City Council - Regular Meeting

$200,000 contract with JAVS. JAVS is our audio visual vendor for the equipment inside the courtrooms that that create a a permanent record of the proceedings. You might remember, last year, Jeff and I were here. I our to do the first three courtrooms. These are the next set of three courtrooms we're gonna do. The equipment is quite antiquated and old and breaks down with some consistency. We just come to, seek an authorization to do the next set of three courtrooms, and we're requesting SAP.

I would like to acknowledge councilman Sorrento. There's Councilman Hobbs. Alright. Councilman Hobbs, your recommendation?

Thank you for your presentation. I read it. Thank you. NSSEP, thank you.

Thank you.

Alright, item one is from Department of Public Utilities.

Good afternoon. Andy McClure, commissioner of plant operations from permanent public utilities. Item one is authorization or legislation looking for authorization to contract with a fire alarm company that specialized in the fire alarm repair at the water reclamation facility. It's a very complicated system and we do need to have it be inspected from time to time and some seasonal and work done on it annually to make keep it in good functional order for the safety, health, and welfare of the employees and the equipment at the water reclamation facility. We'll take any questions you have, and we'd request SEP, please.

President Williams?

Can you push the slide, please?

Oh.

It's very helpful because we get to see the point. So I like that and it that's not even it. Yeah. Yes. Is. Thank you.

Council member Gaddis.

Thank you. Is this for repair or maintenance or both? Like, is there a part that's broken that we don't know about?

There yeah. Right now, there is part that is broken, and they are doing a fire watch at the moment. So they need to get someone in to make that repair, but there would be further inspection.

Okay. And then what's the timeline?

This is gonna be it'll be an annual contract up to I believe it's three years.

Okay.

And the expenditures per year.

Thank you. Thank you.

Alright, Council Member Martinez, your recommendation?

SEP, thank you.

Item two will be from the Department of Human Resources.

Good afternoon, Mike Nojelski, the Director of the Department of Human Resource. With me is Vicky Coleman, the deputy director, and also Jeff Riley from our health care consultant, Highland. Sorry. Item two is requesting authorization to enter an agreement with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield for the provision of stop loss insurance for our healthcare plan. And also asking to waive competitive bidding under the Municipal Code Chapter 187.

So our current contract with Stop Loss or with Anthem, which is our current provider of this service, expires on June 4. And as is typical in the industry, typically these contracts only last a year. So we're coming back to counsel this year for another contract. What Jeff and his team did over at Highland was we did an informal bid process just to see what the market showed. And as you'll see from the slide, only two companies besides Anthem responded, Berkshire Hathaway and Pan American.

Both of them frankly aren't viable alternatives just based upon the huge increase in cost as well as potentially additional liability. And so based upon that, we're asking for an approval to have a new one year contract with Anthem for the year, for '26 into next '27. The cost is about, it costs about $100,000 a month for this service. And it does vary somewhat just because the rate is based upon a per employee or employee roster, per employee per month charge. It's about $100,000 a month or a little over and so the cost is indicated is about 1,300,000 for the year.

Requesting SCP and we'll take any questions. I

would like to acknowledge Council Member Melden. Councilman Sorantu.

Thank you Madam Chair. How often do we exceed the stop loss?

It varies from year to year, but there's I don't know. It I'll say between zero and five times a year. Okay. Alright.

Thank you. Thank you, madam chair.

Vice Chair Gaddis, your recommendation?

SCP, please.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next item, item three and four will be from the Department of Development.

Good afternoon members of council, Brandon Sellhorst, Chief Growth Officer. Item number three on your agenda is stand up a new program under the vibrancy initiative. So this is a program that we talked about during our budget hearing. It's called the property readiness evaluation program. Thank you for changing the slide.

One of the challenges that we continuously encounter when we're looking at redeveloping sites in our community is that there's chronic vacancy and underutilization of sites and buildings. And when we are trying to attract investment, there's either perceived or real risk associated with redeveloping these sites. A common risk that we might encounter is brownfield contamination. The city has been an award recipient previously of a US EPA assessment grant which we were able to use to do proactive environmental assessments on properties to help identify the contamination, the cost for remediation, and then we were able to identify the resources at the state level through the Brownfield remediation program to help us remediate those challenges and make those sites and buildings ready for development. Over the past two years, we've been able to secure over $25,000,000 through the city, leveraging our ARPA and our private developers and companies that are looking to invest in the city out of that brownfield remediation program.

So it's incredibly important that we provide this proactive funding from an environmental standpoint to be able to identify risk, expedite shovel ready sites within the city, and prepare a pipeline of sites for new investment. Unfortunately, there's not predevelopment resources throughout the community. There's a lot of assistance to help you once you have a project through loans and various things. But there's not this pre development sort of money that we have. We unfortunately were notified that we weren't awarded the U.

S. EPA assessment grant for this upcoming round. So we no longer have any brownfield dollars, assessment dollars to be able to assist developers and ourself proactively assessing properties. And so what we are looking at standing up, Carmen if you don't mind switching the slide just press the next button, is what we're calling a property readiness evaluation program. And this is a program under the Vibrancy Initiative where we would provide funding to companies and developers to proactively assess properties and identify the challenges that they may have from an environmental standpoint, from a geotechnical standpoint.

We have issues with wetlands on some of the sites that we're trying to develop. Identifying those is an important. We also see a need for feasibility studies. We have a lot of vacant buildings in the city, a lot of buildings that have previous uses like office or retail where there's no longer a market for that. But we want to save these buildings because maybe they're historic or they're located in an area where we're trying to encourage investment.

Looking at feasibility studies, us as a community understand how to redevelop those spaces is really important to attracting investment. A prime example of that is when we stepped up as a community and invested $50,000 with the land bank to do a feasibility study on the Spitzer And Nicholas buildings in Downtown Toledo. That $50,000 was probably the best money we ever spent as a community because it gave us a roadmap for how to convert these two vacant office buildings in Downtown Toledo into new residential. And we're playing that roadmap out today. We can do that for other vacant buildings in our city.

And this is us being proactive so that we can attract the type of investment that we want. So this is a list of just some of the eligible expenses that we would be looking to do. This would be a reimbursement based grant program like all of our grant programs are through the vibrancy. So the developer or the property owner performs the assessment, we reimburse them, and we also get a copy of that report. So this is key for our strategy because if for some reason that property owner or developer is not able to move that project forward because maybe they don't have the financial wherewithal or the interest in doing it, but someone can step in their place and do it, maybe they put that property on the market, These reports are timeless.

We can use this information to help inform that next project, that next strategy. So today the ordinance before you is to officially stand up this program that we've been talking about for some time. We had budgeted $80,000 for this initiative in this year's budget. So this ordinance also authorizes the expenditure of $80,000 for this purpose. We expect to be able to do around four projects this year for environmental or other type of assessments that we're looking to do and report back out to you on just kind of the impact of what those assessments were and hopefully how they were able to encourage the developer or investor to move forward on their particular project.

We're requesting SEP, happy to answer any questions that you may have.

Thank you very much. We will go to Councilman Driscoll first.

Thank you, chair. Thank you, mister Sellhorse for your presentation. $80,000 out of the $500,000 total budgeted for the vibrancy. Is that right?

It's in addition to. So this was a separate expense. Okay. We didn't list it under the vibrancy initiative because we weren't sure if it was going to be officially approved by council. So it's in addition to what you all allocated for the traditional vibrancy programs.

That's good to know. I'm I'm not concerned about this program. I think it's necessary. But I think the vibrancy programs give us opportunity to put like shovels in the ground. And we might, through this program, just end up with a lot of papers on a desk somewhere. And so I wouldn't want to take from vibrancy if we're going do this. I also would so what do you what will the match expectation be, if any, from a potential applicant?

Ideally we're a fiftyfifty partner in this. Our idea is I mean this is not a lot of money. You know when we're talking about these studies especially if we're talking about brownfield sites. I mean these studies can be very expensive. But our goal is to leverage these dollars as much as possible like we do with all of our grant programs and to leverage the private investment.

You think 20,000 is the maximum goal or you just foresee four potential $20,000 Yes.

We've maxed it out at $40,000 per project for this year just to kind of test it out. But we kind of anticipate based on the projects and the environmental studies, typical costs for these things $20,000 might be an average reimbursement based Okay.

I would not necessarily challenge you, but all of us to think about this as we go through one year of this program and see how effective it is, finding more money for this in the future and maybe a different place to house this than the than thinking about it as a vibrancy program. Because I think when we think about vibrancy, we're thinking about, you know, actual physical assets. I mean, we do the we do the grant, the the some some predevelopment work or, you know, we've done a little bit of that. Planning grants. Yeah.

The planning grants. But but typically, I think when we think about vibrancy, think about the white box programs that we've done or, you know, the the actual physical investment that's being made. And that's obviously not what this is, not that this isn't an important And part of then we've got to get that grant back from the USCPA.

That's the goal. We are reapplying for that grant. So we have that application in. But there's no federal grants right now are in an interesting place.

Yeah. And I think from a lobbying perspective, working with our lobbyists about trying to replicate something like that at the state level The pre development work is important but I don't think about this when I think about the vibrancy program if that makes sense. And this is useful which I assume it will be, you know, we need to think long and hard about how we can continue to invest in this. But it's it's you know, this is good. This is a step in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you.

Councilman Martinez.

Thank you Madam Chair. Director, this is, or chief I guess. This is great because predevelopment money is the toughest money to get. Banks won't lend on it. Developers, if they have a larger scale project, it's sufficient capital out of their pockets. And I guess so I'm very supportive of this program. Think can you remind me how much was the EPA loan or grant last time?

The grant we received was for $500,000 It was to be dispersed over four years.

Got you. So roughly about $100,000 a year. And we maximize that. I'm sure we leveraged it to the hilt. Sure you guys do a great job of that. So I would expect nothing different on this. So one, I guess if we had to prioritize which one we're going to pay for, if you could just you don't have to do it now, just list priority in terms of focus. And the reason I'm asking that is because, for example, like a market study, as you really where is kind of an eye of the beholder and it's only good for so long, right? So if the project doesn't move forward, we can't necessarily translate that market study because it's very project specific. But they are also important to get lending.

And so if we know the project's 80% there, they just need to help cover some of the cost of the market study, I would certainly support it but versus a phase one, phase two that's critical also. So if we could prioritize how we use these as one. And number two, if we could get some sort of work and then we may not be able to but working agreement that if the city pays for this that the banks will honor these so they're not there's no like sunset and they want it, oh we want the latest phase one even though it's two years old, we want it updated. So if we could get some sort of I guess for lack of a better phrase, gentleman's agreement with our banks or lenders that they will honor Citi these types of studies. I don't want to say in perpetuity but for the normal longer than traditionally accepted.

Other than that I'm very supportive of this. I think this is a great step and definitely as we're thinking about redevelopment we should probably start looking at let's see how this goes, but maybe making this a little bit more robust because I think this program is definitely needed and definitely will be used, especially if we want to redevelop harder to develop land. So these are going be essential. Thank you. Great, thank you.

Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the briefing. I too have some questions, more in Brownfield in nature. So did the program, is it still going on and our application didn't merit an award or was it discontinued at all?

The program is still available. We were just not awarded in the most recent round.

Okay. And so how are you going to prioritize these funds? Is it going to be in relation to like the size of the project? So mean I would guess that there's a lot of brownfields in Toledo still. And so how are you going to I mean I'm assuming you probably have a list applications that might be coming in or probably like the vibrancy, there's probably more applications than we have money for.

And so I'm just curious, is there going to be like, we're going to prioritize something that could have more jobs coming into the city of Toledo as opposed to a smaller location. Just trying to see what you're thinking.

Yeah, obviously a huge focus of ours is jobs. That's what we do as the Department of Economic Development. So that's the lens at which we look through most things. So the ability to unlock a five to 20 acre site by providing brownfield assessment dollars is that's an easy way for us as a community to identify risk and help overcome it. And that's we've done it time and time again.

That's why we've been so successful with our ARPA dollars. So jobs are important but there's and this is I think why it's been framed under vibrancy or at least initially kind of thought of, is there's a lot of vacant buildings throughout a lot of our commercial corridors that could be proactively studied to be reused, right? I mean we kind of do that from a ground floor commercial space with our white box program. But we don't in terms of this department look at maybe the larger building, how it could be repurposed. And so I think there's an opportunity here to do both because we do.

Brownfields are important, we need jobs. But also looking at how can we leverage these dollars to look at key commercial properties in our neighborhoods to help identify a reuse strategy like we did for the 4 Corners. Understand the gap of what that cost is and then attract a developer to be able to do that. Another key example is a project that I worked on with Council Member Gaddis. There's the River East Custom Hotels building 514 Main Street in East Toledo.

It's a building we owned, we acquired through tax foreclosure. We've owned it for maybe ten plus years and it's just been sitting there. We haven't had a for sale sign on it. It's in not the best of condition. We got a structural assessment on it. It said it's in okay condition. It needs a new roof but it's in okay condition. We proactively did a feasibility study on it to say how can we convert this old hotel into new residential units. And we paid to have that done through the department. Now we have renderings, we have floor plans to show what that could be repurposed at.

They've partnered with I believe Lathrop to get a construction estimate, say how much would it cost to redevelop that. So now we know we can show a potential investor when we start to market this property. Here's what the potential is of this property. Here's what we think the cost is gonna be. We know that there's a gap.

And we as the city or our partners have identified these funding sources to help overcome that gap because we want to save this building we want it to be used for housing. That's an example I think of why we've kind of looked at this through the vibrancy lens of who's doing that work now in our community. I don't know that there's many partners that are going and proactively doing that. We did that because it was our building and it's our responsibility to do that. I think that there are property owners in these corridors through conversations through our vibrancy program that want to do that.

But to Councilman Martina's point, this can be a lot of money just to get like an idea or a vision of what it would be and not necessarily have the rest of the pieces in place to make it happen. And so there's funding out there to do this proactive work. There's no funding out there to do the vibrancy program which is why we do it. There's no facade grants, there's no white box grants. That's why they come to us because we recognize this need.

So I think that this is such a critical program to our economic development strategy and it can be used in so many different ways. To your point, we're going to look at jobs. We need more income tax in the city, we know that. But we also know we have chronic vacancy issue our neighborhoods and throughout our city and we want to help be a part of solving that. And the only way that I know how to do that is creating a plan, figuring out how much that plan costs and then backing into what resources are at all different levels of government that can help us accomplish that. And we've been successful as a community doing that time and time again.

Yeah, and just as you're saying that I'm thinking about the Royal Hotel and how they just demolished that and then put up a brand new building. And it occurs to me that there maybe it was cheaper to do that to knock it down than it was to be able to find these dollars to be able to rehab these buildings. And so, you know, that does make sense. And then, you know, as you're speaking, I'm also thinking of the former orehouse that's right at the corner of Souter and Shoreland, and that used to be an old gas station. My guess is it probably still has tanks underneath it, maybe, maybe not.

I don't know. Mhmm. I don't know where we would find out if the city has an inventory of some of these places. Is it environmental services? So and then trying to figure out if is that space even buildable? Is it in a floodplain? I mean, there's just a lot to

There's kind lot.

And that space would be perfect for visibility. You would reach almost everybody in the point. So, you know, I'm trying, as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, as a district council person would trying to figure out, okay, what would this mean for my district? I mean, it's not a lot of money. And so if you're talking four projects, if you're talking two projects, you know, up to 40,000, I don't know.

But, know, it's, it behooves us to work with our lobbyists both at the state and at the federal level because this is development and that sometimes can be pushed into a different category as opposed to the brownfields, know, sometimes it can be lumped together. But you know, as funds become more scarce, we definitely have to think out of the box and I appreciate you doing that for us.

Thank you. Remember the vibrancy program started as a $100,000 allocation. I'm not saying that we've got budget realities and let's head to back into it. But look at the need for that program. We got 80 applications last year. And you guys have heard me say this over and over again. We have to be intentional about what we want. So if we want to save buildings, then we need to show people how to save buildings and what the cost is and be prepared as a community to understand what it's going to cost to save it. And then make an informed decision. Should we do new construction or should we try to salvage this? And I think that's what this program's trying to do. Just get more information so we can make better decisions. Thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Gaddis.

Thank you. That blue light is bugging me too.

I the

idea of this. I could see it growing much like the vibrancy. I think one of the things I'm a little concerned on is the scope. So the eligible expenses, there's nine things listed. And when we look at the whole city, there's a lot of need. So how are we going to strategically use this startup program to be catalysts in areas, right? So is there a rubric? Is there targeted areas? Are we looking at nurse in neighborhoods? Like how are we going to strategize to use this to push that along?

I'd love to send you our program guidelines so you can see how we're thinking about it. Of course we're always trying to leverage investment in disadvantaged areas. So our nurses, our LMI census tracts, those are things that we naturally already focus our vibrancy programs on. So that's a given that we're looking at it for this purpose. To kind of some of the comments made earlier, this isn't necessarily a menu where you get to pick I want a vibrant or I want a phase one and I want a like the property owner or the developer has to make the case to us, the department, that this study is going to give them the information to get to that next stage.

And that there's a bigger kind of vision and plan for what they want to do. And there's going to be decisions that we are gonna make in the department or recommend to the incentive advisory committee who ultimately makes the recommendation on these whether or not we think that that information is going to be catalytic in getting them to that next step. Whether or not they have the financial wherewithal to even do the project that they envision. So there's gonna be a lot of underwriting I would say upfront to make sure that we're making good decisions on doing the studies that we're doing. And that the project actually needs whatever they're asking for.

So again the goal is it's not a lot of money so to make these dollars go as far as possible and to show wins from this program so I can come back to you all and say look how impactful this program was. There's a lot of need for it. Look at this project in this district and what it was able to do for the community. But at a base level I'd love to just share the guidelines with you with you all and if you have feedback we'd love to take that into account. This program obviously is not live yet. It will only be live if you vote on this program. So we have a window of opportunity hopefully to continue to work together to improve the guidelines.

I like that. Before when we also looked at the vibrancy, and I would appreciate a copy of that, We talked about how we were gonna measure success and show. Are there any Have you put in thoughts on how we would measure the success and how we would be able to show the citizens how this is changing the lives. Yes,

and that is a big part of the program guidelines that I'll send you that we're looking at, it's a lot of the metrics that we're evaluating these things from. So hopefully that will provide the information and clarity that you're looking for.

Okay. And then will there be any communication with the district council people on when things are picked and is there any Okay.

Sure. Yeah. Would love to have open communication with you all about these. This will be a rolling program so you all know vibrancy. We have a date certain for deadlines and then we announce with all of you at a press conference. This is going to be, we can't necessarily control when people are coming to look to invest in our city. So it's important to have this kind of be rolling program throughout this year. But yeah, would be happy to connect with the district council members if you have ideas of people that would be interested in this program and if we're going to be investing in a project obviously making you aware that that is the case.

Okay, thank you. And then I do have a question on the Brownfields. When we apply for the Brownfields and you pick them, what kind of follow-up is there after the program's completed?

In terms of follow-up to whom?

So Brownfield's done, you've done your job, there's a person that takes it over, buys it, goes through Planning Commission. Is there any follow-up afterwards to check-in?

Follow-up from the city with the person that we're selling it to. I mean naturally with any of these projects, the brownfield remediation is one element of it, right? I mean our value as an economic development team is we like to provide like a white glove service that gets you, if we're selling you the site that we're to take you through planning commission, we're going to take you through building inspection and hopefully be there to cut the ribbon with you. I mean that there's no in our department it's not a one off opportunity. We look at these brownfield sites as lead sources for us because we're actively out there trying to recruit more jobs and investment in the city.

So I would say we're involved all throughout the process and they are naturally, if they are the ones that receive the brownfield grant we help them. They have to annually report on that to the state I think for a three year window. So there's annual reporting that has to be done on those as well.

Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, chair.

Thank you. Councilman Sorontu.

Thank you. Director, in terms of I know you mentioned the 4 Corners downtown. Could you just cite a a few other examples of where brownfield legislation like this has made a difference?

Yeah. Other words proactive environmental assessments? Overland Industrial Park, Southwick Mall Site, Northtown Mall Site, Cleveland Cliffs, the Marina District, a lot of the Riverwalk project, in the neighborhoods, Doller Jarvis, the Cook's House, Kraft House. There's countless examples where we've partnered with developers to assess buildings before they're redeveloped. A lot of our vibrancy programs are beneficiaries of that.

The Brownfield, the issue of environmental contamination is throughout the city. And so we are, there are dozens and dozens of examples where we've assisted with those funds.

Great, thank you. Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you very much. I had a couple questions. Yeah. The first is when you say underutilized buildings, what does that entail?

Like for example of the vibrancy program where we might put a white box space on the Ground Floor commercial space but the upper stories are vacant. That's an underutilized building, right? How can we partner with them to explore upstairs residential or maybe other aspects of the building that aren't being utilized Okay,

and when you had said that basically the developer or property owner you know they come to you in order to basically say what they want, but let's say that they may not be aware of something that would be useful to them. Do you also offer that that technical advice, technical assistance like I think that you that this you know expense or this survey will be very beneficial to you instead of them having to because some people don't know certain things as well.

Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely yeah we we help you know we try to walk a fine line where we're not advisors on like site development, but we like to let them know the things that are available to them. We partner a lot with the small business development center and places like Connect Toledo or Regional Growth Partnership that do advise advise companies and developers that are looking to do investment on what sort of due diligence items that they have. But yes we do let them know that this will be a tool in the toolbox that could help them.

I'm just thinking of really the mom and pop shops especially like underutilized properties they may not know that this survey would be helpful to them for future development. So I just wanted to see if they're getting that sort of sense.

And that's part of the work that we're doing now with the vibrancy initiative on the planning grant side, a lot of people are interested in actually doing the improvement. But a lot of people don't know that there's other possibilities to re envision their facade. Like for example, when we worked with Mr. Daley in the Englewood neighborhood, we were able to partner with him. He had ideas of improvements that he knew that he needed to do to his space, but we were able to bring the planning grant to him that kind of completely re envisioned the facade of his building to help attract more business and things like that.

So that's a part of the ground level work that we're doing is identifying needs in the community like that and then helping to either stand up our own resources to be able to assist with that or bring resources home from the state and federal.

Okay. And is this program if approved will this be used for like the Owens Corning project as well or? No ma'am. Is there so okay.

No completely separate. Completely separate,

okay perfect.

All right. Did you want to present item four and then we'll just ask for recommendation? Sure,

yep. Do you

wanna do that chair?

Can I ask questions about this?

Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

I thought you would kick it over to me, which is okay. Real quickly, how will you know this is a success? It's new. How will you know it's worth it?

You know, let's be honest, a year is not a lot of time when we're talking about studies and getting the information. I think it's gonna take a few years to kind of get the information, put the projects together, which is going be a little hard for me to come back here and ask for this again next year. But I think success is showing interest in the program. I think the number of people and the types of projects that are applying to us, being able to report that information out to you, demonstrating that there is a need because I'm telling you that there's a need based on my experience, but being able to actually show you and quantify that for you I think is important. But in the end, council member, I think the ultimate measure of success for this is did that project happen?

Did that site get redeveloped? Was that report something that that investor or developer cited as critical to getting them interested in this study? If you talk with our KP group and Kevin Prater, he will tell you the feasibility study was critically important to getting him interested and seeing a viable path forward for the Spitzer And Nicholas Buildings. That to me is a measure that this is needed and it was helpful and effective in helping them reach their project.

That makes sense to me. I mean, did strike me that, like, you you think about a budget year and budget cycles, we're not going to be reviewing whatever amount comes in next year's budget and looking back on okay, so that's interesting. So $80,000 fiftyfifty split. How'd you land on the fiftyfifty split? How do you know that's the right split?

You know it's this is kind of a pilot.

Yeah, sure.

And we're trying to understand it. That was sort of a model that we used with the U. S. EPA assessment grant. And we saw that work. It might not work as well when we're talking about bigger numbers, you know, like feasibility studies. But we're going to test it out, we're going see. And if not, then we'll recommend a change

to the program. I think if it's oversubscribed, it could be interesting to actually tweak that split a little bit. Is it a sixtyforty, 70 fivetwenty five where people want we need to make that small amount of dollars go farther. We're actually going to yeah, that's interesting. And the last one real quickly, and if you don't know the answer to this, I would encourage you to ask the president of council. Have you ever considered the orthography of the word asbestos?

President of council,

because Just if you help me answer that question later get that back to her. Thank you,

chair. Well chair Melden, recommendation for item three then.

Did I hear SCP?

SCP please. Yes.

Okay. Let's go to item four.

Alright item four on the agenda will be presented by our real estate specialist Carmen Watkins.

Good afternoon, counsel. Carmen Watkins, division of real estate. I'm here to present legislation authorizing a twelve year CRA real property tax exemption for a renovation project for Zelme Sadiq. He's the owner of property located at 5744 Southwick Boulevard in South Toledo. The owner is proposing to invest approximately $1,500,000 to renovate 50 15,000 square foot existing commercial office building into a 14 unit housing complex located in our Hawthorne Hills CRA area.

In exchange for the tax exempt incentive, the owner is required to enter into a pilot agreement with the Toledo Public School District for duration of the twelve year term, making annual tax payments equal to 67.5 of the property tax rate each year. This project is consistent with the goals of the city's comprehensive housing strategy, which helps support the need for the development of affordable housing. The CRA incentive is a major factor in the owner's decision to move forward with this project upon council's approval of this ordinance. The owner plans to start construction immediately with plans to complete this year in 2026. We ask for your support of this development and we are, for this project and we are requesting SCP.

Councilwoman Martinez.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for your presentation. So I used to live back in this neighborhood. I'm very familiar with this building, and I'm very supportive of this project. I think it'll be a good boost to the neighborhood, although it is starting to get a little inundated with apartments on the periphery of that area, but I think this is a good use of the CRA, and I do support this, so thank you.

Councilman Driscoll.

Thank you, Chair. Are these market rate apartments? You may have said, I'm just curious. Are they market rate apartments?

Yes. Yes.

Okay. Also, we'll see eventually the results of the study, Councilman Martinez put together a study for the Reynolds Corner area. I think this is a would be covered by that. You don't think so? Okay. All right. There are tons of buildings that are just like languishing around that corner. So this is really thoughtful. And I also want to give a shout out to TPS. Not every school district is as compliant with tax abatement as TPS. We're very lucky to have the foresight of the five body school board and Doctor. Duran as well. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Alright, Councilman Melden, what's your recommendation?

Thank you. Before I go SCP, just super exciting. I mean, I feel like we ought to get this done and then take billboards out all over the city and say, own a building, want to do something fun? Work with us. Because it's just such a cool, it's such a cool project and I wanna echo the point about TPS. You know, and I think Washington Local falls into that category too, but it's, we should not take that partnership for granted. So SEP, thanks.

Thank you. Thank you. Items five through seven will be from the. Director Suhorse, could you hold on just a second?

You've got the three second read items. I'm just curious if there's anything you wanted to add for those. The TIF at Owens Corning, the Middle Grounds, and then the development of the Glass City Riverwalk.

Okay. No questions on my end? Thank you. Items five through seven are from the office of the mayor.

Good afternoon, members of council. I'm Rachel Hart, chief of communications,

here today

requesting authorization of $50,000 to support the twenty twenty six free Party in the Park concert series. I'm joined today by Cheryl Hardy, CEO of Hardy Communications, and Lance Woodworth, CEO of Destination Toledo. Since last year, the city of Toledo has worked in coordination with these two organizations along with several other downtown stakeholders, including Lucas County, the Metro Parks, the Mud Hens, and Walleye, Connect Toledo, and the Downtown Toledo Improvement District to support plans to increase activation in Downtown Toledo supporting local economic growth. While this year's plan includes some larger collaborative events to really build up our shared impact, consistent activation downtown really depends on there being something to do every Friday night no matter what. And that's exactly what Party in the Park provides.

This $50,000 contribution will ensure that all Toledoans have access to free entertainment on Friday nights every week between Memorial Day and Labor Day. And I'd now like to turn it over to Cheryl Hardy who will talk a little bit more about the work that she's leading.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, thank you for having us today, counsel. Thank you for your support of 2025 and thank you for considering support for 2026. We appreciate it. I think I have the most fun job in the entire city and I'm really happy to be here saying that last year was a success. So thank you for your support there And I think we'll start by talking a little bit about that. Last year we saw over 50,000 attendees to Party in the Park. That was probably double what we had hoped for. But honestly, I mean, I always want more.

So I would have hoped for more even from our standard. We also had more than 1,150,000 in direct economic impact. Destination Toledo was kind enough to do a study for us, and that was for the 11 concerts in Promenade Park. That does not include the two on the road concerts that we tested to see if we could move Party in the Park around on our fringe time to see if that would benefit the city. 80% of the attendees reported having stopped at a bar or restaurant before or after coming down to Party in the Park.

That's important because as we stated last year, this is an economic development impact program. So the activation has to create some kind of impact. So we want them stopping at the bars and restaurants before and after. So we were pleased to see that. And we got a lot of media and we grew our social media page from zero to 6,000,000 views in about three or four months of downtown.

So we expect nothing except exceptional growth this year. In 2026, we are moving from 11 or 13 Party in the Parks to 19, plus two new events and seven coordinated activation events. So very, very proud of what we've been able to put together for the 2026 season and what that means for the economic impact for downtown. Big picture goals really have not changed. We are trying to drive traffic downtown.

Driving traffic downtown does nothing but benefit everyone. It benefits our businesses, our organizations. We want people to move downtown, live downtown, work downtown, move their businesses downtown. And as you can see, that's exactly what we're trying to do again this year. So this particular goal is the exact same as last year, only bigger and better.

Local programming equals local impact. I think you all saw last year it was a test to do local and betting on ourselves, betting on Toledo worked for us. We were able to reduce costs with bands, but we were able to provide more and we were still able to get the attendance that we were looking for to actually provide the impact. I think we'll do the same again this year. When we did our surveys and asked what people wanted to see, we heard a lot of they want the sing along songs and they want the tribute bands.

So we are bringing in some more regional bands. We're still focusing very local and not yet to that national level of expense. Cross promotion is something that we're focused on a little bit. And Chief Heart mentioned that in the entry. We're doing some activation cross promotion.

And our goals, simply stated, are if you take opening day as the cornerstone, the benchmark, how do we create more opening days? How do we create more days that feel like that downtown? So what we did is we put together an activation committee and we started layering some of the activations on top of each other. This weekend is a great example. We have our first pickle mania in which we now have I have some outdated information here.

We have 18,000 people interested in coming to pickle mania this weekend. And with the weather the way it is, I see nothing but success for that. We also have a Mudhens home game, we also have a Walleye playoff game. That means a lot of things happening downtown. And that's really exciting because people come, they park, and they go multiple places downtown. They do multiple things. They spend more money because they spend more time, and then they go home. And that's exactly what we're trying to do with these layered activations and the cross promotions. The weekends that we have that are specific for that are very intentional and we hope to see more weekends. Maybe we're not going to get to opening day but maybe we're going to get close.

And if we can get eight or 10 of those this year, what a win for us by simply adding events on top of each other that already exist. Picklemania's new so that's a little bit but we only have two new ones. All the rest of them are layered, are existing events. And finally I have the concert schedule for this year. I know it's small, I apologize, but I think you all received an email with the bigger flyer and with the memorandum from last year.

We curated this list from hundreds of visits to see these local bands and it is quite a feat to put together a list of 45 bands plus and still growing and make that something that the city's excited about. We did have almost 400 shares on social media when this concert schedule dropped and over 100,000 views. So I think it was pretty popular. I haven't gone back and checked since then but that day we had 100,000 views and 400 shares. So I believe that we are set for a really exciting concert series again this summer. And I thank you for your consideration of support.

We're happy to answer any questions, and we are requesting SEP please.

Thank you very much. Oh, everybody's lighting up. Okay. Let's start with Councilman Martinez.

Thank you Madam Chair. Can you go back to the second slide? That one. So first of all, I'm very supportive of this. So just let me be upfront about that. But I think a lot of times when we do these types of sponsorships, people, our community, tend to think, oh, government's wasting dollars. You know, we shouldn't be getting involved in the entertainment business. Well, is actually very impactful. So this is awesome because you can see for every dollar that a taxpayer dollar that we get we have a great rate of return. And that's important.

I can tell you as owning a bar and restaurant in downtown, this was huge last year. I was very impressed with the community turnout. A lot of our dead days were much busier. They weren't where we'd like them to be but they're getting there. Not pre COVID yet but I think this is great.

And if you, Mr. Woodward, if you could do this for the Jazz Fest because that's another great event that we have downtown, but we really haven't put pen to paper to figure out what the ROI on that is. And I know every year resources get scarcer and scarcer. And if we can at least show that this is a good thing for our city, it helps better sell sponsorships in general. So I have no problem supporting this and I think your I guess strategy moving forward local has definitely made an impact at least year one so I'm excited to see what this summer will do.

And the other bar owners that I've spoken to have seen an uptick in revenues. So it's not just me saying this, it's having other conversations with other owners in the downtown area. Now if we could just get the Huntington Center to do more, that drives me crazy because we see a beautiful building that sits vacant and I have no problem having multiple concerts in the same area. The worst thing we can do is just have one dead event space and when we have opportunity to attract more. So thank you for doing this. This was super helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. I have an idea. You should bring the toddler raves here in Huntington Center if you haven't seen those. Those are so cute. They're on TikTok and it's wildly popular. So that'll be a good idea, especially for young families. Yeah. Look it up. It's nice. You'll actually be dancing as well as the parent. Alright. Councilman Melvin.

Thank you so much. Man, I've never been more thankful to not have toddlers. But so thank you for that. That's very sweet. I'm so zoom out on the money. So 50,000 of what? What's the total cost to

pull this off?

I do not have it right in front of me, but I believe it's just under $700,000 Okay.

So 50 of 700. Yes. What was it last year? What was the total number last year?

Completely different program last year, but 350.

I'm just talking about growth. I'm just I'm just like kind of thinking about trends. Right? Yep. So what opportunities could there be? And I know you said you're never satisfied with what you have, so this should be a total softball for you. What are the opportunities to grow that 700

Mhmm.

Number? Because that ideally means more activity and more attraction and more visits and more impact and all these things.

You're going to be surprised at my answer then.

Yeah, go ahead.

The idea is actually not to continue putting events on ourselves and funding those events because that requires more money, more time. The idea would be to become the friendliest third party event city in the entire Midwest and attract more third party events that are bringing their events here and paying for them. So maybe the first year, like we did with Garmin, like we are with Pickle, we're bending over backwards and practically doing the work for them, introducing them to everybody that they need, getting all of the connections so that they have the best success that they can possibly have here, and then they come back the next year. And they bring their money with them, and they bring their talent, and they bring their time. And then we have this fantastic event downtown that we aren't funding.

So my idea is not to grow it. We do have to grow it for the next three years or so because we have to build up events create activity. And if we're talking about activation, activation right now is created by events. But we don't want downtown to only be active when we're throwing events. That's going to take us some time.

That's where party in the park comes in because people know something's happening every Friday and they start coming downtown. Well that's going to become a pattern. It's going to become a pattern on Thursdays and Saturdays and Sundays and other days as well as we grow it. But my goal would not be to continue building this budget for event purposes over the long term. Over the short term we have some, we have a bridge, we have a gap we need to fill to get the activation going. But my goal is not to continue creating and running more events. My concept would be to help other third parties run the best event they can and say, Man, why would you consider going anywhere else other than Toledo in the Midwest? Because they've got everything.

I think that's a great answer. I certainly think that feels like a bit of a bothand, right? I mean, I think for as long as it's sustainable anyway. Yes. But no, it's a really great point. It just strikes me it's 7%. You're asking us for 7% of the overall cost here. Don't know if there's a single resident in this community that if they said, you know, why are you doing that? My answer would be, do you think the city of Toledo's party in the park doesn't deserve, like, 7% of support from the city of Toledo? So I think that's pretty reasonable. What would help that is also understanding who else is in that 700 mix. Like, how do you what's the funding level?

Toledo The city and then, of course, the county is a 100. Is it there? There you go. Connect Toledo is 100. DTID is 150. Destination Toledo is 100.

And then

I'm raising money.

So private. Okay.

Yep. Yeah. I raised private money, then I also raised money for the city and for the metro parks just because as you're raising money, sometimes it feels like it deserves a different home.

Yeah, this might be a question for Chief Hart. I haven't got that. I'm so proud I didn't say Rachel. Talk to me about the communication challenges yeah, I know, I just said it. Talking about the communication challenges and strategy of communicating especially if you think about this stacking idea, right? Like, A, that's exciting, there's lot of stuff going on, but B, there's like multiple channels of communication. Like what are some of the challenges there and how are we approaching that from a comm standpoint?

Thank you for the question. Yeah, I think certainly it is a challenge when you're dealing with many different types of events across many different organizations all with sort of unique audiences. So I think that is where this downtown activation committee really coming together in alignment on how do we want to talk about ourselves as a city? How do we want to highlight activation? What does activation look like to us?

And what sort of the foundational needs that we need to create in order for that activation to thrive? So safety, people being visible, are there connections between Promenade Park and the Mud Hen so people can feel comfortable and safe walking around. So I think aligning first on what does this look like if we're doing this well and then how can we start to talk about activation in a way that also feels aligned has really been a beneficial sort of platform for it. And then I think building on top of that, we are trying we're trying to get out of the feeling that promoting this event takes away from this event. So it's not Mudhens versus Party in the Park.

It's both. So I think that's the alignment of branding and naming honestly. Think even just putting themes to these things so that it feels like it's part of one cohesive weekend and then that allows for that consistency regardless of which organization is talking about it. It really just builds the size of our audience from there.

I appreciate that. I mean I feel like I could talk about that forever and I shouldn't. So those are my questions, thank you.

Thanks. Thank you very much. Council Member Gaddis.

Thank you. I think what I appreciate most is the artists have come to me and they've talked about how wonderful they've been treated and how they really feel valued and part of something. You know, there's there's always this line between artist and and economics, and I feel like you've really bridged that and I really appreciate that. When you talk about direct economic activity, what falls under that? Like what are we measuring specifically? Can I answer the first part of that first and then

Lance answer the second part since Destination Salido did the economic impact study? But I just wanna say a couple of things about the artists. First of all, the artists have embraced this. And one of my favorite parts of, and something I didn't expect. When those artists come off that stage at Party in the Park, sometimes they cry, sometimes they high five each other, sometimes they're taking pictures.

And it is the up to that point, is the best day of their entertainment life of the year. And I I didn't expect that from the for the bands, but it is it has been it is such a joy. I look forward to it every single year. And I'm glad that you're hearing about it, I'm glad we're bridging that gap. They should be treated like they are the entertainment because they are. We wouldn't be there if it wasn't for them. So maybe we come at it differently and I'm glad to hear that feedback because people always say that to us, but it's nice what they say when they're not talking to us. So thank you for sharing that.

Yes, absolutely.

Yes, and great question on the direct spend and it's something to kind of point out. For the purpose of this study, we looked at new dollars coming into downtown. So we actually backed out anyone, any residents of downtown because the assumption was is that spending would be taking place anyway. They're gonna go out to eat probably that night or get something to drink. So we wanted to look at what Party in the Park was bringing downtown.

The direct spend is that consumer to that business spend. So if they walk into a restaurant, a bar, they've got a hotel room, that's the direct money that they're spending. The report goes on and I can break out indirect and induced business to business business to business selling as well, job supported, all the way down to the local taxes that are collecting off that. But we wanted to really be conservative with these numbers and say this is the actual people walking into that business taking money out of their pocket and supporting our local businesses, which was huge. And and big picture wise, if you get that downtown vitality and activation going, that is often the place that the visitor visits first.

So if we get that right, it's going to create confidence or curiosity in them to wanna get out and explore the rest of our neighborhoods. And then when we layer them on top, now it's like we don't just need to come in town and leave, we're gonna get a hotel room. And if all the hotel rooms downtown are booked, which is happening quite a bit lately, now they're going out to C Corp or Dusseldor. They're getting around and they're spreading out. So the idea is is really to change that perception that some people have, locals included, there's nothing to do.

Or folks from the outside, there's nothing to do. We create that fear missing out and we create that activation, that vibrancy that draws them in that I guarantee will grow that 1.5 or 1,150,000 in direct spend even higher. But that's how we get to it. The direct is coming right out of the consumer into the business and the others is just all the follow through.

And then did you measure the area of impact? Like is there like, if we were to put here's party in the park, here's how here's how it's the money infiltrated or the impact. Like, have have you mapped that out? Because we talk about catalyst events with economic development and putting it into buildings that economic growth? Like, have we done that with this?

We can break down so we subscribe to a platform where you can actually track cell phones. You know what the app asks, do you wanna be followed or allow tracking or whatever? So we can see people that initiate at one spot or one point of interest they call, and then where they go from there. What I've seen is that people, like all humans, we love to eat, shop, and visit. And we will see people come downtown and I don't know if it's surprising or not, but a great number end up out at Franklin Park Mall.

They end up in in other downtown neighborhoods where they can walk and shop and drink. And so really it is. I mean, it's so important to have that downtown as that light, that beacon that draws them in, get that right, and create that curiosity to get out and explore. But we do track that. And we do have the visitor insights that show where they go from from here.

Okay. Would we be able to get some of that information? I would appreciate that. And then are we activating both sides of the river again this year?

I would love to answer that question. With the river walk coming to a 50% completion, we are working with the metro parks. In fact, our activation committee in general is really looking at how do we activate both sides of the river more frequently. June 12 is the is the river walk celebration date. The eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth is is watershed weekend for the metro parks and both sides of the river will be activated.

But on the twelfth, we will have Party in the Park that starts at Promenade Park, goes down the river walk, to the bridge, across the bridge, and into the International Cove area. We will have actual musicians in each of those locations so people can walk all the way around. We'll be doing the same thing for Latin Fest at the end of July. And of course we're talking about a few extras. I know the fire chief is here and he was just down there helping us figure out how we might do pyrotechnics on both sides of the river for our finale. But don't tell anybody. It's a secret. So we have some really fun activities set up. The hot air balloons for the metro parks will be on both sides. Like I said, the pyrotechnics, the fireworks, there are many things that are on both sides of the river.

And as Rachel pointed out, we're also trying to figure out what routes people will take to go from one side of the river to the other and how do we light those, make those safe, interesting, get people walking the routes we want them to and passing the shops, restaurants, stores that are open and ready for business. So we're doing a lot of background work on how do we manage, once we get people here, how do we manage them to get them in different places downtown. And so there's a lot of that work happening. It's not perfect, but it's moving forward.

And then I know that Adam had mentioned the Jazz Festival or Councilman Martinez. Have you thought about, we are the recipient of the Levitt concert series and some one of the I mean, we have Levis. We have the the Glass City. I know some of the other ones are a little further out. But have we thought about working that in or finding a way to add on that?

Yeah, absolutely. I believe that the schedule is still being finalized, but we're targeting Thursday night, so I think that that's a great add on to sort of the layered approach that we're already taking. So yeah,

absolutely. Well I appreciate all your thoughtfulness. This is how big cities do it, right? You have all these things and you plan whole day. So I'm really looking forward to this summer. Thank you for

all your hard work, thank you Chair. Thank you. Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you Chair. And thank you for giving us all that information. I think the whole summer's kinda looks like it's planned already. One of the things that I think that what we could do is, and maybe you do this, I don't know, is combine that also with the conventions that come into town. And again, you know your work, I'm not giving you advice.

I just know that when someone is, I had a friend from Cleveland that came here for a volleyball something or other, cheerleading something or other, And then we had breakfast and we were hanging out and you know she's asking me, well where should I stay and where where can we go shopping and was asking all of these questions. You know, if she didn't know me, I don't know who she would have talked to. And so I'm sure you probably already do that but with the organizations that come in, is there a way that maybe you do a kind of like a passport like an app or something to try and get people to go to Adams bar, that try to go to different places throughout downtown. You know, of the museum, not just the main museum, but maybe some other places like the Toledo History Museum. Some other places that also need kind of a shout out as well.

So it's not just the big guys, it's some of the small girls too and some of the small business owners in our city. So if you wanna answer that, and then I have two more points.

Yes, let me grab that one because there's a lot to unpack there. Two things, one, being a local ambassador is great. We've got data that shows that nearly 50% of visitors to Toledo come to visit friends and relatives. So that's why you'll see us marketing to the locals as well to say hey, there is something going on in your backyard. And invite your friends, invite your relatives to town rather than going up to Detroit or Chicago or down to Columbus or what have you.

So we rely on the local ambassador. But with the conventions and conferences, sporting events that come into town, we tackle that a couple different ways. One, we do have a show your badge and save program and they can digitally download that and they can go around and we've got participants, especially in the downtown footprint where people can show their badge and get a certain percentage off. And then we will also pre event have the meeting planners get event sheets and we'll lay out everything that's going on and throw a QR code for more information. But quite honestly it's never enough.

It's like you got to keep getting that message in front of them and the local ambassadors is so important too. But it's something we continually strive to get better at but it is out there.

Yeah. Because, you know, those people may not have been coming to Toledo but for, you know, the sporting event or but for, you know, their convention. And then and then when they get here and there's party in the park and there's a mud hens game and there's a walleye, whatever. All the wonderful things that happen here and then they say wow, That Toledo is the

site visit, like that visit, I always say it starts with a visit. If we can get them here then show them what we have, their perception changes, the way people talk about Toledo changes, the way the media coverage covers us changes. And it just gets that ball moving. But yeah, it's as simple as a volleyball tournament or dance competition. We get them here, they see it, and then they're coming back for future trips.

Yeah. And Councilwoman Morris, if I can add on that. From the very beginning of Party in the Park, Destination Toledo has probably done the best job of any organization in Toledo in promoting Party in the Park and finding a way to get that information out to their to their following. So, I think they've always done a great job and I think we're all getting better at it. The more we talk, the more cross promotion we're doing, but they do an excellent job. We can all do better and we all are working to do better, but But, you guys have always done an excellent job from the very beginning.

Yeah. And I always like the friendly family events that, you know, it's not just people going out and having a good time listening to a band. There's also events for the kids as well. And so I guess, I know the question was asked, what is your current funding? I guess, maybe you can give us what is your future funding going to look like? What is the, I know you had mentioned, you know, you want to step back, but for next year because we're all thinking about the budget very intently. And so, I'm sitting here thinking how can we move past our 50 and move that on to either a private or an organization or something that that values what you're doing as well?

Right. Ideally, we for the next three years, we probably need to get somewhere close to 1,000,000 for funding to get where we really wanna be. I you know, all of us are are doing three jobs, but running an activation creating and running an activation committee and running Party in the Park is quite a bit. And I signed on for that. I can't do it forever, not at that level, and get a good outcome. So at some point, we are going to have to add a little bit of extra work toward the Activation Committee and becoming that third party city that we talked about. And that will require some people. So we need a little bit of extra help. We need a little bit of extra admin help. And we'd like to continue to grow the Party in the Parks.

I'm not necessarily sure that our expenses grow from a band and stage. We'd love to have a little bigger stage, would love to have but those are wants, they're not necessarily needs. I think it depends on what the city wants. Do we want to bring in a national act? One a year, is that where we start? Can we get a sponsor for that? How do we engage the river? We have to start talking about events that include water. So how do we do that? We are actively having discussions about that right now.

You know, I'm also working with other venues in other cities. How we grab bands that are coming through if there are three or four of us? So if somebody in Dayton, somebody in Akron, somebody in Grand Rapids and Toledo are all getting the same band, We can potentially get somebody better and bigger than we wanted before. The problem is we need to look at 2028 for that right now. So how do we look forward for this three and five years as opposed to year to year?

Frankly, we're here asking for funding for 2026, and 2026 is already planned. Mhmm. I'm already working on 2027, and I need I need access to 2028 to make these things really amazing. And so I think that is the bridge I need to gap. Funding, I think we can, you know, privately go out there. If we get these big ideas and we have these great things that are going to come, I I think we can find that. We're not talking about millions of dollars, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I think the return is showing that it's worth it. I think the gap is the years. How do we set this program for years to come?

Because if we're just tackling it four, five, six months ahead, we're never really going to get the results that we need unless we are thinking about down the road.

So I'm just thankful that your plans and no one has mentioned the elephant that used to be in the room, Hunter Brooks. I'm just glad he's no longer involved in this at all. Thank you.

Thank you. President Williams.

Thank you so much. Just a couple questions. Can we get a breakdown of the budget that you'll be going off of this year and last year? Is that possible?

Yeah, I can follow-up by referral.

Okay, I'll do a referral for that. Just What

was the total cost last year?

We had a $350,000 budget last year. We also brought in some sponsorships, so we probably ended up around 500 last year. This year we started at $5.50 and we're going to be closer to 700 total. Okay. We also went from 13 events to 19 events.

Yeah, I see that. That's not that wasn't my concern at all. Just was trying to see because the biggest thing like councilwoman Morris said, where are on the money? We're looking at our budget very tight, very tight and we definitely see the ROI and love it but we have a constituent so we want to just talk about it more. Also too, just talking with some colleagues with some complaints that are going on like are we going to get more beer vendors Because it was hard, it was I know when I went people were lying around the corner for the beer.

And I know Dora cups are being sold, right? The Dora cups are being sold at the events, right? Are we getting the same amount of beer vendors or are we getting more, especially if we're trying to grow?

Yep. So when you say beer vendors, do you mean the sales, the beer, the sales lines or do you actually mean types of beer?

The beer, no, not types of beer. I don't even know what types of beer there are. Don't drink beer.

Right, right, right.

Just vendors, beer vendors. Are we going to have beer, people selling beer, more people selling beer? Because I think it was like three trucks last year.

Right. We doubled the amount of bartenders that we had this year. We got new POS systems for this year. And we actually just engaged a gentleman who is from Toledo and recently back to Toledo who is a high volume resort expert. And he is helping us reorganize our bar specifically for sales. He believes we can get it down to twenty seconds per turn and that results in 20,000 to $30,000 extra. So we will be rolling some of that out at Pickle Fest and then we'll be perfecting some of it in the park. There's only so much we can do at a temporary site on the road. But we've also engaged some new signage. Last year the signage was a little bit on the temporary side.

We didn't start until April so we were well behind last year. So you should see a significant improvement this year. There's always room for more improvement so we'll always be able to do better. But we certainly have put in place some changes that should make the beer line roll quite fast. People love their beer. They do,

They do. Also too, just want to know what's the plan for the advertisement? Some of it got out a little bit later than we wanted it to. How are we going to beef up the advertising because we haven't seen it yet?

The advertising for Promenade Park won't start until May due to budgets. We are focused on the bands and on social media, but we do have iHeart starting in May and we have the City Paper, Free Press and I feel like there's another one, sorry I don't have it right in front of me. But we have a media plan that we have in cooperation with our activation committee and so we are cross promoting and promoting Party in the Park. But most of it is focused on the summer concert series.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Councilman Driscoll.

Thank you, chair. I'd like to know specifically what beers will be on tap. No, just a few points. Obviously, very supportive of this. Then you can respond to my points if you want, but you certainly don't have to.

One of the things and I was part of the study that we when we started looking into Party of the Park, bringing it back, we are, like, way behind the eight ball in terms of the number of, like, mid mid size events like Party in the Park. We don't do nearly enough in downtown or throughout the city. And then even worse in terms of our, like, big events. Like, we have Jeep Fest. That's our really our only big event. A community our size should probably have, like, three of those. Communities like Dayton do. When you benchmark against, like, Fort Wayne and things like that, so like, our tourism, we could do a lot better job. And this is a step in the right direction, and it was great last year. And I'm really excited we're bringing it back.

And so kudos to you guys. The other thing I would say is, and I appreciate your point about trying to build the infrastructure to get this organization to where it needs to be so that it can kind of be self sustaining. I think if if I could pass the buck to somebody else here, bring up this idea, but make somebody else do the work on this. We need to think long and hard about our permitting processes and whether or not this entity, the city of Toledo, should be the people in charge of permitting for large events, things like that. Maybe just in downtown, I don't know.

But we we should and maybe Destination Toledo could do it or the Activation Committee could talk about it or Party of the Park could be.

We

But we we're we're just old and slow and not like, we we want people who wanna get to a yes from a permitting and events standpoint. And so, you know, I'm curious what your thoughts are on this. But I would

tell you.

Personally, I think we should look Mhmm. At some at offloading from a permitting perspective for events. It should not be the city of Toledo. God love the people who work here, but we we we wanna get people who wanna get to a yes on events.

The city of Toledo is

doing an excellent job and you have a lot to work on. But I will tell you, we well you are. I mean there's a lot to work on here. But we are actively working on how that might be able to be changed in the future and we're working with the metro parks. So combining the metro parks and the city for downtown permitting and that would go in theory to a third party.

We do not in any way have all of it worked out yet nor is it a done deal. But it is something that we are actively talking about and that we have lots of of great great ideas on. There are other cities that have set precedents for this. So while it might be a transition that would be something that would, might be a little difficult to do, it's certainly, I agree with you completely, it should be done somewhere else. And I do think the activation in general would be increased if we were able to change the permitting.

Yeah, think if this activation committee could kind of just put that on the agenda at some point to discuss because

We're already talking about it. It is already I had a two hour conversation about it last night.

Okay. Great.

We are on it, on it.

It's not unheard of for a chamber of commerce to be the point of contact for a small business that they try to help them work their way through all the business permits, stuff like that. Something like that ought to exist for our events for downtown as well. And really citywide, but I think downtown's a great place to start then. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Councilman Hobbs.

I just wanna say thank you for this, you know, this is a great, and everything that you have laid out here, the diversity in acts, in bands, in activities. Thank you for putting a lot of thought process into this and I really appreciate it, thank you.

Thank you very much, that means a lot. Okay,

President Williams, your recommendation. SEP. Okay, item number six.

Good afternoon, counsel. Austin Mack and the mayor's office here present. I am number six and seven together. They're both our annual dues payments to the Ohio Mayor's Alliance and the US Conference of Mayors. And the Ohio Mayor's Alliance and US Conference of Mayors are bipartisan coalitions of mayors that provide a unified voice for us in Columbus and DC to advocate for our cities. And joining me is Carrie McCarthy, Executive Director of Ohio Mayor's Alliance to kind of talk about some of the stuff they've been working on and are working on for us this year. So take it away Carrie, please. All yours.

Thanks Austin and thanks for the opportunity to present today. As Austin said, we're a bipartisan coalition representing the mayors in the 30 largest cities in Ohio. We do mostly state level advocacy on behalf of the cities, but we also do a couple other things. We help connect our cities with resources, whether that's grant funding or programmatic support through the state agencies. We also do a lot of local innovation sharing and best practice sharing amongst the mayors in the 30 largest cities.

And then the fourth thing that we do is really to promote the value and impact of our cities collectively on the statewide economy. It's an important role that our cities play. Ohio is unique and it has a lot of cities, and sometimes that isn't always appreciated amongst some policymakers and we really try to tell the story of Ohio cities. We work on a lot of different issues at the State House as you might imagine, but the two things that I'll talk about today that I think are most consistent is protecting the fiscal health of our cities and preserving home rule and local control. Those are probably the most common issues that we deal with.

On the fiscal health of our cities, advocating for additional funding or preventing unfunded mandates from the state legislature coming down to our cities. And then any other sort of policy change that's going to have a fiscal impact on our cities is something we're going to pay close attention to and weigh in on. And then as far as home rule is concerned, that's another consistent theme that we see and it covers a lot of ground. But any bill that has an impact on or an erosion on our constitutional rights to home rule will be an important issue that we'll engage on on behalf of our cities. The last thing I want to say is just it's our ten year anniversary this year.

We formed initially in 2016. And I'm proud to say that Toledo has been a member of our organization since our founding in 2016 and we really value that partnership with the city of Toledo. And we look forward to continuing work in the years ahead. So I guess I do want to mention one other quick thing. As an example of some of the additional work that we do beyond just state level advocacy, we've been very involved in the formation of a coalition to help educate the public on the impacts of property tax and what the implications would be if property taxes were abolished in the state of Ohio.

That is a role that I think is really important for our cities. And while property tax is a smaller portion of the overall revenue mix for cities across the state, it has a huge impact on many of our partners and our schools and our libraries and our counties. And so we've been a part of this broad coalition that was announced last week. We have 65 different organizations that are a part of that coalition working to educate the public on the impacts of abolishing all property taxes in Ohio. It represents all local government associations, business, labor, Republicans, Democrats.

It's probably the most broad based coalition I've been a part of since doing this work, and we're gonna continue to talk about the potential impacts of that issue on our community. So I'll stop there, happy to answer any questions if anyone has any.

Council member Gaddis.

Thank you. Thank you for this. You know, as as I'm out in in in my district talking about how we're spending tax money, how we're spending, it's you know, everybody's feeling the strain, so they're becoming more scrupulous with our budget. What are the big wins I can say when they say hey, what is this? What big wins can I say that this is doing to help the citizens in Toledo?

Thank you for the question. There's a couple things right out of the gate. The first thing that we did in 2019 was we really helped to increase the amount of revenue that our cities get back in transportation dollars for roads and bridges. There was a big effort to increase the gas tax back in 2019. We played a leading role in that.

That drove, through a formula, hundreds of millions of dollars back to our communities, including Toledo. The second thing I would say that I think has been I think we take a proud leadership role in was we also helped to make sure that many of the federal dollars that were provided to the state were sub allocated to our local governments through a grant program through the Department of Public Safety. We advocated for over $250,000,000 to be granted back out to local communities to help support issues that things like body cameras, community violence intervention programming, violence prevention work, came down through the Department of Public Safety. And then lastly, you know, I think the thing that's harder to articulate, but stopping the loss of revenue for our cities. You know, one of the big things that we worked on really, that we have been working on is the potential impact of increase in our city's pension obligations.

We continue to be advocates for our cities on that issue and we spent a lot of time working on that one.

Thank you, thank you for that.

And that legislation would cost Toledo $4,500,000 a year. So that's been in committee for two years and when Kerry testifies for it and keeps it in committee, we send him our information and he does that on our behalf and I'm really appreciative of that.

Yeah, really appreciate of your work. This is very helpful, thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. President Williams, your recommendation.

For both it's six and seven, right? S

E P.

Thank you.

S E P for seven. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you for coming.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Item eight will be from the Department of Transportation.

Good afternoon, members of council. Jeremy Michael Isaac, deputy director of department of public works. I'm here to present item number eight, which is an ordinance that authorizes the mayor to enter into a contract utilizing cooperative purchasing agreements for the purchase of one tandem axle plow truck. It authorizes the expenditure of an amount not to exceed 375,000 from the capital improvement fund. We're requesting SEP and I'll take any questions.

Chair Driscoll, your recommendation?

SEP. Thank you.

Item number nine will be from the Department of Law.

Good afternoon, members of council. My name is Mike Walton. I'm a senior attorney with the Department of Law. Joining me is Ann Bennett, chief of IT for the city of Toledo. This ordinance is being brought to council as part of our annual renewal of the city's cyber insurance policy.

The city purchases cyber liability insurance each year. We have an insurance broker, the Highland Group, who annually shops our insurance needs on the market and collects from insurance brokers' proposals. Highland has done that again this year, and they have brought us a proposal to renew our insurance policy with Coalition Insurance. Coalition has been the city's cyber insurance provider for several years. We've been happy with them, and they've apparently been happy with the work we're doing to secure our cybersecurity infrastructure here too.

The renewal rate this year is actually a lower rate than we were charged by Coalition last year, and it includes additional insurance coverage. Hyland told us that this was something offered to us by Coalition as a sign of coalition telling us that we're doing the right things. So the new amount to renew for this year would be for, thanks Anne, a $109,813. We would request SEP on this ordinance. I'm happy to take any questions.

Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, madam chair. It's just I have no problem supporting this. I just wanna given what's going on in the cyber world, I think this is probably super important now more than ever. But I guess my question is, have we ever had to draw on this and and make a claim? Okay. Thank goodness. I'm glad to hear that. So obviously we're doing something right and we're not being held hostage because you hear municipalities being held hostage. Just want to make sure that there's nothing else we could be doing that's proactive.

We have had coalition help us

with

investigations and it's an active relationship in that we don't only get involved if there is a claim or a suspected need for a claim. It is an ongoing monitoring as well. So they do provide cyber security services in addition to the coverage. Thank you.

Fantastic, thank you. Chair Hobbs?

Yes, I'd just like to know, the one year with the the three additional, is it going to stay at the same price?

The price will be updated every year when Highland takes it to market and chops it. So the renewal would be subject to having the appropriations.

So we're not locked in at the 100

and We're not, no, we're not locked in.

No, we have the option each year to renew.

Okay, SEP, thank you.

Thank you. Items ten and eleven are from the Department of Fire and Rescue Operations.

Good afternoon. My name is Tammy Powell. I'm the EFA Fire, and with me is deputy chief, Rodell Franklin and lieutenant Kevin Kirk. Our first ordinance is a request for passage authorizing the mayor to accept an amount not to exceed 1,250,000 from capital improvements for the purchase of fire vehicles and related equipment and authorizing us to advertise accept bids in order to award contracts for such purchases. The vehicle replacements are for current vehicles either damaged beyond repair or exceed the age and or the age pursuant to NFPA nineteen oh one. And fire is requesting SCP and welcomes any questions.

Council member Gaddis.

Thank you. About how many vehicles do you think we'll get with this?

So with the current 1.25, what we have is a 120 just over a 125,000 of it would be needed for what we don't have of two remounts for two ambulances. And then the purchase of five cuts and power loads for the two those two remounts and then we have three more new ambulances coming at the end of the year and that's about a half 1,000,000 for that. And then the balance of those funds would either be for two additional remounts or for another engine depending on what we could what the balance of that would be and then future money available.

Okay, thank you so much. Thank you chair.

Councilwoman Morris.

Thank you, I was gonna ask the same question. So I would like to get that by way of referral if we can do that. I'd like to get that in writing.

Yes.

Okay, thank you. I'll put it in.

I did have a question. Is this just to hold the money for purchases that you're planning to make? Or do you already have purchase orders and then you put in the you make the payment and then that's good.

That we're planning to get. We have to have the ordinance in order to make the purchases for the contract.

I didn't know if you had already specified what you wanted and and go

through But it's the on our list that needs I mean we need to have a couple more ambulances based on what we have to have in and then our schedule with the engines and where they all fall at with the mileage and on the needed basis.

Okay. Chair Hobbs, your recommendation.

Thank you. And chief Armstrong, when she was here the other day for the quarterly report, she spoke of the remounts with the fire trucks and the ambulances as And she explained all that other day at the public safety meeting. So thank you again for your reinforcement of that and what's gonna take place. SCP, please.

And our second request is for the passage and authorization for the mayor to accept bids in an amount not to exceed 250,000 from capital improvements for fire station improvements, to advertise accept bids and award contracts, funds for the various fire facility improvements are those included but not limited to new roof at MLA which would be our fire shop, HVAC system at 20 ones, different vehicle exhaust systems and then mold and mildew remediation at some of our stations. Fire is requesting SCP and welcomes any questions you may have.

Chair Hobbs, your recommendation?

Is there a particular station or place that you're looking for this to go to for and what for what particular upgrade?

Well, realistically, the roof at Emily, which is the fire shop

The roof at where?

At Emily 3917 Emily, which is our fire maintenance shop. It also has the police vehicles that are also there. That roof is going to be well over 250,000 that has been needing to be replaced since the whole report back in '22. So that some of the current money what we have left and then this $2.50.

And so for any access of $2.50, where are we looking then to finish paying for that or how?

Well current money that we have in the CIP along with this if that is enough to cover that. That is what our hope is for before mid year and then based on the needs of the stations.

Thank you. SCP police. Thank

you very much.

Next, we have four items from zoning and planning committee. Zone change at 2500 Collingwood Boulevard. Zone change at 4019 Roanoke Road, zone change for 20 855 through 2857 LaGrange Street, and a special use permit for a water tower at 0 South Detroit Avenue. We will have two resolutions in attendance. Councilman Melden recognizing Toledo Design Collective on their twenty fifth anniversary, and the other resolution recognizing Ashley Westgate for her contributions as Toledo City Council legislative intern, 2025 to 2026.

We do have an appointment to the electrical board of control. That is John R. Sallie, Jr. Replacing Rick Berson for the remainder of a three year term. It'll expire 01/20/2029.

We have four second read items. We have 109 dash 26, amending Toledo Municipal Code by enacting a new section five fifty seven titled biometric data collection. One forty seven dash 26, one forty eight, and one forty nine. The ordinances dealing with the TIF at Owens Corning, The Middle Grounds, and the Glass City River Walk project that was discussed earlier with chief Selhorst. New items from city council, we have reappointments to the Board of Honor, Barbara Floyd, and the Arts Commission representative, Ramona Collins.

Those are presented by council president Williams. And then we authorize a grant agreement with the University of Toledo Jack Ford Urban Affairs Center for an intern, $15,000 from the general fund, also from council president Williams.

Councilman Martinez.

Thank you, madam chair. I don't have anything oh, you just read. I just I have a couple questions in general. So one I have are we done? I wanna make sure we covered everything.

That completes the agenda.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. So two things. Number one, by way of referral, it's getting to be grass season. So I already put in the referral, but I am gonna be requesting a referral on mowing the expectation for the boulevards because I noticed it's starting to get high and we've had a lot of rain.

And if we're gonna do no mow May, fine, but specifically for the trail, Anthony Wayne Trail, if we're gonna go back to saving the butterfly. So if that's the case, I'm 100% for it. I just wanna know one way or the other. And then the other thing that I'm I will be walking on with permission of president Williams is and you'll get a a formal email or letter in this Friday's packet. So as you may recall, the demolition the historic demolition legislation sunset on Monday.

So the moratorium on historic structures is no longer in effect. What I'm requesting is an eight month redo of that given the fact that TPS announced their school closures and the impact that we have. So I am asking for your support on this. This shouldn't be take eight months. Hopefully it'll take it won't take as long. I understand the RFPs have gone out. So we should get a consultant to make sure that we can help preserve or at least get local designations on some of our structures. And one that I'm specifically interested in is Harvard Elementary School. So that is an iconic in South Toledo and I want to make sure that it's protected. I don't expect TPS to move that quickly, but I just want to make sure that there are other structures that could be in jeopardy.

So that's why I'm asking to walk this on. So that being said, thank you.

Thank you. Okay, seeing no further business, meeting adjourned.