Village Council - Regular Meeting

Are you alive? Good evening and welcome to the November 12th, 2025 council meeting for the village of Holly. Clerk, please call the role. Wine Burner here. Lando here. Ryan here. Pascal here. Cole here. Tire here. Brandon here. We have a quorum. If you're willing and able, please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance 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.

This brings us to the approval of our consent agenda. All items listed under consent agenda are considered to be routine and non-controversial by the village council and will be approved by one motion. There will be no separate discussion. If discussion is desired, that item will be removed from the consent agenda and discussed separately immediately after consent agenda approval in its normal sequence on the regular agenda. [snorts] Lisa, can you please read the consent agenda?

A. Agenda approval. B. Consideration of the approval of the village council minutes of October 14th, 2025. C. Consideration of the approval of updates to the fiscal year 2025-26 fee schedule. D. Consideration by council of resolution 2025-35 updating the village of Holl's park hours. E. Consideration of the approval of warrant 2025-011 in the amount of 511,723.33.

In regards to item A for agenda approval on item, new item C. Tim, can you give us a little rundown of what we learned this evening? Yes. So, after discussing this with the village attorney, uh we have the recommendation to item C for additional uh attorney review just in regards to uh our legal abilities to um approve without items being specifically addressed within the TI plan.

Is that item C for the consent agenda? No, for new business. I'm sorry. Again, this is based on the discussions that occurred at the DDA meeting on Monday. Uh we we always knew this one was going to be contingent upon what happened at the meeting, but based on those discussions and the discussion with the village attorney, we were uh recommended to postpone to allow um the village attorney to spend some more time looking at PA57, the TIF plan, and some of the budget amendments um to so that we are making a legal and informed decision.

And what council can do in between now and then is familiarize yourself with the TIF plan. It is located right on the DDA's website. I will entertain a motion. I'll make the motion to what? Hold on. Motion to what? Uh to postpone item C on the agenda. Okay. And then so we have a we have a motion by Ryan and a second by Wine Brener. Please to call the role, please. Brian, yes. Yes. Burner, yes. Cole, yes. Ker,

yes. Wendle, yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended. I would like to uh pull two things down. Okay. Which ones? I'd like to pull uh item C and item E down. C and E. Yes, please. C old C will become new C C and uh old E will become new D. I will entertain a motion to approve the agenda as amended. I'll make the motion to approve the agenda as amended.

I'll second. We have a motion by Wendle. We have a second by Kire. That was you, right? Yes. Okay. Lisa, Lee, call the role, please. Cole, yes. Bunner, yes. Costa, yes. Yes. Wendle, yes. Ryan, yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried.

Presentation. Okay, this brings us to tonight's presentations. We're doing a department recognition. So this evening we come together to recognize the incredible dedication, strength, teamwork of our village of Holly staff. This past year has not been an easy one. It has been a time of transition, growth, and change. A year that asked every one of us to dig deep, stay steady, continue showing up for this community even when the path wasn't simple. Through it all, our staff has not only stayed the course, but has risen to the occasion in extraordinary ways. They have met every challenge with professionalism, creativity, and heart. They've embraced transparency, accountability, and innovation. And they've continued to serve our residents with compassion and pride. I want to acknowledge Councilman Wendell for spearheading this recognition. Tonight, his idea reflects something I think we all feel deeply, that every department, every staff member, every person who keeps this village running deserves our sincere gratitude. To our first responders who serve not only our own residents but our neighboring communities as well. Thank you for your bravery, calm, and courage under pressure. To our public works team who keep our village safe, beautiful, and functioning in every kind of weather. Thank you for your reliability and pride in your work. To our administrative staff who carry out the daily operations with patience, adaptability, and integrity. Thank you for leading with both heart and skill. Each of you plays a vital role in what makes Holly strong. This recognition is more than words on a plaque. It is a reflection of our appreciation, our respect, and our gratitude for all that you do, often quietly and behind the scenes, but always with immense impact. So, with that, we would like to present these tokens of appreciation. Councilman Wendell, who initiated this effort, will begin by reading the plaque honoring our

fire department.

Jeremy Watson, will you please come to the podium? They've uh so I think all the departments have kind of identified people that they want to represent the if that's all right. It's my pleasure to give you guys this on the village with our deepest gratitude for your bravery dedication and calm and face crisis times of change challenge. You have served our community our neighboring true courage and compassion appreciation of those Thank you guys so much. [applause] [applause] One more in the middle.

One more.

Now we are. Are we all supposed to be in the picture? [laughter]

All right. Good. [applause]

I expect copies of those pictures to be sent to me. Me too, please. Uh, Councilman Wein Brener, will you please read the plaque for our police department? And if you want to go ahead and just take the mic at the podium up there if you like. Yeah. Yeah, I probably should do that. [laughter] We live and learn. Yeah. Well, hey, I'm the gay and the representatives from the police department. I guess PD. There you go. We have a we have a new SRO to introduce as well. Grab the microphone so you can hold it. So, the only reason

Thank you, your honor. And you got a microphone. The only reason, [laughter] let me tell you, this [applause] guy, the only reason I'm up here with him is I just wanted everybody to know I told these guys they're getting an award for the best facial hair on the ground. [laughter] I'll be in the back.

Don't drop. I won't drop. [laughter] I'd like to present this award, the distinguished service award to the Holly Police Department with the honor and appreciation for your bravery, integrity, and unwavering commitment to protecting our community and those around us. Your strength and your professionalism shine brightest when Holly needs you the most with sincere appreciation. Village of Holly 2025. [applause] [applause]

Thank you.

I got goosebumps. Wait, don't get it. Get in there. We'll adjust. I need Yeah. Get on your knees, you guys.

One. All right. Ready? One, two, three. [applause] Councilwoman Cole, will you please read the plaque for our Department of Public Works?

Ryan, why you turning red? [laughter] I'm excited to give you guys this award because I feel like your department doesn't necessarily get seen. You're in the middle of the night. You're working overnight in the worst weather sometimes and we truly appreciate you. This distinguished service award, the Holly Department of Public Works with heartfelt thanks for your creativity, your reliability, and your tireless work behind the scenes. You have gone above and beyond to keep Holly safe, beautiful, and moving forward through every challenge. With sincere appreciation, the Village of Holly 25.

Thank you guys [applause] so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. There you go. All right.

[applause]

Sit, kneel, stand. Sit, kneel, stand. And Councilman Ryan, will you please read the plaque honoring our administrative staff? And Lisa, I have to take pictures. [applause and cheering] Good reason. GOOD. YEAH. GRAB THE PHONE FROM HIM. SOMEBODY GRAB HIS PHONE. Lisa is getting called to the hot seat. I thought Tim warned you. Oh, [laughter] all right. So, with gratitude and respect for your leadership, perseverance, and grace through a time of great transition, your dedication to transparency, teamwork, and service has strengthened the foundation of our village. with sincere appreciation. [applause]

Back up. Well, we got to get one with Come on over. Jeremy, grab his phone.

[applause] [applause and cheering] Just going to change.

Okay. All right. Our next presentation will be by John from municipal analytics. Yeah. So um at the last couple uh council meetings um we've discussed you know this as in theory we you know formalize a little bit more how we were going to move forward on this and as promised John is here to kind of talk uh talk through what we've discussed in the past in a little bit more detail. And one of your new business items is the uh approval of the contract or the proposed contract um that John and I have worked on.

Good evening all. Um John Quazor with Municipal Analytics. I'm going to struggle with the last name. Um and I'll say usually when I show up and there's a bunch of police in the back, there's something [laughter] controversial on the agenda, but that wasn't the case tonight. And I'll also say DPW folks I blame a lot for the problems that we have in government because they do a good job keeping things working that people don't see what's actually going on behind the scenes. The the water systems, the sewer systems, all of that are maintained by people who are putting in a lot of hours. And until something breaks, nobody knows they're there. And that's the point of of a lot of these services is that they're just there and they're provided. But when they do break, you all hear about it. Um, and so it's to them that I give a lot of credit for keeping things going. So, um, you can applaud. [applause and cheering]

Um, just a quick introduction. Uh, again, John Quesor, a municipal analytics. Uh, we're a firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Um, I've been doing consulting with local governments for about 30 years. Started at the MML back in 95. Um, in those years I've put together about 120 models of various sorts for many different local governments, primarily in Michigan. And we focus primarily on forecasting numbers that help make decisions. Um, so people in this room have are asked often to make complicated decisions with very little information. Um, or you have to dig for the information. So we want to try to make that easier so that your decision- making is clearer and and more transparent. Um we use a lot of information that we we gathered over the years to to pull this together. I just want to talk about go ahead to the next slide. Um some of the issues that are currently facing Holly the charts in the upper right um I noticed on your website you are subscribing to Munetrics. I don't know if that's through some or if you have your own subscription um but you have that.

It's our own subscription.

So you have access to some information to compare yourself to other communities and to look at your own data. Um, so the chart on the top right just shows that your overall general fund ex expenditures have gone up and down like they normally do and currently they're kind of high relative to what they've been. Um, the bottom chart just shows that your fund balance, that's the general fund fund balance, um, is getting close to the low end. Um, so we want to make sure we address some of those. Some of what's driving this is you have a structural deficit. Uh which means your ongoing costs are greater than your predictable recurring revenues. Um so trying to fix that is an issue that the village wants to tackle. Um there's a concern of deferring capital. Now it's okay to defer capital investment sometimes, but if you do it over and over and over again, those capital projects just get more expensive and the poor DPW guys have to work even harder to keep things from breaking. um your per capita safety, public safety costs, and I'll show you in the next slide are relatively high. That doesn't mean anything necessarily. So, we'd want to look at why that is. Um your water and sewer rates, there's a concern that you are charging the same rates to the village customers as well as to those in the township. And there's a lot of reasons to have a different rate for customers that aren't in the community that's hosting and actually providing the service. Your pension and OPED funding are a concern. Um, obviously trying to get those up is difficult. Uh, but we want to make sure that we're keeping the village uh in a good position for those to stay out of the bad graces of the state. Um, there is concern about limited transparency into the village finances. So, we want to make sure that we can find a way to open that up and make things available to people and be consistent uh with whomever we're talking to. And then there's a consideration of changing the form of government from village to city which is a big question and a lot of information has to go into know whether

that's the right decision or not. So I said we look at the costs. So on the left we have and this again is from SAMCOG comparing the village of Holly to other villages in Oakland, Mcome, St. Clair and Livingston counties. um your general government per capita cost is relatively low and on the right side we see that the per capita cost for public safety is relatively high and again I don't know if that's a good thing a bad thing um it's just what it is so we want to make sure we understand why that is and and make sure it makes sense so where we're at right now uh the village is trying to find a fix so I know that you adopted this year a special assessment for public safety wasn't the most favorable or easy thing to do, but it got done. Um, so now you actually have generated some revenue to pay for those critical services. Um, it's time limited. Acknowledging that this is probably not what you want to do forever. So trying to find a permanent solution is good. You're also looking at the cityhood question which would annex additional properties, bring them in, increase your tax base, which is another option. Um, so again, we want to look at that, make sure it makes sense. there's this big issue of priorities. Um, and when I met with the staff, it was really a question of where do we begin? What's the most important? Do we fund capital first? Do we fund increasing our funding the pension, reduce the liability? What else do we need to do? Um, so trying to understand what those choices are and prioritizing them is critical. We also want to look at the big picture across operations um so that you can see where things are. one relative to the other. Um, and when you're making a decision in one area, how does that affect another area? And then what do all these options mean? How do they impact rateayers, customers, etc., uh, services and all that? And

then we want to make sure that we're not eroding trust in the municipal leaders. We want to have trust. We want to have transparency. So that's what we're going to work towards. So, what we propose doing is helping to identify your financial priorities. That's not us telling you what to do, but working with the village to figure out what those are and then to put a plan together to see if we can actually fund it. We want to align expenditures with revenues versus the other way too, revenues with expenditures. If we look at it and say your operations are as th as lean as they can be, but the revenues still aren't sufficient, then we need to find other revenues. If your revenues are tapped out, we need to find a way to reduce expenditures. It's a it's a mathematical question. Uh we also want to look at developing strategies to address your financial obligations, uh debt and liability for OPED and pension primarily. And we want to make sure you have adequate reserves. access fund balance in your governmental funds, cash reserves in your utility funds to make sure there's cash there. Um, and I talked a lot to communities about why we want cash, especially in the utility side. It's to take advantage of grants. It's to respond to emergencies, and it's to avoid debt if you can. Can't always do it. Um, we want to look at spending trends, revenue trends. What's happening? Why is it happening? What's going on? What's your tax base doing? We want to understand that so we can project forward. We also want to look at your utility rates. Put something together that's more equitable and sustainable to make sure that you can fund what you need to fund, operations, debt, and capital with the customers that you have. And we also want to take a longer term viewpoint going from a one-year budget to a 10 to 20 year forecast. So we can start looking way out in the future and see where things are going. And then we want to look at the impact of changing form of government. Um there's one time cost, there's a returning cost, there's revenues, there's a whole lot of implications one

way or the other. We want to make sure it makes sense and we want to understand the impacts on the rateayers, the customers, the taxpayers so that we know who's who's being impacted in different ways. [snorts] So we do all this through a financial model um big spreadsheet. Um, what I am proposing for Holly is a little bit unique in that I want to take what I usually do in three different projects and combine them into one. And the reason for that is A, it's more efficient. B, time is of the essence right now to get something done. We really want to look comprehensively at the village finances, not silo things. And I think you're going to need all this information to make those big decisions across operations. Um, so I think there's a benefit in doing that. What we will do is we'll pull in all the information that's shown here. Your historical revenues and expenditures, your cash balances, your debt schedules, your capital needs, your tax base, all this information goes in there and then we start analyzing things. We look back and we try to figure out where things are going going forward. Um, when all that's come together in a spreadsheet, then we get the outputs that come out of that. We go to the next slide. Oh, those are out of order. Okay. Um, this was supposed to be before the last one. Uh, why use a strategic planning model? Um, it's really looking at making decisions. So, how do we look at all of these different options um and figure out what to do with them? How do things like budgets and policies and legislation from the state or federal government impact operations, impact your budget? We want to be able to test scenarios. What if we look at a 2% wage increase, a 4% wage increase? What if we invest capital in one area or another? What if we pay with for that capital with debt or with cash? What does all that mean? U we want to look at your current budget and then see how it might

impact future budget. So if you're adding a staff person, that's not a onetime cost. That's a return recurring cost that we want to make sure you can afford year after year. And as I mentioned, we want to look at expanding the horizon from one year to 10 or 20 years. We will build the 20-year model I don't rely a lot on 20-year forecasts, but you know, 10 years, five years really helps understand where things are going. So, we want to be making decisions longer term. And then economic uncertainty. Um, the more we go out, the harder it is to predict. Uh, but we still want to have some way of looking forward. It's not a crystal ball. It's just looking at the numbers and trying to understand where things are going. Like I said, I've been doing this for 30 years, so I've got a pretty good handle on it. um but I haven't been exactly right every time. The reason is because I usually present a forecast that all of you don't like. So that means that decisions have to be made and something has to change. Um so that's why we do this to give you the information so you can make the change to make the forecast what you want it to be. Also uh we want to make a single source of financial information. Um, I've been in a lot of communities where one financial forecast is presented to the bond rating agency. A completely different one is presented at labor negotiations. Another one is presented at budget time. We want one that everybody sees. And again, that works on the transparency, the trustworthiness of the government. We're not, it's not smoking mirrors. It's just one number that we're looking at. I'm going to put it all together so you can see the big picture. And it also supports any make grants or millage requests that you might need in the future. Now we can go to the next slide. Okay. [snorts] So what comes out of it? Um the way that we do these uh there's all these worksheets that have lots of detail and then we boil it all down to a dashboard or some simple charts to to

take all those numbers put them into a picture. Um, so what we want to look at is this extended horizon. We want to save some time of your staff. Um, because now we can work with one spreadsheet and not multiples. For you, it helps to focus the agenda, ask clearer questions, get clearer answers. The analytic ability of the administration gets better because now they have a tool that links everything together. This is something that can be updated and should be updated every year, uh, if not more frequently by staff. If staff can't do it, we can do it. We're also there to help troubleshoot. If ever you've adopted somebody else's spreadsheet, you know, there's usually some problem that you can't figure out, but the person that wrote it can. Um, again, we want to look at the consistent source of financial forecasts across all the different times you're trying to share that with people. um because we're going to pull in information from lots of different sources and we're going to solicit input of staff and uh policy makers, we get more acceptance because more people have participated in it. Um and then we could do lots of what if what if this, what if that. We'll run multiple scenarios to figure things out on rates, on tax rates, etc. So that we know we've explored lots of different options. And then why do we do this? um saving time and reducing mistakes is one thing. Uh we get a comprehensive view which you don't currently have. [snorts] You get best practices. Like I said, I've been doing this for a while. So I can look at what other communities have done and I can pull that information in or share strategies that I've learned in other communities and that helps you to take leaps leaprog over some of the issues that you're dealing with. Can be used over and over. Um, and again, it gets you to the water and sewer rates that you need to actually keep water and sewer operations funded, um, and not fall behind in the capital needs there.

Next slide. Here's a quick example of what we did in Ipsellani. Um, I've been doing Ipsalani's model on and off for a number of years, 20 years, 25 years now. Um on the left was their baseline forecasts. So this was let's assume things continue as they are, revenues come in as they are, expenditures continue with inflationary adjustments. And clearly that blue line is the fund balance. Um and what it shows is if they continue as they are, they will eventually run out of money in about six years. What we did is we ran through multiple scenarios. Um when I gave this presentation to their council, there was about six more slides that went through all this, but I boiled it down here. In the end, we said if you follow the strategy on the right, you can balance your budget. Um not just this year, but stabilize it. And for them, uh because they are hosting a state university, they get fire protection grant money from the state that has not been fully funded for decades. Um but there's been pressure on the legislature to fully fund it. So, if they were able to get that and the uh county public safety millage renewed, they would get about $750,000 more per year. [snorts] They were subsidizing their garbage fund from the general fund. Um they could raise their garbage rates and and not subsidize from the general fund. They had the option of a headly override which would generate about a million dollars in additional revenue. Now, none of these things are easy. I'm not saying they're easy, but these are this is a pathway to follow. um and then start looking for uh what happens when they've got some debt paid off in uh the future years. Um that'll free up a million dollars a year. So this model again, it's shortened a five or six year horizon, but it goes out further than that. Um we're just trying

to find a pathway for them to get to a stable budget. That's the sort of thing we would do here as well. On the next slide, this is a typical uh dashboard screenshot from a water and sewer rate study. And what we're looking at and and when we do one of these is we pull this information together, your operating budget, capital budget, your debt, all of your customer billing data, your your CIP. Um and then we [snorts] look at your funding strategies, your rate structure, make sure it makes sense, make sure it's equitable. Um and then we look at your policies. If you don't have policies, we can recommend policies uh to keep the finances stable there. We put all this together. Again, there are thousands and thousands of rows of data that pull into these sheets. Um but we've got a fairly stable rate increase in the upper left chart. Um we've got revenue close to expenditures, a little bit higher because we need to build some cash reserves. Uh but this is what we've got now going forward. And when this is adopted, this is another model that this community can use over and over to update. And then one final picture here. U I find it very helpful to look at where your taxable value history has been. This is a pretty typical snapshot. Uh this is another village, village of Milford, where before the great recession in 2008, they had a tax growth rate, a tax base growth rate of 5.6 six per year percent per year. Then they had 12 years of lower taxable value than they did in 2008. That's what it took for them to come out of the Great Recession. Um 12 years. Now they're back to where they were in 2009. And since they've started recovering in the middle of that dip, they've been growing at 4.78%.

Which is not bad. Um I was just looking at another community today. They came they went down pretty fast and then they stayed pretty low for a while. They were at 1% or less per year growth for four or five years. Took them 15 years to get out of it. Um and now they're at six and a half% growth. So they just boomed. Um so it's interesting to see what's driving that and help understand how do we predict the future based on that information. You can also see in this chart that on the right side the light green bar um is quite a bit higher than the orange. That is the assessed value or state equalized value relative to the taxable value. Which means if we had another great recession, there's a bigger cushion there. Uh because as tax as values go down, your taxable value keeps going up until it hits your SEV. So this is what saved a lot of communities during the great recession was that you didn't have an immediate drop in your tax revenue. Tax base went down, but a lot of communities didn't see the same decrease in their taxable or value and revenue. Um so that was a saving grace for a lot of communities. Um, looking at where we're going from here, like I showed you on the Ipsellani example, we first build a status quo or baseline model, and then we start playing with what happens if we do this, what happens if we do that. Um, we look at different aspects, whether it's staffing, capital, debt, tax rates, etc. to try to make sure we've got something that works for the community. And then we try to improve what we can. Um, and then we just start testing things over and over again. So, lots of scenario testing to see what works and what doesn't. Um, and that helps narrow down your choices. And if it is something that has to go to the voters,

a debt mill or a special levy or something like that, at least we know we've looked at all the options and we know that this is the one that seems to be the best. If that's the case, that's the direction it's going. Cityhood is the next question. And as you probably know this is a big question. Um what we would do in this case is we would build that baseline model uh with the village status. Then we would look at what would be different if this was a city. Um so staffing requirements there'd have to be a little bit more staffing. We would look at your one-time expenses and then ongoing expenses. What would happen to your tax base if you're going to change your boundaries? How much more taxable value would that add? What would that do to your water sewer rates if you're bringing more people in to be charged village rates instead of township rates? So, we want to look at all of that and understand and then we want to look at who's impacted how. Current village residents, current village businesses, folks that are currently in the township that would be annexed into a new city. How is it all impacting them? tax base, utility rates, etc. levels of service. And then what happens to your tax base or to your tax rate? What is going to be needed to actually fund a city operation? Um, that would have to be decided as well. Obviously, your charter probably go for 20 mil maximum charter, which is what most cities have, but maybe you only need 12 mills or 10. I don't know. We'd have to do the math to figure that out. Um, but we don't want to say, "Oh, let's become a city and charge 20 mills when you don't need it." Um, so we want to make sure you're only levying what's necessary to cover the costs. And then using this going forward, um, we would train your staff on how to use it. Um, staff changes, so we're always available to answer questions in the

future if needed. Um, like I said, it's a 20-year model that we would build. you probably focus on five years with a little bit of a look to 10 years now and then. Um, but that means the model is going to be good for a long time to use. Um, and it's also part of the budgeting process. So, it's helpful as you're building your budget, you throw the budget into the model and you say, "Okay, now we know the impact on this year, but what does that do for the next five years? Are we overcommitt overcommitting? Do we need to look at our tax rates again two years from now to make sure we're okay?" Um, and then again, communicating the plan to your constituents so there's transparency and people understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. That's the proposal. Uh, the written proposal that we submitted has three options. Um, we can well, we can do each of these projects individually. Um, I again think it's there's a lot more value in doing it all at once. There's some urgency. I've reduced the price quite a bit because of efficiency and just because I think it's the right thing to do to get Holly to where you need to be.

So if there's questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you, John. Council throwing a lot at you. Questions? Go ahead. Thank you. So I think on the last slide it said we're provided a copy. Do we own it? Is it all editable? It's it's a spreadsheet. It's yours. It's not um any competitors or Why should we pick you over, let's say, our accounting firm? What do you do differently that our accounting firm is not going to do? I don't know what your accounting firm would do. What would a normal accounting firm do? Why why should we go with you? Then

my the models that I've built tend to be more detailed and I put more time into it. Um, the folks that I've met on the CPA firms that do this are usually the folks that are coming in and don't really have a lot of experience. They're given a template model. They are told, "Go to the um audit statements, put in these numbers, and it kicks out a number." I'm going to be delivering hands-on real world experience, 30 years of here's an example here, here's an example there. We can try things. So, questions. Okay, I'm going

the the hands-on approach. So, how fine tuned are we looking at? So, for instance, are we talking budget line we can go in and adjust or salaries compare overtime versus hiring more people and not paying overtime. Yes.

Let me just back up and say there's one more level deeper than what I'm proposing that one could do which is actually build a personnel forecasting model which goes into every single aspect of compensation which I don't think you need. we can work at a higher level. Uh but that that's really useful for communities that are struggling and they really need to find money in their negotiations with labor. So one of the things I'd like to be able to identify is if we're paying overtime because we're understaffed, what does it look like if we just hire more people? So we're not paid overtime and and the benefits that go with that. Exactly. Right.

Um and as far as I we'll move on for now. [snorts] I have a question. Um I know in our community there's a lot of questions about City Hood and a lot of concerns that if we hire an outside company to come in, give us information about Cityhood that they're just doing it to rubber stamp to give us the information we want to see. Would you provide like sources on where you got that information from? So that way it builds the trust with the community.

Absolutely. Okay. Um, so I I did a study for Pentwater two or three years ago. Um, all the sources were cited. Um, I reached out to all of the villages that had recently um, made the move to cityhood and got all their financials, talked to them about what went well, what didn't go well or the hiccups they had. Um, so all that's documented and and we would do the same. I I am not going to rubber stamp anything. Just so you know, I think my integrity I I value that and I'm an independent. So I just

if if I get pressured to do one thing, I'm going to push back and and do what I think is right. Council, one more Jim. So as far as wastewater rates go, like pilot programs. So that's one of the things I I found when payment of looking up water and sewer things. Is that something that you can be proactive to and say you're not doing this, but you could be doing this?

Yes. Um, so I would look at how much money the utility funds are paying back to the general fund and and a pilot is one way of doing that. So you're essentially saying the utilities are taking value away from the city or there's a private developer that's doing that and you you negotiated a payment in L of taxes. Um the other strategy is a cost allocation where you say X dollars or X% of time of administration is and and auditing services and all that is dedicated towards water sewer. So, let's recoup those dollars back into the general fund because the water and sewer should be funding their own operations.

Yes, that would be an option. Council, thank you so much. You're welcome. This brings us to public comment. Members of the audience may address council on any item not on the agenda. Those adjusting council will be limited to three minutes of speaking time. After each agenda item, there will be an additional two-minute public comment period to speak to that item to four council votes. Council will hear all comments for future consideration, but will not have a response at this time. Prior to addressing council, members of the public shall state their name and address for the record. Any public comment? Cherylyn,

I sent you a copy in the mail. Did everybody get it?

If not, I don't want to take eaten of my time. [laughter] My name is Cherylyn and Everly. I'm from 314 Headley Street and I want to talk to you tonight about the mill pond. Um on I just want to kind of give you a brief overview. On June 25th, the balance in the dam restoration fund was $150,000. We were delighted to know that because that gave us something to work with going forward. But after learning of the imminent drawdown of Stiff's Mil Pond by Eagle, the village formed a Mil pond committee to explore options for restoring the pond. Ryan W from the Oakland County Water Resources Commission attended an early meeting and explained the process for establishing a legal lake level and having them the county assume responsibility for the dam going forward. A key point here is the work the water resources commission executes for the studies like LAR mapping to determine what the shoreline should be and those studies are going to be need to be paid for. We volunteers who went out to gather the petition signatures were told that the dam restoration fund would be available to cover those costs as much as possible. August of 2025, you, the village council, approved the Mil Pond Committee's recommendation to pursue the county lake level option with the with the water resource commission. Volunteers gathered a good number of signatures with the assurance to the signitories that the dam restoration fund will be available and hopefully enough to pay for the water resource commission studies. Now, we're up to September of 2025. the village loses its legal battle in the um in lancing. So by October, our dam restoration fund balance has gone from 150,000 to 115,000. And as a resident of the Mil Pond, we ain't any closer than when we started. November of 2025, this latest Mil pond committee meeting, DPW Director Clawson

announced to us that we are now seeking bids from at least one engineering firm CEC in Ann Arbor for a proposal that includes a document exploration with Eagle Environmental Studies and a plan for the best route going forward. I was in the audience and I asked why and the explanation was so we'll have a plan B if Oakland County doesn't work out. But then his next statement was that Mr. Price wanted us to be sure that the village does not want to be in the damn business in the future. So I'm confused and here's my problem. If we know that we're going to need every bit of that last $115,000 in the dam restoration fund to cover the cost of the water resource commission studies and we know we don't want to be in the damn business in the future. Why would we spend one penny on another engineering firm or engineering study that's not going to get us any closer to being with the county? We have a engineering report from row that was dated August 10th of 2021. It was prepared after the work was done wrong on the earth and dam.

Thank you Cherylyn. Could I have an extension please? Motion to give her an extension. We have a motion by Wendell. We have a second by Wein Bunner. All in favor say I.

I. All oppose say nay. Motion carried. Thank you. It's my understanding from some engineers that that report from 2021 is still valid because the rules for dams have not changed legally in the legislature of Michigan. As someone who has been following this process with the microscope, here are my recommendations to get this project on track in sync with the Oakland County Water Resources Commission and in alignment with our promises to the people who signed the petition. Just like the laces that were in my kitchen tonight, I want you as the council to put a lock on the dam restoration fund. No expenditures without your express approval, and I would expect that you would not be spending any money that didn't get us closer to being with the Oakland County Water Resource Commission. The topic of the dam should be an item of old business at every council meeting. This is the third consecutive month that you've met and you have not had a report. It's not been on your agenda. I think we should inquire require staff to ensure that a representative of the county resource commission preferably the young man we've worked with attends all future mil pond committee meetings can't be there we need to do our best finally I just have one more thing I would like to be appointed to the milon pond committee in the capacity of secretary so that she would have minutes and that we would have some professional um accountability for this endeavor. Thank you. Is there any further public comment? Hearing none. Seeing none, that brings us to new business. Lisa, will you please read item A of new business?

Consideration of resolution 2025-34 confirming the village president's appointment of Kirk Cross to the village of Holly Construction Board of Appeals with a term ending December 31st, 2028. Do I have a first to consider item A of new business? I'll make the motion to consider item A of new business. We have a motion by Wendell. We have a second by Wein Brener. Any public comment on this item?

Hearing none. Seeing none. Council discussion. Is Mr. Cross here tonight? I don't think so. No. No. Uh Mr. Cross is on planning commission and again this this commission just they just meet when there's a problem with the building code. Correct. Tim or feel like it was against it.

I think so. Yeah, I think this will be the fourth. We're aiming for five. I just wanted to make sure that way then everybody knew what it was going for. Yeah. This is part of us reinventing the wheel. Um just something that was not done before that should have been but uh we're doing it now. Better late than never. Yep. Yep. Can you just give us maybe some of the points on like his resume and why we feel like he would be appropriate for this committee? Um I'm slacking and did not bring his resume with me because I know I know I was g I was going to ask you since you since you said I'm planning

individual has pertinent questions. I think he can uh make good decisions. So not not just what I agree with just good decisions overall listens to experts that we have there too. So research council. Okay. Um, clerk, please call the role. Wineer, yes. Yes. Ty, yes. Wendle, yes. Ryan, yes. Paul, yes. Brandon,

yes. Motion carried. Thank you to Mr. Cross. To everybody else, we're still looking for one more member for our construction board of appeals. I'm on team A committee. Lisa, will you please read item B?

Consideration by village council to enter into a consultant agreement with municipal analytics in preparing a 20-year strategic financial planning tool, including any including all primary governmental funds, a water and sewer utility rate model, and a cityhood financial analysis. Municipal analytics shall further provide services related to alternate revenue sources, opportunities for cost reduction or cost sharing with other municipalities. target fund balance and cash reserve policies and strategic options to improve village financial sustainability. This consultant fee shall be in shall be in the not to exceed amount of $22,000.

Okay, this was tonight's um presentation. Do I have a first to consider item B of new business? Make that motion. I'll second it. We have a motion by Kascala. We have a second by Wendell. Any public comment on this item Cherylyn [clears throat] Cherylyn Everly from 314 Hadley Street and Hallelujah. I just think this is a fabulous idea. Don't take the $22,000 out of the damn restoration fund. [laughter] I make a motion to pull out the restoration fund.

But we've needed this for so long. I've had a personal experience in the past where I took over an organization that was defunct and the person in front of me said if they were still standing in two years, it would be a miracle. Well, I had the advantage of consultant services like this for five years and that organization is still here. And that was 10, 15 years ago. So, you can't find your way out of the swamp by yourself. Tim doesn't have the staff. Go for it. [applause] Thank you, Cherylyn. And thank you. Applause. Any further public comment hearing? No, I see somebody [laughter]

psyched to walk up there. Name and address, please.

Jan Vanzofty 15226 Weller Court. Um I did address it at the last meeting that um I wanted to see the the tears of like maybe let's break it down but I did read the um detailed agenda online which I recommend all the people at home look at that because the agenda that we receive in the evening is is good but the detailed one online is better. Um, and after reading that, I do agree with spending the 22,000 upfront because the breakdown was like 36,000 if you broke it into into segments. So, I also support this plan and I'm excited to see what what the report says. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Any further public comment? Hearing none, seeing none. Council discussion. Um, if we approved it, when would he start? John, would you like to come back up to the [laughter] answer question? Sorry for not ahead.

I don't mind. Um, if approved tonight, um, and I get a signed agreement, um, I would prepare a a long list of information that I would request to begin the study probably this week. It might be early next week. Um but as soon as we start getting that and I encourage my clients to send me as it comes in rather than wait till it's all available um we start building the model. Um so we start looking at the information. I will download five years of financial statements from the state's website which I've already done. Um and look at some of the issues looking at some of the information in your agenda items. Tonight I have some questions for the administration about some of your current financial strategies. Um so we start asking questions and moving forward. Um so practically immediately

and then is it also it's like an hourly rate or is it like a It is a flat fee. Um we will we will blow through the $22,000 very quickly. Um so I I and again there's a lot of value in this for the village. I'm offering it a discounted rate. Um, and by combining it, we can save even more money. That's why we're doing it this way. Um, our costs will certainly be more than that, but we're willing to do it for 22. I appreciate that's why I was asking, you know, if it was hourly or anything like that because not to exceed and then is it is it better to do a 10 year or is it better to do a 20-year outlook prediction?

Uh, for us building the spreadsheet 20 years is no more time. So, we build the 20 year. We're going to focus on the more immediate term. the 20 years if you've already built a new village hall. But if you needed a new, you know, water treatment plant or something, that's 15 years down the road. We wouldn't want to know that now so we can start anticipating what it's going to take to get there. Okay, council. Jim, [laughter] time's up. Jim, I'm asking now. Yes.

Um, so there was some concerns with our audit previously with the previous administration being slow to deliver information and should this be passed if if there is any delays on our staff is that something you feel comfortable still coming back to us emailing us and saying your staff is not sure if if you want to be involved in that way absolutely oh yeah um yes I my my job is to get it done and to get it done right so a lot of things coming up in time you have you have limited staff resources I understand that. Um, and you're probably in the audit process right now.

That is one thing I wanted to point out when we were talking about timelines and such because, you know, a lot of this is going to be working with Lisa on these things. She's in the middle of the audit. She's buried in the audit right now. Her and Tessa, that's what they primarily do. So, we would do as much ground work, you know, John and I, as far as, you know, like get him all the information that I can provide. And then when Lisa and Tessa have gotten, you know, through more of the audit process and involve them, you know, with their specific numbers, you know, that I wouldn't be able to provide. Um, I think that would be just that would be the only time consider constraint that we have right now because we need to get through this audit for for our residents to find out six months later that there was something going on for five months and then we're five months behind. So,

no, we we want to keep it moving. Um and and ideally we would get this done in time for you to be working within it in your next budget cycle. That's that's the goal. To to backpack on that like you are looking at 3 to four months that it would take before we would get back. Yes. Uh for staff we are currently working with a firm water rate water rate. How does that impact uh what we're doing with them? just stop paying then.

So I haven't so I don't know what the actual like existing plant man uh water sewer um uh relationship is like what that contract looks like. So we have to like reevaluate it. Obviously, if this meets our criteria and our needs, then we would we wouldn't be doing anything further with that on that particular section of how we're utilizing them because looking through this, I think we need to be able to justify everything. There's no no numbers back there's problem. So we need some could we potentially because we already have that contractual plant and say that this works for us basically pay for this out of the contractual which we've already set a budget for.

We would have to look at what that actual contract looks like. That wasn't a contract that I executed as far as for that portion uh of it. It's something that's been legacy. So we'd have to look at how that looks. Uh you know what the termination rules would be uh So then do we want to approve this on a contingency that we can cancel contract because that would be double bill. Well, what plan is providing is completely separate like as far as um they do water study for us though. So if that's built into the contract that would be built contract for that we say no we're not going to fulfill our least. Do you have any information on the contract for that one?

So yeah we have to review that. I haven't again yeah that was all legacy stuff that you know and they were mostly providing us uh hourly bills like when they were to do that or do any additional work like that it was at an hourly rate it wasn't like a contracted fee so when Brian from them would come in they would give us they would charge us for his time not based on a like this is a flat rate for example question Yeah. Um what's what's your take? Should we worry about a contract with plantar?

I don't without having the contract in front of me. It's awfully hard to uh to answer. Uh if you if you wish to build yourself, you know, an escape hatch, for lack of a better term, you can always uh you know add some language which says to the extent this is not already covered or I mean whatever whatever you're hoping to achieve. And I'll just say I think a difference between what I'm proposing and offering and and plant is is they're doing the work and again I know they work at a much higher level than I do. Um I would be giving you the tool and and that's yours to use. So that's a difference.

I would pay for us to have a contract in place that says and and that's a valid question and I I support exploring that before you commit more funds. Right. Um so I also I mean We're talking a three to four month timeline that's going to take us into March, which is our budget sessions anyway. So that's when we would be budgeting for plan at that point if we were doing a contractual thing. I don't I don't think it's going to overlap timeline. depends on how our contract was like a threeyear contract that we're in the middle of or five year right looking at the but if we're doing an hourly rate contract

yeah I I need to review it but looking at the bills the only bills that I've seen for that since I've been here and at least correct me if I'm wrong have been just hourly rates so I think my assumption is you know again we were already talking water rate studies when I when I arrived so I think any additional that we were doing with them have been at an hourly rate. Are they currently working on those water and sewer rates right now?

Nothing. Besides for what we've already done with the finance committee we've asked and we honestly like one of the reasons we included this in there is because we haven't really been happy with the the results of the information we've been getting from that. So that is a reason that when we talked about this we said he mentioned that and we said uh that is a hot topic within the community and you know we'd like another uh I think we can do a lot of good water. So um something that could be built into the motion would be pending that there is not a conflicting contract etc. Rest of motion I think that suffices every everyone understands. Yeah, I I won't be offended if if the scope has to change. Just communicate.

My only thing is that he's doing it for a set rate. So whether or not we have the water on there with him or not with him, we're still paying the same amount. So what's the difference? Yeah. The the discount is rather extraordinary. So I mean, we're not saving money if we don't have him do the water. If we did the financial forecast in cityood, it would be 16,000 versus removing 18,500 water rate. But then it would a lot of that discount might disappear, right? Well, going off that doesn't,00

so what what I think if if I can just address some of the concerns. So if if plant is working on a study now for your rates for 2627 that that's what I would be working on. If they're working on current rates that's a different question. Um but if you are in a contractual relationship with them that is for a time period then obviously we want to make sure you can get out of that or we revise what we do. Um I just want to make sure we give you the right thing for the for the village. I would rather modify ourselves 20 years personally, but

I just like to know if if if if we do have to have them both, we can compare both sets of numbers and see who's coming out with the correct amount better. What numbers you like more? Well, I'm not saying what I like more, what what actually makes sense. I mean, he obviously does this for many multipities and villages and townships where Plant Maran is more or less auditing company. Oh, we can find that out pretty long. All right, Tim, go in your office. Go.

That historic records are not always readily available as I would like. So, if you know if Lisa and I can find everything as timely as we'd like, then it should be pretty [snorts] immediate and it really just depends on that. um to to your point uh that um the other municipalities that have worked have mentioned this before and um that like talking to the the reason that I I asked John, we've kind of gone this route is because talking to many different municipalities when we were in our budget, the name that I kept hearing was John from Municipal Analytics and like uh we had Milford up there. Christian the uh village manager from Milford said the single best thing that he's done for his village is get them involved and that he you know every you know has they've trained their uh their team to go through that model and update it and it's just and if there's ever any issues they've been very receptive in working with them and so um you know when I keep hearing the same name over and over especially in this community it's like okay this is private we should go

I'd like to make a motion okay that we approve contract with the amendment. Wait, hold on. Yeah, you're right. Yep. Yep. We did public comment. We did discussion. Yeah, we already had the motion. So, who made the motion? The motion. The motion was by Well, the motion was by you. Yeah. So, you can amend your motion. I have some discussion before. Okay. Yeah. So, but before before you amend your motion, Ry Ryan will speak, but then you'll have to amend your motion if you and then Wendella will have to approve the amendment because his was the second.

A lot of what everyone was talking about was some of the questions I had, so I was just waiting to see where it led to. Um, this is more for the village staff. Um, are there any other overlaps with companies for any of the other tools that are being provided with this? And how does this already pertain to like your guys' job scope like are you Are you doing any of this? Is this just to provide a tool to make it easier and forecast better?

Yeah. So, um obviously it's something that works in tandem with what we do. A lot of what Lisa has, you know, our our vision of maybe what we want to do, uh you know, has been kind of rough because we've been having to play catchup a lot. Lisa has is having to do the dayto-day all the time. I've been uh doing a lot of day-to-day operations, you know, working with our team, making sure that we're covering a lot of these areas. that what we've not been able to do as much has been able to do some of the strategic planning. And so without a staff, as Cherylyn mentioned, um this augments all the things that we need to do. It allows us to look ahead and do some of this strategic planning and in many ways it it provides this additional staff member to both Lisa and I what we do every day. And so it it yeah, it would definitely assist in what we do. Um, another question for it. Our budget's already kind of tight. How does that fall into our budget we currently have if we want to do it this budget cycle? Yeah. So, and that's and we're going to have to uh there's a lot of things that we have to look into and how we're going to be able to uh afford this. Part of it is uh having the water sewer rates uh study in there allows us to utilize some water sewer money for this as well proportionate to how it you know, benefit the bottle. So, that's one of the reasons that we wanted in there in order to uh allow us to utilize different [clears throat] funds. So, it's not all just coming out of fund, for example. And so, we are having to get creative and and give specific uh recommendations, but it's going to have to come out of our some of our contractual expenses.

And so, between water and sewer and contractual, we have it. I mean, yes, we do, but everything. So, we're gonna have to Lisa and I are definitely gonna have to, you know, figure out where every single pennies come from and report back exactly where we're pulling it exactly from. Um, and another question for you. Um, with the city stuffing and it's also for you as well. Do we project that we need more staff if we're making like more fire, more admin, DPW or whatever. Could that be added into it as well?

Yeah, I believe you already said, John, that you were going to add that into it as well. Yes. So, part of the analysis is looking at if you change your boundaries, what is your service area looking like and then what staffing level is needed to to staff that. Um, so that that would be an added cost that we'd have to cover

because I know when we were on the city commission last year, One of the things we like what would our SAT you know look like? So when John and I had the initial conversation we talked about all right if we were to continue on with our current boundaries what would that look like? And then the other model as far as mapping because we've not really discussed what this would look like. What we took was the um the census data uh that the census defines as the urban area of Holly which includes some of the development area out into the township. And so using that is kind of what we use as a like a first look map as all right you know does this make sense because again the census already says this is the urban area of Holly. Um so that is what we use to kind of expand into the area that's being developed.

That's what goes kind of in line with what the boundary committee might look at. Is that what you're suggesting? Yeah. So as far as what if uh you know if the cityhood initiative goes forward and you know the proposed map that would go to towards the state boundary commission um you know we have all of this data to inform the community when they're trying to make their decision about whether or not they sign a cityhood petition or you know and the state boundary commission can also look at and said you know this makes complete sense or no it doesn't make sense uh to do this. really is to just provide all the facts. Um, which is what I, you know, repeatedly been asked for from council. So,

all right. Thank you. Okay. Uh, Jim, did you want to continue amending your motion? I did. So, I put a com and say provided the village does not have conflicting contractual obligations. Wendle. Wendle, do you agree to amend your second? No. Would you like to How does that work then, Gilder? So, his motion the original motion. Yes.

Got it. So right now the original motion stands which is to accept this um as presented without pending any um contractual conflicts. Uh Lisa, will you call the role please? No.

No. Wend. Yes. Ryan, no. Cole, yes. runner. Yes. Brandon, no. Um, I'm sorry. Did the nays get it? Four. Yes. Four days. I'd like to make a motion. Hold on. First motion denied. I don't get to say that very often. [laughter] Do that. Mr. Kasa, motion a comment at the end of 202,000. Provided the notice does not have conflicting contractual obligations.

I will second that. We have a motion by Costa. We have a second by Cole. Clerk, will you call the Sorry. You know what? Just to be on the safe side, I'd like to offer another public comment. Any public comment hearing? Yes, please. I just want to say thank you to Mr. Price and thank you, Mr. Thank you. Any others? Hearing none. Seeing none. Council, any further discussion?

The only reason why I didn't go with the contractual because if you get a second opinion, you have to pay for it. And I feel that if he's looking into something, we can use the water and a sewer fund to help pay for him. If we don't have that on there, we can't have that fund to help pay for it. So, that's more that we got to try to figure out how to get out of the general fund. And if we are contractually in with Plant Moran, there's got to be a stipulation somewhere where their services aren't putting up to the value that we expected and we could walk out of that contract.

I'm going to agree with Daniel. We have continuously asked to look at other audit forms. We have not shown that they are the one that everybody wanted to be on board with. I've also sat through those meetings with plant man's water sewer rates and it sounds alart to me. Um, I mean, whatever. But I, you know, I think we were good. Okay. I will agree with all that. My concern, however, though, is what if the contract comes back and says we're locked in at $50,000 every year, five years? Well, and I'd further like to point out that as Jim um amended it, it's to conflicting contracts. So, if there is wiggle room to get out of that contract, it's not conflicting. Okay. Okay.

No, I just I just don't want to hold him up for valid. Yeah. want to make sure we enroll in as soon as possible and knowing that we can. Speaking of as soon as possible, council, anything else? Um, do we have any other contracts out there that might also conflict with it like for financial forecasting or financial impact analysis and stuff like that? No, the the auditing that we do is a completely separate service just to cover your motion. It's not just water. We're looking at you put a blank. All right then, clerk, will you call the role, please? Yes. Yes. Wendle, yes. Ryan, yes. Cole, yes. Yes.

Brandon, yes. Motion carry. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, where are we at here? We are at old C, new C. Do I have a first to consider item C of new business? I'll make the motion to consider item C and new business. That was the old C of the consent agenda. There we go. Um, okay. The updates to the fee schedule. Do I have a second? I'll second it. All right. I have a motion by Wendell and a second by Cole. Um, do you want to present?

Yes. The reason why I pulled this down is just some of the things looked kind of like the NF NFS NSF check fee I know is different from every bank we go to. I don't know what our bank charges. Um, and then clerk certification. I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but if it's something like a notary public thing, there should be something for that. uh for the police department uh CD and DVD duplication changes from the previous schedule it just the only things that we're asking are the highlighted things

well okay then but I still I don't I see that you well you can still amend whatever you want to though because I'm just saying there's these are fees some of these fees I just don't agree with his at all. Bye, John. Thank you. Well, can can you elaborate on what you don't? Well, it's like for the reg rental registration annual long-term, they've got a $50 fee, late fee of $30. Short-term annuals don't have no late fee. Shortterm was first come, first serve. So, there wouldn't be a late fee whenever you register it. So, say there's still openings in July. If you're in July, it's not.

Okay. And then we got, this is just me probably being petty, but we got uh road closures, four hours, $150 plus $35 for barricades. A lot of the events that I've been on, it's been closed for seven hours. So that and then um like I said, that CD DVD duplication, that's outdated. Don't really use the CDs or DVDs anymore. It's all on the uh micro flash drives. That's not true. The department uses uh CDs. That's not true. That's not true.

We still have to make that fun. The courts have flash drives, but most of the attorneys still want

and the only and the only [laughter] and the only other thing for even though it hasn't And the other thing was this water department fees. We don't have [clears throat] anything that says out of village pricing on that. We have I know I'm just saying we don't have we should have a thing that says to be determined for out of village pricing. So that way at least it's on there. We've got a scapegoat to fall on to once we get that done. Um the water uh water department fees it's on the it's the back part of the fee page. We don't have nothing for out of village pricing.

We haven't set it up yet. Well, I know but we should have something on there to say to be determined or something.

Yeah, we haven't had a resolution yet. There was a resolution back in uh 2019 was it? The last resolution was to separate because In our charter, it allows us to set uh like non-resident and resident rates on things, but the last resolution from council, previous council, several councils let go or to have it as one rate. So, we haven't established that yet. That hasn't been the finance committee has been looking at it. That's part of what John was talking about, but we haven't separated it as like a non-resident resident fee. So, we didn't want to prematurely put it on to a fee schedule without it being a council. Well, that's why I said to be determined because if somebody wants to go on there, let's see we change it and they go, "Well, I have a fee schedule here that, you know, so and so gave me it doesn't have it on there."

Well, the charter states that the fee schedule can be changed by council. And so when you actually change it, when c when it when we would add that on, if that were to ever get added on, council would then uh vote for those changes and then they would be added. So, I'm just making sure we cover our bases. So we're not leaving ourselves open for anything. That's all. So only thing I would say the construction that's pretty standard for the amount for it. Yeah. So we just reviewed communities. Looks like it was the same as the zoning ones, right?

Do we want clarification of what the clerk certification or what that entails? It's a zero fee. It's probably a notary. Well, don't they charge for notaries? We do not charge for notaries. No, we do not. Okay. Well, I know some places.

And for the not notary law, we can only accept up to $10 anyway, even if it is document. Okay. Um, I'm sassified. Public comment. Any public comment on this item? Hearing none. Seeing none. Cler, will you call the role, please? Yes. Wendle, yes. Ryan, yes. Cole, yes. Wrunner, yes. Yes. Brandon,

yes. Motion carried. Um, Lisa Lee Reed, new item D. So that would be the warrant, correct? That was the old the consideration of approval of the warrant 2025-1 in the amount of 511,723. No, no, I thought he wanted to do the resolution 2025-035 for the park hours. No, it was it was he Okay, just making sure. Um, no problem. Do I have a first to consider this item? I'll make a motion to consider this item. I'll second the motion.

Motion by Ryan, second by Wendell. Wendell, do you want to present?

Yeah, when I was going through this consent agenda for a warrant, um, just a couple things were popping off at me like they always do. And, um, I don't know how we do certain things and like uniform allowances and everything else. thing or if it's department things. And then the one thing that I would like to see happen and I don't know if it's the right way I'm saying it or not, but when we have uh vehicle repairs being done or spending money AutoZone or Riley's or whatever, I'd like to see the receipt attached to it so we know what we're buying. And also the repairs, what vehicle had what repairs done to it. If it's a repetitive repair, we need to Is that satisfactory to keep that vehicle around or should we just expire it? You know, I mean, there was a towing fee of um let me see where was that at? 495 $473 for complete towing service and worth three square miles. $473 total vehicle somewhere. You'd assume inside of our village area? Yes. He's like, "Wow."

All right. Well, I'm gonna have uh Brian go up to the podium for a second. He's going to help me out with this one. But I I you know, I'm I'd be interested what you're what you want to do if you want to be all administrative uh like charges as far as you know how we are um you know how how we're doing business. I would be interested in specific recommendations that well it's like you know if we have fl towing if we get if we make a contract with let's say Billies who's out of poly

bas and he could take care of all of our towing at a flat rate and give us a a decent deal. You know I'm not saying that that's what he's going to do but I'm saying have the same company no matter what flat look around so we know exactly who's doing it towing and exactly what it's going to cost per mile and we're not go to the next guy and get charged more or less. We're getting the same rate no matter what. Go ahead, Brian. The Jack did try to tow that vehicle and he couldn't. I don't know what it is. It It's one of our older dump trucks. It's been at this repair shop for a lengthy amount of time. So, I had them tow it from that repair shop to another repair shop. It wasn't probably talked about that.

It wasn't repair. It wasn't in a local tow and it had to use a larger truck. So, that was a semi-to truck, not a standard tow truck that towed that. and and then things like that when they if they submit it as a different just besides complete towing service vehicle repair and maintenance we look at that and I'm like well okay but now now we said it's a heavy duty tow truck basically required well that's a justifiable price it's out of the district everything else and that way then we know and it's just like same thing when it goes for like anything when we buy stuff at O'Reilly's on accounts or whatever you It'd be nice to know what we're purchasing. Are we purchasing the same thing twice? Is Tim purchasing this and is Brian purchases the same thing when they could just use the same thing? Mean like windshield washer saw, but like the police department purchased it and then Brian purchases something and all this when we could just purchase it all at once a big congomerant pallet and then have it. So, we're not going through and just having all his little, oh, I spent a $139 O'Reilly's for a bowl.

I think you might be crossing into um an area that the department heads are contractually permitted to make decisions on themselves without that kind of micromanagement. I'm not really I'm not trying to micromanage them, but I see what you're saying. I'm just trying to so we understand better what's because I mean we know uniform allowances uniform allowances. The only thing I understand is why we have a uniform allowance for um Kieran Valley guns. Um probably like a holster or Yeah, go ahead. Safety vests, holsters. Yeah, but that's why I'm asking because I

But so I I would I would counter a little bit in that you are like that's why we've attached not only the warrant that shows you know the breakdown we've provided like what you're seeing is essentially are the receipts from all these places. That's why you're seeing here on Valley Guns and all these things which previously you would have never seen those things. We're trying to provide as much transparency without, you know, obviously if you saw every receipt that came through the village, you know, like further, you have to sit next to Carol uh in the office for a couple days to just go through all of that.

Every week when Lisa signs checks, they have to submit a lot of paperwork and receipts. Um and then there's also a record of who's been solicited for different services as well. So, if there's a specific item that you want to have them start, um, soliciting new manufacturers for, um, speak to the item, um, this kind of vague directive to overhaul the entire system is, um, a little difficult, I think, for everyone to answer.

Well, and I understand that when when I when I say like, you know, I don't, but see gun holsters and everything else make sense. You know, I didn't that my my brain didn't compute that. I know from being in business with my father and working at other places when any somebody had receipts they submitted other than the ma ma main ones they always submit them with that

I I will say just for you so you understand part of our audit process is we trying to clean up a lot of this um I know I know that we're really worried about expenses making sure that everything is taken like care of so we're actually increasing how we uh review these things in the past um you know it was a little bit more car cost cars launch but now it's more so all right the expenses come to me like the department has to bring me any expenses I have to sign off on it then it goes over to uh Lisa to review and now she goes and then it goes to Carol to actually pay off some of these expenses [snorts] in that process previously it went to Carol and then it went backwards uh and so yeah so we we are you know these are things that we've we've identified in audit and we're kind of fixing these processes. We're not perfect yet. No,

but yeah, but these are these are things that we're trying to do to improve the accountability and making sure that all expenses are accounted for while also not like I can't uh you know, if if Chief Nar needs to get, you know, a new holster, um he has spending, you know, limits that he can do. And what we've done is all right, we budgeted this amount for these things. um you know, as long as it's not a an expense over a certain criteria, they they get to spend that until they get to a certain percentage within that budget line item. And then we actually focus in even a little bit more to be like, "All right, even though you're allowed to do it, we're you're not allowed to bust your budget on things like you have to get approvals for that,

right? There's that purchasing policy to tend to as well." And additionally, I just want to speak to this too. So they there's only so many characters within that line item that can on that check stuff. So when Carol's typing the descriptions in, you know, Chief Nar may have three sentences of what he's buying, but it's she she's limited to the characters. So she sometimes tries to have to just make a, you know, a summary of what it is because there's not enough room on the checks. And that's one of the reasons why I asked for the department number list you guys gave me today was so that way when I get these, I can look at them and better understand them. Okay.

Wasn't trying to pick it or throw stones anyway or say you guys aren't doing. I am glad to hear that. Is there any other council comments? I think you guys can take a seat unless we have [laughter] I don't think they need to. Okay, gentlemen. Thank you. I think we've taken up enough of your time. Amber was right. Um any record if we have a question on something. This packet comes out in enough that we can call you right. I mean this is starts page of 21 council. Any further comments public? Any public comment? Come on up.

Jam off 15226 Weller Court. Um I did appreciate that document in the agenda. I did go through it line by line. There was a couple things where I was like, I wonder what that's for. Um, but they weren't great amounts and um, reading through I'll just be like looking for that each month. Is that going to come out every month? Um, but I do appreciate Councilman uh, Wendell's um, bringing that up just because you know that I don't remember the towing one specifically raising a flag to me, but um, once he said it, I was like, "Oh, yeah. I wonder what that was." Um, so I do appreciate that you asked for that explanation. Um, I don't think that like detailed receipts are necessary because that would be a very big document. But, um, yeah, I I would ask that you go line by line and if there's an item with a large price tag or a item that's repetitive each month and across different departments, then I think it's okay to discuss that. So, thank you for bringing that up.

Thank you. Any further public comment? Hearing none. Seeing none, Lisa will call the role, please. Wendle, yes. Brian, yes. Yes. Brener, yes. Yes. Yes. Brandon, yes. Motion carried. Thank you for the understanding. I don't know where I'm at. Where are we? Reports. Reports. Wonderful. Tim, you want to kick it off?

Absolutely. In fact, I will um because she's waited so patiently. Uh so we actually are going to get a our first report will be from one of our leaison from our dam committee uh who's going to provide us an update. [panting]

Regina Ko 7-Eleven South Broad Street Holly. Good evening everyone. Um I am here to give you guys an update on what we have been doing on the mil pond committee because we have finally made some progress a little bit here and there. Uh, so the dam committee continues working diligently towards submitting the petition for a legal lake level to the Oakland County Board of Commissioners under part 307. The original petition includes 76 parcels and we now have a redacted version which includes 66. Some parcels were removed after closer examination showed that they did not appear to have riparian rights or direct access. That final determination will ultimately rest with the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner. and we do believe that they will agree with at least some if not all of our redactions based on property layout access limitations and inability to reach the water. We are still striving for the twothirds majority using the higher parcel count though just in case. Um at present out of the 66 parcel list we have 39 of the 44 signatures needed so far and out of the 76 partial version we have 41 of the 51 required. We do have some verbal commitments but I've not added those yet. uh because they're not a formal count. Uh we are continuing our outreach still. I do feel that this is a strong progress given the short timeline and the difficult circumstances that we have faced. Uh 21 of the parcels in total lie within the village of Holly and the remaining 55 parcels lie within Rose Township. Um, on Monday, this coming Monday, both Rose Township and the village of Holly will be providing me with envelopes so that we can mail petitions to 11 off-site riparian owners that we have been unable to reach in person. The committee is personally covering the cost of postage and prepaid return envelopes to ensure transparency and participation. The use of official municipal envelopes helps recipients recognize the mail as legitimate and

trustworthy. Each recipient will have the option to sign or to decline participation as that choice remains entirely their own. We intend to have the signatures completed by the end of the year. If we fall short, we will work with Oakland County Commissioners to pursue the only other legal pathway to establish part 307, which is introducing a motion through the county board of commissioners to establish the legal lake level by resolution. Some are on board with this pathway, but we hope it will not be needed as we would prefer to follow the most democratic and fair process moving forward. The Mil Pond committee recently formed several subcommittees to divide the workload and allow members to focus on their areas of expertise. The first of which is our engineering subcommittee. Robert Montgomery is leading that one and he has been working on a potential backup plan and that's in case the legal lake level process cannot be achieved. He has personally covered the cost to have an engineering firm come out and assess the spillway area and provide feedback on feasibility and potential design options. This backup plan would involve a lower cost structure and a lower water level. While it is ultimately a last resort, it's a responsible consideration as the village has made it clear it does not wish to retain ownership or financial responsibility for maintaining such a costly piece of infrastructure long term. We expect a bid report from that company soon. Regardless, this would just be an initial report to see what expenses look like, as we would still have to seek out other bids to follow village purchasing agreements, and of course, any major decisions would always be brought before council. Our second subcommittee is a soil stabilization and wetlands subcommittee. Sue Julian has been leading efforts to identify safe vegetation to prevent further erosion of private embankments. After months of waiting, she has finally received written confirmation from Eagle allowing the planting of annual rye grass without penalty. Unfortunately, the growing season has passed, so planting will now take place in the spring. Sue herself personally purchased

250 lbs of rice seed totaling $636, enough to cover the lower ponds embankments. The mill pond committee discussed and agreed to personally reimburse Sue for this expense. Any planting will absolutely require property owner permission on a parcel byparal basis for access. Sue and the village administration are still exploring all contingencies and responsibilities regarding wetlands and mitigation. The intention of the rye planting is to help stave off invasive species that have already begun to take hold and to prevent further erosion during the straw down period. The next subcommittee is the historical and grants subcommittee. I am currently leading this effort to pursue landmark recognition for Stiff's Mill Pond to help protect it long term and open funding opportunities. I will be presenting this to council next month. This work also includes coordinating administrative and regional partnerships. Holly Township Parks has already passed a resolution of support as you all know and I will um and I have been informed just today that Rose uh Township will be passing theirs this coming Monday and I will be um presenting a resolution of support to Holly Township at their next board meeting next week as well to continue building on this multi-jurisdictional declaration recognizing Stiffs Mill Pond as a regional and environmental landmark. We are also coordinating a third informational session with Ryan from the Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner's Office to answer questions about the part 307 process and our next steps. We will welcome council members and the public to attend or even submit questions in advance. This date is to be determined and will be posted once we have confirmed with him. The committee appreciates the vill's continued support and we remain focused on finding a fair, sustainable solution for our community, our waterway, and our shared future. Thank you, Regina.

If you guys have any questions, uh, you know, Regina talked about this, but if you have any questions on, you know, the what's going on with the dam, uh, or, you know, current status, uh, you know, we could take them. Uh, the I just want to like Regina, Cherlyn, uh, Ashley, and, you know, all our members committee obviously very passionate about this. uh you know there's you know Virginia has been so dedicated in you know you're tracking this down both hers they've gone to the Rose Township meetings and you know requested support they got it from the parks commission and the township they're working in on Holly Township too um really they've been driving you know this initiative where staff we just don't have the staffing and also it's a a community initiative it has to be because whenever we're doing petitions like this it has to be a communityled one and We couldn't have a better champion than Regina as far as all the work she's doing.

Thanks, Tim. I'm trying. Uh Regina, um the grass, the ry mix is you you said the damn board's going to pay for that. Um yes. So, we're trying to keep money in the Mil Pond fund and um because we weren't sure what was going to happen uh with it in regards to whether we would be allowed to purchase it or not, uh we all discussed together uh and voted on it. believe it was a couple of months ago that we would all be personally willing to fund it ourselves because we wanted to protect our embankments. So does I just wanted to make sure that we knew what's going on because Cherylyn's comment earlier,

of course, we don't want we're not asking the village for money and we're not asking for money from uh the Mil Pond fund. So, the some we have some outstanding questions on it that we've been, you know, trying to work through um as far as because we've always been under the the hope that we're going to be able to draw the water back up. Uh as far as, you know, and that we're not going to have to really stabilize the soil because it will be water, right? And we want to make sure although Sue Julian has been working very hard to get, you know, answers from Eagle, we want to make sure that once we do plant anything, it doesn't make us doesn't require us to maintain it as a wetland. That it doesn't put any more, it doesn't lock us into any of these considerations. There's also, we talked about repairing rights. A lot of these are cut and dry. If you look at um like Bush Lake and some of those on property maps, we can see that, you know, the the rights uh extend out into the water. Well, mill pond. Uh, you know, it it was actually drawn out as the the the entire map of the mill pond. We haven't answered some of these repairing rights like how would those actually um, you know, if Cherylyn and Regina's property get act additional um, land, how do we actually draw those uh, lands or is it the villages and is it our responsibility? And if we have to plant, can we can we actually plant on private property? Uh, because it's not considered like a right of way or those things. So, we're having to have a lot of these uh questions answered and they're not uh they're not normal questions. They're not easy ones to answer.

They're very specific. Uh and and again, um some of the things that and we're also having to work in parallel with them in that they are working hard to do this legal lake level with the water resource commission. And we are hoping this occurs because it is really the way that we are going to probably be able to uh maintain uh the water level in the dam there. But we have to act we have criteria that we have to meet by Eagle as far as within a year we have to have done a wetland mitigation study in order to determine you know what the impact would be on the environment. We have two years to from um you know when they did the initial draw down two years uh to give them an about what we're going to do as far as removal um replacement or uh you know or repair. And so one of the reasons that we're you know like as Regina mentioned, Robert Montgomery brought in an engineer to kind of start that process, help us out a little bit. One of the issues we're having is we don't know what kind of question what kind of problem we have yet. We don't know if it's a $25,000 problem, $250,000 problem, $2.5 million problem. And so this uh allowing doing these uh endeavors helps us contextualize the problem and like help us better address like all right what kind of other engineers we might not need to get in to do bids. Do we want to submit this out for an RFQ or an RFP? Um but again it depends on where we're leaning as far as repair versus replacement versus removal. Um because those are all different questions we have to have answered before we can even know what path we're going down and what that price tag might be.

And Eagle didn't give us anything except for we're drawing down for the most part. So they shot us in the leg. I mean they didn't even tell us about the wetland study that they wanted until after the draw down and they wanted that done before the draw down. So and they didn't even tell us until like recently. So it's to be fair we shot ourselves in the lake 25 years ago. Yeah. To be fair. I mean, if we're if we're being honest and but um you know, obviously they've expedited a lot of these things. So, I don't want to just completely shift blame off of the village like you know um these are things uh like as John mentioned capital improvements that could have been done two decades ago that um

would have cost us a lot less. Uh and now we are having to uh bear the burden of that. Um, so yes, Eagle is holding our foot our feet to the fire and um, you know, we don't agree with all of the things they're doing, but at the end of the day, at least right now, the burden is on us to um, to do the right thing as much as we can all time. Two quick questions. Um, number one is, uh, is Sysma a relevant resource? Well, I've got my SISMA expert here. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So Danny will now give his report. He's got some good things to say.

So we we uh with the Gchaw Park project, we tried to get some grants through Sysma. They have paused their grant funding through 2026 because they are currently restructuring Oakland County Parks with all of the government cuts and I think they're trying to restructure how they're doing all of their funding with the parks millage that they passed as well. So Sysma is kind of out of the question for a year or two. Gotcha. Thank you. questions for it. Um, is it safe to assume that staff is reviewing the correspondence they're sending out before it gets sent out since it's going to have the building on it? Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So, Regina's been working really close with uh with us on Sorry, Regina.

And that's and that's something we've, you know, we've said, hey, this has to come from the damn committee. This has to be that, you know, we're um we're going to provide envelopes again just so when they open it up, they know that it's actually in the first place. make sure you guys had a look at it since we're putting our name on it. Yep.

Yes, I I did give Brian um from our last committee meeting the paperwork that I was uh sending out that Rose Township has approved uh just to make sure since it was using their their envelopes. Uh they wanted to make sure that we were being fair and honest with our residents and not being unethical in any way and letting them know what was happening. And so it's a very summarized version of what's happened from draw down to now and letting them know about the process and giving them an option to sign or abstain. um so that we would like to know if they deny so that we can know that they've you know that this message has reached them basically.

I will say for them Ashley who's not here like they have been methodical in wanting to provide as much information to the point that it's almost hampered them in some ways because they like we want to give them price tags. We want to give them all these things and a lot of that just won't be decided like that's water resource commission has to decide a lot of these things about what level different people would be specially assessed if they were to if they were to produce it. Um so but they've gone as above and beyond trying to be as transparent with um all of the residents because again we're mostly talking about Rose Township residents at this point. We're trying to be really ethical because it is a special assessment district. That's what it would be and I want to make sure people are aware of that before they sign.

Worry about not being ethical. It was just more make sure that something wasn't said in there that you're not supposed to say. Oh yeah. Yes. Of course. And the only reason why I brought com is just not because I don't appreciate what you're doing. I just want to make sure we all know what you're doing. Oh, absolutely. And what's going on. Any any paperwork that I put out um is always handed in at the end of a meeting to staff and anything that I send in emails is always uh copied to staff as well. Now, from the legal perspective, we can't be held liable for anything, can we? If we put our name on the bottom of it. Oh, that's why I asked some staff was reviewing it. We we are liable.

It is um village correspondents and that's why he wanted to make sure it's going through. That's what I just wanted to make sure. And we're only talking really about like four or five like or uh you know like 10 or 11 residents that it will actually go out to with our uh name. It's and it's really just people that have poly partials or that live in the village. they they're kind of tailoring it to who uh who who the remaining parcels are that they need to go out because some of them are, you know, on the Rose Township side, ones that are maybe are in probate that are uh you know, people that live in Florida or or even within uh you know, uh surrounding communities. I can give you exact numbers. It is it is three in Holly and Aiden Rose.

So yeah, so really talking only three letters. Emily mean the reason why I was asking that is because I wasn't taught like you know things not being said I might talk about evil don't like something that was put out even though it's 100% correct evil might get mad at us. Yeah, they're good at that because I read [laughter] I think I read one of the reports that the concrete leeching where you get the white marks on the concrete is a sign of a failure and if you go to any piece of concrete that's in water it does that. The Mac bridge it does that.

Thank you Thomas. Last question for this was um say if we didn't end up getting with county and we were left with the replace, repair, remove is could that be added to that uh financial planning model? Yeah. Yeah. Because that would be part of our capital improvements that we responsible for being added to it. Good question. Yeah. Thank you. Um I have one more question. I think it's for staff. Um I know and thank you Regina. I know uh Cherylyn had mentioned earlier on the same topic about being appointed as secretary. Is there a current secretary on the Mil Pond? No, there isn't. Danny's raising his hand. Danny, you are the secretary.

Danny is the secretary. But what my point on that is that because it's a committee, it's not like there isn't a requirement to actually produce minutes in the same way that like boards and commissions have because it's an ad hoc committee. Yes. Exactly. And then my my second question was uh regardless of what kind of committee that wouldn't be a council decision. That would be up to the committee or am I I mean you could you could appoint additional members uh to to the committee. I mean we we've done that already. We've put out names in the position of officers. The position of officers they would vote themselves. Okay. That's what I thought. Just wanted to make sure that's not on not on us.

And I would say that I remember with this committee that their mandate is pretty narrow. It was to advise uh council on you know the path that we wanted to go. So they did advise they wanted to pursue the legal lake level and that's they've kind of taken it as a community initiative to do this process and so that is like they they are they are going above and beyond with some of these other things and so that's discussion we've had about right we need to make sure that we stay within you know the the lane that has been established by council for this committee and not you know going different directions.

Okay. So, currently not on the committee. Um, that's right. That's right. I I knew there was someone in your household. May I add one more thing? You're still doing your report.

I have one May I add one more thing, Tim? Is that okay? uh with the above and beyond. The reason that we have added some of the extra things like with the subcommittees is because part 307 um to achieve a legal lake level requires so many necessary steps to take. For instance, if if we're working towards other avenues, it actually lowers the cost. They need mapping. They need historical information. They need many, many avenues covered. and Ryan from the Water Resources Commission did let us know that any information that's already done on our end, whether it's through historical district, etc., or anything we already have is beneficial because it would cut down on their paperwork and office time, which lowers our price tag. So, for me, I'm like, anything we can do in the winter in my off time, I'mma do it because I want to cut everyone's cost, especially the people in rows because it's a lot for them. Okay, that's it.

Thank you. So, and we have other community volunteers like Diane and Carolyn that are volunteered to go through some of these historical documents, pull out relevant things and uh help build that. Would we as council want to add another member since she's already doing so much work for them already and Jim did resign. So, that is something we can put on next month's agenda. Oh, we have to have an agenda for it. We just can't um I don't think modify the agenda today's agenda. I would I let me look at how we wrote that because I believe that I wrote say I thought that we worded it where it's in our council policies and procedures. Yeah, I think we can always suspect the policies and procedures to have that.

I believe that this uh committee I wrote it the same way that when I rewrote the depot one is that um we do the initial setup and then they can vote in new members themselves as far as because it's an ad hoc committee like they have some responsibility of like maintaining membership. I will verify that. And we we did talk about it when Jim resigned that it did not have to be formal because it's an ad hoc committee. So he didn't have to turn in a letter of resignation. We didn't have to approve his resignation. None of that. So yeah. Um yeah, let's review that and then obviously Cherylyn can attend the meeting and um if we have to appoint her, we will on the next one. Otherwise, it'll be just up to them. [laughter]

Um so to continue my uh report, so uh you know just some great events with the DBA the ladies night out witches night out both were well attended and uh well um put on by the DBA um they're they're doing a great job with those events um we've got obviously we have the Dickens Festival the parade November 28 6 p.m. Tim, can I interrupt for one second there? We need uh participants for the parade badly. Okay. So, if anybody knows anybody Oh, okay. I'm sorry.

The depot move. Um so, we we had a little bit of um uh a few days where we had to get some uh utilities disconnected that kind of pushed it a little bit more to the right. Uh originally the date was supposed to be November 17th, that actual building moved. Um right now we're looking at um moving towards the week before Thanksgiving based on the holiday. We don't know if they're actually going to fulfill that or it will be the first week of December. Um we're still um looking at when that actual date will be when we have a solid date. I'll obviously inform the council and the community. Um Regener did the damn one. I want to thank all the people in the community for supporting the food pantry. Um we, you know, we recognize with the continued federal shutdown and how it might affect our community, we put out, you know, some um requests out there for additional items, additional support. Uh we got thousands of dollars of donations to our food pantry as far as um being able to do like Kroger gift cards. Um tons of donations. Thank you for all of our pantry angels that have been managing that for us. as well as we got additional donations uh to our um our fire department. We didn't think this year we were going to be able to afford to do a um a Thanksgiving dinner giveaway and because of donations from what was the organization

Yep. and that we are able to provide 50 uh Thanksgiving uh dinners to uh families in our community that otherwise would not happen. Um, you may have seen that on our uh I sent out an email um yesterday that uh on Monday the DDA voted to they request requesting a joint meeting with council u to do a working group at 6:45 on Monday. Um we are going to notice that as if we're going to have a quorum. are hoping to have a quorum in order to have an informed discussion and specifically around um the new uh of the position of DDA director, economic development director to kind of form formalize what that would look like as a group. I'll do a kind of a presentation of what I'm thinking and then it'll be really up to the two bodies to have discussions because it is a special work session for both bodies. Um we are limited to discuss only what uh what are agenda items and that's that. So we can't like it's uh not a case where we can add additional agenda items or topics of discussion. It's really limited to that topic at that time. Um tree planting uh with our CDBG funds. We put out information out there. We still have additional opportunities for people that live within our CDBG district. Simply that is our our community development block grant district. Um, if you're looking at a map for us, it's pretty much north of Elm. Um, if you go to the Oakland County's website, it'll show you what that is. But if you have if you're looking to put a tree in your rightway, uh, if you reach out to us, we still have some opportunities for that. Um, as well as some we can use that to put

trees uh, in other areas. We about $17,000 total that was grant funded from Oakland County that we have to spend. So, we're looking at, you know, exactly how we're going to do that. Um, we're going to put out a tree planning RFP. Um, it's kind of a little backwards, not how much, you know, would it take to do this? It's like this is how much we have. How many trees can you do for this amount? Uh, and so we're working on that as well. And my last thing that I want to point out is, you know, just our condolences um to the Springfield uh fire department for the loss of Lieutenant John Miner who many of us attended that funeral. And um you know, our whole community grieavves and I'm really appreciative of our our team that when as they were grieving, our uh department was able to go in and fill in some of their spots um to make sure that they were still maintain while they were uh in this period. So that's all I have.

No, Lisa. So um again, as Tim was saying earlier, in the audit. We're still doing the audit. Um again, the anticipation is to get it done before the filings are done. So, we're working diligently with Plant Maran to get that completed. Um and to piggy back off the CDBG, we also have $3,500 that we're going to um give to neighbor to neighbor for people who can't afford their water bills. And that was as of last year. So, there's a she has a list of all the people that that we donated so that we can give them that $3,500. Um And that's all I have.

Thank you. Um, any other staff want to make a report? Lots of fun. No. Okay. Um, Councilman Wendell. Yes, ma'am. It is your board comment.

Okay. My board comment. Um, like I was I said wrongly at the time. Um, anybody who's looking to join the lighter parade, um, go on the Dickens Festival website Facebook page and click the link and fill out the form. Um we only have right now about 11 participants and we're looking for a lot more. Um, so that and then, um, I have, uh, I don't know who dropped the ball or what dropped the ball, but we had our ladies night the couple, uh, was it on the 7th, I think, last weekend,

and um, we had some problems with no parking signs and barricades. And I retained the copy from last week, last month's agenda, and it said they were doing a road closure from Civic to Junction, but we only had two barricades, no no parking signs, and that was it. And I don't know if it was every event that we've ever closed on a street when they say they're closing down from one end to another, they always put out four barricades and they always had the no parking signs. This time we had two bar two barricades and that was it and it was so I don't know where the disconnect happened at or what it was but

I can talk that a little bit if you would like. Sure.

So with with that one um obviously so we've identified some gaps in our special event policy. um we've improved it uh over the last um few months and we've identified some additional areas and our expectation is because on the form it says street closures but there's also parking closures as well that you're supposed to annotate and tell us which parking spots and so we're kind of going letter of the law while a lot of uh organizations that have previously done special events are like well this is the way we've always done it and we're like well now we're we're having um uh we want a little bit more specificity in in the actual agreements So we were actually talking about in our department head morning. Uh one of the things I want to institute is that I really need to have an opportunity to sit down before after council approves sit down with every special event go over all of the specific details with them on it and make sure that you know everything is accounted like accounted for that they want and also that we are um annotating on that to provide them an invoice beforehand so that when we're talking about barricades all of these things that we they know any of those costs ahead of time so they can defay costs but also so that we're making sure that we're getting all the cost recovery from events um and so that our staff isn't you know have that we're not having to pay for some of these events of our own pockets. But yeah, so this last one was just a mis uh we we looked at the letter of the law of the uh the application and because like for some like our last parade we didn't remove parking. we just put parking barriers up and if they were parked there. Uh so we we've identified that gap and we were making corrections for the future though.

That's I mean that's all it was because I had to I got a phone call at noon from from one of the people putting the event on and asking if I had any of my cones available that we could put signs on for no parking. And I'm like so I was down there from noon to 9:00, you know? I was just like trying to figure out if like they didn't fill something out right or you know and like you said you're going to meet up with them once we figure out which is a great idea.

For example, um Danny and I are meeting with the tickets festival tomorrow to just go over all of the details of their special their special event application to make sure because this is my first time in this role attending. Um although I went to the event last year as I was, you know, investigating Holly, I never I was never in this seat during it. And so uh we're gonna go over it and make sure that we've got all of that covered for this bigger event. Wendle and then um HTC meets tomorrow. So I don't have any regard to that because we didn't meet last month. So other than that, that's all I have. Thank you.

Thank you,

Cole. Um, I was not able to attend the HA meeting that they just had, but we did get an email from Sarah McGrath, a case worker for Haya. Um, she wanted to extend that they are going to continue to request the village of Holly to consider sponsorship money to Holly Area Youth Assistance to continue to fund programs that directly assist and support residents looking at our 26 budget. So, they are asking for that. I've talked multiple times about uh what a great resource Hayatt is in our community and all the amazing things they do. Um some of the things they've said is um in 2025 they paid $7,753 for kids in the village to participate in sports, attend camps, go on educational field trips, participate in band, take driver's training. Um they're continuing that work and asking that we support them for So that's what I have. They are in the middle of a toy drive. There's lots of things going on over the holiday season. Thank you fire department for sponsoring 50 lunch or dinners for Thanksgiving. What day is that? Because I have the microphone and you didn't. [applause] Just so people hear it. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving from 11 to 3 if you need it.

Or when they go because it is first come first serve. But there's 50 dinners that Wednesday. Just because I have the mic and you didn't hopefully people hear that. That's what I got. Um, let's stick with the Haya for for a second. Is that the one that we're having the the issue with what line to pull it from or was that something else? Um, in the past, at least from what we I could tell from our budget session that we just previously had for the 25 year, we gave CDVG funds. Yeah, I can talk this a little bit if you like. Thank you. So,

so with the Haya, you know, I mean, we we agree that it's a great organization. We want to, you know, figure out how we can support. One of the concerns is that I believe It's it's so within uh the budgeting uh policy or the the law I think it's article 2 section 819 something like that that states that we cannot um we cannot like use taxpayer money to support another organization by just giving a check essentially we can't just say it has to be for a specific project or cause that is that we can uh identify the money going like being spent within our our district and our community. The way that we've gotten around that in the past is by using CDBG funds like $3,500 that we're using for neighbor to neighbor that uh the council has identified. They've expressed that they don't want the CDBG funds because they come with additional considerations and how they have to be spent and used. Um and they've said well in the past we've looked and it came out of general fund and I've said well I just need to see how we can do that legally. We have to determine if we can do it legally. Um and then if we have the fiscal capacity to do it. I mean, although we want to support um and then we also need to look at they say there are some obligations they they've mentioned about uh how it was set up with the court, but I haven't seen any of those documents yet. Again, we would love to support it. We just need to make sure that we're doing it legally and uh correctly and that we have the capacity to do it.

Yeah. I would also like to point out it's not as if we I mean I always want to say like we're not reinventing the wheel here, but we kind of are on some of this. There is not a legacy that we can look at to say this was how it was done. So, we are just researching at this point. [clears throat] But yeah, and I I think it's probably the consensus of council that we'd like to continue supporting. Haya, can I get some nods or some shakes? Yeah. Can we reach out to the other municipalities that support and see how they use their funds for it? Yeah. And I and where I've been hesitant on that is I also don't want to uh ask questions that are going to prevent other municipalities from from you know

from this law. Yep. And then so I have been pulling the budgets of the municipalities around us. At this point, there's only one that I can see that lists on their publicly posted budget where they are giving to a youth assistance organization at the moment. So, I am going back through all of that. That is um what I've been working on because they are funded throughout Oakland County. Every municipality has a youth assistance. They are funded somehow. I don't know how yet, but I am on it. Well, and and then it sounds like maybe the the worst case scenario is that um they get CDPG and they have to turn in the proper paperwork and apply it to something specific

and it wouldn't be for this year. It would be for a following year when we are doing our CDBG. No, actually I believe CDBG no longer uh has that funding line for it. Yeah, they don't they only have certain categories and they they because again CDBG has lost funding. Oh, never mind. So, that wasn't one of the that was not one of the um I think there's five categories. Well, we've got staff on it. We will do what it takes to figure it out. If it's at all possible, it will happen. Okay. Um Cole, that was mine. That was it. Yep. That's my closing. All right. Ky,

yes. Um parks does not meet in November or December, but I did want to give an update on our last event, Halloween. Uh we had a great turnout this year with over a hundred applicants for the costume contest. We went almost all the donuts and cider. The hay rides were a hit. Uh we were joined for the first time this year by Big Papa's Pizza who handed out free pizza slices. Our event sponsors this year were Wingle Meers, Holly Donut Shop, the American Legion, and the Holly BFW. Our costume contest prizes were made possible by Cracker Snacks Barbecue, Gnome Daddy Ceramics, Holly Bowling Alley, Cupcakes and Kisses, Altered Designs, Aia Restaurant, Holly Cafe, and Holly Antiques. I'd also like to shout out to our downtown businesses who handed out candy at their shops and made a magical day for the kids. These kind of events would not be possible without the tireless efforts of our volunteers, staff, first responders, and our wonderful businesses. I hope with the holidays coming up that we all remember to shop local and support our neighbors. On a personal note, I'd like to acknowledge and congratulate our newest members for making it through their first year on council. Can you believe it's only been a year? It's like a 50 year. [laughter]

Today was the actual day, too. Some of us haven't celebrated here [laughter] yet. Yeah, you're like two weeks behind, right? I'm like,

so in the spirit of the season, I'd like to say what I'm thankful for. Jim, I'm thankful for your neverending perseverance toward research and fact-based analysis. Buster, I'm thankful for your historical knowledge and your diligence towards our first responders. Thomas, I'm thankful for your thoughtful questions and your sense of service. Daniel, I'm thankful for your cander and your heart for volunteering. Shannon, I'm thankful for your reason and for your financial savviness. April, I'm thankful for your leadership and your integrity. I'm thankful for our staff who answers our endless questions, who advocates for us and this village, and who rarely gets the things they deserve. and I'm glad that you got it tonight. [applause] And since I know it can be tough during your first year and since we are here on a Wednesday because of Veterans Day, I would like to read a quote by a former president and a veteran in honor of you all. The man in the arena by Theodore Roosevelt. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly. Who airs. Who comes short again and again. Who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement. And who at worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly. so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.

Happy Thanksgiving. [applause]

That was powerful. You get to follow that. You ready? Good luck. [laughter] That's a tough act to follow. That is a tough you tough act to follow there. over there. [laughter] I have not one joke I tell you. Not one joke. So, back in the summer, we requested like postflight attorney, auditing services, professional services. Do we have any updates?

We have the RFPs. Uh the RFPs are drafted, ready to go. Um we the auditing we had discussed at a previous meeting that we were just waiting until after the auditing season uh that we were going to um that we wanted to submit them to all be done and ready for the new fiscal year for budgeting purposes. And so that we'd have we would be able to submit it and have a timeline to like review and uh make a decision. And basically if they if we make any changes, it would go in effect for the new fiscal year because obviously that would be increased expenses if we were to go with a different attorney, we were to go with a new auditing firm one way or another. So um and another question I had as far as like when we submit an ethics complaint to you, what's the average time for it to get from you to the committee?

So usually uh I mean it obviously depends on we We only had a couple one of the things that we need to fix with this and we've discussed is we need to determine what is a formalized ethics like like when when does it become a formalized uh ethics complaint and now it's been like all right I'm making a formal complaint then that's you know is kind of how how we've been uh articulating that usually uh it depends on the investigation the severity of it um most of the time uh that there will be an initial like as soon as we receive it and we have some kind of um understanding of it. It depends if I need to discuss it with the village attorney. Uh we'll almost immediately schedule a time like say you know we had a complaint you know we've done an initial investigation um and it's uh gone to them within a couple weeks. Um again it depends on you know if it's if it's a council member then it has to have the attorney involved. If it's um you know something that we can handle. We've only had hand really a couple of official complaints. There have been other things that I have I have brought up to uh the ethics committee um just as I was doing my due diligence through the process as far as things like incompatible offices um that we've that that we've discussed before um that we've gotten like attorney uh opinions on um that weren't necessarily complaints but they were just you know I just wanted to update if it ever came out you know like hey we we reviewed this for an incompatible office or there are things that We've determined by charter that they could be handled administratively. We've had to avoid a couple of appointments that aren't weren't necessarily ethics uh issues. They were uh administrative things that we just were we looked in the charter. We were determined that we were able to avoid the appointment and so it never really needed to be brought because it was not an official uh complaint or it

was being able to be addressed in that manner. So going back to office thing, I know we had discussion about that. So that wasn't considered an official complaint when I asked you about that. So it when we looked at it, it wasn't we determined it was not in we discussed it, we determined it wasn't there wasn't an ethics violation. There wasn't a conflict of interest negotiating between two organizations with two board members on both. I mean that's the definition of it

for for the parks the parks yeah parks commission one when we discussed it um there as far as removal from office or anything like that um we we that's when we talked about we had to determine uh when we were having the discussions about um what actually constitutes a conflict of interest and that and I think those discussions because of recent events we've had to re-engage those discussions as far as what that entails because at the time we were under understanding of if they don't personally financially benefit um that was initial and now I get that but you also can't in good faith negotiate with yourself on two different

so that's where the other conflict of interest would arise from so what if that still be an ethics violation earn your money

we've had a number of conversations myself and Tim about um this very topic. Um and I think Tim has done a good job of summarizing the dilemma. Uh someone can submit something that says this is an ethics complaint when in reality it really has nothing to do with the ethics uh ordinance that you have in place. It may procedural issue. It may be something else. Um, this uh one that in particular that you're mentioning, I don't recall the specifics of that. Um, but it could be uh simply wrapped up in all the conversations that we've had uh about it. I know that there have been some requests, for example, um under FOYA to try to amass all the records of ethics complaints and we've discussed it that um There really by our definition have only been maybe two that have been presented to us. Those have been fully addressed and resolved and that others were not. Um so you know I I I'll talk to Tim about this particular one that you're mentioning but it certainly has not gone by the wayside. It's been I don't know that we've really talked about anything other than those issues uh in the last couple of weeks.

I mean it's been like five months almost six months now. So and then we had other people ethics complaint and it's already seen ethics board within a few days which is why we had originally changed it to give them a notice. That's different. It came before council not Right. Right. But I mean I just see a disparity between you have one ethics complaint that can be completely weeks. Another one's taking five months, which at least in my opinion could have at least moved forward to you or council to discuss because when I read our charter, it seemed pretty clear that that was a conflict of interest negotiating between two bodies. And this is what you're saying that five months ago you said,

right? It was during the parks. Well, like I don't think the township parks follow through on it with the swings. Those two members negotiated both. And I know exactly what you're talking about. And I want to make sure that we don't use our ethics board and weaponize it against political perceived enemies and to use it just as a cudgel against people. We're all going to make mistakes. People are going to make mistakes. And I believe in education

and then they would have to like remove themselves from one of the boards. That's I would imagine that resolution would have ended up like I don't think they were doing and I definitely don't have any kind of political agenda against either of those numbers like I respect both of them. They do a lot but you're saying you put that in five months ago. Yes, it was right after I watched the parks meeting. I we didn't see this meeting. So I don't think was at that meeting. So it has it been determined that and make sure I'm asking this right that village parks and township parks are incompatible offices. Am I asking the right question?

Right. So that they want to go in negotiation with each other like purchasing each other. But are those incompatible offices? Have we made a determination? That's not something that I recall being on my plate. Tim tells me that bundled with other requests that were sent my way. So I told I would speak with him at your next meeting. I don't know about that particular one.

Yeah. Our our initial conversation on this and when we first it was brought forward and that gave us a laundry list of like of individuals that you know all right this person's on this this you know how could these be and so they were all presented at once and we went over [clears throat] that as well as specific examples. Um, I would have to I'll have to I mean, we have records of all of our emails and such. We go over and just see exactly where we're at. So,

I would like I'd like to piggy back though on what Amber said because I think it's happening. Uh, it may not be deliberate, but your ethics ordinance has become really a cottage industry. Someone doesn't like something, it becomes an ethics complaint. And you know, know that that wasn't the intent behind it. Um, and yet you're not the only community that has adopted one and it's happened in both both places uh that that are mine that every other week there's a new ethics complaint about something and that's I think why we we probably need to tighten up the ordinances and really make uh clear This doesn't even though it seems incompatible acts is part of it comes from the conflict of interest which is defined in our recelus being removed from that one of those

well if I'm understand yeah and I don't know I'm confused on that one because I know for some for For some boards it is like that and for some things and then for some things people are permitted to recuse themselves. So I'm not I'm not clear on the differences there. Well, this one's like negotiating behalf of two entities on the same if there's to be ongoing shared resources contracts that kind of thing. So that that would make sense. Jim was buying something from the village and we had a vote on it then he would

otherwise be for that. So that would be refusing versus negotiate on both sides.

Yeah. This specific instance I'll talk to specific instance just so we're not using. So on May 7th, the parks commission had a uh meeting where they were discussing the purchasing of parks equipment from township, the township board, a township parks board, which two of the parks at the time, two of the parks commission members were were on both boards and they were negotiating the purchase of these equipments. Um and then uh you know and then obviously um council member Ryan brought it brought forward we discussed it and then um that led us to like all right who who else within our boards of commissions are in other offices that this might be an issue and we had um and I was tell was like we've had a lot of conversations about you know him and I talk you know several times a week about all the things so I don't you know blame him for not remembering because there's there's lots of uh lots of issues that we're having to clean up and address.

No, one item. Can the parks board even make decisions of can they legally buy and sell stuff or does it come to council? It has to come to council that they're not Yeah. So then they're not Yeah, we just make like recommendations. So it's just a recommendation. That's a good point. But I understand which is why at the next meeting I was like hey that can never happen again and that's what I believe before I move to an ethics necessarily. I believe in education first.

Well actually our ethics our ethics uh ordinance states that um it's not necessarily a mandatory report it's a mandatory intervention. Yeah. that include education. Yeah. Like so if you see something that's incorrect and you can address it at your level, we don't necessarily have to do an investigation. Like it's, you know, that's how the actual ordinance is written.

And I'll this is where I'll share and and I won't say names. I'll just say that um the people involved there. Um I informed one of them because Amber spoke with the other. I informed one of them of you know my um my perception that that it was a conflict of interest. and um that person did not agree. However, when it was time for reappointment, I'm I did not serve a reappoint. I'm not going to reappoint people to boards that that might have conflicts of interest. I'd rather just get, you know, get somebody else on it where you don't have that kind of concern where you don't have to worry about recusing yourself often. So, um I looked at that as a done deal, but it sounds like we're still looking into some of this. I more so than I want to make sure that we did the the follow procedures for Councilman Ryan brings up a complaint like I have a responsibility to bring it you know if it's a you know legitimate complaint I have a responsibility to provide it to the ethics committee and they have a responsibility to take those reports if like determine legitimate and all of these things to council but once it gets to them you know the determinance been determination has been made that it is an ethics complaint uh and there is a mandatory report when an actual ethics complaint comes up. Obviously, you know, there are there is wiggle room within the ordinance um to allow to pro provide it to try to keep it from being a um a witch hunt or a cottage industry as discussed. and we're trying to make sure that people aren't necessarily um their name is not dragged through the mud when we haven't had the chance to give them an opportunity to refute mitigate um any of the allegations. Um and I know we may have not done the best job of that in the past. You know, it's something we're trying to clean up.

Well, and quite frankly, this sucks. You know, the the whole reason that we wrote this is because previously council people were not protected because there was no ethics investig investigatorial procedures and so there was a witch hunt and a hanging all in one day and we wanted to prevent that and and now it just seems like it's you know if you want to make something into a weapon you can. Can we create like an official document for ethics complaints so that way it's like there's one thing look at here's the official complaint. It's not email document for it. It might require an amendment to the ordinance.

I don't know that the ordinance speaks to that specifically, but if that can be done administratively, yeah, I think it can be done administratively. Okay. And you know, I'll close by really just suggesting that perhaps that's a topic of conversation, tightening up that ordinance a little bit to try to, you know, make sure that it stays true to what the intent was when you adopted. Yeah. And Thomas Ryan, anything else? Um, no, that was okay. Wine Brener. have a couple questions. One question.

Okay. It's a ghost truck. And I got one question for our chief again. Anything on the road by McDonald's? The uh have been circled in red. That just makes it better. Now we can see him dodging them like this. Right.

We we we actually discussed that in our department head uh meeting this morning is that uh chief has been working with the different property owners had like there was several different people that kind of had a responsibility and he uh discussed it with all of them and said, you know, you will fix it. You'll fix it, you know, before the asphalt uh plants close at the end of the month. And so I guess that's your uh your timeline on it is that they've out that's why it's been out there and circled is because they know what they need to repair and they have a timeline um to have it done. Um you know, usually they close by deer season, but I think they're because of the warm weather they're staying open a little bit longer. So they got a little bit more grace. Is that a

accurate representation? When you have three entities that have a civil agreement together, they all want to then when I said collectively they found a way. So uh the it is in process and uh and actually they're doing it right. So I met with the contractor contractor and they all three of these that they have process for that. So it should House.

Thank you. Planning Commission did not meet. Finance committee tried to meet but we didn't. I was there [laughter] and then must be nice. I want to thank Mr. Wendell. Um, so the plaques, my understanding was all his idea. I got a phone call from Daniel one day. I'm like, shoot, what does he want now? Like, [laughter] yeah, you got to be careful when I fall.

It was all goodwill. So, that was all his idea. So, he he was he was really thinking of all you guys. So, and staff. So, that was very nice gesture. Um, one comment to Miss for Miss Everly. She's not here, but uh when we're looking at the case. I called a couple attorneys and I called one of them that uh location. I called one of them, one of the attorneys that was representing a White Fisher cloud up north and I said, "Well, we have a a damn study by SM." And she goes, "Well, SM is not a damn company. They don't do dam surveys. They do engineering for Earth." So, she said, "We had a damn survey in 2021, but we didn't have a damn survey by engineering company that does dams." So, whatever that

Damn it. Um I am excited for the special meeting for the uh on Monday. Um I I do have some uh other comments regarding that. I I'd like to make them there, but I know you listen to manager can't really make comments there or talk about other things that on the agenda. I was a little shocked to see that there DDA is now proposing $18,000 budget for lawy um when our budget as a whole village is almost 20. So we may have I don't know where we're at currently. We have a lot of fees for that added up. We budgeted for 20,000 for the entire village and I think it's a huge waste for our taxpayers because it's called information silos. We have an attorney, they have an attorney. And our attorneys aren't talking. So if you want to know something, our attorney has to call their attorney. Our attorney cost 150 an hour or 175. Their attorney cost 250 an hour. So now we're filling our res. Thank you. All that money for them to talk. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And reading over our charter and uh ordinances and other municipal law, I think there is a solution. I think one of the things overlooked is um it may be possible and Mr. Gil hopefully will weigh on this weigh in on this on the future that we would be able to set an ordinance that says all legal services must be handled by the village attorney and there's precedents in other communities they do this and way I was looking at this could you imagine right now if manager price says well I want an attorney and then Brian says well I want an attorney right now our ordinance or our charter says the only have the attorney, it's the council's attorney, and I think we could save our taxpayers a ton of money, bring

it all in house and and then we're done. Um, I have been uh lobbying, I guess the right term for uh changes in the DA. Um, I had contacted with chair chairwoman Stoford and also our board members about it and I was trying to relay some of my thoughts and stuff. I was a little dismayed when chairman Schaer said it was inappropriate for me to contact the members trying to sway their votes because that's exactly what I was doing. I was trying to sway their votes. I have an opinion and I would like them to vote a certain way and I think I can help someone learn something and I have a lot of knowledge in my head and I would love to share it with people. So, um and and I hope that if a resident of our community wants to contact me and say, "Hey, you're doing something wrong or this is something you can do better." please contact me. That would be that would be amazing. Um, so, um, yeah, I think I think there's some some dilemmas there with with the DDA and it seems like seems like to me part of the issue is it's the DDA being the instrument of the village. The members of the DDA that are still saying village has financial problems. part of the village and there's others which literally say for instance they write a check every year,000 bucks the DBA says here's money take it so I would love that cooperation for our res I don't think we're getting that right now so hopefully this special meeting is the start of

thank you um me so um as DDA liaison done. Um, we had our meeting on Monday. We went over you you saw there were some some items on there for budget amendments, but we have to put that off for the tip plan and see what we're legally allowed to do. But I I was going to say I'm pleased to inform you about a meeting, but everyone stole my thunder on that. So, um, yeah, next next Monday at 6:45. Um, they they were all excited about it. Um, let's see. for simple piece of budget transparency. These plaques are not paid for with village taxpayer money. These are paid for personally by council. Um it's not coming out of your taxes.

Yeah, we all chipped in a little bit possible.

That's all on that. And then um let's see uh my last note. We uh we lost a a staple. Ed Coleman, our community lost a truly good man on October 30th. at Coleman, longtime owner of Coleman and Sons Garage, was fair, honest, and hardworking as they come. He was one of those rare people who made things simple. He would literally just show up to your house with your car when it's ready and send you a text and I hope you're ready to come outside because he's ready to drive you back to the shop. No fuss, no fanfare, just quiet reliability and kindness. He took pride in his work and treated everyone with respect. Ali is a better place because I was part of it. deepest condolences to his family, friends, and all who were lucky enough to know him.

Can we take it a moment of silence for Yes, please. Can we have a moment of silence? Thank you. Um, do I have a Let's see. Where are we? Is it to go into close session? So, if that concludes reports, do I have a motion to go into or Lisa, can you read the uh close session item, please? I guess that's letter E now. Yes.

Consideration of village council to enter into close session to discuss the village attorney's written legal memorandum and to approve close session minutes from the October 14th, 2025 meeting pursuant to open meetings at 76 of 1976 and specifically my letter October 29, 2025 regarding appraisal and that will be the basis for close session request. Okay. Do I have a first to enter into close session? I'll make the motion to enter into close session. Motion by Wendell. Second.

Second by Wine Bunner. Cler, will you call the role? Call. Yes, Wendell. Yes, Ryan. Yes, Brandon. Yes. Motion carried. Okay. [laughter]