City Council - Regular Meeting

the April 13th Rochester Hill City Council meeting. Looking forward to an interesting meeting this evening. Um, with that, Miss Bowman, could you please call the role? President Carlock, he is excused with previous notice. Vice President Mji present. Mr. Blair here. Mr. Lindberg here. Miss Manino here. Miss Newower here. Mr. Skelece here. Vice President Mongioli, we have a quorum. Thank you very much, Miss Bowen. And with that, um, we'd have Brennan Deal lead us in the pledge of

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much, um, Brennan. Um, with that, we are at the approval of the agenda. I've not heard that there are any changes or suggested changes to the agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? It's been moved by uh Miss Nubau, seconded by Miss Manino. Uh all in favor say I.

Anyone opposed? And we have an agenda for tonight. Thank you very much. Um with that, we're going on to council and youth committee reports. And so we start with our youth committee. So Brendan Deal, please um start us off.

Thank you. Uh, good evening, Vice President Mongioli, Mayor Barnett, council members, and citizens of Rochester Hills. My name is Brennan Deal, and I'm an 11th grader at Stony Creek High School. I'm in my third year currently of serving on the Rochester Hills Government Youth Council, and I also serve on the Avendale uh, Youth Assistance Committee. One of my main goals in my time as a Youth Council representative is to learn more about leadership as well as the inner workings of the government. This past month, the youth council has been working on setting up the 2026 cultural fair at both our regular and our special meetings. In addition to planning and organizing the schedule, setup, and responsibilities of the event, we've also been working on inviting entertainers, performers, uhformational booths, and food vend vendors to make this upcoming event a truly entertaining as well as educational one. We're hosting our cultural fair this Saturday, April 18th, from 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. at the Rochester Christian University Alumni Center. This event is free and open to the public, and we would love to see you there. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, April 15th, 2026 at City Hall. Thank you so much for your time, and have a great evening.

Thank you very much, Mr. Deal. Um, I wanted to kick us off from a council perspective for our council reports. And it's more it's a fitting that we have our fire department in here today to say thank you for helping our residents in Shadowwoods that had two homes um had unfortunate circumstances this past week. And I do want to um let our community know that some of the either one or both of the families um do have a GoFundMe that's available to help support them because as you can imagine if you're sitting here and then have nothing left. Whatever you've got on you is all that you have. Um and so that's what our families are experiencing. So, please keep um the two Shadowwoods families in your thoughts and prayers as they navigate this new um situation that they're dealing with. So, and again, thank you very much to our fire department for all the help you gave the families in these trying situations. With that, I don't see anything else from other council members. So, we will go on to our first um agenda topic, which is our recognitions 2026-141, which is our proclamation for the Rochester High dance team in the 2026 small varsity Palm National Champions. With that, I'll ask the mayor to take us to the podium and council to join us in front of the podium. All right. Well, good evening. Well, that was awful.

Good evening.

We have uh a really exciting agenda tonight and it starts with probably uh one of the best parts. It's to recognize excellence among some incredible students in our community. Uh and as I know at least uh council member Nubar and myself, we are incredibly partial to Falcons. Um we are a falcon first community here. Um although we do occasionally have to recognize the Highlanders and Cougars when they do some things too. And since they're not here, I can say that. Um but uh as a as a a part of the Long Falcon family, uh we are always truly privileged to recognize outstanding achievement. And of course, uh, much was made about the University of Michigan winning a national championship, but who cares when you have the Rochester High School varsity dance team and the small varsity palm national champions here. Let's give them a round of applause. This team was absolutely incredible. And I'm going to ask their uh head coach, Lisa Fisker, uh, to come up. She's got some hardware, uh, some some jewelry that she's wearing, uh, some bling, if you will. Uh, and I want her to tell you a little bit about, uh, the actual, uh, the competition, the sport, and a little bit about this massive Stanley Cup trophy that sits behind us. Uh, I'll read a little bit of this, but for many folks, uh, they don't also always know what Varsity Palm is. Uh but we wanted to recognize you, the city council, uh and myself for uh winning a national championship. And the and the proclamation reads, "Whereas competitive dance is a high energy team-based performance sport that involves athletes performing elaborate physical demanding routines. And whereas the Rochester the Rochester High School varsity dance team maintains a rigorous training schedule of 10 hours a week plus outside technical study. And following stellar preliminary performances where both the Jazz and Palm squads placed first in

their groups to bypass the semi to bypass the semi-finals, the team capped off the national competition with a standout performance, securing second place in uh jazz and defending their national title with a first place win in Palm for the second consecutive year, winning by a decisive, and you'll have to take your word for it, decisive 1.92 points. And whereas the 2026 dance team's union national champions led by coach Lisa Fiskar and assistant coach Fiskar and what' you say? Niskar.

Niskar. Sorry. Uh Niskar and assistant coach Andrea Arnold consist of the following Rochester High School athletes. I'll let her introduce those to you. Therefore, let it be resolved that on the occasion of their outstanding performances, we congratulate the Rochester High School varsity dance team on their national championship and wish each each athlete all the best in their academic and extracurricular activities. signed by myself, all the members of the city council. We are incredibly proud of you because we know how much work goes into it. And at this time, coach, why don't you tell us a little bit more about what it takes to be a national champion. How about a round of applause for the coach? Thank you. I think my assistant coach, Andy Arnold, should come up here with me because she is an equal part of our success. She hates coming up here. It's great. Uh this team is the most hardworking, dedicated group of athletes that is just committed beyond and has overcome such adversity this year with challenge after challenge and they've done it with a true champion mindset and just so much resiliency that we are so proud of. In addition, one of the things that makes me most proud is their sportsmanship with all of our competitors both regionally and nationally. Um, but I am incredibly proud to coach them and to lead this team and especially back-to-back win. And uh, hopefully we'll go for a three. So, with that being said, I'd like to introduce the team. We have Victoria Brunell. We have Luke Loftess. Bring the trophy. We have Brooke Deerly.

We have Shelby Lawrence. We have Riley Hubard. We have Emily Buchanan.

Better next season by the time the season starts. Yes, this just happened. We have Natalie Heric

and someone very close to me, Macy Niscar. There are two athletes that were unable to join us tonight and that is Belle Bates and also Tegan Armstrong coaches and congratulations.

As the coaches go through uh and are congratulated uh we will take a picture. We might have you guys move back around. I do want to say if you recognize any of these faces uh it's because a few of them have danced in our state of the city addresses before uh in both the Disney State of the city and the uh greatest show uh state of the city. So uh obviously I'm not going to say that the state of the city gets some of the credit for this for these amazing athletes. Probably not. It was a stretch. Uh let's give them another big round of applause. Congratulations. And then I think if we can uh uh athletes if we can circle back behind in front of the city council so we can get the trophy and then we'll do a couple pictures back here. And we definitely need one with all the bling for sure. Why don't you go in front of the stand in front of the city council just kind of every other there. Jason. All right. Let's give one more round of applause.

Where does the trophy go? Is it like the Stanley Cup where it has all sorts of secrets and principal wrinkle? Is it Is it Well, we thank you uh and we hope to bring you back next year and another three national championship. Let's give them another round of applause. Congratulations team. Well done.

And thank you parents and principal wrinkle for being here as well. It is always good to start a meeting off with great news. So, thank you and congratulations again to our Rochester High School team. With that, we going on to agenda topic 2026-0158. It is the presentation of the 2026 Memorial Day parade of heroes, Rochester Regional Chamber of Commerce and Chamber Foundation. Maggie Bobbitz, President, it's good to see you, Maggie. I know I get to see you again tomorrow night at the Sister City meeting. So, thank you for coming and joining us this evening to talk about what's going on with the Memorial Day parade.

You know, two years in a row. We just need you to two years in a row I've had to follow the cheer team. I think I deserve one of those rings. So, good evening, Vice President Mjoli, city council members, and Mayor Barnett. Just for the record, um my name is Maggie Babettz, and I am the president of the Rochester Regional Chamber of Commerce and Chamber Foundation. The Greater Rochester community will be executing events to honor veterans that have given their lives in the line of duty on Memorial Day, Monday, May 25th, 2006. The community events for the day will kick off wh I went too far. There we go. Will kick off at 9:00 a.m. as the city of Rochester will host their lane of the flag ceremony at Mount Avon Cemetery. We the chamber foundation will commen will execute the memorial day parade of fallen heroes at 9:30 directly after this the city of Rochester's event. The parade will conclude at the Liveroise and Avon road intersection at the city of Rochester Hills Veterans Memorial Point where the city of Rochester Hills memorial day celebration will begin directly following the parade. And then as after that, the city of Rochester's fire department will be hosting the community for hot dogs straight off the grill at 11:00 a.m. The Rochester Regional Chamber of Commerce and Chamber Foundation would like to take a moment to recognize the three Rochester Hills City Council members who sit on the Sister Committee, Sister City Committee, and are a huge part of the Memorial Day celebrations. Vice President Teresa Mongoli,

Councilman David Blair, and Councilman Mark Skulki. The official parade route. The parade will leave Mount Avon Cemetery. Pro proceed south on First Street to Castell. Left on Castell Castell to Ar Harding. Proceed on Harding to Liveroy. Left using the northbound lane on Liveroy proceeding south to Avon. They will then turn left onto Avon and the parade will conclude. Parade participants will include elected officials and local community organizations. based on the anticipated number of participants and the length of the route of the parade is projected to conclude no later than at 10:30 a.m. Side streets will need to be closed on Liveroy from um from Harding to Liveroy from 9:30 to 10:30 until the last parade participant has safely gone through the entire parade route. I respectfully ask that the city council approve a resolution authorizing the temporary closure of Liveroy Road and Avon Road to be implemented by the Oakland County Sheriff's Office on Monday, May 25th, 2026 during the hours of 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Roadways would reopen as soon as the final parade participant has cleared the intersection of Lurenoi and Avon Road. In closing, I'd like to take thank the city of Rochester Hills, city council, and mayor Barnett for their continued support and participation in this meaningful event. I can take any questions that you all might have. Thank you so much tonight for for this, Miss Bobbits. Um, so it is great to have Councilman Blair and Councilman Skely to work on the sister city committee with us in planning. So, we'll be talking

more about this tomorrow. Um, but I do want to see if council has any questions for Maggie. Hearing none, I have a motion by Miss Newower, seconded by Mr. uh Mr. Lindberg um to accept the resolution in our packet. Um with that, I'll read the resolution. It says, "Resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council acknowledges the 2026 Memorial Day Parade of Heroes to be held on Memorial Day, Monday, May 25th, 2026." And I'm going to add, I'm looking forward to walking with you and all of you uh on the parade that day. It is a great opportunity for us to remember our fallen soldiers as well as celebrate with our community as what we as we provide um opportunities for them to remember family members that we have lost. So, thank you again, Miss Bobbits, for tonight.

Thank you guys. Have a great evening. All right. I a vote. All in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you again, Miss Bobbitz. Moving on to our consent agenda. The consent agenda is um has all matters under the consent agenda are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion without discussion. If any council member or citizen requestes request discussion of an item, it will re be removed from the consent agenda for separate discussion. There are seven different items on the consent agenda for this evening. Do I have a motion to accept the consent agenda? It's been moved by Mr. Blair, seconded by Mrs. Newower. All in favor say I.

I.

Anyone opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much for that. Then we move on to item number 2026-117, a request for acceptance for first reading. This will also be one of those where I get to practice all of my dots and dashes and chapter numbers. So, if you need to get a cup of coffee, this is the time to do it. Um, request for acceptance of first reading, an ordinance to amend sections 138-4.30-4.44 138-4.45 138-4.410 138-4.42 427 138-4.437 1385.10 138 uh-1 sorry 138-5.101 138-12.108 1081 138-123000 138-12301 138-12307 138-12308 138-13-101 of chapter 138 zoning of the cohort of code of ordinances of the city of Rochester Hills Oakland County Michigan. Yay. Um, Mr. Deal made it look so easy. So, thank you very much, Sarah Roiger.

Thank you very much, Vice President Mioli, Council, Mayor Barnett. Um, you probably had more of a mouthful than I do. Um, this is our annual administrative update that we do to our ordinances every year. Uh, throughout the year as working with ordinances, no ordinances are perfect and we always keep an ongoing list of things that we need to clarify, clean up, modernize. Um, and really from a content standpoint, the only real thing that's changing here, um, is requiring additional landscaping in a lot of circumstances. That's one thing our our planning manager is very, uh, keen on. And so, we're making sure that we incorporate more landscaping into various submitts. Um, other than that, they're very minor changes. Again, clarifying um, cleaning up confusion. So, I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. The planning commission have gone through this with a fine tooth comb and unanimously recommend approval. So, this is just the first reading this evening.

Thank you very much, Miss Rodiger. Are there any questions? I am not seeing any up here at this point except Oh, I'm sorry. Um, Miss Newower,

thank you. Um, I just wanted to say that we did go over this at several meetings um at the planning commission and uh went back and made several revisions and suggestions and they were all taken into consideration and it was passed unanimously, the resolution at planning. So, with that, I'd like to move it for approval. Great. And it's seconded by Miss Medino. Are there any other comments or questions from the council? Hearing none, this is one where I get to go repeat all of those numbers again. Um, be it resolved the Rochester Hills City Council hereby accepts for first reading the ordinance as presented to amend sections 138-4.30-4.44 138-4.45 405 138-4.410 138-4.427 138-4.437 138-510 138-5.101 101 138-12108 138-12300 138-12301 138-12307 138-12308 138-13101 of chapter 138 zoning of the court of code of ordinances of of the city of Rochester Hills, Oakland County, Michigan to reflect other proposed changes to use standards as listed in other amendments to include EV fueling stations with automotive gasoline service stations, to add design requirements, and to delete the current automotive service center provision, to replace automotive service centers with

animal cafes, and to add requirements to animal cafes, to allow for potential reduction in the required setback for buildings and structures if certain conditions are met. To reflect that places of worship or assembly may be permitted subject to certain requirements. To expand a utilities provision to include community facilities and to add a provision to nonprofit organizations. To remove a caveat for front yard setbacks in the R41 family residential zoning district. to remove the option for reduced minimum lot width and area in the R41 family residential zoning district, to require the developer to ensure a landscape bond remains valid throughout the development process, to add a provision to require a landscape buffer when a public or private road is proposed to be constructed parallel or generally parallel and within 20 ft of exterior property line of a development. To add a landscape requirement for landscape islands and parking lot divider medians. To add a section foundation plantings and renumber current and subsequent sections to add a requirements for foundation plantings. And to add and or amend the following definitions. Automotive gas station gasoline service station. Automotive repair garage. Automotive service center. Community facility. industry general and statelicicensed residential facility of chapter 138 zoning of the code of ordinances of the city of Rochester Hills, Oakland County, Michigan, and to ensure consistency across various ordinance sections to repeal conflicting or inconsistent ordinances and prescribe a penalty for violations. This was moved by Miss Manino and seconded by I'm sorry, moved by Miss Newower, seconded by Miss Manino. All in favor say I. I.

Anyone opposed? That motion passes. Thank you. And that we leave you right there, Miss Roiger, for item number 2026-10120, request for acceptance of first reading, an ordinance to amend section 122-367 of chapter 122, land division of the code of ordinances of the city of Rochester Hills, Oakland County, Michigan to extend the length of preliminary condominium approval before expiration to two years from one here, Miss Rodiger. Thank you. Just one section this time. Yes.

And it's much shorter to read. Um really all we're looking to do here is we extended the approval process for um site plans previously to two years and we just wanted to do be consistent with site condominium process as well. Um we're finding that developments are taking a little bit longer to build uh due to difficulty with construction, you know, supplies and costs. So instead of making them go through the burden um after one year, we're giving them a two-year time frame to try to get everything in order. So happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much, Miss Roiger. Um, Miss Newower.

Thank you. Um, this was also done because there was an issue with the state moving slower than the city is moving and so it was causing kind of an administrative headache and so um, this was something that was done to be cost effective and time effective and again being consistent. So planning commission approved this unanimously and with like with that I'd like to move this in the motion for approval.

Great. Thank you Miss Newau. Is there a second? Um, Mr. Lindberg, are there any other questions or comments from council? Hearing none. Um the rec I will read the resolution that the Rochester Hills City Council hereby hereby accepts for first reading an ordinance to amend section 122-367 of chapter 122 land division of the code of ordinances of the city of Rochester Hills, Oakland County, Michigan. to extend the length of preliminary condominium approval before expiration to two years from one year and to repeal conflicting or inconsistent ordinances and prescribe a penalty for violations. All in favor say I.

I. Anyone opposed? And that motion passes unanimously. Thank you again, Miss Roiger. Thank you. I'm still I'm not going anywhere still. You're not voting any No, I'm not going anywhere. Now we are into the planning and economic development section 2026-0164 request for purchase authorization planning lease agreement between the city of Rochester Hills and the 1505 Auburn Road LLC. Miss Roiger and Mr. Elbert.

Yes, good evening. Um once again, um the next three agenda items really are all related to the same effort and that is the Art on Auburn 2 initiative. I know we have some new faces on council that weren't here when we did that initiative. So, just to make sure and remind everyone, this is a community art project we did um back in 2024, uh building upon the success of our first Art on Auburn project. We had um arts uh circles that were built in in the actual roadway of Auburn Road. Um this art on Auburn 2 initiative was to actually um do an art contest to display why do you love Rochester Hills? and the 20 winners um are going to have their designs put throughout the sidewalk on the Brooklyn's Plaza expansion. So obviously um that's something that was announced in 2024, but the park was not built yet. Um and also need to mention that this is a partnership that we are doing with the Paint Creek Center for the Arts. They help us a lot with our art endeavors as I don't really have an artistic bone in my body. So um too far. There we go. So, since the park um wasn't constructed yet, we had a temporary banner that we had constructed to again, we didn't want to announce the winners and then have them go away for two years and not really acknowledge their art. So, their art has been shown on the side of the building there. This is the wall immediately abuing the park. There may be up to a six inch gap on the property line. It's it's really close to what the property line is. And I'm sure from a park standpoint, they'll be maintaining that area right there in front of the um of that wall. So, we did receive a grant from GMAR, which is the Greater Metropolitan Area Realators, uh, for a placemaking grant to actually install these pieces on the ground. Um, unfortunately, the method we used, uh, in our first art in Auburn was no longer an option for us as part of this. We really had to brainstorm and we worked with the Paint Creek Center for the Arts and they actually are coordinating um, a team of volunteers who are going to hand paint these onto the ground. Um so that's going to happen um here hopefully

before the uh parks ribbon cutting in May. So um that is our hope with that. And when we went through the process um we received one submission that really didn't meet um the requirements of the art on Auburn 2 criteria in terms of being a circle and and limiting their colors and being very crisp and clear. Um, however, the the panel of judges um and the parks team as they were developing the Brooklyn's plaza and looking at the elements that were to be included, we really felt that this image kind of captured the calming um you know, the greatest place to raise your family feel that we wanted for the expanded Brooklyn's Plaza. And the um artists graciously offered to, you know, allow this to be on the side of the wall as it's a perfect backdrop for that park. Um it's a very blank wall. Um obviously we've been using it in the past for the um art and Auburn winners, but we felt taking it back to just nothing kind of seemed like a miss if we didn't put something up on that wall as a perfect back backdrop to that. Um and again the good news is we did receive a wrap grant which um from the Michigan Education or Michigan Economic Development Corporation to cover the cost of this. So in summary tonight, there are three different items. We're looking at a lease agreement with the building of the owner to allow us to put the art on the side of the wall, an agreement with the artist to allow us to use her image um that she created. And lastly, a memorandum of understanding with the Pain Creek Center for the Arts to coordinate the installation of this um art uh throughout the park. Uh the total cost of all items is approximately $8,000. It's actually um less than we anticipated. Um, and with the grants that we have received, the actual cost of the city of Rochester Hills is nothing. So, um, I know that there's been some concerns about murals in the past, uh, due to cost and some potential concerns about what it could look like. And I think in this instance, we have

we're bringing it to you with no cost, knowing exactly what it's going to look like. So, we hope with that we have your support and Ken and I are both here to answer any questions that you may have.

Great. Thank you very much. So, yes, there have been some questions or concerns about murals in the past and um and when this was under the consent agenda, I decided wanted to have us come back to the council and have us have the conversation to make sure we affirmed um that this mural was okay given previous direction or conversation. Um, also as one, I would like to see and ask the mayor if we could have an ordinance or some process documented for future because it's great that it's free and I don't want to pay any tax dollars for doing this. So, thank you for finding the grants, but then Mr. Mayor, if we could ask the team to put together a process for future murals that may come into the city, whether it be on business property or even on the city's property, that we know exactly how this is going to be managed going forward. Um, the team has done a great job for art on Auburn one and two and we should be able to continue to document that process and know that wherever it shows up in number three that we've followed a consistent process. Um, with that, are there any questions from council? Um, first up is Miss Manino. Oh, I'm sorry, M. Newower.

Thank you, Vice President Mioli. Um, I was one of the people who were very against murals in the past. um what happened with our neighbors in Sterling Heist and their police department gave us pause. Um the cost and the maintenance and all of those kind of things were something that we were concerned with, but I had had three conditions on ever bringing in a mural and it was it has to be free, it can't be controversial, and it has to be in a park. And this checks all the boxes for me. So, um I I know you presented them in three separate um well, you presented the the three separate agenda items together, but um with that, I would like to move 20260164 for approval.

Okay. And All right, that's seconded by Mr. Blair. Um anything else, Missino? Do you want us to do the three together or do you want to do it individually? No, we should do them separately. All right. Okay. Um, and with that, Miss Manino.

Uh, yes. Thank you. Um, uh, Miss Roiger, just a couple questions about the mural. Um, I can say maybe agreeing with Marvy a bit. Um, not a big fan of murals in general based on what I've seen in some other locations, but um, this one I did actually go to the Brooklyn's today. I'm glad I did that because we need something on the wall. So, in total agreement there, we have to do something. Um my concern is the ongoing maintenance once it's done so that over time it doesn't deteriorate and then start to look you know weathered graffiti like that type of thing. I want to understand what is the process for the paint what type of material and what's the ongoing from a parks perspective are they monitoring it yearly or how is that going to work?

Yeah. Well actually um you know the we've been calling it mural but it actually is not going to be painted onto the wall. If you can kind of see, the wall is very textured and so um it was determined that painting on that wall would not really do the the image justice. So, we're actually having metal panels be constructed to be attached to the wall. So, it's going to be something that's created through a sign shop that will be physically attached to the wall. So, um and again, we've done some preliminary estimates um and they're coming in like $2,000. We thought they were coming in closer to 10, but they're coming in at two. So, they're definitely affordable. And so if there's damage to one of the panels, they could easily be swapped out if we needed to. Um, but they're meant to be an outdoor panel to to hold up to the weather. So hopefully that addresses some of the concerns.

Yeah, that that's good. I'm glad I asked that question. I I thought it was going to be actually painted on the wall, but will will the panels be created and then artists will be painting on the panels? No, it's going to be done what? Via graphic design, machining? We provide the high quality image to the sign shop and they produce it and put it up for us. That's good to know. Okay. Um I think that was Yeah, that that covers my questions. Thank you. Yeah, all right. And we have another question from I'm going to figure out how to read all these numbers up here. Mr. Skeleie. Yeah. So, the wall that the um the murals on

with the textured are is Rochester Hills going to be responsible for that wall then like maintaining it? So, we're going to be in charge of maintaining the actual image, right? The building is owned by, you know, a private owner and we're leasing the ability to put our art up on the wall. So, the building maintenance isn't our responsibility, but anything associated with the image that we're putting up would be our responsibility. I'm just because when I was looking at it earlier, I thought I saw like there was paint peeling off of the not our stuff, but the m the building itself. So, I just it's a beautiful mural. I just don't want to see the surrounding area that it's on, you know, if it does start to peel or whatever.

Yeah. The building owner has been very cooperative with us. He's excited to see this there. Um I think if we had any issues with painting, I'm sure he'd work with us to figure out how we could make it a nice frame for the mural. And and then my next question, you said you uh the one the the circle ones, the circle, you're going to put those on the sidewalk, correct? So, how are you going to like seal them? How are you going to protect them or

Yeah. Yeah. So, again, we're working with the Pain Creek Center for the Arts. Um, they're working with a team of their instructors and volunteers and students, and they're going to be projecting the image onto the ground and tracing them. And it's almost like a paint by number where we're inviting the artist back and volunteers to paint on it. And then once the paint we've selected is very specific to concrete, we have a primer, the paint, and then we're putting on a sealant on top, an anti-skid because we've had some concerns about that, an anti-skid um sealer on top of that. It's hopefully we're expecting to last hopefully up to 5 years. Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. Next up, Mr. Mayor.

Just thinking about the person whose job it is to sell anti-skid sealant. That's it's a very niche market. Um I am uh really pleased about this and and really pleased to hear the direction of the council. I want to, you know, recognize the team uh who I think heard councils in the past talk about some of the challenges and then try to address those. Um, I I uh have an opinion that murals add uh vibrancy and beauty to a community. I've watched the our neighbors in Rochester do that pretty successfully and many communities like ours um across the state and so I'm excited to see us do this. Of course, we've only had one mural in the city for a long time. That's the one at Rochester Christian University on the trail. uh this will be the second and uh you know assuming this goes through and uh again I think as is most of the time the case with our team if we're involved at the parks team planning team are involved uh you'll be very proud to be associated with this I think this will create uh a nice bookend to what we've done in uh that whole area with the splash pad and Brooklyn's plaza park it will be a nice bookend to that so I think you'll see this be in a lot of pictures uh a lot of Facebook uh uh profile pics and uh uh our goal is that you all be proud of this moving forward so thanks Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Lindberg.

Yes. Thank you very much, Vice President Mioli. I actually have just a few comments to make. First off, um I did have a couple concerns from the beginning. You've addressed some. First off was um the mural would be on like facing the east, so it would get a lot of uh morning sun and whatnot. Um so, thank you very much for expressing how that would be controlled. Um also very happy to see that it is zero cost to the city. Um myself, I'm actually a huge supporter of the arts. I'm an engineer by trade. What I say is that uh math and science defines our world in black and white, but art fills it in with color. I love that. Um and it adds uh a lot of um like a demonstration of the culture of the area. Yeah.

So, uh and I actually like the mural, which is very nice. So, I think it's going to be very nice for the park. Yeah. Thank you very much. We agree in terms of, you know, keeping Rochester Hills one of the preminent places to be. We want to make sure that our community is unique and reflects our values. And so I think it's these types of placemaking initiatives that keep, you know, keep keep us standing out from other communities and just being anywhere USA. So, thank you.

Great. Thank you. Um, seeing no other questions on this item, I will read the resolution resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes the lease agreement with the 1505 Auburn Road LLC to obtain the right to use the east wall of 1505 East Auburn Road for an art installation and authorizes the mayor to execute a memorandum of understanding on behalf of the city and further authorizes approval to hire a firm to install the art based on a competitive solicitation with a stipen not to exceed $10,000. This was moved by Miss Newower, seconded by Mr. Blair. All in favor say I. I.

Anyone opposed? And that motion passes. Going on to the ne the second of the three items. It's 2026-0163. Request for purchase authorization planning artist agreement between the city of Rochester Hills and Karen Childles Elder. is I mean I don't have anything further to add. This is just the the second on the list and this is the the artist that we're um who's graciously providing this to the city for us to all enjoy.

Okay. But this also gives me an opportunity to say uh clerk Scott, I had asked a bunch of questions to Miss Roodiger about these. If we could just put those questions in the minutes for today's because it covers all three in a sense of the these motions. And with that um Miss Newower. Um, thank you, Vice President Majuli. I was going to actually say the same thing. I think it was this item number is what brought the my question. So, if we can incorporate that into the record as well. And with that, I'd like to make a motion to approve 20260163. Is there a second? Seconded by Miss Manino. Are there any other questions or comments from council? Hearing none, I'll read the resolution. resolved that the that the Rochester Hills City Council hereby authorizes the artist agreement with Karen Child Elder to obtain the right to use an original work of art for the stipened in the amount of $2,000 for an art installation and further authorizes the mayor to execute the agreement on behalf of the city. This was moved by Ms. Newower, seconded by Miss Manino. All in favor say I.

I. Opposed on that motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much, Miss Roiger and Mr. Elbert. And we go on to the third item. One more which is 2026-0162 request for purchase authorization planning memorandum of understanding between the city of Rochester Hills and the Paint Creek Center for the Arts. Miss Roiger,

I have nothing more to add unless you have any additional questions. Um, it's been moved by Ms. Newower. Is there a second? Seconded by Mr. Lindberg. Um, with that I'll read the resolution. Um, resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes the memorandum of understanding between the Pay Creek Center for the Arts and the City of Rochester Hills for the installation of the Art on Auburn, two winning art pieces in the amount of $4,000 that will be offset by the Greater Metropolitan Association of Realators grant and further authorizes the mayor to sign theou on behalf of the city. Um, we have a motion. We need a motion. Um, oh, sorry. I moved by I forgot to note it down on my own paper. Moved by Miss Newower, second by Mr. Lindberg. All in favor say I.

Anyone opposed? And that motion passes unanimously as well. Thank you very much again. Thank you very much. We hope to have all this installed for the ribbon cutting in May. So, look forward to that. Oh, then we're going to keep our fingers crossed for good weather. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. This takes us to public comment for items not on the agenda. There is a blue sheet at the back table of the auditorium. Um where are someone who wants to speak to us under either the public comments here or any other agenda item. You are limited to three minutes for your discussion. And uh clerk Scott, I don't see any items coming forward for public comment. Which then takes us on to legislative and administrative comments. Are there any legislative and admin administrative comments from council? Mr. Blair.

Thank you very much. Uh Erin, would you share my screen, please? So, I received a piece of mail the other day and I was almost duped by it and I just wanted to share that with other homeowners in the city in case they receive similar correspondence. Let me zoom in there. It's service line information for And that's my home. Everybody knows I'm on Sandy Ridge. That's my That's my address. Home's 38 years old. It kind of looks like official correspondence, doesn't it? And well, what's a service line? Let's talk about that real quick. You've got a water and a sewer line from the city of Rochester Hills and those go into your house is actually a storm sewer too that's missing. We'll talk about that in a second. But part of that is on your property and part of that is your responsibility which if you haven't figured out so far is what this letter is all about. They're saying, "Hey, you know, it costs money to replace these sewer lines. They kind of scare you into thinking that yours might be on the brink of failure and they want to get money for it and it's an insurance policy basically. And you can see up there in the corner it's Consumer's Energy is on there. So they've basically sold your information to this Encourse Company and this is a a bid trying to get your your money. Um I don't think it costs anywhere near that much to fix any of these lines. And I called up our DPS and I said, "Hey guys, how often do you hear about service lines getting damaged?" And it I can assure you it's not a a huge problem, especially if your home has been built in the last 40 years or so. That service line for your water is probably copper or polyethylene plastic and your drain line is probably PVC. And those are very long lasting, very robust materials. So I would use caution. Maybe if you have an older home, a policy like this makes a lot of sense. But, you know, for me, you can

stop sharing my screen. Thank you. Um, I uh I set it aside. Also, these policies rarely cover storm sewers and that is probably the most likely underground utility that's going to fail. It's probably privately owned by your HOA and you're responsible for the portion on your property. So, be very wary and read the fine print if you get that letter in the mail. Back to you, Vice President. Great. Thank you, Mr. Blair. you're doing such a great job keeping our community informed on different scams that are coming to our homeowners. So, thank you very much for all that effort, Miss Newower.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Vice President Mioli. Um, as Mr. Deal mentioned before, we are Oh, could you share my screen, please? We are having the cultural fair on Saturday at noon and um we have a lot of vendors and a lot of free food from a lot of the local restaurants from many many cultures and we would love for everybody to come. Here's some pictures of it from last year's. There's also going to be performances and um the French uh club is making crepes. We have baklava coming. We have Thai food coming. We have Mediterranean food coming. We have just come for the food. It's from 12 to 3 at Rochester um University and that's all I have. Thank you.

I know the food is usually amazing and having those crepes. Uh there's usually a line so get there early to get those. And it's and it's free. And it's free. And that means I don't have to cook anything for the boys in my house.

Well, and the Yes. And the performances that our our local dance schools do and the different cultural groups. Um they do an amazing job. I did want to take a moment um at here to talk about two events that uh some of us at council have gone to recently. The you heard about the greater metropolitan area realators. Um Miss Manino and I went to their legislative breakfast last week. Heard a lot there from a panel talking about affordability for housing and how the different laws that are coming up in the state legislature may impact our different communities. It was a great opportunity to meet with other council members from Oakland, Mcome, Wayne, and Washington County as well. So, it was a a great deal, great job that the greater metropolitan area realators did. Um, also one of the thing that most of us on council went to is the city of Auburn Hills hosted an evening on meeting decorum, open meetings, act, and Robert's rules of order. Um, again, a great night. Um, and as you know, I ask a lot of questions and I did there too. So, um, it was a a fun evening for us to learn more and again meet with some of the council members from across the different communities neighboring Auburn Hills. With that, Mr. uh, Diana uh, Manino.

Yes. I'd like to do a quick update for the OPC just on some upcoming events. Can you please share my screen? Thank you. Yes. So, uh, the OPC has a few events coming up. So uh starting off Tuesday May 19th uh they have a workshop on Parkinson's very important topic. This is an engaging workshop where individuals with Parkinson's their care partners and community members they come together to discover the valuable resources share support and connect. Um also coming up for the OPC uh three events here. um one the what they call the couch to 5K program which is a preparatory program to get in shape to do the actual 5K run at the OPC to benefit Meals on Wheels. But the couch to 5K program is a basically a training program uh starting the week of April 9th. So they started last week but you can still join. It's a seven-week program. They meet once a week and it includes full training package um on a and using a runw walk method throughout the the program. And then the 5K, the actual 5K pancake breakfast is Saturday, June 6th. That's their big annual Meals on Wheels uh charity to to benefit their charity, Meals on Wheels. And then the uh on uh June 19th is their annual summer suare. And this year the theme is called Feeling Groovy. Again, the annual event will be held Friday, June 19th from 6:30 to 10. Tickets are on sale beginning uh on April 23rd. Delicious food, live music, and a silent auction. Definitely a night to remember. So, please check out these events. All great programs for the OPC. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Miss Manino. Mr. Mayor, thank you, Vice President Mel. I uh described earlier a situation that was uh rather niche. Uh I would guess that um people describing an evening seminar about Robert's rules of order as fun would also be a very small niche group. You Oh, that's me. Maybe no one else.

Uh good evening council and Miss Bowen if you could show uh my screen as well. I want to start by uh saying great job vice president Mulian running the meeting. I just received a text from President Carlock who's watching us uh probably the only one watching us from a Tuesday morning location uh in the land of the rising sun. Uh so we wish him well and thank him for his leadership and we'll welcome him back when he comes back. Um I do want to mention a couple things that have happened in the city and I know we have a an aggressive agenda so I wanted to be relatively quick but knowing who and seeing who we have in the crowd not knowing that they would all be here today. Certainly want to give some shouts out and props to the men and women of the Rochester Hills Fire Department. Uh unfortunately uh as some of the council members mentioned earlier, uh we had a very unusual situation. Technically, we had I think three fires in 48 hours. Uh three three two fires in one neighborhood and then a fire the next day. Three fires in three days. Um very unusual to have that many fires in a row. Certainly two streets apart. Um but what isn't unusual is the uh the absolute professionalism and dedication of the team. One was in the early morning hours, one was in the late evening hours. Uh we had men and women there all throughout the night. Uh obviously our um you know wonderful to be on the scene of of both of those and this one in particular. uh the way the neighbors came together to immediately encircle uh the family that uh sort of tragically of course everyone was okay thankfully but tragically obviously lost um pretty much everything uh in the fire. Um you can see it there on the right working pretty bad. The second fire, the the first fire technically on the left. Uh just a reminder um to to to to be safe to to make sure you're practicing uh exits from your home. I grew up in the firefighting family. We did that pretty regularly, but uh aren't uh under the impression that many people do that. Um and obviously just uh contacting the fire department if you have any questions about how to make

your home uh fire safe uh is certainly appropriate. But just a tremendous recognition to the men and women, many of them here. Uh thank you for the great work that you do in keeping our residents safe. And of course uh it's you don't get to control when these happen or or or how convenient it is, but of course always answering the call is something that we really appreciate. Uh so to all the chiefs in the room, Chief Gary and others and all the me men and women of the department department, thank you for uh for a great busy week of keeping our residents safe. Um it's worth a round of applause for sure. Two quick things to note uh happening this month. Uh one is that April is seek awareness month. Uh our friends from the seek uh gudo stopped by my office and brought treats for our staff uh this week. Tomorrow is uh Vaki uh which is the major SEK festival celebrating the spring harvest. And so uh we uh always meet with them. They'll be a part of uh the youth council's um uh diversity fair or event uh uh uh cultural fair on Saturday. But we wish them uh a very peaceful time this month and and congratulate them on their uh their month. As I mentioned, they will be at the sixth annual cultural fair. Um and we uh celebrate to thank the council for their support and of course the youth council for their leadership of this event. This is always an exceptional event. Um to see to taste the foods to see Irish dancing next to Indian dancing belly dancing next to Hawaiian dancing uh turban tying uh everything you can imagine happens and it's all really uh at the at the the ideas and leadership of our our young community leaders. So thank you for that. Uh and then one other big event happening at the end of this month is the 45th 45th annual Rochester area prayer breakfast. Uh our community's prayer breakfast is one of the 10 largest in the country. Uh many times it's been in the top five. Uh and we'll

have between 8 and 900 people uh at Oakland University uh at the arena this uh Thursday the 23rd. Uh the speaker is Chad Williams uh a Navy Seal who's been on some pretty impressive missions. You can see where you can get tickets. Rochester area prayer breakfast. But of course, many in our community will be uh joining in prayer for our nation and our community that day. We'd invite you to join us as well. Uh and then finally, because these folks uh just drive me crazy. I love them. I love them. But wow, they are ready. They've been ready for like since Christmas, but the pickle ball courts are open. Uh and we invite folks to come out and play pickle ball. Uh let the fights begin. Um but uh uh we love our pickle ballers and they're out probably out there right now. And uh courts are open. We thank our parks team for uh getting them up and ready and uh uh if you ever want to drive by and just watch, it's a lot of fun. There's a whole community out there uh that comes specifically to um uh to Bordon Park in a regular basis. Pickle ball courts are open and we're ready for a great summer. Thanks, Vice President Moli.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. With that, we move on to attorney's report. Mr. Chris, thank you, Vice President Mioli. No legal report tonight. Thank you very much, Mr. Christ. And that takes us on to nominations and appointments. We are um just making sure I'm Yes. Going on to agenda number 2026-018. Request for appointment of a planning commission representative to the zoning board of appeals for a one-year term to expire March 31st, 2027. Miss Newower.

Thank you. Uh Vice President Mongioli. So, we um have been I've been serving on the zoning board of appeals for almost three years now and on the planning commission for six or seven and I worked very closely with Deb Bernabic. She has over 20 years experience on the zoning um board of appeals. She's her she has institutional knowledge. She does her work. She does her research. She knows what we're talking about. So, we'd like to renominate her um to be the planning commission representative for the zoning board of appeals. Okay.

Thank you, Miss Newau. Is there a second? Seconded by Miss Manino. Um, are there any questions or comments on this motion? Hearing none, I'll read the resolution. It's resolved that the Rochester Hills City Council hereby reappoints Deborah Benabic to a one-year term as the planning commission representative to the zoning board of appeals for a one-year term to expire March 31st, 2027. All in favor say I. I.

Opposed? And that motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Um, going on to the next agenda item which takes us into new business. New business. So, um, Mr. Carlac, wherever you are, thank you so much for leaving me with an agenda that is as long as it is, but as full as it is. um because tonight our city council is going to pass um an agenda that covers almost $18 million in expenditures um and two millages that we're going to have. So this is a once-ina-lifetime type of a agenda for a council member because I'm here six years and this is the first time I've had an agenda this full with this many important things that are going to impact our city for years to come. So, get ready for conversation. Um, Mr. Snyder, we have 02026-0150 request for approval for the pathway mill renewal ballot language to be placed on the August 4th, 2026 primary election ballot. Mr. Snder.

All right. Well, thank you, Vice President Julie. You're doing a great job tonight. Good evening, city council, Mayor Barnett, and Mr. Deal. Well, the uh item presented before you tonight is a recommendation from the Public Safety and Infrastructure Technical Review Committee or otherwise known as the PSNI TRC and is to place a renewal of our city's pathway millage on the August 4th, 2026 primary election ballot. On March 16th, the PSNI TRC met to review and discuss our current 100mile pathway system. After evaluating our long-term infrastructure needs, the committee voted unanimously to recommend option number one, which is a straight renewal of the existing 0.1715 millage rate for pathways for a new 10-year period. I would like to highlight two key strategic updates as part of this proposed language. And the first is the inclusion of the Paint Creek Trail in the Pathway Mill language. Um, so this is the first time we are explicitly naming the Paint Creek Trail within the ballot language as we currently have the Clinton River Trail in the ballot language. And while the city remains a committed member of the Paint Creek Trailway Commission, this update provides us with the clear legal opinion uh to use dedicated pathway millage funds for the physical rehabilitation of the pathway or the Paint Creek Trailway segment within our city borders. And the second is a strategic foundation. So this pathway millillage, it really represents the baseline of our pathway program. It covers the critical annual operations, basic repair and maintenance of our pathway network. And by securing this renewal, we can establish the necessary framework to discuss more aggressive rehabilitation goals during our upcoming 2027 budget process over this summer and fall. And at that time, we will um as we're in our budgeting process, we can look forward to

discussing how we might pair this pathway millillage with other funding sources potentially such as Act 51 revenues to address our long-term pathway system needs. However, tonight uh the request is strictly procedural and it is to request for the city council to approve the ballot language as reviewed by our city attorney and as unanimously recommended by the PSNI TRC so that we may meet the deadline for the August 4th, 2026 primary to put the pathway millage on that ballot. And I am happy to answer any questions you may have.

Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Snyder. Um, so I'm going to start out with some of these because the pathway, um, covers so much of our community, 100 miles. Um, I've heard it referred to as the pathway, a trailway, a bicycle path, a sidewalk. Is there an official term that we're supposed to refer to it as? Well, I wouldn't use sidewalks, okay? Because that is uh that's the

ownership of the the residence. But um yes, this would cover all the pathways, those are basically the 8-foot sections along our major road network. And as well um by including the Pink Creek Trailway in with the Clinton River Trail, you could, you know, use term those. Now, those are trailways, not pathways, but we can use the same dollars to maintain those vital um you know, pedestrian means within the city. And we've seen the challenges that the city of Rochester has had with the Clinton River Trail not having a funding mechanism like this to be able to repair the damage that happened what almost two years ago to that pathway. So adding the Pank Creek Trail with the Clinton River Trail to this millillage enables us to use this funding to cover this. Correct.

Um but there has been questions in the past about the fact that we have a 100 miles. This is a 10-year millage, but we can only pave about a hundred uh a mile a year. Correct. So, it it takes us a while. So, are we we're going to be talking more about funding pathways and rehabilitation of pathways in in August at our budget meeting? We will. We will, but we need to secure this baseline of the pathway millage first and then we'll have the ability that we can talk other things that we can do to, you know, accomplish more than one mile of a 100 mile pathway system each year. Great. So, we're excited to to bring those forward. Wonderful. I'm looking forward to that conversation in August. You know, I'll have more questions then. I'm sure you will.

And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Blair who has some questions.

Thank you, Vice President Mongi. Um Joe, I appreciate you bringing this to us and I Councilwoman Mongioli, I think mentioned most of what I was going to bring up. I just wanted to make sure that we will have the results of I think a study was being done or a a consultant was hired to look at our pathways. Does this ring a bell? Specifically, I had asked about like some of the gaps in the pathways and perhaps filling those. I want to make sure that not only do we have the language secured, but that we've got a really concrete, evidence-driven plan that we can put in front of the voters at the time so that they can see their tax dollars are being well spent. I can't tell you how much I want to see some of those spots get filled. And I know that I think they're going to be reaching out to property owners maybe see if houses have changed hands. Is that in the works? And can we expect that around the same time?

Well, I know whenever when there is a a house with a gap and that house goes on the market, we do try to reach out to the new owners as a kind of welcome package, would you be interested in, you know, selling your right away for a reasonable price? Um, some people do, some people don't, unfortunately. Uh, the city does have the option to do eminent domain and and just put the pathway there, but somewhat that's a political uh issue if we chose to do that or not. But yes, we're we're very encouraged and we would love to, you know, get that connectivity.

I just want to make sure that we've got a a a comprehensive plan in time for that ballot, right, in time for that um election day. And I also want to make sure that we've got a system in place so that each time those properties turn and maybe every five years, maybe they move in and they don't want it, but three years down the road they say, "Gosh, these pedestrians are wearing out all my grass. I may I sure wish the city would come and sure enough we ask them again maybe the next year and they'll be on board. So if we can start tracking that

um it's a safety issue for our residents especially if they're on a bicycle or if um you know there's a route or something that uh you know can cause them to fall. So it's a lot of reasons other than just it would be nice to have uh the visible pavement. So I appreciate the effort you put into this. You've got my support with this and uh please keep us posted on the rest. We'll do. Thank you. Are you moving the resolution? will move the resolution because you can't move it. I can't. You can. Seconded by Miss Ms. Newower. Um with that, Mr. Skeleie.

Yeah. Uh I have a question. How are they um categorized like the needs of what needs to be repaired? Like is there a scale of some kind? like you know it it's you know it's shifted by so many inches or yeah I know our DPS crews um they go around very similar to how they rate the local street or the street infrastructures given it a rating from one through five they do the same on the pathway network as well. Okay any anything else Mr. Kelsey? Nope.

Good. All right. So I do have one more question for you Mr. Snider, as I'm looking at the resolution here, and it says this is a straight renewal. Same millillage today, same millillage tomorrow. But times I will get questions from residents that said, "I was only paying $1,000 today and next year I'm paying $1,100. You raised my taxes. How how can we answer a a resident's question about this year? It's a straight renewal. We're going to be generating $864,000 from this. Um but next year it's going to be 900,000. You raised my taxes.

Well, the the millillage rate number will be the same. And if if anything, it might even go down with the effects of Headley. Uh the anything increased would be basically due to the taxable value increase of the home, which for a homeowner living in the same home could only increase by the rate of inflation. And this is all per proposal A. So yes, my taxes keep going up a little bit every year um due to the rate of inflation or CPI. Um but the the millage rate it stays consistent.

So my investment in my home goes up which is yay the investment of my home the value of my home has gone up but that also triggers the value of our home times the millage rate means I'm paying a a little bit more in taxes. Correct. Yes. the the taxable value times the millage rate equals the the that amount on the tax bill.

Great. All right. Seeing no other questions from council, um we have a motion by Mr. Blair, seconded by Ms. Manino, sorry, Ms. Newower. Um I'll read the resolution. And it says, "Whereas the city of Rochester Hills currently maintains a 100mile city-wide pathway system that serves as a vital nonmotorized network for residents, students, and recreational users. And whereas the public safety and infrastructure technical review committee PS and I TRC met on March 18, 2026 and voted unanimously to recommend a straight renewal of the existing 0.1715 millillage for a new 10-year period to ensure the continued operation and physical rehabilitation of this system. And whereas the proposed language includes the Paint Creek Trail to provide the city the strategic option to utilize a dedicated pathway funding for the physical rehabilitation of the trail segment located within the city's local borders. Now therefore, be it resolved that the city of Rochester Hills City Council hereby approves the following ballot language and directs that the question be placed on the August 4th, 2026 primary election ballot. Shall the city of Rochester Hills renew and continue to levy 0.1715 mills per um so.1715 cents per thousand of taxable value to establish construct maintain and repair pathways and services for use by bicycles, non-motorized vehicles and pedestrians along main arterial and collector roads on the Clinton River Trail. the Paint Creek Trail and to create linkages to pathways and schools in the city for 10 years, beginning in

2026 for fiscal year 2027 and continuing through 2035 for fiscal year 2036, which will provide an estimated revenue of $864,920 if levied in the first in the first year of such levy. All in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? And that motion passes unanimously. Thank you very much, council. Thank you very much, Mr. Snyder.

That takes us to our next millillage request. It is 2026-0171. Request for approval for the fire charter mill increase ballot language to be placed on the November 3rd, 2026 general election ballot. Here presenting this evening is most of our fire department chief and Mr. Snider.

All right. Good evening, uh, Vice President Monoli, Council, Mayor Minnette. Uh, we're here tonight requesting approval of the ballot language for the charter mill increase and to place the fire charter mill increase question on the ballot for the November 3rd general election. We previously presented to the public safety and infrastructure technical review committee and they voted unanimously unanimously to recommend this to city council uh for approval. Uh before we get into uh some of the issues in our staffing assessment, uh I would like to talk about some of the things that brought us to this point. Um it's important for you to understand that as a department, we are always looking for ways to improve. We're continuously evaluating our service delivery. We are monitoring response times, tracking call volumes and trends. We're proactively responding to those trends. Our members attend national training, which allows us to stay up to date on the latest fire service trends and technology. All of this led us to updating our strategic plan and conducting a staffing needs assessment to determine the department's current capacity relative to the increasing service demands. Obviously, all this boils down uh to our call volume and how it affects our operations. So, over the last 10 years, we've had a steady increase of call volume with the exception of 2020 and that was due to CO. So, over the last 10 years, uh we've seen an almost 40% a 39% increase in calls. Now, the increase in call volume, this has occurred faster than we have previously anticipated. And although the increase for last year was under 2%, the increase for the last three years is a little over 14%. So as the call volume continues to grow, so does the number of concurrent calls.

And this is where we start to have an issue. As we have multiple calls, we tie up our units and then we no longer have units available. So in 2024, we started tracking the amount of times that we have no units available. And as you can see from 2024 to 2025, we had an increase. And then so last year, there was 224 times where we had no units available to respond to a resident's call for help. Uh during these times, it leaves the city vulnerable and leaves us scrambling to try and clear a unit to respond if we have a call or we have to rely on mutual aid, which can greatly increase our response time. So, another part of this assessment was to evaluate our future call volume. And we went to SEMCOG, the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, and we looked at their population estimates for uh the city of Rochester Hills, and they're saying that our population in July of 2025 was 78,820, and they're predicting the population to reach 83,000 in 2050. So, I think it's safe to say that the population is starting to level off. We're not seeing the big increases we had in the 80s and the 90s. So, while the population is starting to level off, the population is aging. So, here's some information. Um, age 65 to 84, uh, they're predicting a 11% increase by 2050, which is not really significant. What becomes a little more significant is the 85 and older. Um, we're looking at 112% increase over the next 25 years to 2050. Now, this age group certainly has an increased need for EMS services. Now, this is a significant increase, but it is over the next 25 years. Now, I think

it's no secret that the majority of our calls are EMS related. In fact, last year 84% of our calls were medical emergencies and 30% of our total calls occurred at our 24 senior living complexes. And here you can see we've had a dramatic increase in the number of calls at our senior living facilities. And we track calls per bed as well. And you can see that has increased from one call per bed in 2015 to 1.5 calls per bed in 2025. And it's worth noting that since 2015, we have had eight additional senior living facilities built in the city, adding a total of 580 additional beds. So because some of these factors, we are anticipating our call volume to continue to increase but at a lower rate. We feel the calls are starting to level off and the anticipated increase is not due to growth or general population increase but because of the aging population. So if the call volume continues to increase at about 2% a year, I think we can anticipate hitting about 10,000 calls in 2030. Keep in mind, we have to evaluate this every year. It's hard to predict call volume. Certain things can change, things of that nature. So, it's important that we evaluate this every year. So, in conclusion, I just want to say that our current staffing levels are unable to keep up with our increased call volume. Our resources are being depleted at an unsustainable rate. 224 times last year, we had no units available to respond to 911 calls, and that makes us dependent on mutual aid for our day-to-day operations. So, our recommendations is to hire 12 additional firefighter paramedics. This allows us four personnel per shift. This

will give us the ability to staff an additional ambulance and it will enhance our fire coverage by providing an additional staffed fire apparatus. It'll reduce the number of times we are out of units. It will restore our internal reliability. It will reduce reduce our dependence on outside agencies and ensure that our department has the personnel required to handle the current call volume. These 12 will also allow us to meet our current demands and take us into the future. And obviously we're looking at funding this via a fire millage increase. And I will turn it over to CFO Schneider for that. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Chief. Well, I will try to cover the financial end of the fire charter mill proposed increase. Um, so where we came up with this number, currently the fully loaded personnel cost for a firefighter paramedic, and this includes all salary, overtime, and benefits, is approximately $163,400 per year. And per our uh current 3472 fire union contract, the wage increase for 2027 has been already agreed upon at 2.75%. So we multiply the new number for 2027 by the 12 firefighter paramedics uh requested and that total amount equates to just a little over $2 million. In 2027, we anticipate that 1 mil will generate that $4.97 million or just a little under $5 million. So, the millage rate equivalent to offset the cost of the 12 new firefighter paramedics is at 0.452 mil. Now you will notice that the millage uh increase requested was 0.5 mil and part of that is due to uh contributing at a a smaller portion or the 0.948 mil just roughly a tenth of a mill. Um and that would be proposed to be transferred over to the fire capital fund and most notably for ambulance replacements. And as the fire charter millage is specifically dedicated towards the city's fire department, these funds cannot be used for any other purpose other than fire and will either be deposited into the fire operating fund or the fire capital fund. Now, you may recall as part of the 2025 fourth quarter budget amendment that I presented to you in December that the uh

long-term forecast for one of our big seven funds, the fire capital fund, was projected with a significant funding shortfall as soon as 2031. And so, that is why we've been trying to be proactive and to include a small additional portion to attempt to address that funding issue. So for the past 12 years since 2015, the fire charter millillage has not changed from the 2.7 mil that it currently sits at. In November of 2014, the voters of city Rochester Hills approved a fire charter mill increase up to a levy of three mills. So we have been consistently levying less than what the voters have authorized. However, the erosive impact of the Headley amendment uh upon the approved millage rates has reduced that 3.0 mil from 2014 down to 2.7798 mills today. So, not a whole lot above the 2.7 mil that we have been maintaining. Now, at the voters of city Rochester uh hills approved this new fire charter millillage up to 3.5 mills. It is the city intent and the city's pledge that the new fire millage rate will be set at 3.2 mil. So again um actually levying less than it was authorized and this is well below the authorized amount which will hopefully provide for another decade plus where the fire millillage can be left unchanged. So a couple charts here. So first this is the status quo of the fire operating fund. um if we were to do nothing, same uh same 2.7 levy, same funding um amount of firefighters. Now, next we'll compare this with the new uh proposed if the 12 firefighters are hired with an increase of.5 million. You can see the increase there in 2027 of the bump in the revenue and the bump in the uh firefighters.

Now, next, let's check a look at the fire capital fund. And this is the one that was very, very scary, and it's still a little makes me a little nervous here, but Chief Gary has reviewed the fire apparatus replacement schedule and has made a number of changes to the timing of apparatus and personal protective equipment replacements for our firefighters. So, we are in a much better long-term projection, but we may still have some issues uh funding fire capital, especially once you get out past 2032 to 2033. Now, you notice a a significant decrease in that black bar, which is the fund balance level of the fire capital fund, and that is due to the replacement of five ambulances uh scheduled for 2026 along with an additional three ambulances scheduled in 2028. And then once again, if you get out on the right side of the chart there in 2033, that is the replacement of the five ambulances from fiscal year 2026 that we haven't even replaced yet. So that's how we're thinking ahead. Not only can you replace what we've got now, can you replace it down the road? Now, let's take a look at what the fire capital fund would look like with the remember that additional just about tenth of a mill. And it looks a little bit better. Now, we look to be able to sustain out to 2023 and a little bit beyond that. And so, that's kind of wraps up my portion of the presentation here. And I will turn it back to Captain Gary and uh Chief Gary, sorry, and sorry, Chief Gary, and the rest of the the fire team here.

I have nothing further. We're available for any questions that you may have for us.

All right. With that, um, we do have someone who has submitted a blue sheet for for questions or comments. Uh, Derek Gardner and Derek, um, please come to the podium up here and you will have three minutes for your comments. Thank you, Vice President Mioli, members of council, Mayor Barnett, and Mr. deal. Um, I know I've met some of you, some faces I recognize from Fire Ops 101. Uh, for those I haven't met, my name is Derek Gardner. I'm the president of the Rochester Hills Professional Firefighters Union, Local 3472. Uh, we have 64 members that proudly serve the city day in and day out, and I'm very proud to be a part of their leadership team. Um, I just want to start off by saying that we I want to start out by saying that we are um, sorry to hear about the fires that have happened recently. Um, while we always appreciate the opportunity to use our skills to help people, we certainly don't want to see anybody uh lose what they've spent a lifetime building. But we're very thankful that nobody was hurt or killed in that fire or those fires. Um, but we we hope that they're doing okay. Uh, I'd like to say thank you to all of you on the council, Mayor Barnett, and to those who have come previously on the council. Uh it's in due to no small part uh due to your leadership and willingness to fund the fire department that we have transformed it over the past 10 11 years from when the millillage was increased last time to become a premier agency in the area. Uh we are looked towards by surrounding neighborhoods that when we show up on scene they can breathe a sigh of relief because our firefighters are well equipped and well trained to assist them. And I hopefully our residents recognize that when we show up on scene that we are ready to help them in any way that we can as well. Um, as Chief Gary mentioned, uh, this

millillage is going to increase the millillage, uh, I'm sorry, increase the amount of money that we have in order to, uh, meet our current needs, uh, and hopefully in the future as well. Uh, I want to point out we had those three fires in three days. One of them on Sunlight, that was the second one. We had nine additional calls while we were on scene of that. Uh so we had to dedicate all of our resources or most of our resources to that fire while still meeting the needs of the city and other areas for both fire alarms and medical emergencies that happened uh during that time. Uh we mentioned capital fund. I don't know if you're aware but uh fire apparatus have seen a dramatic increase in costs as well. So it is absolutely vital that we are able to replace those in case some cases they have doubled in price for ladder trucks. Um, I want to finish by saying that, uh, I've sent you all an email. Hopefully, you all receive that. Uh, I meant what I said at the end there. I hope you will reach out to me. Text, email, call me. I'm always available, happy to chat. Uh, I look forward to seeing, uh, those who I haven't seen at Fire Ops 101 later this year. I'm sure Captain Gabbato will be reaching out and we will try to uh, twist your arm a little bit to get you to come out there. It's a good time. Ask those who have been. Um, I hope to see you all there. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Gardner. All right. Um, seeing no other blue sheets, I'm going to bring this back to council. And yay, I get to go first. I don't have to wait to buzz in. Um, so safety first. That is um our strategic first strategic objective of our city is safety first. That includes fire and police. And I want to thank you all of you for the work that you do every day to make sure that that strategic goal is met and that um fire is is the premier organization. Um Mr. Gardner, I will say I on Facebook I have I follow your union group. Um I've also started following some other unions and I want to say we have one of the best ones in the area on our firefighters. So don't tell Mcome anyone I said about that. that it is great to see how active you are in social media promoting everything that our fire department does here to our residents. Um, and definitely we are the premier agency in Oakland County if not the tri county area. So again, thank you all for your leadership and making sure that happens. Um, couple of questions on the millillage itself. The because we talked about how much it's going to generate, but the turnout gear and we're hiring 12 new people. Uh, how are we going to cover the cost of adding 12 new staff into the into um the overall fire department? Yeah, it would be a a portion of the first years of the millillage if if approved and then you know to hire the additional 12. There would be the onetime setup cost, turnout gear, uniforms, boots, all that sort of thing. But generally it's a it's a one time um

one time we can cover it in the once every about 10 to 12 years. Yeah. Okay. And because this is a dedicated millillage, we can't use it for anything else. There's no parks, there's no pathways, everything has to go only to our fire department to make sure they do stay that premier agency in our area. So dedicated money to that. So residents should feel comfortable knowing that if they increase the millage rate that it's not going to go to some other fund within the city's budget. Legally required that way. Correct. Um

the retire in place. Yeah, I'm one of those people. While I sat here, I was counting up my neighbors around me. And just about every house that I can see from my front door, there's two that have schoolage children. The rest of us are those that have retired in place. So, we're keeping our fourbedroom center hall colonial, but other than me, I think I'm one of the few that are left still working. The rest of them are retired. And so that's where we can see the increase in our calls in our community is that people are staying here because we are one of the greatest cities in the area and our residents like staying here because of all the services that we offer and our parks and our taxes being as low as they are. So, it's that retire in place that makes it attractive for residents to to stay here, but it also means not only are they going you going to those eight additional senior facilities, but you're going to start going to those homes as people start aging in their houses. Um, for the residents who know me, they also know I am not one to want to raise taxes. And this was one of the hardest things for me to start absorbing. And I met with the the chief and the mayor a couple of weeks ago to talk about this initially just to say, "Hey, can we get this passed? Do you think it would we work on council?" It's like, well, if you can get me to say I'm willing to increase my taxes, then I'll I'll make sure I work with council to make sure that this is an attractive um millage increase, fully accountable to the council as well as to the residents on how we're going to spend that money. and I'll be the first one out there telling residents to vote yes on this. So, I want to thank you for providing the information that I needed to feel comfortable in being able to say yes,

this is an important millillage. I'm hoping that in August uh it doesn't get lost amongst the pathway millage as well as the school district will have a millillage on that um election as well. So hopefully will stand out as a preeminent um millillage increase that is absolutely needed to meet our safety first strategic objective. Um so probably no questions in there but more comments. Um with that I'm going to turn it over to council for some other questions and first one up is Miss Newower.

Thank you Vice President Mongioli. Um, first of all, I sit on planning commission, so I'm fully aware that every time we apply we approve a new development for our aging community, the first thing I think about is fire because I know that you all are the ones that are going to be primarily responsible for those residents. And for that, I thank you and we take that into consideration every single time um we approve one of those developments. Um, also being a parent of school age children, I also get emails several times a week about you all responding to the schools for assistance needed with students, somebody having some kind of medical emergency at the school. So, it's not only our aging population that needs this millillage, but it's our youth and everybody in between. Not nobody's as healthy as they were before. And um I'll just say on a personal note, you guys responded to my parents' house and for my mom two years ago and while she was there with your um your firefighters, my dad had a medical emergency and a second ambulance had to be called at the same time. So I can't even imagine being dialing 911 and then you all being out of units. So, we need the staff, we need the equipment, we need everything that this millillage is going to provide. I also am against raising our taxes usually, but um I wholeheartedly support support this. Um I will also be campaigning that it gets passed with our residents and you you all are one of a kind and I thank you so much. And I will not be doing fire ops again because I was told when I got there and I put on the outfit for the first time that they don't have outfits that are kids size because it damages their spinal columns.

And maybe we shouldn't have put Miss Newau out here. So um it was a good experience. I did it once. I'm not doing it again. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Miss Newau. Um my mistake I um I mentioned August. It is the November ballot. I was I know originally we had thought it would be August, but the procedures to file everything to get it on the ballot will take us to November, which I feel much more comfortable on at that point. So, I apologize for my error on that um piece. And I want to do Fire Ops again, but I also want to lose 20 pounds and be 10 years younger when I do it. So, um maybe you can get me at some point to do it again, Mr. Gardner. Um, with that I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Blair. I'd absolutely go again. You were Were you on my crew? No, was he Dale and I went?

I was with Mr. Deal.

Got it. Got it. Yeah, absolutely. Would do it again. Um, to our members that uh that that came tonight, thank you. Uh, we appreciate what you do. Um, these are important conversations and um, Chief, I this is not the first time I've been in receipt of a forthcoming increase to first responders. And I sure hope Oakland County is watching because if they had come to us with the same data, the same calm and collected, pragmatic approach that you have, how different that situation would have been for us as we navigated with the sheriff's department. So, thank you for being so thorough. Um you've made it clear that this deficiency is not is due not to neglect or to waste. There is a demonstrable need due to situation that is largely out of our control. So I completely support you. I am very concerned about the capital fund though and obviously if we're going to have another ambulance that means we need more apparatus and we may not have the money for more apparatus. So, I'm curious to know with these new ambulances that are coming in, what's the condition of our current ambulances? Are they able to serve a little bit longer? How do we plan to bridge that gap? Because presumably we'll need more and then we need more. How's that going to work out? We've always had five frontline ambulances and two reserves. So, a couple years ago when we bought three ambulances, we kept an additional reserve ambulance. So now we have eight ambulances. Now even though those ambulances are on the budget for this year, it's going to be another 3 or 4 years before we actually purchase those. So the ones that we have now, you know, we've worked with our fleet department and we're able to maintain those for another three or four years. And the fact that we're now going to have eight ambulances total instead of seven, um, we're going to start rotating them around. For example, when we got the new ambulances, now station 3 is our busiest

station, so they put a lot of miles in their ambulance. Station five is a little bit slower, so they don't put a lot of miles in their ambulances. So, we started rotating some of these ambulances around to try and even out the miles to make them last a little bit longer. Uh, you know, our fleet department is very good with the maintenance and the repairs. And, you know, we we discuss with them, you know, what we can do, how long they should last. And when we originally bought them, we were looking at a five to sevenyear replacement schedule for ambulances. Because they were getting so much wear on them, we were trying to move them back to five years. Now we're trying to move them back up to seven years. And uh we've already moved the three that we were going to purchase in 2027 to 2028 because we feel we can maintain those a little bit longer. Obviously, you know, you there comes a point where it becomes too expensive to maintain them or the you really need the new tech in the latest models and whatnot, but it's it's good to hear that we're trying to get the most out of what we've got and I'm hopeful that we're doing that across all of our apparatus and absolutely

I appreciate you bringing this to us and uh I support it as well. There's a motion on the table. Thank you. There is a motion by Miss Newower, but um you now have the second, Mr. Blair. Um, and with that, we'll go to Miss Manino.

Yes. Thank you, Vice President Moli. Um, just a a couple follow-up questions. First of all, fully agreed with my counterparts here on supporting um the millillage and the need for it, but my questions are more aligned with the execution and the implementation. So that I think I got my question answered. So this will go on the November ballot. Okay. So assuming it gets approved, then we you start recruiting. I'm I'm trying to get to the timeline and the implementation to bring on 12 people on board. Like when do when do you think you're going to be fully up and running with the additional staffing? What? Go ahead.

The um we're going to have to look at that. Once the millillage passes, then we can go ahead and do the posting. Uh we may have a problem getting 12 applicants. I think we've kind of discussed that before. We're kind of looking at bringing on six and six. Um, so if it passes in November, I think, you know, we've already talked to HR about, you know, being ready to go and going out and posting and hopefully within a couple months we can work through that process. We can get enough applicants. We want to bring six on at a time, run them through kind of a mini academy and then, you know, we rotate them through the stations so they can get experience at all the stations. That's a lot to do with 12 people at one time. So, we want to do six and six, but once we get down to the first six, we're hoping to bring the next six right on after that. So, if it gets approved in November, we'll get the money, you know, the beginning of the year. So, we're hoping to be able to bring them on in March or April, within about three or four months of the beginning of the year.

Thank you. Next up is M. Next up is Mr. Skele.

Uh, first of all, thanks for your service. You guys are awesome, men and women there. Um, I'm very pro-UN. I I think the unions are what made this country what it is. So, with that being said, and this might be directed towards more the union uh in the back there, what is the game plan to get this millillage passed? um how are you going to go in a positive way to bring it out to my constituents so they're not cornering me at Kroger's asking me about the smell. So um we've had some discussion with that regarding uh with Nathan Mueller. um that's kind of his role and he is I don't know if he's met with the union yet, but we've had some discussion with the union president and how the two can work together um to to roll out a a campaign and a uh an ad to it's uh we we will be uh educating um so our role as a community, as an administration, as a city is to educate. We can't advocate for them.

Other groups can advocate for them. No groups to be mentioned out loud today, but other groups can advocate, but the city's role is simply to educate. So, our job is to let the people know the ballot language, what it would raise, what it would be used for. It's pretty black and white, and we'll do a campaign to do that. Uh, other folks that may be interested, you as an individual council person, as mayor, unions, other folks, pro firefighting folks can go farther than that. But from this location, from our uh vantage point, it's simply educate, not advocate. but others can. Derek, Mr. Skely, any other questions? No. Thank you.

All right. Um, before I pass it over to the mayor, I did want to ask, seeing that I messed up on the dates, what is the approval process? We approve this tonight. What's the next step? Uh, maybe Clerk Scott. I will s um I did. Yeah. Thank you. I will send the certified resolution from tonight's vote to the attorney general's office tomorrow for their approval to go over to the governor. And that takes us so long to make that happen. So it can't be it doesn't take us so long. They require 90 days. Oh, and we're 90. And it doesn't mean they'll take the full 90 days, but they say do not plan for less than that.

Okay. All right. Thank you very much. With that, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you, Vice President Mel. I I think of a a great discussion and uh you know these things aren't easy um to even get to this point. We've had uh many many meetings uh many times practicing you know what are the other ways we could accomplish this? What aren't we thinking of? What are other communities doing? What will technology allow us to do moving forward? Is there any other way to achieve the similar result? And so I want to thank the chief and his leadership team for you know steady leadership and a a long range plan. And I was mentioning in a meeting earlier, you know, cities um cities are here forever, right? They don't they don't go out of business. They're here forever. And so everything we do should be positioning our community for uh decades to come. And and public safety has long been the uh sort of cornerstone on which we have built uh this great brand, this great environment, the reason that so many people love living here. And so uh all of this makes sense. that aligns closely and the members of the fire service need to understand um many of the reasons that we have been so successful is because this council and previous councils have had a very uh financially conservative mindset uh to make sure that um you know we are only uh collecting dollars and uh deploying those dollars in the most effective and efficient way possible. We are among the lowest the second lowest taxed community uh in uh in our county. Um, and most people wouldn't suggest that we have the second lowest level of amenities. And so we've been conservatively run uh with a a forward mind on public safety, both police and fire. And so it's at those sort of unique crossroads that you find yourselves like this. And I think the only way this is successful is with both uh the the elected leadership uh you know leading and educating and the the fire membership uh advocating and continuing to perform uh with excellence um the the the roles that you do every

single day. And then we leave it to our voters. Our voters ultimately decide the level of fire protection they want in this community. And I know uh the council will respect that and we'll we'll all have to respect that. But we all have a united job to do uh in the next 6 months. Um and the what we do in the next 6 months will position us for the next 10 years. Uh so let's uh let's work together. Uh appreciate everybody's hard work to get us here. Council, we know when we come with a millillage. Uh we we we count on seven nos out of the gate and we got to get you to seven yeses. Uh so the the the the back work has to be done. The messaging has to be correct. the need uh the professional and professionalism and the uh the the you know the the work that goes into showing what they're going to do with it. Um the street cred all of it has to be done. So we appreciate hopefully your unanimous support tonight and my commitment that our administration will be working with fire and all else in the community to educate and those that it's appropriate advocate for its passage in the fall. Great.

Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor. And I I know where Mr. Carlock is if he's still watching us. Um he was in full support of this as well. Well, I don't want to put words into his mouth, but I know he was in agreement um with us moving forward with this millillage. Uh so I have a motion by Miss Newower, seconded by Mr. Blair. The resolution, if you thought I was having fun with those chapters before, you should see these four page three pages of resolution for the fire millillage. I have been uh informed by the lawyer here at the table that I do not have to read every paragraph that's on these three pages, four pages of information. What I have done is picked out some specific things to read here. So for the residents who are interested, you're more than welcome to go to this agenda topic um and pull up the full resolution. But what I am going to read is whereas the city council of the city of Rochester Hills desires to initiate a proposed amendment to subsection. 4 of the city charter sections 4.2 charter tax rate and special voted millages limitation to increase the amount the city may levy for funding of the fire department from 3.0 mills to 3.5 mills. First paragraph of the resolution going to the last paragraph. The proposed amendment shall be submitted to the electors in the following form. Proposed city charter amendment to authorize additional millillage for funding the fire department. A proposal to amend the city charter by modifying section 4.2 section for section 4. This subsection authorizes the city to levy up to three mills for funding the fire department. Required millillage roll backs have reduced this to 2.7798 mills. If adopted, the charter amendment will increase the amount the city may

levy for funding the fire department to 3.5 mills, which if levied in full will raise an estimated 5,39,970 in additional revenue this year, and that will be on the November ballot. All in favor say I. I. I. Anyone opposed? And that motion carries unanimously. Thank you so much. We look forward to working with you over the next several months to inform our community about the importance of this millillage. Again, thank you again for making our city such a safe city. We look forward to keeping it that way. Thank you for your support. We appreciate it. Thank you, city council. But don't go anywhere.

Uh, okay. So I I get to go to another one that's on the fire department. Okay. So two point two two 2026-0160 request for approval of the interlocal agreement between Oakland County and the city of Rochester Hills for the public safety P25 simalcast system. With that Chief Gary Oh Chief Eckles. Okay.

Um good evening Vice President Moli mayor and city council. Uh we're here today to request approval of the interlocal agreement for the Oakland County P25 Simocast system. Uh this interlocal agreement is intended to replace the 2004 agreement between Oakland County and the city of Rochester Hills uh with their recent 2020 upgrade of the county radio system. The new system provides the ability to communicate with emergency services statewide uh during an incident or large regional disaster. As a user of the system, we're required to enter into this agreement with Oakland County and the agreement has been reviewed by staff and the city attorney and I would ask that you approve this agreement for the P25 Simocast radio system.

Great. I'm here to answer any questions. Have a motion. I see no questions over here. So, a motion by Mr. Blair, seconded by Ms. Newower. I'll read the resolution. Um whereas through this agreement and the operation of public safety P25 simo case system each party will better be be better prepared to serve and to provide aid to citizens of and persons in Oakland County, Michigan. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Rochester Hills City Council hereby approves the interlocal agreement between Oakland County and the city of Rochester Hills for the operation, management, and maintenance of the public safety P25 Simocast system. All in favor say I.

I. Anyone opposed? And that motion carries unanimously as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Which then takes me to the third fire um agenda topic which is 2026-0157 request for purchase authorization fire contract blanket purchase order for fire and emergency services records management system in the amount not to exceed 105,900 $898.73 for a three-year term EPR Systems USA Inc. Ovido, Florida. All right. Hello again. Um, let's see. I'm here uh to request approval for a three-year blanket purchase order for software services from EPR fireworks. Uh, the department's currently using three separate systems for our EMS fire and inspection records management and documentation. With recent changes at the US fire administration in fire reporting requirements, last year we began to evaluate our data and its management. Uh we have strong long struggled to run reports and manage our own data uh along with the county system. Uh the EMS and fire reporting systems we currently use requires programmers from the companies to write the reports for us with parameters that we request. Um there are some canned reports but they are not very usable and they provide some information but if you run one report it sometimes conflicts with another report. Um, our fire inspections are currently being documented in the building department's permit system, BSNA. Uh, it's not really meant for an inspection program. It's more of a permit system. Um, but we've been making it work for the last couple years. And, um, it's not really built to use in the field at all. So, we have to go do inspections, do our work out there, write everything down, and then come back and redo it at the station. Um so these new programs or this package uh will streamline our software and provide integration between our EMS fire and inspection reporting and it will enable us to create our own reports without the

use um or need of a programmer. So with that I would ask to approve this blanket purchase order and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

I am not seeing any questions up here. Moved by Miss Newbau seconded by Mr. Lindberg and I will read the resolution. Um, resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes a contract blanket purchase order for Fire and Emergency Services Records Management Systems to EPR System USA, Inc., Oeddo, Florida, in the amount not to exceed $15,898.73 for a three-year term. and further authorizes the procurement manager to execute an agreement on behalf of the city. Further resolved that the city's acceptance of the proposal and approval of the award of a contract shall be conditioned and contingent upon the party's entry into an execution of a written agreement acceptable to the city. All in favor say I.

I.

Opposed say nay. That motion also passes unanimously. Thank you very much. which now takes us outside of the fire department and we get to talk to facilities our our garage tonight. Um, this is item 2026-0167, request for purchase authorization facilities blanket purchase order contract for the Department of Public Services garage building improvement projects in the amount of $827,71081 with a 10% project contingency in the amount of 82,771 and8 for a total not to exceed project amount of $910,48189 to Quadrate Construction Mcome, Michigan. Yay. Okay. Um, Mr. I'm going to turn it over to our team, Mr. Hollis.

Well, good evening, Vice President Moli, City Council, uh, Mayor Barnett, and Mr. Deal. Uh joining me tonight is our facilities manager, Matt Exley, and we are here to request approval for a blanket purchase order for some important improvements to the Department of Public Services garage. Uh key upgrades include the replacement of the industrial oil interceptor as well as the replacement of HVAC makeup air units, control systems, and the carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide monitoring sensors. These improvements will ensure the proper removal of humidity and hazardous gases and to continue to provide a safe environment and reduce energy usage. All of these which are essentially vital given the high daily volume of heavy truck traffic. Additionally, the building's automatic transfer switch will be upgraded and additional circuits will be added to the generator electric panel to ensure reliable power activation during outages. During this process, 14 vendors attended the site for a site visit. We received five bids by the deadline and um Quadrric Construction was the lowest bidder, but they were also uh determined to be the most responsive and res and uh responsible and we would request uh approval of this contract for this project.

Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Hollis. I know I had some questions about this um when I first saw it come on the agenda mainly because I wanted to make sure our staff was safe in the garage right now today given the situation that you've described in the in the need for this and I was assured they are safe. There's nothing that's going to happen to our staff at this point pending the implementation of adding these building improvements to the garage. So, we're good, right? That's correct. Okay. The building is aging. The building's over 20 years old. Some of these systems are reaching the end of their lifespan, so we want to be proactive to get them replaced.

Great. So, um, Clerk Scott, if we could just put my questions into the minutes this way, I don't have to go through all of those here. Um, we do have some questions from council. Um, Miss Manino. Uh, thank you, Vice President Manulie. I think you've answered my question. Um, the building age, I wanted to understand that. And is this um just confirmed that the systems on never been replaced? We're talking about the originals in the case and what we're asking for here. Yes, I believe they're the originals. The building's about 23 years old. Yes. And so it's time for updates. Yeah. Go. That that was my question. Thank you. Okay. And then uh next up is Mr. Skelce.

Yeah. I'm just curious, what is a industrial oil interceptor and what does it do? I'll let Matt take that one. All right. So, uh there's a lot of oils that are always being changed from all the materials and everything and there there's always dripping oils. It's always going into the oil interceptor. Basically, it's the big drain in the middle of uh the DPS garage there. So, basically just separates oil so it doesn't get into uh the sewer systems and everything else. And is that recyclable at all or is it can um we have a company that comes out and backs out all the oil. Um and they do recycle it. Um they have their own process for all that. Thank you.

Okay. Any other questions, Mr. Kelsey? All right. Um do I have a motion? It's been motioned by Ms. Newower, seconded by Mr. Blair. I'll read the resolution. Um, it is resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes an increase to the contract blanket purchase order. I am reading the next one, aren't I? Um, sorry. Going to make sure I get the right one here. Resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes a blanket purchase order contract for the Department of Public Services garage building improvements to Quadrate Construction Mcome, Michigan in the amount of $827,71081 with a 10% contingency in the amount of $82,7718 for a total not to exceed project amount of $910,4818. 89 cents and further authorizes the mayor to execute an agreement on behalf of the city. Further resolved that the city's acceptance of the proposal and approval of the award of a contract be contingent and conditioned upon the party's entry into an execution of a written agreement acceptable to the city. All in favor say I.

I. Anyone opposed? And that motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I've already queued up the next motion for you. So, we're up to um 2023-02 0403 request for purchase authorization facilities increase to the contract blanket purchase order for architectural engineering services for improvements to the Department of Public Services garage building in the amount of $3,500 for a new not to exceed $157,000 to DLZ Michigan Waterford, Michigan. Mr. Hollis,

thank you. And hello again. Um, this this request is to increase this um this blanket purchase order for the engineering services to the project we just mentioned. Uh, the reason for the increase is because during the bidding process, a technical issue was identified regarding our building automation system and its integration with the proposed improvements. And so it was determined it would be more costefficient to go back and add that into the drawings upfront than to get change orders as the project was going. So that's the reason for this request and if you have any questions we'll be happy to answer them.

We have no questions. Do I I have a motion by Mrs. Newower, seconded by Mr. Lindberg and I will read the correct resolution. uh resolved that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes an increase to the contract blanket purchase order for architectural/engineering services for improvements to the Department of Public Services garage building to DLZ Michigan Waterford, Michigan in the amount of $3,500 for a new not to exceed amount of $157,000 and further authorizes the mayor to execute an amendment on behalf of the city. All in favor say I.

I. Anyone opposed? And that motion passes unanimously as well. On to the next item, which I'm glad Mr. Hollis, you're staying right there. Um, we have 2026-0149 request for purchase authorization building contract blanket purchase order for fire suppression and fire alarm plan review and inspection services in the amount not to exceed 135,000 for a one-year contract term fire safety consultants inc Elgen Illinois. Mr. Hollis,

thank you. Yes, this request is to uh authorize a contract blankets purchase order to fire safety consultants. They are our consultant we've used for several years now. We're very happy with their services. They assist our team in the commercial fire suppression and fire alarm plan reviews that are a little more technical than our team can do and also they um assist in the inspection of those services to make sure they're done properly. What I wanted to point out in this is that this is a pass through cost. So whatever the cost is is is passed on to the contractors. There's really no cost to the city. It's passed on to the contractors who utilize uh these permits. Thank you.

Okay. With that, I am not seeing any questions from city council. It's been moved by Mrs. Newower, seconded by Mrs. Manino, and I will read the resolution. Um, resolve that the Rochester Hills City Council hereby authorizes a contract blanket purchase order for fire suppression and fire alarm plan review and inspection services to Fire Safety Consultants, Inc., Elgen, Illinois through April 12th, 2027 in the amount not to exceed $135,000 and further authorizes the procurement manager to execute an agreement on behalf of the city. further resolved that the city's acceptance of the proposal and approval of the award of a contract shall be contingent and conditioned upon the party's entry into an execution of a written agreement acceptable to the city. All in favor say I.

I mot and anyone opposed. And that motion also passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you. Um now we are on to I'm going to guess the parks group. Um, we are at agenda item 2026-0170, request to rename Harding Hardy Greenspace after Gerald Carvey in recognition of his significant service to the city and also request a waiver from the city na from the city naming policy that requires a person to be deceased for three years prior to the request. Mr. Elward,

good evening. Vice President Mioli, City Council, Mayor Barnett. Um you have before you a request to um rename Hardy Greenspace as you've summarized. Um the naming committee met on on March 19th, which is made up for a few citizens, including one council um representative. Appreciate Mr. Blair's attendance on that. And um Mr. KBY was um unanimously unanimously, excuse me, recommended um to um essentially accept this nomination. We received a nomination from a member of the community, not related to the community. And so, um, for those that don't know Mr. Carvey, I'm going to read a little bit of of who he is and or at least, you know, what he's being nominated for. And so, Mr. Carvey was a founding member of the green space advisory board, served as chairperson from 2005 until 2016. Jerry played a key role in initiating the citizen ballot proposal that led to the passage of the green space mill. the green space or the city's green space system now consists of eight properties totaling over 140 acres. In addition, the green space trust created from this millillage to maintain the system and purchase future properties is currently at $6.7 million. This fund allows preservation activities and stewardship projects to occur yearly to keep the green space properties natural and serving their preservation purpose as well as be used for future um purchase of of green space related property. Um in addition um Mr. Carvey is a huge community um supporter and involver involvement too. He was um in the Rochester is in the Rochester um ro Rotary for over 55 years. um was given a stateswide senior of the year year leadership award from M Parks in 2017 for his greenpace work. Was a longtime board member of the Clinton River Watershed Coalition or Council, excuse me, leading to the development um by the CRWC in 1998 of a yearly award called

the Jerry Carvey Volunteer Service Award. Um he also served on city council um in one of those seats up there at the inception of the Rochester Hills change from from Avon Township from 1984 to 1991. And so for all those reasons um we agree with the citizen recommendation to um to put this forward for your consideration as did the naming um naming committee. The one thing you need to be aware of on this is in the naming policy. There is an exclusion um that um a person is is recommended to be um passed on for at least three years. How the the policy however does allow council to essentially wave that exclusion. Um administration feels in this case Mr. Harvey has been inactive from city government for um many many years on this and that we believe that fulfills the intent of of that policy and so we put this nomination forth for your consideration

and I am so glad to hear that Mr. Carvey is still with us and can we can wave that exclusion um relative to this. So with that, um, um, Miss Manino, thank you, Vice President Manili. Um, Mr. El, just a a quick question. Uh, regarding the name change, will there be anything posted in the park regarding Mr. Carvey and his contributions just to signify the name change of what the park represents?

Yes, it'll occur in two phases. So, the first phase is is is essentially just a quick um change of the current signage that's out there from the name to essentially carve green space, but we'll also be working on another sign close to that that will be more interpretive. That's going to take a little bit longer and of course we would want permission from the family and review on that side and and everything there. So, yeah, the intention is to change the if approved tonight, the sign right away or very very quickly and then work on essentially an interpretive um signage next to it. Okay.

All right. Um I uh also on here is the mayor.

Uh yes, I thank you, Viceman. Yeah, I would just say um obviously I'm uh in support of this. I think one unique thing to note is that as far as I know uh Mr. KBY has no idea uh that this is happening. Uh he's not been a part of this. He's actually out of town. I was curious uh if he by chance would know anything about this, but he's out of town. And so um this isn't certainly something that he was advocating for. In fact, he would probably be embarrassed if he knew this was happening. Um but you know, we we currently most of our green spaces are are are just merely named after the the streets that they find themselves on. And this does seem like an appropriate way. There is a pretty good policy, a committee in place, rules, a structure. Uh so u the administration is hopeful that council will be supportive of this tonight. Thanks.

And Mr. Carvey has been a longtime resident of our community. I'm hoping that the Van Husen Museum also has some uh space dedicated to our founding fathers of our city 42 years ago with Mr. Carvey being one of those. So I'm looking for a motion. It's moved been moved by Mrs. Manino, seconded by Mrs. Newbower, and I will read the resolution in the packet. Um whereas city administration recommends that the Harding Greenspace be renamed the Carvey Greenspace in recognation recognition of Gerald Carvey's AVID conservation support, community involvement and and engagement in city government and requests a waiver of the city naming policy requirement that the recommended outstanding individual be deceased for three years prior to the request. resolved that the Rochester Hills City Council on behalf of the city of Rochester Hills hereby approves renaming the Hardy Green Space the Carvey Greenspace and waves the requirement that the recommended outstanding individual be deceased for three years prior to the request. All in favor say I.

I. Anyone opposed?

Thank you very much. And another unanimous resolution for this evening. But I think we're now getting to the fun part of the night where we start. If people thought we were spending a lot of money before, this is this is where Oh my. Um so we are at 2026-0143 request for purchase authorization parks project budget for general contractor services for the construction and development of Nikki Park and other vendors as necessary to complete the project in the amount not to exceed too many commas $15,797,580.70 and I'm going Watch the 70 cents. Frank Rewalden Sons, Rochester, Michigan, and under other vendors as necessary. Mr. Elward,

good evening again. Um, I want to introduce as well as Mr. Andrews and myself. We have Steve Sutton on the far end there from from Noak and Fra who will be integrally, I won't say daily, but will be talking to us regularly on this project and the review on the engineering side. And I have Ed Alonzo from A3C with us, the architecture firm as well, which will be um helping oversee the the building construction, as well as our building um team staff has graciously agreed to stay a little bit later um in case there are any any detailed questions that uh um that come up that they can provide answers to. Um so with that, I just want to give a little brief outline of what the presentation is that we're going to have tonight um before we get into detailed questions. So, we'll talk a little bit about the project background. Um, you'll hear a little bit about timeline. Um, you're going to see some pretty pictures on the site renderings that perhaps you haven't seen before that are are pretty fun. Um, and you're going to see some detailed drawings as well and and get into the weeds a little bit. Um, and also of course um the the fiscal request in in detail and Mr. Snyder is also available here to uh um to go into that. This presentation does cover all three of the the next three agenda items um lumped together on that and feel free to ask questions at any point. Of course, I'm sure we'll have a robust discussion at the end of this. Um but you know, if if something you you you have a uh um just need to know at the moment, feel free at that point and we will dive in. I just want to point out that right here in front of you, the picture you see is of course um the the new wiki properties as we own them. Um, Adams Road is on the right there and pretty much this encompasses the whole property. Um, although the woods on the upper left are actually part of the Shadowwoods common area. As you can see, some of the houses that sort of circle around there. It's a nice little buffer and connection and

and a neat little part of the park. And another tidbit that you may not have heard before is the history of Nikki Park and how we got here. here and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, but um we have a lady that researches all our parcels um in in detail through the museum. And so this parcel was originally bought as part of 160 acres by John Miller in 1819. He was a veteran of the War of 1812. Um later on about a hundred yearsish later, um it was bought by Arthur Spencer in 1909. You might recognize that name, but he was the supervisor of what was then Avon Township and um a drain commissioner in Oakland County in the early 1900s. Um eventually in 1990 they split it into 5 acreish parcels and um Rochester Hills purchased those parcels in 1990. So it's been sitting basically in its current state for almost 40 years at that point. Um actually in 1999 um this very body a council um city council resolution um passed after naming the park after Eugene excuse me Eugene Noiki who was a councilman that had recently passed but was also a very strong conservationist and in recognition of his service and his conservation ethic. And there you have a little bit of the history of of Newicki Park, how we got here. Um, I wanted to bring up a few con um, you know, concept plans that maybe you hadn't seen before. This was what um, what it was going to be 20 years ago. These were the concept plans from the public um that they received in in 2008, essentially a sports park with trails around it. Um, you know, demands change over time and and you know, input changes over time. So recently um we have you know collected more and we've come up with this nature concept right this nature park concept and we really

started this process um several of you were were involved in this process in 2023 to produce this concept that you see here I'm working with Niagara Morano who does a great job on these these site concepts they actually did them for for four of our parks and um we had a conceptual design cherat which a few council members um I think at least two um that are are on the board now had had come to if you remember that whole day thing and that was um you know that was developed and worked with on Noah and Fraouse and all the boards and gave opinions on the buildings and this and that. We did the same things for the public on focus groups and random surveys for our master plan. Lots of public input long term. So, I appreciate your engagement in this from the beginning, but from concept comes construction plans. And so, I'm just going to give a little bit of an overview. This can get a little bit into the weeds, but I think it's important at least on a couple things that you know um sort of where things are and and the questions we might get. And so, these next couple slides have to do with that. Um you know after concept with council's approval we went to this construction design process with Noah Kfra and A3C really we've been working on that for a year and a half um over 30 it feels like more than 30 meetings um but over you know um a year and a half we've we've put together um a large um packet of information and working handinhand with the building department DPS and fire on the specs and the code and moving buildings around to to make sure it was safe from fire and you ideas from building. We've we've come up with what are 200 pages of this type of drawing um in and of various levels of details and another 1,200 pages of specs and and details that they have to follow. So, the contract book is probably going to be taller than this microphone when when the uh um

construction company gets it, assuming approval tonight. Um it had planning commission re um review in 2025. Again, lots of public input. there was some there at the meeting. Um we held a public input neighbor meeting um of which we have a few neighbors from Shadowwoods um in in the audience and appreciate people coming on that. Um we had a robust com conversation at that at that meeting. I think a couple council members were there then and that's appreciated. We also held several walks with the neighbors immediately adjacent um you know and got strong feedback where we moved the trails back. the trails were when you actually walk the property, the trails right next to the six parcels in Shadowwards were were pretty close. They were still allowable by code, but they were they were pretty darn close. So So we ended up moving those back about 50 ft. We changed the burm configuration. There were some that that were concerned about BMS because right next to the property line because they were concerned it was going to hold drainage. There were others that were concerned that their house wasn't burmed enough and they wanted a burm. So, we I think we've we've come to happy medium in in in adding some BMS up top, but moving the B BMS right next to the trail that we've moved farther down that will allow um allow the drainage to proceed as it does. And um let's see. Um the one thing that did come out is the residents are very supportive of dog parks and trails um in in all that public input. I'm just going to give a quick overview with my little magic pointer that's being squirly here um of where everything is just for a moment. So, you have the um you have the playground on what is the south part. Imagine that this is Adam's Road right down here. Um you have the playground right here. The major features you have the community room building in the center. Um you have a hawk signal which is across the road right here for pedestrian crossings. And then you of course have the dog park um in this

area. And we'll talk a little bit more about the trails um later on. I want to mention there's a couple site plans coming up next, but these are these are things that we're going to get calls on. So I wanted to just throw them out briefly to city council so you understand that we you know we will get resident calls on them and you might get um um questions on them. So, the um the first one, even though it doesn't happen until 2027, is a traffic flow. And um the way this is designed, essentially, you're shutting down half of Adams Road and you're putting temporary pavement on the other side to still continue the north south. And so, it won't start until June of next year to try not to interfere too much with school. Again, it'll still be two-way flow. They do half of Adams Road, do the construction on the other side, then they move it over and do the same thing on that side. So, we're still um maintaining two-way flow on this. Just be a little bit tighter as they put the the temporary um the temporary in on that. And you know, we will mo you will most likely get conversations about that. The next one is tree removal. And it's important that you you see this and know this because if it's approved tonight, um this is going to be there's no other word for it. It's going to be dramatic. um as as people are buying are driving by here um that you can see that the majority of the trees are up close to the road in the one parking lot there. There was no other way around um removing these trees. We've adjusted trails to try and and and essentially save the bigger trees wherever possible. But the tree survey has 1900 trees on site. Um, city code actually allows us to remove um 1,100, which is crazy. We would never do that for a park. Um, but that's the 40% number that that is is city code. Um, so we're we're removing um 600 trees. 515 of them are regulated trees. The other 85 are um are excluded for various

purposes. They're either dead, dying, or invasive, I believe, is the um but the important part of this then is the planting plan, which comes next. And you see the vegetation all over the place, but you see a lot of trees along the front um which the residents asked for quite a bit in our in our public input. The residents across the street were concerned about noise from the dog park. Residents over here were concerned about noise um from the playground. And we love to plant trees anyway. Um, so, so we added about a hundredish trees. We added screening over here, which the residents add for there. Even added some more over in in this area to screen any we don't believe that there's going to be noise issues on this side because it's so far away, but we added the additional screening anyway. So, there there's substantial there, but only um 515 trees are required to be planted. We're planting 650. Um, again, we're we're adhering to more than than what our code of ordinances requires on this and um when trees are involved, that's the way we like to do it. So the timeline very briefly um if approved tonight um we plan to um start working with our professionals here and um talking with purchasing today that they have a contract book ready to go tomorrow um to get to the the recommended um recommended company on that and and start that process. So we would expect to be on on the ground in late May is a target. Um it could be early June, but the target is late May. Um we're really looking at having the building framed if at all possible before winter. Um so that they can work inside and throughout the winter and do that because we won't be able to do a ton of of other work that way. Um it'll really start to look like a park in spring of 27. The playground will be coming in, which we've previously

approved. Um and then the, you know, the trails will be coming in. Um the summer road work will really be the final touches and that and the planting in summer of 2027 with a target of a late August opening um for the timeline. And now we're on to the pretty pictures. So thank you for for bearing with me on that. Um, but you know, this is a community's first dog park and and so, you know, we wanted to make sure that we we get this right, that it looks right, that we have a couple special features in there that will control um control erosion. So, the material on this this whole area here will be concrete, this pathway coming in um instead of the the initial limestone that um potentially had erosion issues and such. Um you see two features here. It's not actually the wire fence that you see in the background, but it's this fence in the in the lower left hand corner. This um ornamental fence that is consistent with sort of the planning and economic development um department standards um for fencing as well. It's what you see around the but it's not chain link fence and we heard from both members of the community and council members actually that it didn't want chain link fence for the um for the dog park as well. There will be low-level lighting using sort of almost a ballarded system, but with this as as a uh a top light essentially in the dog park area, sort of around the edges because people will want to use their dogs in the evening on this after they get home. Um, several community dog parks around the area offer this service already. Um, I think the closest being Sterling Heights. Um, and so we we're planning to provide that as well. the the actual light um the lights in the parking lot will have a very similar look and feel just be taller on on that area. One other unique um element of the

dog park is that it has about 2 feet of edging along the fences on the interior. And a couple parks have used this where they've um essentially it discourages dogs from doing what they do right next to the fence and ripping up the fence and that the fence area becomes a major um a major erosion mud type of issue. And so we're we're um we have planned to put in essentially stones along that edge held in by landscape edging and such so it won't work. We've been working with our maintenance department to make sure or grounds maintenance to make sure that that's maintainable and that's what they recommended. And the last thing in the dog park um fobed entrance. Um so it it will be a requirement that you have to come to us and or have a process. that might be coming directly to us um to provide your dog license to provide that your dogs have have the appropriate um vaccinations and that you've read the rules or at least signed off that you receive the rules and that you're going to follow them in case we have issues later on. So that's that's the um the overview of the dog park. Um the buildings that you see here involve a maintenance garage um close to Adams Road, the community room and park office um in the in the center as we pointed out earlier. And then the also attached to that is year-round restrooms. The community room um facing the pond can hold approximately 120 people um about the same um size but different shape slightly that the calf barn is. If you're familiar with that, holds about that many people. And again, year round restroom. So that's available for regular rental, you know, um grandma's birthday, anniversary parties, graduation parties, our own programs of which we we could use this significantly for. Um um but also a couple special populations and um you know the clerk's office being one that um we've been working with them a little bit to establish the electrical needs um

additional outlets for a a possible location for early voting on this and that that has been a consideration um through this as well as RAR um and we've been working with the director over there for their usage during the summer for for summer camps. Um summer camps are bursting at the seams there. it's difficult to find camps and so this just adds another option that they'll be able to utilize. Um the playground we've talked about um in December, so I'm not going to go into it in in too much detail here. Uh it's an acre playground. It's going to have a very unique look and feel. Dennis is pushing me along, so I'm talking too much. Um but mounds and trails. So this and we'll talk about the surfacing a little bit here. This mound is the observation mound um essentially east of the uh um the pond and boardwalk and it's one of the higher parts of the of the city. And this area here will be limestone. you'll see um and I didn't point it out in the slide um earlier, but there's a big darker loop that goes all the way around the park, a big circle that is ashvalt um that is a, you know, accessible design um for for anyone with mobility challenges. Um they'll be able to get all the way around the park in a great walk on that. All the secondary trails are going to be crushed limestone for a for a different feel, a little bit more rustic, a little bit more off the beaten path in some ways, similar to Innovation Hills on some of the dirt trails there, but we're going with a a crushed limestone here. Um, as well, there's some very small um areas on both the north and south part of this park that are sort of meditation areas. Um, there there's one in the woods that has a small a couple small gliding um rocker benches instead of the traditional benches. And then on the north side, there's a small hammock area that um not a ton of people, but a few hammocks overlooking the natural metal that we're planting that's that's surrounded by screen

trees. Um so they really won't be able to see anything else or disturbed by neighbors. And even though those aren't huge amenities, those are going to be very cool things I think that people will appreciate on that. And now to some of the fun stuff. Um, so because the way the uh the agenda items had to be written, we thought it would it would be helpful to put together an overall chart that it sort of explained the whole project a little bit. And so what you have here is the um costs listed on the top. The really the agenda items we're discussing tonight are the first two of the three lines under costs, right? They're the the park construction which includes construction contingency owner allowances um the road construction and the water and sewer connections. That's all all included in that Wiki Park construction as well as the professional services. And you know we have our professional services here tonight to be able to answer any questions um as as we get into that. And then our our proposed funding model. Um the funding model consists of the current budget for the parks development fund which was always intended just to be parks. Um the DPS budget is also on top of that for roads, water and sewer which is another 2.4. So approximately $17 million there. And you know that's a whole we see that. Um, but we've also received and and went out for a a $2 million grant that we weren't expecting when we started this bid process and when we started the uh um revenue estimates in June of last year um for $2 million with a with a big thanks to um Representative Mark Tisel and his co-sponsor Senator Weber um to to get that through for us. That that really funds a lot of these cool things. Um, as well we're requesting use from the saver fund and and one thing that we noticed

um last minute should have caught it earlier on me um is that um the uh the contingency and the initial estimate in June was at 5% not 10%. And and that's $700,000 in this capacity. And so, you know, city code recommends um that we do 10% and for a project this size um it's it's recommended as well um on that. And again, the plan is most of our projects we don't go into contingency. And because this is a bid, um this is an even tighter project in that, you know, um we can't add things. We follow the materials list. We can subtract things if they're a problem. Um so, you know, we're hoping that we won't touch that at all. So, that's the overview of the charts there. Um, I do want to point out a couple things about the bids that we did receive. We got eight bids. Um, two of them were disqualified for essentially using the bid form. Um, the wrong bid form, a previous version of the bid form, putting the wrong numbers in that were required. There's a variety of reasons. I have a two-page write up on on our defense if if those companies um have have a concern with that. Um, but also, so we went with the lowest qualified bidder. Um and and we're also happy that it's uh it's a local company, which which is, you know, um a great opportunity to to work on a showcase project with a with a local company who has a strong reputation as well. Um and so we're excited to do that. And I just want to point out one last thing before we get into the meat of it a little bit more is that, you know, parks are expensive. Um they're they're getting more so. Um, Bordon Park, we went back and looked at the numbers and and Bordon Park, um, with inflation, um, for that whole development, not including the new buildings or anything that we put in recently, is $13.3 million in present day value. And that

that was for a sports park. This wasn't a, you know, really unique playground or other water features that we were building or what have you. That was $13.3 million for a wellutilized, our top visited park, very well-maintained fields. Um, but a sports park. And so, of course, Innovation Hills um at 18 million and we did that over seven years, not in one year. And so, you know, we produce quality results with these things and and it takes some time, but they they are expensive. And so what we're really asking on these agenda items tonight is to utilize the $2 million unexpected grant appropriation as revenue for the project. Um we're also asking for the $500,000 for the saver fund as I mentioned um to really cover the difference between the 5% contingency on the estimate and the and the 10% that we're proposing um tonight. And so we know this is a big cost um but it's not out of line um with the parks that we've built in the past that produce awesome feedback and great usage. We've looked for other funding sources and been successful in finding a $2 million appropriation grant thanks to the representative Tisl and Senator Weber. We're asking to move Newiki Park forward without any additional general fund money um by utilizing this grant in the $500,000 from the saver fund to cover the contingency that hopefully we aren't even going to need. Um and if we don't use it, that money stays in the saver fund. We've worked very hard over really the last three years collaborating with our community to make it a park they really want, updating it to a nature park instead of a sports park. um including additional tree plantings, building our most requested amenities of a dog park, and more trails. Um we're asking you tonight to move forward with this permanent legacy for our grandkids, our kids, our neighbors, and the

community. And with that, we're available for questions.

Thank you very much, Mr. Elbert and team. Um, I'm sitting here thinking I I moved into my house across the street from Noiki Park 39 years ago. Um, somewhere in your history piece, you have to remember that it was Adam's Apple. It was a privatelyowned home, ranch home that was there that had a fruit and vegetable stand out in front. and he got into a um disagreement with the city for many years over whether or not he could have produce there that he didn't grow in his own backyard. Um that eventually became um the city and ended up acquiring the property and then it became Nikki Park for Eugene Nikki, someone else who has been a a strong person in developing our city as it is today. And as I said at the very beginning, this is a a once-in-a-lifetime tenure of your time here on city council because Innovation Hills was already started when I joined city council. David Blair and I joined at the same time and so it was already in place. Mr. Carlock and Miss Newbower joined um shortly thereafter and now we have Mr. Lindberg, Miss Manino and Mr. Skeleie. And so this is your first time and maybe only time to build a park that will be a legacy um in our city and for our kids. It's also a lot of money. Um so I'm there's a part of me that's very happy to see that this finally coming to fruition. All the different community events you talked about that we've had with residents. I I think myself and Ms. Newower have been at most if not all of them. I remember telling people to go to Van Husa Museum and put their dots and I'd go around say don't put it on the dog park, put it over here, avoid the

pool and do this and um so talking to the neighbors about the different options that they had in our parks, whether it be Newiki Park or Spencer or Bloomer or Bordon on the park development that we were going to do. But you have done a fabulous job in getting us to where we are today. I know I talked to Dennis um probably last year I used to say where is there water in Noiki Park? There is no water in Newiki Park. How can you talk about a water feature in New Wiki Park? And um I had him set up a walk through New Wiki Park when it was dry, when there was no rain for days or weeks prior back like end of July, early August last I think it was like August 9th somewhere in there last year to make sure I was like I'm not going to find any water here. Um but you did give me a lesson on what is a wetland and how a wetland doesn't always necessarily have water on the surface, but it's the vegetation that grows there. And so the team has been done an excellent job in being able to promote the different facets of our park. Um I know I had asked a number of questions before this and so um clerk Scott, I'm going to ask that my email be part of the record for today's meeting so I don't take up more time from council itself. But one of those answers was Mr. Elbert has sends us a monthly report on what's going on with the parks. I've saved them. I must say I don't always read them. So now I will read those so that I can see the construction work because if you're going to have a a book that big, I want to know um what's happening and that the timeline is being adhered to. So

and yeah, as we mentioned, I'll I'll call out since this is such a big project, we'll have a separate separate thing. So you don't have to read the rest of it. You can just read the I should read all of it if I'm going to you can just read the and a lot of its operations and not projects certainly. Um but it is yeah on the first page or two and we'll highlight the new wiki status um going forward a little bit. We we may we may ask the mayor to bring you in here just to see the team if we can talk about our our uh brownfield grant. We can also talk about spending $15 million on a park. So, um, with that, I have other comments and questions, but I will, um, turn it over to council right now. And first up is Miss Newower.

Thank you, Vice President Mongioli. Um, yes, she's correct. I I think I've come to all of the public meetings and the other meetings. And one of the things that I want to say is thank you so much for being willing to pivot and make adjustments based on the public feedback. And also you came into planning commission as a as a developer and you were treated the same as any other developer which is always not always um warm and fuzzy. And you took all of our recommendations and made those changes as well. And so I want to thank you for that. I understand that there's a lot of trees being removed, but I do want to stress that more trees are being planted than are being removed, which is not usually what developers do. They usually try to just get out of it by paying into the tree fund. And you're doing better than a lot of the developers are doing when they come in front of planning commission. So for that, I want to say thank you. I also want to say it's an honor to be part of a council that will create if it passes that has the ability to create something that's going to last for years and years and years and years for our kids. Um Rochester Hills is known for their parks. I think the mayor calls us the Disneyland of Disney World of Parks. Um, and I can tell you that my kids are on sports teams in Rochester Hills and kids from other counties, Mcome County, Wayne County, they come from everywhere to visit our parks. So, um, it's not only a benefit to our community, it's a benefit to the kids as a whole. And, um, I just want to thank you for putting the effort into developing it. And it's going to look beautiful. Right now, it doesn't really look like anything other than overgrown grass from the road. Um, and I'm sure Mr. Noiki would be very happy that something in his name um is gonna end up

looking like this. So, and his family um which we've heard from and um are in full support of this. So, thank you for that. Are you uh Okay. So, it's been moved by Mrs. Newower, seconded by Mr. Blair. Um, next up is Mr. Mr. Lindberg.

Uh, thank you very much, Vice President Mioli. When I was uh looking through the packet for tonight, I was going through the information and I saw and I said, "Wow, that's a lot of money, a lot of residents tax money." Um, I was happy to see that the states uh is going to be contributing some to the cost as well. and I said, I need to see this park for myself in its current state. So, yesterday I pulled myself away from watching the Masters. And uh it was a beautiful day outside. And as I was driving uh across the city to the park, I noticed there were a lot of people walking outside and came out of uh their homes to enjoy the beautiful weather. And uh as I got closer to the park, I saw even more people along Adams and whatnot uh walking around, but they were not walking inside a Nobi Park. And uh I stopped, I pulled in, I parked in the uh in the small parking lot area and I took myself on a self-guided tour of the park or I attempted to. Um there were nice paths cut out and whatnot. And um there were definitely some low-lying areas where there was some definitely some water there. And I also noticed that there were some wood planks in the lowlying areas there to attempt to make it easier to to cross those areas. I wish I had uh worn shoes that I didn't like so much because they did get a little wet and I wish I had brought my hiking sticks. But uh I noticed the topography and the trees and the natural beauty of the land unimproved. And I said, "Wow, the people in this part of the city, they don't have beautiful parks like over in the south and in the east side of the city. They need a beautiful park to go visit when they're walking around like they are today. So, um, that all being said, I I I think this park is necessary. It is a, uh, good use of the taxpayers's money and, uh, I will be supporting this measure tonight. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Lindberg. Next up is Mr. Skelece.

Uh, thank you, Vice President Mongi. Um, my question is this. I mean, I'm new to the council here. Not a great numbers guy, so you're going to have to help me out here. But like, when we first brought this up, 14.5 million is the number that stuck in my brain for some reason. But now we're at 19 million. And that's a big jump. And I know we got the grants and everything else, but my biggest concern is what are the residents going to say about this? I mean, yeah, some of them will love the park. Some of them have dogs, but David's a cat lover, so I don't, you know, that's what are you going to do about that? I I guess my thing is that's a lot of money. And are we going to run into a situation where once this project gets rolling, you're going to be coming back to ask for more, or am I missing something?

Um, I 100% agree that it is it is a lot. And um you know that 14.5 number sticks in your head because that was just the parks portion and um but I understand how that that number sticks in your head. Um and it is expensive. Um as to will we be coming back um for any items in this construction? Yeah. Um we can't with a bid. Okay. Um like we can't start anything else in this project if if and how to explain it purchasing explains it is a bid is a bid is a bid is that you're locked in. Okay,

this is what we're doing. If some reason we came up with uh you know the greatest water fountain in the world that we wanted to put at the park, we can't do anything about it. we would have to get an estimate, come back to council um before um you know before we could even fathom moving forward with anything and then we'd have to get an estimate from different construction companies. We couldn't just tack it on to here. Um what may change and it would be within the contingency is that the materials will go up and down um based on what they're actually using and you know this is what our our professional services are here for and the in the weekly um you know process and making sure in fact even if you wanted to talk a little bit how you keep the contractors sort of on on task for a minute on that side would be great.

Sure. So um we have a proposal in front of you tonight to manage the project for the parks and in many regards the facilities group as well. So we have inspectors and um onfield staff that are on this project every day all day managing what the contractors doing doing all the quality control and essentially making sure that what's in the drawings is what's built in the field. So we manage the budget as well or I shouldn't say manage but we oversee and and keep tabs on the budgets every week. So nothing changes without um all of us being a part of that conversation and nothing gets brought forward that would be new unless it was groundbreaking or earthshattering.

So Ken would be getting reports from you saying we are on target. We haven't gone over budget and then Ken's going to come back to us and

update you in the monthly report that's going to be yellow and highlighted. Um yeah, um you know it it'll be called out there again and you know this if approved tonight this is the work is not done right in many cases just getting this is this is weekly and bi-weekly meetings for the next year and a half with the the consultants out in the field. It's them um both um both Noak and FRA and the architects, you know, being out there and inspecting regularly. The other portion that you see tonight is the contract with A3C to ask for more inspections of of the building side to make sure that we're we're on track. So, yeah, I don't know if that answers adequately where Okay. Yeah. Um Okay. Like for instance, like the crushed limestone,

I mean, that's going to have to be replaced and updated. I mean, I know crust limestone not going to stay in place. You have to constantly maintain it. I mean, so that that's another cost. Um, like is this is there going to be an entry fee to this park? I mean, maybe I missed this. So, um um on on that um administration hasn't solidified 100% the recommendation, but you'll see that in budget, but we're leaning towards no. This is a community park. Okay. Um you know, it isn't a regional park. Um there it's meant to serve the neighborhoods. is not meant to serve the region and there the therefore the cost recovery model is different. Okay.

And so but yes, are there ongoing maintenance costs? There absolutely are and and you'll you'll see some of that. Um you know, the rough estimate is about $300,000 including staffing um on a yearly basis for this. You'll see that in the budget requests on that and that's consistent with our other parks. Can we have a grounds maintenance division that has a pile of mulch um tons and tons of mulch and has you know purchases yearly tons of of gravel and a variety of things. So we you know that is factored in um to the to the request going forward. Okay.

Um and then just what is the cost per tree? You're you're planting how many 650 trees. So like what's the cost of these trees? Um, it varies by species. I'm going to give you a number and it's going to be wrong, so I've got to look it up unless somebody um um smarter than me can remember. Yeah, there's there's different size categories. Um, but if you're talking about a standard 2-in caliper tree, you're probably in that $500 to $600 per tree. Okay, I concur.

Okay. Now, it varies looking at the price list, you know, and I'm probably looking at the wrong contractor, but I um some of them vary from $500 to $700 depending on the type of tree.

I mean, I I just want to make it clear I we moved to Rochester Hill for the first the schools. Next was parks and the trails. I mean, they are I mean, they're outstanding. I mean, we use them all the time. I mean, I want to see this happen, but I don't want to get bit by it later on either. So, I mean, I I think it's a great idea. I mean, and what I had another question, too, and I'm sorry I'm taking up so much time here, but like the dog portion of this, are you going to have like two separate like big dog corral, little dog corral, or is it going to be

um Yeah, I think they're separate, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we we you know the separate areas have different corrals for the separate entrances. I think they even have their own there's a separate area that you can go to off the dog park to wash off your dog and if I you know again no soap not a fancy you know manicure or anything like that. Um but I believe even they have two separate areas. I don't remember for sure on that but yeah so we've yeah we've separated that out pretty pretty. I'm just asking because I know larger dogs sometimes are more aggressive to little dogs and that's again the last thing we want to have happen there. So, but thank you. I had a lot of questions and you answered them. So, I appreciate Oh, sure. That's what we're here for. Absolutely.

Thank you.

And Mr. Kelsey, don't worry about the time because I did warn the staff that as this is a once in a tenure time for us that we wanted time to discuss and ask questions because we are the ones that are accountable to the community for spending this much of their tax dollars and we want to be able to answer them. So, please, I want everyone on council as well as the community to feel comfortable contacting the staff or the mayor's office and asking questions about what's happening with the project um if they think of something later to follow up and ask those questions because the the more information we have, the better we can be as an advocate to the community for the work that we're doing. So ask your questions away as the person who is known for asking as many questions as I do. Ask them. I'm gladly give up that crown to anyone else on the on the table. Um I just want before I go to the next question, the Mr. Scelsey had asked about you know cost overruns and right now the picture you showed us it's just vegetation. There's nothing that's done, you know, driving pilings into the ground to make sure that the building that we're going to put up there is in stable soil and not that we have to go down 20 feet below a frost line in order to put pilings in to create a building. These are all things that are rather unknown to us at this time when you start the construction um that could end up costing us more money. Is it within that this 151 $119 million that we're approving for tonight? If we if we find out that you have to spend an extra x amount of dollars to put in the a building or put in the playground or drive pilings for the dog

park fencing that some other part of the park is not going to be done until that part is finished. and not that you're going to come back to us as some of these other nice agenda items come and say, "Oh, we're asking for an extension or asking for an addition of x amount of dollars." So, how do we make sure we're not going to over that the once we start breaking ground, it's going to stay in the budget?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean if if to address your specific questions, I mean, we did quite a bit of due diligence up front, and I don't want to speak for Ed's building design, but there was quite a geological uh investigation up front to understand the underlying soils out there, and surprisingly, the soils underneath the ground aren't as bad as we even envisioned out of the gate. So, um, yeah, there are costs for foundation design. There are costs for helical pier installations for the boardwalks that you see out there. Um, we've built in a small amount of factor of safety in that. So, um, I don't anticipate that being an issue, but I understand that's just an example that you're you're giving us. So, I mean, that's why we have to watch the budget closely from start to finish so that

stay in there. something comes up that's completely unexpected, we have the chance to cut back on something else. Okay. So, you need our monthly report. AB:

Absolutely. And, you know, we've worked with Noak and Fra for um well, many years now on on all of our really almost all of our parking lot projects. And um we are reliably um outside the contingency like you know um I think there's one project where we went to contingency in Bloomer because of surprise drainage issues or what have you um a bit on that that the eagle required us to do and redo four times but um we have a good working relationship with them and they understand our philosophy of of you know not going into the contingency unless we absolutely have to and pushing the contractor to stay out of that. So

great. Thank you, Mr. Blair. You're up next.

Thank you, Vice President Mongioli. Ken Dennis, thank you for all the effort that you've put into this. I can only imagine how much work it's been and how much work lies ahead. So, we know you can do it. We've seen you do it. So, we're super excited. Um to follow up on Councilwoman Mongioli's um comments, I I too am just super proud to be able to support this. You know, uh as she mentioned, Innovation Hills was kind of kind of in the works, but you know, not really started, but this is going to be really the first park that, you know, I've seen through uh fruition. And it's going to be a legacy piece. It's going to be something that I look back on and it's something that's got a lot of eyes on it. I can tell you knocking thousands of doors and talking to literally hundreds and hundreds of residents, they're all super excited. And by the way, they all have really loud, large dogs, too. So, they're just going to they're just going to love it. Those are the homes that I'm just like, "Okay, I'm just going to leave my I'm just going to leave my my door hanger as the dog chases me away." But to Mr. Scelsey's concerns, I wanted to speak to those as well. the the the cost. Um I learned something about six years ago. Um and it's Rochester Hills likes to get it right the first time. You know, if uh we're going to put this park up and we could do it for a little bit less by sacrificing what would probably be the the icing on the cake, the cool stuff. That's really not in our residents best interests. Um because the cool stuff is always the first stuff to go, right? And the other thing I learned was not to be afraid to I'm going to use a British expression here to gild the lily on something that really builds residents experiences and memories in the city, right? And these can be things

like the mural that we authorized earlier. It could be the entrance to the playground in Innovation Hills or the rope bridge. It could be countless examples up and down Auburn Road of things that we've done to make that experience just a little bit better and a little bit beyond what our peers in other municipalities might have felt necessary. So, you know, these things really do define the experience of our residents, which is why I'm really pleased that we were able to find those additional funding sources and that we weren't pulling things out of the project like that mound, which I think is going to be an absolutely gorgeous place to just sit and veg out and look at the beautiful surroundings. I can't wait for that. Um, it's my my my notes are just a little bit chicken scratchy. I was trying to keep up, but um I do want to get a little bit more information on when we will get the details on that dog park. When will that start to be released? Some of the logistics about it, the costs, the where you go to get the license, when registration will be open. Those are going to be the questions that we start getting as soon as shovels hit the ground. So, can you tell me when that information will be start to to get fed to us?

Um, I can I can give you some general Yeah, general information. Um, you know, of course, we we will, you know, that'll be a discussion through the through the budget process as well. Um and but again general um you know we're target the beginning of the year um possibly spring that that those passes will you know um potentially be available but we don't want to jump the gun we have to make sure that the fob system works that it's in all that and that might actually be May. Um so you know um I I can't give you a specific other than normally you know we we operate on like an annual cycle where every year beginning of the year reservations are available annual passes that type of thing and that will be the ongoing cycle for this too. It's hard to nail down entirely when you'll be able to get FOBs. Um, but we'll have information and price points and how it will work probably in the fall. Um, through working with council on the budget process and sort of the cost recovery um, expectations on this park that that will have some of that. I don't know if that gives you all the detail you're looking for or

No, it it does because we're going to we're going to get those questions right away. I had a 20inut conversation with an older gentleman who lived around the co around the corner that he wanted to book his anniversary with his wife. He wanted to put in the budget um the passes for his you know two dogs and we haven't even decided whether it would be per house or per dog or any any of that yet. He was so excited. So I understand I'm I'm experiencing that those questions as well.

What about um staffing Ken and Dennis? Um, what's this going to look like from a human resources standpoint? Will we have people rotating in or team members rotated in from other parks? Will they be assigned directly to this one? Will that be new hires, part- timerrs?

Yeah. And so that, you know, the short answer is that, you know, this is still going to be a heavily used park. It won't be, you know, 500,000 people or what have you. So, it's going to going to require a full-time ranger. um we have and and supporting supporting um seasonal staff essentially. And so that was included in that $300,000 that um Mr. Skeleie had asked about on the operating costs on a yearly basis, a rough estimate um on on that. The majority of that is is staff costs. There will be, you know, room rental setups on a on a regular basis. There will unfortunately be um interactions in the dog park that we need to take care of and incident reports to write up and sheriff to call and get an incident report and not not every minute, but it it's going to happen. And we're developing specialized training to essentially deescalate some of those those areas. So, we're looking at at a similar model to what we'd call um a bloomer park that has a full-time ranger and, you know, three to five, maybe six at some point um during the busy summer months um of of seasonal help.

And are we going we're not charging for parking at this park at this point? Um again, not 100%. um you know administration's basically settled on the recommendation to through the budget process is going to be no but we're also going to be going other the over the other costs you know recovery expectations that we're expecting from that park and that's ultimately going to be up to city council to decide but our you know our recommendation at this point before we're in the budget is leaning towards no because it is a community park not a not a regional park and it's meant to serve neighborhoods especially if you're doing elections there you'd have to do parking for the elections anyway. So,

and that was one of the challenges and yeah and if you have essentially a membership feeish type of thing which we would were having for the dog park then do you charge parking on top of that? There was you know there there were many challenges with with parking at this park. Does is there a relationship between like the membership to the dog park and the parks pass? like is there a parks pass plus that gives you the dog park or is that maybe um it's some I again we don't um that's something we've rattled around but we don't have anything locked in yet. I could see that really driving uh if we just said, "Oh, it's part of the parks pass." I could see that really driving sales of that. But

it could. Yeah. But like as someone pointed out, there are 50% are dog owners and 50% are cat owners. So um you know, we have to uh

Yeah. Well, the 50% that own cats are, you know, much better. But that's that's just me. Um I really appreciate all the answers, Ken and Dennis, I wish you guys the very best of luck. It sounds like we've got the right talent on board. And to any of the residents or fellow council members that are looking at the shock of the the cost, I mean, I would just say remember that, you know, this is stuff that's visible to our residents. This is not, you know, a roadway. It's not, you know, some HVAC system on the roof or a PRV valve buried underneath, you know, some street. This is money that's going directly into resident experiences. So, I trust you guys are going to deliver a great product and I hope you keep us posted and I can't wait to see it on the other side. Back to you. Thank you, Mr. Um, Miss Manino.

Uh, yes. Thank you, Vice President Manioli. Um, just want to say you guys, thank you for bringing these pictures today. Looks looks really good on the schematics that you brought in and thank you, Ken, for taking me on the tour the other day. So, I've walked the park. Um, got the pictures, everything looks good. My question to you maybe to this gentleman over here is more on the contractor and the um I guess you know progressive payments andor pay for performance. I'm concerned about demonstrating that what they're putting in, especially on the drainage issues because it's an extremely wet piece of property and we're going in there and doing a lot of excavation, a lot of different elevation changes, creating ponds and ensuring that I'm trying to take maybe lessons learned from Innovation Hills where we have some, you know, drainage issues going on over there. And I'd like I'd like to get some comment on that, where the protections are, how we're going to ensure that what they're doing is working and we're not flooding it out and those types of discussions so we don't have cost overruns.

Yeah, maybe I can just touch on I mean we we're investing in this project um a tremendous amount in under drain. So all of the dog park um is under line with drainage tiles to support that. The playground is got quite a drainage system included in it. Um, we are feeding all a lot of that drainage to the center focal pond which you can see in the schematic on the screen. There's also a detention facility that's secondary to that to handle any of the auxiliary runoff from that area or other parking areas. Um, but at the end of the day, this is going to be a net zero um discharge site. So, um we don't anticipate um discharging offsite at all for this one. So, it's going to be contained on site. And again, that is our job in the field to make sure that all of that under drain, the piping is all installed correctly so that really it performs as we expected to.

Okay. And I'd just like to add to that that um Noak and Fra wasn't involved in the in the in the Innovation Hills um project originally and that specific issue that you're talking about. That was a phase project and and so we were adding things at the same time and and there was quite a bit of budget stress on on that one. Um and um so we actually consciously made the decision not to go with the recommended drainage because we were going to be overbudget on the parking lot at that point. I that was my decision a long time ago. We're trying not to do that again. And so that's why you see the drainage project you're talking about coming back is is that you know um yeah we should have did it then.

Yeah. No, I mean don't take it's not I'm just trying to understand what this situation is and uh you know so that we can avoid any future issues. So no, I appreciate the response. That's good. I I don't have any further questions. It looks good. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Manino. Mr. Scelsey, um I know there just um not on the park property, but there are wetlands. I mean, is did Eagle come in and because you're talking about drainage and I'm wondering is that drainage going to head towards those wetlands? Are they going to be affected at all? Um,

I'll I'll give the overview and and and and Mr. Sutton can get into the weeds if if if you need more, but uh essentially there's basically two classifications of wetlands on the property. Again, this was reviewed by planning commission in detail, too. And um the ones to the north that go on to the other property um are actually eagle regulated or state regulated wetlands because they're close to that stream and within I forget the exact 200 f feet or what have you of a a moving drainage stream they become regulated by eagle wetlands. So the ones to the north are are eagle regulated. And if you notice in the design details that we stayed 100% out of away from um you know we even tightened up the fencing um and the dog park and lost I don't know a tenth of an acre um to to to move the dog park away from that area um a little bit. The rest of the wetlands are city regulated wetlands which um allows a little bit more flexibility. Um, we did come to this body asking for a wetland permit a while ago on that because of the boardwalks and some of the things that we're doing in the city regulated wetlands. So, um, I don't know if you have anything to add.

Um, just to add that Eagle was on this site, um, and did their own assessment secondary to the city's review and concurred with all of the the current regulated and non-regulated wetlands. And then are we going to be offering um because I know there's buildings there and the offices if people show up and they don't have a license for their dog, would they be able to purchase one there? Is that going to be a possibility?

I don't want to commit to that yet. Again, we're still working out um you know, the process as it's set up right now is through the office just like our annual passes. And it's a great touch with with residents that maybe don't come into the the city hall for anything else, but it but that's a little different if you want to, you know, go to the park there and and use the dog park. So, we're I I can't answer that directly. All I can say is it's under discussion and we're we're we're thinking about it. Okay. Thank you.

All right. So, before I go to the mayor, I have a couple of other follow-up questions for you. Um, we're approving on this resolution almost $16 million. That means I'm going to we've we've got a bucket of $16 million set up, but I'm not going to see you come back for the limestone or the top soil or the fencing. All those bids are now going to be done through this contract. um everything that you've seen before you is included in this contract. And so yes, is is the short answer. Um there's not going to be anything related to well all the line items that you see in this are are set. Again, purchasing she Lisa drilled this into my head. A bid is a bid is a bid. Um is that you know these are locked in and what you see is what you get. I can't I can't go in um easily and say, "Oh, I want a diamond fence instead of the typical ornamental fence on that without coming back to you on on that." So, I I don't know if that answers it directly. It's different than the other park projects that we've done. Most of the other park projects, at least like Innovation Hills, have been RFPs and so that allows some some movement on, you know, coming up with the creative ideas and working with the consultants. So, we we knew what we wanted here. We had the great public input. We had the great design team and it's quicker and more efficient to use a bid if you're confident in the design. And so, that's why we went this route.

So, Frank Rewald and Sons, they are not doing the bidding for us. We've already done it through our process here. Right. What what you have before you is is is the construction contract with that company. And so, um, if you say yes tonight, purchasing will issue a contract with them tomorrow and ask them to come pick it up. And they will take a month to get their bonds and do all that. And then they're going to start building exactly every, you know, eight pages of of line items that are in here. And and um, you know, our professionals and us are going to to keep them um on task.

Okay. Um, what percentage of the almost 16 million is like the fee that Frank Reelen Sons is keeping as their processing their their contracted obligation versus all the other stuff we're buying? Yeah, that's a difficult question. Um, and I can let Steve do it. I know, you know, mobilization costs are sometimes um called that, but we actually um you know, we actually locked in a mobilization cost across all the bids so that they couldn't play with that number. They had to do everything else. But Steve, I don't know if you have anything else you wanted to add.

Is your question how much is Frank Rewald adding or how much are they making on there? How what when I see 15,797,000 and I and somewhere I can go look and see all the individual bids that Miss Cumins has run and it's $14 million. Does that mean Frank Rewalden Sons is making $2 million? That's their cost for this. Not necessarily profit, but their their cost for doing this project. Yeah, as Ken said, um there's a team of subcontractors that are on their team that are handling many of the line items in the contract. I don't know that I could tell you what the Frank Rewald cost is, except to say that I would think probably in that 10 to 15% range would be a typical cost for a general contractor to oversee and manage the project. Um, and then if I'm looking at this, is it one check? Hey, I approved you for a million dollars today. I'm going to give you a check for a million dollars and you're good. I don't see you again. Or is it a monthly draw against that million dollars that we then pay in that way?

Are you are you talking about the um whether it be no process? So, everybody has or everybody has a little bit different billing process. um you know um these guys bill monthly um so and it's hourly based for the most part although I you know um on theirs whether they came up and did the inspection there's a certain fee for that especially with our architect side that's the contract that you have in front of you today is for 20 additional inspections on the architect side on the building so they're coming up on the next monthly budget or month budget invoice we see an invoice monthly that says oh we came three times at $2,000 each um we see a detailed invoice from from NOAK and FRA that lists we had these professionals at this rate, these professionals at this rate for our agreement for this many hours this month, that type of thing on on rewall. That's a more complicated process and this is, you know, where Steve can um they essentially put together and I'm going to put it on layman's terms and he's going to give you more detail. Um they essentially put together this is what we've worked on for the month. This is what we want to be paid for. This is how much the quantities are. this is the rate in the contract. It all adds up to this. We want this and then we they hand it to the engineers um who are out there regularly.

Well, and kind of kind of exactly layman's terms except that we control that process. So, we control the pay application preparation, not the contractor. So, we manage the contractor's work. We oversee it. We know what happens on a day-to-day basis. at the end of a a billing period or a month, we sum up all of the work from day one through 30 and we prepare those estimates. So that's part of our our task as well. So we man that's how we manage the budget to tell you the truth. Okay. So then we're like 30 to 60 days if we hit a

oh my gosh we have an unforeseen expenditure we can say all right now we need to readjust the budget and we're we can manage that within Yeah. I you know un unforeseen expenses if they have to do with something that's already contracted would go to contingency. If it's something new um it would have to come back to council. All right. So then Mr. Elbert, we're not allowing you to add any new scope to this project. I cannot on a bid.

You got Okay. Um and then we we can tell Mr. Snider he doesn't get any more money out of the saver account for this project. Okay. He's shaking his head no back there. All right, with that I'll turn it over to the mayor for final comments. That was a terrible turnover. Sorry, Vice President Mike. Okay. No, I'm good.

Uh, you know, I I just will mention because, uh, we have some amazing team members, many of them, uh, who watch. And Lisa Cumins just texted me and she says, "Please let them know that purchasing reviews and processes all changing orders." And, you know, mayor, nothing is going to get through me unless I'm okay with it. Four exclamation points. Um, I can hear her through the text. Um, you know, uh, council's questions are certainly appropriate and and, uh, many of them anticipated because we don't come to ask for this amount of money, uh, very often uh, and without a ton of work. As Ken said, this has been a labor of love for a very long time. And I want to thank him and Dennis for their leadership on this. this is uh and and many others on their team that have you know started crumpled up thrown started crumpled up thrown um revised as he said dozens and dozens of meetings ultimately to get to something better. I I love the confidence that they have that nothing will will change. Um uh I have experience that sometimes things do change. We certainly get the message from council that uh hopefully they change in a financially favorable way. Um but what I think Councilman Blair said well and I think many of you agree. We we've really hung our hat as a community on our park system. Uh it's on every time. It's on everything we do. When you hand out a business card in your duties as a council person, the back says innovative by nature. Both parts are equally important. That nature part is what Mr. Skeleie said he moved here for and many of us enjoy and it it's what separates us from our many of our neighbors is that we are really proud about directing people to the trails and to Innovation Hills and and uh and and saying I mean I love going to almost every class in in reading month

is March I did and saying have you been to Innovation Hills and you lose control of the room for three minutes because they all just start yelling and screaming and telling their story and you know you've created something And you know, when I said earlier that, you know, cities are forever, this is my favorite part of of this job. Ironically, today, as I'm sitting here, it was in this room 20 years ago today that I became mayor. And since then, I've taken probably only one I haven't taken this vote, but been a part of maybe one other vote that has me as excited as this one. That one being Innovation Hills, because this is the fun stuff that creates community. You you you look at the council that were, you know, seven different faces eight years ago and if they could have seen the number of proposals, graduation pictures, promosals, um family pictures for Christmas, uh just incredible moments. The first football toss, the first fish caught, the first ice, you know, lacing on skates and and just memories created. That's what makes community fun and what makes local government, I think, the best part of of of of government in general. And so when I see something like this and our team gets to be unleashed to create something that other communities only dream of because we have a conservative but generous council that says, "We trust you. We've seen what you've done in the past. Do that again. Don't get crazy, but do that again and deliver it to a different section of our town." that gives them the opportunity and and they really get to be the envy of most of their colleagues because they get to create again something really, you know, unique uh and something that will last forever. Um, you know, to think of just the ways that the park systems that we've created have have touched people is the best part of this job. And your vote tonight, and I like where this seems like is headed, is historic. you will be the

ones that will forever be able to say, you know, you launched this project, you launched this uh this dream, this idea, this this um new part of our community that will be here in 50, 75, 100 years from now. And so we uh sit excited to deliver this. We will do everything possible. We know the financial nature of this this council. It mimics the financial ma nature of the administration. Um, yes, this came in higher than we thought, but we we got a grant that covered 80% of it. And and as many of you know, we've been out privately fundraising and we hope to have some very good news on that because the community is also excited about this. And it's pretty fun to have go back to people that contributed to Innovation Hills and you say, "Would you like to?" And they say, "Yes, yeah, we don't even need to see the drawings. We love what you did there and we want to be a part of it again." And and I don't know how many other places in Michigan that that happens that individuals, not giant companies, individuals say, "I'm willing to write a a family check because we love what you've created there." And so to me, this stuff is personal. It's it's passionate. I get to work with incredible professionals. Mr. Sutton, thank you for for your team and your leadership. Um this is legacy stuff for this council. Uh, I know there were a lot of big votes tonight, but this is the one that I hope you'll remember uh whenever it is that uh that we hand retirement plaques to all of us, including myself. This is the one uh uh of maybe just a couple that will be the ones that you'll drive to uh for a long time and uh and be really proud of. And I just will say one one thing on the way out. Um while we will do uh all of this to deliver this uh in with absolute excellence, we will never ever ever have a cat park. I hate cats. I don't even really like people that keep cats. And so,

yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Blair. Your cats are not normal. Your cats are practically tigers. And Oscar is coming to the next meeting. You better lock up hills. This is uh this is an exciting moment. Council, thank you for your deep deliberation on this. Thank you for challenging our team to deliver the best parks system in uh in Michigan by far and I think uh in many states around us. And we won't let you down. Great. Thank you very much, Mr. Mr. Mayor, I'm I'm looking forward to a cornerstone in the community building with all of our names on it. So this way $500,000. It's not in the budget. I mean, we have to stay in the budget. It's not in the budget. Huh. At least I'll I'll give you a piece of cardboard. We'll frame it and tack it to the wall.

It's not in the budget. Um, but being able to tell our residents this is a no tax increase park, that it is budgeted, that we're not going to them for a millillage to pay for this, that it's coming from the money that they have entrusted to us. And so, thank you very much all of you. Um, with that, we have a motion by Ms. Newower, seconded by Mr. Blair for uh the resolution that says that the Rochester Hill City Council hereby authorizes a project budget for general contractor services for the construction and development of Nikki Park and other vendors as necessary to complete the project to Frank Rewald and Sons Rochester Michigan and other vendors as necessary in the amount not to exceed $15,797,580. $8.70 and further authorizes the mayor to execute an agreement on behalf of the city. Further resolved that the city's acceptance of the proposal and approval of the award of a contract shall be contingent and conditioned upon the party's entry into an execution of a written agreement acceptable to the city. All in favor say I.

I. I. Anyone opposed? I didn't think so. Congratulations. We now have $16 million for a park. We appreciate the trust and the support that council has has put into the the system over time as well. And um yeah, it's hard to say in words, but I know we have two more items, too.

Yes, it is. But hopefully we've asked all those questions during that portion, that hour and 20 minutes, because I do keep track on how long these things take. Um, so we are now on to agenda topic 2026-0144 request for purchase authorization parks blanket purchase order contract for construction engineering services for the construction and development of Noiki Park in the amount not to exceed $1,140,180 to Noak and Frost Engineers Pontiac Michigan. I have a motion by Mrs. Newower. Do I have a second by Mr. Blair? I see no discussion on this topic. All in favor say I. I.

Anyone opposed. That motion passes. Again, congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you. We're looking forward to hearing from you at future meetings or as part of the monthly report from Mr. Elbert. Which takes us to con our agenda topic 2025-000054 request for purchase authorization parks increase to the contract blanket purchase order to provide architectural and engineering services for the newiki park development in the amount of $19,140 for a new not to exceed amount of $275,645,000 A3C collaborative architecture Ann Arbor Michigan. Mr. Albert.

Um, yes. So, this is um the the quiet compatriate here um and Mr. Ed Alonszo who who actually designed the buildings and and the structures and so we and working with our building department who's still graciously still here in the back just in case um you know determined that we needed more inspection services from them just to make sure that we're on track for the costs and the right things in the building. So that's what this is for. And we're not going to see because Mrs. Cumins is listening. We're not going to see any other requests for increases to an amount new not to exceed amount. Right.

That's my question. Other than that, I'm going to say I've got a motion by Mrs. Newbower. I've got a second by M from Mr. um Lindberg. I see no discussion from council. All in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? And that motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Um, your support is really what makes this community and and and brings those people in to the to the park system and so I appreciate and as our team does, I appreciate your um your support all of you and and in the past as well, but we're very excited to get going on this. So, thank you very much.

Very excited to see it. We'll start uh competing with Innovation Hills for the best park in the city. So, um, with that, that takes us to any other business. I am not aware of any other business. Our next meeting is Monday, April 27th at 7 p.m. here in the auditorium. I have a motion from Mrs. Newower, seconded by Mrs. Manino, to adjourn our meeting at 10:19 10:24. All in favor say I. I. Anyone opposed? Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you to the community and we will see you here in two weeks.