City Council - Regular Meeting

How you doing there? I am good. That snow really started coming down, eh? Yes.

Can you hear me? Shane

the very top right hand. Shane, I don't Hi, Sarah. Can you hear me now? Yep. Can you hear me? Yep. Audio's fine. You guys are good. Audio is fine. I can't I don't have video up. I can see you guys. Well, I can't see. So, we're good. Oh, you know why? Because I think you guys, if you go over towards the right hand, I think if you like right click in the black area, does it just say like my name and I'm talking? If you say like hide me or if you go into the participant list, actually that might be easier. Go to the participant list to the city of Paski and then say pin self. Aha. Are you good?

Nice work. miracles happen. Are we ready for the city of Pataski city council for December 1st, 2025? Call the order and I ask you to rise with me for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation [clears throat] under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Would you please call roll? Deore present. Shields present. Nacktrad here. Walker present. Murphy

present. We have a quorum. Next public hearing that's the receipt of comments concerning the city's proposed 2026 annual budget and property tax millage rates and appropriations as recommended for the 2026 fiscal year. Does anyone wish to speak to council at this time regarding the budget? Nothing on therefore I close public hearing. Next, we have a presentation by Patrick Bolan, CEO and general manager of the Michigan Power Public Power Agency, MPPA, concerning public supply trends in the city's power supply. Welcome.

Hit the hit the thing so it's green. Okay. Well, thank you for having me. It's been a few years since I've personally been here, but I think you've had the pleasure of several MPA employees speaking before the city council, I think, over the last three three years or so since I've been here. All I know is those TVs weren't here the last time I spoke. So, how long that's been?

Um, I don't want to speak at you. So, and the more important thing, I want to make sure I answer questions that you have about the power industry, what's going on with Paskki specifically. So I don't want to get bogged down in any kind of stuff here. So we can handle that any way you want. I just make sure I leave time or we can address some of the key concerns or questions you have now too. So um do your presentation.

Okay. I'm going to rip through this very quickly. Um particularly the early stuff. This is really just more of acclamation slides talking about public power. So you can you can slides just a way to look you. So, you know, we really are working hard alongside um our sister organization, which is the Michigan Municipal Electric Association. Um, you know, to describe the real the real inherent benefits of public power. You know, I speak a lot in front of other audiences that aren't public power utilities, and I try to emphasize these these key points in a variety of different ways. Um but it's true from a from a cost perspective and from a reliability perspective and those are the two um principal components as well as the decision about your power supply driven by your community. Those are the three aspects of public power that are the most advantageous compared to other utilities. And so we like to help through the joint action agency um our members achieve those three components. And uh we do that in a variety of different ways. Economies of scale is the is the primary driver for that. Um strength and numbers, but in the end we try to deliver very specific unique needs for each of our communities because we have very very different demographics among our our members. There's the UPN North communities. There's very industrious towns in the south in very different sizes um utilities all the way from 450 megawatts down to 9 megawatts. It's a very very different needs and staffing and capabilities. So the joint action agency is kind of that centerpiece that tries to um make all that work for everyone. We can slide forward here. Keep going. Oh yeah. Yep. So, it's just just a quick acclamation here. There's

22 members. I try I can't get out to all 22 members every year. Um, I try to get somewhere between eight and 10 members a year to their city councils or their utility boards. About a third of our members have utility boards. They don't they have a city council too, but the utility board is really the governing body that makes the decisions about the aspects of utility operations. It's very different. Usually, those are larger larger towns that have that. Um um but you know we're growing uh as a result of uh some interesting uh developments that are going on in some of our communities. So for the first time in probably 15 years, you know, we're seeing pretty significant load growth. Next slide. We don't need to get bogged down here, but really economies of scale and risk diversification are really at the centerpiece of what MPPA has done really since it founding. Our organization is very different than it was even 10 years ago, let alone 40. However, these two economic principles are still at the bedrock of MPPA and it really does allow a small community like Paskki, it is a small utility to be able to build a portfolio of resources and supply that you otherwise would be difficult to do on your own. And those two economic principles are are the key benefits there where you can compete with even the largest utilities by partnering with your other public power uh entities. Next slide. Um I'll just kind of buzz through here, but these are really at this centerpiece of our activities. Everything we do do is about competition. We want to make sure that we have a competitive structure for our members. Whether we're trying to issue buy power in the marketplace or build power, we want that to be through a competitive platform. Risk management is a very very important aspect of our business and it's growing in importance with this industry and where prices and

uh credit and challenges are in this industry. Now, uh risk management is becoming more and more important. Obviously, industry expertise. You're counting on us to know a lot about the power markets. Um that's what we do. And then of course the concepts that we just talked about sharing. Next slide. So obviously members are at the center of everything we do. Um we own large transmission assets on behalf of our members. We own own power supply on behalf of our members. Market operations is a little un little less understood aspect of what we do every day. That's really the day-to-day activities we do to participate in the power markets that you know um as a 247 operation and then member services is a is a growing this isn't true just with MPPA if you go across the United States now joint action agencies are doing more for their members than they used to and there's a whole probably hour-long conversation about why that is and we won't do that obviously today but member service is a growing aspect of our business next slide so we have a strategic plan. We redevelop it every three years. It's a fiveyear strategic plan. These are really the four uh key components of that. Uh decarbonization, obviously. Uh decentralization, which is really an interesting component that um we'll talk about now here and and some of the things that we've been trying to do actually with the city of Paskki and we've run into some political snags there. um engagement. This industry is getting far more complicated than it's ever been and having our governing bodies of our members truly engaged in the business is critically important. And then of course the end use customers, they're becoming smarter. They're more interested in energy and they have a lot more tools at their disposal. So they we have to attend to that and our members obviously do. And we're now partnering with our members in in ways we never did even when I started

at MPPA which is 10 years ago. Next slide. So, what's going on in the world in the energy business? Well, um I just mentioned increasing end-user participation. That's true. Um even for people who have a Nest thermostat in their home or or knockoffs of those types of products up to the very large customers. What's the biggest thing you read about almost every day in the newspaper? Data centers, AI. I mean, they are changing the landscape. Those are enduse customers and some of the things that they're building are bigger than cities. So they have a very influential um impact on on our industry. Political discontinuity and we were on a very interesting trajectory until a year ago or less than a year ago and now suddenly the rules have changed but we're still trying to make 20-year investments 20 year 25 year decisions and having that change every four years is just not conducive to our business. um data intensity. I think we uh have a million records a week that we deal with which is incredible. Um in the data that we do in our market operations sustainability focus despite some of the political changes generally speaking most of the customers of most of our members obviously are still trying to build a sustainability platform. Um diverse resource control. What does that mean? Well, if you think about the old days of the power business, there was a couple very, very large power plants and that was it. Today, there's a lot of small resources that are creating or or manipulating energy usage. And so, when you just that's that's what decentralization is. You just have a lot more components in the system than you used to. By the way, the more components you get in any system, the complexity rises. And that's true of all industries. rapid rule changes and then of course low growth which we haven't seen in a long time. So those are the things that are happening in our industry right now that we're trying to

deal with at MPPA on behalf of our members. Next slide. Next slide. So um interconnecting power generation to the big 345 12 KB lines it's taking a lot longer than it used to. Um, I won't get into all the reasons for that, but it's driving a behavior at MPPA where we're actually now actually trying to work inside our member systems. It's easier, it's faster. Um, so uh this is an outcome of um of changes in the grid and and rapid deployment of a lot of largely intermittent resources over the years, but uh again part of that diverse resource control. Next slide. I'm trying to hustle through these. Um the uh transmission system, we're a transmission owner. One of the reasons why we uh are very interested in transmission is because it's becoming an increasingly large percentage of the total delivered cost of power. And uh there's three ways we can manage that. Use less of it, which we're always interested in doing that through our members. um uh challenging rates at FK very difficult to do and very timeconuming expensive or investing in transmission and our cost of capital is a lot lower than the 12% returns that private transmission companies get. So those are the three things we do to deal with this growing percentage of your your total delivered power cost. Next slide. what was

uh investing in transmission. So um there's a lot of uncertainty in the business right now. These I don't want to get too bogged down here, but these are um futures that the large market operators posted here just recently and it shows that there is a scenario where we could have um 8.2 2 gawatt of deficiency or we could have 11 I put my own glasses on so I read my own numbers 11.4 four gigawatts of excess. And so you might say, well, how do you plan for something that dramatically different? And a lot of that has to do with things that we don't have time to get into in too great a detail, but it has to do with getting permits, getting interconnected to the transmission system, delays for equipment. There's a a lot of complexities out there. Um and and so the uncertainty about will we have enough resources to serve load is is a growing source of of uh of uncertainty. Next slide.

Are you stating can you go back one? Yeah.

Are you stating that in 2829? Are you stating that at 2829 there's possibility there's there is possibility of brownouts or something like that? It doesn't necessarily mean there'll be brown outs, but it means that there's a possibility that we'll have a deficient amount of capacity to meet the reliability criterion, which what the historical reliability criterion in the power business is, you try to serve a a one day outage in 10 years. That's that's the that's the criterion you solve for. So, this means we're short of that. We could be short of that by 8.2 gigawatts. And we don't need to get into gigawatts are a big number. there's megawws and there's kilowatts and there's watts but um uh and so but at the same time there could be 6.7 gawatts of of excess above that criterion and a lot of that depends on these futures that are stabled above here. Do we have 4.7 gawatts of additions per year or do we have um 8.6 and that's that's the difference that's forecasting is becoming much more challenging uh than it than it used to be. Next slide. Um, so this will be near and dear to your hearts, uh, because I know Paskki has been one of, uh, our members who've been much more focused and aggressive on renewables. Um, so we did we've been active s I mean, we've done an incredible amount of renewable business in the last six years. Um, 1.4 billion dollars committed. Um all of them went smoothly until 2021. Then we ran into all sorts of problems. COVID supply chain problems. A lot of it was political though. Um tariffs, um labor law challenges with China. A lot of polysilicon for solar was coming in from from the Asian countries. And so we saw and have seen a very

significant increase in the cost of these projects. Um the ones we did in 19 the cost is double today from what we did in 2009. We're really glad of the projects we did get done. We did some great projects and you were participants in all of them. Um wish you would have done more at this point. Um and then along came the uh I don't know how you one big beautiful bill. I can't believe they actually called it that but um and that's now um sort of undone or un undoing um a lot of what was in the IRA. And so that's really created a lot of angst and challenges in terms of well exactly what should we be focusing on now and that's changed a bit of our focus. Um we're trying to combine and I'll get to why I think that's should be of interesting to you uh here in a moment. Uh next slide. So these are the things that um you know we are focused on with all of our effort inside of MPPA right now. these three things and obviously we're focused on other things as well but these are the three centerpieces of our efforts here over the next uh 2026. Um next slide. So we can talk a little bit about uh you know the clean energy efforts. Um, all the projects that we've worked on have all been located in Michigan because of the tax code up until the IRA passed where there was some elective pay options. All of the the tax code and really even still with depreciation [clears throat] so forth favors private enter private entity ownership and so we got the benefit of that through power purchase agreements and we did a lot of those and that's why I said I think almost $1.3 billion of commitments. So you can see where Paskki was in 15, which is actually when I started MPPA to where

you are today. So um you know 300% increase in your renewable portfolio. It's seems like no big deal. It's it's a big deal. It's a lot of work. Um however, under Michigan current Michigan legislation, that number's got to get to 50% by 2030. And that's going to be tricky. Um but we'll talk about that. Next slide. Uh, yep. I already talked about this and in interest of time I'll skip it. Um, resource adequacy it's a big deal. Um, the great recession of that 2008 to 2010 time period u on average utilities in the Midwest lost 10 years of load growth. So from that time period all the way through COVID, it was just a lot cheaper just to buy excess reliability, if you wanted to call it that, from generators on on the system. Today, you can't do that anymore. And that just didn't happen overnight, of course, but there's now low growth. There hasn't been new builds. We've moved to uh mostly renewables. The way the rules have been working for renewables, they don't get the same level of accreditation, the amount of capacity they can deliver to the system. And so we're we're now having this um uh resource adequacy issue and really it's going to come down to building and um frankly we'd like to have more control over what we build and rely less on others and so a lot of our strategic objectives are focused on that. Next slide. So this is uh Paskki specifically and you can see that you're in really good shape on capacity uh generally speaking through 2930 but in 3031 you go negative and um we're obviously aware of that. We're actually this we created this

runway which is great uh for ourselves but we've got to act now because it takes three four five years and even longer to get new capacity on the system and depending on the kind of projects and so that's why we're feverishly working on all these efforts now so that we can we have to file with the state of Michigan uh February of 27 or March of 27 um through the uh public act 341 a capacity demonstration says we have enough capacity to meet our our load in that time period 2030. So it's a one year away. We have to notate what we're doing in 3031. Next slide. This is a very busy slide and I'm sorry about this. Should have done it better, but this is just a stack bar chart that shows where the different sources of your energy is coming from forecasted through 2030. And I could have done this out through 2040 of course. Um, and so, uh, you're out of the coal business or out of the coal business. That's no longer going to be part of your portfolio. Um, and, uh, the only thing that, um, and gas is still part of your portfolio. Obviously, renewables are obviously a growing share, and I wish we could have all labeled those the same colors, but they're they're in some different colors there. uh because you have wind and solar and I have to get on my people for making renewables brown but nonetheless they're there. Um so this kind of shows you where your portfolio is and the uh I don't know what you call that is it pummus or light purple or I don't know what that color is that represents the amount of energy right now that is forecasted to come from the market. We have a uh regimented risk management policy that rolls every every year and it sets the percentages of hedges that we have to have in place for the next five years. And so this will all get changed here once we get

into 2026. Next slide. Does that mean that onethird going back? Yep. That means that uh onethird by 2030 onethird over 33% of our energy would come from the market rather than from any of those that we in 2028. Yeah. Uh yes 2030 it's it's 29 or 30. Yes that's right. Those that means that we're going out we're purchasing it on the market. Yes. Right. But before that before that happens, we will have made a decision under our risk management plan. So that number will get a lot smaller next year. Okay.

We have a do do we have an option as a city? Absolutely. So if we want to say you know without knowing without getting the report in on on what uh what the cost per kilowatt is of natural gas. um you know all of those pieces we will not be able to make any real decisions.

Yeah, we have a riskmanagement plan that you are subscribed to and you but you have the ultimate trump card. If you want to not subscribe to it, you can change your mind. But um but we come with with recommendations to meet prescribed percentage what we call price certainty because you have to make rates for your retail customers. You need enough understanding from us what are our wholesale power supply costs and so we have this obligation to have a certain percentage of your portfolio be price certain known so that by the time you get to the year 2026 you have to have between 85 and 100% of your needs price certain known so you can develop rates for your own customers. Okay, that's the last slide. The other one's just a nice fun graphic. Um, I raced through those because I wanted to make sure I was available to uh answer questions. But one of the things I did want to talk about is resource adequacy and decarbonization do kind of come together along with behind the meter strategies which you remember I said we want to work inside our communities. The one thing that still works inside of even the one big beautiful bill act is battery energy storage. And so um even though we've struggled getting this PACE renewable solar project in town and we'll talk about that. I can answer ask question answer questions about that. I know my time's up here but um one of the things we are very very focused on the resource adequacy is not trying to do a one-sizefits-all for our members. Some want to put gas fire generation in, some want to put batteries in. Both are very legitimate sources of resource adequacy that we are working with our members on inside of their communities. I just wanted to make that point. Um,

you want to address since you brought it up? Yes. So, pace 23 city council is presented by you or the group. Yep. The city landfill. Yep. Going to fulfill 10% of our city needs. Yep. Is that where they at?

It's not a good place. So, um we were working with a uh an organization called Soul America. Um they were getting um uh financing structures and grants through the uh USDA. Um, I can't speak for their business specifically, but all to say that the new administration has made the USDA very difficult to work with. And so the loan provisions and terms and conditions that this developer is getting from the USDA are not, in their opinion, financable. And so, um, you know, I don't think the white flag has been thrown in yet, but it's getting close. And obviously, we can't wait either. We have to make decisions for our members. We have a a power supply plan we have to follow. Um, so this December um, here the end of the year, worst case early January, but I think the end of the year, they're going to have to make a decision. Um, now without the USDA financing, the project still can get built. It's just going to be more expensive. I mean, we haven't seen what those numbers look like. I mean, at the very very beginning, probably in 23 when Steve or I'm not sure who was up here at the time, I mean, we were able to build a solar project in town less than we could build a large utility scale solar project for. That's how um beneficial the terms and conditions were from the USDA. And if that not only has that not gone, not only has that gone away, but it's coincided with just a massive inflation in all of the underlying components that go into power infrastructure, transformers, polysilicon, copper. Um, so yeah, pricing is not very attractive right now. And so if the USDA does not come through, you know, we can't we have to move forward with our own power supply plan. So

questions. I wish I had better ways to describe it, but um this is one of these things where out of our control question, Mr. Moore, this actually isn't a question, but I would just say what you just described sounds like it's in the lane of political discontinuity.

That would be a great place to put it. Yep. You know, I'm um I'm a big believer in in diversifying and everything comes around goes around. What we think is going to happen is not going to happen. Um we'll have many more bites at the apple. Fortunately, the way we run our organization is we don't take home run swings. We try to hit doubles, singles, and we've done a lot of that. So, your portfolio is in pretty good shape. Um, and that's because if we just been routinely making decisions, not huge ones. This is a bummer because this would have been a really nice added to your portfolio. But fortunately, you weren't like counting on this to be 80% of your power supply and so it's not going to hurt that much. It's going to hurt. It's just not going to hurt that much.

Thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Mr. Bolan. I I have I I think I was my first year you came and presented and I I have have lots of respect for MPPA and and really appreciate the role that they play for the city of Paskki. I I think we're super fortunate to have a m municipality owned uh utility department here and we can partner with um other communities around the state to as you said have strength in numbers. Um, that said, I I over the my fiveyear tenure here, I've I've become increasingly disappointed with our partnership with MPPA

and and um, you know, I understand some of those things are out of your control, but one one is this I feel like our partnership has has held us back in in several ways and I'll explain those. Okay. One is this this uh landfill project that you know we have I I and solar council members here uh have been encouraging our the city to to look at that that project and and make it happen and to reach out and work with other nonprofit partners. And then when the uh the direct pay opportunity came back came open for uh municipalities to receive that that tax benefit to make it even more financially doable.

Um [clears throat] I was I felt like we were held back because well MPPA's got got a lead or MPA is is who we work through and and it felt like we were hamstrung that way that we couldn't just take the lead on our on our own. Um now maybe that's not the actual case but sure um that's the way it felt. That's a perception. That's a perception. Yep. And and then also the so we have a renewable energy goal for 2035

and we I I have been suggesting that we need to get uh an action plan in place to how we're going to do that. What are those what are those steps? and and I I've been told the MPBA leads they'll they have an action plan for us to get to our renewable energy goal. So again, I'm not saying it's more a perception, but it is been I felt the perception has been a real barrier for us moving forward. A 33%'s great, but I think it's far short of where we could.

Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Um, let me make a key point here, and I didn't make it at the beginning, and I probably should have. We're a projectbased agency. The vast majority of joint action agencies across the United States are all requirements. So actually a projectbased agency is structured so you the community do not have to work through MPPA at all. You can actually go out and do your own projects. You can buy your own power. There's no restrictions in our bylaws that says you have to buy through MPA. Um really the only reason you should is if it makes economic sense to so it's the most freeing um independent structure of a joint action. It's actually the hardest one as a CEO honestly to manage because um I can't just go out and make decisions that on behalf of all our members. I actually have to get their approvals. So, I'm sorry that you have felt that way and and there could have been instances where maybe if we reround the clock and you didn't work with us on the USDA project and you would have done something else, maybe would have got done. That's a possibility. Um, but you know, for every one of those, there's a million other examples of where we actually delivered a high value project. I if you go back and look at some of these projects we did in 17, 18, 19, and 20, I mean, we bought renewable power for $30 a megawatt hour. I mean, that's in your portfolio now. So, like, like I said, I think there there are challenges always in this industry and um but the trump card you hold is you can always go on your own. You do not have to use MPPA.

Thank you for addressing my comments. I appreciate that. And just one followup, you mentioned the transmission costs of power. You mentioned the three. Yeah. Could I propose a fourth and I want to see how you think about the trans the cost and transmission more diversified energy sources that are close by. Um, you know, think of the cost of some smaller scale utility projects, but when they're close by, transmission costs are are lower.

100%. I agree with I agree with that 100%. I do. Yeah. And I the problem that most of our members have is they're very concentrated municipals and the property is at a uh is very scarce to do projects and typically solar and wind projects take up massive amounts of geography. That's why those a lot of batteries though don't take up as much uh property and so those are right sized. You can still do solar projects in town, too. But tell me tell me how much how much Yeah. I mean it land would need Yeah. to do a

Well, you couldn't do a wind project at all. There's just it just So solar I mean when you when you take in all the buffering and all that, it's about 10 acres a megawatt. Yeah. A megawatt. A megawatt. Yeah. And we were going to get with our project three megawatt, right? So you need about 30 acres. Now there are projects that have done at 7 acres a megawatt. There's projects that have been 12, but I think on still on average it's

in that in that 10 acre. Yeah. Now technology has improved and it will continue to improve. We're going to get a lot more energy out of future solar panels than out of previous solar panels. There's no question about that. There's bfacial now. There's all sorts of interesting technologies of getting more. I mean, the sun is the greatest resource there is. We are going to improve there. That's actually another reason why you don't want to go all in on solar now. You want to keep layering in because the technology is always going to improve. You're going to get more energy from solar in the future. I'm the first guy to admit, man, technology solves all of our problems. There could be a day where you could put a project out there and you could get three times as much energy out of it. So, now it's one megawatt for how many acres?

10. 10 acres. Yeah. So, you can see why with the maybe a few exceptions, most of our members when you try to go in there and take 30 40 acres from them in their communities, that's really really hard to do because typically they want it for industrial or commercial or other real estate. You're fighting over real estate, which is why the the landfill project was so attractive because you weren't fighting over real estate there. And I really hope something can happen there and I'm confident that it will at some point. Are you the one that will go out and help find a partner for the city for that project? Uh MPPA. Yeah, we would absolutely support that and and we would assist you in that regard. Absolutely.

But I think everybody sitting here would like that to happen. Is that correct, council? Yeah. Not necessarily. I understand. Having gone through this, I I feel confident that comfortable in stating personally I I hope that you do get it involved with helping the city because that's our really only sizable land the city has. Yeah. Is available for any kind of renewable energy.

I mean, I went out there seven years ago with Mike Robbins. I remember long before the USDA project and like, wow, this is a pretty cool spot here. There was some worry about how much boring you could do in there without infringing on whatever the, you know, soil forbearance or whatever. I know there's some issues there, but um yeah, again, technology keeps improving, so I'm confident you will get something done there at some point. Yes, Miss Walker.

Thank you. Thank you, Patrick, for your presentation. Um, I also share a lot of cute I also share a lot of Derek's sentiments in terms of um, I have been serving on city council the longest adjacent to the mayor and so when the mayor passed the resolution for 100% renewable energy by 2035 in 2018. Um, I'm very curious about our path to get there. I too have been told like let's just like lay it out, wait it out, let's take the guidance and direction. But I also look and hearing your presentation tonight, you spoke on several things that were that resonated with me. Economies of scale. Yeah. And decentralization. Yeah.

So when I think about our region and I first of all want to set that off by saying thank you for MPA's work during our ice storm when we had Zealand and Charlavoy and Harbor Springs come to our aid during our transmission failure and our ice storm and our blackout. Um it was it was those partnerships that were really that were reinforced in terms of like we are we're playing in the right on the right team.

But that being said, I also want to look to those regional partners like um uh Britney at Trevor City Light and Power who came from Lancing um program and the sheer scale of what they're able to accomplish and maybe they're operating with Light and Power boards as well. maybe their structure is different like we don't have a DP DPW board here in terms of governing body but um I would be hopeful that we could look to those regional partners for economies of scale and sharing in utilities. So the power between Charavoy, Paskki, Harbor Springs, and Traverse City is really clear and apparent to me and how we source our energy and the cost of energy. But a volunteer renewable energy program is only going to get you so far because you have your early adapters, people that are willing to pay an extra 10% on your electric bill to sign up and subscribe to 100% renewable energy. We're not really going to get to that threshold until we start with a date and work backwards of how we're going to systematically accomplish that year by year by year.

Yeah. So, that being said, I'm hopeful that maybe where there is a will, there is a way. And I've also been told to rely or we're relying on updated technology and that battery storage is going to be a huge game changer for us. And I have heard whisperings of that technology coming to utility scale fruition. And so while I remain hopeful, I'm also concerned about how we are systematically getting there.

Yeah. So I think I'm going to summarize what you said and I think um one of the things we need to do better at is providing a better visual so you can see the implementation to get to where you want to go to. And we need to do we do provide these they'll call multi-year budgets, but we probably need to provide something more um uh tied to your own city goals so you can see them out beyond the five years. Um and by absolutely we I mean we don't have like some kind of we're a nonprofit organization too. I don't get paid more to buy power through MPPA. So, if we can help facilitate an arrangement with Traverse City or Charlavoy or anybody up here, um we'd love to do that. Obviously, affordability is always on our minds. And so, if a project's going to cost significantly more than um alternatives, you know, we have an obligation to share that with you because that could impact your own rates to your your retail customers here. So, those are the things that we have to be communicative about, but in the end, it's your decision. It's not ours. and we just try to help facilitate it.

Joe, Mr. N, thanks for the presentation. Um, and I'm not completely up to speed to this, so some of this might be ignorance. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't hear and read articles about the hyperscalers and AI building their little mini power plants. Yeah. And and nuclear, the smaller nuclear. I'm kind of curious what nuclear in in your whole thought process.

Sure. Well, none of them have done that yet. Um the only thing you've seen them do is contract with old nuclear plants that they're restarting and there's only a handful of those really honestly that are capable of doing that and they're pretty much all taken. Um small modular reactors is what you're talking about sort of the next phase. Um nobody's done one yet. There's a lot of talk. There's been a lot of projects. I'm not saying they're not going to get done, but um they're not going to happen fast. That's in any meaningful way. It's 10 to 12 years away. So, that's a long time. Um actually, none of these projects actually all they have on site, most of them are either uh diesel or gas fire generators and batteries. That's what they have on site. But they're relying on the grid for their normal power. And quite frankly, that's the big argument you're seeing everywhere right now is there's not enough of that around for them. So something's got to give. You know, something's got to give. And I think the got to give part is going to be there's not going to be as many data centers as people are planning until the power supply catches up. That's the give part.

Mr. Moore, so I just had two questions following up on your presentation. One, it indicated that a business objective was renewable energy from 15% to 50% by 2030. Yeah. Can you speak to the feasibility of that?

That's becoming more challenging. I mean, you're at 33% now. So, thankfully, you're a you're very close to you're closer to 50 than than you were in 2015. Like significantly closer. But it gets harder here for a couple reasons. Um, one is the we were getting much greater amount of reliability per megawatt, but there's been some rule changes and it's going to get into some highly technical stuff that'll bore people silly here, but we're not getting as much reliability per megawatt of installed solar as we used to. So, that's slowing us down. The other thing is prices have just gone way up and um, so now there's an affordability issue. So, how do we get there? Um, well, we're going to have to make some tough decisions. Fortunately, um, we have some other vehicles. Renewable energy credits can be bought, of course, but that's from existing facilities. We're going to have to do some more renewables definitely within the next two years if we want to have it online by 2030 to meet the 50%. Um, now there are exceptions under the legislation. We don't want to use them. Um, so but right now, um, we're kind of at this hysteria phase of the business and so going into this market today to try to do a deal just has not seemed like it's a really good idea. Um, now what we may end up doing is just doing a smaller project. So then again, we're not trying to hit home runs here. So if if it is a high price and prices fall to that, we're not going to be sulking and regretting it. I think that's what we've been doing. We've just taken a little bit of a pause. I I don't

want to bore you here, but we're putting a brand new system in at MPPPA, a much more sophisticated portfolio management system so we can really analyze um these intermittent and battery resources. And it's been a year-long process. We're going live with it in 26. So, we want to get that done and then we're back out into okay, what projects do we build or or buy um to get to that 50% number? Yeah. Thank you. And then the second question is just the degree of accuracy of these capacity forecasts. I mean specifically relative to Pasi. Yeah, it looked like there was a lot of swing there.

As far as Pasi, I mean we rely a lot on your city to tell us what you see of your own retail customers in the future, new construction projects, whatever your all the information. We have a very very uh dynamic econometric project process we go through for your load forecast and we simulate all sorts of different uh futures and we come up with a one that's within um a high confidence level. The marketplace is really struggling with low forecasting right now. Really struggling. And that's because of what we just been talking about. There's all these new I mean one example we have our two largest members Holland and Lancing both were going to put automotive battery project plants in their in their cities that was a year and a half ago they're both not happening now they've been converted to um battery for the utility industry so suddenly all the load forecasts that they had given us and these are big companies GM sold out their partnership in Lancing I mean things are changing very rapidly in the industry right now So yeah, forecasting is very hard.

Thank you. We have an about 3% something like that gases. Correct. That's very that's very expensive and right now it's well over $100 a Yes. Yep. running around $50 a megawatt landfill projects or unfortunately the landfill projects were grossly expensive um a few years ago. Unfortunately, now they're less they're still expensive, but they're less expensive than relative to the alternatives because we were doing, like I said, solar at $35,45 a megawatt hour. Now it's 80 $85. So

yeah, we are restructuring those those contracts by the way and dropping their prices down in the 60s. This megawatt was I think two years ago was 95. Yes, those deals were done back in 2008 before my time. Not that I'm blaming the previous, but uh and uh they had massive escalators in them. So, um fortunately, most of them are gone away this next year. Nuclear. Are we investing more in nuclear?

We're not. But well, because they're they're gigantic projects. None of them are proven yet and just not scaled yet. Um, will we? I'm sure we'll look at it. But, um, and we we might end up buying power from a nuclear plant. We could do that, but as far as building one, I mean, they're just massive projects, tons of money. Yeah, sure. And and we're exploring those opportunities, but there's there's Yes, Lindsay. Ma'am, thank you.

Um, quickly, um, so the white elephant in the room is like every utility company around us in the universe is doing rate hikes and I know that we are undergoing in the next year or so a study determined um, I've always been of the belief that we try to keep our utilities not at a subsidized rate, but how much can our community warrant an increase in utility costs? Yeah. considering our most vulnerable residents. And then um I also wanted to ask some questions about like biomass and is that considered a renewable energy and could we increase the capacity of the biomass facilities in our region? I mean I know that it's also regulated by Eagle. They're only allowed to burn so much, but we were city of Ataska and Emtt County were great contributors to the biomass facility in Gringu's power because of our ice storm.

Yeah. Um so I guess I'm just wondering um your forecast or predictions about the um affordability and the accessibility and the renewability of biomass facilities.

Well, let me address your first point first. Thank you for Yes. Our members have on average rates that are 15% lower than your competing investor own and cooperative utilities which is a great and that's that's an average obviously some have significantly lower some have slightly and it's by rate class it's all different um uh but investing in your system you got to have enough revenue coming in to continue to invest in your system so your rates have to be set otherwise your system gets antiquated just like your house or any other piece of equipment. So, rates have to be set. We're also very um involved now in our member rate making because we want to make sure that our members are creditw worthy. You know, that they have strong financials, they have proper cash levels and reserves and debt service coverage ratios. And so, you need to make sure that your rates are set so all those financial metrics can can be met. Um, as it relates to biomass, and I mean there you're talking like wood, not methane. I'm presuming

TDR.

Okay. And TDR. Yeah. Um [clears throat] yeah, th those projects so historically have been very uneconomic. A lot of them have closed. Um there's only a few biomass projects left in the state. And um now you you rais a really interesting point like where is all the wood that just got devoured here with that ice storm is is something that I've been paying a lot of attention to and I don't have a good answer for that. Um, but I would think that that presents an opportunity as opposed to just getting chopped up and thrown in a heap somewhere that that that wood supply. Um, uh, could be a source of economic benefit for everyone there. So, I mean, I don't know how many millions and millions of tons of wood were were, uh, left on the ground from that ice storm, but it was I know it was staggering. But, historically, there's been challenges operating those plants. um their their costs have been well over $100 a megawatt hour and I I'm not an engineer a biomass engineer so I don't know all the reasons for that but I can get that to you after. And then there's also the other points that you kind of brought up like

we've never explored fiber optics and if that's an option to diversify our portfolio to bring in more revenue to have another that's awesome utility as part of us. I mean we would rely once again on on your guidance.

Yeah. No, I think that's that's great. I mean, I know Traverse City's been actively putting fiber in and and um I haven't studied the math there, but I know that they've they've felt it to be a big success. Uh Holland has done the same. Um I think having more utility services underneath your umbrella here could be a great thing. And then also like our wastewater treatment plant, anorobic digestion as another component, generating energy either to cover its own energetic costs or to supply extra decentralized energy.

Absolutely. I think you're going to see you already have seen I'm sure the transition from like um you've already seen are we're much more involved in what's going on inside of your system than historically. Back when I started MPPA, even before that, it was we were just like a wholesale provider. We was very different organization. Now, a lot of that's just because of the way the industry's changed and we really kind of have to be very involved in each other's business, yours and ours and ours and yours in order to survive the complexities we're dealing with. Anything else? Council, sorry I took up so much of your time. Okay. [laughter] Thank you. Thanks for having me. We look forward to

I'm sorry it's been a while but we have a lot of great people at MPA beyond me and I'm happy they've come here. So I'm sure we're going to see more of you because I think we will probably be looking at strategic plans that will get us to the Yes. You will you will definitely and we Yep. you or your staff somebody we have great staff and they will definitely be here. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Safe travels back home.

Next is the consent agenda and it's approval of the following asking for a proposed resolution that would confirm approval of the following. the November 15th november 17th, 2025 regular session city council meeting minutes as well acknowledge the receipt of certain administrative transactions that have occurred since November 17, 2025. Anybody have any questions or comments at this point of entertain for a possible motion? So moved. Or

I have a motion from Mr. De Moore, a second from Mr. Knob. I go to Miss Beck for roll. Moore I. Nocttra I. Shields I. Walker I. Murphy. I motion passes 5. Now this is your chance for public comment. Uh you'll step up, give us your name, come up to the mic, push the mic. So it's green and you'll have a few minutes to talk to councel. I ask that you speak to councel and not to the audience and your presentation. Thank you

chimat for this opportunity. Fred Harrington Jr. 11-11 Howard Street Paskki. I just want to read a resolution that we passed at the tribe. Uh, tribal resolution 1 062501, opposition to Paskky's plan to move uh, war memorials out of Pennsylvania Park. Whereas the Waganoxing Odawa Nation, known as the Little Travers Bay band of Adawa Indians, getting blurry [clears throat] and its citizens are vested in the inherent sovereignty and right of self-governance. Little Travers Bay Band of Adawa Indians is a federally recognized Indian tribe under public law 103 324 and is party to numerous treaties with the United States and most recently of which being Treaty of Washington March 28th 1836 and the Treaty of Detroit 1855. The city of Paskki was named after a prominent Adawa figure Ignatius Paskki. The statue overlooks the Little Travers Bay just over that way. The tribe and its citizens often use the city's parks and s park system for their events, including the first festival by the bay and the water is life festival. Now, the city of Paskki resides entirely within the boundaries of the trib's treaty boundaries outlined in 1855 treaty of Detroit. Multiple businesses in the city of Paskki started with seed money from the trib's community development financial institution, Northern Shores Loan Fund. Adawa warriors fought in the Union uh fought with the Union in the Civil War as Company K Sharpshooters. Adawa

warriors fought as American soldiers, sailors, marines, merchant marines, coast guard, and airmen in every American conflict since the revolution, including but not limited to the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The tribe reveres its warriors as Ogichidok, the ones with the big heart, and celebrates them with special dances and songs at our events. The tribe and its citizens often use the city of Paskki Park for their events. I put that in there twice, didn't I? For their events, including the first festival by the bay and the water is life festival. The city of Paskki has memorialized its warriors killed in action during American conflicts in the town center, Pennsylvania Park. The names of Adawa warriors appear throughout Paskky's war memorials. Most American cities, as do Boone City, Charavoy, East Jordan, Boone City, Harbor Springs, and Boone Falls, display their patriotism with war memorials in their town center. The city of Paskki has engaged a company to revise the to revision Pennsylvania Park. This company envisions Pennsylvania Park without the war memorials that currently reside on the east side of the park. Therefore, be it resolved, Little Travers Bay Band of Adow Indians vehemently objects to any plans that move the Paskky's War Memorials out of Pennsylvania Park and urges the city council to reject moving the memorials out of the Pennsylvania park. It passed by uh a margin of seven zero uh in favor opposed two absent and was signed by the uh tribal chair. If I

could, I'd like to give you the this is a signed resolution. Why don't you give it to Shane? City manager. Oh, it'll be documented in the minutes. Thank you, sir. Yes.

Now, I know people have told me that this isn't going to happen, but I haven't seen a quote that says it won't happen yet. These things have a funny way of happening as we go along. I also uh take a moment to tell you that the tribe starting a DPW and a possibility of a utility and we look forward to working with the city and maybe um MPPA to develop alternate power sources. Jimmy Gu.

Thank you very much, sir. Uh my name is Patrick Klene uh Vietnam veteran and I am uh been involved with the uh monuments in the park since the beginning. I helped spearhead with the help of all the other organizations of BFW, the American Legion, and of course the Vietnam Veterans of America and Blueest Star Mothers to make that happen. And that was in the mid 80s. A lot of people who are here who want to change this weren't even around at that time. And at that one point during this particular point, they wanted to put our monument under the bridge because they thought that might be a more beneficial place for whatever reason. That didn't happen. and uh we've always had the support of the city council and that's the reason we're there and still there and the amount of work that has gone on to put those monuments there and at no cost to the city may I might add uh and the people [clears throat] that were involved in putting that there a lot of those people are gone now it's unfortunate but more importantly that's become kind of a sacred ground. And if you walk through the park, as we all have, I'm sure, and you look at those monuments and you look at those names on those monuments, not only just the Vietnam, but the World War I and two, and there's names from Afghanistan and uh the Gulf War. It really it strikes home because a lot of those people were the especially with World War I, those people were the

beginning people. Those families were what started Paskki. They were all connected. And I think it's important and I'm not against any music venues. I think that's very important. We need that kind of thing in Paskki to bring people together. But it doesn't have to be in Pennsylvania Park. At the opposite end of the park, there's lots of room. A band a band shell there would be fantastic. There's no reason. And you're at the point where people will walk to a music venue, but they won't walk very far to see a monument because if it's already central, they will see it. And it's beneficial to everybody in the community. And I'm here because I've get phone calls and that's how it all started. Everybody's afraid just like Fred said, things just happen to PDSI for some reason. And uh believe me, I don't want to bring it anymore because maybe it's premature, you know, but I the calls and the people have called me and talked to me. They're concerned. uh and I was put on an ad hoc committee to check in and and I haven't heard a word from anybody uh on what's going on and not even about the part about uh taking uh uh they had some you had city I think had something in the on the internet uh for uh people's advice or you know their thoughts on changing it and everything that I had heard has always been on a negative side of changing it. Even the railroad tracks simply because if you think about it, why is what's Pennsylvania got to do with Paskki? Well, Pennsylvania railroad is who had that property to begin with, not excluding our Native Americans, but uh that's who put it there. We should we we

should ought to uh maybe put a a caboose there. Do something to bring people to see some about our history of Paskki up here, easy to walk to rather than down at the waterfront. You know, have more for it, that type of thing. The other thing I would suggest is that it's it's a beautiful park, but you should be able to walk through that park and it should look like daylight. I mean, I know we just talked about energy here and what the costs are, but now with LED lighting, it's a lot less expensive to light up and something like that would make it a whole lot easier for people to to enjoy that through the in the evenings and a nice stroll through the park is always good. But that that's the reason I'm here on behalf of the Viet Veterans of Vietnam Veterans of America and other and the American Legion and the BFW and other veterans in the community. And uh everything that I've been told, nobody wants to change it. And if if if something changes, I would sure like to know. And just exactly like Fred has said, a vote from the city council saying that they will not be changed, that will not be tampered with makes a big difference and makes everybody feel a lot better. I thank you very much.

Thank you. Anyone else wish to speak to council at this time? There being none, we'll go to city manager's update and I turn it over to city manager Horn if I can both these things. [laughter] [clears throat] So, I wanted to take a few moments to celebrate some staff uh birthdays and work anniversaries for the month of December. Uh John Tommpkins, Parks and Rec, celebrates a birthday December 5th. Uh Mayor Murphy uh celebrates a birthday um next week, December 11th.

That was can due to lack of [laughter]

Yeah. Jeffrey George parking, uh, December 11. Uh, Bob Nichols, public works, December 14th. Mary Sue Prantara, library, December 14th. Uh, Scott Goak, public safety, December 17th. Amy Tweeton, downtown manager, December 23rd. And Tyler Hart, uh, parks and wreck, December 25th, Christmas, Christmas, baby. Um, December work anniversaries this month. Ed Smith, parks and wreck, 29 years with the city this month. And Larry Donovan, public safety, celebrates 24 years with the city this month. Um, public meetings coming up. Um, Paskki Youth Advisory Council meets next Monday, December 8th, uh, at 6 o'clock. That's here in this room this month. Uh, parks and recck uh, commission also meets on Monday, December 8th, in the community room at six o'clock. Uh the board of review will gather for an organizational meeting on Wednesday, December 10th. Uh that's at 3:00 in the afternoon. Um and then the art commission next week on Thursday will meet for their monthly meeting on December 11th. That meeting has been chain time has been changed to 8:00 a.m. um in the morning. wanted to bring um our residents aware again it's it's that time of year where we are um regulating uh parking on street parking due to our winter parking regulations which obviously started today uh which is kind of apppropo for the weather we're we've had over the last few days and plan to have maybe this evening and tomorrow. So, as as hopefully all of our residents know by now, um we we rotate parking on on eve on evendated dates based on um uh your

address. So, on even dated dates of and the calendar, vehicles must be parked on the even side address side of the street. And then the same on odddated dates. Uh those folks should be rotating back and forth. We for the first um couple weeks obviously we we'll educate as much as possible but it's very important for our plow truck drivers to be able to clear appropriately on both sides from curb to curb. So, we ask for the public's uh participation um and adherence to this so we can clean our streets effectively and not have to continually weave in and out of uh traffic um and leave uh voids in our plowing operations. So, again, I c we did this last meeting, but just to as another reminder, a few events coming up the next couple weekends. This Friday, December 5th, we have our annual holiday openhouse. Um, very well attended event. Uh, we'll light the, uh, new Christmas tree as well for the first time. So, that's very exciting as well. Following next Saturday for the holiday parade. This would be December 13th at 10:00 a.m. And uh the routes are on our website as well and downtown's website uh as well. Also wanted to let parents know they may want to circle the December 12th on their calendar. We will be providing a parents night out. This is will be at this will be at the Winter Sports Park Lodge um from 5 to 8:00 p.m. on December 12th. uh our our parks and recck kids camp uh coordinators and helpers will be uh facilitating this opportunity and so we ask folks if they're interested to register at the Paskki uh rec desk um on

our website and take advantage of that. That's ages 6 to 12 on December 12th. Happy to answer any questions you may have. Oh, then the mayor I think had one additional uh comment. Any comments questions for the ma city manager? Uh Paskki holiday light contest 4th annual is coming up. Uh if you have lights on, you want to have it looked at. Uh Friday and Saturday, December 12th and 13th. We're encouraging people to make sure and have their lights on. They're from 6:00 till 9. Uh I've talked with Kuanas and they've want to be involved with this. Uh, so the Quanis members will be driving around and taking a look at covering all 31.5 miles of city streets. I was told we'll divide it up to make sure it all gets covered and we'll come up with you end up getting a big yard sign in your front yard that looks something like this, but will be largesized. Um, and you also will get a $100 gift certificate to a neighbor a uh restaurant in the area as well. So there are the categories will be listed on the city website uh and probably in the newspaper as well. And so any questions? Okay. Any does public have any questions for the city manager for his update? There being none, we go to appointments. It's consideration appointments to two boards. Downtown management board and the tax income finance or tiff board. I'm going to let you know that there are two three people. One is uh Drew Smith uh for the downtown management board. He uh has lived in Paskki for six years, though he grew up here, went away, came back. He's a member of the uh Newman

Rotary board of directors for that. Um very passionate about Paskki. Um works hard for it. So I bring forward Drew Smiths. Mayor, I move to reappoint Drew Smith. I have a second. I'll be happy to second the motion. Mayor, I have a motion from Mr. Shields and second from Miss Walker. I go to Miss Beck for rolls. I Walker. I No. I Murphy. Yes. I Deore. Sorry, Deore. Hi.

It passes 5-0. Congratulations, Drew Smith. Wherever you are. Next, I bring to you on the tax increment finance. That board meets twice a year with the uh Kendall Cllingon Smith is the uh staff member that runs that. Uh, and it it approves TIFF tax increment finances of the city. And I'm bringing forward Clark Smith. Uh, he's served on the board for quite a few years. He says he's continuously lived here for 75. So, I'm pretty sure he was born and raised here since his mother was my kindergarten teacher. I move ask for a motion. So moved. I have a motion from Miss Deore and a second from

Second. The motion, Mr. Shields. I ask Mc Beck, Miss uh Sarah Beck for roll. Deore. I Shields. I Walker. I Nocttra. I Murphy.

Hi. The last one I bring forward is Nan Casey. Uh Nan actually probably is closer to city hall than anybody just a couple doors out of the way. Um, so, uh, she's an attorney and she feels like, uh, it's a brings her expertise to this board. She's served the board for the last, uh, I appointed her, I think six or eight years ago. Uh, so I bring forward her name. Uh, she's involved with Brother Dan's Pantry and Hospice. Does anybody wish to make a motion? Mr. Napra, I'd be glad to make a motion to uh, appoint Nan Casey. I'll be happy to second the motion. Mayor have a motion for Mr. Knob and a second for Miss Walker. And I'm going to go to Miss Beck for roll.

Knock. I Walker I Shields I Deore I Murphy I motion passes 50. Miss Casey Nan Casey if you can hear us you're on the board back. Now we go to we have uh two more items on the thing. One is old business and that's a discussion on possible adoption of a proposed resolution approving the city's proposed 2026 uh annual budget. And I'm going to turn that over to city manager Horn who has met with all of you over the last week.

Thank you, mayor. Yes, this kind of uh continues our ongoing discussion on the 26 propo 2000 2026 proposed budget. Uh we presented that at the November 17th meeting. um went through a presentation um took your questions and comments, feedback. Uh we did schedule a public hearing for this evening which was done. Um I did uh Audrey and I finance director Audrey and myself uh met with uh each of you uh kind of accumulated your comments, feedback. I distributed distributed that out back to you. Um, so just looking forward to continued feedback and discussion and potential adoption of the proposed 2026 um, budget.

Council, do you have any questions, comments? We can move otherwise a possible adoption. Mr. Moore,

it's more of a question. Do we need to delineate those items? Yeah, I did print this off in case you didn't have those. Um, again, I tried to I tried to capture your thoughts. If I did not adequately do that or there's things missing, obviously you can bring that forward this evening as well. Um it appears there's there's some consensus on um keeping the 50,000 in the budget for the wheelway kind of bypass surveying and design based on um again based on your feedback. If that's different that's that's fine. that money is already in the in the budget, so we won't really need to do anything um with that if that's the consensus. There was a an item that uh I believe council member Nocttra brought up um initially um he he thought, and I don't want to speak for you necessarily, but um you thought that maybe doing both marina projects uh would be prudent just based on some of our electrical issues we've had at the marina. So, we brought that up as a potential as well, adding the Pierb B electrical upgrade project. Um, doing both that project and the dredging project within the marina using uh the restricted uh fund balance that the marina currently has, which is around uh Audrey two two.1 million or something like that. Um, so there is funds available to do both projects. The question became if we're only able to get a grant, one grant for 150,000. So for half of it, should we space those projects out so we can get that 150,000? Not not that grants are given, but this this usually

is been pretty well accepted. So potentially getting one project done in 26, another project done in 27, both with that $150,000 grant attached to it. That's an option. Or we proceed. It's likely that we're not going to get a grant for both of those projects in one in one year. So that's the question, I guess. And certainly we agree that both projects need to be done. The question I guess is should we should we space them so we can qualify for an additional grant opportunity? Mr. Knob,

just to clarify that I when when we met, I thought that we were we would get 50% reimbursement on both, but that's not true. I don't not sure if I conveyed that or not. If I did, I apologize, but it's likely we'll only get one. Uh, so I don't know if that changes your thought. It changes mine a little bit. Which one is the most important? but not known for sure at this time. My recommendation would be to put both in the budget if we're going to apply for both of those grants. If we only get one, then we can make that determination at the time. That makes sense. Put that in motion then for the for the for the budget. Yes.

Yeah. Ear noted that we're approving both with the understanding that if one goes and the other doesn't, we drop the other. Correct. Right. That's right. Okay. So that would be in the budget stated. Do we need to do a motion to do that? Well, yeah, we'll we'll keep that with the big picture. There's a few other things, right? Okay. So, um um let's see. Um there's the Ward 4 sub area plan. Uh that was mentioned by one two

two mentioned to keep it in and two mentioned to move it to 27 and I think Mr. Ntrab it wasn't on his um radar. Yeah. Well had a question. Are we Can we ask a question? Oh, please let's talk about it. So, so the the it currently is in the 26 budget. My my general question about this is we seem to do a lot of plans and and and what would we be doing? What would we be losing if we put it into 27? Has this been kicked down the road before?

No. No. But what would we be what would we be losing if we delayed it a year relative to everything else we're doing in in the other planning? I'd rather ask it. What will we gain? What will we gain by doing it? A live study at the initiation of a major development being in place. Give it another year then we'd know more. We're talking of parking and stuff. Our trip talking about a sub plan for that Standish Avenue. My thing is

Thank you. I here's how I I read this. We do not know what the traffic patterns are going to be at this point. And would it behoove us to wait until next for one year to get us a a feel for what what are the what are the patterns of of traffic? Are they are do we find that everybody's going up Sheridan Street and now Sheridan is the one we really need to look at or is it they're going out River Road and it's the the South Standish or is it Howard where is this traffic going because isn't this more or less a traffic no it's much more than

but it is a traffic is a component I feel like that component would best give us some view if after we have actual actual cars on the road instead of guesstimating oh 204 let's see 20 will go that way 10 this way 100 this way and so if that's a part of this process I think it would behoove us to have more information and I don't think we can have it until we have live action

just just to clarify sorry uh I wanted to clarify something real quick that 55,000 was removed out of the 26 budget so if you want it back in that would be an ad. One of the things we could do as well, as Audrey mentioned, I I'm really somewhat confident that we can get some RRC support funding for this. So, we could do it at we could put it in the budget and if we get some uh grant support, it's a go. It's a green light. If if it's not in the cards for 26 from a from a grant standpoint, maybe we we hit the pause and that could be an option. Mr. Moore,

for me, it's not so much a grant issue or a funding issue. It's more of a timing issue because as this was explained to me, it was like looking at the corridor as a whole of which traffic was a portion of it. And so along those lines, I think holding a bit to see how it all settles would be a better plan so we have a better picture. That's that was my thinking in moving it to 27. It didn't have to do with grant funding. Thank you. But but grant money is good if we get 55,000 or whatever. Mr. Shields,

just some thoughts on that. Is there value in being proactive though versus waiting until things settle to to direct how we as a community want that corridor to look versus being behind the ball. um this this I my understanding of a sub plan I meant to do a little more homework on that so I don't know a lot what's involved but my understanding is it's a way to get ahead of of of designing a an area of growth to reflect our our community's goals. So it's to me that it's a opportunity to get that funding and get it rolling right away. Why why wait? Um it feels like we may be behind the ball. Mr. Moore,

oh I love when Mr. Shields and I respectfully debate things. I think it's important to have information that can inform what's going to happen and we're sort of in a phase right now where we don't we don't have that information. So, I think being proactive is a really good thing, but I think being informed with more information is always helpful as well. Miss Walker.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, seeing that this is um, word for in my very specific neighborhood, I also wanted to say like we at some point we were kind of like, oh, would a, should a, could have, we should have added that on to the developers like task of of him bearing or them bearing the cost of a traffic study as a stipulation to Maple Block, but we didn't do that and that's okay. So, reflecting upon that, it's also a designated neighborhood enterprise zone. So, I really want to lean into the policies that we've passed and um and as designating that with John Igo's recommendation that that become a neighborhood enterprise zone that also opens up other opportunities for investment and grant opportunities. And I agree with Shane that if MEEDC through redevelopment ready communities, if you can piggyback a study that's very much related to a previous redevelopment ready community property, which would have been Maple Block, like are there possibilities of layering other next opportunities and looking at that like very holistically as this new neighborhood enterprise zone? So, I'm in favor of of expanding our lens of how we view that and whether that could be grant money or promised budgeted money for 2026. I'm kind of on the fence. I'm like, yes, this year and addition to 2027. So, um yeah,

Mr. an opt. So I when I asked Shane about this, you sent me Shane uh um the scope of of a of this kind of a plan from Beckett and Raider and and and I I'm I'm hearing and agreeing with this the traffic stuff, but there's a heck of a lot more going on in in this plan than the traffic. Yeah. You know, to me, a lot of stuff is is relevant. So I mean I'm personally I think it's important to do whether it's important to do in 26 27 I'm kind of can go either way on it but it it's really good stuff in here that is pretty relevant.

Manager do you have an opinion on this? Um, the reason I took it out was I just to have more data, more information, let let the two large projects in that corridor kind of materialize. Again, Maple Block will be built out um in July. So, we're already halfway through the year. Let that all come to fruition. Let's see and monitor kind of how it's going. I think we'll have good data to insert into this plan, you know, in 27 based on um based on these projects kind of coming to the finish line.

That's pretty relevant to me. Um let's talk about whether it's in or out. Which one is it in 26 27? you know, um, three people saying 26, three people saying 27. We, you know, let's give the city man. Let's, let's give the city, we need to take a stand on this. So, give you a year, mayor. We'll go down the line. Would you like us, too? 27 27 26 actually 27 26

next Mayor Mr. Shields I was just I was going to move on to um Yeah. Yeah. Just Okay. I was going to the next. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. point.

Um, so I I do want to just make the public case for removing the little Travis Wheelway bypass surveying design study. Uh, and and that that is because it's not about this study. Um, it's about diverting attention and slowing momentum away from what the community is, in my opinion, actually asking for. Um, it's delaying a the progress towards fixing the wheelway where it is. So even if the study comes back and gives us another $1 million probably more than that um as cost estimate for putting the wheel away back along the highway and then a community as I feel like we're if we went that route would be kind of not reading the room so well as as a board to what the community is asking for. We'd be back to community uh angst against us spending money on a study to do something they don't want. So I I it's not about the study. I just feel like that that money could be better used and it's and it's again just slowing momentum where we have some m momentum now. Let's let's put that momentum to where the community wants it to go. Um and so taking that uh $50,000 out I'd also recommending removing uh the $150,000 for the weway resurfacing and and experimenting is for a year what what it happens what that looks like without putting that money towards it. Um, and then putting that money towards uh what what put it towards I I'm suggesting uh the philanthropic or development officer. And let me just publicly say a few points what that looks like. Um, you know, some of those job responsibilities would be developing a a fundraising strategy uh and annual work plan that's aligned with city priorities. It involved building and stewarding relationships with philanthropic organizations and donor networks and corporate partners as well as researching, writing and submitting grants uh to support the various

community pri city priorities and and assisting the the various department heads. Um and then coordinating those private contributions for public project projects, ensuring compliance with the city's gift accept acceptance policy, which is one of the very first policies I was part of in this body. Um so so that that's something I I I I'm not sensing there's support for that but I think uh communicating that out and for uh this body to continue to think about that in the future as a way to um so multiply the effect the rate of return on this investing in a position like this would have uh potentially implications for not having to uh allocate $150,000 yearly for resurfacing or um it can jumpst start help jumpst start things like uh assistance with the unhoused or um you you name it. City priorities. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you. Are you asking if there's an interest in doing this? If anybody is so interested in joining me on these ideas, please please speak up. Is there somebody Do we have three votes to put that on there? I guess that's the question. Is there any anybody here support putting that on this budget? What's the that the last one you mentioned? So the the philanthropy or development director. Is that what we're discussing? I think so. Okay. Thank you for clarity,

Miss Walker. So from what I understand, Derek is suggesting the to to fund the development officer or philanthropic director through the removal of the 50,000 and the 150,000 for the little travels wheelway as like an offset. Is that what your Yeah, my my direct request would be to make space in a budget for that potential to then have the city manager explore it and then bring it up to this um you know once once that's developed further uh this body could then weigh in if if city manager so chooses. But there would be a place within the budget uh for that potential.

It wouldn't be up to city manager to bring it forward. It would be city council. Mr. knob drop. Just a just a I guess a comment. I I I I get the merits of this, but it's a permanent position with annual costs over and over and over again. The $150,000 resurfacing, from what I understand, has been [clears throat] there, but we don't always use it. And it's it's to fix it's to fix things as we need it along the railway. No, it's for the wheelway. Yes, it is. Am I wrong on that? Well, we do use it. And it's it's it's section by section. As we resurface the wheelway, we go systematically further further north. Use it every year.

It's called maintenance. And I don't think it goes north. I think it goes to where it's needed. We we did not use it in 25. Okay. Because we were we're partnering with Bay Harbor and we will partner with Bay Harbor for the next phase. um uh they just didn't have their plans together in time to to go out for bid and get the project moving. So we did not spend 150 in Thank you. Sorry. But normally we do. But normally yes, you're right. But normally so this money goes back to general fund the 150 for this year. It just wasn't spent. Was spent. So is it right? Mhm. But a position is

is an ongoing cost and we don't know what that cost. Miss Walker and any suggestions for changes in staffing absolutely goes to the city manager. So what Dererick was saying was correct. Like it goes to the city manager for evaluation and exploration. It also goes to probably like a legal body, right? Our legal counsel as well. But ultimately you are the decision maker in terms of your staff. But but you're approving the budget. So without without money in the budget, I don't really have authority to add position to the budget.

It's it's our responsibility. He's he if there's no money, he's have he does no hiring. So did we want to hire that position, make that available or not? It's obvious if we said this is what we want you to use this money for, the city manager is going to follow the lead of city council. So is there is there three people supporting doing this? Okay, moving on. So, it will go to to the 27. We'll go to 27. We'll stay with what where we're at with it. Yeah. Miss Walk, Miss uh Deore,

um I just wanted to speak to the $50,000 for the little Traverse Wheelway bypass project. I think this is extremely important. I feel like our first duty is to advance safety and what exists now is not safe. I also think that making efforts toward both routes is not mutually exclusive. There's no reason that as we try to advance this this route on the north side of the roadway that community members who are interested to undertake fundraising for the Miracle Mile route can continue to do that. So, I fully support keeping that $50,000 in the budget and um in recognition of the importance of advancing safety. Thank you.

I agree with you, Miss uh De Moore. Um, it's about safety at this point. I totally support fixing the wheelway, the miracle mile, which I think Roger Banister ran that back in 53. But I I think that it's very important for us to to do the safety piece as well. So, I think it's it's a two-piece thing. Uh, I I'm sure that if the money came available to do the bigger project, this council would jump for it. Mr. Mr. Shields.

Thanks, Mayor. And and M de more I just respect respectfully push back on on that uh narrative of safety. I said I'm not definitely not opposed. I definitely am for safety and safety is clearly a priority as is listening to our community members and a community asset. And I I I challenge the narrative that it is you can do both. I of course you can do both, but if you're spending if we are choosing to spend a million plus dollars on a paved wheelway up along the highway, that loses that kills any momentum for um fundraising for something that um goes down uh below where the city has taken a lead for in a great way and doesn't need to do the whole thing, but city has continued to be a lead. I think it sends a mixed message to then spend lots of money uh for the the the wheelway to make it safe. Whereas we could take that $50,000 and and invest in more protection and ballards and in a faster way potentially if the state works with us um versus spending uh for a study that then that safety that we're we're looking for is not going to be another couple years potentially um to come come for. So I think if we're we're talking about safety, let's put that $50,000 towards a ballers and 100% support that.

Mr. or nap job.

You know, I also agree with what what Tina said and and I on the safety issues, but I also have another probably equally important and although how can you have anything more important than safety is the fact that we we've got all the people came, we got a plan, $20 million plan, there seems to be support, but I'm skeptical of seeing that and and if that's going to be a two-year thing, a 5year thing or 10 year thing, 11 15 year thing, it seems like we should be at least creating a plan B and I don't think it takes away the momentum. It's it's if the if the private group if the private group that we talked about they start making actions and they start getting some pledges going and they start acting on it, I'm all for doing that because I want the miracle mile too personally. I mean, this goes right into what I I I live that, too. And and so I I I think we need to have a plan B developed and and to me, it's not putting more ballards on that darn curve. It just is an awful thing. But that's that's me.

I don't think the ballards they can't be permanently put into this roadway, can they? They have to be where if a car were to hit it, it's it's going to be able to go to the shoulder. So, I don't know what they could put in there that would What would you put in there that's going to make it safer with ballards than Bards than they are now? I I don't see it. So, do I have So, at this point, I don't hear the support to to move uh funding out of the survey and the design $50,000 for the the wheelway at this point. Yeah, I'm not hearing that either. Okay. You have other things, Mr. Shields?

I would also encourage us to um when you when we think about a city planner position and potentially uh ask manager Horn if that's something that would need to be if that's going to be an option for midyear that should we allocate a portion of the budget to um to include that? Yeah, I think the last few years we had some flexibility in the budget to to pursue that. I think we ended up taking off taking that out in 26. So, we would have to do a budget amendment if that was something that council wanted to do as we got into 26 or we can put funds in the budget, you know, ahead of that. Um, I know I thought we heard I thought what I heard was let's get through the zoning work. Um, maybe evaluate that mid year um with with city council at that time. If that's the case, we could we could always uh do a budget amendment. Um,

absolutely.

And uh move in that direction if that was the concurrence of city council. I support that because I I want to see I want to see what happens in the next four or five months as we go through this zoning. Uh the support the expertise that we get from the city planner. I want to see I want to see their department how it responds to this zoning that we're going to go through. And I think that will give us a better picture. And I I I have no problem with going and and putting a uh amendment to to the to the budget in the middle of the year if we decide to go a different route with that and to actually go out for a call. But I' I'd like to see us start with where we are here with what we have. We've ridden this horse this far. I want to ride this horse to through the zoning piece. Mr. Knobro,

I I I agree with you, Mayor. And and what was compelling during during the meeting we had that that Lindsay and I were at was the notion of the increased customer service by having more availability in the building on this. And to me that there's always a lot of questions and it would be nice to be a little bit more responsive. So it makes sense to revisit that after the zoning okay stuff is done. Anything else on that? Anything else, Mr. Shields? No. Does anybody else have something that was not addressed on your list? Mr. Knob.

I would I would like to at least talk about the public safety officer position and and it was and and if and I and I I get the notion about revisiting this in midyear and I I'm I'm I would support that. But I want to reiterate the fact that [clears throat] at least my involvement or my exposure on this council is Bear River um recreation area needs patrolling. And and I made I kind of faciciously made a comment that I'd rather have a scheduled patrol in those in the high-risk areas than people than a than a scheduled patrol going around Bay Harbor just for optics. And you know, and I'm I'm Bay Harbor as well. So, I would I would love to figure out a way to make sure we are having regular patrols of high-risisk areas and not only being there when there's a call on it. And and if that meant we needed to have a public service officer added, we ought to be doing that. But that's the only thing I wanted to say. Otherwise, I tend to agree with a midyear um re re-evaluation of the

Mr. Moore. Um, so I fully support this idea. I just would defer to the city manager as far as an assessment of when you think, you know, is this thing we should go ahead with now or wait and assess. Yeah. And I don't I don't want to sound like I'm kicking the can down the road, but we do have a couple retirements in in first quarter 26 that will

likely impact some of our operations. I I really haven't had an in-depth conversation with Director Carr on uh Council Member Noctb's um uh kind of dedicated patrolling in that area, how how we can structure that. So, we need to have kind of have that conversation of of how if we did create a new position, how much time could we devote to um those areas, the wheelway, um kind of those busy areas in the summer where we get some calls on and likely that'll just continue as as more of the ebike stuff kind of comes out and we get a lot of lot of complaints about speed and safety on the wheelway with with this type of uh technology. So it does it's going to require more us to devote more time in those areas for sure. I just need to we just need to have that operational discussion on what that could look like and I we really haven't had that conversation quite yet. So I think if we can get some time get through a few retirements potentially look at this again midy year to see what this look could look like and we can have more conversation about what that kind of that job description could entail. I think we need to with that and I think we do need the time to take a look at this the ne this next year. I think uh electric bikes ebikes are becoming a big issue in this city. Uh and I think they should be addressed. Um and I think that should be a part of the whole discussion on public safety and the hiring. Um I I think we need to take a look at that. That would be my biggest priority for hiring another officer would be not necessarily riding around in a car looking to ticket people or to those [clears throat] type of remergencies, but it sounds like those are covered. But I think it's the public safety as far as ebikes go, uh, walkability,

rideability, that type of stuff that I think we really need to address with public safety coming up. Mr. the more. So, just to circle back here for clarity to the city manager, you're suggesting we don't put it in the budget now and we wait to reassess it mid year. Yeah, I'm just I'm just asking to hold tight for now. It could be u you know, we have two PSOs that come back to us. I shouldn't say uh um not PS they are PSOS but um um

school resource officers that come back into the mix in the summer. Could one of those potentially be more focused on um what council member Nocttro is is asking. So I just need to have those operational questions and and discussions with the director. I

I think those two officers are one specifically is is very uh well suited for working with the public on on in in the face of public on bicycles etc. Having seen what he does at the high schools in the working with schools that you know I I I say uh do your checking and get back with us. Anything else on the list, Miss Deore? Well, I just have one that's not on the list and it's probably a subject for discussion, but I wonder if we might um revisit this funding percentage for MS. I'm not saying we should increase it. I'm just thinking it would be a good thing to revisit going forward. Um I don't know what others thoughts are on.

Do we have anything we're going to pay above what what what our requirements are right now? August. Yes, it's in the budget. Yeah. 400,000. 400,000. above and beyond as opposed to like the million dollars that we were paying in previous. Yeah, we were doing a million I think for two three years. Six years. Six years and then we dropped out three years ago to 600 and then 450 and 450 last I was just

but we have we have dropped down. Yes. I was just more referencing the fact that the goal of 90% funding had been met and had been met for a while and perhaps that should be revisited to see if we want to give ourselves a different goal to try to to reach again. I don't think it's necessarily five. We're putting in five. No, it was five years. Five years of 100,000. Okay. Million. No, a million. A million. Five years of a million. Started in 2007. We're at about 6.6 6 million above and beyond over the last seven years, whatever it's been. Oh, I think our total fund balance with that though is 3.9 million unfunded liability

unfunded right now unfunded for for retirement for those it's 3.9 and I think in the action plan or you were maybe going to was in the action plan or when was that established the 90% was that I think that was the 21 2021 action plan so as we reimagine that in 26 I think that certainly could be a priority of the new council to give us that direction on where you'd like to go. Um, that would be my recommendation. Okay. I guess if if do we get charged interest on that 3.9 million?

No, you're not paying out yet. We receive or we're earning interest on investments that they have, you know, as we fund it. There are administrative costs of course because they administer the plan. So are we so do they adjust how much we pay them send us envelope saying pay this much does that get affected by the 3.9 our our unfunded liability or is that just what is goes out to to pensioners? How is that determined?

No. There's a there's a certain percentage what is going out to those who are receiving pension right now and a percentage that is going in the savings account per se. Everything that's going into the savings is being invested by them for future payouts. Mr. Knob, I guess I just want to make sure I'm I'm understanding this. The the unfunded portion is not money going out. It's just when you when you do the actuarial computation of all the right retired people and yet to be retired people, we're short. It's not costing us anything, right? And we are pretty much farther ahead than many cities in Michigan. Many, which we ought to be happy about

and and if we got the money, it would be great to to have it funded because it is a liability that we have. I mean, it is, but it I don't think there's a giant rush. Does it affect us at all on bond issues? If we were to go for a bond, would that would not be looked at at all? I don't think I don't think unfunded pension is in the in the wheelhouse of of It's on the Michigan. You know what it would be if we were in a bad Yeah. Yeah. If we were in a bad uh But it it is listed in the m in the uh data thing that I got from Tina. Yeah. That you got from Tina. It is in that Mr. Moore.

Well, the thing that's frustrating though is because the actuarial assumptions continue to fluctuate, then that impacts how our annual payments impact the percentage that's funded. Hence, my argument, well, it's not an argument. My suggestion that we just, you know, revisit this to the extent we can accelerate it. I mean, it seems it decreases that impact to some degree. I mean, revisiting with the action plan sounds like a fine idea to me.

Okay, let's do that. Are you good with that, council? Okay, who else has something they would like to discuss? Okay, so here's here's where we can go with this. If we have a motion, we will have to include these some of these changes. I got it. Do you have it, Tina?

I think so. I think really the only thing we need to add because um would be the Pierb B electrical upgrade uh along with the dredging project. So we only have one of those in the budget um at 300,000. So if we put the second one in and with a disclaimer pending, you know, grant funding um

that would be an amendment. The other ones that we talked about um we already have the slope restoration bypass project in the budget at 50,000. So that would be wouldn't be a change. Um the sub area plan is already removed. So that would not be a change. Um council member Deore, I don't know if you've got something else. I got it. That's it. Do you wish to make a motion to start more discussion on this? Would you like to make a motion since you seem to have it? I have a question first before

Please. Question, Miss Walker. So, assuming that we still have about a $250,000 shortfall for the budget, is that correct? Yes. Use use of fund buns. Fun b funds. [laughter] Tell me more about those. All right. Afterwards. Afterwards. Yes. We have a deficit right now, but at the end of 2025, we are going to experience a no not a transfer, just a positive positive fund balance. That gain. Yeah.

So, netting out the two years will essentially a wash. It's basically a wash. Is that correct? Thank you. So, please proceed. Back to Miss Deore. I move um to move forward the resolution set forward on pages 33 through 36 of the agenda packet with the addition of adding the pier B electrical upgrade project for the marina with the dredging project pending grant funding.

I'd second that. Okay. Any other discussion? Council Mr. Shields. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Knob. Um, I want to also remember that the whole FEMA reimbursement, I know you don't want to have that in the in the in the budget, and I'm not saying it is, but we spent a lot of money in 25 that we do expect to have in 26 that's going to be a a positive thing to our fund balance. That is correct. Thank you. Good sum summation. Nothing to from council. We need a second. Do we have a second? We have a second. We have a motion in a second. Second, Mr. Knobro.

Okay. Thank you. Public wish to speak to councel regarding this matter. Come up. Hit the thing to get it green. Talk to council on this. Anyone? Anyone on public? Oh, I'm going to go. Did you Did you understand the amendment? Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. I go to Miss Beck for roll. Deore. I knock I Walker I Shields no Murphy

I. Motion passes four to one. The budget is approved for 2026 at this point. Next is new business and is the adoption of a proposed resolution approving the city's 2026 schedule of fees and charges. I turn it over to see Mayor Horn.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, in your packet is the schedule of fees and charges. Um, both uh the proposed changes for 26. You can see on page 39 of your packet, these are the proposed changes of proposed what is current and then the difference and then the entirety of the rates, fees and charges is also in your packet with those uh changes. So I would open up the floor to any questions, feedback on these proposed changes for 2026. Mr. more.

So, can I just ask a point of clarification on page 39, one of the ads with the add of the fee of $25 for pickle ball and tennis courts per hour. That is based on my reading of this for nonaffiliated sports groups, not for someone who would just wish to go and play pickle pickle ball. Am I am I right on that?

Yes. Thank you for that clarification that this would be for outside groups that want to use our um facility for a tournament that generates revenue for that entity. We feel like similar to what we do with the uh baseball, softball, edit field um charging those uh tournaments for court time is something that we should consider. This is not for um anyone locally that wants to play, you know, pickle ball. You know, they don't have to. This is not for them to pay these fees, if you will. This is for again tournaments that are occupying the space that potentially could not be used otherwise. So, that's just to there's a little bit of staff time involved with that type of uh tournament type setup. So, we felt like we needed to have some cost mechanism in the in the fees. What has been your feedback from the public on charges uh at this point for gazebo shelters and special areas? Do you do you have what's your feedback on from those people?

Um um as far as what are they are currently and I haven't had any you haven't had people call up and say this is outrageous. No. Okay. One question that's the Marina waiting list annual fee. I I get asked this all the time now somewhat, especially in the summertime, not now. What is the weight list? How many is on it? And what's how long is it? Do you know?

Yeah, there's over 200 on our weight list now right now. And we have multiple people signed up, you know, the same person signed up multiple times. And so to keep people um I shouldn't say the word honest. We we have very great people here. Um, but to keep the the true people that want to have space um and are are interested in in being on a wait list, we think that it's it's prudent to have some sort of mechanism in place to to kind of weed out and maybe shorten this list and and really try to get some turnover on this list. Okay. Many marinas have this. We have never done it before. So, this would be a new um new fee to if you're interested in continuing to be on a wait list, it would be $25 a year to keep that current.

Can I ask what the wait list time is? When the last person that got on, how long have they been waiting? Do you know? Yeah, I don't. Somebody had said it was five years, but I don't know. Been seven, something like that. Okay, very good, Mr. Drop. Um, maybe I missed it here. Uh I actually two question. I didn't see a seasonal rate for the um Magnus Park and I didn't see I saw the daily rates but I thought you know we we we raising the the seasonal rates for the marina. Are we doing that for the park?

We are not proposing any rate increases for Magnus Park. We did that last year. Um we I think we tried to take a little bit of a break on that and not do it every year uh necessarily. seasonal rates because I didn't see Oh, seasonal rates. I'm sorry. Yeah. Um I was actually I was okay with the daily rates. It was the seasonal rates. I was trying to understand how much of a discount we're giving and I didn't see it anywhere. I think there's a limit. I you cannot stay the whole season at Magnus Park. I think there's a certain number of days that you can stay. So, you get paid a daily rate times the number of days. I think there might be. I understood there was a season rate. weekly rate or a weekly or a month. More than a week.

Yeah, it's more than a week. It might be month. Yeah. A month. I understood that we had some type of of a monthly monthly fee seasonal fee. I might s Are you aware of that? I don't know off hand. No. Okay. I just know there's a higher rate during peak season and I know in the past they could not stay all summer but I haven't been up to par on if any of those criteria has changed.

So to be clear, we do not discount anything other than peak and non- peak daily rate. So if someone's going to stay 30 days, they're going to pay the daily rate times 30. That's my understanding. I can get back with you on that, but that's different than what I understood before. So that's that's why I'm kind of beating it to death a little bit. Okay,

Miss De Moore. So, also on page 39, there's just one where the proposed rate is less, and that's under office of city clerk, and it's my understanding that that amount was reduced because of some statutory change that made the efforts of the city staff decreased. And I don't know if Sarah wants to speak to that or Amy, is that correct? kind of overall. I may have Amy, if you don't mind, Amy coming up and talking about the redevelopment liquor licenses, the change from is that was that you 750 to 550?

Um, I'm not aware what the fee change was that maybe Sarah question. Weren't Didn't you propose that though? No. Sarah, do you want to chime in on that?

Sure. Um actually when Amy and I the downtown manager met regarding a few items on redevelopment liquor licenses, we did review these fees and it was my understanding um that there were that there are two licenses um per state statute. It's A1A has several psych criteria, A1B several criteria. And um for many many years when we first initiated some of these licenses, uh there was more staff involvement with one type over the other. So that's where the 750 and 500 were established. And then the state, I do believe in conversations with them, state statute changed um in 2021 and 2022 that we weren't necessarily aware of. Um we don't approve a lot of these licenses uh regularly. So in conversations and doing um an audit of how many redevelopment liquor licenses we had, etc., some of the requirement of city staff on um looking at dollars invested in real and personal property or rehab money for some of these applicants um was a little bit less and um maybe I misunderstood uh Miss Tweeten, but I believe we had agreed to change both of those fees to 550 to have the same fee for both because it was near the same amount of work. Now based on the criteria that changed.

Yeah. My understanding of our discussion was that because we have

the because the law did change and the licenses we have involve less data collection on investment in downtown over a certain number of years. and that moving forward, if we were going to get a request for a DDA license, it would probably be that less time consuming uh license that we felt that license could have a lower fee just based on less staff time. Okay, agreed. Thank you.

Thanks, Amy. I can report on the uh US Jason something. I can report on this part 68 units. You can stay all summer if you wish. Once you check in and just keep in stay the whole summer. The other thing is there's roughly 18 to 20 of the 68 that basically stay all summer long. So is there a summer rate or they just do it day by day? Day by day. Okay, thanks. No, I was just getting Okay. Okay, Mr. Seals.

Thanks, Mayor. Uh, manager Horn, the special Can you remind me again the the special this is page 43. Um the fees for special meetings, uh planning commission, zoning board of appeals, those are so if if it's example a resident has a non-conforming situation, they wanted to seek um um approval to do something. Um is that is that a special meeting or is those like those who called for outside of the regularly scheduled meetings? Those are outside the regularly scheduled meetings. That's what that is for. Yes. So the in a regular schedule meeting it would just be the application fee. There wouldn't be this addition,

right? Yeah. Thank you for that clarification. Anyone else? Do I have a motion for possibly acceptance of the teeth and charge? I move to support the uh the fee schedule. Have a motion for Mr. Natra. I have a second support. I have a second from Mr. De Moore. I have a motion from Mr. Knoprop, second from Miss De Moore. Does the public wish to speak to the council on this? There being none, I go to Miss Beck for roll. Knock. I Deore I Walker I Shields

I Murphy I motion passes 5. [clears throat] We'll start with uh W three, Mr. Knobro for council comments. Um I did want to I I started an outreach feedback email list u a couple weeks ago and I've gotten quite a bit, but I'd like to if anybody that's listening or anybody knows of anybody that's in W 3, I'd love to get their name and email address so that I can uh communicate directly to them. Ward two, Mr. Shields.

So, my penultimate city council comments. Um, you know, I've I've had some disappointments the last five years, but I I feel proud of the of continually showing up and and trying to do disagreements well. Um, and I thank you all for doing those well with me and alongside me. um and you know trying to seek the common good in in this community and you know so specifically um want to thank all of you. Mayor, thank you for being someone who shows up and you're very committed to this city. I applaud your dedication to Paskki. Miss Deore, I appreciate you. Thank you for being very intentional and consistent in trying in in wanting to seek public input and and having an equal opportunity for the community to give voice. I've learned lots from you talking with you and and crazily disagreeing with you. I appreciate appreciate you. Um, Mr. Natro, you asked great questions. Thank you so much for your curiosity and um, I wish I had more time to toh get to know you more. Miss Walker, I very much appreciate your your passion and knowledge in our community sustainability and your your bold voice for for those who are are more vulnerable. Thank you. Thank you everybody.

You are coming back two weeks from now. [laughter] He'll be here at the He'll be here two weeks from now. That was just part one. [laughter] Wait, we have one more ward for the water.

Thank you, mayor. Um what what what I'd like to share this afternoon um or this evening, I have been serving um as the um city representative on EMTT County Department of Public Works materials management planning for the last year. And I hopeful that in the next two years I will um in serving in that same capacity I hope to do a more regular reporting back to um this municipality and this board in terms of things that the city of Basky can be doing to divert more organic material from landfill, more recycling heavily on the public space recycling and our parks and recreation departments. having championed that over my duration of my children's um attendance at Paskki public schools over the last 18 years as well as um my involvement in community spaces and public space events and um incorporating best practices and public space recycling and making sure that we are um doing comprehensive recycling but also that we are not greenwashing and um following systems of best practices. in recycling. So, I look forward to leaning into that position and reporting back to this governing body as we move forward with more diversion opportunities in our county. So, thank you.

Thank you. Ward one, Miss Deore. Uh, first of all, um, thank you for your kind words for all of us, Mr. Shields, and it's been my honor to respectfully disagree with you at times and, uh, to model for the community what constructive discourse can look like. Uh, Mr. Nocttra, I have an email for you and it's a good one. Good. And then finally, I just wanted to make sure I'm guessing that we're going to circle back to the revision of the city council procedures once we kind of get to the new year or something like that. Yep. And I look forward to that. Thank you.

What a year it's been. And we still have a meeting to go. Um, make sure you get out this Friday, go downtown, see Santa Claus, light the tree, visit our stores and shops. Following Saturday is Santa Claus's parade at 10:00 going through downtown. Come cheer on children and the etc. and Santa Claus. And by all means, uh, drive safely home tonight and we'll see you in two weeks. No further business come for this the council. I call this meeting adjourned.