in people's lives every day.

Arguably a positive one in my way of thinking. And uh I think on the whole uh Jackson does a uh Jackson County organization. we do a very good job uh which to me is not only evident in some of the comments through the strategic planning process but we survey our residents uh every other year and that's reflected in there as well. So um but please continue.

Yeah, I think that's I think that's true and I think we heard a lot of the same sentiment shared through this process and I think there's a lot to do with the workplace culture piece as well. you know, creating a place that people feel proud to work, know they're making a difference makes goes a long way, and we heard that in our our input. Okay. Um, so we're at the we're at the the end here. Um, so next steps, um, we appreciate the comments and and conversation here now, but if you would like additional time to provide any feedback to us, you can reach out to Ethan. His email address is up there. You can also get to us through Mike um, to schedule a follow-up call. We're happy to have a, you know, 20 30 minute call if there's anything specific you want to talk about. Um, we do expect to hopefully deliver the final strategic plan to you by end of January pending adoption. Um, and just to know that the Drive Jackson 20-year vision and strategic plan process is concluding in February. Uh, that plans being wrapped up kind of as we speak as well. It will be revealed at the Victory Lab Chamber annual meeting on February 11th. Um, and then it'll be the the real what I say is the hard work begins then. Um, because both plans will go into implementation. um you know starting starting then and so that's where you know I think uh really start to roll up your sleeves and and dig into some of these uh initiatives. So that'll be that'll be exciting for both both plans. Um so that's that's all I have. Um stop sharing here. Um

I would comment that uh u my expectation is that at our Tuesday night meeting uh uh we will I've forwarded the plan to you once. We'll forward it again. uh uh and at our Tuesday night meeting if there's concerns or changes or anything that the board wishes to address, bring it up then. Uh ideally, we would approve the plan Tuesday night and that way they can finalize and you know add a picture or two here or there and so forth and give us a finished printed version, an electronic version by the end of the month. Um last call, questions, concerns or otherwise? Yes, sir.

Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. I I generally like to allow for the presentation to end before I ask my questions. Um but I will say that I do have a um quite a significant list and so I would appreciate a follow-up call um to kind of go over some of these, but I will ask maybe one or two now. Uh and so kind of starting with the um public services um obviously as a county commissioner we hear from constituents um all the time on things that are important to them, things that they need. And so just out of the litany of of items that are generally brought to me and I'm sure to other commissioners, I was quite surprised to only see two items on the list, I'm curious, um, in your research, were there other things that were brought up but just didn't make the list?

Um, I mean, we can go back and doublech check. You're talking about from public input, like the things, ideas that people shared that maybe didn't make it into the list. Yeah, we can go back and double check. I mean, a lot of what we were sort of not screening for exactly, but what we were looking for was things that were in county purview already. Um, you know, things that the counties overseeing are doing. There are some other things that might appear in the Drive Jackson plan that are really not cover uh government, you know, specific maybe in the purview for government to do, but are still important in the community. So, they are in this like larger overarching plan that is going to be implemented by a number of different organizations and groups. So there might be some stuff that you're thinking of that might end up being in addressing that plan, but we can go back and double check and look through the input just to make sure we're not missing anything. Um, I know we added some new things around like AI because that's a current kind of uh, you know, thing that that the whole world is is is sort of grappling with how to to use it and to be efficient. um and um you know some using GIS and some data more in in a better more efficient way as well. Um but I think safety and roads were really the things we heard you know road safety corridor safety and like the road condition of roads is what we heard from most mostly from people which are in here. Um, but we're happy to go back and just double check the input to make sure we're not missing any other services or if there's things that you've heard from folks that aren't in here that you'd like to, you know, to share for, uh, consideration to include in the plan, you know, we're happy to to hear that. Maybe that's we can talk about that in the follow-up call.

Okay, that that'd be great. Thank you. And similarly uh in the arts and culture and recreation um one of the constant uh comments and things that I get from constituents um is just the lack of diversity. And although I see that there's ways in which that can be promoted through I think what you're calling cultural offerings. Um I'm curious to if you heard any conversations in in that regard as well. Yeah, I think we did. And I think we kind of put it in that general kind of uh bucket. Um but again, we can go back and look for anything maybe more specific um that might um that might help kind of round that out. Um I think we heard just about mainly that people, you know, people like what's happening in the county now. They like the bright walls. They like some of the stuff that the city's done and really just want that kind of, you know, pulled out into the community. But I think we did hear that folks want to make sure that um you know that that there's like a um the the culture that the people that live in the county are represented and and um and celebrated.

I got you. Thank you. Look back at that as well. I I I'd appreciate that. And uh finally um again I do have some other questions and so I will appreciate a follow-up call so we can set up a time to do that. But my my final question um for you today is how what determining factors are you using to create the list like how how are you coming up with based of all the data and if this is if that's a long question we can discuss that later but um just I guess in so many words how are you taking the data and from that creating the goal then the objectives from that

yeah so I think for this plan you know we started with the existing plan and did that audit So we went through with the department directors um and and with Mike's help and and went through it kind of line by line and said is this something the the county still wants to continue doing. Um so there was that kind of just stuff pulled forward, right? So that was one input and then we did go out to the community and the public input. We looked for themes. We looked for wasn't just a popularity vote though. It wasn't just the most most things mentioned got in the plan, but we did look for those themes of multiple times people mentioning a particular issue or particular opportunity, but we also just scan for good ideas if there's just a good idea in there that maybe one off that we think's helpful. Um, we also looked at the data. Um, so we did an existing conditions uh report that looks at the demographics, what's happening in the community relative. So, a number of different like census um inputs and economic inputs. And so, we looked at that as well. and that all all of that sort of went into the hopper I guess and then gets sorted into these recommendations. Um so you know that's when we can talk more about that but I think um and we're happy to share the database uh as well the raw input database we have that all organized um and as part of the drive Jackson initiative the key leadership group that that kind of steering committee that brought was brought together they actually look through the input and help make sense of it and helped us understand what people are saying and kind of craft into the recommendations. So, um, we're happy to share that raw database if you want to look through it and if there's anything that might jump out to you that maybe we didn't pick up on because you're, you know, you're in the community, you're talking to people, you're hearing from folks, but we really try to to be broad and look at it from not only just like what are the most people talking about, but also where are those good ideas and where are those maybe oneoff things that um, folks might have shared that we think would be good. Um, does that does that help a little bit? Yeah, I think seeing the the

database might help to answer a lot of the questions that I have. Uh, and so if I if I can continue on that same thought. And so if I'm hearing you correctly or if I'm understanding correctly, excuse me. So there isn't really a matrix or a a formula that you're using, but you're more so hearing the this is kind of the general voice or the the majority comments are coming from point A. And so from that you say this then becomes the goal and then this then becomes the objective from there. So it's not a yeah exactly formula.

It's not it's not a formula. No it doesn't go into some sort of like um AI based thing that that we don't look we we like Ethan has read every single comment and we have looked at the database um and looked for those themes. So, it's a little more um yeah, it's it's like we're looking for those those uh points where people are kind of coming together and saying, "Yeah, we we hear this, you know, a bunch of times. We got to make sure that's addressed. We're looking for good ideas." But there isn't a formula. There's not a matrix. There's not a um a numbers kind of component to this. It's not um quantitative, so to speak. It's more qualitative, taking that input, reviewing it, and then crafting those recommendations from it.

Okay. Thank you. So yeah, I I look forward to um discussing further with you and then looking at the uh the data um the databases and uh we'll kind of go from there. Okay, that sounds great. If you want to email Ethan with some dates that work for you for a follow-up call, we will get that scheduled in the meantime. Ethan will send you the raw data. We can send actually the raw database to Mike if you want to send it to everybody. Um that way anyone can look through it. It's a lot. I don't know how many pages it is, but there are some, excuse me, some of them are summarized like so some of them that are a little more quantitative. Yeah, it might make it easier to look at. Um, but a lot of it is people's direct comments.

Yeah, expository comments. We do have a few way we asked questions and some in the second round

um allow people to like select something or it was like a multiple choice. So, we did get some quantitative kind of input on that, but there was also always a chance for folks to just share what's on their mind or share a comment directly. So we've got kind of both. Um but we'll provide databases for both the first round and the second round. Um you know the first round really helped develop that high level plan what we call the plan framework which is you know just what are those what are those goal what are the buckets we need to address what are the goals what are we trying to kind of understand here and then the second round dug into some of those topical areas. It gave us some more targeted or focused feedback that then we were able to use to create the actual recommendations. And again, in this plan, in the county's plan, you know, there you guys like like was shared today, you're all already doing a lot of good work relative to um these different topic areas. So, a lot of it was continuing pulling forward, maybe cleaning up the language a little bit, maybe making it a little more um specific, but really focusing on those key initiatives you're already doing. So, a lot of that pulled forward, but we we added some new stuff as well, obviously, from um the input and the data that we were seeing. Thank you. So, I I will say to um and I'm done with this. I think to your to your last point, um a lot of what has been presented are things that we are doing and things that I as a county commissioner take pride in the fact that we're doing. Um and so I'm wondering if one of our goals or things that we need to look at on on this side of things is just marketing and advertisement so that both the community and employees are aware of a lot of what we're doing. Um

I think that that's an opportunity. Uh, and granted sometimes marketing, advertisement, a lot of that costs or can bring about a significant cost when we look at hiring people to do those types of things, but I'm wondering if this is a sign that this is a direction that we need to move into. So, some things for us to think about, I think. So, nothing further. Thank you for your presentation and all the work you've done to do this. I know this is not um an easy task, but it's clear that this is something that you uh like to do and have a great uh passion for uh putting all this this work together. So, thank you for that. And uh thank you uh Mr. Chair. I have nothing further. Thank you.

Thank you uh Mr. Chair. Um quick question for you. When you present the finalized strategic plan, in that plan, will there be recommendations for uh key performance indicators or measurables to to reach towards? So, so if there are if there are some things we are already doing, we can we can have those things marked off as well as other uh indicators as as to how we're moving the direction we're moving in into into meeting the goals, objectives, and the summaries that are included in that plan.

Yeah. So there were some initial there were some success measures in the first plan. Um and so I think what we need to do is look back and we can pull some of those over create some that go with each chapter. I don't we weren't envisioning a KPI for each recommendation but for each goal area we can definitely put in some of those success measures or those sort of metrics that you can track to make sure you're making progress towards your overall goal if that makes sense. Um, and that could be I mean if if if you want more specific KPIs that could be something that you all work on in your imple some of your first implementation um discussions as you start to implement is like what are those key you know pieces of data or metrics um that will help you know you're making progress. Um but we can put some general recommendations in for that for each kind of goal area include that in the plan. Yeah, if I may, we we

we do that now, too. It's in and and we look at our budget, we'll put in there, you know, how we how we've done in the past, what we're doing differently or what have you. But that was always expectation when this was done to revisit on uh all that and build it into the system itself. So, there's measurables, those sort of things.

Okay. Thank you. That's all I have. Uh just to make commissioners aware, I think when you look at the white paper that appears before all of our motions, you'll see where the item that we're voting on through a regular meeting cycle, uh where each item fits into the strategic plan and how it is being done and how the measurables are being met within those documents. That was the creation of the first committee to be able to show to commissioners and the public where we are uh tying everything back financially and tying everything back to the strategic plan uh for a clear message to the public of what we're doing. And if I'm to chime in one more time there in regard to uh Commissioner Williams comment, we have talked about in the past uh communications person, marketing, that sort of thing position and uh we see the need, our employees see the need. The the struggle has always been is money. Um and you know where do we how do we justify and rationalize because there's limited amount of money and unlimited amount of need. So, uh, we'll have to just revisit those priorities and that's something that, um, uh, that would, uh, obviously it's a new FTE because we've tried to adding it on to different people's roles and responsibilities and, um, you get what you pay for, you know,

with that said, thank you.

Well, thank you. I appreciate getting to know you all and and your community and uh we wish you the best. We'll um be looking to to finalize everything. We'll follow up uh with anyone who would like a um uh a call to discuss anything in more detail and we'll get this uh wrapped up for you all and then we'll uh we'll keep an eye and um hopefully you it sounds like you've already got it institutionalized within the county processes which is great. Some places don't have that in place and so there is some time to get get it kind of uh into city or county processes but here you've got that already going. So I have no doubt that you will hit the ground running with your new plan. So we appreciate you trusting us with this process and um we will be in touch.

Thank you again. Byebye. Bye

bye. And then our next item is Varigy. Um we have both Dick and Chris with us here. U come to the podium please. Good morning board of commissioners and happy new year to each of you. It's a pleasure to be uh in front of you again to give you a status update on our uh Vari uh energy project. Um do you have a could you forward the next to the next slide? So um we're in the home stretch now uh with most of the project with with the exception of the landfill and we're going to I'm going to tell you about a couple opportunities there with that as we go through this. But I want to review the scope of work that we've completed. You see six ECMs listed there. Um obviously we've commit we've uh performed all the LED lighting retrofits. We've done the HVAC at Wesley uh jail, the north lawn uh the J do you center airport J dot and HSB. Um we finished all the solar uh that's there for all those facilities and it's it's energized and operating uh you know online giving you energy savings there. Um the building controls um have been finished at the Wesley Jail North Lawn JT youth center airport HSB and the courthouse. Um the geothermal has been finished at both the human services building and the courthouse. Um, we did have a little bit of a lapse there that was caused from about a year and a half delay that occurred from the city of Jackson trying to get what they call a

revocable license permit to basically run our piping under the under the street. that that was a significant delay that caused us. We actually finished the HSB building before the courthouse and we started that a year a year after uh because we you approved that as a change order for the geothermal there and then we finished the EV charging at the at the courthouse. Those chargers are right outside underneath the uh uh solar shade structure canopies that are right there on on the street level. So you can see some of the pictures there uh of what the solar looks like uh completed from our drone shots that are there. Next slide. Um this is about 99% completed the the courthouse. You see some pictures there. Um you have on the left you see what the new HVAC units look like. Uh basically we installed 34 of these units throughout the courthouse. Um the courthouse staff was very uh you know very nice to work with, very patient. Um they they they basically helped us do this because you're dealing with an occupied building and you're putting all this new HVAC in there. So, we do want to thank everybody from the courthouse that really worked with us as we put these 34 these 34 uh geothermal units uh in. Um you can see what the mechanical rooms look like on this picture to the right. The only thing we have left to finish is you have a couple rooftop units that we have to change out the uh duct work on the roof. Um that will be done by the end of March. Next slide. Um this is the um tower building here that you see. Um we basically are

building out uh three floors with new air handling units that are going to accept chilled water and hot water from the new boiler plant and the new chiller plant that that we installed. And you can see what the uh air handler unit looks like. Uh that's going to be located in the closets. Um you can see down in the in the picture in the middle um what the pump controls look like. We put those on variable frequency drives to ensure uh proper energy savings uh you know for the operation of those pumps. And then the last picture on the right is the uh steel structure that uh encloses all the piping you know from the um chiller uh system that that goes on each floor. Um, this is about 75% completed. Um, we did have a a delay in the start of that because what happened um, and I don't know if this was communicated by Ed, but the contractor that we had uh, lined up to do this work actually the owner of that company passed away and his partner basically didn't want to do the job. So, we had to go out for rebidding this whole that whole thing. So, that's that that delayed the start of this. That's why this isn't this taken the longest um to get done. Next slide. So, this one here is the one that reminds me of my football days. Um every time with this landfill, it seems like we get down in the uh ready to score the touchdown, we get a 15 yard penalty. Uh and just like in football, you have to stay vigilant. you have to stay persistent that you can't let those penalties stop you from getting where your goal is is to get in the end zone. And um so unfortunately, you know, we've been taking it's been like almost three

years now trying to work through the state and their process. Um we've been very patient. I want to recognize Mike Overton. He's went up to Lancing several times to like testify and all these different things that are that are going on there. But um it's just been delaying this project. The blessing about that is though because be I've learned that blessings come in disguise a lot of times is had we started that project, there was a tornado that hit the site that took that building down. It's it's all in pieces now. We've got to demolish that as part of the project. But let's say we would have retrofitted that out and that tornado would have hit all that money that was put in there destroyed. Um the good Lord I think was watching over us on that. So um we're we're you know we're just we're we're just conveying to you that we're going to remain uh vigilant. We're going to remain persistent and patient to try to get this project done because this was one of the three key things that the county wanted done. you know, talking about your strategic plan, which was nice to see that which was to upgrade your facilities. That was part of that uh you know, those key performance indicators. This was one because of, you know, that hauling of the leech that goes to Detroit. So, uh we're still uh waiting for the state to hopefully finally get this approved so we can start and uh we're going to show you some, you know, what the cost is now because it's been three years later. Next slide. So as far as the status, just listing all the energy conservation measures that are there and how where they are in the completion um in the first uh bullet there. But I want to zero in on the lower uh you know the as far as what

really uh needs to be done besides the landfill um is the courthouse HVAC. I told you the duct work that'll be done by the end of March. the tower HVAC installations will be done by the end of April. Um and the controls as well at the end of April. So that will be done and then once the state gives the uh transfer of the land deed over to you um we it'll take 9 months to get the solar done. We've got all the solar panels and inverters. We've been waiting, you know, patiently to have that installed. And then, uh, it's going to take about 18 months to get all the equipment in the new building built because one of the things we have to do now that we didn't anticipate, we were going to take the existing building and this he put the equipment inside and retrofit the inside of that building. But now we have to actually replace that building. We have to demol finish the demolishing of it and then we have to build a new building. And that building is on the state land because half of the uh landfill is owned by the county and the other half is owned by the state. And where the building is, that's on the state land. And so and and the two most corrosive tanks that have the most corrosive uh PAS in there is on the state's lands. So um we're still patiently waiting on that. Next slide. So, we put down two uh change orders and I just want to clarify um because it it came came to our to my attention. I was looking at this last night. Chris and I stayed in town and we were looking at this and I this was a sheet that he prepared and this was his project management sheet. But um where it says change order 5, 4, 6, and 8, those are

internal to us, our change orders to our contractors. They're not any change orders to the county. So I apologize if if people took that as that that those were change orders to the county. The county has only really executed one change order with us, and that was for the human services uh uh geothermal project, and that was that was it. This work here has all been completed. We've paid our contractors for this work. This is work that came up primarily from unforeseen conditions or other issues that came up on the project that uh we were requested to add stuff um and you know or stuff that wasn't under our control. And you can see the breakout of those cost. Um and then altogether those come to like $491,000. We made the decision to keep the construction going each time on this because we couldn't afford to wait each time to come back for each thing for another delay and another delay and another delay. So we just we talked with you know the facilities guys Pat Fings when he was here and Rick when when these things came up and you know now Blake just took over but we you know they were aware of these things going on. Um, so it's not really a surprise, but we officially need the county's uh, you know, the commission to bless this and basically approve this. The good news is in this delay that occurred, uh, both from the state where we've been waiting three years and then the city where it took a year and a half to get the revocable license uh, permit done. um in a perfect world we would have had that within a month and we would have started and literally this whole project would be done. Okay. But unfortunately that didn't happen. We tried and tried and

tried and we were patient and we got everything you know through with the city and they were you know very helpful at the end there um to get that done. But because that money didn't get used in this project, it was sitting in a bank account that was making interest and um that uh escrow account. That escrow account actually was supposed to stop as of last April. I worked with the bank, Bank of America, and Mike Overton to basically extend that so that you can still earn interest on that money that hasn't been spent. So even though we're asking for this money, you know, these are things that weren't included, but the blessing there is that the money has made you've made $1.5 million as of like about a month and a half, two months ago when Cecilia got this balance. You've you've made that money to cover this change of these changes of work and then some basically to cover the cost of the landfill. So had we done had we had all all those permits done we would had this finished and it wouldn't have earned all this money now this money can be utilized to help pay for these change orders is what you know what we obviously need your blessing on that to get the approval of that um once you do this change order what we did is we put it as two change orders because we figured you know we didn't want to imply you know the whole uh do pause one. Um because this work has already been completed, we would like to get this one approved as soon as possible cuz we've paid contractors, you know, all this money for that. Um there was backup information provided to both Mike and Blake. I'm not sure if that was shared with the commissioners, but it was basically all

of the uh change orders that we issued to the contractors and their quotes to us that backs up and lines up to all this dollar amount that's there. With that said, I would just for the for the benefit of the board, uh our plan, our expectation is that uh this change order number two, uh the materials he just spoke of will be at committee next week and that you would review that uh stuff at committee like our normal process would go. Uh and then uh we'd move it to Tuesday night where we'd see seek approval for a change order number two is what our expectation is. Commissioner Bear.

Thank you, Chairman. This uh escrow account, who owns that? Jackson County.

Okay. And so as I looking for some clarification, the uh top block here where it talks about uh removal of asphalt change order two, change order three. You've tallied up those change orders. Uh I asked for a copy of all of the change orders and I did receive that. Um, you don't have change order seven totaled in here. Change order seven was from the from Nth Consultants Limited and that was that was that was 5,000. So, if you are including your internal change orders 2 through 8, you need to include number seven. So your the top box there, your total is going to change from $264,023 to $269,22 if you include the Nth consultants work. Um

and so these change orders have been approved internally between Very and the county.

Now basically we made a decision to do that. Um we never really actually sought the uh formal approval from anybody because we had to get this done. We couldn't let these things hold us up from getting this project done. Uh but the county knew for instance like the first one that we weren't responsible for the parking lot and when these things came up on that first category you know they they were just unforeseen conditions that you know they would have came up anyway and we just you know had to by the time we got the courthouse going cuz it was a year and a half late. the contractor that we had lined up to do the drilling couldn't do it right away because he had we had scheduled him twice and then he couldn't by then he got other commitments to other customers and he couldn't come back when we finally got the revocable permit done. So then he came back like about six or seven months after we got that because he had to meet his other contractual obligations. So unfortunately that that delayed that but that's that's actually what happened there. And as far as NTH, that change order 7, that was Nth was the $5,000 for this building cuz when we were trying to put our drainage system in for the boiler and we started excavating, we found all that water,

which that was a blessing because that was an unforeseen condition, which obviously if we were able to mitigate that and do all the work associated with like filling that void and getting and that the city wanted you to get a private engineer to ensure that the building was structurally safe. That was the Nth cost for that. So, are you going to ask for compensation for that? Yeah, it's right there at $5,000. It's right where cuz I don't see it.

Well, uh, if I may, um, at this point, what we're looking at here is the high overview. I wanted the board to to see that it's coming and then we're going to get in the weeds because Tony, you have information that the rest of the commissioners do not have at your request. Um, but our study our committee meeting is when we're going to get in the weeds and then ultimately bring it to Tuesday night and get in the weeds again if necessary to have that conversation about proven it. So, if you could hold off on some of those some of these changes are from May and I'm disappointed they're coming to us in January. Well, you understand that they made it very clear, I think, that they took the risk. They paid it to keep the project moving forward, knowing full well they didn't want to bring a $5,000 change order. They were letting them add up and they're bringing them to the board. These change orders, you'll find uh I've reviewed, they're they're not really Ver's fault. They're mostly mother nature or unforeseen conditions like our basement having a creek running under it and things like that. But um but we'll get it into that weeds when the board full board has the information available you have.

These aren't anybody's fault. They're no person's fault. No bad workmanship. I'm just disappointed in the 8-month time delay. And what we have here is some of these numbers aren't quite right. Uh change order seven needs to be added in here someplace. We will if you want it added for the next the next page talks about the landfill cost. Landfill costs have gone up 1,39,000. Comm

Commissioner Bear, you have information that other commissioners don't have. Commissioner Commission administrator Overton just told you that we'll discuss this at committee next week. I'm politely asking you to accept that answer or do you want to continue on sir? Well, if I could just say that this sheet here represents a summary of what you have. And that $5,000 uh NTH thing. If you look on this sheet that's showing on the screen right now, that's actually for the tower, not for the courthouse. So, um, that is covered right there at the where it says, if you look on the screen right now, it shows

I don't care what building it's for, if you're going to ask for compensation for it, it needs to be shown. The one single piece of information I have that the rest of you don't is I have the breakdown of um, this is a high level NTH consultants. Yeah, Tony, as as I said earlier, um you have information the rest of the board doesn't have a tiny bit.

They're going to have it uh because we're going to bring this up because today is a high level overview. We were not looking to get into the weeds of every one of those. We have the information and we will get into the weeds of it, okay? But it's not really the time. So, what we're looking at when you add everything together, we're looking at an upcoming change order for 1,87,000. No, you're getting ahead of us again. Uh, right now, I don't think you're going to ask for that.

Change order number two is uh if all total $491,396 uh is number two. We haven't got to number three yet, and we'll talk about that in a minute, too. Well, you will get you will get to number three. And so the the total of change order two, which is going to be sent to us soon, add into it what will be change order three, is going to be a project cost increase of over 1.8 million if we do number three. But we'll have that conversation shortly. Yep. Okay. So um to do number three

if if you look at this sheet that's there again remember that I said that in a perfect world had these permits been done you wouldn't have this escrow money earnings because it the project would be all done okay because we couldn't get the approval from the state and the city that money sat in that account and made money to offset the the not only this unforeseen work here and change order too, but the cost of building, you know, the plant out at there. So, it's really not costing the county any more money. You can bring that Monday to show the ver so we can go on verify the numbers so we can see that. Yes.

Thank you so much. Well, the statement that this project isn't costing the county any more money, I don't agree with that because if these changes hadn't occurred, then although the interest earned off the escro account, the county would have kept. No, it wouldn't we wouldn't have gained it, put back in, but now we are going to have to spend it. So, but if if I may, um, we're going to go on to number three. Okay. next month. But let me speak first to this just to be clear.

I do not plan to bring number three change order this month. That would be February. We put it in here because it's Verigy giving us the overview of where we are. And uh the problem with number three, it's the landfill. Yep.

And in all honesty, guys, uh we're going to have to have some serious conversations about the landfill project. Um, you know, it started off at what, 2.4 million, and now it's anticipated at 3.7 million. Um, the landfill project wasn't uh uh uh saving or making us money. Uh, it was paying for itself, but clearly the payback went to from 20 years to like 40 years now or something. It's way beyond what we had envisioned uh because of the delays and so forth. The state still has not approved our transaction. Um, it was they just recently tiebarred it to a Livingston County uh uh transaction which set it all back. Now, they're supposed to I talked to Sarah Lightner this uh well, a couple weeks ago, they're supposed to um have their first committee meeting January 14th, I believe. Whether this will make committee again at that time, I do not know. But the problem is at some point if the state's going to continue delay, we may have to very well say

we're not going to do it. And I'm not saying that today, but it's something we got to really seriously look at and consider and factor it all into the situation at hand. But again, that's for another conversation, another day. Uh they've given us here the uh what they believe the anticipated uh cost increases are going to be if we were to move forward with that. Uh but for next two, next Monday, we're going to look at change order number two. I I don't expect to see change order three until perhaps February or uh when a state regardless of whether we do the project or not. I still want to uh the state to finish the transaction we've initiated and take ownership of the landfill. We're fully responsible for everything that happens at the landfill, but we don't have the authority to even go on the property without their permission, which is kind of crazy, but it is what it is. And um that was my thoughts. Dick, if you had something to add to that.

Yeah, I was just going to say um as far as change order three goes. Um um hopefully it will the timeline will occur the way that we think it's going to be, which is that they'll have a vote out and everything approved in February. uh so that we can then bring this back then to you in February to basically consider uh you know what the options there would be to do this as it the project stands at what's showing you here um from my perspective I think the the cost the escrow earnings is really covering it really isn't doubling your payback to 40 years it's really still 20 years because the interest that you earned off of that is offsetting that cost. Had we gotten that approval, we'd already had that building built, you'd be online and you know you those dollars would have never come into play here because you never would have earned that interest in that account. So, um, but that said, my job, the way I've done my job for 46 years is my job is to represent you to Varigy, not me representing Varigy to you. So, it all comes down to what do you guys want to do? I still believe this is a really good project. It's something that, you know, the EPA's regul regulations are constantly changing, getting stricter and stricter, and it's not going to get less expensive to haul that leech to um Detroit. It's that's not it's just going to keep rising. But it's your decision. If you would decide that you don't want to go forward with this, what you would do is we would credit back that dollar amount to the county. you could use it for other things within this project along with any escrow earnings that hasn't

been paid, you know, as well. Um, but that's your choice is what you guys want to do with this money, you know. Um, I still believe and I was actually this to me this was one of the most exciting things that we were doing in this project and it's been disappointing it's been taking this long but like I said going back to my football days every time you get a 15 yard penalty if your mind says we're not going to get in the end zone guess what you're not going to get in the end zone. So my mind is yeah we're going to still get in the end zone on this. We just got to be patient. we got to keep doing what we're going to do and we get this thing in. So,

yeah, I don't disagree with Dick that the game's not over and uh we shall see what what happens there. Um to be clear though with the the monies the remaining monies from the debt that the the loan that we took from Bank of America including the escrow account uh it can't be spent on anything else other than vari project related energy this project or we can make uh um a payment to the loan itself. We could pay back the loan if we had an extra million or whatever. Uh we could put take that off the debt itself. So, but yet that's yet to be determined and I look to have a a spirited conversation about that in the future with the board and you guys will need to vote it up or down on that and but we'll have plenty of time to talk about that more. Thank you.

Thank you for your time today. Any other last questions before we Well, yes, go ahead.

Okay. in regards to the landfill. Um, unfortunately we live in highly politicized times now and I'm not so sure what's going on isn't political. I'm going to ask my two Democrat colleagues on this board to please reach out to Senator Sue Shink and and ask specifically why she's tiebred Livingston County to Jackson when this could happen. you guys are going to have better access to talking to her than a Republican would. And uh this shouldn't be political. This is silly that the land hasn't been deed over to Jackson. We're taking leech across interstate highways where a truck could turn over. It could spill everywhere and we could solve this overnight. So, if you could just reach out to her and get her specific rationale as to why she's doing this, I would greatly appreciate it and I think the whole board would.

Commissioner Williams. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, I do agree that this is this shouldn't be a political issue and I will make efforts to reach out to her office. Thank you very much, Commissioner Williams. Just to Yes. Yes. Question for Commissioner Kennedy. Just to be clear, can you explain her role in that for me a little bit more? I can only explain what I've heard from Representative Lightner in that. Well, actually, I think uh the county administrator could explain it best.

In order for the state to make uh to give us the property, transfer the property, it has to be approved by, you know, the houses and then the governor. And we've gone through all that process. had come out of committee and and the legislature came out of Senate committee uh but went to the floor uh and uh Sue Shank stood up and pulled it aside and tiebred it to Livingston at the last second and we're dead in water again. Now it goes back to committee. It's got to be reviewed all through that process again and we don't understand why. I've sent her a letter asking her why why why' you do that? Um I I you know I haven't had a response. uh so I couldn't uh say as to why but currently it's tiar to live instance uh transaction so they have to come back and u be approved at the at the state signed by the governor before they can actually transfer the property to us and we can't go on their property and start breaking ground and doing things when we don't own it you know

thank you thank you Mr. Commissioner Kenny and the county administrator. Thank you for your help on that. Commissioner Williams and Commissioner uh Willis if there's nothing else I'd like to move on. Help Tony like to thank Very for what they do. The disappointment that I've expressed today is not disappointment with you or virtue. Thank you for your input and comments. Uh, Commissioner Bear.

I believe we have uh Kyle and Jacob from Grow Jackson. Come on up, Jacob. I think Jacob's going to take us through his PowerPoint and Kyle's backup or something, right? Good morning everybody. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Jacob Inosencio. I'm the founder and executive director of Grow Jackson and uh we're the nonprofit in question to bring uh this farm stop and food hub to fruition at the armory building inside the walls of the historic state prison. Go ahead. So, the conversation started a few years ago when uh the county administrator and I had a great conversation about what a farm market might look like inside these walls. And I thought that would be an incredible first step. Uh but I thought there might be more we could do to activate the space, improve opportunities for the local food economy, and expand fresh food access in downtown Jackson. And so over the last couple of years as we've worked to bring the farmers market to the historic state prison, we've also begun to develop the rest of a plan. And so I'm here to share with you today the numerous stages of the farm stop and food hub development. As you can see here, we have it laid out uh in this timeline. And we'll uh mention that this timeline is of course uh subjected to your approval as well as uh the money that we can raise for this. This is not a project that the county is investing money in the infrastructure beyond the additional excuse me the initial spark grant. Everything else in terms of cooler buildout, cafe buildout, future accelerator kitchens that you see mentioned here, that all will come from private dollars or public dollars that we solicit outside of the confines of Jackson County. So this is not going to be a taxpayer funded a local taxpayer funded initiative. Uh you can see here on the timeline uh that the farmers market is the first piece in spring of

2026. Uh so in November, Gro Jackson uh took over the fiduciary responsibilities for the Grand River Farmers Market. Currently, the Grand River Farmers Market is housed in the Grand River Brewery parking lot at Bell's Cool Tower. As many of you may be familiar, that location uh has historic significance for the market for Jackson County. And we may still have the market be there one day a week, as well as at the farm stop and food hub, at the prison property one day a week. Uh but right now, we're still working through those logistics. What we know for sure is at least one day a week the farmers market will take place inside the walls of the prison. There's a couple of uh really strong advantages for this happening. And I'll talk a little bit about some of the potential disadvantages that may be coming to mind as well. The advantages are that there is far more parking available. There's far more space so we can offer more vendors the opportunity to come participate. When we have the farmtop infrastructure operational, as I'll explain in a minute, there will be more internal infrastructure that makes going to farmers market a lower opportunity cost for farmers. It makes the process for farmers more financially viable and it creates an opportunity for more farmers to participate. So, the movement of the farmers market is going to be a great strategic opportunity for the expansion of the farmers market experience in Jackson. U I didn't say this at the beginning, but please feel free to stop me at any time. Uh the farm stop is phase two and the farmtop operates as a consignment grocery store. That consignment piece is really really important because this is not just grow Jackson. Yes, sir.

Did you want to advance the slides?

Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Thank you. So this is the overview. We can come back to this. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. Sorry. Thank you. So the farmers market, many people are already familiar with the farmers market uh and how it operates. Farmers show up, they set up a booth, they sell their products. This is a great opportunity for community engagement, community collaboration, connection to the people actually producing food locally. Many of the downsides are that when farmers go to farmers market, they have a high opportunity cost to do so. They are either investing their own time or the time of a staff member or a family member to go sit at market and sell those products instead of being at home or on the farm farming. Now, this can be a payoff, but if you have bad weather or you're subjected to the seasonal whims of farmers markets, you may get up early. When I worked on a farm in Chelsea in college, we'd get up early. We'd get to the farm at 5:00 a.m. 5:00 a.m. Saturday morning. We're loading the truck. It's going to market. Now, that's great, but that farmer has a sunk cost to get that food and that those products to market. And then if it's raining, if there's a problem outside, if there's low opportunity for people to attend the market, they've not made money. They've lost money to go to market that day. We are hoping to reduce the chances of that happening with the addition of the farm stop, as I'll explain in a second. But we think that the movement of the farmers market creates numerous concepts in the space and allows for farmers to have better opportunities. These farmer opportunities will exist because of the farmtop. So, a farmtop is a consignment grocery store. The way it works is farmers and food producers will drop their products off on a regular schedule in accordance with our staff. They will pick their price and we will sell the products for them at their uh decided price and they will receive 70% of that sticker price every two weeks. What this does is this dramatically expands the market penetration opportunities for dozens of local farms and small businesses. This is not grow Jackson

going out buying products from a wholesaler from a Cisco or Gordens or something like that. What we are doing is we are simply uh coalesing excuse me coalescing these local products creating a viable and reliable and consistent market space for Sephronic farms and hundreds of other farm excuse me I shouldn't say hundreds yet we're getting there that's probably year five we'll get to hundreds our goal in year one is to work with 50 small businesses and food producers but to work with dozens of small businesses and food producers to source their products from in and around Jackson County create them excuse me, retail them in a reliable and affordable way and create an opportunity for people to sell their local product without having to be on site to sell their local product year round and expand their production levels and the economic viability of farming as a as a job. Right? Most farms in Jackson County and all over the country, if they're not huge corporate farms, farmers have what's called an off-farm job and they actually go to work all day or their spouse goes to work all day so they can afford to farm. What this does is this creates more opportunities for fewer farms to rely on that off-farm job because they have a reliable ecosystem to sell the food. They have year-round access to people who want to buy local food and we do it in a way that doesn't rely on them coming to sit at the space all day. Also, at the farmtop, we're going to have a cafe. We're working on procuring a liquor license for both on and off- premise consumption. So, we can sell local beer and wine. We will sell locally roasted coffee, locally made sandwiches, pastries, things like that. And so the cafe and the produce deck and the coolers and freezers will be organized in about a third of the building that still stands inside the walls. And we will use that for everyday yearround uh everyday year-round market experience. Do we have any questions so far? Okay. Yes, sir.

So if the farmer brings you a head of lettuce. Yes, sir. And that farmer says, "I need a dollar for this to make my costs." So you have to sell it to the people that come in for a $130 approximately. Yes. You're keeping 30% of the sale. Yep. So once the farmer the cost for his product goes up to cover your operations, how does that cost then compare with other produce available in the county? Is this going to be a financial benefit to the citizens?

Yeah, this is a great question. It's one we get all the time. So it will be certainly a financial benefit to the farmer because the traditional food system returns about 15 cents on the dollar. So when you and I buy a head of lettuce for a dollar, that farmer gets about 15 cents. The rest gets eaten up and very little of it, very little of it even goes to retail. Uh most of it is going to distribution, marketing, and other supply chain development. What we are aware of in these consignment models is that there is an opportunity for the farmer to charge more than the grocery store. In the same way that at the farmers market you will see prices that may be more than what you see in the grocery store. We anticipate there may be some price discrepancy. However, it's really important to know that we are working really hard with the farmers to keep those prices as close to grocery store comparison as possible and we are working diligently to ensure that the accessibility of food is still uh available. And we're going to talk about that in a minute with the mobile market. But some of our accessibility strategies include the fact that we will take food stamps. We will operate what's called uh the double up food bucks program. So anybody purchasing fresh food using their food stamps will get double the buying power when they purchase produce. So what happens then is if that person says I want to use my food stamps to buy this head of lettuce for $130, that person actually only ends up paying 65 cents. the farmer still gets their full dollar and the state steps in and picks up that difference and so it expands accessibility for the 60% of families in Jackson County who qualify for food stamps. We do understand that there are families who don't qualify for food stamps who still might find fresh food access to be a financial burden. So, we've also implemented or we will implement some programs including a buy one give one box program where people can buy a weekly food subscription and they end up paying for and subsidizing the cost of a second one to support a family in need. And we're going to have

a couple of other strategies as well. So, based on your explanation, people use their food stamps, but they can get double the produce. Yes, sir. So I get twice as much money as a food stamp is is worth. Yep. And then the state steps in and kicks in more. The state covers that uh the doubling of the buying power is covered through a private public partnership between the fair food network and the state of Michigan. Between which network?

It's called the Fair Food Network and it is uh an entity in the state of Michigan that exists to promote and expand the ability for low-income and moderate income households. where do they get their resources, their money? Uh, I couldn't speak uh fully to how they are financed. I think that their uh tax filings would show that better. Uh, but the Fair Food Network is I believe a private public partnership that uses federal public and private grants to uh support their initiatives and actually it was started in the state of Michigan and because the model was so successful has been scaled to national implementation.

All right. Well, I'm concerned that the taxpayers in my townships are going to end up paying twice. No.

Um, no. The the double up food bucks doesn't charge the taxpayer additional money. What it does is it doubles the buying power for low and moderate income households purchasing produce, but that money is not coming out of like general tax coffers. That doesn't make sense to me because the people that provide the food the agents the state that provides the food stamps then the state provides more for the for that food stamp after it's spent. Well, if the state's providing it, that's tax dollars and those tax dollars are coming out of my check, my neighbor's checks. So, you can't have extra money going into it

if you're not taxing people. I do I do understand the concern and I would be uh ill advised to speak to how the Fair Food Network is financed, but I would certainly be happy to follow up and I'll write that down if that's okay to follow up with you about how do we how the Fair Food Network gets their financing. Would that be all right? Okay. One minute, please. And while you're doing that, I would add that I see that and I understand your point, Tony, uh, but I see it as no different than any of the grants that we receive. Um, you know, all money comes from the people one form or another. It's either taxes or the private sector makes donations or, you know, partnerships and things like of that sort.

But, um, when it comes to like a grant, and that's really kind of this what that equates to exactly. uh we have to make a decision here locally in Jackson. Do we accept and participate in that grant and therefore benefit from that grant, meaning our residents benefit from that grant, or do we not accept? And if we don't accept, well, that's fine. We can choose to do that. The problem is the program didn't go away. The taxes didn't go away. The money just goes somewhere else. Yeah, I have a problem with that. And we've had that conversation here about roads and all kinds of grants over the years. uh where where commissioners, individuals will say, you know, wait a minute, um we shouldn't take this money, but when you think about it, if we don't take the money,

it's not like our taxes are going down. It's just the money went somewhere else and we don't get our road or bridge or whatever fixed. This is the same kind of program.

Absolutely. And while there are numerous strategies for us to execute to expand fresh food access for low-income populations, the important take-home point here is that dozens of local small businesses that already exist either have the opportunity to grow, find more financial viability. And also what we see across the country when these models are implemented is the development of new businesses, right? engendering of new small businesses into the market who can produce a product who before maybe would say I can't do this because of cottage food law or any of these other constraints that make it difficult to run a food business. But now because there is a yearround market in a viable space where people can consistently come access these local products. I can start my business because I have an opportunity to participate with this relationship. So, this farm stop is an excellent opportunity for dozens of local existing Jackson businesses to start, scale, and solidify the viability of their business.

We can go on. Hold on. When you say businesses, be specific. You're talking farmers. I'm talking about farmers. I'm talking about artisans. I'm talking about value added products like folks who bake, make granola, roast coffee, set up spices, manufacturing and manufacturing. Yes, sir. Okay. Did that answer the question? Okay. Thank you.

So, here's how farmtop works. Local farmers and food producers will deliver their products. They set their price. They set their unit. Grow Jackson as the administrator of the farmtop will retail those products at the direction of the farmers and food producers. And what happens is we return millions of dollars to the local food economy over the years. Uh the model that we've seen working really well in Michigan uh in Ann Arbor has returned millions of dollars to uh their food economy. Now we know that Ann Arbor and Jackson's socioeconomic models are very different. And so before we began this process, we've thought it was very important to find uh a peer of ours that was not geo geographic peer but a socioeconomic pier. And there is a community in West Virginia that is almost identically uh aligned with Jackson in terms of education level, home ownership, uh racial and socioeconomic demographic, and they are running a farm stop as a nonprofit entity identical to how we want to run it uh very successfully. And they do it through all of the models I've explained here as well as grants and private and public partnerships. So they have found a lot of success and we are taking it from their playbook to bring that success to Jackson. And so we think we can return millions of dollars to our local businesses. We think we can circulate more dollars. So instead of us having to buy, you know, all of the groceries that we need from Walmart where all the money is leaving the community, we can support more local producers who are right here who kids go to school with ours down the street and who, you know, live right next door. And then of course the community food experience, right? What we're trying to do with the farmers market and the farm stop and ultimately the development of a food hub is to create an experience around food that's about more than just go to the grocery store, get what you need, and leave, but about connection, about community vibrance, about community vitality, that builds relationships with the people growing and producing our food, that builds relationships with the people consuming the food, and creates a market and food experience similar to what you might

find at like an Eastern market or a Horoc. s where there's actually an identity and a community identity that is felt and established around the local food experience. Go ahead. So to answer your earlier question about accessibility, the mobile market is going to be an important and essent essential next step for us. So we cannot do this until we have the farmtop operational. That's really important to know. We're still in the process of raising money to build the coolers and the freezers and we need to have the farmtop aggregate excuse me the farmtop space established so we can actually aggregate all the food so there's a central place for all the producers to bring their products once we have that up and running we can begin to implement our mobile market concept. This is still in the works. None of the partnerships have been solidified or formalized. So that's really important to know. But we have had some really promising discussions about what this might look like. Our vision for a mobile market is a wagon, a retrofitted school bus, something of that nature that on a consistent schedule, moves around the community, sells the same products in the farm stop, but then our goal is to have that mobile market every afternoon be located at the YMCA parking lot and have a really strong partnership with the YMCA so the families that they are serving can access fresh food right in that parking lot. And the way this would work is we would carry the same products the farmtop carries, but we will operate this entire mobile market on our end of things with a grant and with corporate sponsorships and partnerships so that there is no actual overhead cost that we have to levy against the consumer. What that means is everything we carry in the mobile market, we will sell at a 30% discount. So whatever the farmer was going to take home, if that farmer said, "I need a dollar for my cabbage or that head of lettuce and we have to charge them a$130 in the farm stop." Because of some creative financing from private and public partnerships, we will sell that head of lettuce at the exact same cost

the farmer gets. So the farmer does not have to subsidize any of the uh community support. Instead, we se step in and subsidize that community support. So low-income families and families in strategic locations can access this mobile market and access local fresh products at a discount, but still have some skin in the game and still have some ownership of the process by paying for those products when they come to their neighborhood. Okay, so this is down the road, right? This is if $5 million fell into my lap yesterday. So you don't have to hold your breath too much on this one, unless anyone's looking to get rid of $5 million. Um so accelerator kitchens again none of the concepts that we've shared here today or that we'll share in the future are completely original ideas right we're connected with nonprofit entities who are focused on food access all over the state of Michigan actually all over the country uh next month I'll go to the farmtop conference in Ann Arbor and it hosts farm stops and farmers from over 30 states and a couple of countries who are really interested in this model as a way to expand and promote local food access. So, what we would like to do with our accelerator kitchens is use the rest of the building. Right now, uh, that building is about 6,000 square ft. Our plan that we'll show, actually, if you could go two slides up really quickly for me. Thank you. Um, so this is the layout. I know it's a little bit hard to see. I apologize, but this is the layout for the farmtop. Uh, this is the entrance right here that's on the south end of the building. This is the patio that's just been beautifully redone. So, this entire space right here will have cafe, produce deck, uh cooler, and freezer. That entire footprint is only about uh two 2500 to 3,000 square ft, which gives us half the building, right? It gives us uh the other half of the building to activate. If you could go back two slides for me. So what we would like to do in the activation of the other half of the building eventually down the road

when we have money and your approval, but this is just, you know, imagining for a moment, we would like to put in what are called accelerator kitchens. a couple of micro kitchens set up side by side laid out to how you might see in a college food court or an airport food court where you have a couple of micro kitchens where restaurants and emerging restaurants I should say not not established ones who say maybe I want to take my concept from a food truck to a brickandmortar or maybe I'm a catering company who wants to go to a brickandmortar but making that leap into the full-scale private market can be difficult there's significant costs there's a really high barrier to entry to starting a food uh restaurant here in Jackson. It's like a incubator space.

An incubator space. Exactly. And in this space, what would happen is people could sign up for uh short-term leases. They develop their concept. They commit to a certain number of operational hours and then they can test their proof of concept. I think of uh our friends at AGMA down the street who had a really hard time for a long time. They were ready to go. They knew what their menu was going to be. They were ready to launch, but they had some difficulties. I could see someone like AGMA saying, "Oh, I can lease at the accelerator kitchen for a year, two years, whatever it may be." Again, the process still needs to be developed, but we can use the rest of the space to incubate and help expand small businesses. And then those small businesses can sell some of their ready to go products in our farm stop. They can procure from our farmtop so they can carry local products. And it's a oneplus 1 equals three situation where now in this space, we have a farmers market. We have an everyday retail market space. We have restaurants. And you're beginning to have this development of a food identity all in the same building. Commissioner Shaw, you look you have a question.

Okay, great. I won't go anywhere. Um, going on to the next. Again, I just want to make sure I reiterate this has not been approved. This is not none of no one here has said this is going to happen yet. I'm just sharing our future plans for what might look like a really cool opportunity in the space. Last slide. This is down the road. This would require some sort of new construction probably. This would rely on other space um in the footprint inside the walls of the prison. So again, this is even further down the road. But in these conversations that we've had with farmers, farmers have begun to say to us, well, if we're going to bring our products to you ready to go, could you do something so that we can bring more of our raw products to you? Many farms lack the infrastructure on site to set up what's called a wash and pack, right? They have the products coming out of the field, but they don't have the infrastructure to wash and pack those products, so they're market ready. Some farmers say, "I have a bumper crop of those heads of lettuce, but I'm not able to sell them all at once." Lettuce is a bad example because it doesn't freeze well. But a bumper crop of broccoli, a bumper crop of peas, what can I do with it? Well, if we put in a flash freeze, we can reduce waste, expand market opportunities, and help farmers grow even more food. We have some folks who are doing uh local grain growth. They have nowhere to mill their local grain. Could we put in a small mill? Right? There's all these opportunities where our local food economy could be enhanced because now the farmers are already coming to a retail space. Well, bring your raw products to us. Bring us your raw beans. Bring us your heads of lettuce. Bring us whatever else it is that you're producing and we can help you wash them. We can help you freeze them. We can help you process them to expand the opportunities in the marketplace and to increase public use of your good and again to increase the economic viability for our farms and our food producers. This could create future opportunities for education. This can create again more opportunities for small businesses to start and scale and

again more community engagement around food. Right? Grow Jackson today we operate uh 19 community gardens. We're in 75 classrooms in 12 buildings across four school districts. We work with thousands of students every year. Almost all of them have no idea where their food comes from, right? They think some of them know farms. Most of them, if they know farms, think that farm is right behind Meer or right behind Pies or right behind Kroger. They don't have a concept of the food system. And so we think, why not put in something that helps people understand the food just got here out of the field. Here's everything that has to happen to it so that it's ready to go on your plate. And so again, this is all in the spirit of promoting the local food economy, strengthening fresh food access in the city and the county of Jackson, and creating more opportunities for our small businesses, our farmers, our food producers, and our families to grow and consume fresh food that's done right here in Jackson, Michigan. So, we've got uh the layout like I just showed you, and then I can pull a couple of photos up if you'll go. Two more slides for me. These are some photos. This you all recognize this building, of course. This is where it will be. These are photos from inside the Argus farmtop in Ann Arbor. You can see they sell local beer, local wine. They've got ice cream, frozen fruits and vegetables, couple of produce islands, as well as a four-door cooler and a produce deck. So, it's not a very big space. It's intentionally laid out with a lot of products in one spot, laid out really beautifully. So, it's really engaging, really enjoyable for the consumer. It makes the product look great for the farmer and creates a fresh food access point that is intentional about promoting access, intentional about only strengthening from local producers and intentional about the placemaking and the community vibrancy that I know we all care about so much. So that's the overview. I know it's a lot and I know I talk fast. I apologize. I always try to slow down. But if you have questions or I need to repeat something, please feel free. uh

like to make comments first and the um who knew from such humble beginnings cuz you know we we went into this with the idea that we're going to have uh a farmers market maybe it'll work one day a week maybe just who knows a Saturday Sunday we're not sure but uh and we're still not sure but it's great to have some uh young man full of vision and energy to uh to see what could be and as you've heard me talk about the the whole space over there behind the walls. There is great opportunity there in in the long run and it takes of course vision and it takes a lot of hard work to get there. But I do believe that uh we walk before we run and as you heard Jacob say he's not looking to do this with county dollars. He's looking to do this with Grow Jackson and private sector and and you know other public already existing means of funding. Yeah, we've already um we've already secured 115 thou, excuse me, $109,000 in state and federal money towards the equipment infrastructure in this grant.

So, again, back to my walk before you run, we're looking to get this farmers market off the ground in the spring. I think it'd be great for the local farmers especially. Uh and then we go from there is really what I would say. The expectation here is that we're having this conversation today. I would encourage you to ask questions if you have some. And uh next uh Monday, I want to bring an agreement between the county and Gro Jackson that we've been working on. It's been to attorneys a number of times, but um and we'll lay that out and what that financially looks like. Uh and then with the expectation that hopefully we can uh enter into that agreement Tuesday night this month uh so that he can proceed. But uh with that, please I'd open it up to the floor for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a couple of questions for you. Um, you mentioned um about a a um I think it was a county in West Virginia you've done some research on. Yes, sir.

Is that data something that you would be willing to share?

Oh, absolutely. Uh that is the Wild Ramp market. I can send this and I can send a follow-up email, but it's in a town called Huntington, West Virginia. Okay. And uh it was because it was really important to me because what works economically in Ann Arbor certainly is not going to necessarily work in Jackson if we're not really creative about it. Right? Argus in Ann Arbor is in a census track that I believe has six to seven times the household income of the census track we're going to be. And we never want to create a space that is about fresh food but is not accessible to the people living immediately around it. Right? Accessibility and food access is why we started and is the core of our mission. So, we wouldn't do something without that in mind. And so, we said, "Okay, we need to find them." And we did. And they are using Accelerator Kitchens. They have a in-house catering that they do. They use a lot of strategies to diversify their revenue so that they can make the food as affordable as possible. And we expect that year-over-year we will continue to add strategies because our first and foremost goal is get the farmers paid what they're worth and get more food to people who need it. So I appreciate your your statements there and I am looking forward to seeing that data because oftent times you know we're we're in positions where people will bring data from Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids and because those communities are so different that information tends to fall in deaf ears. So when we have the opportunity where we're presented with data from communities that are very similar to ours, it makes it a little bit more appealing so that we can see uh that example there. So that I think that would be um very helpful. My my second question is is that we have um as you had kind of mentioned earlier as well uh places like Horox and others. Um I'm curious if you're any of your data um or information shows where Jackson farmers um are utilizing a place like Horox outside of the county.

Yeah, I don't have uh a specific number for you in terms of how many of what percentage of Jackson farmers are going other places. I know that Jackson farmers who use the farmers market that we just took over do go to other farmers markets and in some cases uh where there's a little bit more infrastructure uh Donation Bakery for example I know Donation can sell at local markets but they have some of the more robust infrastructure to sell their products in you know in brickandmortar stores. So, I can't speak specifically to how many of them are already going to Ahorox or somewhere like this, but I can tell you that when you look at a map, and I should have included in this, but when you look at a map of food hubs in the state of Michigan, there is a gap in Jackson, right? There's the Valley Hub in Kalamazoo. There's multiple food hubs in Ann Arbor. There's Eastern Market and the Detroit People's Food Co-op, the Downtown Market in Grand Rapids, the Allen Neighborhood Center and Horox and Lancing. All over the state, people are developing or scaling these local food hub concepts. And we're not doing it here yet. And what I believe is a really strong opportunity for us is to by starting this create an aggregation space for our local producers. But then we have known for years that we wanted to do this. So what I'm about to tell you has been a big part of our plan all along. There's this concept uh with the Michigan Department of Agriculture and MSU Extension and other folks who care about strengthening the local and regional food economy called hubbing the hubs. Yeah.

And it means creating connections between the food hubs. So right now it might be that there are farmers in Jackson who could produce enough to sell at some of these other places, but they don't have the capacity to drive to those places. They don't have the time, right? It's very expensive to transport your products because half the time you're doing it with an empty truck. You take your products there, you drop them off, you bring them back. We think that by bringing this food hub concept to Jackson, we can begin to work with folks in Ann Arbor, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lancing to hub the hubs and create networks that say farmers who are in Jackson, stop driving to Ann Arbor to drop your products off. Bring us your products. We'll sell them for you and bring us what you're taking to Ann Arbor. And we actually in our grant are going to own a refrigerator truck in the next couple of weeks. And so we'll take the products for you to Ann Arbor, Detroit. And when we're there, we'll bring the products back that we're carrying from our Detroit and Ann Arbor friends that we can't find in Jackson. And so this creates a diversity of offerings at the market for the Jackson consumer and a diversity of markets for the Jackson producer. Again, what we're trying to do is we're trying to step in and help fill that gap that in the corporate grocery model, the federal government fills. The federal government subsidizes the corporate grocery model through the farm bill and through transportation incentives and things like that. It doesn't exist for local farmers and small food producers. So, we're trying to step in and do that. But by hubbing the hubs, creating connections, building relationships, and leveraging those state level relationships, we think we can diversify the number of available markets for Jackson producers.

So, thank you for saying that because in that you answered my next two questions already. Uh, and so I'll move on. My my last question is for administration. Um I've asked this question before and so I apologize to to have you answer it again. Uh when we look at the uh building usage and things like that, are is Jackson County going to be responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of of the property over there?

We would be essentially a landlord with a what is Kyle's there? Triple net lease. Is that what we're looking at? or less, meaning they're going to grow Jackson be responsible for the maintenance and care of the building, that kind of thing. Obviously, you know, if it needed the new roof or the waterline breaks coming into the building, we would deal with that like any other situation. But no, and we'll talk like great detail about the lease uh uh next week. We could talk eye level now if you want. Kyle's uh been intimate with the lease, so we could go there a little if you if you're so inclined, but we'll actually have the lease in front of each of you. um by the end of the week and uh so we can go through it with fine tooth comb next Monday and go from there. But yeah,

I think it would serve us best to to have it and then have discussion on that later and I think it would probably solve the one or two other questions I have on that after we view that there. Um so I'll close with with this just thank you for what you're doing. I know that I remember um talking with you and and maybe one or two others when this was an idea and kind of here we are now is is is amazing. Uh, and so hats off to you for seeing a need and and jumping in and and trying to do your best to to solve that issue. So,

a couple other things we can talk offline on that. Um, and then again, once we have the agreement, I'm sure I'll be uh I have all my questions answered by them, but thank you for what you're doing. Certainly, I will uh just add, you know, people have asked this question about upkeep and for us the presentation and appearance of the building is going to be incredibly important because we know that in addition to attracting a customer base because of the market opportunities, we also know that there's a significant amount of placemaking that needs to go in and will go into the activation of this space. So, as you all know, the county has, you know, redone the trail that goes right by this building. And now the trail will connect from Concord all the way over to Port Hiron. And so, we're going to be one of the only spots on the trail that serves that population of people using it and serves as a strong uh entry point for the people using uh the trail. And so, exterior uh appearance is going to be incredibly important to us. You know, nice exterior seating. We're going to have picnic tables, chairs, probably in the summer, some kind of lawn game set up. There will be outdoor seating for folks to get a beer at the cafe and get a sandwich at the cafe and then, you know, sit outside on the patio and enjoy the day. So for us, upkeep of the building is absolutely paramount because we know that we are trying to, you know, work with the county to redevelop a community space and it's going to be incredibly important to our neighbors at American 1 and Art 634 and the Armory Apartments and so on and so forth that that appearance and upkeep is paramount. So, one thing I would also suggest that as you're kind of sharing your vision with with individuals, um, I think the one thing that would help with buyover from community, uh, is that you continue to remind them that, uh, essentially Jackson County is not buying this. We're not we're not using county dollars, as you've mentioned in your meeting a couple times, uh, for that because that's one of the one of the few questions that I get from constituents that they were thinking that they're we're taking county dollars to to, uh, fund this program. So, as long as you, you know, kind of continue to share

that, I think you'll continue to get even more community support with that. Yeah, absolutely. And usually the follow-up counterpoint folks have is well indirectly the county will use dollars to help with the upkeep, but I remind them that we will be paying rent. Sure. Right. And we'll we'll talk more about that when the lease is in front of all of you, but we will pay rent as a function of our as our sales so that we have some skin in the game as well to aid in that in that upkeep. Perfect. Thank you. Nothing further. Mr. here. I would add one quick thought because you brought it up. The the artisan community there I believe will benefit greatly. Me too. You know, once if this comes to fruition, I just you we hope it will when it comes to fruition.

Yeah. When when uh all those folks that are selling their art, they have a a built-in audience coming there, customer base. I think it's going to be phenomenal potentially. Uh Corey, you had a question. Yeah. The first is for you, Mike, before and I'll get to you, Mr. Inseio. Um, I'm assuming since Kyle's here, then this is a park property. The county owns the property, but the parks uh is really responsible for that. I see it as a park venue, if you will. Uh, yeah, here's my here's where I'm going with it. Our parks now operate fully with parks millage money. Correct. They do.

All right. So, snow removal, lawn care for this property. Where's what's going to be the funding source for that? Well, I believe Gro Jackson's taking care of their grounds around the building. We'll do our grounds around the building. And my I mean, the countyy's already mowing and we we do Yeah. Yeah. the rest of the space. We do that now. We we mow it for the fair. We do all kind of stuff. Yeah. We'll be responsible for patio snow removal. There'll still be fair park there. Okay. So the the property that you directly occupy, all of it, you will take care of the lawn care and the snow removal at your own expense. Okay. All part of the lease. Yep. That'll be part of the lease. Okay.

Thank you for the clarity on that because that's going to be a question from people because they pay for our parks millage for the funding to go to parks, not not to uh farmers markets and other things like that. Secondly, um Jacob, I wasn't expecting what you brought today. I was expecting a farmers market. So to see the scope of things, first of all, I give you credit. It takes vision. Um, your target goal of 30% is realistic. From my time in the supermarket industry, retailers in the produce sector are generally anywhere from 20 to 42% depending on if it's an upscale model or a limited scope like an Aldi's or Save A Lot. So you're right around where a regular retailer would be. Um, and I do see that you could definitely help some local um, businesses, farmers, but I would also point out that there's businesses in our community that were already reaching out to local farmers. Um, I make I'm not affiliated with Palies anymore, but everybody knows my family is. Um, lots of local farmers take their produce there at at a fair price and then uh, Py's attaches on an appropriate gross profit amount. That doesn't sound much dissimilar to yours. My main concerns are is Keys Produce Palies. They don't have government subsidies helping them. A with equipment, B with I still I'm going to talk to you afterwards. Get some clarity on the the double back food. Yeah,

I've never heard of that before. Traditional retailers aren't eligible for that. Correct. They can become eligible for that. There is an administrative process in the same way that you have to go through an administrative process to accept food stamps. Okay, they can accept them. It's I I don't know anybody locally who is because I think that the uh the ROI is not there for most retailers. There's strings attached to it. In other words,

I I don't know enough to say about the strings attached for large retailers. I know there is an application and approval process that we will need to go through. I don't know for sure if that's size specific. The my understanding of why most large grocerers do not participate and again this is just my limited understanding is that there's not enough of a population using food stamps in their space that would benefit from this. Right? This was originally conceived of to expand opportunities for families who are not going to farmers markets to start going to farmers markets because they wanted to get around that cost barrier to entry that Commissioner Bear spoke about and then because it worked so well some farm stops and other um you know community models have begun to take it up. I shouldn't speak to why it's not more

prevalent. Okay. My direct question would be what's your goal, your target goal for your first year for net sales. And since you're a nonprofit, you you don't look at a net profit, but obviously you got to look at a bottom line that you have to take to cover your operating expenses. Are you are you hoping to end up at a net zero? Is that the goal of a of your particular nonprofit expenses?

We anticipate needing about 30 months to break even. And so we've begun already in our capital fundraising for the infrastructure to bake in conversations around here's how operational efficiency will look. And so our vision is that over 30 months or so we work to break even and then after that any money that it makes right above that bottom line first and foremost would subsidize the operations of the mobile market so that we can you know carry that out sustainably throughout the community. And then now you're getting to a point where dreams come true. But if we can somehow get to a point where our profit margin exceeds the need to run the mobile market and everything else we want to do, any additional dollars that our profit would go back into our uh school garden, our school gardens and our community gardens. And this is uh maintained as oversight from the IRS. Um when the IRS grants a nonprofit their tax exempt status, their 501c3 status, they do not allow you most of the time. There are always caveats and workarounds, but they would not allow us to keep more than six months of operations in the bank at a time. And what this does is this makes sure that we aren't, you know, running a model like this, hoarding cash and sitting on it without doing the community work that we claim to do. And so,

so after this 30, you said 30 months is that's that's the goal. So after this break even point to to reach that to reach that break even point, what's your target for net sales annually? What would you need in the first year? We're hoping to do around $750,000 in net sales, which breaks down to about $2,000 a day. Okay. And doing that, what what are you anticipating your labor structure to be? Are you going to have a store director? Are you going to have department heads? What are you going to what are you going to do there? Absolutely. We won't necessarily need a department head because as you can see in this upper left photo, that's almost the whole space with the C store then.

Uh yeah. So the vision in staffing will be that there will be a manager in the building that is paid a little bit more hourly and has more training for the opening close component. We anticipate 14 managerial staffs a morning and afternoon or meet morning and night seven days a week. And then to start just one support staff because we want to run lean again it's only a 1500 foot space and I'll be there every day too. So the managers would be the employees as well.

Yes. So, we'll have a managerial employee as well as an hourly employee to support operations. We can staff up more if we need to, which would be a great problem to have. Uh, but then in addition to that, we will have a specific produce manager. So, every one of the managers will be crossrained to have a specialty. We'll have a general manager, we'll have a produce manager, and we'll have a cafe manager. So, our really two departments are produce and cafe, and they will department heads. Those are our department heads. Okay. Right. So, two department heads you, I'm assuming, would be the CEO, store director. I'll be the CEO. There will be a store general manager

that reports to me. But there will be uh like I will be there. I just haven't baked my time into the management because we wanted to sustainably budget. We didn't want to say that I could do everything I'm already doing and now take this on full-time. And so, we will staff it so that it doesn't need me. I will be there to support it accordingly because we'll move our office space to this location and so I can flex in and out to help and then we'll have a general manager, a cafe manager and a produce manager. So we anticipate about $500,000 in expenses to operate from a payroll insurance. There will be some non-consignment cost of goods. There's of course insurance and overhead operational utilities. So you're anticipating 700k a year in sales, 500,000 in labor cost.

Yep. We think that 750 in sales will uh render about 350 in uh profit. It's not all going to be sales that are consignment. There will be some cafe beer and wine sales of course. And so we think that in the first year we'll need about a half a million to run. We expect to clear 350 after the payouts and the farmer paybacks. And so we are looking at we think an operational gap of$125 to $175,000 that we will subsidize with grants and private and public partnerships. That's optimistic. I'll be honest with you from my time in it. But so I will say here's what we have already done because

we got that feedback early on. And so the way that we are structuring our capital campaign is that we need $600,000 or so to build this space. Okay.

Right. We are looking for $300,000 in uh private partnerships and support from largecale entities. Right. There's two $50,000 options and $200,000 options for people to support. That would give us the 300 we need to build it. But those people who get to those top tier spots, so they get a little sign on the patio or sign on the cafe, they commit to a three-year commitment. And so what that allows us to do is say, "Okay, you've committed to we've got 300 of the 600 we need for the capital campaign, but because all of those people who committed to that have made three-year commitments, they know that years two and three of their commitment is to subsidize the operational gap as we move towards sustainability." Okay? And we will not open until we have the first year of sustainability in the bank because I will not close again.

Yeah. So you're you're you're a hybrid model for sure. You're going by sales, government subsidies, and private subsidies. Yes, sir. As a nonprofit.

Yep. Yep. I Yep. Totally understand. So, you know, there's pros and cons to everything. You definitely have a a vision here, and I could see the pros to it. I will point out that with every time there's pros, there are cons. There's no way you could take $700,000 of annual sales out of the the retail sector in Jackson and not affect longtime established businesses here. So, that's a concern that I have to be honest with you. Um, and not just from my family ties because I'm not even affiliated with the business anymore. more the smallest guy keys, you know, they've been here for a long time. And if you've ever been in there, it's right in the When I hear food deserts in the city, I'm like, how can you say that there's no fresh food when there's Keys Market? Have you ever walked in there?

I have. It's an impressive place. Um, locally owned, familyun, and there's there's fresh food right there for people to to access. So,

um, I see your your pros. I don't want to just dog you cuz you you've you've done a good job presenting. I would say on your operational expenses, especially when you start talking about compressors and installing coolers, the maintenance on that along with the cost, you might look into that deeper on your operational expenses cuz I can tell you from my times looking at P&Ls, it's a lot of money. Uh this is a smaller setup, but it's still you're you're probably talking over a 100k a year in consumers bills unless you're getting subsidies for that, too. Are you looking into that?

No, there's no um no subsidies for consumers. Our projections based on uh the electrician and our refrigeration tech say that we're in the range of about $50,000 a year in utilities. And that West Virginia places let you look at their financials by chance? Um not in like dollar for dollar, but I know their executive director. Well, so we talk frequently. Um I could I could pull up their financials because they're all public. Yeah, I would. That that'd be I'd be interested to see that to be honest because they've been operating how long? I think they're six or seven years old. Okay. All right. Thanks for fielding my questions. I appreciate it.

Yeah, absolutely. I would say I totally hear the concern about Keys and other local consumers. We are not trying to out compete everybody. Obviously, the competition exists, so I want to acknowledge that. But I would just say that farmers markets also create that competition. And what we're doing is I think the biggest difference for us is that our source is different. I know Keys carries some local produce, but I also know Keys is buying from a couple of wholesalers that are aggregating locally in Detroit and Grand Rapids. I think I don't want to speak too much for them, but what we're doing is we're not looking for local uh local retailers who are, you know, coalescing products in Grand Rapids in Detroit. We're looking for, you know, the Honey Company in Napoleon. We're looking for Sephronic Farms and Homer.

I I understand what you're saying, but being from a business background, my degree being in business, there's a thing called market share. I respect that. There's only so much pie in Jackson and we know Jackson's a uh we're not an influential. We are a bluecollar town. And so in retail, the margins are thin. In traditional retail, after all your net operating expenses, you're if you can clear 2%, you're doing good. Yep. So, taking 700K out of the uh environment cuts that bottom line even thinner. But thank you for your answering the questions. I see your points of view. I have an open mind. If we uh if we do this right, uh remember I was joking around. I called it South Central Eastern Market.

Uh we could draw from across the state up from Ohio and Indiana too. You just don't know where the what the That's the other consideration ends someday. Could happen. That's the other consideration is we think there are a lot of people who are driving from Calhoun County to the farmtop in Chelsea. We we believe that there are people I certainly agree $700,000 is going to be part of the market share, but I don't think that whole $700,000 partially because some of it is coffee, beer, and wine. I don't think it's all going to be grocery. And I don't think it's going to be that we take it from a local small business. you know, maybe Walmart, but personally, I wouldn't have a huge problem with taking a little market share from Walmart,

I believe. John, did you have a question? Or

actually, just more more of a a comment. Jacob, we appreciate the work you've done. Uh, had an opportunity to watch you all work uh from King Center to the hub and different places with with the youth and how much it means. My wife at one time was on an anti-inflammatory diet. So for us that meant traveling to Argus uh or Horox or different things to to get some of the uh accessible hormone free uh products and stuff that they carry. So I think this being an obviously a new and improved use for the facility that's been vacant for a very long time and with the work that you've done. I'm really looking forward to to to what you can present to the community. Appreciate that vision that you have and I know there'll be challenges. I know it won't be something that you just overnight fly us where we wanted to, but if we could, I mean, we do travel to Eastern Market. We do travel to Argus and different places. So, looking forward to it. It's right across the street on on our district with me and Darius bumping in each other. So, really looking forward to that. We can help.

Thank you, Margie. Okay. I just wanted to clarify one thing. Um, well, a couple of things actually. Did I hear you say about 60% of families qualify for food stamps in Jackson? The 2023 data was 61%. Ma'am, 2023. Wow. That comes from Feeding America. They publish a county level uh food insecurity analysis called map the gap and they publish county level data for how many families are currently qualifying for food stamps as well as um you know how much money would be needed annually to close food insecurity. And they do this from a number of a number of sources, but it's it's pretty uh pretty fascinating data.

Yeah, I was a little surprised. The other thing you talked about students and things um will you be utilizing some of the activities that occur say at Jackson Career Center where they the kids grow food, they grow steers, they grow different things. Will they be able to utilize something like this as well?

We would certainly be open to that. We have uh early on had a couple of conversations with the career center and their a program is more around um like PNK ratios for their farmers, the levels of uh feed, the levels of hormones that need to go to uh show animals and and livestock and things like that. Our focus is from the education perspective has been more on like organic mixed vegetables and things like that that the career center is not doing. Uh certainly if the career center students said, "Hey, we want to, you know, sell our products here and they could have them processed following all of our licensing standards, then absolutely we would be open to that conversation. We would love to uh begin right now what we do when we grow food at JPS is we just give it away. We would love to take some of that out of the school gardens and let the kids learn a little bit more about the market economics of food and have a school farm that, you know, has a has a space at the farm stop. and we also could see, you know, being a site for field trips and educational space. St. John's Elementary is of course right across the street. So, we think there's a number of ways to leverage our existing and future academic partnerships. Yes.

Thank you. Um, also there's Commissioner Willis touched on it. There are a lot of Jackson County farmers on the eastern side, which is my district, um, that do take their product to county. And I also have um some of my outlying townships that are really excited about just being able to access this facility from the trail. In fact, I was at my last one of my last township meetings and they're like, "When is it going to happen? When is it going to happen?" So, I'm excited to be able to take some information back to them about that. Um, and I think if the Jackson County farmers on the eastern side are headed to Chelsea, headed to Ann Arbor, you might be pulling some of that county um, dollars back into Jackson County. So, people who are coming here to go to the fair, you know, they're going to see this thing and perhaps say, "Oh, I could go there." So, I want to be sure that we actually make it very clear to the townships um outlying, especially those on the trail that one, we're going to have a a mobile facility. And if we were to look like towards the northeastern part of Jackson County, they use a lot of mobile facilities. They love the bookmobile when it's running. They, you know, cuz they don't, a lot of them don't have a lot of transportation, but they can congregate. their neighbor can take them to the township building or whatever. So, um if that mobile truck is at some point able to hit those

absolutely rural food insecurity despite so we work in Jackson County or excuse me in the city because we have the most concentrated need and when we started that was the it made the most sense economically for us. It was just me and my free time going garden to garden. But rural food insecurity is very near and dear to our heart in terms of you know addressing it and improving it. And so what I envision for the mobile market is in a two-week cadence having 10 different locations. And depending on need, some of those locations might get two spots in a two-eek cadence. I don't know yet, but I could see it being King Center Monday, Boo Center Tuesday, you know, Spring Arbor, Free Methodist. Maybe that's a bad example because they've got Hutches, but you understand my point that we can pick these different locations and we work with our partnerships to say, "Okay, the mobile market will be set up. Maybe it's on the same day the bookmobile is here in town, right? There's there's a lot of things we can do. We can say, "Okay, Henry Ford, you've got your mobile unit. Do you want to, you know, consistently start coming doing blood pressure and books and fresh food." So, there's lots of ways for us to utilize the mobile market to expand that access and again, you know, drive more sales.

Excellent. Um, and I will tell you this, just as a positive note, at this last township meeting I was at, they actually congregated after the meeting to discuss this trail in this food market. So, they're really excited about it.

Well, we're thrilled to hear that. We know that the trail is going to be an incredibly important aspect of this. So, one of the things we're going to do is uh we're going to develop a number of partnerships. So, the we'll have corporate partnerships for example where corporations can say I donate this much and then all of my employees get an everyday discount with their employee ID. But we're going to do that for lots of populations that don't pay. We're going to do it at least weekly for seniors. We're going to do it at least weekly for students and families. we're going to do it all the time for uh cyclists and runners using the trail. And so we we know that, you know, that 10% will eat into our 20%, but nine times out of 10 is going to bring someone through the door that wouldn't have been there in the first place. And so it's a new it's a new part of our margin. So we're really excited to utilize the trail as a lifelong runner. I'm excited to, you know, maybe lead some group runs or something. I don't know. But I think that that trail is going to be a really critical part of the space. I know the discussion was already about where are we getting our insulated bags for our bicycles.

Awesome. And we we'll have bike racks. We're going to keep uh you know like bike pump and basic tools and things like that on site to be able to support basic bike repair and we're going to advertise that. We really want to lean into that partnership. Thank you. Other questions? I would just make a comment and it since it came up. You know, I think oftent times uh we uh the rural community is missed. Yep. Uh we always look at the this the larger inner city as impoverished and need but there are millions of rural residents who are just as impoverished

and they do not have access uh to buses or anything else because they're isolated so far out there. Yeah. Um the data shows that but but they do not get the recognition or um um effort that I would like to think they deserve. Yeah. With that said though, we will have a meeting next Monday and we'll review the agreement. We'll send it out here uh as soon as it's soon as I have it in my hand finalized and uh so you guys can review and we'll have a conversation on Monday about it with the idea that Tuesday night uh we'd be in a position to uh vote it up or down. Thank you for the time and consideration. Thank you. I'll stick around for questions after. Yeah,

we've returned to public comment. This is the second public comment. You have two minutes to address the board. Under this public comment, you board members will not debate nor answer questions at this time. Public comment is now open.

Thank you again, John Wilson, 1045 South Durant Street. Um, going back to the Armory Arts, there's a few of us in this room that were around when the Armory Arts was created, and that didn't quite live up to its expectations. I'm not sure how many artisans live in the Armory Arts today, but hopefully they will um will be consumers there at Jacob's Market. myself real life example here. I currently shop at Pal's Spring Arbor Road which I have for many many years as long as as well as my mother and father and always buy my produce at Py's because they have what I consider a fantastic produce section. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop shopping at Poly's because I won't to buy my produce and and I hope to get to the uh market at the armory also to to shop and and buy produce and whatever else they may have to offer. One question if you can answer with any certainty either Mr. Overton or Kyle will any as a as as a county taxpayer who did vote for the county parks millillage wasn't in favor of all of it but we've known how they've created some other entities that take money from that county parks millillage since its passage in 2018. Will any of that mil those millage dollars be used for this armory area, this property? Because again, the county parks uh designated the fairgrounds just after the passage of the county parks millillage as a county park. So, our millage dollars goes there. Now, will

any of the county parks millage dollars be spent within this armory property? I know you can't answer that right now, but maybe later. Okay, thank you and and good luck, Jacob. Any other public comment? Any other public comment? Public comment is now closed. We have no closed session. Commissioner comments. I think we had a very good study session this month and I believe uh the sheriff's on deck for next month and uh we're going to have again another thorough discussion about the different projects we're going to be implementing and the partnerships that we're working with the uh sheriff's department with long term to make Jackson a safer and better place and have a more thorough and better trained law enforcement division. Uh, I really appreciate Sheriff Shudy's comments and we've had some very good discussions the last couple of months about what's going on. Um, any other commissioner comments? Seeing no hearing done, we are adjourned.