City Commission - Special Meeting

In order, the special meeting of the Marquette City Commission, Thursday, August 6th at 9.01 a.m. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance 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.

City clerk roll call please Commissioner Davis here Commissioner Gottlieb Commissioner Hanley here Commissioner Larson here Commissioner mayor Mayor Pro Tem Ottaway and Mayor Schlegel here Motion to excuse please. Mr. Gottlieb.

I Move to excuse commissioners Ottaway and mayor for personal reasons.

Is there a second? Mr. Hanley I second. Thank you all in favor or any discussion. I Okay, all in favor please say yes. Yes. Opposed, no. Motion passes 5-0. We have agenda in front of us. Can I get a motion for that please? Commissioner Davis.

I move we approve the agenda as presented. Thank you, second. Commissioner Larson.

I'll second. Any discussion on that? Okay, seeing none, all in favor please say yes. Yes. Opposed, no. Motion passes 5-0. I don't have any announcements other than this is going to be a rip-roaring great budget session I can't wait to get into. With that, we will go into our first public comment. Please remember that public comments cannot exceed three minutes per person. Please state your name and physical address when making public comments at the podium over here. anybody for public comment I don't think I see any so public comment will be closed and that will move us to the consent agenda we only have one item on the consent agenda motion please commissioner Haley I move that we accept the consent agenda as presented thank you second please mr. Larson second any discussion no okay seeing none all in favor please say yes yes opposed no motion 5-0 That brings us to our new business, the big topic of the day, our budget overview. I'm gonna ask the city attorney if I actually have to have a motion for this, because everything is supposed to have a motion.

So you're not adopting the budget today? Thank you. So you do not need a motion.

That's awesome.

So I was wrong. Everything does not need a motion.

Well, I didn't hear you say it, but we'll kick this over to staff, please.

Thank you. And just a reminder, and I believe you covered it, that this is a special meeting for the budget hearing or budget workshop. It is recorded and streamed, but it is not one that we are making any decisions or requesting any decisions at this point or action. So just to ease everybody's mind on that. So just to get started, we can go ahead and pull up the presentation. One moment. There we go. So today what we're gonna just cover is going to go through, again, high level introduction and background. We're probably not gonna spend a lot of time on those explanations for property tax revenue that we do so often, just because you guys have heard it a lot and a dozen times every year. However, I do wanna note that we are preparing the information for more budget materials that you can review and that the public then can also see that and hear that and review that as well. because this presentation is for the Commission to hear it the first time, get their first glance at the budget, and provide any commentary or feedback or direction if necessary. So the public information will be coming a little bit later and is for a different format. So this morning, again, budget overview and highlights. That will cover mostly and focus mostly on the general fund. And within the general fund, it's the big, obviously the big Fund that has most of the decisions and most of the revenue coming through but we will also talk about Debt service and the capital outlay portion of that which does tie into debt service. So these things kind of just flow in together We'll cover some of those other funds. We'll talk about water and sewer rates as well the hot topics for the morning and then the afternoon we'll go through the strategic plan review how that's tying back to the the budget and really going over what we've have in progress, what we've accomplished, and where we are and focused on in the future, especially as we talk about budget. And then we'll talk about next steps because next steps is going to be a big one. We do need to plan for a capital outlay tour. So that is going to be discussed in our next steps. think this is something you've heard before of what to expect these are so preliminary these are you know our best estimates at this point with the information that were provided a lot of that coming from the state the requests that are coming in from our departments working through how that all balances at the time of not necessarily finalizing or fine-tuning but we're coming in with these may change if they well actually say they will change if they do change that is something that you'll you'll see those changes presented when we set the public hearing or even prior to that but I just want to say that these are preliminary it's not set in stone these are going to be able to be adjusted if necessary and as we finalize it the budget currently has some placeholders in there for all department requests so This year we were rather, and I'm gonna use your word Mary, optimistic. We have come out of really tough years and so this year coming in was more optimistic and we wanted to make sure that we are understanding what our departments are needing and wanting. I say want very, kind of with maybe a little asterisk there because our departments have not been asking for very lavish things or Absolutely ridiculous discretionary items. They are when they ask for a want it is something that is really more needed But also have been able to make do without so we're calling them kind of wants but we did request all of those from our departments and unfortunately As we're optimistic, we're not so financially secure that we can fulfill all of those requests. So there are going to be some, I don't want to say decision items, but some recommendations and some discussion on a few of these discretionary type things that we need to consider for postponing or seeking alternative funding. And I'll get into those in more detail. This one, we talked about this past year, we had significant need for some street improvements, which was for SIMP, and that we did use a significant amount of fund balance in fiscal year 26, which is why I kept that note up there. This is something that we had for last year, and we cannot continue to do something that significant with our cash and fund balance, so that is gonna be something a little bit more different this year that we talk about. And of course, we'll be talking about brownfields because that is the number one question I think I've had from many of you is, do we get that nice little chart of when these things are paid off? Of course, we'll absolutely discuss that and tie that into revenue. And we'll talk about debt. We've covered that before. I think it's really important to just kind of pause for a moment to read the vision statement especially as we talk about the things that we provide you know the vision for the city really is to ensure that quality of life and I've said this before with our services high quality services and we need to be doing it while we're remaining economically sound but we also need to continue moving forward too so just gonna kind of pause here for a moment so you can just review that and read that for a minute a moment you know taking a glance at it We need the background music. The other point I wanted to mention here is we encourage continued citizen involvement and that is something we're very proud of and when we get into a strategic plan, we talk about how we've really been trying to engage with the residents and the community to understand these things so that when we are making or requesting significant decisions, we're coming at it with these priorities or this vision in place. And as I said, priorities and strategic things. I'll get you a copy of this if you need it. But as we just mentioned, the strategic priorities and looking at the budget priorities. So as a reminder, and we'll get into these in more detail in the afternoon session, but the strategic priorities that we have been focusing on and that were identified by our discussions last year were governmental excellence, economic development, prosperity, community engagement, health, recreation, environment, mobility management, and public safety. So as we present this budget and discuss the budget, these things are what we're focused on. So everybody's excited. You do have your budget binders and books in there. We will, I won't be going line by line. That's one thing that we've heard quite a bit from the format that we have for a budget going forward is not going necessarily line by line. I'm not even gonna go department by department. Those are in there for you. I will note significant items or changes if there are some, but When we look at operations for fiscal year 27, there's not many significant changes. So the general fund budget is going to look pretty similar is what I would say. Just pull up some notes here. So this looks familiar, right? I want to remind everybody on this one because this came out of time when we really presented some tough decisions and requested some direction from the City Commission and I believe when we looked at this we said out of all of these wonderful things that we we provide which one would you be willing to do without it's really hard to pick anything from there because these are so incredibly important I'm not asking don't to ask you that right now but these are the things that we have heard are so incredibly important to our residents and to our visitors it's not all-encompassing so trust me if there's some things that need to be added yes let me know but these are things that we provide services for and we are incredibly proud to to continue doing so into city departments I don't necessarily need to maybe run through all of these, but with our city departments, and we look through the general funds, if you wanted to open up your binder, you can on this. But we go through just kind of some of these. City clerk obviously is responsible for city clerk things. Elections is one. But even the budgets for something like the elections has not changed significantly because they've been pretty consistent with elections and the number of elections. I will say that things that have changed over the past probably four years, I would say, is more of all of those increased requirements for mailings and printings and notices and polling locations. I start with this one because it might just be one that's very fresh and top of mind for you right now. So no significant changes is what I would be saying compared to the prior year. Significant changes over the past few years, yes. In looking in the binder, executive, which is the city manager and legislative, there's not much that has changed in there that is pretty straightforward. A lot of those are memberships and then conferences, which are incredibly important for professional development for both the elected and the appointed officials. So nothing significant really to point out at that point. Finance is pretty consistent as well. I guess I'm not gonna go through too many of these. I did just wanna note a couple on here if you don't mind.

I think one important point is the word cloud on the previous slide, these are the departments responsible for providing all of those. So the money that is allocated under these budgets lets all the things happen within the city.

Yep. Is there a certain department you would like me to point out or talk about at all? in the general fund, I would say. I can keep going, if you want me to keep going one by one. Just a note on some of these, okay.

I think you nailed it with your comment that there's really not a lot changing here.

There's not a lot changing here. I think that, how about, before we get into individual, if you don't mind, I wanted to just pull up one thing here. If we're looking at the general fund in the binder, I did just want to kind of point out before we go into other details is on page two, the two on the bottom. In the general fund, there is something called AP Undistributed Unclassified. It's just the standard title we gave, just kind of a holding place. These are the items that would be included in the departments within the general fund that have been requested but need further discussion here. So I just wanted to point that out. That totals $1.2 million almost, and we'll get into some detail on that here shortly. As you were reviewing all of the departments, you might have seen some significant expenses. One I would say is like City Hall. There's a $500,000 request in there for a new roof. We have been patching that or maintaining that and would be making some recommendations to maybe continue to just do that. But Commissioner Gottlieb, you look like you were gonna have a question. Yeah, and I'll mention a few more of those. So, and as with these departments listed, we then see how it's kind of broken down for the general fund and the percentage in the types of expenditures in here. So, I don't necessarily again show my department with the exact numbers, but we look at these, it's pretty typical and pretty standard to see public safety, police and fire, as a higher percentage of your general fund budget. You have significant capital in there of your people, and equipment and there's some, those are departments that have requirements to provide service within your city. So whether it's by charter or by statute, those are required services. Public Works is also in there as well as one of the higher, again, what are they responsible for? All of that infrastructure around here and the big service of snow plowing and providing just the work to make things, you know, The right things leave your house and the right things come to your house. Debt is 11% of the general fund budget. Community development, which includes planning and zoning and engineering, is in there as well. And then general government, which is 16%, covers some of those things we talked about with the city clerk, legislative, finance, executive, human resources, general liability, stuff like that. And recreation is 5%. of the general fund budget and recreation includes parks and rec and arts and culture in there as well. And I believe promo funds are included in there too. Promo funds, I will have those listed out. Those are very similar to the prior years that I've provided before. We will list those out as the budget is presented, and when the budget is presented for adoption, you are also adopting and approving those promotional fund distributions. Those, I believe, are totaling about $63,000, if I'm not mistaken, $63,000 to $68,000. I can glance at those real quick. Yep, so promotional funds, fee waivers are just shy of 40,000 and the direct contributions to city ban and beautification are at 25,000, which is pretty consistent, I believe. So we'll come back to expenditures again, but let's just first, let's talk about revenue. I wanted to kind of paint the picture of what the general fund provides, but here's revenue. Looking at fiscal year 25, actual, we performed I would say probably I would say better than what we had expected originally in 2025. So we did end up doing fairly well. 2026, we were looking to hold pretty steady. The decrease into 2026 had to do with the grant kind of cliff that everybody's been experiencing. And then looking into 2027, we're looking at a modest increase, which is the right trend that we wanted to head to. I'll kind of go through some of these individually. Grants, interest, and kind of other is decreasing. That's a continued trend that we see across all municipalities. Grants are drying up. Federal grants are a little bit more complicated. And the state is trying to do some different things as well. So with that, that's why you do see that kind of decrease.

And the state is responsible for a lot of pass-through federal funding. There's fewer opportunities for smaller municipalities such as ourselves to get direct federal granting. But through block grants, the state gets that funding and then distributes it down. So when the federal government is cutting direct grants and block grants to states, we see an impact on that.

Yes. One thing I also wanted to mention on the grant topic is Grants are certainly ideal alternative funding for some of the extra projects that we take on. It is incredibly important to note that there's no free grant. Free grants, if they say it's free, it's not free. Free grants, grants come, especially with projects, come with continued maintenance costs. Some also come with matching funds, completely understandable, but they also come with some high expectations or high requirements that would be things that we would otherwise say are more discretionary. And I'm gonna just use a broad example, not a real life example, I guess, but if we were to put up a new pavilion somewhere and we receive a specific grant, we would be, one of the requirements would be to plant 25% of the green space around there in, even if I say native plants, native plants to the area. that might not be a priority for that project for us to take on. And that would be one, if we were trying to cut costs in a project to make it more affordable, that would be something we would consider maybe postponing, but we couldn't if we had a grant. So the grant dollars don't go necessarily as far on a project as we could hope. And then we have that maintenance cost thereafter versus a simpler pavilion perhaps to start with and in five years upgrade with some of those plantings. Again, not real life example, just trying to say that it comes with some extra strings and maintenance as well.

No grants are really free money. They all require a significant amount of staff time just in terms of administration, but then additional costs. I think we've heard the commission give some scrutiny to some of the granting opportunities we've looked at and what liabilities that would bring us, even if it is bringing us a significant amount of revenue in. We're really trying to encourage everyone to take a real close look at what exactly we're obligating ourselves to.

So, we talked a lot more on something that wasn't a significant revenue source for 27, but let's talk about the significant revenue sources. Property taxes remains our most significant revenue source. That's very common in Michigan municipalities. I don't think we need to necessarily go over the fact that we are very limited in the revenue sources in the state of Michigan that we can do, although we're trying to advocate for change. But with property taxes, we did see a 5% increase in revenue for property taxes. That actually is pretty, I would say significant, but that is a really nice jump in property tax revenue. However, we understand that that comes at a high cost for our residents, so I don't want to celebrate too much on a 5% increase, but that also includes add additional buildings or property that comes online commercial property. You know some of the newer developments that is non residential that is included in there as well. 5% is a nice increase. But do you guys really think that 5% was all that cost increased by? No, it's high inflation, and high inflation for everybody, but also for the cost for the city. So this does not cover the increases in cost that we have experienced. Another big revenue source, which happens to be not the second largest, but is a state shared revenue. And as you see here, it's a decrease. So there was a 6% decrease in state shared revenue. I don't know if I want to say anything more on that on camera. It is frustrating. There were some extra, I would say, distributions last year. This is tied to sales tax, but also tied to the state's contribution for state shared revenue so one that says you know here here's what we'll carve out for municipalities so we've been really working with the MML to make sure that we don't see any decreases in in that component of state share revenue for municipalities going forward but that's still you know kind of in the works there but this one is is a tough one the more mandates that we receive from the state the more support through funding we would expect to receive, and that's not what's happening. We're having increased mandates, less state-shared revenue. Math, not mathing. After that is your fees, sales, and services. Those are the things that we, the services we provide. Many of these, I will note, are limited to what it costs to provide the service. So we cannot make a profit off of permits. There are very strict laws about that. So many of the fees, sales, and services that you see here in the revenue is covering a cost. Maybe break even, but maybe a little bit less than that. After that you see payment lieu of taxes. That is somewhat similar to property taxes. I kind of put those together sometimes when I discuss these things in presentations, but we do have it separated here. The significant one in there is the BLP payment lieu of tax arrangement, which is slightly increasing, but that is a percentage of their revenue. You would think that as growth continues to happen, the revenue for them continues to increase. However, then you also have this other competing factor of energy efficiency. So you see these two things kind of level out and stagnate. Also in there is the payment in lieu of tax arrangement from our wastewater and utility facilities. So because they act as a business, or if they act as a business or operate as a business, they would otherwise be paying tax, but they don't, instead they pay a payment in lieu of taxes. So yes, it is paying ourselves, but it happens every municipality. Also in the payment in lieu of taxes, a small portion of that are subsidies for our housing developments. I didn't necessarily go into great detail on this one, but I do just want to remind everybody that there's 700 units of housing subsidized housing within the city. And of that, those provide only $53,000 of revenue to the city to serve 700 units, which is probably over 1000 individuals or folks. That does not include Northern by the way, but that is your Snowberry that is. Grandview, our new Black Rock Crossing housing development. So we do just mention that because equivalents to that would be the largest apartment complex, such as Tourville, and they have about 280 people. I'm sorry, I even took that slide out and I wish I didn't. They would be providing close to $300,000 a year in revenue. So that's the comparison. And then transfers in, that's minor things usually for grants or pass through or things like that. Any questions on revenue? We did see a small increase of about 540,000, but it's an increase nevertheless.

All right.

Just another way of looking at this, I'm just trying to find better ways to kind of look at the piece of the pie here without it being a pie. Property taxes, 14.8, PILS 4.1, your fees and services, state shared revenue. State shared revenue used to be your second largest, maybe your largest after property taxes and payment in lieu of taxes together. It's really interesting. I don't recall a time where it's lower on the list like that. And then our grants, interest, and other revenue. Oh, I did keep it, okay, good. I was hoping that this was there. 480 units from Tourville pays 280,000 to the city for revenue. And that's in city taxes, that's not the other entities. That's what we would receive in revenue. While we're talking about arrangements other than property taxes, I think it's just a good time to kind of roll into Brownfield discussion and just kind of do an overview and review as we talk about property tax and revenue.

Absolutely. This is a very familiar chart. Not much has really changed. I updated some of the revenue figures, but this is the total of... Brownfield projects that are within our city tax capture the next slide would be the DDA developments but really we've only added the chip in the last two years and we're looking at an eventual city tax revenue impact of about 3.5 million dollars All these are very significant projects, but they are long-term investments to get tax revenue back on the rolls from underperforming properties. We do have some hope that some of these could pay off a little bit earlier, but we really have to be conservative in our estimates of when these plans are going to be completed, when developer and bond obligations are going to be fulfilled. So these numbers don't change too much until we get to really a close end game on paying them off. I think one notable thing here is we are still figuring out the former MGH property. The city commission has approved an amended brownfield project for that property. We're still waiting on state approval of state tax revenue capture. and we're still waiting for those construction plans to really manifest. So that's still an estimate that's sitting out there that we're hoping to see some movement on within the next year or so. We are looking at UP State Bank rolling off hopefully within the next few years. I would think that estimate could be rounded down a little bit more. And DLP and Liberty Way could also hopefully be rounded down a little bit more. Cliff's Dow is reaching the natural end of that plan. We are currently evaluating what the impacts of the potential sale of the biolife building to Marissa will be, but even if it is sold, if that sale is completed, I haven't been informed if it actually was, it's still a taxable property through this year, so they still will pay into that. but if it was in fact sold, the capture on that is going to become fairly minimal and we will need to look at planning for our monitoring costs in the future. If it's not sold, I still would like to try and extend that brownfield plan out or renew it. We have continued obligations on that property and it is very useful now that state law has changed that we're able to take advantage of the state tax capture to help fund our obligations towards that property. I'll just note on founders, the whole founders landing development has not been fully realized. I'm not sure the status of that, but we are quite lucky that there were two or three additional developments at the end of the road that have really taken up the the slack of helping us fulfill our obligations through capture. So those two hotel developments and the Gaines Rock townhomes have really contributed highly in making that a successful plan. Moving on to CDA developments, the only new development here is 401 West Washington. We're still kind of waiting to see what the tax revenue on that is going to be. I'm sure you guys have noticed that since you've approved the brownfield plan, the building is down and they are working on it, but they still have a ways to go. So we will figure that out for probably the next budget year. But between 401 West Washington and the CHIP, those are really tied to the length of the housing subsidy that was proposed in those plans. And it's not as much about the future tax revenue as it is that public purpose. But overall, we can see that we have a fairly robust brownfield plan within the city. The economic impact and investment we've seen is in the hundreds of millions of dollars from all these projects. And these are long-term investments that are really going to pay off for the city. They're just working their way through their process right now. I'm happy to entertain any questions on this.

You said that founders in DLP or DLP and Liberty Wave might be completed a little bit. What is a little bit? A year, two years, five years?

I can't give you a concrete estimation, but I would say that's two to five years earlier, potentially. We'll know more as we get closer, of course.

Okay.

Not Brownfield related, but having the DDA come up, I just wanted to make sure with the DDA, the revenue share, was that included in that as well? Yes, thank you for that.

That's it.

Any other Brownfield questions?

No. One more question. Thank you for pointing that out.

So I know we've talked a lot about Brownfield and the capacity to do more Brownfield, where there hasn't necessarily been a lot of appetite. You know, would you still suggest that, you know, as we're kind of thinking about this, that future brownfield projects, you know, we still need to take very like conservatively. I know we kind of have a conservative appetite on the commission, but like from your point of view, you know, looking for a future looking towards future projects, you know, do we still have that conservative view? you know, kind of moving forward and taking on more brownfield?

Yeah, I think absolutely. The message we've received from the Commission is that these projects need to be very scrutinized. We need to make sure that they're providing some sort of public benefit, whether that's housing, whether that's investment, whether that's remediation. And we need to really reply to the test of can this project be done you know without any kind of reimbursements through you know act 381 um and i think that's what we've done to date with all these with all these projects and there are you know interviews i have um with potential developers who are seeking this kind of funding and i really have to you know put it on the line for them of you know you need to demonstrate the value to the city you need to demonstrate your need as a developer if you are going to go anywhere near a public body for approval on this um and you know that that test might scare a couple developers away but they need to know what they're getting into before they start asking for public approval and public scrutiny on their project when you're talking about applying tax dollars you know i i I've had many conversations where people try and explain Brownfield to me of, you know, oh, you know, you're not really losing anything. You know, you're just, you know, it's just going to happen later and you don't really notice a change in your budget. And I have to tell them that's not good enough. You know, there needs to be that level of investment that wouldn't be present otherwise or public benefit. This isn't a, you know, shall approve situation. This is totally discretionary in terms of future projects. It's really difficult to predict. I think when we look at the two pages of projects we have here, each one is unique in its own way. And developers have approached them in ways we might not have anticipated. And people come with plans that are larger than we could have even dreamed sometimes. I don't know what's going to pop up tomorrow, but I do apply that pretty strict test and I give them a very candid observation of whether or not I think their project is going to meet that public level of scrutiny. I don't ever stop anybody from moving forward. I just tell them, you know, these are the questions you're going to face. This is the scrutiny that these boards are going to apply here, and this is the public purpose you have to demonstrate here. And if you don't feel like you can do that, you know, I just want you to know what you're walking into before a public setting. So will there be more projects? I'm sure there will be more proposed. The housing component of Brownfield is starting to pick up steam. In our local area, we have at least three projects between the city and Marquette Township. The land bank has been a pretty strong proponent of utilizing these tools. MSHDA has been a very strong proponent of utilizing these tools. And even the NBDC said that if you can do your project under the MSHDA aspect of TIF, maybe you should be looking at that instead because they are much less restrictive and they are making the impacts in areas that the MEDC is not even traditionally focused on. So those projects, those are questions that this body is gonna have to deliberate on in the future, I'm sure, as more and more developments are proposed, but being conservative, recognizing the amount of projects we are sustaining right now, even though I really believe that none of these would have occurred but for the capture element of financing. And this wouldn't be revenue that we'd look at in the city if we didn't approve those plans, but we're still gonna be applying that pretty strict test and recognizing the impact that our current projects have on the future city budget.

Well, I certainly appreciate the diligence in carrying that message forward because I know that's something we've talked about here, but thanks for the insight on kind of looking forward.

And I'll say just in addition, I know this board maybe feels that when a project comes up, it's hard to turn down. I applied that test at the beginning of the project because I want both parties to have a chance for agreement when they come here. We want to be a place that's friendly to development. We want to have good public interactions with the city commissioner and developers because we need investment in the city, every city in the UP. needs constant investment to keep growing. And that's what we're seeing here with these projects. We're seeing investment, we're seeing jobs, we're seeing livelihoods, and we're seeing the city being rebuilt in areas where it wouldn't necessarily have been otherwise.

I know I think we covered the MGH project, but I do just want to kind of highlight that right now and just say that the estimated future city tax revenue of 1.2 is you know, high as well as the DLP, which is, you know, they're both kind of related in some ways. But I think it's really important to note that, and I know that Sean had mentioned it too, but that is still requiring, you know, some consideration from the state. And that only includes the state capture portion for that project to proceed or to actually come to completion. And so, That's a really important piece to the Brownfield, I'd say, portfolio that we have right now. And that is something that is, I don't wanna say at risk, but is one we have to be advocating to the state for that support to make sure that that does occur so that we could see that full 1.2 million in the future for that. Any other comments or questions on Brownfield before we move on to that? So I will also say Brownfield budgets are, I see they might be, they're not included in your binder at this moment. Those budgets are just the, you know, kind of collection and pass-through. There's nothing significant included in those budgets, so we weren't going to necessarily go through those individual funds. But when you do the review, they're tying back to these projects, if that makes sense. Okay. Okay. You covered DDA. Just pause for a moment. All right. Getting back to property taxes again. We do want to just touch on property taxes as our largest revenue source and the fact that it is something that's a heavy burden on our residents and our taxpayers. so um with that increase that we did see um we do say that the average household and again we say average in the average residential taxable value is about 101 000 assessed value 202. this is not a number that necessarily is accurate but it is around this amount um of an average home of 202,000 assessed value. The annual city property tax portion of that is just shy of about 1780, so $1,779, and that equates to about $148.30 per month. So of, but of your total tax bill though.

Is that a real, is that a real starting point at 202? I mean, with everything that's going on in home values and are we just talking about property value versus home value?

Assessed value is, is your, so we need to keep in mind that your assessed value can increase, your taxable value can only increase a certain portion of that. So if you're in your home longer, you would see your taxable value at 101,000, even though you've probably been in your home for 15 years and you would probably say your house is worth 400 or 500 in some cases. So is it a starting point? I guess, are you saying like this isn't realistic?

I'm just wondering if that's a fair average. I mean, it must be because you're using it, I'm assuming, but it seems like everybody that's been in their house for a little bit of time would obviously say it would be higher, but I hope I'm not taking a swing at something that I'm, you know,

Going to regret. So what we can do, and we can certainly find a way to explain how you can calculate your own as well. So if you do look at your own tax bill or your own valuation, you could drop in these numbers and see what you're paying in city taxes and what that monthly amount is in order to get the services that you have. But with this, I just want to mention $148.30 per month. That's a small amount in order to get accredited police department, a full-time fire department that does medical emergency services and even transport as well that's available all the time. There are cities, I don't think we need to remind everybody, there are cities that don't have fully staffed 24-7 medical or fire departments. We have So many awesome trails and parks, so many things that draw in our residents into the core part of our town, and then also our visitors. It also is Presque Isle, a wonderful place, and more lakefront access than a city downstate that I will not say the name of, but more publicly owned lakefront. And that is something that's a huge priority, but we also have snow plowing. I understand that there was a lot of snow this year. Things weren't perfect because it snowed constantly. So it was nowhere to able to keep up on some of this. But we have the best snow plowing in the state. And they even plow the bike path as well so people can continue to walk. And we have 19 miles of sidewalks that we clear as well. We also have community art and events and some fun things that we can do as a community. We have the Citizens Academy that we provide, Police Citizens Academy, public engagement opportunities, capital improvement upgrades that we continue to do each year. Even though it's been scaled back in previous years, still did some improvement. And we have the safest and most secure local elections with the best staff ever running them. So for $148, and that's just to name a few. There are so many more. But $148 a month, that's what you get. That's a pretty darn good deal as well. But going back to what you pay in your full property tax bill, doesn't all come to us. 44% of it goes to the city, 32% goes to education, so that could be state education, schools, ISD, and that is an increase this year. 19% of that goes to the county, and that includes county operations, your veterans, transit, parks. There's a couple that are missing in there as well, medical, things like that. There's also the library and recreation, 1%. Recreation is the Iron Ore Heritage Trail. not necessarily city recreation. So just a good visual to have when you pay that bill. So enough about revenue. Let's talk about expenditures here. And so this is going to be a fun one, probably. I would say maybe more engagement here. So looking at our expenditures and the comparisons from 25 to 26 and 27, Obviously, things are increasing. We do have contractual wage increases that we cover, as well as just the cost of things like health insurance and other benefits that we would provide, what you do see. Of the total in 2027, and it's consistent pretty much through the years, 70% of our costs are wages and salaries and benefits. That's pretty typical for a municipality that provides a lot of services like that. But it also means that our core services that we provide are provided by our biggest assets, which are our people. included in there we do have these are just general fund again so the departments that we mentioned previously police fire our public works are included in there as well they are charged out to other funds as as necessary it's reflected in there and all of your other general government services as well and It's important to note, and while we're talking about salaries and wages and benefits, that working in the public sector in government is very difficult to recruit. And it is one that we handle a lot of services that our residents depend on, some life safety requirements and services. services that promote democracy and continued citizenship, basically, and the handling of funds and enforcing laws and rules. And so it is very much in our best interest to hire quality people and recruit and retain those quality people. And so for our costs to be 70% or wages, That is one that we are investing in people. They're providing the services. It is important that we try to keep our people.

And we run a very lean organization. I struggle to think of anyone in the city who isn't performing at the maximum of their job, and any department in the city that would love to add one to three people on the spot if we had the capacity to do so. But we really work to evaluate each position, very much scrutinize any requests for additional positions, and keep the organization as efficient and lean as possible.

Not that we want to get into too many details either, but there are very few benefits sometimes of working in the public sector. I think we get a lot of flack from outside sources and people that don't necessarily understand government. And so there are very few benefits in working for city government. This isn't helping with recruitment, is it? I'm sorry. This place is wonderful to work with.

Sometimes your immediate earning capacity can be much higher. But when you look at the long-term benefits of public service, you're building a career here. You're building a lifetime of stability. And that's what we offer as a city. And that's what we have to offer to be competitive. We can't fluctuate with the construction markets. We don't lay people off during the winter either. we're able to provide a consistent, comfortable lifestyle for our employees so they're able to do the work of government that we need them to do.

He said it way better. The point I was going to be making on that are the fringe benefits that we do provide and those benefits is really one of those things of working in government that we do have the ability to be offering that the private sector can't always offer. Some of our benefit plans are much better than what you see in the public sector. I know that from coming from the consulting world. I had to pay astronomical amounts for my health insurance, and we're able to negotiate with our providers and find ways to provide a high-level benefit. at a cost, but in order to really be that attractive employment opportunity and provide that if we can't be providing the wages that you see in the private sector. That was my point. Not that I needed to justify your salaries and wages, but it's also just a great place to work too. Supplies and services are just the operations and things in each of the departments. Some of those include your contracts, some of those extra software services, things like that are included in some of these things that are very unique to the departments. If you're interested in going into some of these detail in the departments, I can do that. I'm just kind of scanning to see if there's anybody that wants me to go that level of detail. Not yet, okay. I'll just keep rolling through here. Capital outlay, what I have included in there in capital outlay is really just the number you see in fiscal year 27 proposed includes those one-time projects that I then pulled out in the recommended adjustments on that bottom line there. So that is why it is higher this year than compared to prior years. Prior years, the capital outlay in fiscal year 26 did include the street simp project, but I put that in the transfers out because that was transferred to the street project. I didn't want to necessarily skew that conversation. Debt service is a little bit misleading in this in this table here because it's 904,000, that debt service is only the TELP or the JCI project payment that is directly correlated with the general fund or the general government portion of those projects. So that's why that's there, but the transfers out that you see below the operating budget, includes all debt payments in the other funds that need some assistance in paying that. So those are going to be your street funds, most of your street funds, I would say.

Any special revenue.

Any special revenue funds. And so I'm going to take a moment here just to mention that I believe there's a debt listing that we handed out as well. Most of those debt listings are paid for out of these transfers out here from the general fund.

And we have our debt service slide in a couple slides.

I just wanted to mention that. And Commissioner Davis, you looked like you were going to comment on that. 2037-ish? We'll get to that. We'll get to that in a moment. Yeah. But 2037, around that time frame, yes. That's what we're estimating. So when you look at the transfers out trend from 25 to 27, 26 is higher. That is not debt related. That is the SIMP project in there. And then that also projects out the subsidies that we would be paying to our other funds, which are not included in our 27 proposed budget. So I'm just pausing there for a moment. I did, again, pull out those recommended adjustments in a bottom line there of 1.2 million, just to point it out that the total operating budget expenditures would be 24.2 million. With those transfers out for debt covered payment, that would be about 26.2 million. So I wanna, bear with me for a minute here, but I wanna mention this. If we don't pull out those recommended adjustments, or we did not pull those out, we would be looking closer to the 27.4 number. And that's a pretty large number, because if you remember, our revenues were not 27 million. So any questions on expenditures before I just move on to a little bit more explanation on the comparison? Commissioner Gottlieb? Okay, you will, I'm sure. So, how does that compare to our revenues and our expenditures? So, revenues of 25.8 million, this is where I say the expenditures of 27. Now, going back to the slide, 27 would be with that 1.9, or 1.19. Everybody understand that? Okay. So, 27.4, if we did not pull out those 1.2 million, say recommend discretionary projects is 1.2 million if we take that out we would then be looking at only a net expenditures over revenues of four hundred and twenty seven thousand so what I don't it's not math going up and down like that so what that four hundred and twenty seven thousand is signifying is Our operating deficit, so of pure operations, so when we pull out the $1.2 million of discretionary projects, we're talking about just operating, not necessarily any big projects, any big movement, just operating. We are still short about $427,000. So we're not generating enough revenue to cover our full service of expenditures without any special projects. That's been the story for a long time. that since we've been projecting to use fund balance, again, this is getting to be a very common thing in municipalities because our revenue is so restricted and so constrained on growth. So this isn't a huge surprise. We are in the financial position to be able to continue to use fund balance for these operations in order to await for some other changes or some increase in revenues, some things to roll off. I want to note this that, I'm making sure that this is probably gonna be just headlines of something, but I think it's really important to be proud of how much work we have done to get to the point of $400,000. $400,000 is what we're projecting to use in fund balance. It's really important because five years ago we were talking about six million. I think we presented you to like two million, but there was a point when we were staring down a six million dollar deficit. to get to the point of $400,000 is huge accomplishment. And that is a huge accomplishment from our departments who have worked so hard to make sure that they are operating lean and efficiently and exploring all options for funding and all options for minimizing costs.

I think it's worth saying that if state shared revenue alone had kept up with what it should keep up with, this wouldn't even be $427,000. It would be half of that if it had been the same level as last year, but it wouldn't be existent if state shared revenue had kept up with its responsibility.

So, yes, thank you. That was also, yeah, a big...

It wasn't a jab to say that.

can it be sorry uh can you say more about that so can you explain a little bit about that sure uh mary do you wanna do you wanna do explain it while i pull up a couple numbers for yeah well i just wanted to kind of preface um that all the prior discussions that we've had with you about our long-term forecast why am i

While all the prior projections we had given you had always projected that we would have state revenue sharing increases. So we did not anticipate that we were gonna have a decrease going into, when we were putting the 26 budget together, we could not have anticipated that 27 was gonna have a decrease. Believe what the state was doing over the last year is they're starting to fund the road trust So their argument is is that they're pulling back on state revenue sharing so that they can contribute more to the road program So their their argument has kind of been we're gonna pull back on your general portions to fund your streets So you're gonna have less coming out of your general fund transferring to your streets. That's been their objective Going into this fiscal year their estimates for streets have been incorporated in the street budgets however we have not we've been basing this on estimates we have not seen concrete numbers coming from the state yet so that's why but there's been pullback from state revenue sharing

When you say streets is that highways is it is it streets is it everything?

Local yep program that they're trying to fund now is called their neighborhood road prop fund So that's primarily gonna go into our local streets And that's been notoriously underfunded for years. So there's trying to bulk that fund up a little bit more so

while we're on the street topic here for a moment, while they are taking away from state share revenue to focus on streets, we actually need both. Municipalities cannot maintain or keep up with maintenance of the roads and the streets in their boundaries with the Act 51 funds that are being distributed. We do get a snow distribution. There are a handful of communities that see over a certain amount of snow. They do get a distribution. It's it's delayed I Would say it's delayed by two years essentially so we just saw the biggest snow Snow year in the past what five years I would say maybe nobody know we fact-check me on this one and we received a measly 20 grand Thanks a lot. So, but when we talk about then maintenance, there's not enough of that Act 51 money to cover those maintenance. So it's just, it's a backwards system as well. So yes, we are very grateful and happy that we're seeing those increases with the neighborhood street guns. Oh, sorry. It was 40,000, by the way. But, so we say thank you for the neighborhood street funds that we will be seeing eventually. But we would, We need both. And just before I get to your question, Commissioner Gottlieb, going back to state shared revenue, statutory revenue sharing, so the state's portion of it that can change, that formula has not been fully funded annually since 2001. State shared revenue sharing to local governments has been underfunded by more than $10 billion since 2002. So for the city of Marquette, that would be $12 million underfunded since 2003, nearly 1.5 million per year, which happened to be the whole we had been staring down for consistently two years.

And that's what I mean by state shared revenue living up to its obligations. And I'll point out that there have been legislative efforts to fix this and establish a local government trust fund to codify that shared revenue a little bit more stable. Those efforts haven't succeeded to date. The MML continue to advocate for that. We continue to advocate for that. The MML continues to advocate for higher shared revenue. And really, there need to be some legislative fixes from Lansing to take care of this problem, not just for the city of Marquette, but for all local government within the state.

And there was the legislation that had been, I believe, passed for the trust fund, but that still requires a budgetary commitment and portion of that, which then is left open for negotiations and horse trading. And again, I'm not saying that we are just completely ignored in the funding sources, but with how much local municipalities are now having to take on because of of certain requirements or less funding from federal and state and county sources, we are receiving less revenue for those increase in services and requirements. But good topic and I'm glad we're talking about that. Also state shared revenue that we saw in the revenue section also accounts for the decrease in marijuana tax money that we're seeing as well. That has taken a not surprising decline.

We lost three dispensaries in the city in the past year.

Commissioner Gatling.

Just so I'm sure I'm understanding this, the state-shared revenue decrease I see in the budget we have in front of us, proposed budget, but the road fund increase is not in here, correct?

That will be in the 202 fund and 203 fund, your street fund.

And so that is not in here, but there is an anticipation of perhaps seeing some money for that.

It will be in the street funds though, not in the general fund.

Right, I understand that, but then that can be adjusted later. And do you have any guesses to when and how much that might be?

The last correspondence we got from the state, they would have new estimates for us in July of 26. And if you go to their site now, it still says update in 26. So we're still waiting on those calculations.

Do you have any guess as to how much?

Yes.

Just a guess. While you're looking that up, I just wanted to mention that you said it's not included in the budget, and it will be included in the street fund budget, which would mean we would, at the end of the year, have to probably provide less contribution from the general fund to the street. So it would still have a positive impact on the general fund.

Right, exactly.

You were getting there. Yeah, that's what you meant. I just was trying to...

The estimates we have for fiscal year 26, which is the current year that we're in, is about $824,000. Their estimates for next year, which is also in your budget, is just over one million.

Say that again?

For fiscal year 27, we're looking at about a million, the estimate for that first local street.

Which is?

Neighborhood roads. Nice.

Which is? We need that quadruple 10. Yes. Thank you. Good. That's their estimates. Yep, yep.

Thank you. We need how much? A lot more. About three million?

Yes. A lot more. But it was good. Good conversation on that. So again, if you're going to use fund balance of $427,000 for operating, I feel very optimistic and comfortable with that. one point six million of it I'm not comfortable using which is why we would be recommending some adjustments to the discretionary projects so bear with me when I explain here the the box on the bottom with projects of one point two million the fund balance without those projects is what we see here at seven point three million or seven point two six two million if we put those projects in and used general funds in there the fund balance with those with those projects included would be six million and that would be getting very close to our our bottom minimum requirement for fund balance which we will cover our fund balance policy here in a moment I just wanted to mention that if we're continuing to chip away at it that is that is a trend we can't get comfortable with which is why we would not be recommending going forward with all of that Before we continue to move on here, I just wanted to pause for a minute. Kind of see if there's any questions on this. I know it's kind of hard to say without continuing to move on. Okay. So we talk about the long range forecast. This one is utilized from last year and I'm gonna keep it at this just to kind of show the trends that we were moving towards with our fund balance and if we did not make any changes or if we continue to spend on those projects and not do alternative funding, we would be getting towards spiraling into the abyss is what it feels like if we don't make some of that changes. We'll have more of a detailed long range forecast for you, not on the screen momentarily, but in the next iteration of the budget package. But I wanted to just kind of mention that $1.2 million of projects coming from the general fund is not sustainable this year, which is why we will be talking about the recommendations here in a moment. I just wanted to maybe test the waters here and see if we wanted to take a quick break. Just before we start getting into like some deeper conversation, okay? Do we need to do it for a quick ten minutes ten minutes break five minute breaks? Five minute breaks do they need a recess for a five minute break okay?

Yeah, we're gonna take a Less than five minute break Okay, we need a motion. Let's get back by 1015 It's 1015. Let's resume, hey? Great. Holy wah.

We're just talking about fund balance, right? Before we get into some difficult, not difficult, but just other discussions. Hold on. My apologies. Alright, so we do have a fund balance policy, so I just wanted to maybe go over that real quick as I had. Heard some questions on what that fund balance policy is.

And I'm pulling up the exact words here.

All right, so we have a minimum and a maximum fund balance policy. The minimum fund balance, and I'll have Mary take over here in a moment, is the bottom amount of what our percentage of fund balance should be compared to our expenditures. And if it goes below that, we are to take action to get that above that floor. And then if it goes over a maximum amount, that is one where we need to be considering either spending that down or that's when we would say, okay, maybe we don't need as much property taxes for some of these things. So that is stated in our fund balance policy. What that means, though, for us for... let's go back to this previous slide, for let's say this fiscal year 26, what is the, using our expenditures, what would be the bottom percentage of, or bottom amount we could do?

Bottom amount is 4.4.

So if we were to dip our fund balance down to 4.4 or 4.5 million, we would have to take action to, to, to increase that in order to be within that bottom portion. So at our rate of let's say 1.8 million in fiscal year 26 and then if we were going to be using 1.6 million in fiscal year 27, we would be next the following year be you know barreling towards using another you know 1.5 million in that pattern and that would get us below where we need to be. So making sure we are watching that long term when we look here, making sure we're watching that long term to make sure we don't end up in that projection is where we need to be. So again, this means we are able, we do have enough to utilize the fund balance for things like one-time expenditures or operating within reason as long as we're paying attention to the projection out and how soon we would be doing that.

Does that make sense to me? The low end is 4.47 million. The high end would be 13.3. It would be a wonderful problem to have.

Do you remember if in history we were ever as high as that? I know that would change throughout the years.

I want to say there was a point that we were close, but then we did that. We had done some one-time capital projects, but that was probably before my time.

Which is what it's for. If you're fully funded, it's for the significant investments in the city.

So in 25, we were looking at 9.5 million, knowing that we were gonna need to spend some for capital the following year because we hadn't been doing bonding, we hadn't been doing significant projects. So sometimes when we end the year, which looks high, we are looking towards the future of when we need to be spending those things. Make sense? Any other questions on fund balance and fund balance policy?

I just have one question. When I'm reading this fund balance carried forward, how do I think about that?

Sure. In your budget? In my budget, yeah. So, Mary, do you want to explain fund balance carried forward in there? Are you looking at a specific fund?

I mean, it showed up in a number of funds.

so when we're doing budgeting um we are required to have a balanced budget so our appropriations our expenditures need to agree to our revenues fund balance carry forward is kind of saying that over the years we've accumulated resources assets cash etc and we're saying we want to be able to expend those dollars in order to carry out the expenditures on our that we're trying to allocate for. So in the budgeting world, we say, hey, we recognize that our expenditures are going to exceed our revenues, but we have this resource of fund balance that we want to be very transparent with, that we intend to spend on our prior accumulated resources. Makes sense.

So it will be balanced using fund balance.

Sometimes those can be like bond proceeds where we do intend on expending them over a couple of years. That's where the revenues come in in one year, but we don't anticipate expending it until the following year. So we use that line item to articulate that we're expending a prior revenue. Perfect.

All right. So we recommended adjustments is where we want to be at this point. So if you, I don't know why my, I don't know why it shows up different there, but I apologize for the.

I think you're using a different presentation. I didn't have the unbalanced slide either.

I took that out. But the recommended adjustments that we're going to be talking about are these discretionary projects of the 1.2 million. And so these requests for discretionary projects that will need to be fulfilled at some point. So again, our departments are not asking for lavish things that don't meet the values or the priorities that we're looking at. So they will need to be completed at some point. Of those, we have some mostly facility requests and then we do have a non-facility request. So the facility requests are city hall roof for $500,000, and that is when we, again, have been patching the roof. We have continued to kind of chase some of the leaks around. However, some of this is also looking towards the future of what this building would be used for, knowing that our seniors are looking for a senior center. There's some other improvements that we're looking at as well. Also, there is the Presque Isle Bandshell Restroom for about $490,000. I want to take a moment here to just talk about that because when we talk about needs, this is one that comes with a little bit of baggage. So when the Bandshell was built, the vault bathrooms, very old, and it's kind of past their life were taken down and in that when we built the new band shell there was a code requirement to include restrooms even though it's an outdoor facility there are restrooms nearby there it's not close enough in proximity for this and John I know is back there you probably also correct me on this one but The county inspector did provide us with a temporary certificate of occupancy, knowing that we will be doing bathrooms in the future. So we could utilize the band shell this year. That extension was only for one year, and the number of stalls or fixtures that are required are something around eight. and looking at an estimate that we are trying to fine tune is about $490,000. So the options with that one, when we talk about restrooms for that, would be, is there alternative funding? It's not necessarily a project that is great to be grant funded, but are there alternative estimates that we can be looking at, alternative arrangements, and is this something we can be looking for in extension? I understand that they provided an extension for us with the understanding it would be done immediately within the next year. But this is a pretty hefty price tag that we need to consider. Or do we look at trying to find financing through bonding for this improvement? Moving on to just the next item would be the moose wood roof, which is estimated at $125,000. That is a needed repair and replacement, but we are aware that the organization has been trying to identify other funds, so postponing that would be acceptable. And then, as we heard just recently in the Arts and Culture Committee presentation, A master plan is being looked at, this was postponed from last year for $75,000 and the city staff is recommending, I'd say the city staff from looking at the budget perspective would be recommending to postpone that again until we can either identify alternative funding or until we have the budget allowance for that. So we did talk about alternative funding ideas, excuse me. Looking at that, postponing, and also things like bonding. Yeah, I don't know why it's like that, because it's not what shows up on mine, but.

Yes, go ahead.

Obviously maintenance is a big big deal. I mean leaks and roofing and whatnot can lead to other problems You know kind of kicking down the line, but staff is confident that this is these are in good enough shape that there's still enough life left in the roofing to kind of make it worthwhile and not necessarily cause additional problems. And then follow up question to that, I assume there's other building maintenance that goes on. I hear a lot about road maintenance, but we've got probably a lot of building maintenance that is in addition to that. Is some of that kind of being kind of just kicked down the road as well, or is that included kind of current budgets, you know, as well.

So we are fortunate enough that we can keep up on maintenance, general maintenance in our buildings. One, when we talk about City Hall roof or roof leaks, we do have a fantastic facilities division that does a great job at chasing these leaks, but it is becoming quite tiresome to be chasing that and difficult. And I'm kind of, let's see, I was looking at Mike Shulin, who was here on that. Is it, are we near something like a catastrophic complete failure of roof? I do not, have not heard that. So, and I'm looking back at him.

I don't believe we're the midst of theater. No. It is something that, it is something that needs to be addressed. And Mike is very diligent about keeping us informed of the status of, you know, this facility's roof. But we do want to try and see if there are alternative funding sources for it. And if we can delay this expenditure a little bit, a little bit longer.

Or if we're looking at other improvements that we could be pairing with that large expenditure as well.

And with Moosewood, I think it's reasonable to see what that organization is able to do. They're a very long-term tenant, I think at least 15 years or so. What they're able to do in the building that they occupy for a very minimal cost.

Go ahead.

I'm looking at the arts and culture master plan being pushed off again and whereas I am Completely understanding that we don't plan on underfunding the arts in the city of Marquette. I think this is one that we should Definitely push off based on we just did a master plan They're included in that there are there is still guidance on what they can do and this is just an expense I don't think we have room in the budget for at all at this point

And I want to note on that one. We are currently in the middle of our sustainable tourism management plan that we had pushed off in our budgets previously for, I want to say, three years possibly, which was one that we were really looking at and exploring all ways to continue providing services to our residents and to our visitors. And so that is one that has been pushed off or had been pushed off until this year. And we were able to continue proceeding forward with that. in fiscal year 2026 here. So, for arts and culture master plan, we understand, and this is why, you know, comfortable, you know, talking about it from this perspective of, we had postponed the sustainable tourism plan for, like I said, two to three years. I understand that we are coming, I think, on year 12 of the arts and culture current iteration of master plan, but really looking to bump that because it is a significant expenditure for another year. Knowing, though, that it's gonna move up on the priority list here within the next budget.

Go ahead, Stavis.

Well, first of all, I agree about putting off the arts and culture master plan, but on another topic, it seems to me, if I recall correctly, that in the previous, previously, we have had grants for restrooms. Yes, Sean, like from the passport grant.

Taurus Park, I believe, yeah.

Okay. Is there potential through the passport grant or other grants that we would be able to fund restrooms or at least partially fund them?

I think John's over here John can probably speak on that as well it's it's one thing to say that we are receiving quite a few grants from the DNR and we do rely on those for other park improvements as well so if that is something we seek for for this I'm not sure of the timing we would still need to be looking at possibly an extension request which I'm not entirely sure if they're gonna be willing to entertain that. But then also, it just takes away from opportunity of another facility that we will need to do.

Yeah, I think that's also what I was asking. I don't know what's in the lineup of applications for those grants.

John, I'm looking towards you. Do you have anything to add on that question of grants?

Yeah, so DNR grants, as far as the trust fund goes, the way that those cycles work, it's an April 1st application. And then it usually takes anywhere from six to eight months before you get the grant agreement. So timing-wise for this, based on what the county's given us, that wouldn't work on this cycle. We'd be pushing into past the temporary occupancy period. as far as other um opportunities there's a number of things that we're looking at both passport and trust fund grants for and those will be things that parks and record advisor board will work out in the next year before the grant cycle but but when we look at these we're looking three years in the future and we're looking at um November of 2027 is when they say we can't use it anymore

And if we even consider that

Potential projects that we're looking at for those grant programs.

Yes, certainly. You know, we're looking at the the bog walk as a potential project that has been gaining some traction as well as several others. When you look at the parks and rec master plan, you look at the capital improvement section. There's just line after line after line after line and then and a lot of priorities that are very high. But again, it comes down to the timing is the most pertinent factor.

OK. So one of the things I just want to voice this, if nothing else, I know it's probably going to fall underneath the same umbrella of timing. But six years ago or six or seven years ago when I was on the commission first time, and we knew that the band show was coming to the end of its life and we've got a a moose wood building out there that's probably is old as my grade school which is old if you don't land but you know that the life of those buildings have have really kind of come and gone and one of the proposals that I was really trying to at least get out there was to consider bundling some of these structures or these facilities in order to limit the amount of different buildings that we would have to maintain over time, and potentially bringing the band shell as part of a new most wood, as part of a new welcome center, getting rid of the ice cream shop, and putting more of a hub building out on Presque Isle that would hopefully stop a lot of traffic there. and allow for less tires going around the park. And I'm not doing this for any other reason to say that. I really hope that we can bring this type of idea where if we're going to do something for Moosewood, which is a great organization, but that building has seen its life, and we're going to consider new bathrooms. I mean, is there any kind of joint Ability to grab grants from somebody like a moose would somebody like a DNR or something else that could bring these entities together to help fund One structure versus have two or three outlying ones So just something that I'd love to have further conversation on in the future, but I realize you know, this is one of those things that Probably is not going to fall underneath our one-year timing obviously Thank you for indulging me.

And you're talking about a grander plan for Presque Isle land use, essentially, and I think that's something that John had been talking about. I think that when we did the Parks and Rec master plan, there was some discussion on that, knowing that long-term planning for that is what's needed, where the scale and the magnitude of the things that we would be looking to do exceed what our budget could handle in the next two years, three years. yeah but the focus to me again is to be able to get multiple organizations in one facility that's going to be able to help yes absolutely burden yes absolutely I think that's something that we really rely on the press guy or the parks and rec advisory board to to really kind of coordinate and discuss as well

And I'll just say, you know, a couple years ago, the Banshell was on this list. And we didn't know a way forward for that. And I am incredibly proud and grateful for the donors and the funders of that project who came to the city and produced something that's just an incredibly tremendous asset. for us that really resulted in pretty minimal costs. And you're seeing on this list the leftover costs associated with that structure. But it's far eclipsed by the asset we are able to replace that we didn't necessarily have a financial plan for at first. And so I'm confident that we can move forward and figure out funding for these items. Sometimes it just takes time for that funding source to appear.

And you mentioned something that's really important is the band shell was a community asset that 2.2 or 2.3 million, I don't want to get it wrong, it feels like it's much more than that, but a very significant asset that was funded by the community. And to have a delay in some sort of use would be incredibly tragic and very difficult to really kind of accept when we talk about how much our community has done for that, if that makes sense. So these were listed and we'll show that list again here. These are listed in recommended adjustments for alternative funding and kind of taking those out of the general fund use. So alternative funding that we're talking about would be grants, really seeking out those grants and going hard for those. All of these could potentially be something that could qualify for those grants. Or the alternative funding that could also be included is our bonding conversation that we will be having here momentarily. Some of these do qualify or could be put into that and make sense to be a priority to be put into there. So as we move forward with that. We're just taking a moment to appreciate the presentation Karen put together. So good you won it twice.

Yay!

Look at that.

And ideas is correct.

Thank you so much, Annie. You're the best. All right, so we just talked about some of these recommended things. Let's talk about the infrastructure here, a component of that. Infrastructure comes with a lot of investment, but then also comes with maintenance, okay? So when we talk about maintenance, the things that we are maintaining on a regular basis to make sure that they continue to function, and I'm not even talking necessarily about the reconstruction or investment, the significant portion of that, which would be like the road projects, These are the things that our crews, that our funds are having to maintain. Now, a lot of these funds are coming from Act 51 or from utility funds, certainly, but ultimately these have to be maintained year after year. And the more that if we ever ignore or kick the can down the road, the more expensive the maintenance and the repairs and the investments get for these. So there's a lot there. And when we look at asset maintenance and capital improvement projects, our departments have a system of identifying needs and projects, and I'm thinking with mostly just the utility and street infrastructure, of ranking the needs based off of various criteria such as the current conditions of it, the age of it, the type of infrastructure, and the risk of failure. in the near future. So our departments, engineers really heading this is looking at these, making recommendations for improvements on what is absolutely critically necessary. We then are investing in simp. And this year, what we are really looking at is more investment for some of this reconstruction over the next few years. And I'll get into that strategy here shortly. So when I talk about infrastructure and maintenance, We're covering the maintenance costs for that. We're covering the basic, the keep it running and functioning and making sure that we are not going to be having catastrophic failures. Those can still happen, but we are to the point now we need to be investing in making sure that we're replacing some of these things. We've had several requests for capital outlay tour this year. We're happy to be bringing that back here. We're gonna find a date that works for everybody and everybody's schedule is very, very busy. So we're gonna work on that date here coming up. But in that discussion, we will be talking about those PASER ratings. We'll be looking at the infrastructure or the roadmaps where we see water, sewer infrastructure and the age in that area so you understand where we're going to be heading and what we're going to be looking at targeting and those ranking systems and the funding mechanism for that which we're going to get to here momentarily. Also in capital outlay, it's important that we then talk about the marinas. And I also think it's really important that we visit the marina, at least Cinder Pond, for sure. Because that would be something we are talking about planning for the future of capital improvements and investment. So as much as I know you guys want to talk about it today, what we are going to talk about today is how we fund that. How do we fund that? Oh, and let's talk about debt service, too. But before we talk about how we fund those things, let's actually take a look back at how we have funded these things in the past. What you did see was you provided a list of the bond issuances from the past and how much money that has been invested over what the past, I mean, say, decade to two. And that was exceeding $93 million. And before we get to that, I want to The amount that we have outstanding for debt not including the JCI project would be around 26 million ending this fiscal year 26. And that was, again, coming from a significant portion of about 65 million. We've previously funded all of these road and capital improvements through debt, which is spreading that out and looking for favorable interest rates in order to spread that out and incrementally be paying for that over the years. And we have gotten from 66, almost 66 million, 65.8 million down to $26 million. Also then included in that is the JCI project, which was a $28 million project, which improved and... did some massive improvements and infrastructure and energy efficiency improvements for the total of $28 million. And had we waited on a lot of those improvements, it would have been probably twice as much this past year had we had to wait to do some of those improvements. That is a slow payment process, it feels like. We're at 21.7 million in payments, and that is spread across various funds. But there is a significant portion that is the general government, general funds, that we see the 900,000 debt payments. So that's where we've kind of been. When we look at the debt service payoff timeline, I kept this 25 in there that we just had paid off a significant portion. 26, we're not necessarily paying anything off Significant this year 27 is gonna kind of have some but the big one is 2029 when we see a significant payment reduction or debts retirement there with a three at least three issuances that we see and that's a significant portion of General fund cash that would be able to be reinvested or used to pay off debt

This is all investment right this is all significant investment in the city you know, we really took the 2010s as a whole and pumped as much money into city infrastructure As we as we possibly could and you know It's reasonable to to roll back on that a little bit and sit back and pay off that debt as the payments accumulate, but I just I Each one of these bars represents significant investment into our city.

So while we looked at where things are going to be headed and the amount that we have invested and have been paying off, it's important then to say, okay, what is our possibility for coming up this year in fiscal year 27 and beyond? So we are aware that we have a project that we need to be considering bonding for, and that is the Cinder pond marina project we saw major failure In the in the system area in the infrastructure during this past winter storm Which just highlights the need for that asset which has is beyond its useful life and needs to be reconstructed and we were fortunate enough to get a significant grant from the DNR for 1.7 and We have a matching requirement of 1.7 as well so in order to preserve the fund balance for the general fund, instead of loaning that money to Cinder Pond or using that money as a contribution for the match, we would be bonding for that match, which is acceptable, and then using the rates from the marina to be contributing for those bond payments related to this match. We still have, after we if this is the direction we were going, which is what we were recommending, after we receive those estimates for payments, we would be needing to make sure that we review the Cinder Pond Marina or the Marina funds and those rates to make sure that what they had projected and presented to the city commission for acceptance when we applied for the grant is enough to cover these. And if they're not, we need to be then having a conversation of revision. But until we get those final numbers, we won't be talking about those rates. You wanted to say something?

I don't know, okay.

So because we have Cinder Pond Marina project that needs the matching funds, and we were recommending bonding for that, we are also looking at our capital improvement listing and those priorities and the infrastructure that needs some reconstruction and significant repair. While we look at that, we don't just look at one year of improvements. We're talking about a multi-year strategy. So a larger, perhaps, bond issuance than just what we have seen for SIMP, but a larger bond issuance that covers multiple project phases over a number of years, two to three years potentially. So you will have a number of those listed, or you have all of those projects listed out with the plan of when they would be funded and using those bond proceeds. So not having six projects all in one year, but perhaps maybe we have two projects spread out throughout those two to three years. While we look at that, we are also pairing these with what the enterprise or the utility funds are covering because they do have balances in there that can be contributed to to infrastructure improvements that is built into their rates. That's something very intentional that we have done and it allows us to do some of those projects and do bigger projects essentially that are the reconstruction and the infrastructure underneath. In the capital outlay tour and during that meeting, we would be talking about what those projects would be and what we were recommending or listing as priorities and potentially that strategy for multi-year bonding and what that amount would be. I don't wanna toss out an amount just yet because I don't want you guys to get too excited, but it is more than 2 million. It's not 10 million. But things are expensive, and there's cost. And when we look back at this, That bond issuance, if we're timing that, especially with the 2029 roll off of debt, and we're looking at our capacity for 27 and 28, that does fit in there for payments and that would not be causing us to be financially constrained or our bond rating negatively impacted. But the longer we wait to improve some of these things and address some of these things, the more expensive it will get. Have you seen that before? And we've been hearing it this year, especially when we talk about the potholes. Any questions on that? I'm kind of just giving you a little bit of expectation for capital outlay tour. So you'll probably have lots of questions at that point. And again, I want to mention that Our listings, our capital improvement listings and priorities are ranked based off of data that we track and that we consider and look at. But we also understand that you hear things in the community and that would be the time where we can talk about, hey, I think a really good example of this was Division Street at one point when we were able to resurface that. That wasn't necessarily high on our list. It was really bad. Just because it's really bad doesn't mean it's high on the priority list because it can't get much worse. Or wait, maybe it could. But when we had the discussion during budget, it was mentioned that that is a really terrible road, and we were able to find a short-term solution, but one that went really far. There's some other things that Division Street needs right now, but that goes really far, and was able to make some of those priorities a little bit higher. I think I'm just going to dispel a rumor in the general public that says whoever the mayor is, their road gets redone. But that's not the case. That is not part of the ranking criteria. You were not the mayor and yours was done now. All right, let's talk about some other controversy here. Utility rates, no. Utility rates. As I mentioned, utility rates, the rate study that we had performed was a five-year or multi-year, not five-year, but we looked at a five-year smoothing, 10-year smoothing period for our utility rates. Utility rates have very unique consideration in there for, yes, bond payments and whatnot, but also includes repair, maintenance, and infrastructure costs. So the utility rates that were proposed in the rate study, which I can share that link if you need an electronic version of that or print you off a printed copy, but I know all of you have seen it, has the projected rates for the improvements that we are expecting to make over a period of time. So we are very strongly recommending staying with that rate structure and that rate timeline. So that is what we're going to be seeing here. And yes, that means increases. that there they are increases but that is the projection for the replacement schedule and maintenance schedule going forward and it was also part of when we restructured some of these rates so what we are seeing in the water rate breakdown now there's two components to your what your utility rates water rates let's let's stick with that one your fixed rate and your usage rate fixed rate doesn't change each month right your usage rate changes based off of how much you use so In fiscal year 26, we saw here $11.02 and $13.01 per unit. And what the rate schedule has laid out for the schedule is an increase of $0.38 for the fixed rate, so $0.38 a month increase on water, and $0.46 increase per unit for your usage. Again, that's assuming the standard five-eighths meter size. If you don't know what your meter size is, please look at your bill. It does show you what meter size it is, but this is what's typical for a home. Sewer fixed rate, again, similar with fixed and usage. Fixed rate increase of 53 cents per month and a 67 cent increase per unit for sewer. Stormwater, 1029. This is about a fifth acre lot. So again, look at what you have on your bill. This could be different, especially if you are in an area that has larger lots. I can share all of them, but I didn't want to put too many numbers up there. That's looking at a 31 cent per month increase. Yes, and when you think, yes, yes, it is. there's increases. So what does that look like in a monthly bill or the average bill? We assume again the five eighths meter. We assume an average four units or 4000 gallons per month, so I think it's four. Yeah, four units. And a fifth of an acre lot. Again. Looking at what it was previous year, $63.06 for water. $81.06 for sewer, $10.29 for stormwater. It will now be $65.28, $84.27 average bill, and $10.60. So you will see an increase of what's just over maybe $5, $6 there per month. Yes. Yes.

What's inflation rate right now? Do you know Mary off the top of your head less than five?

I want to say it was like 336 or something like that.

OK, thank you.

And then salad. So annual increase for water, sewer and stormwater annual estimate increase is. Is $69.

Annual increase, so you're basing this off of a 1 5th acre lot. And I'm assuming that's because that's the average size of a lot in the city of Marquette. One-fifth.

Okay. If you guys want me, I can certainly do that for each of your bills if you'd like.

Yes. So it's about 4.5% increase, more or less. How did you come up with the numbers?

So there's a water rate study that was performed by a consultant not too long ago. We updated it.

It was actually a little while ago now. But we updated it.

We did an update.

Yeah. We looked at a pretty significant step up because we were not at the level we needed to be to fund our infrastructure. It was about five years ago the commission came back and asked us to revise that. So we smoothed it out over a number of years. where the larger increases were kind of past that point, and now we're at the maintenance increases. You have to keep up with inflation somewhat to be able to be responsible with these utilities. If you're not, unfortunately, if you're not increasing rates, you're not keeping up with what you need to.

Which is why I pointed out what inflation was at. So, it's not much over inflation. Forgive me, when was the last time we had a water increase? It doesn't seem like all that long ago.

Every year. We've been doing them.

We've been doing them for 10 years.

So the previous rates that we projected out, we had from 23 to 32, and we had to, because of some of the infrastructure improvements that we were doing, and because I believe that COVID years kind of had some stalling and some cost increases at the same time, We needed to catch up during 23, 24, and 25. Those fiscal years had some larger increases. We were looking more at 7% increases in water from 23, 24, and 25. So 26 is when we're starting to have these smaller 3.5% increases, 4% increases for sewer. So an average increase looking closer to the 3% to 4% increase, yeah. And if you want, after lunch I can get the table to kind of review what the plan had proposed and what we've been following for the past few years. Would that be helpful? Okay. But I think it's an important one to note that this plan has projected out More smaller increases for the next few years, but we will be talking about probably making sure we review this because things do change inflation changes cost change needs change. And there are some communities that bake in increases into ordinance or. to policies and I don't necessarily recommend blind 5% flat increases all the time because then eventually you're gonna be too high or too low. So keeping with what we've projected out based off of the assumptions we have and then reviewing those is our strategy.

think this is kind of a another argument for us to really hammer the need for a room assessment some sort that's going to go into the realm of the general fund or infrastructure based whatever designation would be but you know here we sit and for just for keeping getting pounded each year with increase after increase

I mean, you've nailed it too, because this is infrastructure. And infrastructure, we build out for infrastructure for the capacities that we see, but we don't, you don't take just the average. You have to be prepared for the highest influx of capacity. So the things in the infrastructure that we are investing in is for high capacity, which isn't always what we see on a slower, let's say, slower spring day, perhaps, when we don't have an influx of tourists. So, yeah, you've nailed it. There's some of that interest for capturing some of that into consideration, which is what we're discussing so timely in our sustainable tourism management plan. All right, now we're talking utilities, let's talk about the solid waste fee. Last year it was $25, we are looking at an increase of $2.50. But yes, I know, yes, I understand that. And a significant portion of that is our contract with our waste hauler. That is something we've been aware that there's a contractual increase there, but then also there's the cost of providing the services that this fee covers. So if you remember, last year was a big change because we went to the all-cart system for recycling and rubbish. So this year is a little bit more consistent. But I'll bump back to here for the total in a minute. But here, the solid waste covers a lot more than just our curbside waste pickup, which includes not just waste, but recycling as well. That also covers the drop-off site. that we have that we run the leaf pickup spring and fall leaf and brush pickup and Then the compost sites and then the miscellaneous stuff like the holiday trees or other, you know garbage can type things that we have to cover so this year we are really closely monitoring the expenditures in here because There have been significant increases with the tipping fee at the landfill for the past few years to the tune of 44% increases so City of Marquette is the largest contributor into to that so we will be seeing the largest impact and that is something that is a little bit more variable because by ton but it's it's one that we're watching very closely and sometimes we have to to to be anticipating mid-year increases we've seen and then being counting for some of their other improvements that they have to But I will also say that recently we were successful in keeping that spring and fall leaf brush pickup low for this next year because we were able to avoid a tipping fee on the leaf and brush that we would be dropping off at the landfill, which they were proposing to charge us $20 a ton. and fortunately they understood that a bulk of that that we almost all of the the brush that we bring is from our residents and they um they understood that and heard that and decided not to proceed with that that would have equated to another sixty to seventy thousand dollars and we would be talking about something other than how do we continue with it

but for the advocacy from our representatives on that board and Karen who's kept a very close eye on that authority that would have been a reality right now thank you for that one of the things that I think it's important to understand when I when I get phone calls from constituencies

where do these services really benefit us? Are the leaves in my yard, do I deserve to have them picked up by city staff and not deal with them myself? And then the conversation for me switches quickly to what if we don't? and what happens to our infrastructure if we just let these things go, you know, and ultimately the dollar gets put in a different category of maintenance, right? So I think it's really important for us as commissioners to always make that point to people that are bringing that up. To me, initially it would be a luxury because, you know, I'm entitled to have my lawn waste picked up when truly it's because we're looking out for the betterment of our infrastructure and what the impact of that stuff would have if it went down our sewer drains and things like that.

When we talk about the drop-off site especially, that's a really good point. The drop-off site is sometimes tedious to run. It is, you know, you see an influx, you see slow times, you have to staff it. Sometimes we hit capacity really quickly too. But if we do not offer that service, then we would be seeing a lot more stuff on the curb. We would see stuff dumped. We would see things, you know, burned. Yes. So it is in our woods. Certainly, and that is one that we feel very strongly about, but that is in line with one of our top priorities that is identified in the master plan and in our strategic plan on preserving the things, the natural resources and assets that we have. So all of these are very much a part of that, so everybody does benefit from that. And I will say that we would be, you know, The biggest portion, 53% of that, is our contract with waste management. That includes garbage and recycling. That includes carts. That includes a portion of that as well with, I think, the tipping fee in there too. So that is just one we're continuing to watch in the future, especially as we get towards the second half of the contract and look at what future services are exploring to be. And this is the one that we hear the most probably from.

Well, I think it's worth saying, you know, I've seen many comments like, oh, I pay so much less for waste disposal in a different area. And people don't recognize how much is included in this solid waste fee. And from my experience, our residents have a very high expectation of these services. And they really rely on them. And I can say that because if anything is interrupted, if anything is delayed, they are calling us they're calling you um we know how valuable the you know leaf and brush pickup is and then the availability of rubbish and compost drop-off is is very high to the to the residents of the city and that it can't be understated that you know those take up a decent amount of the cost for this fee but i do think people are getting you know the services that they need to pay for it's a service that everybody receives weekly and um

it's really hard to get 52 out of 52 weeks perfect so there are there are some imperfections with that and I'm not saying we should settle by any means but that does mean that we do have some some some expectations that you know we let's see how good we can get it 52 out of 50 but knowing that we're gonna have a couple of a couple of days or weeks that aren't so great So looking back at the example monthly bill, the total annual increase for solid waste is $30 for solid waste over the year. So $250 a month increase. And I do want to recognize, I don't want to glaze over the fact that your total utility bill for the year, you're going to see just shy of $100 increase. And I want to say that we don't look at that lightly. And I want us to make sure that we recognize that along with you know, increasing in property taxes as well. It is. It is a lot of money. Any questions on utility bill? Great. All right, we we were gonna. That is kind of the end of our budget. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. What's the total? That would bring in how much do you think in that revenue?

You're talking about water and sewer and garbage.

Okay, so

Water, sewer, stormwater are enterprise funds and utility funds. So when we look at revenue and expenditures for those funds, they are a little bit different than how we analyze and look at our general and rubbish fund. So if we want, because it's earlier in here, towards the front, is the utility, the rubbish fund, which is 227, yes, but that is page... Pardon me. Page 41 is sanitation. And it's a little difficult to compare year to year because we have changed the revenue structure and the fee structure because we have different fees to cover tipping fees and in contract fees, so you're looking at Without that fund balance carried forward last year. We did subsidize

Doing some math. Among all the funds between the increased expected budget for sanitation, stormwater, sewer, and water, it's looking at to be about a $450,000 total among all those funds revenue increase. So it goes from roughly $13.8 million to $14.3.

Thank you.

Is that what you're looking for?

Yeah, it was actually twice the number I was guessing.

It's important to note, too, in fiscal year 26, the current year, we did keep those fees lower because we had the change in services and change in carts. And so we did essentially plan to subsidize that by $500,000, which we planned on when we built up that fund balance in order to stabilize those rates, but then also account for the change over to carts.

The major reason for our tipping fee increases, if I'm not mistaken, is because of the water treatment plant that they're being forced to implement. Is that correct? Or PFAS issues?

That's the most recent increase. There have been previous increases in there that are just cost of service increases.

40%?

That was over a few years. Okay. That was over probably three years.

And every other month we're getting a notice that the tipping fees are going up yes. I'm not an expert in our rates and recycling isn't nearly what it where it needs to be in order to. Recycling eyes the the recycling facility that we just built out there. Because you first don't know how to recycle some for some reason.

The city of marquette doesn't. They went. The city of Marquette does. I think we're the largest consumer or a contributor to that.

And I want to recognize that it's difficult to transport that kind of material sometimes from those farther away townships to the landfill or to the recycling center. And that's something that we can't fix, but there are opportunities and grants that are out there that the state of Michigan has really been pushing to increase recycling here. And the county has, or the landfill authority really has been pushing for that, that would essentially try to make it easier for people to recycle. So, you know out I'm thinking out like the outskirts the edges of the county I I'm not even sure that they have you know door-to-door service that can be offered You know financially feasible and especially in the winter so I don't know what so they don't know how to it's just not as easy But yes, I do think that there's going to be some changes and improvements and the materials management um requirements the part 115 requirements that are coming up that is a county you know it's going to be a county-wide you know requirement to increase recycling to a certain point and that's gonna that's probably gonna bring some improvements around the on the board but yes city of marquette i would say is safe to say that we lead the way for recycling Future projects in that realm is looking at compostables and the food waste and how we can start improving our food waste and making sure that that is staying out of the landfill and is composted in a way that's useful for our environment and for the landfill. So that would be something we could be seeing shortly.

Any other questions on that?

Before we say break for lunch, we're a little bit ahead of schedule, but are there funds that you would like me to address or specifically go through? I don't want to bore you with any of the details that you want, but are there certain areas that you would like to discuss or certain funds I could highlight or cover or direct you towards? I'm just giving you a moment to look. I'm just waiting.

The biggest one that I was looking to kind of micro analyzer get into the weeds with was a little bit more on the road maintenance side of things, but I think I think we've done a good job of getting into it. But if you want to take a deeper dive, I think that's a very important one to her.

So there are major and local street funds that are pages 32 in your special revenue tab. And then it's that page 32 is your. major street funds Largest revenue source is that Act 51 funds?

Are you talking about road maintenance line?

Okay

Well, I was thinking I just want to really kind of hammer home. And I don't think we're there yet from not mistaken, but you know what we're going to be doing with our road improvements.

Yeah, sure, absolutely. So in major and local streets, so funds 202 and 203 starting on page 32. And these, again, major revenue source or really the sole revenue source on this one is coming from Act 51 funds or state funds. And then the general fund does typically have to contribute or kick funds in there for debt service. And sometimes, especially in our local streets, because we get less revenue from local streets, that is usually coming from the general funds. And that's to cover just basic things that we're doing or maintenance in there. Just to mention, and I think that this is one point I wish I did have included in there, is we see about, you know, I would say probably just a small increase, less of $10 per capita in our Act 51 funds. We're seeing just shy of $10 more than last year. And so there is a small increase in that. And then again, like I said, we're waiting on some of those other things. But it's not a lot. If you think about it, it's a per capita, $76.31 per capita is what we receive for major streets. Local streets, we receive $25.44 per capita, so about $100 per capita for our roads each year. I think I drive a lot more on those than $100 worth, right? When we look at total revenues for that, and that is including the general fund's contribution for debt, we're looking at about $3.4 million. The general fund contributes about $700,000 for debt, so if you take 700 off of that, you're only looking at about, what, 2.5-ish million in revenue that is meant to go towards maintenance of our streets. In the street funds, so that's revenues for major streets. In the street funds, we do have things like routine preservation, we have construction, routine maintenance, non-motorized maintenance, winter maintenance, business routes, we do have separate on there as well. So that is basically what our people are doing in order to keep those, that preservation, that maintenance and winter maintenance in there. So what you see in 27 in this budget is just the maintenance portion of that. Improvements, we will be talking about in the capital outlay. And that would be more of the construction type.

So when we get to that point, maybe it would be, I think it's beneficial to talk about with our pace of ratings and how that whole thing works, what does it mean because the recommendations from this year are different from last year for different streets, and that list probably has the majority of those roads still on the list. So where does that put those when it comes to the projects that get recommended for this year? when it for the just for the general public so that we can understand hey yeah we know it needs to get done and it's it's number three on the list but there's six other roads seven other ten other roads ahead of you from the last three years that we are are backlogged so that's something that i'd like to make sure that we kind of talk about when when it comes time for that

Absolutely, that is what we're planning on talking about in further depth with Mick and their engineering department on What how we consider that and what that looks like and you can even compare the maps We'll have those maps for you which show the various roads the conditions And the infrastructure conditions as well and those are all taken in consideration when we look at ranking of those projects and sometimes I think it's it's you know a good point to remember is sometimes the worst road is isn't first on the priority list. And the reason for that which is shocking is, like I said before, it's bad. It needs replacement already. It doesn't need more replacement the next year. It just continues to need replacement. Whereas we have roads that right now are getting to be rough and maybe if we did this routine maintenance or this extra maintenance even like what we did with patching or I would say resurfacing, we can extend that life by another two years for a minimal amount versus having to do a complete reconstruction right now. So sometimes the worst road is not the first on the list. Oftentimes it's not. But we're looking ahead at what's greater and more costly if it fails. So that will be discussed. Any other funds or questions specifically before we break for lunch and then go into strategic plan? I do, if you don't mind, that one thing I did not incorporate into this was when we talk about equipment and I really wanna make sure we mention that because I do have Dwayne here and he does a phenomenal job, his crew does a phenomenal job at keeping things going for a lot longer than they probably should, than we ever expected because they do do some pretty miraculous things. But I also wanted to touch on how we fund those. So that is the motor pool fund specifically where all of our equipment and vehicles are are accounted for and the use and the maintenance of it is accounted for is in fund 661 which is it in the internal service revenue fund and it is page starting on page. 88 page number 88. OK so. I apologize, I don't have the total number. If we wanted to replace everything today, what that cost would be. Obviously that's not feasible, but I do like to have that kind of that number there. I just don't have that handy right now, but what we're looking for fiscal year 27 is the purchase of equipment and that includes the purchase of. Excuse me, a plow truck. Slide-in sander and a dump truck, right? Nope. Municipal tractor, plow truck, and slide-in sander. I'm sorry. And that is a total of $725,000 for equipment purchases. Yes.

Didn't we just buy a plow truck? We needed another one. We needed two. How is that other plow truck working that we purchased?

The new one?

No, the one we, well, I mean, I feel like we bought one after that one too. Yes. But the one that we had to refurbish.

Would we like to you are you feel? Yeah, just from here.

I can bring the mic over. Oh, that's right. I forgot. Yes.

Thank you. But while we're about to touch on that, the revenue that comes into motor pool funds in order to make those purchases and continue to do those improvements for those pieces of equipment come from all the various funds that use them. So in the general fund, you saw rental revenue for the vehicles. And for like when we use the fire trucks, there's contributions in here so that annually that money can be used to stow away to purchase or invest in and then continue to maintain. So when we say something like purchasing a plow truck, it's not coming directly out of the general fund all in one fell swoop. Sometimes it does, but it's coming out of our funds that we put into the motor pool fund, which is how internal service funds work.

Where is that? Where is it loaded? Where is it noted that we're buying that 8989? Got it, thank you.

So question on. Purchase of. Plow trucks last year.

So the used plow truck that we bought, because of the way the winter was and how quickly it started, we were going really well on it. We pretty much had to stop and take care of the stuff that was out running. So right now it is almost finished. It'll be ready for this winter, and it's a good thing because the other plow truck we ordered, the Peterbilt, was supposed to be ready in March, then it was July, now it looks like it's gonna be September. So we are not gonna have that truck up for this year. There's no way it can happen, because we still have to outfit it. So that's where we're at on those trucks and then plus the new truck we're gonna purchase.

Now, forgive me if I'm wrong here, but I do believe when we purchased the one that you guys are fixing right now, we were told we have to buy one right now. We absolutely need one for this winter. There's nothing else you can do. You have to spend this money and pull it out. And you're saying it's still not working?

That is correct. Okay, thank you. But there's several reasons why it's not working. We waited too long because we were looking for something used, and just the way the winter went and everything, and we were short two guys, and it just...

everything when things break down you got to prioritize what you got to have out so and that is a dual use kind of a truck as well when once we have the full fleet of plow trucks that is able to be reused for something i believe is which is why you went with that right so we bought that we were going to put a sander on it a actual bolt-on sander

Now we're gonna put the slide-in sander in there because during snow haul with our trucks being so old and the breakdowns we have, it'll be nice to have another truck that if we need it, we can just slide the sander out and it's already ready to go for a dump truck. So it's kind of a good thing that it didn't get ready because now we can shift gears without having to revamp the whole truck.

Is a municipal tractor a loader?

It's sidewalk, those sidewalk plows or snow blowers.

How were those sidewalk plows this year?

We had some breakdowns, and the problem is nobody in the U.S. makes one, so you've got to go to Canada, and with the tariffs and coming over the border, sometimes we waited weeks on end for parts, and it doesn't matter who you buy it from because it all comes from over there, so it's It's one of those things, but our guys did a really good job of doing what they could and trying to keep everything up and running as best we could.

We were very fortunate to have some of the luck, but also mostly the talent that we had in order to get some of these things up and running and working. That was something that, you know, when one went down, it was, okay, how much magic can we perform on this to get working? So you did a great job.

Oh, thank you.

And being down and short on staff, you did a phenomenal job too, Matt.

Yeah, that's all the guys. Yep.

While we're on motor pool fund, I do just want to also point out on that we do a lot of this work in-house, and we rely on the expert and the staff that we do have with the talent. And it is hard to find mechanics that can work specifically on the type of equipment that we have. And so it's really amazing to see what they can do. It's one of my, I would say, probably favorite divisions to kind of brag to some that are doing a tour on. I love all of them equally, but it is one that is so easy to brag because if we think about the type of places that we live right now, having to send out a piece of equipment to Green Bay takes time away from that piece of equipment being utilized on our roads. And downstate, I would say in another community closer to a Metro Detroit area, you have more options for mechanics, you have more options for specialty equipment or even dealerships. We don't have that here. So it is so important when we look at our mechanics and when we look at the work that they do perform, how lucky and how fortunate we are to have them here. And the type of work that they perform is just truly amazing.

And that's something to be stated too is, you know, we look at a metro area, we look at smaller cities. I mean, they have a lot of opportunities for regional cooperation, regional resources, county support. We're on an island up here. I mean, we're the big municipality. We're the ones who are expected to have all the resources. You know, cities of an equal size in other places might not have the same teams that we have because they can just take their equipment to a centralized mechanic shop that specializes in that. We've got to do it all ourselves, and we have to recruit the right people to do that for. And I'm very grateful for the people we have working in our mechanic shop and the good work that they do.

Yes. That sounds like a good note to end on with that one. Any questions on the motor pool and the fleet and the piece of equipment we're looking at? This was not what it started off as. This is what was reasonably adjusted to, and I am very, very grateful for Eric and Dwayne. Yes, I told him to ask for everything that they wanted and needed, and he thought I had a sense of humor. No, he did have these already ranked and ready to go. All right. All right, are we good to break for lunch and then move on to strategic plan after this? Are there any pieces of information or charts or information you would like me to have at lunch that I can gather that we covered today that we thought, hey, you know what? That one chart you always have is handy. Is there any of that?

I'd like all of them.

All of this?

What? I'm a visual learner, and I would really appreciate it. It doesn't have to be today even. You want this? Yes.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'd like to have it just for reference.

Absolutely. We will be sending that out today. Great.

Okay. How much time do we need for lunch?

Did we have budgeted for lunch? Did we say?

I don't think at least an hour.

It's 11.30, so do you want 12.30 or would you like one?

12.30 is fine by me.

Sounds good.

So long as your other afternoon session can be here for it. Yep. Great. Okay. We are recessed until 12.30.

that we are approaching in a different light, but also very much in mind that we need to be investing in things. So, yeah.

Yeah, as I know for the last probably five, six years, bonding has been kind of a very taboo topic with all of you. Thank you for that. We've done some very significant improvements on paying down that bonding by deferring so many projects. So, I think for the last couple of years, this has come onto our radar of we need to invest in some of our infrastructure. and the cash flow isn't keeping up yet, so when is it time to bond? I will have to say that when we moved forward with the waterways grant, that was kind of the catalyst to be like, okay, if we're gonna do it, this is the year to, really start that conversation. So I have been talking with our municipal finance advisors. We're getting some comfort level of what that borrowing capacity is going to be. They've been very impressed with our ability to pay things down. They say, you know, we're looking really good. So now we're just trying to make sure that we find that sweet spot for how much we can borrow without impacting negatively our bond rating, which is something we also want to make sure that we preserve. and we've come up with a few figures but the goal is that we kind of want to make sure that our debt service payments stay very flat so you know as karen was mentioning earlier you see that we're going to have some significant uh debt fall off in fiscal year 28. if we can strat strategically issue in a time where we can make that payment very um just as flat then we're um Yeah, it's just trying to make sure we got the timing right. So we are looking that this fiscal year 27 would be a good opportunity to bond, do a significant amount, and try and capitalize on that gap that we are going to be facing in 28.

So because none of this has happened, at least in my tenure, can you break down how a bond, how we go about bonding and paying went off real quick as far as timing-wise afterwards? Is it... Is it like a home loan where we get a packet and we're paying this much a month? Or is there a penalty for paying early? What's a typical longevity of a payment plan, something along those lines?

Yep. So we want to make sure that the bond is as long as we have the asset. So we're kind of looking at like a 20-year bond we would typically go out for. Right now we're talking about structuring that bond repayment that we would actually probably have one year of being interest only so that when we start paying off the principal it falls in line with that fiscal year 28 when we start seeing that the old bonds fall off. We also want to time this out so that once we've identified our projects that we aren't issuing too early where we have we have assets sitting in our in our In our bank for too long because we want to make sure that we spend these down in a certain time period, too so Yeah, we're looking at trying to make sure that we have everything set up to issue probably around January to March so that we're in line for those construction expenditures that would be starting with the marinas next spring and and then uh... we're working with engineering department for what other street improvements and other things on that capital improvement plan we can start knocking down for the next two three years

You do receive an amortization table that shows you the years and when those payments are and what to expect. That is how we budget, but you don't typically have that until you realize what you are spending and interest rates and schedules and things like that until you get closer to the issuance.

And we have to make sure we identify those projects that we're bonding for. We can't just say, hey, we want this dollar amount and we can allocate it how we want. With the type of bonds that we go out for, we have to be very specific about the projects that we're financing for.

Forgive me for interrupting. I just want to make sure that the people at home aren't looking at a screen that says lunch break.

Sorry, yes.

Because I know there's a ton of people that are dialed into this this morning.

We're going to just pause right here for a moment.

Do you have an estimate on what a significant amount is?

One in two, less than 10.

I want to be careful of what we say, because I don't want everybody to salivate about how much we could be levying. But again, we're trying to do it within a way that we're not... Right, yeah. We want to make sure that we can... And with that, I'm pretty comfortable with what we can move forward on with projects.

Having never gone through this before, is it too early to ask you, like, what are the basic steps that you would be following to get a bond?

Yep. So, we kind of started that. We start conversations with our municipal finance consultants, and they work with our, with the legal, the bond attorneys. And that's part of why we engage them early on because, It's expensive to bond, so we want to get a good idea of how much it's going to cost us to go through an issuance. Then there's a lot of, once we identify the projects, that helps us to identify what funding sources are there. So each project that we get into is going to have some allocation towards our utility funds. some allocations towards our like our street funds so there's just a bit of structuring they have to go through there then there's a lot of public notice and then we will go to selling the bonds so there's me a process where we start that actually our municipal finance will go through that where they're gonna actually seek out the investors that want to buy and this debt of the cities and then they Go through the closing once we find the best rate and the best investors And then they will close the bonds out to us, which means we'll get our money and then we can start using those funds We have about a three-year window usually to expend those funds down What is the role of the City Commission in the residence? to authorize the debt

So that's the city commission vote?

Yep, because these are going to be backed by the full faith and credit of the city. So basically, we're pledging our tax dollars to paying these down.

Do the residents have any say other than public comment?

That will be all part of the public.

Is there a public hearing specifically for these?

Yes. There is a public hearing, yes. Yep, yep.

When we say residence and debt as well, there are options that we've discussed in previous years in talking about debt, and that was talking about debt millage, which is specifically tied to a millage that is raised by the public or by the residents or taxpayers. That is not what we're talking about here. This is talking about just municipal and the general obligation, which, yes, is still taxpayer dollars, but it's not specific millage that's identified for that. That's just general operating.

It would be the city commission that ultimately has the say so.

Yes.

So we need to bond. We have to bond for the project at the marina for the one point seven match. And you're talking about a 20 year bond. Are we confident that that those improvements in the marina will last that 20 years?

You didn't see John shaking his head.

There are multiple. Well, and let me just, and as I understand it, that bond will be, that debt will be paid off by the Marina funds, correct? Yeah. Okay. So, but my question is still the 20 years with the Marina.

There are multiple ways that we can bond for projects. Okay. there and this but this seems to be the most strategic way by lumping this in with a with the rest of the projects that we want to do for the city this seems to be the most efficient way to take care of that financing need it's going to be more it will need to be more of an internal discussion that we'll have to have to make sure that those fees are covering the debt service that we will be allocating to the marinas

Wouldn't it be fair to say that if we were just looking at the marina for bonding, we wouldn't need anywhere near 20 years?

It could be different, yes.

Any other questions on that? I'm glad that we had a little bit more time to kind of dissect how and why and the process for that.

And the conversation will still keep going. I know this is new for a lot of you, and it's something I guess I want y'all to be comfortable with too. So yes, ask the questions.

Won't necessarily be a test at the end here. All right, moving on to, yes, go.

Question, I guess why don't we, I mean, it's an option too um that was something that i mean that is still an option yeah but

It would create a situation where we're limiting the ability to cover operational or unexpected needs in the future. It would strap us thin very quickly. It's ultimately, I think, the goal of everybody to always be able to pay cash for something like that, but there's a long lead time to build up those types of reserves. And it sometimes isn't incredibly popular because residents and taxpayers are seeing you starting to build a fund balance before you're about to spend a project or for a project. But it would be strapping us then to the point where we would be under our minimum of fund balance.

I also think it offers a level of accountability to bond for it because we're pegging that to those marina fees and it's very clear that we need enough money collection from those marinas to cover those payments. I've seen boards in the past that have a tendency to kind of forgive the debts that they've issued to themselves. And even special assessments has been a problem where we'll special assess a street, for the improvements we're making and then a couple years down the line you have some turnover and it's decided well you know maybe we just cover that from other funds and we stop making you know those people carry that burden um and i think long-term bonding with this really pegs it to creating a sustainable marina fund and making sure that those rates are covering what needs to be covered to improve the facility

I have a vague understanding of the difference between a millage and going out and getting a bond, but I would like to hear your reasoning for not pursuing a millage and going out to the bond funds.

A millage would be more taxes for everybody. And at that point, you're looking more for almost even an unlimited bond or unlimited millage, a bond millage, so that it would be variable every year. And if financially there's an issue with the economy, you would start seeing these millages spike potentially. And it needs to be voter approved. I do not think at this point our community has, our taxpayers have the capacity to pay any more in taxes.

And bonding is getting a loan essentially to cover something. Millage is a property tax increase. And we really try and make the users of these individual recreational facilities, especially something as niche as the marinas, pay for the facilities they're using versus having the entire city you know, user base paid for that.

I just want to be clear. I knew the answer. Yeah, yeah. I wanted you to say it out loud. Oh, good. Okay, good.

Thank you. Yeah, and I think, well, and I think it's really important, too, with issuing bonds and not being backed by a millage specifically. That allows us to explore opportunities for revenue generation that, for people who do utilize some of that infrastructure, that may not be taxpayers. And so that would free it up in, if that does become available, then we can be dedicating some of that revenue to the general operating, which would be covering these debt payments as well. Yes. There are several, it's probably the first year that we haven't talked about other options and other revenue generating resources that include taxes, mostly because it's just not feasible from what we see in our community. But there are other millages that can be explored. We are at our capacity for levying anything for operating and for other specific things, but you know when we talk about special assessments that is something that if it's very much tied to a specific service for a specific area or specific benefit for a specific area that is something we've always had but we do not feel it is an appropriate time to be discussing something like that for an increase that's why you didn't really see it this year so good questions and good point anything else on that while we move into strategic plan review all right so it is um you know really an excellent uh practice to review the strategic plan with the budget at the same time because these are these priorities are leads us into the decision making that we we present to you and the recommendations we present to you in the budget and so if you remember just not too long ago we were meeting and discussing and coming up with a strategic plan and approving that in fiscal year 25 leading up to 26. and so here you do see the strategic priorities and you know government excellence i think is one that we we see frequently in strategic plans, but it is something that really allows us to continue to improve and strive to increase certain things like strengthening our fiscal stewardship, having high performing collaborative workforces, professional development, and seeing the value in that. improving communications within the organization. So really looking at the assets that we have in here and being able to provide those excellent services out to our community. Economic development and prosperity really I think we kind of all know this definition, but it's really trying to take that reputation, identity, and really growth of the city and of the community and making sure that we can continue to sustain that type of growth. I'm talking about some tourism stuff here. looking at what other economic opportunities exist, how we can capitalize on that, looking at activating some underutilized areas and parts of our community or town, maybe some of these commercial corridors we see, and really fostering that entrepreneurship and regional collaboration there within our community, whether it's within the city, and then looking at a broader strategy with the region. That is where you're probably gonna see a lot of those legislative tools and advocacy sections that we'll get into and looking at even infrastructure in there because that is an important part of economic development prosperity and really tying that into how that keeps us to continue to invest in our community and grow in the right ways. community engagement. This is something I think all of you are so passionate about. If I'm reading the room and reading the things that you do correctly here, but really looking at that transparent form of government and that transparent communication on how we make decisions, how we go about looking towards the future, and making it something where people feel welcome to come and ask the questions, come and hold people accountable, but really try to get the community to understand this. And we'll get into that. The top of mind that I think of is really the Citizens Academy and the Police Citizens Academy, and we'll talk about that. a little bit here shortly. Health and recreation and environment. We just talked about public spaces. We just talked about our natural assets and some of the amenities and facilities that we do have that really fosters that recreation and environmental stewardship in there. This is what we're talking about when we're thinking of the climate action plan. So looking at how we keep our people, our infrastructure, and our place really healthy and happy and able to grow. And we'll talk about some of those goals here. Mobility management. I just had a conversation with the mayor on some mobility improvements here. But this is for everybody. This is talking about things like prioritizing snow removal in certain areas for children, for school, for students. for people trying to get into town, really enhancing some of that walkability for everybody or that bikeability or any type of micromobility and looking at bike infrastructure. We just saw some really cool things happening on the bike path or on the multi-use path with those line painting. Those are the things we would be talking about in here. And then public safety. Public safety is really an area where that emphasizes and reiterates that trust and transparency and that service. And I think it really goes to say that we have invested a lot in those efforts for public safety. in not only police and fire, but on waterfront safety and really trying to promote this community to be a place where you feel comfortable, safe, and happy to continue to live and grow. And so yes, this one might be a little heavy on the police and fire, but it's really talking about a broader public safety component. So with that being said, I wanted to go into just some of the key metrics that we talked about or that we identified and had adopted into our strategic plan. So we broke them down in previously in the metrics, we broke them down. And if you'd like, if some of you have computers or laptops, I can have Annie send you a link to the strategic plan document on our website. Or I can possibly get some of those printed for you if you'd like to follow along real quick. And I apologize for not doing that. I thought that was just something you always carry in your backpacks or whatnot. So do you want me to shoot out a link real quick? Would you like that? Would you would you like and you know any type of printed version? Okay, perfect And for anybody who is watching or the public that doesn't have the ability to get the link emailed to them This can be found on the city's web page The easiest way or at least the quick way that I usually do it is going into departments going into community development planning And then there will be a link for the strategic plan. It is one of the top box to the right. And then you can follow along if you'd like. I do have points on here, but sometimes it's nice to refer back to the details. So we did categories then by some goals or things that we would identify that could be and we would strive to have done by 2026, in 2026, by 2027, in 2027, and so on through 2028. But then we also have some kind of continuous ones as well. These were some rough targets, trying to judge what our current workload and priorities were, but then also knowing that things happen in the middle of the year, right? And other priorities that kind of come up throughout the year, other specific issues or projects kind of sometimes take precedence and zip in there a little bit before, which sometimes we can't get some of these things done timely, but looking to get these done by the end of the strategic plan still. So some of the things we identified by 2026, we have some of these that we've really started and done significant work on, and some of these we've kind of started dabbling in but really haven't taken a hard start on that. So that first one you see, which is establish the questions guidelines for staff through supervisor reviews, that part is part of government excellence. That was really looking to kind of have this regular opportunity for staff and supervisors to have an open conversation and ensure there is some open communication and constructive feedback both ways. So really having that ability to talk things out and find out how we can best be serving our employees and other people in the organization. That priority or metric has really taken kind of just a little bit step back as we were working on some other reviews, and I think negotiations are this year, too, so there's some structure.

I was gonna say, we've had a lot of labor discussions over the past year, and our HR manager, Laura Steele, and I need to sit down and work on this project a little bit more.

Instead of winging it and just trying to see what would happen, we really like to do things a little bit more structured on this to make sure that it is effective, but it is something we still look to strive for in this strategic plan timeframe. We did start working on the updated economic development plan that is part of actually our RC certification. This one is an important one that I think we'll need some real serious attention to in the near future to really kind of revamp that as we start seeing the the finalization of the Innovate Marquette initiatives and what that next phase for them looks like. But then also housing really has been a big part of economic development lately, especially at the state level. And so trying to revamp that and look at our economic development plan with some fresh eyes and maybe dedicate some more resources towards a very robust plan for that as we head into kind of our recertification for RRC. So that one is in process. And then we have also started, we have sought input and research for climate action and adaptation plans. So we are working with the Rural Leadership Fellowship program and have somebody that is working on, we've heard that initial presentation and working on that. So we've identified that in a unique opportunity and partnership and have made some good start on that. In 2026, again, I'm gonna kind of just run through quickly so we don't spend too much time on these, but there are some I wanna point out. Start the research and input on that sustainable tourism management plan. We're on that, we're working on that right now. The final product we're looking at would probably be January by the time that's finalized and requesting adoption. So the steering committee's meeting for that, we've had one meeting and we're now having some department meetings related to that. That one is one that we've pushed off for a number of years. And really I wish we could have done it sooner. So we could have gotten even further ahead on this one, but we are in a really good time for this because there's a lot of energy and conversation happening. And we've had a lot of success with the events and some of the efforts here working with Travel Marquette. And so I think that the timing is still very good for this and that's in process right now. And you should be seeing some final stuff here as we head into the fall and winter. The bi-monthly presence in Lansing to meet with state legislators and talking about really managing tourism in Marquette, that's a conversation we have any time we are meeting with legislators and expressing some concerns with challenges. so I do believe that we would call that one in process a bi-monthly presence we would love to have more meetings and more discussions with our legislators but we're really in an interesting time for elections right now so meeting with them their time is very limited especially in the district here it is hard to be here and in Lansing at this thing at the same time in a week so we recognize that but we do have some open communication whether it's on a department level or or whether it's with our legislators directly.

And Karen is a part of the Marquette County Ambassadors, which is a very active group and has been recognized, you know, down in Lansing for the advocacy they have for this region. And you do go down at least twice a year for that.

Yep, that is, that's... There's a lot of prep in that as well leading up to it. We look at city priorities. I do advocate and represent the city priorities, but then we look as a region for Marquette and then partnering with Baraga and Dickinson County as well on some of these things that we can collaborate on. So that one is one we will continue to work on, but shifting that focus more towards tourism, we're really gonna start seeing that after we get that sustainable tourism plan completed. One that's, I wouldn't say not as exciting, but I'm really proud of is the early compliance with the ADA website guidelines. We may have been kind of thrust into that a little bit sooner with some of our website changes, but that is one that I think Annie has had a significant role in, and I'm just gonna kind of glance over at her if she has anything to say on that, or just, yeah. This is something all municipalities will have to do.

I'll say, yeah, this is a requirement that for us, the deadline was supposed to be next April. It's been extended out a year for larger governmental organizations. It was supposed to be last April and was extended out a year. that I see a lot of municipalities haven't even started working on or addressing. Or known. I think the old website was good. I built it. So I had a soft spot for it. But I think the new website is much better. It's cleaner. And it really focuses on adhering to ADA website guidelines that we're all gonna have to come into compliance to, and I think it's easier for residents to find the information they need. We were hoping it would be a quicker project and stretched out into a year for launch, but so far it's been a very successful launch in my opinion. And I'm looking forward to working with Annie and continuing to improve it.

that comes with change. So things are going to look different as well and things are going to seem different, especially as we look at anything that we post on our social media page. This will have to, you know, these requirements for ADA requirements for municipalities will have to comply to those too. So those posts might be longer. They might be, you know, certain there's certain requirements for graphics. So this is one that's taken up some time and that we've we've seen and I'm really, really proud of the progress because I think that a lot of these municipalities are going to be scrambling at the 11th hour and don't have the resources for that and that's just really unfortunate.

It is an unfunded mandate and the requirements are incredibly important. Accessibility of websites is a very important topic. Everybody is utilizing, accessing government through the internet and more and more through their cell phones. would say a lot of people exclusively through their phones and everyone needs to be compliant with these it's hard to be forced into that especially with the cost of web development but I will say doing it in-house even if it was a little arduous saves the city at least twenty to thirty thousand dollars a year

and continuously the website will have to be updated you know obviously as things change and as we need content updating and that you know is also something that has to then comply with these new guidelines too so there's constant maintenance on this and constant improvements that will need to be done so I recognize that takes some time away from staff you know having to work on that as it comes to But this is really important for that community engagement piece so that everybody has the ability to feel informed and communicate with us in any way that is accessible for them. Another one that's pretty exciting and that we've made some significant process on is identification of a site for a year-round dog park. While this one might not be year-round that we're proposing, we are looking at, you know, summer while we still utilize a winter dog park. And we were very happy to see that progress made with that site identified and a plan really kind of getting kicked off for that and progressing forward. So I'd definitely say that his identification is complete, now working on making that happen. And that was really meant for a recreation area, not necessarily a dog park, but a dog recreation area.

This is another instance of a project that we didn't necessarily have funding for, but we've seen commitment from the community who wants this to help fundraise for it and find a way so that we can add this asset without having to bond or seek additional grant funding or anything like that.

I'm going to skip one right now, which is the sidewalk clearing for a second here, because I want to jump into the public safety part. and just give you a quick update on these. We are in the process of conducting a wage and compensation and community risk analysis. We did just have actually the consultants virtually, meeting virtually with city staff on gaining some of this information. That's in process, that has been a little bit delayed. So we're looking, I don't know if I have the time frame. What's the time period that we're thinking this would be adopted by or presented? So hopefully having something there, but so far the conversations have been incredibly interesting and informative, but that is one we're looking forward to completing. Yeah? I can simplify this down, but I'm probably going to make it too simplified. But really looking at all of the things that we have in our city, like our waterfront, the tall buildings, the number of miles in between, the blocks, the spacing, and how many staff we have, and looking at what we need. So do we have enough staffing? Do we have the right staffing for this? Do we have the right equipment for it?

It's a full analysis of our fire service and response.

That's way simpler. Thank you. Did I get that right? So it's not just winging it and saying, hey, we need this, and people not, it's not necessarily an accurate guess. A lot of places have done that. And then also within the fire department, there's some program that we're looking for, some self-inspections, and utilizing some software called iRoll, and trying to get some of that incorporated. That is delayed due to some software issues with the vendor, We're still working through a few of those things before we roll that out, but that's been delayed. But it's still very much something we're working on. Annual medical and fitness testing for the fire personnel. That one is also one in process but delayed just due to the complexities of the topic for that. So when we're talking about staffing and some of these, I don't wanna say requirements, but medical testing and things, We want to make sure that we're implementing that program in a way that makes sense for our employees and isn't a burden or anything that could be construed as some sort of negative or burden. And so we're working on some of that. And even the state level of the fire unions have really been taking a look at this too and trying to secure some funding to help with that. I think there's positive progress with that, but it's just not fully implemented here and we're still discussing that. And then the replacement of the ladder truck. So we did make a request for congressionally directed spending through the federal side of things. We have made it kind of past that first phase into the second phase. That is where we're really trying to just see how likely that will continue down in that process. But we do feel heard and represented quite well on that side, especially from, I would say probably from Senator Peter's office, I believe is where that request was made. Still working on any non-federal or grant funding is gonna be a tough one, but this is a hot topic for a lot of municipalities. Now, I wanna just talk about that sidewalk clearing ordinance. Obviously that's not something we have brought to you yet this year. I really want to make sure that everybody is aware of, I don't wanna say how controversial that could be, but it was a very interesting conversation this past winter with the number of calls we received about people wanting their sidewalk on their side of the street cleared. Now, there is a logistical plan of why we clear some sidewalks in some of these routes. But on whatever side of the street, we're not going to make everybody happy when we switch sides of the streets, those kinds of things. You know it really is something that we look at trying to be practical for all abilities and all people and what is practical for clearing snow and so we're really taking our time on this one because we know when we come to the Commission with any recommendations on a snow clearing sidewalk clearing ordinance that it's gonna come with some heavy thoughts emotions and opinions from from perhaps maybe even the public so So this one has been a recommendation I believe from Planning Commission and we're just really trying to make sure we take all things into consideration. So just remember we talked about this one a little bit and so still bringing it to you. We'll give you a fair warning for that. So looking ahead to 2027 and what we would like to be accomplishing by 2027 and would mean we'd be really working on right now as well and what we've started talking about is that capital reserve policy and looking at a capital reserve construction fund. I don't think we're quite there financially to be looking at that. We really want to get through this next I would say probably capital phase and see how much we can kind of chunk off for this next issuance and then looking at what we would need in the future. This one is gonna take some commitment and some discipline in making sure we are putting aside some funding for this. So this would be saying, hey, instead of having to bond for things, we can pay for cash for some of these things. A fire truck would be one that we really would consider on some of this or some of these larger projects. And making sure we we have some cash set aside for some of those And that would be if there's any example that could be is any surplus we have left over or anything that is unspent that wasn't budgeted for we continue just to take that and Instead of putting it back into fund balance take that and put it in the construction reserve fund. That's what that would look like and That kind of goes hand in hand with adoption of a debt management policy too, making sure we're taking any of our reserves and what we're planning for and managing that and balancing that with debt. So looking at what that debt management policy could become as well. So that will be something we just start really looking at in 2027. Develop an asset management plan. So we do have a capital improvement plan that has an asset management component to that. This is based off of some of the best practices that we've been hearing and learning from the Michigan Infrastructure Council. We have several employees that have already completed the asset management champions course offered through the Michigan Infrastructure Council. And that has been really helpful in trying to understand and communicate what an asset management plan and capital, capital, capital, capital, there you go, improvement plan looks like. Wow, it means I'm rambling, isn't it? So looking at more of a robust asset management plan that you all could be a part of as well is gonna be an important component to that. uh barragut avenue place plan um is one that we're really looking and working with the dda on and tara could probably be giving a good update on that when we talk about dda annual update so i'll kind of flag that for her to update when we hear that update from her the renter's guide is something you will most likely anticipate seeing when we start talking about the rental um city housing stuff that we we heard from and that the Commission was looking for from this past early summer so this was one we would anticipate it was her idea And so looking at street rebuilding projects, that one is also one we're talking about with asset management and capital reserves. These kind of all tie in together with that. Adopt an active transportation plan. I'll say that all sounds familiar, right? Because we did adopt an active transportation plan. Nice job on that one. And we've really actually, if we took that plan and looked at what we've done in there, this year I would say we probably saw some things that we've checked off on. Line painting, look at that. Thank you. Perfect. So these, if you are wanting to follow along with individual, this is in the back. However, they tie to the front strategic priorities that are in there. So don't feel like I'm going to be running down some of these lists here. Third Street has been a hot topic, right? We've had some mobility improvement plan identified for there. I think that you also see that there have been some progress on that on Third Street. Some of those lines have been repainted. They have also eliminated some parking spaces, I want to say eliminate, which have created some site issues at some of those corners and intersections. That has been adjusted. And some of the bike lane and signage for that with the sharrows have been also updated and a little clearer. So those are some small improvements temporarily before other larger things that can be discussed and identified. Yes.

I just want to say I rode there last night. It was amazing.

Listening?

Looks nice, right?

Yeah.

That was done in-house too, by the way. Annie did not do it.

She probably could, though. I wouldn't put it past her.

So there's still some other plans and mobility improvement plans that we want to incorporate in there and accomplish. But the point of it is we hear it. We hear you. we know that there's some things that we would like to do. And maybe perhaps that is where you discuss one-way things. So who knows? And then the funding of the police and fire water safety boat. There was some progress made and there were some grants that were explored. Even this asset may be better for something else. So we may not continue on with a fire water safety boat. We are looking to see what exactly we need, what will work for us, and what we can be utilizing as partners in our community. So we know that there's something we need, we just don't know what is gonna be best before we go out and get some funding. So in 2027, we're looking at some online fee payment options. That is something we have kind of really taken a chance on exploring more on with the transition in BS&A, which is something you probably saw in some of the budgets where slight increases for BS&A transition into a different web or a different interface that will make online fee payment options a little bit easier to explore and offer. online payments require credit cards and banking information and a really difficult part of that is making sure that that remains safe, which is why we contract out with vendors in companies that that is their sole business to do so making sure we have one that works for our community and that is safe and Not something we necessarily have to manage is important to look at Come we're looking at a plan for a future senior center facility and That is something that Mo and her team are really trying to understand the full need and the full possibility. Which is why we know that there's a plan for a future senior center and that is a big portion of our downstairs area. There's a gym, They have some space that the senior center does utilize. And if that's going to be changing in a near term or within five to seven years, before we make an investment of $500,000 or more for a new roof in the building, let's make sure that we are fully understanding what we want to use this building for in the future. So this one kind of helps ties into a few other options and considerations for projects. That one is going to be a fun one to really consider. because we know geographically we need to be where our population is, and there are some discussions on if that is moving, where is that moving, and what does that look like, but I will say that we're really gonna explore that, and that's why a plan and actually something that incorporates that into the needs and the location is important. In 2027, we're looking to adopt that climate action and adaptation plan that's currently being worked on right now. We're looking to bring that for adoption in fiscal year 2027. Really excited about that. I think we should be very proud of how much progress we have made on that. I think we're going to be pleasantly surprised on the things that we have done. And if you've visited the recent open house that was just a couple of months ago, there's a lot of things that I didn't know we already did or that our community does that we would be identifying in our climate action plan.

That open house was really well done. We really like the format of it.

Yeah, I love that. So hopefully you're going to see something similar too. And then looking at a public safety facility plan and what that looks like. So we know that we have fire stations or fire halls that need Some improvements, we have a police department that has done the best that they can in the space that they have, but as needs continue to grow, we recognize that there's some opportunity there and some need to replace that. And what that looks like for partnerships. Are there opportunities that we can explore for partnerships and have some cross-collaboration on? And then continuing on just with some things that we have done and we continue to do. So reducing the turnover rate for employees within each department, maintaining and keeping that talent here is really what we would like to do. have that historic knowledge or the institutional knowledge that really builds up with the services we provide. Reduce the number of days to fill a vacancy. This is really recruitment and making sure we're using the platforms that reach the most people and looking at our talent that we have in town and internally even and making sure that we can tap into that and that they're aware of the opportunities. Increase the number of staff participating in at least one professional development activity. We've made some significant progress in that this year. I think of Mary when you were doing MGFOA activities and courses. A lot of things are held now on webinars. We are unfortunately in a place where not a lot of these seminars or conferences come here. We are traveling downstate, but there is great value in leaving this area for a couple of days and talking with peers in other states or other areas in the state. So we've seen our staff participating in that and I really want to continue to encourage that, within reason obviously, but making sure that we're able to encourage them to seek the professional development that they want or need. And that would also include MML and what you guys also attend as well. Staff Academy, we are still in our first cohort for the Staff Academy. And it has been, so I think very successful and popular. We're looking to, when's the last session?

In two weeks.

In two weeks. And then we're opening up the next session at some point.

Yes.

So looking really to kind of continue to grow that program and see how we can kind of incorporate that into an orientation of some sort and get others involved. That's been a really good one, so thank you Annie. And then internal promotions or lateral moves across departments. Really looking to build that leadership within and then keeping them within the organization too is really important. I said institutional knowledge. Growing that from one area to another or from one department to another or even internal promotion, that's really a huge benefit.

Recognizing the talent we have and investing in them and then providing opportunities for people to do more with their positions and take it to the next level.

Continue to have that engagement with our state and federal officials. Yes, we go down to Lansing with the Marquette County Ambassadors, but we have a lot of state and federal officials that are coming to Marquette lately, including just this week, we had some meetings with MEDC leadership and making sure we're prepared for those and advocating for the things that are happening right now and making sure they know Marquette you know, is a place not to forget in our area needs some attention and some support too. And thanking them and also thanking them for the support that they provide because they have been very, you know, very helpful.

And we know there's going to be at least some defined turnover in some of those positions and preparing to, you know, build relationships with whoever is elected into those offices. I think it's something on Karen's mind as well.

Strategy changes, especially in the interests that change, especially as even just administration changes, that is one that we do have a lot of need to kind of look at what their interests are and understand how we can connect with them versus making it a them versus us. And that kind of goes with the same one that we've talked about previously with tourism. We did talk about some grants and looking at identifying grants on a quarterly basis. We're really trying to be careful when we consider grants and we look at grants. We talked about no grant is free. And so making sure that we have the capability to provide that match, that support, and that maintenance afterwards is something we need to be incorporating into kind of an analysis of that. Yes, we look at grants that are available, but we are also really trying to manage that burden. Now, when we talk about community stakeholders, we look at how we support a lot of our downtown businesses, our small businesses, and also some of those larger opportunities for economic development and making sure that we're all working together on this and not all advocating and fighting for the same piece of pie. And then some of these, increasing the MEDC, supported small business developments and projects. The DDA is managing that quite well, and I think Tara talks about that in her annual report as well, or annual presentation. So still moving through these, we talked about wanting to increase underutilized corridors. We've been looking at South Marquette and what that's transforming into. We just saw some buildings that were sold and redone and opened in different uses. Very interesting possibilities there and how can we open that up and revitalize that. Same thing with Baraga. And Third Street and with the old hospital development. So really trying to see how we can get all of these, you know, really robust areas working together and working and start. Yeah, activated. That's what I was looking for. Thank you. Developer business owner guide. We do have some of these guides that are available, but looking at revamping that and making sure that we have things that we can provide to developers that say, here's how you get this done and here's the best way to do it. Here's your contact, here's where you start, here's everything laid out and where you find more information. So we are well on our way with that, but really kind of trying to utilize our resources for that and to fine tune that and get that more revamped. Oh, social media. This does not mean the comment section, by the way. So increased social media post engagement by 25%. We do not have necessarily somebody who is a dedicated social media person or communications person. Yeah, we do have an Annie. We do have an Annie. And Annie does many things. And so... When we talk about really trying to target this increased engagement, she is really looking at a lot of things that we're doing and saying, hey, maybe we should put a post out there. Hey, maybe we should get some information out there and making it something that's understandable. Now with the increased requirements too, we have to make sure that it is done in the appropriate way. So have we really been seeing the increase in social media engagement? Yes.

Not by comments. I will say we have, looking at our metrics, our audience continues to go up, our interaction, our views continue to go up. Annie has worked on our Instagram page quite a bit to try and reach people in other avenues. I teach at Northern and every semester I ask my undergrads, how do you want us to talk to you? I think you have a duty as a resident of somewhere to seek your government out and pay attention to what they're doing, but how do you want us to talk to you? And I mean, Facebook is a smaller and smaller user share, especially as that platform kind of gets more anonymous and kind of degrades. But younger people are on Instagram. Younger people want direct communication. They want in-person events. And just with social media, I have seen a definite increase in our engagement.

But that also means that there's some some opportunity for you as as elected officials to be sharing some of that information out and Because you have a following as well But sharing some of that information out when it when it's important to you, especially some of those things I'm thinking about are when there's you know, some of the phone lines are down or something and we're like, hey phone lines are down and you're getting a ton of residents calling you saying I can't get a hold of finance to do this and being able to share some of that that out share and when to share and when to comment it's important We would like to really increase those followers as well. We do have a lot of people that visit the site or see our posts or information, but don't necessarily follow. And that means we're missing an opportunity to connect with somebody. So trying to find ways to increase social media followers so that it's more of a consistent and increased feed and views is going to help. But we've done a really good job at that. I don't know how you've done that, but you've made some miracles on that and increasing that. So we have made progress. She knows how to talk to everybody, right? Increase attendance at community office hours. When we have hot topics, these are a really good opportunity for people to come in and visit and have conversation. I do have a regular following that attends just to say hi. just to touch base, they write it down on a note card and come in with five different small things or large things. But I do want to see an increase in that attendance and more participation. And whether that is more targeted conversations or more topics that are dedicated to present on or discuss, I think the venue's great at the library. During the hours are great. We've dabbled in after hours as well at a coffee shop. It's just kind of a, we're never going to be able to get to everybody. But in lieu of that, I do try to get out in the community a lot more to be able to just interact throughout the week. See me at a coffee shop or, you know, come in, stop in, or call. If we haven't increased attendance in office hours, we've at least really tried to make sure that we're open and available to the public.

One thing I really love about office hours is even if you know the attendance ebbs and flows, Doug Garrison is always there. He's looking for stories, of course, but he also is engaging in conversation with us and trying to pick up on what the city is going on. So just having basically a standing meeting with word on the street has actually been quite nice.

We do, yeah. And he has this list that he asks questions on, but they tend to lead to more conversations about other topics and brainstorming. And it actually is kind of fun to see where it ends up.

And he really listens to people that come too and asks us follow-up questions and gets stories out to the community that are more organically than we'd be able to through a PSA.

Agreed. His commentary is quite entertaining as well. after that we do have established and have regular attendance at events in the community we have been doing quite a few of those i think lately we've had hr attending some of the the career fairs um job fairs or you know fall fest over at even the university and really trying to get interacting with everybody and especially the university when we have students that are coming in for the first time or know aren't as confident in reaching out to the to city hall and they still want to have their mom or dad call um city hall for things but really trying to get out to them and see you know what their needs are hear them out and just show show up that we're we're a welcome place in the community and same thing with other you know other entities and taxing entity events

And I would say, you know, our mayors, you know, Mayor Schlegel, Mayor Hanley, Mayor Davis, you guys really commit to showing up to ribbon cuttings, to showing up to events. And I think it's very noticed when you're in the picture, when you're holding the ribbon, when you're at those events. And I really encourage, you know, commissioners to keep up that attendance because I think people really recognize it.

It's been great. It's really been great. And I think, Paul, or Mayor Schlegel, you've done one where you've even just drove by. And same thing with you and you as well. You're always just everywhere. But stopping by at a project, I think the Habitat for Humanity project was a huge one where you just popped in. You were driving by and saw, and that went really far for them. And then getting your hands dirty and rebuilding some stuff is always a fun one.

I enjoyed the habitat ribbon cutting because you've never seen Mayor Schlegel so excited as when they start talking about insulating foam.

So this is one that we appreciate all of you being so involved in that.

It's always fun to see you out, especially at Music on 3rd when that finally happens here with hopefully the weather holds out. And you can do that with your Citizens or Staff Academy shirts, by the way, which are great. And then speaking of Citizens Academy and Staff Academy, we do want to have full attendance and applications to the annual Citizens Academy, which we're working on.

Where's that sit now as far as capacity?

We still need more applications to tell you from Facebook a few weeks ago, but we've got like

I think half capacity right now for this coming fall, so I'm still looking for more applications. If you all want to share it on your Facebook.

And this is our fourth cohort we're looking at? Yeah, and until the past three, we've had full capacity. So we're expecting to be able to wrestle up full capacity for this one as well.

i've seen the comments on facebook from from some of the from that post specifically the most recent one and i think we've had at least three the last time i checked three or four um residents who have taken citizens academy and saying that this was one that they learned so much they really understand and they feel very informed and and have actually come to apply for open board and committee applications so our positions so that's been so successful. That's how we gauge the success of that program is when we start seeing them coming out and getting involved. So that one is fun. And the sweatshirt side. Yes, I do. I see quite a few people when we have the sweatshirt, you can recognize who's gone through it. Small perks, right? So we're getting to the end here on some of the continuous items here that are worth really, really noting. Really looking at our facilities and the existing facilities and talking about how they are utilized and what we can do in order to either enhance that utilization or make different changes and really look at what our stock of facilities looks like and the cost to continue to have those kinds of things. That will help us with future decision making and really looking at what our community wants and wants to use. This is anything from even just the DDA Commons to our pavilions to our conference rooms that we open up to the public, those kinds of things and really trying to track that. We have not started that yet. We do keep an eye on those things, we have the conversations, but really looking at how we analyze those. So we will be trying to work on that as we head into the second half of this strategic planning timeframe. We have been working on strategies with BLP. Something that we would like to do is make that a little bit more formal, have them in front of the commission, and talking about what our annual or our utility plan and infrastructure looks like. I think we're gonna probably have that opportunity soon when we talk about a couple of those priorities, such as infrastructure, investment, and usage, things like that. One of the, where you've probably seen with the most work on this in the past year has been with the energy legislation and talking with BLP on what exactly is going to be the impact and how we communicate and what we really need and how do we get to some of these goals that we need to get to legally, but then also what can we afford. continue to bring down energy use in the city buildings. I think we're doing a great job with that, especially the JCI project, but really looking at how we continue to bring that down. Probably going to be seeing some of that addressed in the climate action plan. So I would say probably slow in progress right now. This is where I talked about sidewalk clearing and making sure we prioritize that. This one is a friendly reminder that winter is a few months away here and that we should make sure that we are making significant progress on this in the next few months. So talking with the schools before they get started to make sure that we have a plan in place to do our best to get these areas cleared. Not every child can get a ride. Do they want a ride to school? And they do walk. I have found out recently that Bothwell has communicated that they don't want students necessarily walking to the school. And I want to make sure that is not because of something that we have not addressed. And I think that we want to make it so that every child can walk to school and make sure that we can. yes I'm not starting rumors but that was one we want to make sure that they have a safe route to both well and and cars can get through working on the number of miles of bike lanes that are painted improved annually I think we've done a great job on some of that especially we just talked about 3rd Street and looking at what we can do and continue to make improvement there but we also want to recognize that The current areas that we do have bike lanes that are identified and painted are not necessarily the most ideal that have been identified in the active transportation plan. And so making sure that we're, you know, making some progress but not tying ourselves to things that are not working effectively, especially with the change in traffic patterns that we have seen. So trying to find that balance is really important here.

I think we're focusing on putting more paint on roads right now and identifying what the next level of that will look like, mostly through funding. We have an idea of the plan of what we need, but funding is always going to be the conversation there. Yes.

Moving into some public safety continuous strategies here and priorities is really looking at those community policing and outreach efforts and having that. We just had the noon out barbecue yesterday. which had great attendance, by the way. But really, you know, looking at more of that community policing, and that's the side that I think, you know, of our police department that we really, we don't brag enough about or really highlight enough about is their jobs really are, Yes, law enforcement, but they're really community pleasing, getting out into the community to make that connection and divert any issues or really be able to have that kind of built up connection that people want to take pride in their community and behave, right? Or do good or things like that.

And I really, really admire Chief Graham's commitment to community policing and having a friendly, approachable presence at any kind of event where people understand that the officers are there as a resource and there to help. I can attest that any interview we have with a potential recruit, we talk about the importance of getting out of the car and being a part of the community and interacting with our citizens. And that's what we look for in our officers. I really attribute that to Chief Grimm's leadership. I think it pays off dividends for us, and you can see the benefits all the time.

Definitely. And with that, we also would like to reduce turnover rate of employees in both the police and fire departments. there have been retirements and whatnot, but there also have been opportunities for our officers or firefighters to also go into another line of business or a different agency outside of Marquette.

And our staffing for the fire department is Very close to 100%, I want to say, right now. It is 100% right now. Our last round of interviews, I think we had 20 interview candidates for one position. It's very competitive to get in to the department. Police is harder. The requirements for the academy proved to be a hurdle for us just in terms of time and getting people to commit their lives there. And then everybody, everybody is looking for officers across the state. Anyone we don't hire, someone else probably is going to try and pick up. So that's a continuing question we're having. I think we're putting every effort forward to recruit the very best that we can. We have not been able to maintain that 100% staffing, but we're working towards it.

Yeah, and I certainly don't think it's for any fault of our, you know, that we've created by any means.

It's an industry-wide question.

Very big struggle on that. But we do have, you know, one of the best police departments that I've ever worked with, and I think that we offer some great opportunities here, and it's the best, you know, especially when we talk about even in the UP, there's so many opportunities for really finding something that you are interested in, whether it's waterfront or snow or something like that. We generally have something that relates to that.

We're absolutely the gold standard throughout the state, in my opinion.

So, and then, you know, you kind of covered that with the increased number of applicants when open fire and police positions are posted. We had, well, I think over 20 applicants, as you said, and we had 11 that I believe we went through with interviews and testing by the time that we, you know, kind of shuffled down the list a little bit. And that is finally a place that I'm grateful for that opportunity to see that, but we've gotten to a point where now we're having people that are interested and keeping an open list of who applied previously and hopefully having that opportunity reopen for them.

And I am pleased to say that we are swearing in three officers next week. Next week, we just graduated the academy. We have more, we're planning to send to the academy. We have been using Traverse City's academy as well. Just every opportunity we can.

So before we close out with with this are there any questions or thoughts on the strategic plan that you would like to see anything else You know we've covered a lot. I know that was a lot of words, but this is really how we have looked at our fiscal year 26 ending and prioritizing our efforts and investments into fiscal year 27 and and beyond, but these are kind of our marching orders, but this is where we decide on the budget part for that. Any questions on strategic plan?

I would just say that. This is something that we should see next to the market monthly out there, you know just because it's so well done and it really does identify who we are and where we're going and why we're going there so. Public access. It's a great way to toot your own horn.

Recommendation. Anything else on strategic plan? Right. Fabulous. And this was a really fun exercise when we did create this. you know, there was a lot of input. We then hashed out and really kind of dove into some of the sticky notes and suggestions that were made last year, and really tried to figure out what that meant. I'm sorry that we didn't really incorporate Boulder art into that, but I think that, you know, I think that there's some room for that, and I think that's just gonna happen on its own, so. Bold, bolder, whatever. So.

I still keep thinking of the painted rocks on Boulder's campus every time we say Boulder.

So where does it leave us now with our next steps? So we are going to, probably following this meeting here, reach out with some dates looking at our capital outlay tour. Previous versions of our capital outlay tour included a bus trip around town, visiting some of the areas that we've identified as capital projects needing some attention or some funding. Resources for funding a bus and having a bus available for us, which is a public resource, we don't necessarily want to put ourselves in that kind of predicament where we're We can't afford that or we don't have one available. So we are exploring on what that looks like. We've had a bike tour suggested. We've had just a group kind of self-guided tour and then meeting back to discuss. But we are kind of looking at what that looks like. If it is a bike tour, an e-bike tour, whatever you want to call it, we're going to have to wait for the weather and make sure the weather is OK on that one. But now seems like a good time.

Maybe we race a little bit.

And included in that are some of our facilities that we want to make sure we discuss in our capital outlay. I mentioned the marinas, and I think it's really important to get a visual there. I think that helps with us and a couple of other topics, you know, recently with, you know, we talked about fire trucks, looking at a fire truck. But this one is going to be really on that capital side. So we're going to get some dates out there for that and to narrow that down, hoping to get a full schedule for everybody. Then we will fine tune this a little bit more, send out some revised copies in order to prepare for setting the public hearing on September 14th and then present that final proposed budget which wouldn't have many changes from the 14th to the 28th because that is the time where we want everybody to be inspecting it and reviewing it. and then do a presentation, shorter presentation, hit some of the high-level topics that the public might wanna know about, and that would be on the 28th, and looking for the public hearing and adoption on the 28th as well. And then throughout the year we talk about really looking at that mid-year budget update, touching base, Mary provides some fiscal financials or financial updates throughout the year, quarterly at least, but really looking at that mid-year review and then spring and really look at when our projects are going to start and if there's ever any other room. We did that this past year, identified some funding available and timing to do some spring projects that we didn't necessarily have Funds were but we're able to kind of get across the finish line. So That was where you saw maybe perhaps, you know the added Washington Street repavement and some other sections as well so Those are the next steps that you will be seeing and and anticipating I have you have an hour here of any questions or details you would like to go into that we may have skimmed over or that you thought of while you're on lunch. And if not, you have your done early.

Is there anything else Mary that I missed on that?

It's a lot. How are you feeling about the the format?

Today's format, yeah. Personally, I like it. I really appreciate the graphs and whatnot that you had earlier. That's that's a good way for me to kind of wrap my head around what's what you've got. To send those out as well, just dresses. I would probably like to see those physically next time you got it.

You got it.

Anybody else Christian Davis? Are we doing commissioner comments or are we just commenting? Well, we've got other stuff to do ahead of that.

Okay. I appreciated the review of the strategic plan, and I don't recall that being as detailed in previous years, but it's nice to see where we've made progress and what we're planning for the future.

It really does drive the budget.

Yeah, and I really agree with that. I mean, I think we took a different approach to strategic planning last year. And I think we keep this plan really present in what we do. So it's good to hear that feedback. Correct. Correct. It's the worst thing a plan can do. Mm-hmm.

Anything else? Yeah. John, if you could, should we move to this next? Comments may not exceed one three minutes per person as we all know and please state your name and physical address when making public comment should you have any podium I Don't believe we have any public here right now So I will close that and move on to comments from the Commission. How don't we start on this end? Mr. Larson Commissioner Larson

Just thanks for all the work you put into this and thank you for the clear answers to our questions and certainly look forward to some of those things that are coming our way after this with making sure that everything's in order for it to eventually be approved and looking forward to some of the future projects that are discussions that we may have. So thanks.

Commissioner Davis.

You started out by talking about how optimistic you are about the budget and that was a really nice comment to hear. I remember several years ago when you first came and you said we're only $6 million short. So congratulations to you and all of the staff and how much work you've done to put us where we are. I was really happy to see the DDA revenue share in the budget. That did my heart good. There was something else I was gonna comment on that. I can't remember what it was. I really am glad we implemented a policy on accepting grants and donations to consider whether or not the long term commitment is something that we want to do. And then I was thinking about the pacer ratings for the roads and a lot of your comments about the facilities. And it wouldn't be nice to have a pacer rating for our facilities. I mean, and and some of the priorities that we could have. I mean the senior center, the police department, the fire department, what's happening with Lakeview Arena. Just some of our facilities like the service center are really good and some of them, what do each of our facilities need? And I saw there was something in the strategic plan about that and I would look forward to those sort of things. And other than that, I can't remember. Oh, I know what it was. Don't be afraid to give us some homework. A self-guided tour rather than a bus tour would be an okay thing for us to do because we all get around the city anyway. So if you tell us that you want us to look at these things and this is why or whatever it is, I think we could all handle that, whether it's a bike or a walk or a drive.

Love it.

I just want to say thank you for the hard work that went into this, especially to the department heads who must have worked very hard, along with Mary, to come up with the numbers and the unsung heroes, because you guys are all in back and you don't say anything. But thanks for putting the numbers together. It's not easy.

Thank you. Commissioner Hanley?

I'll echo what everyone else has said. This is great. I know that. and probably all the other commissioners spent a lot of time with our binders before this meeting staring at numbers on a page and it's much easier when we can sit in front of you and can hear the explanations to why those numbers are there so it's very helpful always getting this in-depth detailed look at what's going on in the budget and all the questions that you answer beforehand are wonderful as well I also want to give a quick shout out to the clerk's office for another wonderful election you guys did great and everything went so smoothly so thank you for that And I'd be fine with a self-guided tour as long as you can send Mick with us.

That's right.

Because I want to be able to ask questions.

Check.

I would like a self-guided tour and then a follow, or after that, a conversation.

Good point I was that's what that was my only concern is I'd really enjoy having the city engineer to be there for to answer questions I was excited about the DDA I Think going through this process it really points out the fact that we do not sacrifice who we are at any point in time whether it's 5 years ago and what we were dealing with or today or what's going on in 3 more years is that we we really hold true to our community and and if you might have some tough decisions to make financially but none of it ever comes at the cost to our our citizens and that's really just incredibly professional and much appreciated so going through this process is always a bit of an eye cross for me because of all the numbers that we have to consider but at the same time it is clear that we're in good hands and the track record especially the last couple years have in the direction that we've been taking is really the icing on top of the cake there so with that I'll pass it on to the city manager

I just want to say thanks for the real engagement and the conversations that we've had today about the budget. It's exciting for us, I would say, maybe for the nerdier sides of us, but it is really one of our opportunities to talk about just how much consideration and planning the department heads and the staff put into this. and provide the recommendation versus throwing it at you and trying to have you guys sift out what's up and what's down. So I do appreciate your conversation. I really want to say thank you to the staff for sticking through a tough year, but one that we can all feel very comfortable with and have some hope here for some big accomplishments in the next year. And looking forward to some hopefully more, you know, fiscally stable, you know, years coming up here too. So thank you.

Okay. With that, we are adjourned at 155.