Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I shall ask everyone to take a reverent position. Good and gracious God, watch over us this evening as we do your work. Please bless us and follow us through and make sure we're able to do all the things we need to do this evening and complete our tasks. In your most holy name, amen. Madam Clerk, could you call the roll?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Behr.

Present.

Commissioner Walls. Here. Commissioner Kennedy.

Here.

Commissioner Duckham. Here. Commissioner Pilecki. Here. Commissioner Willis. Commissioner Williams.

Present.

Commissioner Snow. Here. Chairman Shotwell. Present. We have a quorum.

Thank you. Entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented. We have a motion in support. Any additions, deletions, or corrections? Seeing or hearing none, all in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed, duly carried. If you have any communications or predictions, please place them in front of the clerk at this time. Seeing none, public comment guidelines. Each individual will state their name and have three minutes to address the board. Subject matter must be pertinent to items on the agenda following you may only address the board once under this public comment opportunity and may not yield your time to others board members will not debate nor answer questions at this time public comment is now open any public comment any public comment seeing none public comment is now closed we have no special meetings of standing committees Entertain a motion to the regular minutes of the June Board of Commissioners meeting. We have a motion. Do I have support? Any questions, comments, deletions, or corrections? Seeing or hearing none, Madam Clerk, could you call the roll?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Walz?

Yes.

Commissioner Kennedy? Yes. Commissioner Duckham? Yes. Commissioner Pulaski? Yes. Commissioner Williams? Yes. Commissioner Snell?

Yes.

Commissioner Behr?

Yes.

Chairman Shotwell? Yes. Motion passes.

Thank you. We've arrived at the consent agenda. Entertain a motion for the consent agenda. I have a motion from Snell, support from Williams. Any items for removal at this time? Commissioner Behr.

Thank you, Chairman. I would like to remove item 10F, JC dot lease agreement private utility.

That'll move the standing committee public safety transportation become 11B. Vice Chairman Kennedy is the chairman of that committee. Do you understand Commissioner Kennedy?

Yes, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much. Any other items for removal at this time? Seeing or hearing none, Madam Clerk, could you please post the vote? Yes.

Carries 8-0.

Thank you. Standing Committee's Public Safety and Transportation, chaired by Vice Chairman Cory Kennedy. Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Tonight we have a couple of items of business. The first are our July regular appointments. It is for the Joint Airport Zoning Board that we've had the last couple of meetings. For one of the two members from townships within 10 miles of the county airport, the current member is Jack Koch. He did not reapply. There are now two applicants, Byron Schroeder, Timothy Sparks. The committee recommended Byron Schroeder. Any nominations from the floor? Mr. Chair, I would nominate Timothy Sparks.

Any other nominations from the floor? Madam Clerk, are you prepared to poll?

Yes, I am. Commissioner Duckham. Excuse me. I believe, nope. Commissioner Duckham is next.

Schroeder.

Thank you. Commissioner Pilecki. Sparks. Commissioner Williams.

Schroeder.

Commissioner Snell. Commissioner Behr.

Schroeder.

Commissioner Walz. Schroeder. Commissioner Kennedy.

Sparks.

Chairman Shotwell.

Schroeder.

Let me count these. Five for Schroeder and three for Sparks. Schroeder passes.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That's it for our appointments. I will go back to the agenda item that was removed. I believe that was the JC. license agreement, private utility. Commissioner Behr is the commissioner that removed it. I would yield the floor to him.

Thank you, committee chair. Appreciate that. This is a license agreement for private utility. I claim this is not a utility. If you look up utility, do a word search for it. Utility means the quality of being useful. My axe is useful. I can cut down trees with it. If you go to the Cambridge Dictionary, it talks about public service utilities, like water, sewer utilities, electric utilities, natural gas utilities. So if you accept the standard nomenclature and the Cambridge Dictionary definition, this gravel company is not a private utility. we have previously approved private utilities that were sewers. They weren't really public utilities. It was just a homeowner, owned land on both sides, wanted to develop a second house on the other side of the road and wanted to connect the second house to the original house's sewer system. So those have been provided Those been permitted this is not the case here. It's not a public utility Under Paragraph analysis a approval of this license agreement will enhance the quality and life for the residents in the community while enhancing the fiscal responsibility by providing future cost preventing future costs for Jada this is not going to enhance the quality of life for any residents in the area it's going to enhance the business profits for a corporation The license agreement keeps referring to this Article 3, extend a private utility. Article 4, private utility. This is needed in order to extend the private utility. License has been obtained. The necessary permits. to work within the right-of-way. So it seems that JDOT has already given them the permit to work in the right-of-way. That was a little premature. It should not have been. Item 5 in the license agreement, again, refers to a private utility. The license is item 7, revocation. This license is revocable. that will by leaser. We're the leaser, so we can revoke this license if we feel that's appropriate. If it's revoked, who takes care of the culvert they're constructing under the road, and who takes care of the 42-inch pipe? I am recommending that this request be denied. Thank you, that's all I have for this.

Commissioner Snell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. In all my experience, we've always considered county drains and road department culverts to be utilities. I move that we approve this license agreement. Second.

I have a motion in support for the item.

You have someone down there.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you. I just point to all the commissioners It seems that one of Commissioner Baer's concerns is addressed under analysis. That is item B, financial. The licensee will bear full responsibility for all costs associated with the installation and maintenance of the private 42-inch pipe and concrete box culvert. JCDOT and the County of Jackson will incur no expense related to this project. We were also explaining from JCDOT leadership that this also will establish in the future who owns it, who has an obligation to maintain it. And in previous instances, we haven't done that, and that's caused some issues. So this is the responsible thing to do. The culvert's going to be installed, and this is at no expense to the county, and it clearly states who is gonna be responsible for the fees to put it in and to maintain it. I'll be in support of this.

Further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Nay. Motion carries. Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. That concludes business for the Public Safety and Transportation Committee.

Standing Committee, General Government, chaired by Commissioner Phil Duckham. Commissioner Duckham.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have one item tonight. It will be an appointment. The appointment is for an elected official of a city or village on the Material Management Planning Committee. It's a new term. It expires 10-29. It has been vacant since the committee has been formed, I believe. We have no applicants either. Either we expand the definition of who can serve on here or we keep going the direction we are, we're probably never gonna get an applicant. So I have nobody to present tonight.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, sir. That's all we have.

Standing Committee Human Services, chaired by Commissioner Earl Pileski. Commissioner Pileski.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have no items for action by the board tonight.

Thank you, sir. Item 14, unfinished business. Any unfinished business come before the board? Seeing or hearing none, new business, FOIA appeal. Adams, administrator, controller, Overton, please.

I trust you've all had an opportunity to look at this. Mrs. Deborah Adams has made a request for over 2,000 individual property owner addresses, and the information was spelled out into the FOIA request, what she wants. And frankly, that takes a lot of time for an employee to go through and determine the information she needs. So we basically said, You need to give us a deposit, which is the law. And the deposit on this is up to 50% of the amount, which amounts to over $3,000. She believes that that is too much and that we aren't doing things the correct way. And she has chose to appeal to the full board because she would like us to reduce or waive that fee. I'm asking that the board uphold our FOIA coordinator's decision.

entertain a motion to Concur with the administrators controllers ruling We have a motion in support to concur with the administrator controller on this FOIA appeal Commissioner beer Thank you chairman can anybody tell me who issues the business licenses in this county

Nobody knows The county clerk does sir clerk is responsible for a DBA a doing business as license For a DBA That is correct who issues the licenses for a home-based business and

If you register the business as a DBA, that is with the county. If you register a business as an LLC, that is at the state level.

Would you repeat that for me?

If the business is registered as a DBA, then it is registered at the county level at the county clerk's office. If the business is registered at the state level as an LLC, it is registered at the state.

So the state of Michigan would have issued the home-based business license in this case.

If it was an LLC, if it was a DBA, the person would apply to the clerk's office and send the paperwork there. They're two separate entities.

Okay. The statement that this person requested the information from over 2,000 addresses, I do not think that statement is true. She requested... from the records, a list of home-based businesses located within the Lake Columbia Homeowners Association. Now, if that's not something the county can provide, then the county should have just informed her, we can't give you that. You got to go to some other state agency. I believe the, who handled this FOIA, turning it over to the health department was the wrong group of people to hand it over to. It should have first gone to the health department. Yeah, they just needed 2,026 addresses to look through. That's the long way, the expensive way, and that's not how we should treat our citizens. If we had just looked, find the list of the home-based businesses, It's got to be a lot in this geographic area. It's got to be a lot less than 2,026. So we headed the wrong direction in looking for 2,000 addresses. I think we should start this over, and we should look for the shorter list of the home-based businesses. That will then... produce a much shorter list, much less expensive list to provide.

Commissioner Behr, that's not what we're asked to do. We either vote yay or nay on this decision. Voting yay, we concur with the county administrator controller. Voting nay, we go back and do similar to what you would like done.

No, I can continue to speak in opposition to this in the attempt to get other commissioners to see the wisdom of voting no.

Well, at this time, we're going to vote, sir. Commissioner Duckham.

You're going to cut me off and not allow me to finish my questions?

Commissioner Duckham. I make a motion.

You did cut me off and did not allow me to finish my questions. Very poor procedures, Mr. Shotwell.

All in favor? Aye. Those opposed?

Nay.

Duly carried. At this time, we're now at public comment. Yes, sir?

Yeah, we just did. Wasn't that a motion to?

No, just to concur with the recommendation of the Administrator and Controllers Office.

I thought we were moving to.

You've arrived at the second opportunity for public comment. Each individual will state their name, have three minutes to openly address the board. You may only address the board once under this public comment opportunity and may not yield your time to others. Board members will not debate nor answer questions at this time. We are now open to public comment.

Hi, good evening. My name is Nicholas Thurston. I live in Jackson, Michigan, District 8. I want to give some feedback on some of the things that are going on with the situation of the increase in homelessness in the downtown Jackson area. First, I want to just kind of clarify some things so people have access to information. There is a lot of misinformation that there's lack of resources, shortage of funding, or lack of housing in Jackson. That is not true. There's nearly a thousand nonprofits in Jackson that are receiving about a billion dollars a year in revenue. Not 100% of it is government funding and grants, but a lot of it is. There are definitely hundreds of millions of dollars that are dedicated almost exclusively to companies that are supposed to be doing homelessness outreach, provide transitional housing and rental assistance, and drug recovery therapies and alcoholism treatment therapies. As you can see, there is little to no work being done. And so what I would like to do is ask you as the county commissioners to consider a criminal investigation into the nonprofit organizations in Jackson County. This is something that's gone on for decades. It's something I've seen my entire life growing up. There's tons of news articles about businesses in Jackson County winning massive government contracts and awards for millions and millions of dollars. They always celebrate getting the money, but you never really see anybody do the work or talk about completing the tasks. That is a problem that we have here. It's not a lack of funding, there's a lack of law enforcement. The people that work for these companies know what their job is, they know what the contract says, they know what they're supposed to do. They're supposedly professionals. They're getting paid. They're taking the money. They're going shopping. They go on shopping sprees. They buy luxury clothes. They always have the new cell phone, the new iPhone, the new MacBook Pro computers that cost $4,000. They go on vacations for cruise ships and international vacations to foreign countries and shopping sprees and max out their credit cards and all this stuff. They come back home and they just squat at whatever job they have. Even organizations like Lifeways, they get $100 million a year. I don't see them doing $100 million worth of work. Interfaith Shelter got $11 million this last year. Do you see them doing $11 million worth of work? I don't. The county government right now has contracts with Home of New Vision, Family Service, and Children's Aid, and Andy's Place right now. You guys doled out about $300,000 to them last December. Where are they at? Before that, you gave Home of New Vision a contract for, I think, $240,000. It was a two-year contract. Where are they at? Where are all these people that claim to be the good guys and they claim everybody else is the bad guys, that somehow nonprofit companies are better than for-profit businesses? But again, they get billions of dollars and they do no work. Thank you for your time.

Any other public comment?

Greetings, I'm Tom Guthrie from Michigan State University Extension. My current role with Extension is working with the horse industry throughout Michigan. I came tonight to give you an update on some of the programs that I've been involved with, and also thank you for your continued support of Michigan State University Extension. Some of you may know that Michigan ranks 12th nationwide for horse population. We have about 189,000 horses throughout the state. Jackson County ranks fourth in the state for horse population. Oakland County's number one, Washtenaw number two, Livingston number three, Jackson four, Hillsdale rounds out the top five. So we're kind of in the center of all the horse population. A couple of programs that I would like to highlight that I've been involved with in the past couple months. The first one is the Michigan Horse Expo, where I gave four educational presentations or educational sessions at Horse Expo up at Michigan State University at the livestock pavilion. Those topics range from horse manure management to horse pasture management, toxic plants to horses, as well as our emergency response to accidents involving livestock program. We had 111 participants attend those four sessions from 19 counties from Michigan, including there were participants from Jackson County. We also had two out of state participants from Pennsylvania and Ohio. The second program I'd like to highlight is the 2026 Equine Health webinar series, where I partnered with the Michigan State University College of Veterinary Medicine. I delivered a presentation on plants toxic to horses there. We had 318 registered participants for that webinar. There were 16 Michigan counties represented in the participants, some being from Jackson County. There were 20 participants from 20 states across the nation and five different countries. So that's just a quick overview of my program. And once again, I would like to thank you for your continued support of Michigan State University Extension. Thank you.

Any other public comment? Any other public comment? Commissioner comments? Commissioner Walz.

Thank you. I'd just like to piggyback off from Mr. Guthrie's presentation of what's going on with Michigan State. We were at fair board prior to this meeting, and we have 12 youth from Jackson County 4-H that have qualified for the Equine State Show at Michigan State University at the, I think it believes on the 12th of August. That's pretty remarkable that our little county has 12.

Commissioner Behr?

Thank you for the time. Chairman Shotwell? You are prejudice and bias. You treat different people inequitably. You allow other commissioners to cut me off. You don't allow that to happen to anybody but me. You fail to let me ask my questions. You don't cut any other commissioner off when they're just getting started in their questions. That proves your bias. That proves your prejudice. And a bias-prejudiced person does not deserve the position of chair of the Jackson County Board of Commissioners. I call upon you again to resign your position as chair. You're not fit for it. You don't deserve it. resign as chair and let this board elect somebody else that's going to be more fair, open, honest, easier to work with, to be voted into the chair position to replace you. You don't deserve that, chair.

Commissioner Schnell.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Also at the fair board meeting, we talked about volunteer needs. And I will have this copied and put in everybody's box. It's a list of times available that you can work at the fair, volunteer. Also, this handy dandy admission information with the fair. I'll have that copied and put in your boxes. These were just given us tonight. And on my last note, I think Chairman Shotwell does a great job and I appreciate all the work that you do and the knowledge that you have and keeping this meeting to order. Thank you.

Commissioner Pileski.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just like to remind Commissioners briefly that the back to school blast will be on Thursday of this week. It's run by First United Methodist Church in partnership with. many other organizations, a number of community organizations will be there, and 1,500 backpacks will be distributed on Thursday between 3 and 7. And I just want to make commissioners aware of that. My wife is, of course, this deep into it. They're gonna do a nice job. We look forward to helping our youngsters have the tools they need to be successful at school this year. Thank you.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to bring attention that the Jackson County Fair is coming up August 9th through the 15th. It's gonna be a great year. The fair board, the commissioners that are on the fair board have done a great job. I'm excited to show up. In addition, out in my district, there is a new... thing going on called Nashville Nights, where they're bringing local, not local, excuse me, artists, musicians from Nashville. And August 1st at Aggie Sports Bar out in Napoleon, Garrett Biggs, who's been on the radio, is gonna be there. So I encourage everybody to look into that. It's not often that we get national acts coming to Jackson, and that's a great thing. The last thing I'd like to talk about, unfortunately, is what's kind of spilled over into my district. I've had several residents call me. I've witnessed it personally. We have had some individuals, whatever you want to call it, but they are setting up temporary housing facilities on public land right on the border of Commissioner Snell and my district. I have seen them with open containers of alcohol acting erratically. And I'd like to speak to the sheriff in regards to that because the county doesn't have ordinance enforcement like townships in the city do. Ultimately, the city of Jackson has really invited this, that city council has, with what they started over two years ago, and we are reaping what they sowed then. We are now becoming a target. There are police agencies from outside of our community that have brought some of these individuals in. Some have come in on buses. They are not from here. We have adequate resources in Jackson County, multiple, both private and public sector, to help our residents that are in need, and certainly we're not heartless here at the county. But what's going on in, going on in the city is one thing but when it starts spilling over into the townships i represent i have a problem when the law is openly being violated blatantly they they have no regard for the law and i would hope those that are engaging in public intoxication defecating in public urinating in public would be cited and ticketed appropriately thank you commissioner duckham

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to commend you on running an efficient to the point agenda and meeting agenda. If you did not do that, we would be here at 11 o'clock at night listening. Thank you very much.

Next item on the agenda is closed session. In accordance with MCL 15.268A, a personnel evaluation will be considered. I need support for my motion.

I'll move that for support.

We have a support. Madam Clerk, could you call the roll?

Commissioner Pilecki. Yes. Commissioner Williams.

Yes.

Commissioner Snell.

Yes.

Commissioner Behr.

No.

Commissioner Walz.

Yes.

Commissioner Kennedy.

Yes. Commissioner Duckum.

Yes. Chairman Chatwell. Yes. 7-1.

Motion passes 7-1.

Earl, I heard that eye roll all the way over there.