City Commission - Regular Meeting

Welcome. Good evening and welcome to the November 24th, 2025 meeting of the Marquette City Commission. Um, please rise and pledge. I alce to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Uh, city clerk, roll call, please. Commissioner Davis, here. Commissioner Gotautle, here. Commissioner Hanley, here. Commissioner Larson, here. Commissioner Mayor, Mayor Prom Otawway

here, and Mayor Schlaggel here. Uh, commissioners, can I have a motion to excuse Commissioner Mayor, please? Um, I move to excuse Commissioner Mayor for personal reasons. Is there a second? Commissioner God second. Thank you. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Oppos? No. Motion passes. Six. Um, Commissioner Hanley.

Um, I'm going to move that we accept the agenda with a modification. I would like to add item five, directing city staff to proceed with a contract to use the Prescy Pavilion to new business. Okay. Noted. It'll be listed as number five. with that amendment. Um, can I get a second, please? Mr. Gig. Okay. Uh, all in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. Motion passes. 60.

Announcements tonight. Uh, not a heck of a lot going on. Uh, oh, I I take it back. We've got a big day coming up on Wednesday. The winter dog park is about to open up after uh many renovations to the uh tourist park. It's a very exciting time for uh people and canine alike. And feel free to swing out there. I think it's open 7 until I've been out there at 11:00 at night some nights uh in a good snowstorm. But um uh please note that uh there is some new uh signage and uh access pathways that you'll have to pay attention to, but it really looks great. I commend uh the design and everything else that went with it. So also boards and committees, please, if you're interested in being a part of seeing how the sausage is made and not just uh being a part of the fun time, let's get involved with our community. There's all kinds of opportunities out on the board here uh in our advisory roles. So, please look into something that would spark an interest and and get involved. Uh moving on to appointments. We have one tonight. Can I get a motion, please? Commissioner Larson, I move that we appoint Kendall Menink to the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee for an unexpired term ending 0601 of 28.

And a second. Commissioner Davis. Sorry. I'll second the motion. Thank you. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Yes. Opposed? No.

Motion passes. Six. Nothing. Uh any I guess I should have uh offered offered up some comment there. Would you like to say anything, Miss Davis, since we're moving on? I will. Thank you, Kendall. Um great. That brings us to our first public comment. Uh, comments may not exceed 3 minutes per person. Please state your name and physical address when making public comment. Anyone for public comment? Margaret Brum for Portheast Magnetic Street. We just sat through a work session where problems of people and their behavior seem to be insurmountable. So, I decided I would give you a solvable problem with a technical solution. All around town now, there are tubes for cigarette butt recycling. The original four that I worked with Spiri Wershed Partnership along the lake shore have been supplanted by a dozen or so put up by the downtown Development Authority on Third Street and Washington Street. Now, I confess that I use my key that are good for the four tubes on the lake shore and they broke into the ones on the third street as well. So apparently um Terraycle has only one key fits all. The problem is not that one key fits all. The problem is that the top of the container is open to the elements. And when I opened up the container, a whole bunch of water and soggy cigarette butts came out. And essentially those aren't good for recycling. Those are good for throwing away. I have pictures I can send to you, but oh, it's a technical fix. Somebody needs to put a little plastic cap so you can lift it up and put your cigarette butt in there and it'll just stop the water and the snow from getting in the tube. And if you think it it doesn't matter, we are literally over a 100,000 cigarette butts recycled in this area alone. And that is

a huge amount of debris that is not contaminating our lake, not contaminating our roadways, and not making us look like somebody's garbage pit. And that's why I keep doing it. And while I will keep doing it and I congratulate the downtown development authority, talk to Spur Watershed Partnership and the DDA is doing this on their own and I'm thrilled about it because more the more people that do it, the more the word gets out. However, the problem with the tubes has always been there. My big collection point is out at the border light and power where we have two um garbage cans with with covers and people come by from um cars and they dump huge ashtrays in there and so it's all dry and when it's all dry it's real really easy. I keep the stuff in the back of my vehicle now, just dump it in there and when it's full, I could put it in a plastic bag and ship it off and we're once again recycling. So, I thought I would give you a technical situation that can be resolved. The DDA can give you the locations of the ones on Third Street. I can send you a note of the ones that are in the area. This is part of what's working in Marquette and it doesn't go away. By the way, I was out at the island this weekend. We've had we've had a horrible snowstorm. you would think there would be nothing out there and I can tell you that there's always something out there. So, I would encourage the city to fix this technical problem which um continues to be um I think almost any problem that has a technical solution can be fixed. It's just the problems with people that are problems. Thank you for your time.

Anyone else for public comment? Anyone else? Okay, with that public comment is closed. Uh we have two presentations tonight. Uh the first one is a gift presentation made by area sister city chair Morin Jensen and uh leazison Randy Jensen. Uh we can go up to the podium if you would. And this is all about our sister city in Kajjani, Finland. Am I am I getting that properly? Keani, I'm sorry.

Morin Jensen, chair of the market area city, sister cities partnership. Randy Jensen was a leaison for the incoming delegation from Kayani, Finland. Going to let him do most of the talking. He did a lot of work and um here he is. Yes, we uh hosted a a delegation from the city of Cayani, mostly government officials uh that came. There were six of them and uh while they were here from November 7th to November 13th, we took them around to see Marquette. Um one of the things is they met uh at the time, Mayor Hanley, now commissioner and uh the city manager, Karen Kovac, and they also went to a variety of other places. We kept them really busy while they were here. uh hopping from one thing to the next. Uh they also uh presented presented uh at that time u Mayor Hanley and Miss Kobach's uh with a clock. The clock is made out of tar. Tar is a very famous um um it's a very famous output of Kayani back in started back in the 1600s and uh was used for sealing up ships. uh the wooden ships and so forth. And so it's a very famous aspect of Kayani and one of the main reasons why it's there. Uh but the they were gracious enough to provide this uh 4:00 that represents and it's on Kayani time right now. U to let you all know that's going on with that. There there's a request I believe that there's a request I believe for this to be placed underneath this clock possibly to show the two different time zones and the connection. We do have a sister city room in our library and our board meets in January. We would like to be able to

show this to our board and have it sometime in the sister city room and then we would like to bring it back. And if the city would still like to have it in this room, it would be kind of a neat reminder of our relationship with Kayani Finland. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you both very much. Anybody Anybody have some comments? I don't have a comment. Okay. First of all,

to get a picture with First of all, you need your picture with that. Go ahead. You guys coming over? Did I have it on the wrong side? Now we have a question now. Can I talk? Go ahead.

Commission Davis. Rand Randy and Meen. I know how much work the two of you did to make this so successful. Um I happen to sit on the city sister I'm the city representative on the sister city board. Um, so I watched how much work the and time and effort you put into making this visit very successful. But not only this visit, but between the two of you, you have renewed our sister city friendship that would have been kind of put aside on the back shelf for quite a while. And I really appreciate that that is back up and running as what it is is. So, thank you so much for the work that you've done.

Thank you. I I forgot to mention um next year is the 375th anniversary of Kayani's founding and also the state of Kynu which Kayani is the capital of and we are planning to send a delegation over uh to celebrate that with them uh probably the last week of June. Thank you. Anybody else? No. Well, thank you. Um great representation. I'm so glad that people like yourselves are so involved in that and look forward to hearing more from you down the line. Thank you. Yep.

Our second presentation which is going to be a real humdinger. It's from our city clerk Kyle Whitney and the election board.

Hey, it's me over here now. Uh you guys kind of got a preview there when it flashed up on the screen. So, I hope nothing got spoiled. Uh, thank you, uh, mayor, commissioners. Um, this is just that annual presentation, uh, related to the city's election board. Um, I usually we don't have, uh, that many activities or meetings a year. Um, so we're always always looking for more members, but I also kind of use this, uh, this opportunity to talk a little bit about the election that just happened. Um the city's elections board is uh there is currently one vacancy on it. Uh the city clerk is the chair. There are four at large appointees uh appointed by the city commission. The election board um state law requires the creation of an election board in a township, a city. Um but it provides that um if there exists a city charter in a home rule city um the city clerk uh in our case the city clerk is the chair of the board. There are four qualified electors appointed that is a city charter provision. Uh state law otherwise requires uh very specific appointments from city staff. Um so the mission of our board under state law and the charter is um very uh I would say routine and black and white. Uh they meet annually uh around each election to certify local candidates for elections. So those are people who file to be on the city commission or the board of light and power. Everybody here has gone through that process. Um the election board appoints election inspectors. They conduct public accuracy tests of our election equipment. They are also charged with establishing precinct boundaries and absent voter counting boards for the city of Marquette as well. Um, additionally, uh, there there was a bit of a change a year ago. They established, uh, early tabulation for our absentee ballots as well. That was a

new provision that state law allowed for. So, that's something that had to go to our election board for review as well. Um, so specifically in 2025, they had three meetings. They certified the candidates for city commission and board of light and power in the summer. They appointed workers uh for that election at another meeting and then they conducted a public accuracy test of the city's election equipment at a third meeting. I I always try to drive home to people that these they're not exciting meetings, but they are uh public meetings and they are the kind of the first point of contact with the election system. If you have questions about how the machines are tested, if you have questions about how they work, um if you're you're kind of looking for the endto-end view of that, this is where it starts. It's a public meeting where you can go and just watch all of all of the excitement happen. Um, this I would also note is the first odd-year election cycle uh where there was not the potential for a local primary election because the you um the city commission put a ballot initiative forward to amend the charter which removed uh that trigger for a local primary. So we did not have a local primary in August. Had nothing changed and that was still uh in place, we would have actually had a local primary in August for the board of light and power race because we had three candidates, one seat. we would have had an an election in August to eliminate one of the three candidates moving forward to November. Um just kind of a quick summary of of recent voting changes. I know we've all talked about these. Um early voting is now something that is required statewide for state and federal elections. So in smaller elections like the one that we just had, it is not a requirement. Uh but it is an option. So the the tact that we've taken so far is we provided uh a smaller number of days but we did still provide early voting in the same location. It was at the Peter White Public Library. I think my um my idea to this point has been that uh consistency

is best. I think for these bigger evenear elections we are required to do it. I think a lot of times people, you know, the average voter isn't necessarily going to understand, you know, if they hear that there's an election coming up and they know that early voting was a thing the last two times they voted, they're um it's going to be hard to explain to them why every other election cycle doesn't have that option. Uh so we did have almost 60 voters across three days of early voting, which doesn't seem like a lot, but we honestly didn't have a whole lot of uh voters generally. Um we have a permanent absentee ballot list. So that now is the under state law voters have the ability to request an absentee ballot uh and to just get it sent to them automatically assuming that they don't you know their voter registration doesn't get cancelled uh we don't lose track of uh where their mail gets delivered to them uh 4100 residents are on that list right now. So every time there is an election in the city we are automatically sending out more than 4,000 ballots to residents who have put themselves on that list. and uh early tabulation of absentee ballots we talked about. There are other um changes as well statewide um through some of the proposal to language. Not a lot has changed in the city. There's prepaid postage. Dropboxes are required. There is ballot tracking um and application tracking available through the the Secretary of State. You can sign up for that on the state's website. Um a few other boring changes. Uh the November 4th, 2025 election, I told you we didn't have a ton of people. Uh 3,000 votes cast, 14,750 voters were registered. Uh you see that number of absentee ballots, about 70 more than 76% of the votes for November came absentee. Um 58 early voting, 600 some people voting on election day. Uh that election was certified by the county and the state um does random audits. uh their procedural audits after the fact. There is um one post-election audit or an election

post-election audit in one precinct in the city. Um and that is just an instance where they the state comes in uh the county clerks uh in our case come in on behalf of the state and they just review all the paperwork, make sure all the everything is done correctly, and they actually handc count one race um on the ballot to make sure that it a hand count matches what was reported out. And hey, I'm done. Does anyone have any questions? That's good.

Kyle, as usual, I mean, you're killing it. Um, I just want to say from the from being just general pop, I go to the booth every time for the vote and I took my wife and two daughters. We all went together. Um, there were other people there, so that was good. But your staff is always just awesome. Um, I really appreciate the effort that they put forth and uh and just thank you guys for everything that you do and I mean you make it look easy and I know it's not uh not quite that easy. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Uh, moving on to consent agenda. I'm looking for a motion, please.

Mr. Larson, Commissioner Larson, I move that we approve the consent agenda as presented. Is there a second? Uh, pro 10 second. Uh, any discussion? None. Anybody else? Okay. All in favor, please say yes. Yes. Opposed? No. That motion passes six to nothing. We will move on to the added item, uh, the Prescy building use. Um, where do we where do you want to start with this? What? Kyle doesn't have any background. Um, I can start since I added it. If that works, feel free.

Do I have to make a motion in order to talk about this? Okay. Um, I move that we direct the staff to proceed with a contract to use the Prescy Pavilion for overfill overfill use. Do we want to put a period of time in there? That'll be part of the contract that build out. Is there a second? Commissioner Gotaley, I'll second. Okay. All those in favor, please say. I'm going to discuss a little bit if you don't mind. I was get

um so after our work session, we got through a lot of the details from the staff on what places would work best. I feel that directing them to work towards Prescow Pavilion makes the most sense. I don't feel like the Barra gym was the ideal solution for anything um city-wise. So, I would like them to look at that. I do have a couple standards that I would like to see in a contract. Um I don't know if I can tell you outright. Um and everyone else can do it. I want there to be a solid start and end date like uh it ends on this day. There's no chance to extend. This is the day the city is done using our or allowing services. Um I want to make sure that the number is limited to maximum 10. That even if the overfill ends up having more than that, it is 10 people at maximum at any point. I want to make sure that there's no loitering or guests that are over that when it starts and ends it is they come in to sleep and then everyone leaves to make sure that we are um taking care of it. Obviously, I don't want to see any drugs or anything and I would like to see the police do a walkthrough with the dog every night just to ensure that there's nothing on city property. It we can't have any of that on our property. So, I want to make sure that we are taking care of it in that respect. Um, and I think that's all I have besides the other. Yeah, Suzanne's got a question for me.

Never mind. Okay, never mind. Suzanne doesn't have a question for me. Um, all right. But just something to make sure that we are really writing down everything that we need to do to protect not only our unhoused residents, but to also protect the city and its buildings as well.

Mr. I uh I agree with everything that uh Commissioner Hanley said. I would I would like to also make sure that the city does assure that it is completely or as completely as possibly indemnified by the room at the end. I'm not sure how that could be written, but I would like to minimize the liability to the city as much as possible. Um, I also would like to make sure that in the contract room at the end has a minimum of one person there awake 24 hours written into the contract and preferably two people. Uh, and if that one person is not there, then the building is not used. And and lastly, I would request I don't know how that this could be in the contract, but that uh room at the end has excluded other facilities such as the armory. Anybody else? Mayor Pro.

Yeah. Uh, a couple things with this. Um, obviously this is going to require a special meeting. Is that something that should be in the motion? Um, excuse me. No. Okay. Um,

we if if or when the details are worked out, city staff will uh just make sure to get that scheduled appropriately with the open meetings act requirements and things like that. Perfect. Okay. Um, I do have concerns from a liability standpoint. Um, I I I think the city needs to be very careful from a liability standpoint when it comes to any type of housing or any type of just renting of facilities to anyone. Um, so we need to make sure that our taxpayers are protected to ensure that we're not having to make necessary repairs that potentially could arise from some sort of issue um that wouldn't be covered by insurance. Um, so we need to make sure that uh room at the end is able to take care of that. Um, and ultimately that is probably my biggest concern with with this except for the the safety of and well-being of our staff. Um, so I'm looking forward to seeing what the the contract is. Um, what comes out of it and and hopefully it's something we can work through.

Mayor or excuse me, Commissioner Davis, you have problems with my name tonight. Well, you know, it's uh you're sitting so far away from me.

Um I have some reluctancy with this option and it part of it it it comes from the liability that was talked about by our city attorney. I think the park and the facilities are vulnerable. The transportation is an issue for the room at the end. Um the response time for police and fire are an issue. And so it does require some city resources, but beyond that, we need to take care of this population and this is a very dire need and I'm going to vote yes, even though I am reluctant to, but we need to make this work. We need to make this work so that it not only has a pl safe place for these people to spend the evenings or the nights but also so that we have this option in the future because if it doesn't work there this will not be an option. So I think all parties are interested in making it work and I I really believe that it will. So for that reason I am going to vote yes.

Okay. Commissioner Morrison,

I think the only thing I would add to the commission anyway is that I would like to see this essentially as a one-time, you know, emergency issue that we have here. And so having a start and stop date, uh, you know, as some of our other commissioners have said, you know, our facilities are not set up to be overnight facilities. And so I think, you know, we're really in a position where we may not have other choices. And so if we can, you know, do it a one as a one-time contract or a one-time four-week period, that would be my preference. And, you know, that it wouldn't be a recurring year-over-year situation. Uh that that would that would uh come back before us. So, uh I'm I'm in support of moving forward or with this particular motion. uh but on mostly on those conditions that uh you know I wouldn't be interested in doing this again next year or the following year.

Yeah. one one other comment that while while the city is working on a contract and while we are considering I'm I guess it's just an ask for room at the end and that is that you research other um facilities like the armory and like the commons and maybe there are some others out there that actually would be a better solution than what we're talking about out of Prescy. So that's an ask.

Okay. Um, you know, we did a pretty thorough job of ringing this out during our our work session. Um my biggest concern is that we have history going against us with uh what's happened in the past when we decided to help house during co and um and I think that Chelsea did a really nice job of bringing up the efforts that Room at the end has made to help not ensure but to do their best to limit anything that may have uh may resemble what uh some of the bad things that happened during that period and period. a time and we have to um take the steps here to, you know, in in hopes that we can just do this um for the month. I think you're smart, Commissioner Larson, to bring up the fact that we need to have a a solid end date on this and we need to make sure that this is not something that is consistently going to come back to us. I'm I'm slightly concerned about what happens if uh the next option after our month of of helping house um would not go as well as as as it could and they would need to have to open up other options for the future. But I'm I'm going to try and keep my glass half full uh with this topic and hope that we won't need to to revisit it. Uh with that being said, yes. Can I just add that the city staff works with Chelsea to make sure all these final points like I mean I assumed it's it's more than assumed probably but just to make sure that room at the end is at the table while this contract is being done I think would be a good plan.

Yeah. if you don't mind. Um, mayor, I I do think it's important to note that we will be drafting something up and and coordinating and talking with room at the end um with Chelsea and and trying to get some sort of consensus and address some of the the concerns on both sides um before we we call a special meeting um just so that we have it all hashed out and can be incredibly effective. Now, just we just have to look at the timing of this week um and understanding that this is a priority, but um we do have a holiday working up against us, so we're going to move as quickly as we can um and reasonably as well. Thank you. Yeah. Anything else, commissioners? Great. Okay, we're going to take put this to a vote. All those in favor, please say yes. Yes.

Opposed? No. Motion passes six to nothing. That brings us to our second public comment. Comments may not exceed three minutes per person. Please state your name and physical address uh while making your comments if you have not already done so. Anyone for public comment? Uh, starting now. Um, Chelsea Wilkinson, room at the end. Um, thank you. I know this that this wasn't a an easy um vote or discussion. I know that there are still a lot of kinks to work out. Um, but you're right. Uh, on its face, both of our priorities are making sure that our our community is safe. um finding solutions that work for both room at the end, the city and our shared constituents, whether that our housed ones or our unhoused ones. Um and and just know that um as we kind of uh take this day by day and and we figure out uh what works best, just know that um again, we room at the end, we have the best interest of the entire community um at heart. So um I don't take your feedback lightly. I don't take your um asks or suggestions lightly. um and and just know that we will we will make sure that we do what we need to do um to to best serve uh the folks that that we have been entrusted to serve. So um I do also want to shout out as much as we um talk about how amazing um the city staff has been um to mobilize, I also want to say I have three incredible staff members here who um wanted to be here. I didn't ask them to be here. They are here because they want to be here. Um

and um that really is just the uh tip of the iceberg of the devotion and passion that I have on my staff. Um and so it simply would not be possible um without their dedication too. So um I know that there are many staff um that that don't want to clean up or or do all the things. Um but someone is going to and chances are it's going to be me or my staff. So um I do want to publicly take this this moment to thank my staff. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else for public comment?

Abigail Andrews also with Room at the end. I'm a social worker there and I just wanted to say how grateful uh 447 West Washington Street. Um, I just want to say how grateful we are that you are stepping into a space of a little bit of uncomfortability for us and all of the people that we serve. And we are extraordinarily grateful. And I also understand the concerns of this being a recurring issue in the years following. And I want to assure you that we will do everything possible in the next year um to continue finding alternative solutions for the ongoing housing crisis here. So, thank you all very very much. Anyone else for public comment? Anyone else for public com? Yes. Uh, good evening. Will Sullivan, 630 Forest Park Drive. I am the chair of the board of Room at the Inn and uh, born and raised in Marquette, nearly lifelong Marquette City resident. The uh, decision that the board made tonight was not an easy decision for you to make and it was not an easy request for us to make. Uh we are adapting to a what I think is um a danger, a crisis as best we can. Uh and an acute crisis with the weather turning the way it's turning. I think the decision that you made tonight is probably going to save lives. So I very much appreciate that. Um, I also just wanted to say that the lives that you are saving, we we know that there are many people that room at the end serves that struggle with addiction, struggle with criminality. Room at the end also serves many people who are

elderly, who are sick. We serve people who have intact families, who have young children. We serve people who are employed. So there are a lot of people who use our services who need those services whose health and welfare will be benefited from the decision that the uh that the commission has made tonight. We are going to work as as uh much as we can to uh comply of course with negotiating an agreement here but also complying with many of the concerns that the commission has raised. uh some of the what the commission would like to see in these contracts I think sounds very reasonable. So I think we will be able to find a solution that works for everybody and uh again I very much appreciate your vote. Thank you.

Anyone else for public comment? Yeah, I got a comment.

My name is Mike Watts. I live on uh 550 South by 53 just south of Crossroads. on this topic on of the homeless here. I I know everybody wants to help these people who who wouldn't want to help somebody in need. I didn't know that all you guys were going to address address it the way you had which is like uh I'm glad that you guys all have that understanding of of the problem. And uh but as you know just to help one you the needs of one you can't trample on the needs of others. and myself having uh spent most of my time in the military. My parents uh were in the military as well and east coast, west coast, big cities, small cities, you always got a homeless problem. And that's the area wherever those people congreate as a place, especially when I had young children, you want to stay away from those areas. I mean there's some people genuinely aren't aren't going to cause harm to anybody but on the same time there are those like you said you got addiction criminality stuff like that and that you guys are all here that's uh I mean that you work there you're involved in that data game here just you just need to address the commission please

all right thank you so uh anyway so I'm thankful that those people here as well for on this big concern were theirs part and and that your decision went the way that it did to to make a move to help them even at a temporary basis and that these temporary bases don't become permanent as well. So which is tend to happen. You find a fix one way and you want to go there again and uh so I thank you guys for uh addressing the problem and covering it the way you guys did. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else for public comment? Hey, uh Tracy Rushka, 1680 County Road 492. I know I'm not a city person, but I do run my programs out of the city, out of the city gym. And um like everybody said, you want to help out and you want to do as much as you can. So from my program, I know we're very grateful that you guys are looking at some alternate options um just for the safety of the people that actually utilize the city gym. We're grateful because obviously there's some concerns when you guys were or we heard that that was a possibility. So, we just want to thank you and I know it's never easy. Um we have to help as many people as we can. So, I appreciate you guys doing that and making that motion to have it be at the pavilion potentially. So, thank you.

Thank you. Any other comments? Any other public comment? Seeing none, we will close public comment and we will go to comments from the commission. We'll start with the commissioner hand.

Thank you. Um I'd off I'd first like to start by thanking city staff for all of the tremendous work that you did trying to get this together and put in front of us in a work session in such a quick fashion. This is not something we have a lot of time to spare with. So, I really appreciate what you've done and for Room at the end for all the work that they've done on their side trying to come up with solutions and work with the city as well. So, thank you for that. Um, I do want to say happy Thanksgiving a little early to everyone. I hope everyone drives safe. From the weather that I've seen, it doesn't look like it'll be super fun if you're traveling. So, be very careful on the roads if you are. And I would also like to say a happy early birthday to Commissioner Davis, whose birthday is tomorrow, I believe. All right. But other than that, I'm good.

Yeah, just real quick. Uh, great discussion tonight. I was glad to have it. I think this is a, you know, the homeless situation that we have here is no different than so many communities across this country. Um, I I think that if if we can step up and and, you know, be an example and and try to fix that problem even locally, I I think that that's great. Um, I do have concerns still uh with the contract as you know. Um, and my number one concern is for uh the taxpayers in this city. I want to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can uh to take that liability away from them from a safety standpoint, from a financial standpoint uh when renting out a facility, whether it's to the homeless population or to anyone else. So, uh just know that uh I look forward to continuing this these discussions with you uh as well as uh hearing from members of the public who may have other concerns. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Larson. I have no further comment tonight. Thank you, Commissioner Davis. I got no comment. Commissioner Gadley.

Um, like I said, when uh uh the city commission asked the task force uh created a task force to address ebikes on the multi-use path, nobody would be happy with the recommendations that the task force would come up with. I don't think the homeless situation and the solution that we're trying to head towards is going to make everybody happy. I think we're trying to make the best we can do with what we got. We're not going to solve the homeless population problem, but we got to make an effort to make it good for the people here.

Thank you. Um I I guess it's kind of echoing what everybody else is saying about uh the homeless task force or the homeless topic. I I feel that uh you know when I think back to 12 13 years ago when we were talking about 10 or 12 different people that would be utilizing the service and now to think that we're upwards of you know 40 to 60 people depending on the season it's pretty uh it's pretty daunting task to think about how do we continue to um service the uh this population and respectfully uh from both sides of you know room at the end and our our general population um and I have seen improvements in how things have been uh working uh from Rome at the perspective and I I'm slightly hesitant to uh get involved with the the overflow uh housing opportunity here but as everybody else has mentioned including staff from from at the end we got to take care of uh our residents. So, I would really appreciate uh the community if they could look at this and rally around um what we're trying to do and and if nothing else understand that uh uh this is something that's not going away anytime soon and that it'll be a continued battle throughout uh the near future and probably the long run. So, um thank you for that. I would also like to echo uh Commissioner Hanley's comments on Happy Thanksgiving. Please be careful. We're leaving a day early for our uh our ventures because of the weather that's coming in on on Wednesday. So, please be careful out there and uh enjoy yourselves, enjoy your time with friends and family if that's where you're headed or in solitude if that's what you prefer. Um

uh moving on to our comments from the city manager.

Sure. Thank you. Um, as we head into the holiday season and especially with Thanksgiving, I do just want to mention our city employees, um, who really are a true a heartbeat of our community and, um, every clean street, safe park, plow drive, you know, uh, and dependable service reflects their dedication. Um the staff shows up through storms during these holidays, during emergencies, in the cold weather, digging in sub zero um degree weather sometimes and often giving up that time with their families um so that our community can continue to function safely. And so um they do give endlessly and quietly and and with consistency. So, we're incredibly fortunate to have a group of individuals um working at the city and dedicated um to the city so that uh that things can continue on and move safely and do some really cool and new things. So, um just want to shout out to our city staff who um you know, we head into Thanksgiving. Just want to give a little thanks to them. So, that's all. Thank you.

And with that, we are adjourned at 6:43.