City Of Muskegon Commissioners - workshop

Good evening, good folks, and welcome to the City of Muskegon City Commission work session for this Monday, August 10th, right?

Yes.

Yes, August 10th, 2026. All right, we're going to get right into our agenda. We're going to take a couple items for new business. First off, we have Muskegon Area Parks and Greenway Coalition presentation. Good evening, sir.

Kindly introduce yourself. Yes, I'm Aaron Bodbile-Mast, President of Beechwood Bluffton, and I'll wear many hats that I'll just to HELP WITH THIS PRESENTATION I'LL MENTION AS WE GO. ALSO I WANTED TO COMPLIMENT THAT I LIKE THE NEW INTRO GRAPHIC TO THE THING, THE CITY COMMISSION, AND I ALSO WANT TO COMPLIMENT IT. I ALWAYS LIKE THE PLEASE STAND BY MUSIC THAT STARTS IT. I DON'T KNOW IF THAT WAS LIKE OPEN SOURCE OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, BUT IT ALWAYS GIVES ME PUMP FOR THE MEETINGS BECAUSE I DO WATCH THEM. So I'm here representing today the Muskegon Parks and Greenways Coalition, Muskegon Area Parks and Greenways Coalition, which, what is that? Well, it's a kind of a grassroots group that's just forming. We don't have a formal designation. But over the last several years, at least since the pandemic, I and others have been all over the county talking to people about parks and trails. And what we found is that There's somebody somewhere that is very passionate about their parks or their trails and wants to do more, and they didn't necessarily recognize that they were working on the same thing, whether you've got Laura Swenson here and watches go boating or Jamie Cross and walk on or Larry Fife in Muskegon Heights doing Johnny O'Hara's park or Holton Township. You've got Anita. They've got their community park and Blue Lake Township. Jeff Faber is working on his community park. It's Anita Cantola that's doing the county fairgrounds and a lot of passion, a lot of effort, a lot of time. So if we can coordinate our resources and find the resources, that's kind of the goal of the group. Of course, as we'll discuss, kind of the highest priority is stable funding, which not many parks organizations have at the county level or at the local level. So this is kind of how we get there. So is the presentation...

Yes.

Okay, great. So to start off with, we're going to do this in two parts about the Shoreline Trails and Greenways Plan and the Muskegon County-wide Parks and Trails Millage. Several years ago, the city gave substantial contribution to get this regional trails plan done that's been adopted by the Western Michigan Shoreline Trails and Greenways Coalition. I think you all know Wim Zerdik, but I'm saying this for the audience out there in Streaming Land. That would get a sense of it So I wanted to follow back up because that was a big commitment and you should hear what's in it And I don't think you've had that opportunity yet. So to start off with I got some Copies here to hand out to the city. They'll get the most copies of any, you know One for each Commissioner plus one for the City Hall and one for the DPW That's something another group this distribution of the plans is something another group I'm a member of, the Muskegon County Bicycling Coalition, which is focused on biking advocacy and accessory parks, so it's a lot of acronyms and names, but I wanted to mention we got a grant from the Michigan Trails and Greenways Alliance Catalyst Fund to get the word out about this. So we'll be, not only are we dropping it off at places like Aldea, Dockside Donuts, the Book Nook, We'll be dropping it off to local units. There are some given to county commissioners. We'll also be out on the trails doing pop-ups so people can stop and see what's in the plan because one criticism of plans is always that they, you know, get done and they sit on the shelf and gather dust. So that's the – and the regional trails plan, Windsor-Dick is the regional planning agency for all of Muskegon County and northwest Ottawa County. That's why you see Ottawa County on this map if you're not aware of that. And they had a non-moral rights pathway plan they did in 2013. This is a summer 2025 update that included really substantial outreach, a lot of events all over the county, again, with an online survey that, thanks to Deborah, who helped promote it on Connect Mesquite. So this, just quick, briefly, these are some of the people that participated in the steering committee. And if anybody's interested in trails and wants to participate, there's an ongoing quarterly meeting at the Wimser Dick that's involved kind of to keep this momentum going on this. As far as the structure of the plan, one thing it kind of starts off versus demographics. And I think this one, these maps are worth going here for the city because Demographically, there's a key thing about transportation access, and that's the first part of this presentation. On any given day, a third of people in the United States can't drive. They're either aged out of driving, they're too young, or they don't... they have a disability that doesn't allow them to drive or they can't afford to drive. So here, this map shows, you've got areas of the city of Muskegon have a pretty substantial population, 65 and over. My neighbor, Paul, he has an electric wheelchair. He uses it all the time to get around. He goes from over by Cruisy Park all the way to the farmer's market sometimes. So that kind of Even though we don't have perfect infrastructure, even the infrastructure we have is very valuable for people that age group. Again, five to 17-year-olds, again, City of Muskegon has a pretty good significant young youth population that wouldn't be able to drive and has barriers to getting around from place to place. So that's pretty critical too. And then affordability. In the study, you can see the graphic has a median household income for the study area, $70,000. That's including Northwest Ottawa County, which obviously bumps it up, as you can see from the numbers, you know, drilling down from the county to the city and the city of Muskegon Heights. So as the graphic shows, you know, I understand the average car sale is now $50,000. So if you make $44,000 to buy a new car, it's very expensive. Plus, you know, annually with insurance, fuel costs, maintenance is $16,000 a year. So for a family to own two cars that's $32,000 a year, that's a huge barrier as far as getting around. And you do see it around Muskegon County. You see people all over the place that rather than choose to bike are biking because they have to. This just kind of reinforces that, just the census data on where the poverty areas are. Obviously, the most concentrated poverty areas are in the core of the area. But even out in rural areas, there's people that might have trouble affording cars. So it's not just an inner city thing. It's a barrier countywide. And then this one is a pretty stark map that shows people that don't own a car. And there's dark blue that shows people 20% of households in those census blocks don't even own a car, which in America is a very challenging thing to do, to have a job, to make it to daily needs, go to school, or even to go to a park. Another thing that studies showed is they had an inventory of the trails, existing trails in Muskegon County. You can see that there's 61 there in Muskegon County. Just northwest of Ottawa County has 88. Southwest Ottawa County has 227. And then just as a sub note, my day job, Ottawa County Parks manage 40 miles on their own and are building 16 more. So just one agency is going to almost own and manage as much as the entire trail system in Muskegon County. I think Ottawa County would have nearly 400 miles. Kent County would have a lot. And that's way out of proportion. Obviously Kent County and Ottawa County are bigger. but this number is still way out of proportion to the amount of trails. So getting in quickly into the vision for the trails plan, I won't read it, but this shows that kind of the main themes is connecting communities together, enriching, you know, health and social connections, which I'll talk about more later, and then getting access to nature as big kind of demands of the public input. And then, like, in prioritizing the... the trail system, which I'm not going to really get into here. This is kind of the five principles they focused on, which I think going forward will be a good thing to think about. A key one kind of with the next thing we'll talk about, the county millage, is just efficiency. It's like what ones are ready, what trails are ready to go, what can you build faster, just because if you do get funding, you need to be able to do something that's practicable and can get done soon. And if you have any questions during this, please feel free to interrupt me. I'm fine with that. So this is the overall system map. that was proposed. So the dotted purple lines which will be used throughout the other maps are new trails and the solid purple lines are existing trails. So this is kind of hard to interpret from our level in Muskegon County. So this map just shows it in Muskegon County. And one thing as far as a network effect. So one of the problems in the Muskegon County system or any system in West Michigan really is one thing people Although we have quite a bit of recreation use in our trails. As far as the transportation use, there's barriers. If you can't get to where you're going, people aren't going to make that trip. And you have to have, there's a tipping point, and I've seen it just in person in visiting places where you get the amount of the network built, and people will start using it like crazy. My oldest child lives in Chicago area. Logan Square is going crazy with biking, just from, you know, there were like, lead bikers that had more, RISK RISK TOLERANT THAT WE'RE BIKING ALWAYS BUT NOW EVERYBODY'S BIKING I SAW FAMILIES OF FOUR WITH YOU KNOW KIDS AND MOM AND DAD BIKING RIGHT THROUGH THE MIDDLE OF THE LOGAN SQUARE NEIGHBORHOOD IN MADISON WISCONSIN THAT BIKING IS CRAZY THERE IT'S BECAUSE OF THE NETWORK THAT'S THE THING THAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE YOU DON'T NOTICE SOME ORANGE LINES ON THIS MAP JUST AS The time to take, I think there's room to add trail routes to the map when you get into it deeper, but that would take a process of going through Wormsburg that can have them officially adopted. And this is for context. So what does that mean, all those trails? So this is the current trail system. And then the plan in that .8 in Roosevelt Park was built this year. Part of this in Mesquite City along Apple is built. And I know eventually Lakeshore to Laketon will get built when the TAP process, which is a bear of a process, gets done. So those will be added hopefully in the next 12 to 18 months. The main plan proposes 183 miles of trails. And then those additional concepts that have been initially identified as 46 miles. 183 going from 60 to 240 sounds like a lot. Of course, this is not going to all happen at once, but I wanted to bring back this slide quick to say, obviously, it is done because other places have done that. That's taken years and years and decades of investment to reach it, but you can get to 183 miles over the long term. You've got to start with a plan, though, or you won't go anywhere. And so what is generally deeper from the county level to the city level, what does that look like for the city of Muskegon? And this is the trail routes. Obviously, the text and legend. I can get you a PDF of this that I can send it to Jonathan. He can distribute it to all of you to show where these routes are. And a couple slides later, I'll talk about the Joe Lewis Greenway. This is... And that's been kind of to create that greenway, which is a ring greenway around the Detroit area that uses old rail routes, road reconfigurations, and just regular side paths to mix a system that creates a network. So it's not just one approach. It's not just like you see on Lake Everett Drive where they just built that side path next to the road and the road right-of-way. There's a lot of ways you can achieve this. And this kind of imagines that on rail... RAIL CORRIDORS AND ALONG ROADWAYS. 27 IS GETTY. 20 IS THE ONE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT BUILDING NORTH OF LAKEDON, BETWEEN LAKEDON AND LAKE SHORE. You can see there's one of my favorites, the Broadway Greenway, which we get from Muscatawa Trail all the way to June Harbor Park. Part of that was built this year by Roosevelt Parks. That's 8 and 9. That's in the Heights and Northern Shores and Fruitport Township. But you can see that creates a network where you can kind of get where you need to go. Another one I'll point out because it comes up too quick is 25, 26, which is along Moses Jones, and 22, which is Ambrosia. So that's in the city of Muskegon, that's proposed 16 miles of new routes, and then it offers these connectivity items. Of course, one obvious question, it's like, okay, how do you fund it? And that gets, you know, there'll be a lot of different sources. These things are built with local dollars. county dollars, state dollars, and federal dollars, as well as private dollars. So it's not one thing, but in order to access all those, it really helps to have a stable funding source, which gets to a county-wide and parks, trails, millage, which I'll talk about soon. And I did make a bet, or I said I did promise Deborah a certain time, we'll see if I'll make the over-under. I don't know what she's betting. Making good progress, though. So I mentioned Dequindre Cut, and this just shows the Joe Louis Greenway case study. There's a lot of similarities, and not in scale, but in infrastructure between Detroit and Mesquite, and that makes the Joe Louis Greenway a really relevant example. I think one of the things you can see here in that Dequindre Cut, which is a beautiful route, and you can see it's not just... It's kind of like a linear park, so it functions as an urban greenway. And that has, along it, it's a container bar, there's stages, there's artwork. So it's a piece of social infrastructure, not just a piece of transportation or recreation infrastructure. And social infrastructure is all these things, why often I say we think of parks as nice to have, but really from an economic, ecological, health and wellness, and social matter, that's really essential infrastructure, and we should think of that way and fund it that way. I would say from an economic... development perspective, I've seen these things really take off and have huge economic impacts. In Chicago on the 606, that's not something we'll have here. It was an elevated train line. There's all kinds of new development right along it, including huge multi-use facilities that were obviously built right specifically to access that and for people to live near it. In Madison, Wisconsin, They were building just like the new one you have where the McDonald's building was. They built something that size, actually even bigger, and they had a huge plaza on the back with hundreds of bikes where people could get right on the system and get all over the Madison area. That's just more, this is a before-after example of the Dequindre Cut, what it looked like and what it is now. To help people envision that, the plan also includes renderings because there was such a big chunk of funding from Muskegon, three of the four renderings in the plan are from the city of Muskegon. So starting with Moses Jones, obviously the Shoreline Drive pilot project had a lot of controversy, but I've understood even from some of the people that were pretty negative on that online, there's not a lot of There was more feeling to maybe we can fix Moses Jones, which doesn't need to be eight lanes. I've sat there many, many times where there's eight lanes and eight cars on both sides of the road taking one car per lane. And it's a historic urban renewal crime that I would say really messed up, broke a neighborhood there, broke an access to a business district. It's a real barrier from Jackson Hill. those neighborhoods over to the Lakeshore Trail there's not a reason you should need to cross eight lanes of traffic it just doesn't and I think it's been mentioned still as a priority and I think your master plan and as a thing work on the future so this is just a rendering of what you could do if you reconfigure that I'd say one thing about that one I would rather have the four lane section this is where it ended up with a The plan, I can say, another thing I would say, if you were going to replace part of it with a green space, Rochester, New York took a below-grade highway and put it at grade, reduced the size, and they also built housing on it and commercial. So I think it must be possible here to do that. I wouldn't combine Greenway with maybe some other development if you're going to do that. But because we're both in here and it was something that was very important to Mayor Johnson. It's not just that, it's infrastructure like this, adding a bridge over Shoreline Drive. I can say, just got back from Wally last night, and I've seen this in other places like Madison, I saw five bridges over highways. So I've seen them all over the country. It can be done. They just built one where I grew up in Wyoming. It's not cheap, but there's ways to get there if you're determined to do it. And I think There's a lot of talk of it, but this is one way to help envision that. That spot was chosen because you got elevation on both sides, so you have to have less fill to get up to that, because to get over both the train tracks and the highway, you're going to have to have a pretty high bridge. This is my favorite, along by the old farmer's market. There's an old rail corridor below grade at north of Apple, above grade south of Apple, that is owned by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. So it's already a park and is just waiting to be converted into a greenway trail. So this is a vision of that. So again, it's incorporating that park-like feature with that recreation feature and the transportation feature. This would... I think this is really low-hanging fruit, but the first step, even, which I don't think there's a lot of room in the budget, would be to start with a planning study, which is not cheap, but that's how you get started on that. And here, just for example, this one exists now in Roosevelt Park. They took this old corridor behind Home Depot and turned it into a trail with the idea that it would connect, keep going into Norton Shores, keep going to the east through the heights along Broadway, because the nice thing about Broadway is you have a bridge over seaway and a bridge over US 31. So this is what it could look like. Again, mixing that, like you'd plant native species to have pollinators, you'd have other features to make it a place to hang out and have social connections, as well as just exercise and transportation. So that's kind of the wrap on the Shoreline Trails and Greenways Plan. and what it means for Muskegon and what's in it. Of course, you have your copy, it's abridged. There's a QR code to access the study, the full study online. For printing costs, we just got down to the actual maps of the trails and the descriptions of them. Any questions so far? Okay, so now on to the county, how do we fund it? So I've been the chair of the Muskegon County Parks Commission since 2024. And we've been talking about how do we get stable funding for the parks for all that time? The parks, there's eight parks and 846 acres all over the county. They're only funded by camping fees and parking fees. So there's no general fund money that goes into those parks. They just have three full-time staff. So it's just enough to pretty much fund the day-to-day, the camping fees and the parking fees. Obviously, we got things like Heritage Landing, which is not technically a park. It's a long story. I'm not going to get really right here. You can ask me after if you have questions about that. And then new Doon Harbor Park, and then we have this trails plan. So we've been having an over two-year conversation of how, if we were going to pursue a millage, what would be involved. I think there was really consensus of having this parks and trails approach, but as you'll see, there's other things that we're working woven into it that was based on public input, based on stakeholder input. So this is not, um, and the Muskegon parks and greenways area parks and greenways coalition. It's also done a lot of all over the County. We have friends Friday, every third Friday of the month at four o'clock be rotate around the County. So just about, we've been about in every part of the County having these conversations and getting the same, same feedback. So let's start with the strategic plan for the, um, Muskegon County parks commission. So, uh, great. Great community, like I said, social infrastructure is through great experiences and the great outdoors. That's a key thing is how do you get to that? And again, staff capacity is an issue, but I also say one thing, I've read every local parks plan. Of course, no shoreline trails and greenways plan. In the county plan, every plan at every level, there is public ask for more amenities, more trails, upgraded amenities, more programming. It's not, nobody's asking, let's have less parks or less land protection. It's different in different areas of the county, what people want. Um, I know, uh, but, uh, it's the same theme all over the county. Um, so then, then also these funny, as you know, without stable funding, it's really difficult for one to manage grants, to write them, prepare them, and also to match them because most of them require a local match. It's also difficult at the county level. We don't have a complete master plan for any park. We have a concept plan for Dupont Harbor Park, and there is a plan being worked on for Heritage Landing right now. So local level, I think you're pretty familiar with this. There's been a huge influx of arbor dialers, which is a one-time thing, to help do a lot of upgrades in the city of Muskegon. But there's still more that needs to be done, and definitely... There was just posted the, I should do a plug for, please complete the City of Muskegon Parks Recreation Survey that's on Connect Muskegon right now. That really, I think for the next phase, the city wants to know what recreational programs do people want. So we need more of that. So same thing with the local level of matching grants. So those are the needs. And then back just to, oops. Quick reminder, you know, just the evidence documented things of, like, how big is, how important are parks as infrastructure? You said economic development. There's many, many studies that show all these things. But the biggest thing, as far as, like, the U.S. Department of Commerce tracks the GDP of the outdoor industry, it's $1.3 trillion. So that's a pretty big industry, and why we have, it's awesome to have Haumont and La Colombe and Sativa. This is another growth area for this county that we should make investments in, because other places are doing it. Everybody talks about Bentonville. Arkansas, they have Walmart money, but it's, you know, beyond Walmart, that was all they knew it for. Now it's a mecca for mountain biking there, and people are moving to Bentonville, not for Walmart, just because of the trails they built there. Again, in quality of life, many documented studies show that these things, parks do result in these things. We have, there's an agency called the ODC Network that works on integrating outdoor education into daycares, into schools. And they have, not only does it help with performance, it also helps with attention and attendance at schools. So There's a lot of concern about screens and being on screens. Parks are a great anecdote to that. I also say there are also, in times when there's challenge to affordability, there are often, for many, many parks, there are often low cost. You can walk out your door. Beachwood Bluffton is a great example. People use it like crazy. I mean, Beachwood Park, there's always people playing basketball or pickleball or having a picnic or just walking around that trail, and that doesn't cost you anything to do. Maybe gas if you drive there. So back to why a millage? We talked about the strategic priorities. That's the strategic mission. We're trying to implement it. Meet the needs of local parks. I'll talk about that more in a second. Meet the demand of the public. At least have the opportunity to ask that question. It doesn't cost anything in the November election to put it on the ballot. We don't have the money at the county level to pay for a poll, so then we can ask the question. Maybe when it comes to your wallet, people are like, well, I love parks and say I want more, but I didn't mean it that much. But maybe they will. In the August primary, MParks had 94 of 97 millages that were parks-related passed. So in general, parks millages are very popular. in Michigan. I think people know where their bread was buttered as far as the tourism county goes and that's part of it. And then there's big opportunities which will for new park development. Again, other areas are making these investments. Some of you came on a tour to the city of Grand Rapids where they're making giant investments in their waterfront. We want to keep that momentum and help to get things done like the Third Street Wharf. And then Also, if the county has funding, there can be opportunities I'll discuss for coordination planning and grant support. So what does that look like? What are we asking? So it's a half mill over 10 years. One of the reasons why, Mark Eisenbarth asked, why a half mill? So it's an amount that I think is the least needed to move the needle on the trails thing and to help locals. while not being so much that it's luxurious. And it would cost, at the market value in the last equalization report, that's about $68 a year, about $5 a month. One thing we did do in recognizing that additional cost burden, which compared to some millages is a moderate amount, is the county would eliminate parking fees at the four county parks, just at county parks. not other parks. So that's Pioneer, Miner, Twin Lake, and Doonhumber Park. So if you already go to Pioneer Park and you pay the tax, instead of $68, it would be $43, or maybe you would go to Pioneer Park and you don't go there because it costs $25 for one beach day. Well, it's $7 a day. Another thing I'll mention, to remember that if you just bought the house, many people will pay less than that. their taxable value might be less than that. So just, you know, that's an average and we have graphics and the county has a website that has more materials, flyers, FAQs and more details. Also a big thing here is 70% of the money would go to the county for their parks, maintenance, upgrades, new amenities and for building out the trail system, 30% would go to local units. So what does that mean in actual numbers over the 10 years? So that's about $35, $36 million in today's dollars. And we believe that would bring in more dollars that we leverage. It can happen fast. So that you would take $35 million and turn it into another $25 million. So the revenue sharing, what does that look like? This is based on the St. Clair County model. They've had it for decades. It's really popular with them. They do 25%. I'll give credit to my county commissioners. They were insistent on going a little higher than St. Clair County and sharing 30%. How St. Clair County does it is per capita. So this is a per capita distribution. for revenue sharing across the county. One thing I know, you know, somebody brought up to me, what about acres or land? And it just happens to be that cities with more people just have more amenities they have to take care of, so it is really fair. Out in other areas, everybody has a park they really want to take care of, and Holton Township, talking to them, this would double their parks budget. So it would have a huge impact on the park they do manage, which is really an incredible effort, a citizen effort, a DIY effort. So even though some of the amounts seem solved, they really can have an impact for everyone all over the county. Remember, this is just a one-year amount. It would be 10 years, and how would that work? You would have to opt in with the MOU, the county. The main thing with the MOU is that it would just say you promised to use it only for parks, which I think it's in the millage language that it's for local parks. You'd be legally obligated to do that if the millage were to pass. And then you would do an annual distribution request that would just be a formality and also have a report on what you use the money so that the Parks Commission and the County Board could report to the residents what the money's being used for across the county. So any questions about that? Yes, go ahead.

Thank you. I have several questions and a couple of comments. First of all, thank you. This is a lot of information and I appreciate you putting this together. Starting with some of my questions. First, is the Muskegon County Parks Commission, do they have public meetings? Are they open to the public? Yes, they are. Okay, great. And then I kind of see us putting the cart before the horse a little bit. So I don't think it's my place to say that we don't need A, B, or C. If this is going to be a ballot question for the voters, I would love to see us invest in all of our parks throughout the county and do some of the things like some of the renderings that you showed, right? Let's expand. But I think that we need to do a better job than the last. You said that in another area of Michigan, parks pass so many percentage, right? Yes. But the last millage, which was last week, Tuesday, here in the city, or in Muskegon County, that millage failed. Yep. And I think it failed because that entity didn't do a good enough job getting this information more palatable to the voters. We're asking for more money. Here's what we're asking for. So my suggestion would be between now and November, if this is going to be on the ballot, that we need to do a good job of presenting to the Muskegon County voters why a half a bill is would be good for them to say yes to because the community college was only asking for .298. It's almost half of this. So because this is a lot of information, we may want to work on, you know, kind of packaging it in a nice box and presenting it to the voters. You letting the commission know or we go to the different municipalities, let the commission know, then yes, we can be champions for it. Yes. But ultimately, it's going to be the voters that vote on it. So I think we have to do a really good job of letting people know, hey, this is going to be on the ballot. Here's why it's important, stuff like that. And then why I said I think that we're putting the cart in front of the horse a little bit is because the county owns Heritage Landing and they're looking at upgrades for Heritage Landing. Correct. But I think that's a great resource that the county has that is well underutilized. If they only are getting money from camping fees and parking fees, that's one asset here in the county that they could make some money on to have money for other things, whatever that may be. And I understand the city of Muskegon or Muskegon County, we have an asset in our arena. But the city is not... entertainment you know like we're not promoters or something like that to where we may the county may need to look at some outside entities to say how can we maximize this asset in heritage landing that we have and i'm more than happy i go to our county commission meetings sometimes or other municipalities meetings sometimes to listen and to hear and to also give feedback like this and you know but they ultimately though our county commissioners make the decisions on heritage landings. So just some things to think about because half a millage, half a millage asked to Muskegon County voters when they just turned down another millage, they're gonna have to have a really good motivating reason why to say, yes, we want this.

Yep. All green. Thank you. I very much appreciate those questions. And I still, even being here today, it's partly to... It's like some of your many very good questions about the shoreline trails and greenways plan that was passed was to come back and let you know the work that went into it and let you know that came out of it and that, again, how it's going. So I really always appreciate it. You have very insightful, thoughtful questions, and these are all great questions. And there's a few more slides in the presentation, but I want to answer these first. So I'll take them maybe in reverse order. On the heritage landing, I just want to mention that's not funded with camping fees or parking fees. That's because, like I said, it's not a park. So this is a little bit in the weeds, but it's actually funded by hotel tax. And it's managed by the Visitor's Bureau, not by the county parks. So they have different employees. They have the same... person, Bob Lukens is the economic development director. He has many hats, right? Mats and that and the parks and the visitors bureau. So and I understand right now that park is With the events it has they're trying to get more it is it's like a loss leader, right? They're not making it and part of the reason there's been you know, that makes it difficult I agree It would be nice to have that stuff done and have that there is a master plan They'll be renderings this year and options later in September that everybody will get to see So this will be exciting time to see the possibilities one thing I will say about this millage is this millage alone won't be able to do fix heritage landing it's gonna be a piece of you know, other grants plus probably private dollars to get that. It needs, it needs a lot of work. It's, you know, you know, it's six, seven figures, right. To, to do it well, but it, and part of why it isn't working as best it can coming from my day job is it, It's just a design problem. Hopefully this will get to the design issues. So there's huge opportunities there. It's one of our best assets along the lakefront. It's just how do we integrate it with the Third Street Wharf, make it all work as one system, make sure that when there are events that people can still access it and not feel like there is a barrier to it. So that's some of the things that we'll be working on and how do we do some new things like downtown Holland has a skate, you know, escape loop that's pretty popular so you could have a year-round activation. A lot of questions there, so those are big things to come and will definitely be out there. I think it's a challenge with the funding limitations. I think we'd like the chance to build more credibility at the county parks level. It's just difficult with the funding we have to get these things done. That's a big one, that master plan. Purchasing Dune Harbor Park was a big one, a big lift. We're building a new bathroom at Pioneer Park. That was a bear to get it done. A very challenging project. And part of that thing with activating Heritage Landing more is just a lack of staff capacity to make that all work. And this is partly addressing that. Now on the marketing to the public. So Joanne's here from one of our members of the Muskegon Parks Greenways Coalition. We have a group that's a side group working on this millage that will be out in public. We're going to be at the celebration on 15th, the Muskegon Lakes celebration. We're going to be at the farmer's market every week. We're going to be at the farmer's market in White Lake. And I've been doing this. I've presented to several local units already. So we're getting the word out so there's no surprises for people. So not to everyone yet. I'm going to Fruitport Township and Houghton Township later this month. We're going to get it all over that way. So we're going to have a multi-pronged strategy of getting the word out. We just have a big Facebook and social media splash this weekend that's had some good uptake. Plus the website has all those things you'd want. We have a brochure, a flyer. We're going to get the flyer out into everywhere you'd want to get it to. So that's our plan for getting the word out. It's a short time and it's a big lift, but I think we're starting off from... a good place, maybe a little bit ahead, because parks and trails are very popular. Now onto the, all that said, onto the MCC thing. And I don't know how they did it. The only observation I can say, there's two, I have an anecdotal. If you look at the precincts where people voted no, it was largely on the outlying areas, right? It's a big, you know, the map was blue and orange. Every outlying area voted no. No, in those precincts. What does this have that's different? It has the revenue sharing, so everybody gets a piece. Every area of the county, except one local unit, is eligible to get new trails. And then a thing that was very important to some of our rural people, we realized over time, we have Alicia, who's the vice chair of the Parks Commission. She's the president of the county fairgrounds. And for those, that area, that is really important to those outlying communities. It's a huge piece of social infrastructure. It's a beautiful piece of property owned by the county. It's on the Muscatawa Trail. It's a huge opportunity to be even more of a destination. It is, but it needs, it's all volunteer operated. It's a huge operation. It needs both more recreational improvements, natural resource management, and staff support. So this would include all that. And that's one of the things that helped, you know, get more buy-in from the county commission that we're spreading the love. So one of the things we heard, Muskegon's gonna, a lot of nice stuff for this city. I don't, if you pass it, it's gonna all go just to the city of Muskegon. And this is designed, no, it's gonna get, distributed equitably across the county. So that's, that's, you know, I and I know, anecdotally, there's voters, you know, there's one story about somebody that's like, I'm not sure about this MCC millage, but all parks, yeah, I'd vote for that in a second. And there's just, it's just different. You know, that's anecdotal. That's what I would say, as far as some of the things you mentioned, I think it's an ongoing conversation. I'd love to, you know, once we get something materials that could have a QR code. I'd love to have every local unit have it out there because they would get something out of this where they could have the educational materials out there for their people in their parks, whether it's, you know, Pier Marquette, Heritage Landing, Pioneer Park, Ross Park, you know, anywhere in the county. So that's our effort. I want to wrap up knowing that I hit over. So is that helpful? I'm all set. Thank you. So what are the opportunities that this would fund? One is that the county would have people that would work with local units too. So at my day job, I manage all the state grants. If you're in it, you can be really efficient about judging which ones are viable and how to get through the whole process because it's a four- to five-year process to manage a grant. Within limits, the county will help local units apply and manage the grants. And also help with local park plans. WimserDick's doing, you're not eligible for grants unless you have a parks plan, and WimserDick is helping the city of Muskegon Heights with that right now. So we could help do that, because if you write one, a lot of the information can be used in multiple local parks plans. We talked about the trails plan. I think we could get a $13 million investment at least all over the life of the thing, and it could build 15 to 20 miles of trails. It's going to take decades, but this would be, and it'd be all across the county. We try to make sure through the Parks Commission. So this talks about how would we decide which trails to build. Consultation with Windsor, with local units, and the Parks Commission, the county board. You figure out which ones are ready. I think there's, you know, I think, you know, maybe Ambrosia would be a good one, and we'd start with at least a planning study because it's all ready to go because it's owned, you know, right in your district, right? It's already owned by the DNR, so you don't have to acquire them right away. Heritage landing, we already talked about it, Link. You know, these are the upgrades I think we are focusing on. That's one rendering, but there'll be a much more public reviewed rendering at that September meeting. There'll be, I think, three options for people to review and get feedback in And I think the final rendering should be out there before, not before people get their absentee ballots, but before the vote happens. Another big one. This is the concept plans for doing Harbor Park Obviously, it's been a point of conversation is you know as a another Urban ish can't campground. It would be another revenue generator for the county The problem is we can't access that revenue because we don't have the money to do a full phased really detailed master plan so why I think there's a lot of will to do a campground at doing over Park and there isn't an official adopted plan with cost estimates. So we can't even get started in that. So I know in my business, unless you are starting an engineer study, to build something like that is three to four years away to put a shovel on the ground. So this would help us do that and have the staff capacity to do that. And then taking care of what we have. Every park in the county park system would get some kind of upgrade. The restroom at Patterson Park, a friend of mine that grew up there, his dad was the caretaker. He's retired. He remembers the bathroom being built when he was a kid. So that bathroom needs to be replaced and upgraded. So there's many things like that all over the county that need to be done. Another big thing regionally is there's a lot of desire for more access to Muskegon River and Wright River especially. This would be a way to do that. I know Joanne's working on trying to get a launch on Creston. There's just a big gap in access along the river, Muskegon River especially. This would help us do that because, again, it takes somebody that's doing this as a full-time job to be a bulldog and make it happen. Pioneer Park, not only get upgrades, but we'd do a master plan there because we think there's more opportunity for more revenue from camping. And again, camping at Dune Harbor Park and Pioneer Park allows us to do that revenue sharing so that we can make up that money and also to eliminate the parking fees. We'd have the stack capacity to have these other resources and do this. And then finally, I mentioned the fairgrounds. We definitely have a recreational improvement project. They really want a trailhead and a good connection to Muscatawa Trail. They already have a campground there, so they want to bring in other kinds of camping just than the fair camping. And then we'd have that staff support and that natural resource support. So thank you from your time here. Any other questions?

Commissioners, any additional questions? Yes, Commissioner Kugel.

Yeah, I do have one, two, actually, further questions. One is, if this millage passed, does it have a time limit on it, a 10-year, 15-year?

Ten years, yes. And that gets, it's a good thing to mention quick for your next question. Is the current parks plan for the countywide parks plan only includes renovation projects. So while these are the projects, I think we conceptually think that would be the ones we'd focus on. We want to further confirm that with a lot of public input. and have, we'd redo, we'd update the parks plan, kind of like when the ARPA dollars came, there was a lot of public input. It's done really well by the city. Figure out, just confirm that these things are the things we want to focus on at the county level so that there'd be a lot of other public opportunity. A quick mention, there's a lot of oversight at the local level of these dollars, but at the county level, it'd be the Parks Commission, which is an advisory board of the board of commissioners. And none of these projects could go forward without multiple votes at both levels. So... Your second question, Commissioner Kogel.

Yeah, I'll get with you. We'll talk offline. It's not pertinent to this project. But, again, thank you for this information. Thank you, Commissioner Kogel.

Commissioner St. Clair, Commissioner Jackson, anything to ask or add to the conversation right now?

All right.

Well, thank you so much for presenting this evening, and more importantly, thank you for all that you do across Greater Muskegon. You're a man who wears many hats, and your passion and your profession are paired together very nicely, working for the Ottawa County Parks system in your day job, while also serving on the Muskegon County Parks Board, as well as our City of Muskegon Parks and Rec Advisory Committee, as well as the Muskegon MCBC, Muskegon County Bicycling Coalition. I'm going to be a founding member of the Muskegon Area Parks and Greenway Coalition, bringing together disparate individuals and initiatives and groups from across our county to advance better park and greenway amenities.

Thank you. And I'll just say, to wrap up, is I think this community deserves this kind of investment and there's a lot of people working hard to do a lot of stuff and they deserve that support and there's no way I'd rather spend my time to do this. So it's really been really rewarding and really fun to get to connect with everybody and folks like you. Thank you.

I really appreciate everyone involved with MapGC and the thoughtfulness that they put into this millage initiative that they brought to the Muskegon County, and I appreciate that the Muskegon County Board last week approved it, six to one, so it had bipartisan support in putting on the ballot so that the voters can decide if this is something that they wish to dig deeper into their pockets, knowing that we do have an affordability issue in a number of different areas, but we also have under-invested amenities across Muskegon County as well. And we've got quite a few parks, both in the city of Muskegon, but also across Muskegon County. And we're playing catch-up and trying to invest in our city parks, and we have been doing a lot in that regard, thankfully. But as you know, the ARPA dollars are running out, so it's good to have a sustainable revenue source to help fund that going forward. and for Muskegon County to be able to make investment in their park system that had seen deferred investment, deferred maintenance. But really important, that revenue sharing is so important, not only to us having a potential sustainable revenue stream, but for all the municipalities around Muskegon County, especially the smaller ones, that right now maybe can't go after those grants, whether they're federal grants or state grants or whatnot, because oftentimes there's a matching component And they don't have the resources for the matching, or they don't have the resources to do a comprehensive parks and recreation master plan. Yes. And so with this additional support, they can do that. And then they can leverage it to get more resources to invest in their community. So this helps invest in the quality of life in communities across Muskegon County and helps. Well, it's not going to happen overnight. And like you said, it didn't happen overnight in Ottawa County. It was incremental. And This isn't going to get us parity with our neighboring counties. They are far ahead of us in their investments in their park system and their greenways. But we need to stop the, from my perspective, we need to stop the the growing chasm between the two. We may not catch up to them overnight or even in the next decade, but we need to be closing that gap and we need to be investing in our park system across Muskegon County. And I'm pleased that the city commission and our staff and our community has supported the investments in the city of Muskegon park system and that we've been able to revive parks and recreation. and really advance that important work to serve our community. Thank you.

Yes. One final thing on that. You know, we're the largest city on Lake Michigan in Michigan. Nobody in Michigan has what we have. And if we put this together and make this event, man, we'll... Well, it will take a while to catch up, but we'll be the envy of many places because nobody has this kind of urban center with the mix of beautiful forests that we have in the northern part of the county and the backbone of trails we have. So we can really take off with this. So, yes, thank you.

Thank you so much.

And for folks that want to learn more? Check out the Muskegon County Parks Facebook or socials. There's a post and the Muskegon County Parks website, which has all the educational information about all these details, plus that quick talking points about it and FAQ.

And MapGC has a Facebook page or is it a group?

Yes, it's a Facebook page and a group. So one's focused on kind of the broad stuff and some of the stuff that Joanne runs the group has a lot of the opportunities for volunteering, which we do have a lot of. So, yeah, I would recommend following both.

All right. So that's the Muskegon Area Parks and Greenway Coalition. All right. Thank you much, sir. Really appreciate all that you do for our communities.

Thank you all.

Next up, we have community engagement updates. Good evening.

Good evening. I'm Deborah Sweet. I'm the community engagement manager for the city of Muskegon. Give me a second here as I plug this in for you. All right, so I'm going to go over a few current and upcoming community engagement opportunities, just so you are all aware, and we can start spreading the word with our community. There's six of them, so I'll defer to the mayor if we want to do questions in between or at the end.

If you have questions throughout, you can just, like the previous presentation, just raise your hand. We can acknowledge that as we go.

Perfect. So up here at the top, you can see first we're going to talk about our grocery study analysis. I've highlighted our department and staff member who are leading these efforts. The community engagement team helps all of our departments, but they are really doing all of the work here. So I wanted to highlight the grocery study analysis, which was recently published. completed or is in progress, but the public engagement period is currently closed. Last week at National Night Out, which many of you attended, we got over or very close to 100 responses of people who completed a grocery study analysis survey. And why are they doing that or what was the purpose? The idea of the analysis in general is to create a feasibility study or a model of what type of grocery store could work here in the city of Muskegon and then use that information to engage potential grocery partners here in the future. So we had the survey that was open for about two weeks. It was on our Connect Muskegon page just like all of our engagement opportunities and then they also had three unique stakeholder discussions and all that information is being compiled along with other data analysis and we expect to see a result later this fall. Questions about that one? Awesome. Up next, like Aaron mentioned, we have a recreation survey. So Kyle Karczewski, our Parks and Recreation Director, is working on updating our Parks and Recreation Master Plan. We are working on adding in a proponent just for recreation. So the survey that is currently live will be live now through October 31st. It is an online survey and it is going to be promoted very heavily. It's going to be available, um, for our print newsletter. We've got a couple of funny reels in the works to try and grab people's attentions to complete that along with some focus groups scheduled with Muskegon public school students. Um, this is in support with the parks and recreation advisory committee. and we are doing a little extra advocacy with that group to get them out into the community with some QR codes and fun t-shirts to try and get people to fill this out as well. Questions? Careful. Next up, we have Western Avenue repaving phase two. So you may have remembered last year around this time we started a project redo or resurfacing half of Western Avenue. That was from 4th to, or the whole thing is from 4th to Terrace. We are scheduling an upcoming downtown resident and business owner or really anyone who would like to attend open house later this month. And this is expected to begin early September, and it should hopefully be done by mid-October. So again, this will be updated on Connect Muskegon, and it's currently live if you guys want to go check it out. All right. next up is our strategic community plan so communities in the city do these every couple of years to make sure that the city's direction and priorities for the future are aligned our manager's office and deputy city manager leanne mike cell are leading this charge and this has been a little bit of back-end engagement with staff members and commissioners along with our consultant And we expect that soon, maybe early September, late August, we're going to open up a community survey where we're going to start getting some feedback on our early compilation of data. And then also host some focus groups later this summer.

Questions?

Cool. All right. Last up, you guys, this is a very familiar topic for us, but maybe a different term. This is our development agreement or the third street area. So we're talking about the development of a waterfront community park here in the city of Muskegon. We are planning sometime soon. September is going to be a busy month, I think, to do some engagement opportunities for what that park is. may look like. The Public Works team put out an RFP earlier this summer to do design services, and I believe that RFP selection is on tomorrow's work session. So just a heads up, we are also going to have a Connectum speaking page up. It's pretty much drafted and ready to go out, but this will be happening in September as well.

It'll be on the next meeting.

Oh, next meeting. All right, that's what I have. Do you guys have questions? General reminder that everything is on our Connect Muskegon page. Easy hub for everybody to find current, updated, and past information. Yeah, that's it.

Commissioner, is there any questions or thoughts to share? Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate you and your team in supporting all of our partners across the city and the different initiatives that we have underway. It's so important.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. That brings us to public comment.

I don't have any forms. We have one member of the public in the audience. Would you like to speak? No? All right. We're going to go to the phones unless anyone along the wall wishes to speak and address the City Commission. All right. We're going to go to the phones. The number is 231-724-6721. There's an opportunity to give your input directly to the City Commission when you're calling in Please turn down any audio in the background. State your name. If you're a City of Muskegon resident, which neighborhood you're calling from. And if you're not a City resident, which other township, village, or city you may be calling from. And everyone has up to three minutes to provide their remarks. It's not time for back and forth or Q&A. It's to speak directly to the City Commission. Good evening, you're with the City of Muskegon City Commission.

Hi, it's Anne Vander Molen from Roosevelt Park.

Hi Anne, you have three minutes to provide your remarks.

OK, I would like to know why Officer Ray Ryder from Roosevelt Park told my mom that she could have picked me about three years ago. I would like to know why a Muskegon police officer named Andy McKee came to my door about three years ago. I would like to know why Officer John Gale argued with me when I told him of my concerns about child abuse. I called CPS for a little girl who in 2019 told me her parents locked her in a cage. Locking a child in a cage can be indicative of child porn. I do wonder if we have an evil child porn ring in this community. I think a good cop should call the FBI and have this community investigated. I want to know why Officer Andy McKee came to my house about three years ago and Officer Ray Ryder told my mom she could evict me. I believe my Fourth Amendment rights are being violated. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Vandermullen. We had someone else trying to call in. We'll give it a few more moments.

Thank you.

All right. Good evening. You're with the Muskegon City Commission.

Hi, good evening. This is John Allen from the Nelson neighborhood. Nelson, left independent, but just calling about specifically the parks master plan. We're Coming up on, unfortunately, cheers to a great summer. I'd just like to say thank you to all that goes on in Parks Department, DPW, that does a wonderful job with our parks, especially what they're up against at Hartshorn with that awful cooperative use agreement. I'm glad that we as the city have finally taken the initiative to undo the damage of the sand that was spread around the seawall near the launch ramp. It is unfortunate that we as city residents are going to foot the bill for choices made by a previous developer that, you know, again, we always end up putting the bill. But I would just like to point out it's coming up on four years since the initiation. Actually, it'll be four years, I believe, this September. since this awful, inequitable, cooperative use agreement that has never been cooperative for a single minute, at least not for the city, end of things. And yet Hartshorne sits completely unchanged, minus the dumping of the sand that we got to remove and pay for because it wasn't permitted for anything except storage, of course. But again, it would be nice to see the county who had a part in that and the city push a little harder. I understand that there's these bankruptcy proceedings and Chapter 11 things that are pseudo-protecting it. I also see that a previous city manager that Said they had nothing to do with the agreement is now actually going to have an oversight on the agreement. Not really sure how I feel about that. But I hope our city is diligent. I hope our staff is as ready as they've ever been to to deal with the. the future of what Hartshorn holds. I do hold hope that it's changing, but I would really like to see some movement, please. It's been four years since we've been without any improvements at Hartshorn Park. We were promised many, many improvements. I mean, we're promised a lot of things beyond the improvements that will likely never come to fruition. But yeah, I would really like to see the commission move forward with the termination of the cooperative use agreement as soon as possible. So thank you for your time. Have a great night.

Thank you, Mr. Allen. Did you see or hear anyone else trying to call in during that? I didn't hear you. Okay. We have just a couple more moments.

Okay.

All right, Commissioners, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

Thank Officer Pierce for hanging out with us today in the Chief's absence.

Thank you, Officer Pierce.

Motion to adjourn.

So, I'll support. We have a motion by Commissioner St. Clair, supported by Commissioner Acugo. All in favor, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign. We are adjourned. Thank you. Take care.