City Council - Special Meeting

You're not.

Look, you want some place nice for your vacation? Up in UP. We went slamming.

You want me to? I mean, have we done it? I like that term. Yeah.

Well, we've got a guy who sets me on wheels. He brings his trailer and sets it up for us. And we occupy it for six days. Does he come and cook for you every night, too? No, no, no. We usually have two other trailers with us. Nice chain. I can put them on.

Good stuff.

Good evening. The mayor is on his way, but the city manager has asked that I begin this meeting as mayor pro tem. So I call the meeting to order at 6 p.m. and ask that everyone stand for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Now I'd ask that the city clerk please call roll.

Demore. Present. Wilmot.

Present.

Nachtraub.

Present.

Walker. Present. Murphy is not here yet. Smith.

Here.

Newman. Cronberg.

Present.

Grittian.

Detmer. Moss.

Present.

Hall.

Watson.

Present. Okay. Paul won't be able to come tonight.

So you guys don't have a quorum right now with planning commission. It doesn't look like one, two, three, four, right? You need five. Sorry. Oh, because you got moved to the other line. Sorry, Max. Breed.

Present.

One, two, three, four, five. Yeah, you guys are good. And if anyone comes, I'll just make it arriving whenever that good.

All right. Thank you. We have a quorum. So now we'll move to new business city manager horn.

Thank you.

Oh, sorry about dinner peers. Our pizza is running a little late, but we'll Certainly, this is intended to be very informal. So as we get food delivered, certainly feel free to get up, get some food, get some drinks, go to the restroom. Certainly, we appreciate your time this evening. If you can give us 15 minutes, great. If you can stay the whole time, that's perfect as well. These things are sometimes easier to do when it's rainy, nasty weather versus what we get to look at tonight. So again, appreciate your investment of your time this evening as we kind of walk through this annual process, looking at kind of forecasting out the next six years of what projects may be on the horizon. you know, over the next six years. A capital improvement plan is a planning and fiscal management tool. And basically it is a, again, it's a plan. It doesn't foresee ice storms. It doesn't foresee significant winter storms that come through when they drop 26 inches in a 24 hour period. It doesn't anticipate flooding conditions. So this has to be something that is adaptable. And certainly when we have things that pop up, we'll come back to city council and say, this was not foreseen. We need additional resources to... address a ice storm event where we had to pay $1.2 million to help our community clean up. We didn't obviously have that in the capital budget. So this is a planning tool. It allows us to kind of put thoughts together on what we need, what we think we need over the next six years based on infrastructure, based on our needs as we go forward. Really, the Act 33 of 2008, the Michigan Planning Enabling Act, gives kind of the regulatory authority for putting this planning tool together. It helps us coordinate the location, timing, and financing of capital improvements over, again, a multi-year period, in our case, a six-year period. These items are typically major, non-reoccurring physical expenditures, such as land, buildings, public infrastructure, and equipment. CIP assists in implementation of strategic planning efforts and supports priorities within the Master Plan. As many of you recall, the 2021 Livable Petoskey Master Plan has some key components looking at community, environmental stewardship, the built environment, local economy, and land use and zoning. Similarly, the city council has adopted their own action plan looking at parks and public spaces, infrastructure, economic development, downtown development, sustainability, affordable housing, and community engagement. So as we go through this process, hopefully these projects will check one of those boxes because as a staff, we really are honed in on these action items within the master plan, within the action plan that city council has set forward. to the point where our software, which this is our second year of using the software platform, it's called Planet. It's been a great tool for us. We've, over the last many years, we've seemed like we duplicate entries in our program, which is very frustrating. Two years ago, we implemented this software. I think it's been a nice add for our staff, for Sarah and I to kind of put everything together as staff puts their items together. And one of the items within our software is a dropdown menu. And as a director, department director, you have to select which master plan priority does this capital improvement item meet. So it really focuses, again, our efforts to drill back to the master plan process. So capital expenditures, our definition is greater than three years useful life, greater than 25,000 project costs, or greater than 10,000 equipment, vehicle, or material cost. So just some overview, the six year capital improvement plan from an expenditure standpoint is 67.7 million. 12.5 million is in the 2027 capital budget. And just as another reminder, this plan in and of itself does not appropriate any money. When we put together the operating budget, that's where we'll allocate resources to really address the first year of this plan. So this is a great tool and it's a very important tool, but it doesn't authorize or allocate resources. So as soon as this is adopted, staff still can't go out and do these projects. It's when we adopt the actual operating budget that we know which items are gonna remain in this plan. And so we know how to plan accordingly. So in the general fund capital, we're just under a million dollars currently, $978,500. We are planning for $1.3 million in grants or other outside revenue sources in 2027. The Adkins Road project, that is a Little Traverse Bay Band project. If we're provided the grant funds, we'll certainly do that project. If for whatever reason, those grant funds don't materialize, that project will be kicked down the road. Marina Pier B electrical upgrade has 400,000 for grants. We've submitted for a public safety grant to replace some of our self-contained breathing apparatuses, which we'll talk about in a little bit, just over $460,000 grant for that. And then $30,000, we're hoping to get some funds to help us move forward the non-motorized transportation plan. So just some schedule. We submitted these worksheets out to staff on June 11th. We gave them about just over six weeks or so to edit the worksheets. I really tried to encourage them to also get their staff, their individual staffs engaged. provide that feedback to them so they know kind of where to prioritize things. To me, those frontline workers are the best resources that we have to help us kind of categorize where we should be going over this next six year period. So we did publish this proposed to CIP electronically since August 11th. We have a dedicated email address for folks to submit review and comments. So when we get to the end of this process and we come to city council, we'll kind of give a report on how many public comments we've received based on this process. So tonight is our combined City Council Planning Commission review. On September 16th, Planning Commission will review and make a recommendation at their regular meeting in September, followed by City Council review and potential approval at their meeting in September, September 21st. This likely is not something you're going to be able to read on the screen, but hopefully in front of you, you can kind of see the breakdown. This looks at the entire six year period in a little bit greater detail. One of the things we did a little differently this year is we pulled out marina projects and it's under marina restricted. That's still the general fund, but there's projects within the marina that stay in that marina. Certainly the Marina and Magnus Park are net gains to the general fund. While they're expensive things to operate, we generate significant revenue at both of those locations. So that's a gain to the general fund for both of those areas. um but this kind of gives you the breakdown of where um projects are being allocated and what percent of the the entire capital improvement plan is going where still and we'll talk about this one of the big items we're not quite sure how we're going to maneuver yet but we need to is magnus park upgrades it's got we have significant um infrastructure needs there it's getting to the point where it's getting a little dated. It's a wonderful facility. It's well utilized really from, from April to October. But we get, we have a number of again, infrastructure needs, water, sewer, IT issues with wireless internet. You would think folks when they come up here would want to get out of their camper and enjoy the surroundings, but we get a lot of calls that people, my wireless isn't working or your internet's down. I'm like, get out of your camper and walk around a little bit. But some people are here, they're working actually from their camper and they need obviously internet access to be able to do what they do. Another way to break down 2027 expenditures, a little bit different way. Again, we'll kind of slide through these very quickly. One of the things I've asked staff to do as they put together their respective capital improvement plans is they will come up and talk about their individual projects. And again, this is very informal. interrupt while we're going through these. You can wait and hold your questions to the end of that department's projects. This is, again, very, very informal. I know pizza just arrived, so feel free to get up in this transition. Kendall's going to come up and talk a little bit about buildings and grounds out of the general fund. So maybe take a couple minutes if you want and go get some pizza, some drinks, and we'll get started here in two minutes.

Go ahead, Tina.

I just have a question on the page you just passed. And that's the not that one, the one before, before, I'm sorry, keep going back. Yep, there you go. You under 2028 2029, you've got $2 million each year under a bond.

Yep. That's where I was saying, we don't really have this honed in yet. This is for Magnus park. There's going to be significant level of investment that'll be required for Magnus park infrastructure. We're doing, I think we're done. Well, we're not quite done with master planning there yet, but we've, we've done some master planning efforts there to kind of reimagine that space. Um, And so it's going to be a significant cost. We do generate again, revenue there that could pay debt service, you know, over the course of whatever many years we decide to do this, but that was just, it's kind of a placeholder for now. Cause we not sure if it'll be a bond or if it'll be what exactly it'll be yet. But for now it's just under the bond category.

Quickly. I'm, confirming at least now there's no cash reserve spending anticipated or proposed? That's right, yeah. Thank you.

Quick follow-up question. You talked a lot about the Living Petoskey master plan. Is that reflected anywhere in the current six-year projections?

to do an update? It is not. That might be something we try to maneuver in, whether it's contractual services and the operating budget to address that update, whether it's something And I wasn't here when we did the 2021 version. Was that all done in-house or was there a consultant involved?

It was done in-house.

Okay, in-house. So I'm not sure the direction where Planning Commission wants to go with that update. If it's maybe time to get some assistance with a consultant or if we want to do that in-house, that's certainly fine as well. But likely we're going to have to address that in the operating budget and put some resources in there to do that update.

Pizza and go. Pizza brain.

You can either advance with the arrows. Have a beautiful day today.

I mean, it was warm if you were in the sun. Okay.

I'll do it now. Gotcha. Okay. That screwed me up. Really good. Yeah.

I still have to be able to put notes and where I can.

I'm going to join you for the day. I'm going to join you for the day. I'm going to join you for the day.

I'm going to join you for the day.

You know, you're down the ways.

I got your requests are shooing Sarah. Yes, today. Yes, absolutely. Sorry, I'm gonna do chime in. We have

Whatever you need for voting, we will deliver. Whatever you need. Anything else you want to say? I just want to make sure there was something. It could happen.

It's happened before. Don't mess with me.

Don't even mess with me.

Okay. Now, I'll get mine after. Probably wouldn't be very polite to try to eat in tongues. I mean, I've done it, but. So next year for the capital improvement plan, I'm also not only Parks and Recreation, but I'm in charge of the buildings, this building, two fire stations, Director Carr and I worked together to come up with priorities for the public safety. If you recall, a few years ago, we did the vehicle extraction improvement in both of this public safety building and the Bay Harbor one. Those really were a great investment. I mean, to protect the health of our firefighters, as well as protect the integrity of the inside of our bays. You know, over the course of years that the exhaust debris, if you will, kind of settles on the floor. So this is kind of the next step for those bays to help provide for a safer surface for our firefighters. We will address any cracks and any chips that are currently in the uh, in the bays. Uh, and again, I think it's a, it's a, it's a good investment of our time for our public safety, um, our public safety officers and our firefighters to, to be able to have a safer, uh, response path to the, to the equipment director cars or anything else that, that I, uh, that's one thing that the quote is for both stations.

And I think you hit all the important parts on it. The longer we kind of prolong this, the worse pitting and things like that were pointed out to me when they came to the inspections and whatnot. And price was 53,000 last year.

So we'll extend out onto the pad as well.

No, this will all remain indoors. And also the quo pad, red marking for where the trucks would stop so it makes sense.

Thank you. So we've made some great investments with our lease and our fire, with garage doors, with trying to keep our facilities modern and safe for our officers. City Hall furniture updates. Pretty obvious one. A lot of our furniture is original, and we host more and more meetings up here with outside groups. Maybe not so much this room, but our community room and some of our meeting rooms. So we'd like to start transitioning into getting tables that are more efficient, more easy to move, lighter, and more Chairs with chairs that are a lot more ergonomic and and more comfortable. So this is an example of not an example, but this is a picture of the floor next door in the 45 one fire station. You can see a lot of the residual. from when we didn't have the vehicle extraction and a lot of the chemicals that are around the floor, you can see some of the cracks and some of the wear and tear. So we will looking forward to cleaning that up. So for 2028, again,

Just a real quick question on the form of the process. I'm following the numbers on the report you gave us for the equipment. It says 27, 30,000 total projects, 60,000. What does that, or it says 90,000. What does that mean? What's the 90?

Well, the 90,000 is the total for the fire for the furniture updates and the fire station epoxy. Okay. Oh, so those are those two projects.

The only thing that's funded is what's the 30, what's it mean the funding source then for 30? The general fund. So the other 60 is just not anything. General fund.

It's a gift.

Okay, I got you now.

2028, what we're planning on doing is we really need to start focusing on our buildings. On the infrastructure itself, these are the original windows, and both in this building and in the East Lake Street Fire Station. I do have some pictures that will show to you that there's deterioration, there is separation in the panes, and there's water wear. So we need to start taking a look at enhancing and improving those aspects of the building as well. In this room, this building rather, Public Safety does a lot of training and certainly this is their hub for their officers to do their reporting. And the training room needs some Wi-Fi, some technology upgrades. We're bringing in the state police, and we're bringing in people from other agencies to go through some training. Right now, we have a screen that comes out of the roof. And while it works, I think we should consider having something a little bit more modern. And our locker rooms downstairs for our public safety officers are in dire need of expansion. Not much, but there are some improvements that we can make to provide them a little bit more room for all of their equipment and all of their clothes and their uniforms. In addition to the... still on public safety. The report room is the original room when this building was commissioned, I guess, with the same cabinets and with the same file folders or file cabinets and cupboards. And there is not a lot of, there isn't any privacy when you're doing reports. And so we need to focus on some some efficient space for our officers to be able to get their work done. Again, this is a read the city hall furniture replacement is kind of a recurring item in the capital needs or rather in the capital improvement plan for the next few years. Oh, you know, our offices are still have the original furniture in them. Um, so it's just, I think good for us to start looking at refreshing, starting to modernize how we do, um, uh, we can provide the best service to the public as possible. Yes, sir.

Just a question on, on choosing the furniture and all of that. Will you be working with some kind of a interior design consultant to make sure that the purchases are well coordinated and ones which. you know, go with sort of the character of the building at the time that this was all redone. There was a lady from Traverse City that coordinated all the wall coverings, the colors, the furniture, the carpeting, all of that, and sort of coordinated through a single design source. And so I think something like that should be thought about when you start going from like year to year, you know, making furniture selections this year and then furniture selections another year to make sure that there's kind of an overall plan, if you will, or a vision, I guess, that works well with the existing building.

Yes, that would be the exact approach we would take. Believe it or not, I am not a interior decorator or a furniture expert. So it's amazing my clothes match in the morning most days.

Just to answer Joe's question, I think I understood what you were asking now. On page 20 of your binder under tab six, there's projects in here that you'll see that, in that case, under City Hall Furniture, we have 30,027, but it's 90,000 total. This is a multi-year project, so that's why you're seeing that difference. So we have, I think there's, what, three years since we're doing a $30,000. So that's that difference.

That makes more sense.

Thanks, Shane. Okay, moving on. City Hall ADA improvements. This is a Most of these have come out of our capital needs assessment. We do have some deficiencies in our Americans for Disabilities Act requirements. Our restrooms upstairs are not to code. Our entrance ramp evidently is also needs to be improved so as we are improving with our city hall furniture we are also going to improve with some with uh trying to get everything up to our ada standards um i mean citywide but certainly here kendall is that also a multi-year expenditure

165 going to cover it?

165 will likely not cover it comprehensively. Shane and I have had a discussion about looking at this building in particular because this building is going to need all new windows as well. We're going to have to take a look at areas where can we put a bathroom on the main floor for the public instead of having to go upstairs? So we have some questions that we need answered, but there are some areas that we can address. In two years, we'll have a better plan, but these are items that came out directly of the capital needs assessment.

Well, just a plug for the ADA, as far as the city clerk is concerned, we could use this facility for elections if it was ADA compliant.

So, and that was part of the discussion Shane and I had was when we do these, when we do these improvements at city hall, is there a way that we can accommodate, you know, the voting component? And so, yeah, good question, Charlie. And yes, those are likely there will be several phases to this. So here are some windows, some pictures of windows across the street. The one was taken from outside, which we addressed a few years ago. We put some filler in the bottom of the sill. And then the picture on the right, you can see has quite a bit of deterioration and water rot. These are the training and reporting rooms that, rather the locker rooms, are the first and the third picture. You can see that there needs to be some room for our officers to get dressed and to keep their equipment in an area. As well as the middle picture, that is their reporting room. That's where they do all of the their paperwork, and with most things being online now, there isn't a need for all of the cabinets and the cupboards, and it would be nice to get some cubicles of some sort. But again, going back to Rick's point, this is also something that an interior decorator could come in and help us with some space ideas and some assistance.

I'll just touch on that a little bit. Just to kind of explain this, these are on balanced stairs. Joel was kind enough to resurface this and paint for us this year, which was great. But lockers, as you can see, officers kind of all their stuff can be punched in a row. So you're checking pegs just to make sure you're not into somebody else's uniforms. It'd be nice to have some type of wooden cabinets maybe to go around. And then this over here is a shower and we've never used the shower and we're running out of locker space for officers. Matter of fact, we don't have another place to put a locker. And if we intend to hire any more, re-imagining this area, taking that out would give us some more lockers. Here I kind of envision Once again, there's a room on the side where we used to do dictation, now also write our own reports. So it's not utilized. So as kind of was stating, maybe bring somebody in to reimagine that space. So a little bearing wall where we would paint another three feet possibly, and then do individual cubicles. As you can see, these officers here are writing reports and we've reviewed video at the same time to make sure our reports are accurate. that going on next June. So privacy aspect. Okay.

Quick question. Yes. You said you never used the shower?

Not down there. No, we used one.

Oh, okay. So that's just here in this. Yes. Got it. Okay.

Okay, moving on to parks and special facilities. The Marina Pier B electrical upgrades is something that we've talked about over the last few years. This is a pretty substantial upgrade because we have to bring in an additional transformer as right now there is not enough power to do what we want to do. But this, we have 54 slips out on the B period. We have three breakers. So when we get over a hundred milliamp of leakage, we get 18 boats that go down. Our staff spends a lot of time usually on us to identify the boat that has an issue, which is a lot of back and forth. And, and so this would match AC and D the way that we have those, it would certainly protect us better. The, the, The concern is when these boats go out, a lot of them will start their generators because they have bilge pumps and refrigerators, and then they are emitting electricity into the water, which has no protection from us. So A, C, and D, I mean, we're up to code, but B is not safe when the power goes out. If anyone were to fall in the water, they're at risk. As part of this project, about a third of the deck on B will have to be removed. So $200,000 is an estimate to replace the entire dock. And if we're going to replace a third of it, we're going to have a third of it, new boards, two thirds of it, old boards. Certainly when this spec gets written, these will be, there will be alternatives, alternatives, and it will be written to a point where we will be able to get a certain, a variety of different costs based on the scope of the, of the project. But this number is for total deck replacement on B pier. And then underneath A and B, A and B are the original docks. A certainly was there before. And then B is the second oldest. The girding, the steel structure underneath has signs of rust and wear and tear. And although there's no structural damage, integrity that we are worried about. It doesn't match the B and C, so it would be good to use environmental practices to get in there and to sandblast and seal and coat those beams so they match C and D, but they also will preserve them for a longer period of time. This next one is the US 31 trail safety improvements. This is between Epler and East Park. I know there's been a lot of discussion about the lower section. Our focus is on the safety improvements to get people off of 31. You know the state has been a good partner in this in terms of the double lines and the site delineators, I think we've been lucky and we need to commit to getting people farther off of the road on that stretch to get them past the Epler curve onto more of the bluff and then to East Park. The Winter Sports Park Lodge decking replacement, it's the original deck from 1992. It doesn't owe us anything. But it's in bad shape. The railings are deteriorating. The floorboard, a lot of the floorboards we've had to replace. I am working with Rick Newman to come up with a, well, we've come up with an idea for the deck that doesn't interfere an expansion, some more social space, some landscaping improvements, a little gazebo kind of on the ends. We've shifted some things around, but it's going to provide a better year-round experience for people who use the Winter Sports Park Lodge. And then public art is a reoccurring commitment that the city has made. As you've seen, we're prepping for a couple of big projects here yet this summer. And we'd like to continue to invest in public art.

Kendall, can you talk a little bit about the Winter Sports Park Lodge decking replacement? Because that seems to me like to be fall under maybe the same auspice as like the siding improvement, the window improvement, just kind of general... capital improvement plan. Um, but anything beyond that would be, I would assume be part of this master plan that we are working on for the fall of 2026. So, um, hearing you say that there might be some changes beyond just like composite lumber replacement of the decking seems to fall under the auspice of something very different to me. So I just would hope that we could, and that'll be part of a budgeting conversation. But.

Well, you know, the deck is one of those items that needs to be replaced. And, and, you know, master plan certainly will weigh into the direction that we go with the winter sports park and the lodge, the improvements that we are making are, are, are practical. And they're, they're also, they would also fit with any other improvement that we would make with the lodger at the park. So I wish I had a picture to show you. But again, that's a needed improvement.

I hear like replacement versus like upgrades and improvement is a different like budgetary course. for me and my brain of brains, so.

Well, it's both. It's an improvement and it's a replacement because we're not going to use the same footprint that of the deck that's there now.

Oh, okay.

So we expanded it on the backside. We've proposed a gazebo type structure to provide some shade out there as well. We've proposed another ramp that would face the sledding hill. So it is an improvement and it is a replacement.

Yep. I'm going to second my colleagues. Colleague Lindsay's just kind of bit of concern about this. So replacement, got it. No problem. It's definitely needed. However, I'm thinking about things like, well, what's the footprint look like and how would that impact perhaps the maintenance of the existing rink size? So those would be some questions I'd have about expansion and footprint.

Understood. But I'm also not going to build support something that is going to hamstring our maintenance efforts at the at the lodge.

Do you want to like elaborate a little bit? Sure.

I mean, you know, there was, there's, we, we, when we deal with moving of the, of the snow, we have space that we need to get the snow off of, of, of the rink. And if we were to go too far out, we would have to be a little bit more creative with our snow removal. This plan doesn't, include that. I mean, this plan is a, it's a practical application to improve the deck while we can, while we are still able to effectively do our job.

Well, maybe, maybe I better state my question. Would the new design in any way impact any of the current features?

No.

Okay.

Thank you.

Welcome. And again, 2027, the, the, the, Public art, so here's. Some pictures of the current winter sports bar deck. Again, we have gone through and replaced. Some boards that are that are compromised. There's a few that we have to get to. Also, what condition of this is looking at? A different coating. Those rubber mats that are on the deck are incredibly heavy. So ideally what we want is an avenue where we can remove the rubber matting in the summertime. So there are other options that we can use beyond these, because water gets underneath these and it doesn't drain. And so we want to be able to have a little bit more ways that we can protect that deck.

The epoxy coat, the boards, the composite lumber?

Well, I think there's, again, there's product options that we need to consider when we bid this out.

You need it for protecting skates, like for people to walk and traverse with their skates.

Correct. But we also don't, the complaint we get from our day campers is that black rubber coating is hot. you know, so, so, you know, we're trying to try and trying to be good for everybody. Everyone that uses our, that use our day camp. These are, um, these are pictures of, uh, uh, B pier. You can see some of the areas. Oh, next slide, please. You can see what I'm talking about in terms of the steel structure underneath the finger piers and the main pier. They're starting to show their age. I'm not sure what color these were originally. Um, but it would be desirable to come back and to address those projects. Now, this is for 2028. Bates Field Improvements are, you know, Bates is a great park. It's used... almost seven days a week, all summer long. Our little league uses it. We have a lot of local tournaments, a lot of not local tournaments that our local kids play for. The existing dugouts are literally falling apart. The floors are cracked. The bricks are cracked. And on C field, we don't have any dugouts. And so we have A and B, which tend to be the boys play on A and B, and then the girls play on C, and the girls don't have dugouts. And so we need to do a better job about making sure that we have everything on all the fields because there really isn't any shade up on C field. And part of this does... We don't have a lot of shade out there at all where the bleachers are, where the area is in front of the concession stand. It gets incredibly hot in the summer. So I'm proposing we put in some sail shades that will still provide an element of protection as well as some shade. Then we were able to put more tables out there to get people to give them some protection of the elements, as well as the landscaping on either side of the building. It's original, it's old, it's time to rip it out and to start over.

Mayor? Does this Bates Field generate income?

Yes, in terms of Little League does pay the city for use of those fields, as well as when we have tournaments, we do charge the people who the organizations that come in and use them for their tournaments. That being said, I have also reached out to Little League to have a discussion with them as to how we can partner to achieve some of these improvements. So it's not just on the city.

What's the ballpark, just a wide ballpark on what we take in on that?

I don't know.

50,000? I don't know.

I don't have those numbers available. Kendall and follow up to that. There was some discussion at some point in time. I don't even remember between whom that the college might want that piece of land back in exchange for relocating the ball fields up onto one of their cornfields off. Has there been any further movement on that conversation?

Cornfields, would that be the school, high school? No. No. I don't know of any of those. They haven't had any conversation with me. We just re-signed the lease, I think, within the last seven or eight years, and it expires in 36 or 37, the lease we have with the college. Thank you. You're welcome. The extension of the Bear River Corridor, this would essentially pick up the Bear River Corridor at Sheridan by the extension of our trailhead to get us to Riverbend Park. That would include the new apartments at the Michigan Maple Block. So that would create that kind of walkable.

That already exists because I walk that all the time. So are you opposing to expand it or just- Improve it because the one way there are some areas that are compromised, like the boardwalk.

Well, that is a. That is a North Country Trail, so we would certainly. There's other options. Shane, you want to weigh in on this one as to what we're thinking about? The design is that would that go? Along Emmett. Or Standish?

I think it still remains to be seen. This was something that came from Planning Commission. I don't know if you guys talked about it at your meeting or if John Michelangeli just passed this forward to me, but this came from Planning Commission. This is still pretty unknown where this route would be, but the idea would be to get it extended.

How much of the rail line do we currently own? Through Washington. So this million and a half for 2028 is really just addressing that portion of it. So the question that you're asking or putting out there is beyond that, beyond Washington, is where's the path? Is that correct? Or would it continue to follow the rail lines?

So I assume, so we've got two different paths. There's the Bay river corridor, which ends behind. Correct. So that would go farther South. Understood. And then the Greenway corridor expansion, there have been discussions on how we could get it from Washington to Sheridan, uh, because we likely won't be able to purchase any more railroad, um, uh, land from the state on how that could be incorporated perhaps with the road project and get no more after Washington. Is that what you're saying? That's what we have been. That's what, that's what our responses that we've received from the state pertaining to any further discussion about purchasing the railroad.

Okay.

Thank you.

No, that's not a forever statement either, but that's, that's where we are right now.

We are part of the, the shoulder part of the border along that corridor or that railroad track, though, don't we? Does the city of Petoskey own? We own to Washington.

Yeah. We bought from Emmett to Fulton. That part hasn't been developed. And I thought that was part of Harbor Hall's development. So I didn't know we were going to touch that. But then in this capital improvement plan, it talks about Emmett to Fulton, Fulton, to Washington Street. And that last section between Fulton and Washington was what we purchased from MDOT last year or the year before. And with the Lost at Lumber Square project, that was supposed to be part of like the final, work that was done there. So I guess I'm a little confused as well. So we own the rights to what we bought those from MDOT for whatever price. And what you're saying now is that MDOT has given us notice that they're not going to be negotiating any more rails to trails programs or?

No, it's more specific to that stretch because that is still in use.

Yeah, Petoskey Plastics uses it for bringing up their polymers from Harper City, Indiana, all the way to Petoskey. They're the only ones.

So until that ceases, I think we have what we're able to get.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

So just to comment on the boardwalk extension, I believe, from Sheridan over to the River Park area, To try to do that on bike is impossible due to the multiple steps along the way. So anything that could be done to improve that with more ramping or smoothing that out would be greatly appreciated by people who do want to ride along the river to the parkway there. So thank you. Okay, thank you.

Okay, Little Travers Wheelway, $150,000 is our annual investment in the wheelway. Winter Sports Park Lodge, again, ADA improvement. This is a result of our capital needs assessment in regards to the restroom and the concession stand. Riverbend Park pickleball court resurfacing, those pickleball courts are great. They're heavily used, likely going to be even heavier used as that development progresses. The block gets more and more residents. And it's showing its age a little bit. It's best practice about every seven or eight years you go in and you fix the surface. It's not a complete redo. And I have some pictures to show you that I took this morning. And again, our public art investment. So these are the pickleball courts right now. Sarah? Q. Little Travers wheelway. Okay, parks and special facilities for Tifa, we are going to rehab the mineral well gazebo across the street here. It is in dire need of of likely taking it down to the studs if there are any left and starting over basically from the pillars above. It's in really bad shape and we need to, that's a great gazebo. It gets used a lot. It has some historical, some very interesting historical components to it and we want to preserve it as best we can. But if you look at it, you can clearly see that it's past time for that to get to get rehab. In 2028, we're proposing Ed White field improvements. Again, this is just, it's the building, the dugouts, they're original, they're old. It's a heavy used park. It's an iconic field. people come from all over, believe it or not, just to play on this ball field. So, um, it's also used for, for leagues. So it's used quite a bit in the, I mean, again, some weeks it's six, seven days a week that, that Ed white is, is being used. And, um, there's a, there's a score booth where the floor is, is starting to, um, have some concerns that we need to address, uh, And then our Magnus phase one, again, depending on how the master plan and the design comes back and the feedback. Magnus is a, it's on life support right now with our, With our utilities, you know, they're 1960s utilities. We often have septic issues. One transformer runs that whole facility. So we have really no way to isolate when we have an electrical problem. The storage building is, again, we don't really store much in it because of the condition. The road getting in there is... has a lot of crumbles in it and people down there love it. So, but we can do better. Um, it's time at least to have this as a discussion for consideration. Um, like, like Shane said, it does contribute to our, you know, it's a, it's a net gain in terms of the contribution back into the general fund. Um, So those are the TIFA projects that we are proposing. Yes, sir.

Is any of the plan of phase one, is it increasing pads, rental number of units that we can rent, or is it just keeping the number of units the same and upgrading? And is it going up the hill? Yeah. Well,

Ideally, I mean, again, the plan that we have encompasses that entire Magnus property, which if you don't know, there's that open field by Wendy's, which is actually part of Magnus Park. So the vision is, is to how can we address some, I don't think we can call it seasonal housing, but can we work with the hospital? Can we work with businesses where they can perhaps rent cabins for long-term to help? employees. You'd be surprised how many calls we get for traveling nurses and we don't have any place to put them. So we're, we're looking at with a little bit different lens than just a campground. And, and yeah, it's, it would, We'll likely would either have to phase it, you know, where you do, you do one section maybe below the hill and one year, and then you do one sec. I, you know, I'm not sure how that is all going to play out already is this close it down for a year and get it all done. Um, so again, that will just kind of direct, uh, as we work through this plan and, and, and design, um, we will, there's also a public, again, with the plan that we're looking at, there's a, a public, park enhancement to it that would provide a better public space than what we have there now. So. Excuse me.

I have a clerical thing.

Is this line? I don't total TIPA the 2155. Should that be 2280? As it sinks all the way down to the bottom, or are you just accounting for 2028? 20, 20,

28 is 21.55. Okay, it's a separate. Next year for the mineral well gazebo is just 125,000. Okay, yep.

Kendall, this is just a little bit of semantics, but the mineral well gazebo, I would like to think of that as a restoration. It is a historic structure. And so the title that you're... right in there, I'd like to think of it as saying that it's a mineral well gazebo restoration rather than improvement seems to me to imply some change. And as a historic structure, I think it's important to think of it as a restoration.

In the description in the plans, I did say we are going to capture the historical element that was there.

So thank you.

That's the intent. Yep. So here are some pictures of the mineral well. Yeah, I don't really need to talk much about that, unfortunately. Okay.

I got one more. So within whose bailiwick is the Public Works Building? Is that you or is that Director Fate?

That is Director Fate.

So I'll save that question. And then is Public Director, Public Safety Director, are you going to be up here at all? Or if I have a question for you?

You can go ahead and fire away.

Okay. The question is this. Last year, we funded a barrier system. Okay. And it was my understanding that we were going to work to like build that out. And I don't see that anywhere. So that's my question.

Yeah. We haven't received them yet. We were supposed to get them later this month. So I'd like to at least make sure that we're going to fit our functionality and everything and get our hands on and see how they work before. I mean, I guess we could budget ahead, but. I'd like to make sure that they're what we're paying for and what we want and what we want to continue to buy. Sure. Before we go forward. But, you know, I would like to see more. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Build it out. So we continue to purchase more.

I just wonder, I completely understand that makes sense. You want to see if it works, but if it works and then would you come back for a budget request or what would the thinking be there regarding the build out?

Um, well, I mean, we, what I would probably do is come back with a bucket request on it. I mean, I was meeting with Shane to see what the best, uh, admin would be for that purchase.

And Jason's kind of, yeah, for, for 2027, we have no intention to purchase. We would like to use them for a unit to see how they work. And then we'll evaluate our CNA in the future. So we may add it in 28, 29.

Thank you.

We also have received a lot of requests for them as well. Other departments who like the nation, other things. So it might be a possibility to kind of recoup some of the funding for that where there is a department.

Thank you.

I'd like to try to multitask. Sure. Oh, what? Good evening, Sarah Beck, City Clerk. You guys might recall last year, this was in the CIP budgeting for election equipment. The State Bureau of Elections did indicate all local jurisdictions that the equipment is at the end of their useful life. So we are required to replace them regardless if we have the money or not, we must replace them. So as described in our CIP booklets, the city does have five precincts. That includes our AV counting board that processes all the absentee ballots and then wards one, two, three, and four. So there is equipment in each precinct, a tabulator along with an express vote or a voting assist terminal. So the state did tell us that we should budget $15,000 per precinct. So that's where the $75,000 comes into play. I did include this in the 2026 budget because they thought we would be purchasing by the end of the year. However, the contract doesn't end until February 28th of 2027. So it's anticipated we will purchase first quarter budget. of 2027. So unless you guys have any other questions, it's pretty straightforward. Tina?

Yeah, I just have a quick one, Sarah. I feel like at some point when we talked about this, in conjunction with this, there was some dialogue about consolidation as well. Is that still a part of this or no?

So it is completely separate processes, but yes, it does affect this. So I do still plan on consolidating with our election commission. So election law did change where each precinct can now be 4,999 registered voters. We're just over 5,000. So to be more efficient with resources, staff, workers, supplies, all of the above, instead of going to seven pieces of equipment, we may only need five. or if we still budget, we could use more voter assist terminals, which anyone can use. It's just a marking device. If any of you have voted at the early voting site, the county clerk has stressed and pushes use of those voting assist terminals. So potentially, if we consolidate, we'll need less equipment, or we could utilize that and purchase more voting assist terminals.

So my concern around this is just lines and that sort of thing. And I wonder what your thinking has been, you know, if we consolidate what's the impact going to be on voter wait times and those sorts of things.

So I'll only say I do track all those statistics and we have more and more absentee ballots that happen. And the turnout is always a state and federal elections, which are the even years and the odd years. I could say last November, 2025, we had 54 people walk in the door for 16 hours. So to have 24 staff members and election workers and four tables, we could have two. So and the early voting site is another option. So there may be a little bit of lines, but at the same time, there are two other opportunities to vote early or absentee ballot. Or like I said, these voter assist terminals are just marking devices. So they could be, you know, additional voting booths or we order more voting booths.

What, to just play the devil's advocate on an election year, like a regular presidential election year, have you contemplated what the impacts might be then?

I mean, there's going to be lines. There's lines now, but I will say with 5,000 registered voters in 2024, we had over 2,000 absentee ballots and about 500 people, early voters. So right there, you're looking at almost 50% of Petoskey voters already voted before walking in on election day, give or take those statistics. But we were pretty close. It was like 46% November of 2024. So yes, I think there is. I will say also around the whole state of Michigan, there's a lot of jurisdictions that have consolidated already. And you'll get the city of Ann Arbor that has 150,000 or more went from, and I don't know, 60 some precincts down to 50 and it's working for them. So I think it is doable. Obviously, if it doesn't work and we try it out, the election commission will just have to go back to having four wards. So, and another comment that was made earlier, it's becoming more demanding staff wise and city hall has to be open for a clerk's office and we all vote in one location. So to be under one roof for our AV accounting board, for some of our precincts, if we do consolidate having everyone in one building and our resources here is advantageous as well, so.

Thank you.

Thank you. And then I'm sure you guys all know what these look like.

But that's the tabulator.

So obviously, on the left is your tabulator. And the one on the right is what I keep referring to as a voter assist terminal. So

THEN JUST QUICKLY ON PLANNING AND ZONING. IF YOU'VE KEPT SCORE OR KEPT TRACK OF CITY COUNCIL'S DISCUSSION ABOUT DOWNTOWN BICYCLES BECAME A PRETTY SOMEWHAT CONTENTIOUS TOPIC AS FAR AS BICYCLES ON SIDEWALKS IN FRONT OF BUSINESSES. And really, the desire was let's really focus on looking at the 2015 was the last time we did this non-motorized transportation plan. A lot's changed since 2015. We have micro mobility devices, scooters, e-bikes, we have motos that are essentially motorcycles that go on trails and on sidewalks, and it's becoming somewhat of a dangerous thing just to take a stroll on sidewalks. So we really want to take a pretty comprehensive look at our non-motorized transportation plan. I have an RFP out currently. Uh, I believe the date is September 1st is when they're due back. We may end up extending that based on some of the feedback we've gotten just on, on timelines and how busy consultants are at this point. But, uh, This is a 27 project, planned for 27, but we may get an earlier start in 26. If we can get a consultant on board and started, we'll certainly start this process in 26, if at all possible. Is there funding for that? So we are going to be looking for grants. The way we've structured this budget, there's 90,000. We were hoping 30,000 of that would be coming from grants. So we're looking for that opportunity. 30,000 would come from the streets department who has a stake in this discussion as well. And then 30,000 would come from general fund if we're able to get grant funding. So any other questions on the non-motorized plan at this point? Okay, I'll have Amy come up and talk about downtown area projects.

Thank you. Good evening, Amy Tweet, downtown manager.

to talk about the downtown area and these projects all come out of the parking fund. Everything to date that you've been discussing comes out of the general fund. These projects come out of the enterprise parking fund. So the first project in 27 is ADA parking compliance improvements. When we build parking lots, we are required to meet ADA federal standards. Because Petoskey does have so much slope to it, oftentimes we run into issues where we can't meet the exact required slope or cross slope. So then we need to have backup for, we try to get as close as we can, but then you'll also be hearing about ADA compliance, study that needs to be done so that if you maybe, you have an engineer basically evaluate that one space might be flatter, but it's not in the appropriate location. So a couple issues we've, been trying to work with is the Petri lot. The ADA spaces are over by the trash enclosure, because that's the flattest spot, but it's not the most appropriate spot for the users. So how can we either improve that spot or get some sort of waivers to allow that to be the designated barrier-free location? So this is working with Public Works. to have an engineer look at what are our options and then any improvements that need to be made both in lots, On-street spaces are a little more challenging because there's even more requirements of access alleys, but our intent is to continue to try to make downtown as accessible as possible. So that's where that project intent is. Bike infrastructure, again, yes, there's been a lot of discussion. And yes, downtown wants people to bring their bikes downtown and has invested heavily in bike racks and intends to continue to do that. The images are basically, it's these connected loops that is what we want. We don't want them necessarily to look like this with white bollards around. It does not meet our design standard. But that's the intent is to have those actually in where we have the hatched markings at intersections. Those hatched markings are to try to keep vehicles away from the intersection. Unfortunately, a lot of people use them as loading zones. And I know we've had situations, particularly in front of Grandpa Shorter's, the mail van likes to park right there. And there's cars coming down, I don't know how, they come down Lake Street, don't realize there's a stop sign there or that it's an intersection. and have gone right through it because they didn't see the stop sign. So that's why we hatched the areas, but not having a physical barrier there, people will use them however they choose to use them. So this is the design we're trying to get. The current ones we have look very nice, they're just not highly functional and they don't hold as many bikes as we would like. So that is bike infrastructure. And then the meter housing meter, parking meter housing replacements, again, is that head of the meter. And what we had put in is that we would like to do a big changeover over time. So doing about 20% of the 500 years. So you'll see that that math does not add up. We put the meter housing in, but we are always looking at technology. So in the lots we've put in pay stations, they have some success and some people can't stand them, but we do also know that park mobile use has gone. We've this summer reached at least two records on use of park mobile. So as people, as we have these technologies, we wanna move towards them. We know the community is not ready for street side pay stations, but there are, we have talked to different companies about how we can use more and more technology, but people also tend to think the meters are kind of quaint. And so a lot of them are looking very bad. And so just improving our infrastructure again in 2027, not doing a big capital expenditure, but trying to make sure everything else that is downtown is looking good. So that's 2027. Oh, sure.

You mentioned in your first presentation when we're talking about the ADA parking compliance improvements, you mentioned the Petrie lot. Can you remind me where the Petrie lot is?

Oh, sorry. Next to Grand Train.

Thank you.

And then we also, we have the Seville lot has a lot of slope to it. So finding the space there that is... none of them will 100% meet the ADA requirements, but having an engineer say, give us back up on why we're putting it where we're putting it. So again, in 28, it's again, continuing ADA compliance improvements by bike infrastructure, parking meter, housing and replacements. I would also, I mean, we're funding for that just to say, it may be housing meter replacements, but at some point that might change, that could be a pay station somewhere. But we just wanna be clear that those improvements are gonna be moving on into the future, as well as technology, whether that's improving security for credit card payments and making sure we're always compliant with the current requirements, those technology upgrades, and then, In 2028, right now we're saying Clifton lots improvement, which this is the one that is next to the back lot and it is in pretty rough shape. This year as part of the Howard project, they did redo the alley. So some of that drainage has been addressed, but this lot has some serious pavement issues as well. And actually, once we get this lot upgraded, the design committee has talked about potentially doing some string lighting in that alley because we get so much pedestrian traffic from Howard to the back lot. So that is that project. So that is 27 and 28. I'd be happy to answer any questions.

I have a question. So I'm looking at the divider number two, the first page after that, which is expenditure and revenue summaries. And if you don't have yours, I'm happy to share it. But I'm just curious because last year projected revenues for 2027 for parking were $10,000. And now it's saying $130,000. And I'm just curious, I understand last year was a projection, but that's a significant difference. And I'm just curious how revenues are up that substantially. Do you need to see?

For the revenue side, I need to turn it over to Audrey. Okay.

Yeah. Based on the needs of that year. Okay. We usually, just in past history, it was always that they made enough to support 75,000 each year, and now it's 100,000 each year. So depending on what they spend in one year makes the next year more available. But we don't know until the budget actually is complete, you know, finalized. So that's why it might change the following year for CIP revenue estimation.

So you're projecting even beyond, though, what those revenues have been previously? Is that right? Or did I misunderstand?

Just in the past, it's usually $100,000 a year is what is available. So if they don't spend a lot, there's more of the subsequent year. And then there's also the fund balance, say, in the case of last year with the bill lot, the bill last year.

Right, and Park Garden this year.

I think so. Thank you.

And maybe a little clarification that I think where the hundred thousand came in is because historically the fund has brought, has had a hundred, around a hundred thousand more in revenues and expenditures without going into the fund balance. But then we've started doing major capital upgrades. So. we still exceed revenues over expenditures in the parking fund every year. Thank you.

Yeah.

Ultimately, whose decision is it to replace the parking meters downtown? Maybe come on. So we will replace them.

Well, the process is the part it starts at a parking committee and that it's recommendation to the downtown management board. I think, I mean, if it got to the point where we said we want to eliminate on street meters, that would certainly come to city council. Okay. Thank you.

Jason.

Good evening, Jason Fate, Director of Public Works. So we'll start with our streets and drainage. And when I talk about our streets projects, a lot of our projects intertwine with water and wastewater. So I'll include that as I discuss these projects. So our first up on 2027 is Bay and Rose Street, Puerto Rico's truck project. That also includes right now, that also includes William Street and Clinton Street. So our full reconstruction includes brand new pavement structure, new sidewalks, new water structure, and replacement of the sanitary sewer. Up in this neighborhood, our water mains, our age is unknown. So I can't find plans that indicated the year. So that means that they're most likely pretty old. We do know that they are, Four inch, six inch mains, cast iron mains, susceptible to breaks and they are definitely undersized. We provide enough water for the usage in the neighborhood, but when it comes to fire suppression and fire flow at our hydrants, we now install eight inch mains. Same goes for our sanitary sewer. The sanitary sewer up in those neighborhoods are six inch clay, and we replaced them with eight inch PVC. With the full reconstruct includes the sidewalks as well. So in this neighborhood, we do have a complete street, sidewalks on both sides of the streets. But this includes replacement of those sidewalks. Some of them are in bad condition. Over the years, the trees have shoved those sidewalks around. There's significant areas where there's trip hazards or areas where we've ground the major trip hazards over the years. Atkins Street pavement preservation project. So that is tied with a tribe, Bureau of Indian Affairs grant funding. So I'm right now they're in their process of developing their transportation with improvement plan so that this project may or may not happen, but it's on our list of a for a 2027 project and you can you explain what the intention there is and what that is it from Howard all the way to the city limit or what what what span is. Yeah Howard Street to to the city limits and it's a mill inch and a half off and we repay the bill and fill up the And then Shane already discussed the non-motorized transportation plan falls there. Third of it falls under streets, right? Chain.

Yeah.

Question before going to 28. Yep. The full reconstruction is going to drain the budget for the year. We're not doing any mill and fill aside from Atkins. We're not doing any other mill and fill anywhere, anywhere else.

Yeah, correct. So years ago when this project first showed up in our capital improvements plan, ideally we'd like to do, would have liked to have done the entire hill, I say, all the way up to Ottawa Street, Bay Street, all the way up to Ottawa and Summit Street. But with current prices, a couple years ago, we identified that construction costs are rising and we can't afford to do that entire hill, unfortunately. So our intent is to take Rose all the way to where we reconstructed it, repaved it a couple years ago, Um, Bay Street to go up to Clinton Street and then Clinton Street, the north, south there, and then William Street, the remaining William Street portion.

I have no doubt that it requires a full reconstruction there. My question is other places that could use a mill and fill aren't going to see it this year because our record will be fully expended. And, um, But where are we with the updated passer scores for the pacer?

So it's still on our list to do. We're going to complete it yet before fall this year.

And is chip and seal part of your portfolio of tricks for those streets that are beginning to show signs of webbing but not fully mill and fill at this time?

Yeah, years ago, I wasn't working for the city at the time, but I was working for the city in the consulting world. We did look at CHIP projects. Emmett County just did a bunch of them. The difference between our streets and Emmett County or the Royal Commission streets is they're uncurbed. So we have curbs. When we add that extra layer, then oftentimes you hit that elevation differential between the curbs and the pavement. In addition, it is a messy process. There's a lot of loose stone. So all that loose stone during construction ends up in people's yards or on the sidewalks. during plowing, there's still loose stone that's going to come off that first year of plowing. So we've kind of shied away from that application and just kind of, we've had good success with the melon fills. It's just, unfortunately, funding is a big issue.

Well, when the PACER scores are updated, I look forward to the conversation in terms of ideas and how we can accelerate our street improvement process.

You bet. Any other?

Let's get a conversation with the state.

Why?

We need more money from the state to fund those road projects.

We also, but we also can fund some of those ourselves with either general funds or another village or, uh, fund balance could also be utilized at some point. There's some streets that are really in need of repair. And I know they're on the list down the road such as a Willis. My concern was when I see the Pacer, we have a heck of a lot that were yellow, which means they are good but not great. And my concern is those yellows are gonna move into red. By the time we get a couple of major streets done in the next two years, we're gonna have a lot more reds. And I'm just wondering if we can somehow,

push this move this forward that is the city kind of catch up because we're really with this this street millage where we're behind we're behind is that correct yeah yeah so i actually came prepared so i do have i heard a few people mention some streets so elizabeth street lockwood street walkazoo street i've been staying away from that one he doesn't deserve it

Oh yeah. Green that went to yellow, but like Fulton and Elizabeth have always been red, but they're not thoroughfares. So yeah.

So that is a factor too. Some of our streets are rated low because of the pavement structure, but they don't see the traffic. So they don't get beat up like our primaries where you have heavier commercial traffic. So yeah. the cracked pavement kind of stays in place. And we've had a lot of streets that have been cracked in that, well, similar conditions for many, many years. Luckily, knock on wood, they stay in put. This last winter, though, we did see quite a few of our streets. Pine, Tall Pines Court was one of them that kind of fell apart with their snow removal efforts. And a few others that we had to invest some surface maintenance money into this year to maintain them.

Jason? Yeah. On the Bay Street reconstruction, I'm really surprised that the section from Summit around up to Ottawa isn't part of that project because that section is in really bad shape, especially at the curve there at Ottawa. Agreed. Would there be any way to rejigger what's done on William Street or some of those cross streets down below or at Summit to try to move some of that money around to Upper Bay Street instead? Would there be any benefit in trying to structure it like that?

We could, but we're doing a lot of underground work. So as we work up the hill, we're connecting sewers together. So we get to those cross streets. Ideally, it's going to be the best time now is to cross those and connect all those cross streets.

Yeah.

versus continuing up the hill. So just in order of magnitude, and these are very ballpark, I just took our PACER rating scores. So we have about 33 miles of streets in town here. 11 of them are major, which are eligible for small urban monies, which in 28, I'll talk about a smaller funding funded project. and then 22 miles of what we consider local streets. That all comes out of general streets or local street fund. So a full reconstruct project, anywhere from a PACER rating of one, two, and I just estimated 50% of our rated streets of threes. Because some of those streets, we could do a mill and fill some of those non-commercial streets. That's 13 miles in our inventory right now of streets. And at our current cost for a full reconstruct, and that includes, oftentimes that includes utilities, but just looking at the street side of it, that's $43 million. If you add water and sewer, that's $34 million. And you add sidewalks in there, that's another nine. Very large magnitude of dollars we're talking about. Yeah, John, you hit it right, we're behind. Resurfacing, so mill and fill or that type of scope of work, we have about 11 miles of roadway that needs to be worked on. That cost is approximately $10 million. So that's that's basically you know a little bit of curb work sidewalks are decent condition and the curbs are in decent condition.

So nice question Jason so thinking about like our most recent road construction reconstruction project and Howard street, especially that section between fulton and Jennings how much do you think like we've gone over. budget in terms of what was budgeted in the 2025 fiscal year for that project and the fact that it's gone on and beyond both the time and like the scope of work like once you start peeling back the layers you didn't realize like how ancient and the infrastructure was.

I don't have those dollars in front of me right now. And for 2025, I don't know. We're looking at it as a project as a whole. So it's now a multi-year project. I don't know. I don't have those answers for you right now.

I just, I just wonder about like extrapolating like that as an example project and trying to like plan the next, not just mill infills on those odd years, but like full reconstructions. I mean, could you also take that as a model and it's just assume like, Once we start pulling back the layers on these other big projects, we should just build in a larger budget or a larger contingency?

Our Howard Street project is a little unique comparative to, say, next year's project, the Bay and Rose Street. There's a lot more electric underground that was on that project, and we have some that we're adding as well, but... That corridor sees a lot of primary electric and the secondary. So we have kind of your primary that's only feeding circuits and then the secondary that's feeding all the homes. We also have, I think there's maybe four different fibers. So three different fiber companies on that street. gas main distribution side and a high pressure. So we have a lot more infrastructure on that street underground than we do on many of our other streets, residential streets. So it's a little unique and I wouldn't want to take those costs that we experience and extrapolate those for future projects.

But we do look at it. That would be considered like an MDOT urban road because it's a thoroughfare.

It is considered a major, so it is MDOT eligible for funding, yes. But we typically shy away from doing infrastructure type projects, so water and sewer with MDOT money. We can capture the grant funds that we get from MDOT on resurfacing projects on our major streets.

Jason, you know, if we're that far behind, we're getting farther and farther behind in our roads, have we considered doing a really serious financial feasibility study on how to do this, whether we do bonds or whether we do a millage or we do a temporary thing or if right now I'm getting the sense, we're just kind of keeping up. We're not keeping up at all and we're getting farther behind and then everybody wants, I want this street, I want this street. John thinks this street's bad and the prioritization of this seems like it's not very good way to strategically do this.

Yeah, so Machine and I have talked about My millage, street millage. We're doing a rate study on water and sewer right now. The rate study, Audrey, is three years, right? Right now that we're looking at. So it'll take us out to, you know, if we implement, take it to council this year. Yeah, implement it in 28. It'll be three years. So I guess through 31, maybe we have to go do another three-year rate study and evaluate with water and sewer. It just seems like, you know,

Council ought to be looking at this in a much bigger perspective of solving the problem and look at a real serious, because it sounds like it's a big deal. I mean, you've got big numbers here.

Sorry.

No, that's okay.

The last two years have really taken a hit on our street funds budget just because of the amount of snow and contractors and we would have had much more for this year. We have seen some improvement this year for 2026 with the change in the happen. On the flip side, they took it away from the general fund for revenue sharing. So we're 7% down in the general fund right now. Thank you.

So this question is a little adjacent, but since you brought up user fees, in the packet it says, since a significant portion of outstanding debt and future capital improvements are related to water and sewer utility, user fees associated with these utilities are evaluated in parallel with the CIP. So since we're being asked to evaluate the CIP, I'm wondering, I don't know who to ask this question to, if we're going to kind of be looped into what the thinking is relative to those user fees yeah you're going to approve them when we when we bring it up you're definitely going to be looped in will we be able to see that you'll be able to see the entire before the 21st or just on the 21st it's i don't think it's ready to present

No, the rate study that we wanted to finish CIP first, at least the draft form and get that. And then I'll get them an updated list of water and sewer. We're looking at electric too. So the next three year projects. And they'll plug those numbers in and adjust the rates accordingly.

Also, our rates are in our... in our charter. Like we can't have a tiered rate system because our charter binds us to like having only one rate, I believe. Isn't that true? Doesn't our charter dictate that we couldn't have a tiered like rate system for our utilities?

Yeah, I don't recall that.

I don't recall that either, but it does say you'll serve us. So it is supposed to be equitable, not equitable for everyone, but the same price for it.

But that's for, I mean, I think, well, and this is something, like to change the charter, you have to go before the voters to change the charter. So that's like no easy fate. But I was wondering, like, if we're going to be evaluating rates would we consider changing our charter to have a tiered system that anybody that's outside of the boundaries of the city of Petoskey, we would charge a different rate to them as a way to generate revenue?

We already charge outside city limit residents.

Okay, so we aren't bound to the charter in that regards because that only pertains to the city of Petoskey.

Right, our franchise agreements with Resort and Bear Creek Township speak to the rates there.

Those are negotiated. How often are those negotiated?

30 years.

So we have a 30-year agreement right now?

Yeah, we need to re-look at our agreement, but yeah.

When can we upgrade that agreement at any point?

Right now is time where we should be looking at it again.

We have to be able to if our cost for electricity is more than what we're selling it to them.

But like for Rick, I can speak to Bear Creek because that's on the top of my head. Bear Creek sees a 1.5% increase compared to what a city resident pays for water and sewer.

1.5. But there could be 1.8 or it could be 2.0 if city council wish to do that. Is that correct?

It hasn't been negotiated, but we're working on an agreement we currently have.

Okay. I see that one location for us to help pick up the cost of some of these increases.

I would just say don't wait for the state to ride in with a white horse and solve this issue because they've proven they're not capable of doing that. This is going to be on our local residents. We've done a fairly decent job of making sure that we address underground first because certainly the challenge becomes we don't want to put lipstick on a pig right like on my street lindell it's it's a terrible surface so you could go in and mill and resurface that and people would think wow look at that we did it but the water is undersized the sewer is undersized and you could you could get yourself eight maybe ten years but at some point you know it's going to be time to pay that bill. So now do you want to dig up a street that is only five, six years old for kind of doing things backwards. So we try to do it the right way. And you invest in underground first, but it's so expensive to do water, sewer, storm infrastructure that it takes a big part of that takes a big chunk of that money for that. So that's the challenge.

For my part, just a point of clarification, for me, if I'm going to be asked on September 21st to pass a CIP, I'm going to need to understand about this user fee assessment before that and kind of in conjunction with this, just as it states in there. So maybe that's happening.

It won't be for the 21st. Okay.

Thank you. So the 21st, we pass it, but it's not budgeted until we do our budget. It's really kind of an interim kind of want to do resolution. When we do the budget. That improvement is a wish list. Yeah. So it's really the time when Audra comes and says, here's the money we got.

When we're sure. Yeah, because right now it's just estimated based on everything we know at this time. The same holds true with the expense side. time comes, and you know, maybe we'd have a little bit more be able to do more or less.

We just do more R&D when we attend all the planning commission meetings. That's where we get our education.

Shane, just want to throw a plug in for increased additional sidewalks near school zones. Lindell Hoffman, those are major feeder streets to the high school, to Ottawa Middle School. Kids are walking in the streets all the time there because there are no sidewalks.

So whenever... We have a sidewalk plan and it's all, it was done It was not non-motorized, it was a sidewalk plan. Okay.

Yeah, there was a separate plan.

And it was scaled that within 300 feet of any school, sidewalks would be on both sides of the street, churches, playgrounds, stuff like that. So she came out for the... Planning Commission and City Council came up with a plan that was passed for the sidewalk plan to address where sidewalks priorities would be for second and third on. And you got a rating one through four, five. Are we following that? I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, and we try to balance it, but like, you know, in the last six years, we've done some streets with new sidewalk. Kalamazoo Street was completed with a complete street on both sides with sidewalks. Bayview Avenue, when we did that, we added sidewalk on one side. Cemetery Road, we added new sidewalks. We got a lot of new sidewalks in town in the last five years, but we also have to balance that with maintaining what we do have. No, but I get it.

We have Hill Street in there to do that, North Side of Hill Street as well.

Yeah, with the tribe's funding.

Is that 2015 plan still functionally appropriate, or should it be revisited?

I think it should be revisited, but as regards to the sidewalks, I think it's a great plan still. Yeah, I look at it every year we go through this process as we're estimating projects and looking at it.

My concern is that cemetery, nice new sidewalk, but there's not much living people up there. But Hoffman and Lindell are technically probably outside of the 300 foot for the schools, but there's a lot of people that walk them because of the connectors to the schools.

It needs to be looked at. need for improvements, parks and rec. Are we looking at neighborhood parks? We're looking for a millage for that, for the Winter Sports Park, you know, neighborhood parks. We've got a lot of pieces and parts that everybody has a, this is my most important thing, but we have a lot of most important things that I think we are kind of short in some funding right now. I think it's going to take a big game plan to kind of address it.

would just encourage you as proponents of sidewalks to make sure you come out and voice your opinions because there will be people that will be anti-sidewalks because we hear about it all the time people don't want a sidewalk in front of their house because they don't want to people they don't want people they don't want to maintain it or they don't want to get the snow off of it but we take care of that but there will be some pushback on adding sidewalks. So it's important that if you're passionate about that to kind of balance the scales a little bit.

Yeah. And we've, we've always said at DPW, we've done the easy stuff on sidewalks.

And the project on cemetery road was BIA funded. So like, once again, the funding kind of drives the construction projects and it's beautiful. I agree. It's one of the most beautiful sidewalk in the street reconstruction project, but it was the funding mechanism that drove that project.

Going back to the original plan, I think it was 2010, a lot of those were addressed was there were sidewalks in front of a lot of schools. There were both sides. There were a lot of intersections that had none. So the city has addressed to help a lot of sidewalks, I believe.

Yeah, I think quite a bit's been done.

A lot has been done. Is there more that needs to be done? Yes. But hats off to the city for getting a lot of these sidewalks. Because the priorities were all those first number one priorities around schools that we had sidewalks, streets where we had no sidewalks around by the schools. So we are getting those done. Thank you.

Move on. 2027 is the picture of Bay Street that was looking up the hill for division. So if you notice the sides are unraveling, typically every time we get a major downpour, we get gravel and stuff washing down that street. This is photos of Atkins Street, Atkins Road at Kalamazoo. So relatively decent pavement condition, but this is a prime example of a street that's between 10 and 15 years old that we would want to have in our plan, asset management plan to resurface to keep that road life there. 2028 street projects so fulton street reconstruction, so this is a full reconstruct from emmett to Franklin street, this is in conjunction with the greenway extension from emmett to Washington. will do some storm improvements there. There will also be sanitary sewer improvements along with water main improvements. Water main improvements, there's a gap between Baxter Street and Emmett Street right now because of the old railroad tracks. A water main never went underneath that portion of the street. We would add new water main in there. And again, I spoke to fire flow and water quality. That'll improve that. College View Avenue, that's been on our radar for many years. I believe we have a pretty poor pavement structure there. The road has heaved significantly with curbing that needs to be reconstructed. So it's kind of a, we call it a pavement preservation project, but it's kind of a mix between a full reconstruct and a mill and fill, say. Hill Street, like Shane mentioned, Hill Street's in 28. That's tied with the Tribal Bureau of Indian Affairs That's a mill and resurface project along with adding sidewalk on the north side of the street. Pavement preservation, so various streets. This is the project I mentioned with small urban MDOT money. It's a $420,000 project. m.grant and the rest would come out of our major streets, 120 of major streets. Those streets include Jennings, West Sheridan from Emmett to Howard Street and Bayfront here from just past Ed Whitefield all the way to the end. The last time that was touched was when it was built originally. So that pavement is 1985. difference with that street compared to any of our other streets. If you look at it today, it's in great condition still. We don't pull it so it doesn't see the freeze thaw like the rest of our streets see. Fulton Street sidewalk, so that's in conjunction with the Fulton Street reconstruct. And then we threw in their sidewalk construction and replacement. So this is a prime candidate for adding sidewalks. We're working on the Howard Street project right now, but we turned the corner on Carlton and Myrtle and things around the Sheridan School. There's some easy sidewalk locations in there that we might be able to grab and get some sidewalks installed. But in addition, we do have a lot of aging sidewalks that we need to go back and start reconstructing. Any questions on 2028? Bolton Street photo. So you see it's pretty cracked up and alligator. This street has, we believe, at least a portion of it has old concrete underneath it. We found that with Washington and Franklin Street as asphalt over concrete. And it probably dates back to the days of the old Kowalski ready mix plant there and more of industrialized area. All those streets in that neighborhood are concrete or were concrete. The Hill Street project. This is Kalamazoo looking down Hill Street. And then College View. Hard to see the pavement structure, but take a look at that street when you're out and about. It's in pretty rough condition. All right, Electric 2027. Advanced metering. So those of you on council know about this project. We approved it back at the beginning of July. So this year we're working on our pilot project. Next year is going to be our full implementation. This is both on our water and electric meters. Mitchell Street sub and River Road fiber connection. This is next year's project. So right now those substations are connected to us by spectrum. So they're secure. but we'd like to have them more secure. So city owns our own fiber. We'd like to get our fiber out to those facilities so we can monitor the key metrics to making sure we're providing quality power to our residents. And then the Hoffman Lindell residential conversion. So this is a two phase project. 2027 is first phase, 2028 will be the second phase. how that structure's on what street, we're still working through the design, so I'm not gonna tell you what streets we're actually working on, but that's the project. Conversion means to underground it? Overhead to underground, yep, yep. So this is a fun little slide that, actually Shane's idea, but he asked me to find a meter a new meter and an old meter. So we found, I think, the oldest meter we have in our shop. The guy said that this probably is a 1915 to 1925 vintage meter. So, you know, old mechanical meter that spins, the one on the right, the status IQ, that's similar to an AMI meter, all digital, communicates with us. Yeah.

So what's that going to mean for the homeowner?

So what it provides you as a resident, you're going to be able to see your bill and actually help modify and ability for you to use power when, you know, it's... You can look at your power consumption and... say I'm using a lot of power at 3 a.m. in the morning or 12. And where we're going with that is we talked a lot about rates. This sets us up for time of use rates. The industry is going to that. And it's all based on delivered power. So when we buy, we buy baseload power We peak, we've been peaking a lot this summer because we've had some hot days. We buy that at a higher rate than our base load because our base load's on a power purchase agreement. We have to market by the peak. So you as a consumer can look at your bill and say, I know that I'm going to be running my air conditioner all day long, but when I come home, I'm going to be running my dishwasher, washer, dryer. Maybe you can look at your rates and your usage and shift your when you use things and potentially save money on your bill in the future.

Well, as an example, in some communities I've lived in, you can opt in to a peak load modification program where you control how much electricity I get to shave the peak.

Yeah, there's that.

And I get a lower rate for that participation.

Correct, correct. And then we have a number of residents that have generating resources on their property solar in town here. So just more data in front of people to be able to evaluate how you use power. And then in addition, it helps with outage management. So if we lose power, We've lost power just recently in different neighborhoods because of animals and stuff like that. So we'll be able to pinpoint and locate exactly where that's happening. Thank you.

Has the city ever looked into some kind of larger scale solar collection facility? I think the old dump site, the city dump site was looked at at one time, I think, and there was concern about installing foundations there to support structures. Am I remembering that right?

That wasn't the problem.

It was a private public department.

To the federal support.

Yeah, it was funded by subsidies, essentially. So those have fallen through. They are currently, that's not gone yet, but the rates that we were quoted back then are no longer valid. So we're still working with Soul America, the developer and owner of the project, working through that process. I don't, Shane and I don't have an update.

Possibly develop something.

That's still, yeah, that's a very viable location.

Volunteer renewable energy program, whether people are buying into it anymore. I've just stayed the course at 100%. We don't have any plan. We just have this proverbial date of 2035 and no capital improvements.

Well, there is a plan behind it and you'll learn more about that in the upcoming, before the end of the year, we plan this. Yeah, there's a plan. MPPA is definitely, it's not off their radar. They're fully aware of our goals. Oh, this is just a photo of the Huffman Lindell area. 2028. This is the phase two that I talked about on the Huffman Lindell. Jackson's Jackson, Ingalls Liberty. There's a little chunk in there that has yet to be undergrounded. Mitchell conversion, so this is from Hill Street to the Methodist Church on top of the hill. This section of power is overhead, and it's surrounded on the south side by a lot of trees, and we've had some issues over the last few years. You would think that that ice storm would have taken down everything that we needed to, but that's not the case. We still have issues, and ironically, this area too is, we've had some recent animal issues up there where squirrels cross two of the phases and knock out power. So luckily it's been in the summer and the school is the one that gets affected. So they've had half power or no power a couple of times this summer. So being undergone will fix that unless something gets in Transformers, which does happen too. The Petoskey Sixth Circuit conversion, that's on Sheridan Street. So that would be from Clarion up to Emmett Street. This is a two-phase project. So I think the second phase is in 2029. The Petoskey substation switch replacement, substation maintenance and substation reclosures. So these are just various projects, components of the substation that need to be updated. We definitely don't want to run things to failure in our substation. So these are our consultants that's working with us on evaluations of our substations are saying that we need to start thinking about these things. So these projects are showing up. Any questions?

I have questions, but they're about other things. So should I wait?

Oh, yeah. What is it about? Um, streets there?

No. Yeah, one more thing.

I think motor pool yet to finish. Go ahead. Then I'll have water sewer. I think I touched. So babe rose. I've already touched on that. As I discussed that project. Any questions on that? Advanced metering. I mentioned that with the electric that's on our water side. Water and sewer in 28, dead end water main, water quality issues. So Ann Wesley Street, College View, those are on our radar. Again, it improves fire flow, water quality, but it's a balance too with our other reconstruct projects. Water main replacements with Fulton Street, sanitary with Fulton Street, since that's a full reconstruct project. We put a line item in there for sanitary collection and treatment repairs. So we have a lot of lift stations. like seven of them in Petoskey here. We have a number of them, a large number of them out in Bay Harbor. Bay Harbor lift stations are original. We have replaced some pumps in some of those, but we do anticipate that we're going to have to start investing money into some of these lift stations. The main lift stations behind City Hall here, we had one pump fail this year. That's about a $60,000 pump. And that's our biggest lift station here. So the pumps are not cheap. So we're gonna start thinking about some replacement schedules on these. water, so the lead copper rules, so service line replacements. To date, we've typically been doing these on our, as they fail, or on our reconstruct projects. So next year, we'll do a significant chunk, because we know in the Bay Street, Rose Street neighborhood, there's a lot of them. But in 2028, we'd like to tackle a larger chunk of those that we know. And right now, we're currently finishing up a grant-funded water service line investigation, material investigation, so we know exactly, we have a pretty good idea where things are at. We're not investigating 100% of them, but we're getting enough ideas so we can pinpoint what neighborhoods and typically the oldest neighborhoods in the city that have galvanized. We haven't really found too many leads, but galvanized lines that EGLE considers that could have been connected to lead in the past. And then we have water supply and distribution repairs. So no specific identified project here, but to capture the amount of money we have available in 2028, we know we can come up with a $70,000 project. So that's any number of our well stations or candidates right now.

So Jason, on those lead and copper line replacements, are we still mandated to do that onto the personal property? And there's no sources, is still an unfunded mandate that we do this?

Yeah, I mean, there is funding out there, but it's been going to the disadvantaged or economically challenged communities. Thank you. Any other questions on water sewer? I'll move to motor pool. So 2027, we've got a Public Works one ton dump truck replacement. And a lot of these replacements are just due to age. They're at their end of life. We're seeing increased costs in maintenance. or the vehicle is not performing like it should. Bobcat tool cat with attachment. So this is a very versatile machine that we use year round. We can put a sweeper on it to help clean the streets. We have a loader bucket on it. It's got a forklift attachment. And then in the winter time, we use it to blow the snow banks back. So this is one of our oldest ones. It's up for replacement next year. Sidewalk snowblower replacement. So winter of this last March with the 26 inches of snow, we got the sidewalks. It took us a little bit to get them, but we got them. But we beat the heck out of our equipment. Like we shouldn't have been using it. We shouldn't have been out blowing the sidewalks really when it comes down to it. But we did. we need to replace these. And we have them on a four year replacement now. So if you noticed, and I think this came up in some of our other conversations, When you look at the project in the CIP, you're gonna notice that the dollar amount's either doubled or just slightly over double. It's because it shows up in multiple years, and this is one of them. Our snowblowers, now you're gonna see it come up again. The same vehicle is gonna show up twice in our capital improvements plan. And the same goes for public safety when I get down to that. The next one is the autonomous mower.

Is that going to solve the problem that you had this last winter? That's my question.

So we did quite a bit of looking at other pieces of equipment and it's more than double to get a different piece of equipment that may or may not perform as well as the Kubota tractors that we have now. And many of these other types of equipment, they don't have a local presence for a dealership. So availability for parts is more difficult. So we did a lot of thinking at DPW where we want to stick with the same type of equipment that we're using now just because there's local presence here. And there's a few different vendors locally that we can reach out to. So generally, we can get parts within a day. We have an on-site mechanic. We can get them back up and running within a couple of days generally. So we're looking at different widths of the blowers. I think that's a factor in how well we get things cleaned up. Because right now our blowers are slightly narrower than our tractor width. So I think that's part of, you know, something we can improve on. But we did look at that.

But do we need another, an additional unit as an example?

That's not the problem. Every snow event is different, right? So... We get out there and blow. You don't want to get out there too quick because we're still plowing. So that snow that we plow from the street ends up on the sidewalk. If I send the blowers out too soon, it's pointless. I got to send them again, putting more wear and tear on that blower and tractor.

So I walk a lot and there was a distinct difference between the sidewalks downtown and the neighborhood streets. And it was clear that something had been done to the neighborhood streets, but they were like an adventure to walk on.

I've not, yes, there is a significant difference. You're correct. But there's a difference in how we maintain them.

Well, so that's my question. Are we going to do something so that the neighborhood streets are kind of consistent with the experience you'd have downtown?

We haven't run the numbers, but you'd fall out of your seat if I told you how much it was going to cost us to do that. And then we do less street projects. So it's a balance. There's no way we could afford to salt. And the fact that if we salt, you're gonna upset some people because there's a large number of people who don't want salt in their yards.

But also respectfully, over the five years I've sat on city council, the condition of the neighborhood sidewalks were previously better. than they have been. And I'm not attributing that to you. I don't know how we solve that, but I've heard a lot about this and I think it's really important. So I don't know if we're gonna be addressing that or not.

I'm gonna argue with you on that one. I disagree. We've not changed our program. we have in the last two years have had significantly worse winters, more normal, than say the three or four years prior to that. We had three winters in a row that were very, very mild. I mean, we sent our blowers out, but they weren't blowing near the volume of snow that we have the last two years.

We do respectfully disagree.

I live next to you and I thought this year was not bad on Arlington. I'll be honest, I've been there for five years and yeah.

I'm not talking specifically about Arlington. I heard reports on Lake Street and a number of different streets, so.

I would like to say I noticed that a lot of houses where the people don't live there year round. or the areas on the sidewalk that are the hardest to get through. So that's a big part.

Well, as long as everybody's commenting. I just want to point out that of all the places I've ever lived, including the snow belt of New York State that gets as much, if not more snow than here, this is the only place where the city actually plows any sidewalk. That's exactly right. And thank you.

Yeah, I was in Marquette over the winter.

Yeah, we do have it. It's not normal for most municipalities.

It's not normal. Bozeman, Montana gets a ton of stuff. Bozeman, Montana gets a ton of stuff.

And if you don't plow your sidewalk, you get it. Well, exactly. We could have a lot of money. We should be grateful.

No.

City ordinance is that residents are supposed to plow their own, shovel their own sidewalks. That is an ordinance in the city. We do have a right-of-way millage. and we've opted years ago to start blowing the sidewalks as a courtesy, but it is definitely not, and it never was intended to be the utmost priority. Streets is priority. Mobility of vehicles to get people safely from school to the downtown, to work, that's priority. And that's always been our priority.

We're going to have good years. We're going to have bad years of sidewalks. A lot depends on you get snow and does it end up coming that you end up getting warm water that melts them and you end up with two inches of ice and then snow on top. There are just so many factors involved in this. I believe that the last two years we have had more snow, especially last year, but there were three, four years where it was better because we did not have the snow or we had a great melt in January and it took it right down to the concrete. So I think, you know, the city's doing a good job. If we want to, if city council wants to spend a hell of a lot more money, tell the city manager and tell Jason that you want more plowing and more of this. Personally, we live up here in Northern Michigan. Snow is a part of it. Suck it up, buttercup.

Well, I greatly appreciate the efforts

Unfortunately, the 26-incher, we had to make some decisions that we pulled our crews off because they couldn't see. So there's a safety aspect, too, in certain storm events where it's just not worth impacting somebody's safety if they can't see what they're doing. So we pulled them off, and probably that caused us to be in that situation. If we would have kept going and could have kept going safely, we wouldn't have been in that situation because we would have been running around the clock, but you get to a certain point where it's just not safe to be out. So we pull them off.

Well, I hate to hear the plows at five in the morning, but it's a blessing.

All right. I think I left off the autonomous mower. So this is a replacement of one of our mowers that operates at the ball fields. I think Bates. Kendall, do you want to speak to this at all?

Sure, I was introduced to this autonomous mower at a conference this past spring. It is a brand that actually Meijer ACE reps. So we had the rep come out and do a demonstration for us at base. This is a unit. It's fairly good size. It can be transported to different parts. And you can geofence where you want it to mow and walk away from it. It has a seven hour mow time, an eight hour charge. So at the end of the day, you plug it back in, doesn't require any special electrical outlets or anything like that. It's not going to replace any of our already short staff, seasonal staff, but it will allow staff to do other things while this is, it can, mow the entire baits complex in a day. That saves us, if we do it twice in a week, it'll save us close to nine hours of having someone sit on a mower, the gas, the oil, the maintenance. There's a lot of municipalities that are looking at doing this, and if we want to continue to try to do what we do, we have to think a little different. And the cool thing about this is You know, literally, you can take it from part to part to part. And, you know, geofence, and it will do the work for you.

So how much extra is it than a normal mower? Is it double?

No, I think it was, what was it, Jason, 50 to 65?

65 for the autonomous. The mower that it's replacing is in the neighborhood of a $20,000 to $30,000 mower.

Expensive.

It is quite a bit more expensive, yeah.

But you don't have the human labor, which is even more expensive.

You don't have the human labor, you don't have the gas, you don't have the maintenance. I think this has a, I don't know what the warranty is on it, but it's a fairly extensive warranty. I just, I don't know. After seeing what it did in the rain and base, quality of it, it has... the GPS all around it. So if we set up obstacles in the middle of the field and it wouldn't went around them, it had a vocal warning. But it was a pretty high tech. This company is far better than others. And I know several of my colleagues who are also gonna follow suit. to get this. So to Commissioner Walker's point, we don't have to send somebody at 20 something dollars an hour.

We're not gonna save any labor.

No, I don't think we're gonna save any labor, but we're going to have that person move more because they don't have to do whatever, 30 hours of sitting on it. They could go do trash, they could clean bathrooms, they could pick litter, they could weed with, they could go mow another property. It's an investment I think that it's worth pursuing.

Well, Kendall, quick question. From a liability perspective, the geofencing prevents this from like going adrift. What about reverse though? What about a kid that approaches this?

It shuts off.

It's got sensors, it stops, it shuts off.

know security measures that are you know that are put into it so most places we're in a mall is likely

You were so excited when you were at Bates Field trying to squeeze some equipment. I can already see the twinkle in your eyes.

Is it true that it's a help to eliminate squirrels?

Autonomous glorifying? A little.

I want to talk about that, but maybe.

Yeah, Herbert was going ahead in a minute, so squirrels.

So we got a few more parks and rec vehicles. So four by four plow truck. So this is replacing the half ton. This is going to be a three quarter ton pickup. We use our vehicles as a commercial style. So really we put a plow on a half ton just because we had that vehicle still and it was still a usable vehicle, but we want to replace it with a three quarter ton. It's going to be better on the vehicle and plow better for us. The staff vehicle. So this is just direct. This is Kendall's replacement of his vehicle that's aging and costing us a lot of money to keep running. The Toro workman cart. So this is 2008. So our workman carts have a little longer life on them. They seem to last a decent, decent time without with minimal maintenance. So this is just replacing one of the oldest ones in our fleet and public safety. So we're doing two vehicles. We're seeing an increase in mileage on our vehicles. Part of that, Director Carr, you may want to speak.

We're driving more because of... We are... Mental transports used to be done by the ambulance services, and now we... Ambulance services, there's no funding anymore for any community mental health. to allow reimbursement on transports. So that falls on the municipalities in order to transport in the closest. They do have one in Sheboygan, but normally they're always full. So we are running to Grand Rapids. We're running to Auburn Hills. We're running wherever they can find a bed, the fastest they can find a bed. So sometimes we're doing two a day. That's four officers that have to come in on overtime. Oh, that's poor.

Yeah, so we're seeing an increase in mileage, we're seeing an increase in maintenance costs in our vehicles, and I don't know what's going on, but to me it seems like we're spending more money on newer vehicles. The Tahoe's, the Dodge Chargers that we do have in our fleet, I don't know if the Dodge Chargers are problem childs or not, but they're costing us a lot of money to operate. However, We do like to have the sedan-style vehicles in our fleet. We typically run 50-50 with the Tahoe four-wheel drive and an all-wheel drive charger. The chargers are more maneuverable. They're a little better on the gas consumption. We cannot get those chargers. Those of you on council know, when I asked for a new vehicle at the beginning of this year, we had to go with the Tahoe. we couldn't get a charger. And the outlook for Dodge chargers doesn't look promising in the next three to four years. So Public Safety and I, we've evaluated what do we want to do moving forward because towels are pricey. And we know we don't want to have 100% Tahoe in our fleet. So we're looking at either a Durango or a Ford Interceptor leaning towards the Ford. So it's kind of the in-between. It's going to save us about $15,000 per vehicle on a purchase. So that's what those two line items are. They're replacing two of our problem child vehicles right now. A couple pictures. So the Bobcat, that's one for replacement. We have actually between parks and streets, we have four of those in our fleet. The Kubota sidewalk blower, we have four of those that run the sidewalks right now. This is a picture of the Ford Interceptor. Definitely not our colors, but that's what the vehicle looks like. And then this is the autonomous mower.

Lawn rumba.

Yep.

That looks so cool.

Let's see, 2028 capo improvements, motor pool. So another public safety, a wheel drive patrol vehicle. Public safeties, we have a pickup truck. that we use for fire inspections and going to trainings and whatnot. So this is an unmarked vehicle replacement. Actually, I'm sorry, that is not that year. That's a Tahoe replacement. That's 105,000, that's a Tahoe. Water wastewater pickup, so this is just a standard staff vehicle that we use. this in 2028, we're gonna replace two of our sidewalk blowers. So we want them to stagger our replacements so we're not stacking them all up in one year and seeing a large increase in, you know, our replacement costs for sidewalk blowers in future years. Parks and Rec utility cart. So this is just in line with the replacements of our Toro carts. Then Public Works, Bobcat replacement. So this is replacement of two of our vehicles. Any questions?

Yeah, mine's just the general question I've been saving. Every year in this book at the very back, there's the Public Works building for $21 million. As a city council member, I really don't understand if it's that big of an issue, why it's always at the back and it's at funded. I don't understand what the problems are, if there's alternatives to replacement, correct amount. So it's probably a bigger discussion than right here, but it's just curious to me that if it's in that situation that it's always at the back of the book, so. Yeah. It's a question.

Well, it's a large dollar amount too. So we did look at it preliminarily with the rate studies and how does that factor into it? And we opted to, there's a lot of unknown questions yet. So the only really development work that we've done on is like a, space of the midwest siding and sales building yeah we purchased that so we have contiguous property now but we did a space study so we know roughly what type of building or size of building we need to build with all of our equipment to be stored inside and plus our supplies or our materials and things that we use every day um But you said it, is there another more cost-effective way? Right now, we don't think so because the building's so outdated. When we start touching that building, we're going to have to come up to code compliance on a lot of different things, which just opens the checkbook up to lots of costs. But we've never really evaluated that. So can we get another 10 years out of the building if we do X, Y, Z? We don't know. We've not had anybody look at it. We do have one concept out there, but I'd like to look at it again and say, is there a better way? Can we restructure the site to maybe save some money? I don't know. We haven't invested a lot of money into the design aspect of that. And so what we'd like to do is develop a better plan. And then when we look at rates in the future, look at, is it going to be rates? Is it going to be a bond? How are we going to fund this? It's too large of a project to just start spending cash. We don't have that kind of cash.

So for me, just at some point in time, maybe when we have a slow meeting or something, I don't know about my colleagues, but I'd just be interested to understand more about what the issues are, what the need is, that sort of thing. Thank you.

I would love to have either a pre-meeting or have individual walkthroughs with council members. Put your eyes on

time to do that so it's a good idea yeah i'd love to take take you on and show you yeah because it's part of like a bigger campus conversation with the acquisition of the midwest siding and sales building and i'm assuming you guys are using that for storage right now

We are now, for a while there, when we first purchased it, we kind of stayed out of it and just put a few things in there. But now that we're not going to share it down tomorrow, we are utilizing it, yes.

I tell you, they're using it for projects as well, painting indoors.

Yeah, and like the campus was supposed to be like that extension of the path that connects the Parks and Rec building up on Porter and then the DBW building and then getting rid of the Hungry Hollow Gardens on that side and bringing them over this way and putting the salt sheds back over on the other side of the street. So it was like this beautiful multi-campus plan. And I think I was already always under the auspice of the assumption that like, oh, we have an enterprise fund. There's Like there's wealth building happening within the department of public works, but now that I, and this is the first year that I heard from Charlie in a public meeting that said like, our street funds are not as well funded projected out as you may think. And I was like, what do you mean?

Well, street funds are not enterprise funds. The only enterprise fund is electric.

That was an assumption upon another assumption, but it all ties together. And enterprise funds can't always stand on their own. Sometimes they do need influx of dollars to be able... I mean, you have to... spend money to make money. And so I guess I was just under the assumption like, oh, you're an enterprise fund. Well, there's money to build and grow, but that's not necessarily the case.

I'm going to speak. We've got three enterprise funds. They are healthy. That's for a good reason. Enterprise funds are a business, really. There are utilities. We have to have cash reserves in there. They have to be full of money for those emergencies. We have a substation go down tomorrow. It's going to drain those.

It'll go quick. We've got a well situation. $4 million now?

No, not that much. Full well house maybe, but no. Brand new well, just because we did one last year, is $150,000. I've talked about lift stations and stuff. They're expensive.

Any other questions? Thank you very much. Any general questions? Otherwise, City Council will be revisiting this in the future.

Planning Commission will take it on at their next meeting and then September 21st, I think, come back to City Council. Certainly there's time for, if you want to meet individually with us as staff, one-on-one or two-on-one or whatever, we're certainly available to talk any of these projects at more depth. We can take you out to any of our sites, show you our facilities, our equipment, however much you want to invest, we're right here to do that. Thanks for your time today.

No, for their business.