City Council - workshop

Clerk Royal, are you ready to go? No, I had to work at the farm.

I'd like to call this Saline City Council work meeting to order at 5.31 p.m. Members present this evening are Council Members Del Orco, Dillon, Gierbaugh, Halsh, Harmount, Mayor Pro Tem Rice, and Mayor Marl. From city staff, we have the city manager, the city clerk, the parks and rec director, our aquatics manager, and our city treasurer. Is there a motion to approve the agenda as submitted this evening, unless there are amendments?

So moved.

As submitted? Yes.

Second.

Seconded by Harmount. All those in favor of approving the agenda as submitted signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Ayes have it. The motion carries unanimously. There are no absences at tonight's work meeting so we'll proceed to the first and only public comment period. Under the Open Meetings Act, any person may come forward at this time to make comment or question to City Council. This public comment period will be limited to three minutes per person. Those wishing to speak are requested but not required to state their name and address for the record. Are there any citizen comments this evening regarding the rec center implementation team report to city council? There appear to be no questions or comments from audience members. I would defer to the city clerk. Were there any written comments provided in advance of tonight's meeting in which the individual wanted the remarks right at this time? Easy enough. Then we will transition to the first and only discussion item this evening, which is an update from our rec center implementation team. This presentation will include their comprehensive report to city council that they've been working on for the past 90 plus days. There's actually a lot of information to go over, and I have to compliment the implementation team on their professionalism commitment and thoughtful analysis of a variety of options to put the rec center, our municipally owned rec center on a more sustainable trajectory. So I will have some comments at the end. I think the way we will deal with questions this evening is I'm going to start to my extreme left, begin with Council Member Harmount, and then wrap up with Council Member Halsh and myself. Of course, knowing that Councilmember Hulsh and myself served on the Rec Center Implementation Team, I was simply an ex-officio. Councilmember Hulsh was our official liaison and a voting member. We will, again, we're limited to an hour and a half, so we want to hear as much from you all as possible, our guests. One thing that would be helpful, either Lisa Shea, Chairperson Shea, or Director Lambert, is subsequent to tonight's meeting, If you could send an email to all of council with the contact information of each of our task force members or implementation team members, that would be helpful. I would assume between now and when we revisit this issue in early July, there might be some additional questions and various people of the implementation team worked on specific issues or tasks. So it's not necessarily one person that's best equipped to answer the question, depending, of course, on what the question is. so um i think that would be helpful again we're not going to reach consensus tonight we will revisit these issues um likely as a discussion item at our next regular meeting which is a week delayed because the holidays which will occur on july the 13th so again we do a round of questions you'll be limited to five minutes hopefully we'll be able to do two rounds but certainly one um but again this won't be your first or your only bite at the apple you'll have subsequent opportunities um at future meetings uh with that am i beginning with um city manager swallow or uh chairperson shea and yes uh council member Halsh will be joining you up front because he will be taking a portion of the presentation as well. Make sure the green light is illuminated at the bottom of that. And we are recording. We are live streaming. And I'm sure there will be a number of people who are interested in this topic watching at home or watching after the fact. So please make sure when you have the mic to speak directly and pull it close. We want to make sure you're picked up on our audio system.

Mayor, would you like us to introduce ourselves?

That would be great. Perfect.

Lisa Shea.

And actually, if I may, Chairperson Shea, introduce yourself and if you want to provide a little bit about your background and expertise and why you were asked to serve on this body, that would be helpful.

Sure, yeah. So Lisa Shea, I really appreciate the opportunity to come in tonight and share with you the results of our report. I have spent the majority of my professional career at the University of Michigan with Michigan Recreation, holding various leadership roles there within Michigan Recreation but also within Student Life. My experience and my expertise lies in recreation, wellness and community engagement. We're developing programs, assessing facility needs, building sustainable operations and creating experiences that really support community well being. So that's what I bring to the table.

Excellent.

Good evening. I'm Tony. I'm Washington counties. Director of Community and Economic Development. I was asked to be on the task force, though, because of my YMCA career. I spent 15 years in the Y in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Cleveland, Ohio, and in Ann Arbor as the CEO of that YMCA.

I'm Dennis Valenti. I'm an attorney. Also spent a number of years as a finance Saline grad as well, 6 and a half years on the school board here in saline and about 10 years on the school foundation. And a member of the membership of the rec center for a number of years and enjoyed it.

Good evening. I have been in the saline area for the past. field for just about as long as that. Started my career out of college at a little place you might have heard of called Sling Rock Center. Moved on from there, worked for a variety of different places including Washtenaw County, Pant Township. Recently the director of Pant Township for about the last eight years and then most recently moved on and have been with for almost the last year as a deputy chief for Washtenaw County

Like Tony, I spent about 15 years as a swim coach within the YMCA system. My first job was a lifeguard for the YMCA. I also worked at the rec center as a swim instructor.

And Lambert sleep parks and recreation, obviously the director I've been with the city of sleep for 25 years and have been an avid user of parks and recreation services my entire life.

Sarah can probably use the microphone up there, Sunshine, if you want to pass the handheld back to Lisa.

Sarah Zetlow, I'm our current aquatics manager. I've been involved in aquatics basically my whole life, but in more of a professional manner for the past 10 years, and I'm responsible for a lot of the changes and updates in program growth for aquatics, and I know that with all the recent developments with the rec center and the direction we're going, a lot of it does focus around our aquatics center, so I'M HERE TO HELP AND, YOU KNOW, GIVE ANY INPUT THAT'S, YOU KNOW, NEEDED.

ALL RIGHT. GREAT. THANK YOU GUYS FOR INTRODUCING YOURSELVES. SO OVER THE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS, THE REC CENTER IMPLEMENTATION TEAM HAS SPENT TIME EVALUATING FACILITY NEEDS, FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES, OPERATIONAL SUSTAINABILITY, AND FUTURE STRATEGIES FOR THIS LONG REC CENTER. AS YOU MAY HAVE SEEN IN THE REPORT, THEMES PRESENTED TONIGHT AND IN THE REPORT, Probably sound familiar as they are the core issues that consistently surface in our community dialogues and continue to bubble up as our, as our highest priorities for the rec center's future. Um, tonight we'll share our findings recommendations and a proposed path forward. So. The RCIT was formed following the REC Task Force to move from planning to implementation. Our role was not to recreate previous studies, but to build upon and the significant work that had already been completed. We were asked to review capital investment opportunities, evaluate long-term funding strategies, support operational growth, and provide recommendations that strengthen the long-term sustainability of the REC Center. A key part of our charge was also to review the potential use of the $2.7M in federal appropriations. So the RCIT was intentionally structured to bring a very diverse group together. WE REPRESENT VARIOUS ENTITIES, RECREATION, FINANCE, COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND REGIONAL PARTNERS. AND TO BE HONEST WITH YOU, I ENJOYED WORKING WITH THESE GUYS. EVERYONE SHOWED UP EVERY WEEK OR EVERY OTHER WEEK WITH PASSION AND COLLABORATIVE EFFORT. SO I THANK YOU ALL FOR BRINGING YOUR EXPERTISE AND YOUR COMMITMENT THROUGHOUT THIS PROCESS. THE RECOMMENDATIONS PRESENTED TONIGHT REFLECT OUR THOUGHTFUL DISCUSSION AND COLLABORATION AMONG

So the established 2 primary working groups, this is my 2nd year on the task force, but capital investment working group primarily focused on facilities, infrastructure and project priorities. While the funding strategy group. Worked on long term financial sustainability and partnership opportunities, but operational growth was intentionally integrated throughout both groups because facility investments and funding decisions should ultimately support participation, engagement and community impact. 1 of our goals was to avoid starting from scratch and build upon the work that was already addressed by previous task forces. So, the review several years of planning documents and community analysis. These included the very done needs assessment and feasibility study the recreation task force recommendations from past years. The plant moran facility assessments, the cities, federal appropriations request and other supporting materials. We also reviewed recreation trends, partnership models, funding approaches and benchmark communities as well as drawing upon the experience of the individuals on the task. and their knowledge from real life. This report is built on a substantial body of work and research, not just opinions of the members of the task force. And one of the things we also really wanted to look at was a clear conclusion from the beginning that the recreation center truly matters to this community. It provides value that extends far beyond recreational programming. It's a place where community members of all ages can belong and can have the opportunity to grow holistically. It serves as a wellness center, a community gathering place, a youth development resource, a senior engagement hub, no matter what your age there's something here for you and throughout the saline area it draws residents from multiple communities and it's a benefit to community and not just to saline but to the area as a whole and it's more than a recreation center while we were talking we really felt that it was holistically a wellness center as well. And the third place for community members. You have work or school, you have home, but then there are other social places that people go to belong. Social isolation is real for people of all ages. They talk a lot about that for seniors, but also for youth. It's important that they spend too much time in the virtual world and not enough time Playing with other kids in the real world, and this provides space for that, especially during summer camp and other after school activities. The question before us was never whether the recreation center has value. We believe that it does. The question was how to sustain and strengthen that value for the future, not just for this generation, but for generations to come.

thank you um well clearly the rec center provides community value here but we wanted to focus on what are some of the key challenges you're familiar with most of these challenges but to start with we all know we've got a 35 year old building and it's just not any building it's a building with a pool there's a uh you know i don't know my body 35 years later is not the same as what it was so there are challenges there that we've got to focus on we've got as you know some Um, infrastructure aging facilities there that need to be addressed deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed. And also just, you know, this was a structure that was designed nearly 40 years ago. The community wants desires expectations are different today for the type of stuff and then what they were 40 years ago. So that's something that has to be addressed. ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH. SO YOU KNOW ALL OF THOSE THINGS ON THE STRUCTURAL SIDE. YOU'RE FAMILIAR WITH IT MORE THAN I AM PROBABLY. AND YOU'RE ALSO FAMILIAR WITH THE OPERATIONAL FUNDING ISSUES. WE CAN'T LOSE TRACK OF THE FACT THAT JUST BECAUSE THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT INFLOW OF MONEY HERE THAT YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ONGOING OPERATIONAL PROBLEMS HERE. You've got to look at ongoing operational issues. You have to look at other funding sources, not just your traditional funding sources. They have to be looked at. You've got to look at partnerships. So these are the challenges that we identified.

So my role with this committee was to be involved So really what we wanted to do is look at as we as Dennis was just mentioning, there's deferred maintenance. So really looking at what are those deferred maintenance issues, prioritizing those, looking at our building infrastructure, also keeping in mind accessibility issues. Financial side is looking at improving long term functionality, sustainability, so that we have long term growth and success at the rec center. So, we know that with the past committee, there has been an established long list. We had came in, did a value. SHOULD GET DONE. THE RESOURCE THAT WE UTILIZE AS A COMMITTEE IS A SCORING SHEET THAT IS PROVIDED BY, THROUGH THE MEDC, MICHIGAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION.

CORPORATION.

THANK YOU. MEDC. SO THEY HAVE A SCORE SHEET THAT EVALUATES CAPITAL ITEMS BASED ON A VARIETY OF FACTORS, AND THIS WAS PROVIDED IN THE SUMMARY REPORT THAT YOU ALL And then it has it, it tries to be as subjective as possible with the evaluation. Such as, is this item mandated by law? Yes or no. And if you get 5 points, and if it's no, you get 0 points. So that helps prioritize some of your different items as you go through and there's 9 or 10 different factors that look through. to be but it provides a framework for how we're evaluating and we're looking at all of these items the same way and through the same lens and really the intent of this is to provide a summary and a lump sum score for all of the Um, so really, these are some of the different factors that that scoring sheet utilizes. It takes into account health, safety, welfare infrastructure is the is the project included in your city master plan. Are there fiscal and operational impacts? So an example is, you've got a higher scores. If that particular capital improvement may lead to energy energy savings on the back end and how much. would this capital item lead to additional revenue such as membership, class market, participation, et cetera. Those things factored higher, so you got higher score for those items. So these are just some more of the details into how those scores came about. And then the process was that each of the individuals on the CIP or capital planning subcommittee on that list we all individually scored those then we compiled those came up with an average score so that you could see kind of the overall score so you all were were provided with, and I think Sarah's going to pull this up here. I don't want to get into this in detail, but on the left, you can see kind of the location of that capital item, a project, kind of the project summary, a project description, estimated cost, and then your individual, this is the average score for each item after all of our input was put in here. So then on the right-hand side, you get a whole in any way you want if there's a particular question you really want to zone in on you can sort them that way sort of by the overall score however you want to so you can kind of take a look at how did we get to where we are with our recommendation for the

35 years ago, we know that the rec center opened. I looked up the old saline reporter article from that day and. Not 1 mention about how we're going to maintain this facility for the next few next years. There is no recreation center in this world that can survive on membership dollars alone that operational that maintenance. No improvements nothing. So, the 1st task force, uh, Mary Driscoll. Formed in 2010, so since that point, we've been. On the radar, but not quite getting there yet. So. We looked at all kinds of funding operations and opportunities, and I'm going to talk about some villages and.

Sponsorships donations that we think are the best.

Priorities going forward, so the older person's millage. that passed in 2024 for Washtenaw County was a half mil bond. And that generates, the first year generated $11.5 million. $2.2 million of that is dedicated to 11 senior centers throughout the county. There is other dedicated, I think they do some transportation. There's all kinds of stuff they do for older people that are defined as 60 years old plus. The RFI and RFPs for this millage open up. The RFIs, I think, opened up mid-June. RFPs will open up soon and then they will start to decide whose projects can use these funds. Things that are eligible are aquatic and exercise classes and capital projects that directly impact older adults The other one is the Washtenaw Parks and Recreation millage with only a quarter mill that generates about $6 million a year. That approval in the language that we voted on, and I'll quote, says, acquiring, developing, maintaining, and operating park lands and recreation facilities for the benefit of Washtenaw County citizens. So if you look at the map of what the Parks and Recreation Great words for these people. So between now and then, but it is probably what I think would be the perfect fit, almost. Sponsorships, donations, and corporate support. We all know that there's a pledge out there that needs to be addressed and apparently accepted by council at some point. 2013 PLANT MORAN STUDY DID ABOUT COMBINING SCHOOL RESOURCES, SENIOR CENTER RESOURCES, COMMUNITY ED RESOURCES, AND RECREATION CENTER SOURCES INTO A MORE COHESIVE SHARING OF RESOURCES AND THINGS. I THINK 13 YEARS LATER WE NEED TO REVISIT THAT A LITTLE BIT BECAUSE I THINK

So, I'm going to talk a little bit about why partnerships matter and how it takes some planning to build the trust for the relationships to have a partnership for 1 of the important lessons from our work is that it doesn't happen quickly. So, in my life that I mentioned earlier, I was involved in the establishment of 3 city owned. recreation centers that were YMCA operated. One was in Fort Wayne, Indiana at Renaissance Point and then the two in the Cleveland YMCA. One was in North Royalton and the other in Warrensville Heights. So all city owned Y operated. Partnerships require relationship building, trust, governance discussions, financial analysis, alignment around shared goals and values. AND WHETHER WE'RE DISCUSSING POTENTIAL COUNTY PARTNERSHIPS OR A PARTNERSHIP WITH A NONPROFIT LIKE THE Y OR WE'RE LOOKING AT FUNDING CONVERSATIONS, TRYING TO ACCESS SENIOR VILLAGE DOLLARS OR OTHER TYPES OF COLLABORATIONS WITH SCHOOL DISTRICTS, ALL OF THOSE CONVERSATIONS AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TRUST AND FINDING OUT WHAT'S IN IT FOR BOTH PARTIES OR MORE THAN TWO PARTIES is going to take some time. So one of the recommendations we had is to begin those conversations, those exploratory generative conversations as soon as possible, because we want to be able to prepare for the future. And often when you look at reducing financial overhead, diversifying your revenue portfolio, by having multiple sources coming in, be that donations or other sources, could really help improve the financial picture for the long haul so we don't have in the future delayed maintenance, so we can have a capital repair and replacement plan and other things we need to do to create strong opportunities for the future for the rec center.

This is my favorite part of the presentation, not because I'm speaking, but it's the path forward. And this implementation team has not only, I think, identified that path forward, but I think we've done and made a lot of efforts to really quantify with that path forward. looks like especially in the amount of time that we've had to do so I do before we kind of move in obviously there with the pledge being out there some of this may change and shift but I think it overall lays out you know What's next for getting the rec center to where we know it can be. So, in the short term, what we're looking at is continuing to look at our capital improvements list, the scoring sheet, and more importantly, layout, you know. What are those projects that need to be completed immediately in order to do bigger work? What are those projects that need, you know, that can be deferred? What are the projects that are specifically going to increase operational efficiency? What are the projects that are going to increase that member experience? But ultimately, we know that within this 1st year, we want to prioritize and know those down as Paul here mentioned, I think, pursuing the older projects. Should happen when I work there, but also thinking about the. The members of our community that the rec center serves, it's a lot of seniors. It's a place where a lot of seniors gather for a number of seniors. It is. prescribe wellness therapy or exercise therapy. So in a lot of ways, we are offering many of the services and many of the amenities that the older person's village As Tony mentioned, strengthening partnerships, we've spoken to potential partnership with the county. We've spoken about the schools. We've also spoken about the YMCA. I actually wasn't aware that YMCA kind of had those partnerships with the city. I'm going to always be pro YMCA. So that's, you know. 1 of the many avenues when we think of partnerships that we want to go. Obviously, we want to make sure that we're addressing the immediate facility needs. The recent DHU unit is an example of something that needed to be addressed because it does impact our member experience. It impacts our ability to deliver the wellness, to deliver the values at the rec center. As to our community, and then finally, with, you know, in the short term, we want to listen to the community. We want to not only listen to the members that are currently members. We want to go out and we want to find find out why people left. We want to find out what could we be doing from a programming standpoint to continue to enhance the value that the rec center provides. And then moving into sort of midterm, one year to five year, really what we want to do is hone in and begin implementing, I guess we're an implementation team, but actually implementing some of those capital improvements. You know, some of these improvements are really quick fixes, but then some of them, it's kind of that cascading effect of you fix one thing and then you realize this is broken email. This is broke. So we really want to make sure that we take a intentional, a very thoughtful path to implementing the not only the capital improvements we've identified, but some of the operational needs of the facility as well. Obviously, in order to enhance our membership experience, we want to expand programming. A complaint we've had a lot is the number of pickleball hours, so that is just an example of people who want to use the facility, people who see value in the facility, but obviously there's limited space, there's limited time, and we can't offer everything to everybody, but we do believe that there are opportunities to expand our program offerings both in and out of the pool. When I think of the swim school, and I think of that probably being one of the most recent expansions of some of our programming, it's become, It's like a little baby for me, but it's become its own success story in a lot of ways. And we believe that with again, careful planning with intention and thoughtfulness that we can. Replicate that success across the rec center. The most important thing and probably what we're all here for is we have to start advancing and really pursuing those funding strategies. It's no secret the amount of financial support that has That's balloon it's grown and there is a need to get that number back to a number that the council, the community, and all of the stakeholders in the rec center fill is appropriate. And in order to do that, we know we can't go it along. So really, in that mid term, after we've identified. Again, what capital projects to prioritize? what the Extended programming looks like some of those operational and capital needs like we really want to start pursuing and getting dollars in hand and getting commitments in the midterm and Finally in the long term five plus years because you know greatness isn't built overnight. We believe that definitely modernizing our facility, looking at ways to expand and enhance our use of the entire recreation complex. Make sure that every funding strategy and every partnership that we pursue is setting the rec center up for success. It's setting the city up for success and it's setting our community up for success. This can't be a flash in the pan. This has to become Core to the operational model and core to everything that we want this right center to be as we move towards its next 30 years. And obviously we want to make sure that we are growing capital that we are not. That we're not caught flat footed when it is time to to make repairs like obviously things happen, but we want to make sure that the REC Center has the capital reserves to handle those emergencies without being a drain or being any type of strain on our general fund as a C. And so, when we think about what we would like council to consider, and as we think about the, obviously the evolving nature of this work, given the pledge that is that is standing, we absolutely believe that 1st of all, this implementation team should be extended. Because we believe that as we pursue our funding strategies, as we begin to build the relationships that my colleague Tony spoke of with our community partners, our county partners, when we think about specifically implementation, I think 1 of the areas where we are improving as a city is. How we go about starting. And completing projects, obviously, we're still. Discovering areas that we can grow, but we believe that this implementation team could serve as an oversight body as we think about how we spend the federal appropriation dollars, or really how we spend. Any amount that's related to the capital improvements are improving the operational sustainability of the rec center. And then obviously, I think 1 of the more important things that I want to stress is that this work isn't done. We've had a limited amount of time to address all of these things, and I think the initial charge was a good starting place. But I still think that, and I would say my colleagues would agree, that there are still opportunities that we have to really not only implement the phased plan that we've identified, but continue to find ways and opportunities to innovate. And really move the center forward. And so again, and kind of closing, we do as an implementation team would like to see, and it is our recommendation that this implementation team be extended until the end of 2028. To really give us time, like I said, to provide that oversight to implementation to continue exploring and pursuing the relationships that need to be built as we move towards financial and operational sustainability for the rec center. And the 1 thing that I think for me, that was. Incredibly incredibly evident from the 1st, day of this, this work that we've been doing is that the rec center is incredibly valuable to this community. I kind of have a unique perspective and that I sit on that side of the bench. I also sit here and that's someone who's worked at the rec center and seen firsthand the impact. And the greatest area, it can't be stressed enough that this center and for some people save lives. And at the very least, it adds a lot of value to lives, but we can't. Be all roses and sunshine there is investment that is needed within this facility and we understand and it's evident that. That investment can't be shouldered by our general fund. and so we also want to recommend and we also believe that we have to have to have to pursue partnerships we cannot go this alone and so kind of as I pass it to everybody that the path forward that we've identified so far still has a lot of fleshing out to do. There's still evolving information, but we hope that in all of this that you see the value in our REC Center.

Thank you so much. First of all, I have to give my warmest and sincerest thank you to this team. Their outstanding work, their dedication over the past three months, we worked hard. We were meeting every other week, doing work in between those meetings. This group was clearly dedicated and committed to the charge in front of us. These are individuals with unique experience and expertise, and they have a passion for serving the community. And I also want to give a special thanks, and I think on behalf of the entire implementation team, to Lisa Shea. I have to recognize Lisa because she put in countless hours above and beyond coming in and meeting with me in between, meeting with Dan, just talking to everybody, reaching out, making sure that she was providing such a strong leadership throughout this process, maintaining the organization and the focus of the group, facilitating productive discussions, and helping the group navigate through complex issues, because this is a very complex issue. It's a very multifaceted issue. So I thank you, Lisa, and again, to the entire implementation team. And again, I have the unique perspective. I've seen children go through our programs who now work for us. I've seen, you know, individuals who have gotten older, you know, over the years. Maybe they can't do everything that they used to be able to do, but maybe they're still in the pool swimming, right? Because that helps them. They've modified the way that they use the facility. So I have a very unique perspective and I'm very passionate and I'd say protective over our customers and our users. So we're more than just a building. I think this presentation, I hope you heard that, we're more than just a building. We are a vital community asset. We're supporting health and wellness and connection and overall quality of life each and every day. And the challenges that we face are real, right? But so are the opportunities to strengthen and reimagine the future of the rec center. We talked about strategic investment, diversifying our funding strategies, creating strong partnerships, and responsible planning. We talked about that responsible planning. With this, we can continue to serve our community and for more generations to come. We've seen generations come through in the 35 years that we've been in existence. More to come. So tonight, and I echo the sentiments of the colleagues who are sitting here, we ask the council to continue moving our vision forward with the continuation of this implementation team to help ensure that recreation and wellness and community remains the priorities for Saline. The rec center matters. The future of the rec center matters. And, you know, the decisions that we make tonight tomorrow, they will help shape the quality of life in our community. So, I think everybody, and I think the council for having us presented.

Very good. Thank you. Director Lambert. Um, Mrs at low or city manager swallows or anything you'd like to add before we open it up for questions. No, Sarah. You're good? Okay. Well, let me just echo one comment, and then I have a quick question that I'll direct to Councilmember Halsh to get Councilmembers thinking about the subsequent discussion we will have in July. Obviously, the most valuable commodities that you can give, apart from love, is your time and labor, passion, energy. And so, to your point, Director Lambert, this group, under the leadership of Lisa Shea, invested considerable time, energy, and passion, not only to develop said plan, but also to articulate... a vision to putting this facility on a more sustainable trajectory, making it an even more viable and valued resource in the community. So on behalf of myself and my colleagues, I thank you for your time and leadership. Councilmember Halsh, I don't mean to put you on the spot, but I think council and the community would benefit from some additional insights. I think it was the second to last slide where it enumerates a number of recommendations. If I recall correctly from our last meeting, you were perhaps the most stout advocate for extending this group another two years. Can you talk a little bit about why you feel so passionately about that and also whether you think the current composition is appropriate or whether or not you would like to bring in some additional perspective and expertise to the table?

Sure. One of the reasons why I feel passionately about extending the implementation team is because I just don't believe that we've fully discovered all there is to discover in regards to our path forward. I think that if we have more time to continue in this work, that we can truly operationalize that path forward. I also believe when I'm thinking about oversight, when I'm thinking about actually oversight, I think that that's an area again where there is an opportunity to grow. And so having this implementation team not only do the work of building the partnerships of operationalizing these recommendations, I think having oversight sort of in in the implementation, but also oversight into how our rec center moves into the future would be incredibly important.

Very good. And as our council liaison, Council Member Halsh, any insights at this time about additional individuals or organizations that you think should be represented at the table?

Yes. So a couple of areas that I... think and identify that would be useful to have at the table would be some of our business leaders. When we think about our corporate sponsorships, when we think about even some of our area businesses, because we are a community center and because I believe the businesses that are a part of this community do care about the wellness of this community, that having business leaders would be advantageous to have on that future or an extended implementation team. I would also like to see youth and teens. I think there aren't many spaces in the city where youth and teens have to go and unwind or, as Tony mentioned, get out of that virtual world. And I see the Rec Center as that place. We hire a number of teenagers. You know, some of the Most awesome teenagers, I've had a chance to interact with are working at the pool and protecting lives. So I would love to see the rec center become a space where teens feel at home. And so we need that representation on our campus. implementation team in order to know what that feels like for them.

Very good. Thank you for letting me put you on the spot. I think that those additional perspectives and insights are valuable. Much appreciated. If this group is good, I think we're going to dive into at least an initial round of questions. I'm going to limit my colleagues to five minutes per person. We're going to start with Council Member Hermont and then end with Council Member Halsh and myself. So, Council Member Hermont, you have five minutes if you'd like it.

Thank you so much. What a great, thoughtful presentation. I really like how there was a ranking and logic behind the projects that you're prioritizing. I do have a couple questions, though, about the dollars. I couldn't do the sort on my phone. What is the total needs number? If you look at The things that we have that need to be fixed and the people have complained about like the bathroom privacy and things that are not to code or need to be brought to code. What is that dollar amount?

We want to make sure every speaker speaks into the microphone. So if you want to pass it to the city manager, that's fine. If you want to address the question, that's also fine, Director Lambert.

The most clear picture we have of the capital needs specifically that you're referencing as the recent plant brand study was part of the task force. And so they identified right around 10Million dollars needs.

what we have here if you look at just specifically with, I'm just, what I'm trying to understand is like what is our needs, what's the dollar amount, and then the follow-up question I have is what is our operational annual operational gap? AND, YOU KNOW, REGARDLESS IF WE COVER ALL OF THE FACILITIES, I DO BELIEVE THAT THERE SHOULD BE SOME SORT OF PATH FORWARD FOR OPERATIONAL SOLIDANCY, ESPECIALLY IF WE HAVE ALL, IF YOU TAKE ALL OF THE CAPITAL NEEDS AND THE FACILITY NEEDS OFF THE TABLE. I DON'T KNOW WHY WE WOULDN'T HAVE A PATH WITH SOLIDANCY WITH REGARDS TO NOT HAVING A GAP. SO I JUST WOULD LIKE TO REALLY UNDERSTAND WHERE ARE THE GAPS OR WHAT IS THE ANNUAL GAP FROM A DOLLAR AMOUNT TO THE OPERATIONAL SOLVANCY, AND THEN LOOKING AT THE ENHANCED FEATURES, YOU KNOW, THEN WHAT'S THAT DOLLAR AMOUNT? AND THEN WHO IS GOING TO MAKE THE DECISION ABOUT WHAT ENHANCED FEATURES? IS IT GOING TO BE THIS BODY OR IS IT GOING TO BE CITY COUNCIL? WITH THAT BEING SAID, LET'S JUST SAY, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT NUMBER IS. YOU SAID 10 MILLION. I DON'T THINK THAT IT ADDS UP TO 10 MILLION ON THIS LIST, BUT THE SHEET, IT ADDS UP TO

if you implemented every improvement that was identified.

No improvements, just taking care of what's broken.

She's talking about basic needs.

Basic needs, the taking care of what's needed, what's broken, what people complained about, like what is that dollar amount? And then the understanding is if we did not get any money from the corporate, from the AI data center group for the corporate donation, and if we didn't, you know, I don't know what the dollar amount we have actually in the bank or committed to being in the bank, but if we just didn't have anything further than that, what's the gap to what we actually need to keep, you know, that's going to be if we don't handle it in the next five years, we really can't keep it open. So, like, I'm just trying to understand, like, what is that basic need? And then how are we going to enhance and who's going to make the decision with that?

So again, the best need assessment we have HERE FOR OPERATING COST GAP.

OKAY. SO IF CITY COUNCIL, WE DON'T GET ANY ADDITIONAL GRANTS AND WHAT WE'VE ALREADY HAD COMMITTED, AND WE DON'T ACCEPT IT, WE DON'T, I DON'T KNOW IF WE'VE AGREED TO ACCEPT OR NOT ACCEPT ANY CORPORATE DONATIONS, WHAT WOULD BE THE PASS FORWARD IF WE DON'T HAVE, I DON'T, IT DOESN'T SOUND LIKE WE HAVE ANYBODY WILLING TO SIGN ON THE LINE FOR A PARTNERSHIP AT THIS POINT, DO WE? WE DO HAVE SOMEBODY WILLING TO, OKAY, SO WE'RE STILL AT THAT STAGE. AND THEN WE'RE, SO, AND THEN WASHINGTON COUNTY IS NOT WILLING TO TAKE THIS ON, OR THEY HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO

desire to take it on so if we didn't have any any additional funds what would we be doing with the rec center that's exactly five minutes so if somebody wants to answer that last question that would be great and then we got to move on to my next council member and there are partnerships that have been you know moving forward uh both the ymca and county indicator they you know had an interest in that in our In terms of what those responsibilities would be exactly and what the contract would look like potentially. So, with that, you know, those are still in progress. And I would argue that about a. Million dollars here was recommended for capital improvement.

requirement. And let me address the latter part of your questions there, Council Member Harmont. Accepting a corporate or philanthropic gift, approving the parameters in which that gift will be accepted, and deciding how those dollars would be spent would be a policy decision for this body. Okay. Thank you for your questions. Mayor Pro Temorais, you have five minutes if you'd like it.

Thank you, yeah. So I made a couple of notes of point here that I just want to go through real quick, and I have a couple of questions. So my first point is that we spent some time with Congresswoman Dingell on Friday at the 35th anniversary, and the first words that came out of her mouth were, these are such important services to communities, and there's nothing on this side of Washtenaw County. So we do have her full support. It was wonderful to see her show up. With that, Michigan is the third oldest state in the country, so... As your colleagues mentioned, as Mr. Hynek mentioned, tapping into senior millage funds, things like that, really pointing out all the services that the rec center does and whatever's out there. We need to get our piece of the pie. We're not getting our pieces of the pie in a lot of different circumstances. So thank you for pointing out that they are having RFPs open up. Wasn't really clear on how that all worked. Which brings me to, well, let me get back to something real quick. In speaking of being at the event on Friday, I think the fact that pickleball groups or really any groups come to you all and ask for additional services is Highlights the fact that this is a service to the community and they do value it. So, you know, we may have to adjust according to, you know, what the needs of the community are. And I thank you for being flexible enough to do that and trying to figure that out. But again, it just shows that, you know. So long as we kind of continue to keep up with the times with programming and stuff like that, you know, it maintains itself as an appropriate service for the community. And then lastly, to my council member Halish's point, and it actually kind of leads into answering Ms. Harmout's question, Council Member Harmout's questions, we have the right people in the room right now. I do appreciate the added additions of like kind of looking over and saying, you know, we could use these viewpoints too. But in extending this task force, like we have all, these are the people. Like I can't pick a better dream team than these folks that are in the room. So I am fully on board because I think there's a couple of things that we would need to address still. And it's very obvious. And I know where you are in this process. So I'm not saying where are these things. I'm just pointing out the fact that we are all well aware of that. When you talk about the path forward, we need to identify the who, how, where, when, and why and put some deadlines on things. You're just identifying the things that need to happen. But then if we extended your terms, like the implementation, putting dates on things, that's the next step, right? And then to the public-private partnerships, I just, as I was sitting here, had this, like, vision of, like, and this was to Council Member Harsher's point as well, is, like, get the businesses at the table, but just, like, have more business meetings, bringing people in, like, a business open house. Like, not only here's how your employees can use this service, but, oh, by the way, we need some help, and could you... philanthropically spared some cash for us. And you know, that's just how the world works. As the government uses our taxpayer dollars in other ways, we have to find other ways as municipalities to get those taxpayer dollars back into our pockets so that we can do these services. The question that I do have, though, is if we did extend to this team, what do you need from council to from the city to continue to do the work you want to do were there any kind of stopgaps where you were like well we would need to discuss this with council before we went forward so that's the only thing that this group can address otherwise that was just me blabbering benchmark reports to council making sure that we're on the right path seeking guidance on those things but then also

What are the things that council would want from us so that we're ensuring that our due diligence of work is actually happening and we're sort of in synergy working together.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Rice. Council Member Guirova, you have five minutes if you'd like it.

Thank you. As you know, my issue isn't to kill the rec center, which everybody seems to think that is. My goal is to make sure that our city isn't the one funding the whole operation for the community. I guess for myself, my couple questions is some of the things that haven't been addressed. I don't see any pro formas in terms of what would be the continued support that's going to happen. As you'll see in our next meeting, the... Subsidy for the rec center is going to increase by at least another $70,000, if not additional another 130,000, because some of the costs are being allocated or being removed and not being allocated to the rec center. So for me is understanding. And when we look at this, we're going to be doing major repairs. There will be a time when the facility will be closed. What is going to continue to be the support and the facility and what money is going to be needed to it? The other aspect I'm looking at is trying to understand the membership trend. As you look at the membership trends, in 18-19, 2019, we had 2,539 memberships. In 2024-25, we only have 1,569. We've lost over 1,000. And in the last just two years, not even including last year, memberships have gone down by almost 15%. Have you looked at that? Was that addressed in terms of memberships and how that's going to be addressed at this point? I mean, that's where I don't understand how if we keep continuing to go down, where is that going to be and how is that going to be stopped in the immediate future? So basically, if it's going to continue to lose memberships, it's going to mean we're going to have to subsidize more. And in fact, we're going to see that in tonight's budget adjustments that we're decreasing for this current fiscal year another $30,000 in membership fees. So, those trends weren't addressed in this approach and I'm kind of trying to understand that. My other concern is, I don't see cares mentioned at all in this. Did I miss that? That's the funding that's supposed to be supporting this community and we're not seeing any money coming to us from that perspective.

Yeah, at least would you mind passing the microphone down to Paul Paul may be able to address the cares issue and director Lambert as well.

So, here's is up for renewal this year cares. The allocation of money from cares is solely up to this linear schools board of education.

So, last cycle cares passed by 150 votes. I think it was narrow.

So what we need to do in our.

Yeah, and I agree with you. I think that's where I'm looking at. We keep talking about a community facility. The community is not supporting it. It's the city of Saline that's supporting it. There's individuals that are going there, but it's not, and so we're having to deal with that. I'm very glad that you're looking at these other partnerships and everything, but my concern is that any of these are three to four years down the road, and we need to understand, and the city's got to understand how we're going to support this. I don't see a commitment for a millage, a separate millage. I don't think this has been discussed. Because we don't feel there's going to be a support for it?

Well, not even support. I just think that there's other villages coming up along as we look forward. The fire authority, we talked about a rec authority, and that could,

And then go ahead and tell me if you'd like to just be mindful of his time.

He's got about a minute left in regard to the increased membership situation with increased partnerships and improvements to the facilities and improved marketing efforts that will assist in. also talked about the different types of programming opportunities that we would like to offer as we look at being not just a rec center but really starting to emphasize the holistic aspect of being a wellness center as well and addressing with the potential opportunity for the older adult TO BE INCORPORATED INTO IT AND THINGS THAT GO ABOVE AND BEYOND RECREATION. THERE'S ALSO A DESIRE FROM THE SENIOR NUTRITION TEAM AT THE COUNTY TO HAVE A SENIOR NUTRITION CAFE IN SALINE WHICH WE DO NOT CURRENTLY HAVE OPERATING THROUGH THE COUNTY'S PROGRAM AND THERE'S A POTENTIAL OPPORTUNITY SHOULD THAT BE AVAILABLE THROUGH SPACE AT THE RET CENTER TO BE ABLE TO BE A CAFE SITE AS WELL IF THERE WAS THAT TYPE OF DESIRE. So just looking at expanding programs, drawing more people, additional partnerships, increasing the demographic approach to bring in more members.

And I guess my last thing with that is as we talk about expanding programs and more offerings and that, all the incremental costs that are associated with that, will we be able to draw enough memberships and other support to offset that when right now we can't even seem to support what we currently have in terms of what's happening?

themselves having to pay for that.

Is there any concern, and this will be my last question, any concern with the fact that now that we've redesigned the senior center to provide for rec facilities and the kind of exercise equipment, that transfer, and because they're getting more support from this, we're offsetting and losing that. That's a discussion we have Okay, that's my biggest concern is competition and what's happening and how have you addressed that. So thank you.

Lisa said that the instructors from the rec center are the ones that are running the programs at the senior center. So that's part of that whole government's thing to get everyone kind of coordinated and not keeping our silos in the lives. Right.

Thank you, Council Member Gearbon. Thank you to the panel for the excellent answers to those questions. Council Member Dillon, you have five minutes.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Ah, thank you. Thank you everyone. This is probably been the most thoughtful, concise report that we've gotten out of any of the task force over the years. It's obvious that a lot of time effort has gone into this. So thank you very much for that. Um, I feel like today we're still at the same place. We were 2 years ago and 5 years ago and 10 years ago and it's well, we could we could get a partnership. We've been talking about getting a partnership with the county for almost as long as I've been on council and it hasn't happened. Do we have the wrong people in the room? Are we asking the wrong questions? Or do we just need to move on and say they don't want to partner with us? I think we need to figure out and kind of like, okay, and cut ties and say move to the next thing. And same with the schools and that sort of thing. I think that we've got to get to a point where we just stop hoping and wishing for things. that's my biggest concern right now that we talk about you know there well there is the opportunity for the older person's millage and when we talked about that initially when it first came out apparently the rec center didn't qualify we tried to like go halves with the schools on it and they were like no no the school's getting it all because they actually meet the criteria better so i guess i just would like to understand that a little bit better and i'm 100 would like to see if we can get our piece of it

So, the 1st, allocated dollar board of commissioner allocated dollars of the adults village were directed to the senior centers in particular that each received in 200,000. we also did some transportation grants as well, related to a bus service for seniors throughout the county. And in addition to that, doesn't be enough for the senior nutrition program via cafes or wheels on wheels so there were dollars to supplement senior nutrition so those were the first allocations that went out very specific and designated to those types of services the RFP situation that is opening up soon is the broader expanse of how was not the official senior center, they didn't qualify for the $200,000 per senior center that came out with the initial allocations.

Thank you very much for that clarification, Tony. I have a question for Mr. Swallow. So if we were to continue on with this group, would they then take on that responsibility and role of applying for these things and having these discussions? Are they... I guess I just want to understand who's going to be doing the work of applying for grants who is going to be doing the work of soliciting for information, whatever it is, or looking at millages.

And this group would be the basically the, the think tank, if you will, to identify the sources that we know are available. And that, uh, beyond just the senior village, but other other sources as well, and to help draft the initial. But ultimately, the city would probably be the applicant. And so we administer the grant side of it. So we submit the final application with the with this group's assistance and review and then be administering the grant going forward.

Okay. Just kind of understanding that who's got the roles is, I think, very important to understand similar to our other committee members. Okay, thank you for that. Um, I think Mr gear bomb may have said something similar to this, but I would be remiss if I didn't. Over and over we heard this is a community asset community asset and it is. But it's shouldered by the city of saline and that's the part right now that's that's breaking the bridge and that's where everything comes about and there has to be a different funding mechanism. The city of saline is going without. to overcompensate for the needs of the rec center at this point. We keep putting more and more into it, and that is not a sustainable model. And it's not fair to the citizens of the city of Saline when it is a community asset. I do think it's ironic that as we talk about a millage that would be more of a school district millage, there's a fear that it's not gonna pass. Well, that's realistic, but those are the people that use this asset. And if they don't wanna pay for it, then they either have to pay as part of a millage or they're gonna need to pay at the point of entry. And there's going to have to be some sort of, you know, excess fee that they would have to pay to utilize it to offset for the city. I mean, I think fair is fair and it's, I mean, right now, and as it was mentioned, we are going to be looking at our next meeting at more. Dollars going into the rec center, more expenses being shifted off. This is not a sustainable model for us. So I want to make sure that we kind of figure that out.

They'll stop you there. I'm sorry. We're at six minutes. Thank you for your comments. Council Member Delorco, you have five minutes if you'd like them.

Thank you, Mayor. First off, I want to thank the committee and the working group for their hard time and effort and hours put into this. I can see that a lot of work has gone into this, and I'm certainly grateful for that. I also want to acknowledge congressional leadership on the Work and getting us the appropriations that are desperately needed to launch some of these capital improvement projects that are long overdue as well as a corporate sponsorship potential pledge out there that could also help us with some of these capital improvements. And I think it's important to recognize as we have an open and honest conversation about the challenges we face as a community and supporting the rec center. is the difference between the capital improvements and the operational day-to-day sustainability. I think we're in a good position now to take care of some of these capital improvements that are long overdue and desperately needed deferred maintenance. And that is certainly going to help bring back some members to the rec center. But as you've all stated, no community can support a rec center alone on the memberships. And what this conversation is really about is identifying either partnerships or millages that will provide a blended funding model to help us move this thing It provides a valuable service to the community. But the criticism we face on this side of the table from our constituents is that a fair number of resources are being siphoned away to support what they view as a luxury. Not all communities have a rec center, and we're fortunate that we do, and I'd like to see that continue. But we have to be realistic about how we can lessen the burden on the general fund and how that can be accomplished. That being said, I want to learn a little bit more about the older person's millage. I think it was stated that $11 million was generated in revenue for that millage. And with eight other senior centers cited in the materials provided this evening, where do we stand in line to viably compete in an RFP for some of those funds when we have to get behind for what seems ostensibly like a senior senator that would be at the front of the line ahead of us to access those funds.

Tony, do you want to take that one? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you're going to have the most expertise.

For the Office of Aging Services, I'm the Director of the Community and Economic Development, but I'm familiar attending many Board of Commissioners meetings. So there are the dedicated allocations that are non-competitive. that the DOC decides to allocate as they did with money for secret nutrition, with money for transportation, which was an RFP process for the transportation. So that was competitive. And then for the community centers where those are direct allocations. The RFPs that are opening up will be competitive. And so that is an opportunity for you to look at the senior village resolutions of the types of things that VOC prioritized that they would like the senior village to serve. And so looking at the possibilities of additional programs and services, some things that you already do that could benefit seniors within the recreation center or AT ANOTHER PROPERTY THAT YOU CAN OPERATE FROM, AND THAT'S A WAY TO APPLY FOR IT IN THE COMPETITIVE FASHION THAT EXISTS. RELATIONSHIPS ARE ALSO IMPORTANT. SPEAKING TO YOUR COMMISSIONER FOR YOUR DISTRICT, GETTING TO KNOW THE DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF AGING SERVICES, PERHAPS HAVING THE CONVERSATIONS RELATED TO THE DESIRE FOR A SERIOUS NUTRITION CAFE AND OTHER THINGS. as in any grant making process, looking at the formulas that they're going to be using, the rubric, because there should be, usually in county processes for grants, there will be a rubric that is posted that will tell you how they will be scoring the grant process. So all of that would be beneficial to look at in your application process.

very good i again i would love to see some uh regionalized support for for the subsidies of the rec center because i share some of the criticisms that my colleagues have leveraged this evening and that is being supported squarely on the backs of city of saline taxpayers and that's i mean it's accessible to the district wide so if we're not going to be able to move where you're not recommending we move in the direction of a regionalized millage at this time It would be great to see some support from from Washtenaw County to help us overcome these obstacles.

And related to, if I may, the Washtenaw County had a commitment first to the east side of Washtenaw and had made a prior commitment for the east side rec center. So county administration and the BOC have actually are going out to secure And so that has always been the thing that they said that they need to address first before they can make any other additional commitments throughout the county for other rec centers. And Greg, of course, could speak more to that.

We're at the end of Mr. Del Orco's five minutes, but Greg, you want to provide any additional insight on that? I don't mean to put you on the spot, but if you have some thoughts you'd like to share, I think the body would benefit.

I know that is a number one priority for the county right now, that's better. for the construction and then they just approved bonding an additional $18 million for that $49 million budget with construction expected to begin this fall and opening in January of 2018.

Very good. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember DeLarco. Councilmember Halsh, you primarily spoke as a representative of the Rec Center Task Force, but is there anything you'd like to add at this time in your capacity as a councilmember?

Yes, I just wanted to point out, when we think about it, first of all, I want to say kudos to, you know, with a 30-year-old building, with aging equipment, aging infrastructure, I have to give kudos to Sunshine and Sarah for making it work. You know, we often hear about the challenges within the rec center, but I look at the swim school as a perfect example of the scrappiness and the innovation that is in that building. You know, I was there from the planning stages when it was zero students and in a year it's grown to 200 plus. So has the same challenges, has the same money issues, but they're making it happen. And so I think that if we can continue to have people at the table who can be innovative and who can continue to find ways to get it done, that we should take those opportunities. So I have to give kudos to you for that. I did have a question. Specifically to Tony, I'll let you take a drink. But one of the things that I think of when I think about economic development is, and I think it's a part of our strategic plan, is developing a skilled, a healthy workforce. And we've spoke a lot to how the community building and community development aspects of our rec center. Do you see, not just in our rec center, but in rec centers across the board, how they are an engine for economic development within a community?

So one of the things when I worked for the Cleveland YMCA that we really emphasized was we had a strong membership department that also went out trying to secure because companies know that if their employees are healthier, their insurance rates go down, statistics prove that regular working out can make you a healthier individual, whether that's losing weight or whatever, improved cardiovascular condition, et cetera. And so that could also be a way to increase membership, and it's an economic development engine, is because it's working in collaboration with companies for the benefit of their employees, Having a rec center is a draw for companies located nearby because it's about the quality of life for their employees. People look at school districts. They look at is there a place to work out. They look at the park system. They look at a number of things related to quality of life. And so all of that combined is part of economic development. You could also look at those types of workshops related to the facility. Everything doesn't have to be about recreation. You know, spirit, mind, and body aspects of the types

Thank you. That's all my time. Thank you. I've got a couple questions. It's kind of an eclectic mix here. My colleague, Mr. Gearbaugh, inquired about the number of memberships. I think this question is best directed to Director Lambert. And it's true that memberships have declined from their high in the first quarter of of 2020, fourth quarter of 2019. And obviously we should be working to grow our membership packages. I use the plural specifically because I want to see growth in families and individuals and in seniors. But membership packages alone don't paint the entire picture. You might not have data available this evening, but I think it would be advantageous to disseminate it to city council. I'm interested over the past five years to look at membership numbers if they're tracked in terms of day passes, rentals, participation in programs like swim school, league sports, of course, our kids camp, which operates in both the summer and during the winter holidays. I think Understanding the full usage of the complex, the facility and the property would be beneficial to city council as they make policy decisions long term. I don't know if you want to address any of that now, or just follow up subsequent to tonight's meeting.

Yeah, I can go ahead and make sure that I provide that information. We do track those numbers as part of our budget planning processes that we're tracking trends from. you know, year to year.

If I may, can I interrupt you? If I venture such impertinence, I would also add to that list special events and activities. And if we track the number of participants, so I'm thinking of like the mom to mom sale. I was there with Chief Radzik this past winter or fall for, was it an American girl thing? Yeah, events like that.

Absolutely, yep, we can go ahead and provide that information and if I could just touch on the membership, you know, we look over the years. In fact, I have data trends from, I think back to 1998, even though we've been around since 91 and we can see some areas where we've seen dips and we can also see areas where we've had spikes, you know, so coming out of the right task force, I believe it was 2013 2014. we saw a spike. When we repackaged what a membership looks like. Okay. So we saw some growth there. We obviously saw the big dip during coven. We started to see some growth and then we started saw it again. And that was around the time of the issue. So we were having shutdowns. A little over a year ago, the pools were not operating consistently even as part of that. When you look at the lifeguard shortage that we faced for that period of time, you know, that the inconsistency and services came back to bite us. Right? You know, when we're constantly closing the pools. Um, that has been a challenge. So, you know, we truly believe that investments and I know Greg can speak to it, you know, having been a director and working in several different facilities that when you put the dollars in to improve the capital, it provides for consistent services, which then gives faith in the customer base and they're here in the long run.

very good i want to be mindful of time because i got to break down these these tables and chairs before a regular meeting begins promptly at seven so these these next two points are mainly rhetorical but if somebody wanted to address them in a very abbreviated manner that would be fine we've heard tonight we've heard in the past uh concerns about the general fund contribution to the rec center specifically to operations and that is obviously a legitimate concern and the trend is is concerning If this group were to continue, I think council would benefit from some benchmarking and perhaps a recommendation in terms of what our target should be. Because if we don't have a target or a policy established, I think we're just going to continue to spin our wheels. I think we ought to have a goal and then work towards that specific goal. And then, I think this was addressed early in the presentation by Tony, but again, if there's consensus to continue this important work, and I hope that there is, I do like the idea of continuing to focus on the rebranding of the facility from beyond a rec center, how it was conceived in 1989, 1990, 1991, and see it more as a community center. And in the process, we might need to expand and diversify our programming to meet that definition. But I think it would be advantageous and I think changing the nature or the premise of the property, not fundamentally, but in some significant ways could attract new members and make it more viable, more appealing to the broader saline area. You got a quick comment, please. Yes. Okay, thank you. As I mentioned, we will revisit this issue as a discussion item on July the 13th. You are all welcome to attend that. I would ask Chairperson Shea, if you wouldn't mind penciling that in on your calendar, I can follow up with you, but it might be beneficial for you to be present in the event that there are some outstanding questions or concerns. And Director Lambert, you will email this whole group the contact information for our participating members. And of course, to my council colleagues, please reach out to any and all of them if you have some questions or concerns you'd like to address in advance of July the 13th. I appreciate the robust discussion here. I think this went very well. If there's nothing to further be brought up this evening, the chair would entertain a motion to adjourn this work meeting at 6.57 p.m. So moved. Moved by Gearbaugh. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Dillon. All those in favor of adjourning, say aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. Aye.

Thank you.

Let's call this meeting to order. If you please rise and join us 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. Thank you very much. We welcome you here this evening. Members present are Council Members Del Arco, Dillon, Gearbaugh, Halsh, Harmont, Mayor Pro Tem Rice, and Mayor Morrow. From city staff, we have City Manager Swallow, Clerk Royal, Engineer Humphress, DPS Director McNeil, Treasurer Finch, and Police Chief Radzik, along with Deputy Police Chief Hartwig. Am I missing any staff members? I think I got them all. Very good. Is there a motion at this time to approve the agenda as submitted and list our amendments?

I had asked to add things to discussion.

You're welcome to just bring them up under reports and other announcements if you're so inclined.

That's fine.

Okay. Is there a motion to approve or to amend? Moved by Rice to approve. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by, was that Halsh? Thank you, sir. All those in favor of approving the agenda as submitted, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, say nay. I say aye. The motion carries unanimously. There are no absences. so we'll proceed with the first of two public comment periods. Under the Open Meetings Act, any person who may come forward at this time may comment to City Council. This public comment period will be limited to three minutes per person. Those wishing to speak are requested but not required to state their name and address for the record. Please note, City Council will not answer questions during this initial public comment period. Please. And make sure the green light is illuminated at the base of that microphone.

Good evening all. Jack Seale from the City of Saline, 314 Curtis Lane. I come to you tonight as a member of the committee to renew the millage for the Saline District Library. First, I want to remind everyone that there's an election on August the 4th, so don't neglect to vote in that election. Second, there's an important question on that ballot about the renewal of the operating millage for the Saline District Library. Last, this request is on the back of the ballot. Right there. I need to tell you that in my many times as a member of the Absentee Voter Account Board, that many people have neglected to vote the back of the ballot when there are issues on there. So don't neglect to turn the ballot over. Some quick facts about this mills request. It's a 10-year request in the amount of 0.33 mills. This is a reduction from the 0.55 mills that are currently authorized under the current mill of The Saline District Library serves the same geographic boundaries as the Saline School District, that is, the City of Saline, and parts of Lodi, York, Pittsfield, Bridgewater, Freedom, and Saline Townships. The Saline District Library is not part of the City of Saline government, and it is not part of the Saline School District, though it has the same boundaries as the Saline Schools. It has its very own governing board of trustees. This operating mill, if renewed, would be used to pay for the following. New library materials, e-library resources like Libby and Hoopla, programming for all ages, summer reading programs, special features like the Saline District Library Seed Library, technology services and internet access, and maintaining our recently renovated building and grounds as a gathering space for all. So in conclusion, don't forget to vote on August the 4th, and don't forget to vote back in the ballot. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Seale. We appreciate those comments. Are there any additional citizen comments this evening? I'll defer to the city clerk. Were there any written comments provided in advance of tonight's meeting in which the individual wanted their remarks right at this time? Easy enough. Well, you'll have a second bite at the apple at the end of the meeting. We'll have an additional public comment period. We have two presentations this evening. First up is recognition of Officer Bauer. Police Chief Radzik, would you like to come to the podium and kick this off? If you'd like to be joined by Deputy Chief Hartwig, we would welcome that.

Yes, please. And if I can have officer Bauer and his wife and kids and whoever else you have brought with you, if you can come up here, please. Thank you. Okay, so did you want to introduce real?

Yeah, be great. If you officer Bauer, if you'd like to introduce your what family members or friends you have present this evening. Sure.

This is my wife, Courtney, my daughter, Helene, and my daughter, Aurora. Okay, thank you.

All right, good evening tonight. We would like to formally recognize officer Bauer for his outstanding professionalism and care during an incident on May 3rd, 2026 involving a young child riding a scooter in traffic on Michigan Avenue in the hours of darkness while conducting a traffic stop officer Bauer observed a child riding a scooter in an active traffic lane. He immediately ensured the child's safety by guiding her out of the roadway and maintaining a calm, reassuring presence. During the interaction, Officer Bauer recognized that the child was autistic and adjusted his communication to ensure she remained comfortable and understood. Drawing on information from a previous call for service, Officer Bauer quickly identified the child's address and coordinated with Officer Fenske to reunite her safely with her family. The officers made prompt contact with the parents, explained the situation with professionalism and sensitivity, and ensured the child was returned home safely. Officer Bauer's diligence reflects sound judgment and a strong commitment to protecting vulnerable members of our community. The actions of Officer Bauer demonstrated exceptional awareness, patience, and dedication to public safety. Officer Bauer's COMPASSIONATE RESPONSE REFLECTS THE HIGHEST STANDARDS OF THIS DEPARTMENT. AND SO TONIGHT WE WOULD LIKE TO AWARD YOU WITH THE MURATORY SERVICE AWARD. AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE.

Before you depart, first of all, we would welcome the opportunity, Officer Bauer, if you'd like to share some remarks. We're delighted to have you, your family, and some friends and fellow officers with us. And then I know that our friend to my right from the Saline Post would probably love to get some pictures. Trian, I'm assuming with all the officers, the family, and Officer Bauer?

Well, especially Officer Bauer.

Sure.

Well, why don't we begin? If you'd like to share any remarks or perspective, we would appreciate that. And then I would invite you forward so we can all shake your hand and congratulate you on a job well done.

First of all, I just want to say thank you. I've been working here since December. It's been a pleasure. I appreciate working for a community that's so supportive of our police department and, you know, administration that also is very supportive. So just thank you all so much. And I really appreciate it. Come forward. We'll shake your hand.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Congratulations.

Pleasure to finally meet you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. We can take a break if you want to do a picture. Tran, where would you like the group to assemble? Um, we got a presentation after this.

Yeah, maybe just standing right up here.

You want to come in? Yep. Chief Radzic, Deputy Chief Hartwig. I think probably the picture would be best if it looks like you're handing off his plaque to him.

You're okay?

They all have heads in the background. I know.

Same thing. We should move out of this.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, everybody. Congratulations.

Thank you so much. Appreciate y'all being here.

All right. Transitioning on to our second presentation of the evening, we have an update from our city engineer, Tisha Humphress, and our DPS director regarding GIS and effective asset management. You may begin when ready.

I'm just going to hook up here on my computer. Let me sign in and share my screen.

Pull that microphone just a little bit closer to you, Tisha.

Yep. Okay. Can everybody hear me and see? Okay. Okay. Yes, I'm City Engineer Tasha Humphreys. I'll let Brandon introduce himself.

I'm Brandon, Public Services Director.

And we're here to give hopefully a quick and comprehensive update on GIS. GIS is a tool that I use every single day in my job. And I just wanted to give council kind of a brief overview. We're happy to dig in more in detail on one-on-one sessions, but here we're trying to keep to our 10-minute presentation time. So we have a Little bit of items to cover. In general, GIS is taking our data that we own spatially and getting it all into a database. This first picture here is an award we recently won from American Public Works Association last month for effective use of GIS for effective asset management. So really proud of that. Some of the things that we've, and we're going to highlight a few of the things we've done over the last couple years here. These are just some pictures here when I get on my screen. At the top of the screen is just our old plan room, how we used to find plans and then make an example of a map. GIS, the mapping attributes here. This is some of our staff out taking GPS of some of our attributes. I think they might be picking up a water valve here. The idea is that all of our linear assets, all of the things that we own that go throughout the city, our streets, our underground water, our underground sewer, the more data we have on those assets, the easier they are to find in the future, and the less we need institutional operational knowledge to find assets. So this is us taking some GPS data. This is what the plan room used to look like. At one point it would take me a whole day to find a set of plans that now takes me literally 15 minutes. I'm just going to scroll here now. I brought a mouse for a reason. Sorry, I'm going to use my mouse now. It'll probably be a little bit more efficient with my mouse. So this is our online mapping tool right now. This is the base item. This is our utility map. This is, I would say, the base thing that we use every single day. These are all of the items that we have tracked in here. I think our biggest thing being the sanitary sewer, the storm sewer, and the water are our biggest assets that are tracked in here. Just to give you an idea, underwater we have, these are all of the different attributes we have underwater, all the different asset classes. And each of these asset classes have multiple attributes associated with them. As you can imagine, if I can zoom into space here, and I want to look at, let's go to Mill Pound Park here, the north side of Mill Pound Park, we can see where our storm sewer is, where our water main is, where our sanitary sewer is, all in one place. And this is one of the reasons why it's so helpful to get all of our data into GIS. The as-built utility layer, I'm just going to show a real quick example of using this to open up an as-built, so this links to, well, the pressure of the water main. Also links to As-Built plans here and without actually opening something up, ultimately get to an old set of As-Built plans. This happens to be our sanitary sewer going through the old along, you can see it's called Fort Lake through here Mill Pound Park. So one of those neat things that we get out of GIS is no longer having to go dig through the basement for all of our As-Built tools. We can just get them here on the map. So that's kind of how we're using it for inventory every day. And I'm gonna let Brandon talk a little bit about one of our ongoing programs.

Yeah, so one of the ongoing programs that we use for as far as field work goes and at an admin level is the hydrogen flushing app. This is a very welcoming app to the city of Saline here. So basically each year the assets or the hydrants are turned to a different color and as staff completes hydrant flushing and answering questions related to the hydrants maintenance questions for the most part, those hydrants turn to a different color, typically green, and we can track how far the field workers have made it on a given weekend for hydrant flushing. And then the other really nice aspect of that is the HERE WE GO, THE MAINTENANCE PORTION OF IT, WHICH IS REALLY WHAT I LOOK AT THE MOST WITH THE DPW DIRECTOR IS THE MAINTENANCE PORTION OF THIS, WHICH WE ARE GOING TO HEAVILY GET INVOLVED WITH. I GOT WITH I.T. DIRECTOR CHRIS CHAMONK, WE GOT TABLETS COMING IN. WE'LL BE UTILIZING THOSE TABLETS IN THE FIELD EVERY DAY TO UPDATE WHAT WE'RE DOING AS FAR AS GIS WORK. As you can see, we are tracking the various maintenance things that we have to get done with regarding our fire hydrants. So it gives you a breakdown of exactly what needs to be fixed. I can look up. the a specific hydrant through our general utility map and it will take me right to that specific hydrant i can then do the maintenance work order ticket and then open up the tablet and answer a bunch of drop down many questions take a couple of pictures of the updated repair and then post that inside gis app and we'll have that record for the lifetime so this is a living breathing instrument that we will continue to use moving forward and always update as we need And all that touch to take it from here on other aspects of for us, I figure how to get out of this and back to the.

Um. Next, I'm just going to show Council a couple of our public-facing apps. This is one of the cool things that staff has been using GIS for years now. In fact, I started here in November of 21, and it was that next budget year, which would have been fiscal year 23, that we began budgeting $100,000 a year in GIS. um you know some years we've spent all this some years we've left on the table but that so we're now in our fourth or fifth year of continual investment in this tool um it is a tool that i used every other municipality i worked at daily it was not available to me when i started and now i use it every single day obviously council is looking for and the public to get one of the cool things about this tool is being able to be transparent with the public with all of our assets that we own And so we're getting there. We're getting able to show. So I wanted to highlight two of the things that we are now public facing. The first is the lead and copper. We have gotten a big grant. I think we've talked a lot about the $600,000 we got to investigate water service leads. This is us, an example of GPSing. This is us actually digging down and verifying the material of various water samples. I'm sorry, water service leads throughout the city. And what we've been able to do with this is, why is that? Oh, here we go. These are two of the internal applications, but I wanted to show the public-facing website with it, which is this here. That's going to just take a minute to load. I hope it loads. Apologies, it's a little slow. It's here, but it's not really loading just yet, just because there's a lot going on right now. But this is where the public can go and look up their actual lead and copper service lateral information. Here it's going, it's taking a minute. Just give it a second. And you can see here, so you can go on the map, you can zoom in to where you live, you can get the information, click on your home, and see where we're at. And some of them, of course, have yet to be verified, but this is just an application that is currently public facing that's on our website. The other one is a current capital improvement plan map. So this is our existing CIP that was adopted by council back in April. And again, a public-facing map that folks can get on on the city's engineering page to click on and get more information about upcoming capital projects. What I wanted to show you on this map is just how many different types of capital projects we have going on at this time. These are the categories we have, not motorized, parks, the rec center is its own separate category, stormwater, streets, wastewater, water, citywide facilities, and bridges. Facilities, we ended up including all of the buildings the city owns, plus all of the parking lots, and as you can see from this, there's a lot of facilities we own, there's a lot of capital needs in those facilities, hence one of the reasons for the facilities, I forget what the department, the need for a facilities person to manage all of our facility needs. And I think, That's about the end of the presentation here. There's a bunch of other apps that we have, and I'm gonna let Brandon talk about what we have coming up next year.

Yeah, so the goal for next year is to keep expanding the GIS and then more or less field use of the GIS. So we got all of our assets, now we need to be able to utilize GIS in the field to help us with our daily work, to track what we're doing. So valve exercising is gonna be implemented this winter. So basically we go locate every single water main valve, Exercise it by turning the valve on and off and verifying that it works. Document any maintenance that needs to take place. Helps us plan for the future investments that we're going to need to make for valve replacements, documents what we can shut off and what we can't shut off. The other big app that we are going to introduce is the Mystic app. Yeah, the Mystic app. So you'll see every once in a while UCIS out there staking a bunch of consumers and AT&T. They always take pictures of what they're doing to document. you know, where they located their assets that they're responsible for. Well, that's what we need to be doing here in Saline. So basically, what we'll be doing is anytime we get a misdig, we will take a picture of the misdig work order. We'll enter that information, also the misdig ticket number into GIS so that it's easy to look up in the future. We'll plot a point, much like you see on here, but we individually place this at that location that's requested to be staked. we answer some drop down menu questions about that ticket and then also as part of the work order we will take pictures of the markings so that we are protecting ourselves from liability from people hitting our our utilities and us not having any documentation that we had indeed staked it the way that we're supposed to so this will go a long way also for the city's record retention we'll still have to keep the paper copies but as far as having all the documents and making it easily available for us to locate a mistake ticket this makes it incredibly easy so those are the two primary apps outside of additional work that we can continuing on in 2027 with your support.

That's a phenomenal resource. I know that this program and asset management more broadly has been discussed, is discussed monthly at our asset management team. Before we open it up for any questions, do any members of the asset management team care to make any comment this evening? I'll start to my right and end to my left. Mr. Del Arco, any comments pertaining to the presentation or asset management strategies more broadly?

Just that I think this is an incredibly valuable resource to the City of Saline. I'm grateful that we have it and I'm grateful for Atisha's hard work in getting the data populated. It's been a huge task. We spent a lot of time on the Asset Management Subcommittee talking about these issues and this is going to make a profound difference in the DPW's ability to quickly navigate areas of concern for the City and maintain our assets. Very good.

Thank you. Council member Dylan.

Thank you. Yeah, the asset management we do, we spend a lot of time talking about. Um, 1 of the things that we are trying to work through right now is, and that I feel is the next step for us is understanding what information we have in and. what is going the timeline to get the rest in and the cost, the anticipated cost. I think that's really the next big step that we have got to get because what we've talked about in asset management is this is the key to making good decisions. Is that being able to look before you dig up a road understanding what does all of the infrastructure under it look like and coordinating efforts? And so I think that we just need to make sure that we're getting this information in and providing the right resources, but also having a definitive timeline as to when we can expect. To utilize because some of this data correct me if I'm wrong right now, it's in there, but it's not necessarily usable because we don't have all the components of it.

There, it depends on the asset class, of course. So I would say for roads, it's easiest asset class, because you can see them right that you can drive the roads. You can do the condition assessment on roads and. Because we only have 40 miles of roads, we can do it in like half a day a day. A couple engineers go out and do it. But when it comes to an asset like the water main valves that are literally buried, and some of them we don't know where they're at, yes, there's varying levels. And I agree with everything you've said thus far. And the spreadsheet that was sent around to all the council earlier today is the tracking, if you will, of the percent complete. And as you can see, some of those asset categories have further to go than others.

Thank you, Council Member Dillon. Council Member Gierbaugh, any additional insights?

The idea was that we've invested a significant amount of money using OHM and engineering firms to help us put this data together has been significant. I think when we started back five or six years ago under different, even DPW directors, one of our goals was just to bring in the idea of knowing where all our valves were, and we didn't even at that point time understand it. And so now that we've gotten to this point, the more data we have, the more that we can manage and probably predict and and hopefully be able to manage better than we have in the past. One of the goals of the members of our advisors has been to invest into this and make data gathering a priority and hopefully, although we have a number of other priorities and things, that that will continue to be one of our goals so that when we look at this and expansion of the city and as we grow, it's going to be clear that understanding what this is is how we're going to be able to afford or even maybe continue to keep the city attainable and be able to afford to live in its situation as long as we understand what we're trying to do.

Very good. And I'll jump to the far left of the dais. Councilmember Harmon, any questions for Engineer Humphress or DPS Director McNeil regarding the presentation this evening?

Yes, thank you so much for answering and I'm just trying to get enough chance to look over it and then think of more questions to ask, but I'm going to ask them now so I apologize for that. So my question number one was, how are we aligning risk items to the mapping schedule? And I think my question was kind of like, all right, we have 40 miles of road in the city of Saline. Of the 40 miles of road that we're mapping, what percentage of the mapping of the 40 miles is complete? And then the follow-up question to that is, are all the things that we've completed, are those the high-risk items, or do we still have, after three years, things that are high-risk that have not been mapped out yet? That's kind of my question.

I'm going to transform, I guess, high-risk with essential, because the Asset Management Committee has classified all of our assets as essential, safety, or community enhancement. We're not the risk mitigation committee, though. They have a different set of metrics that they're going off of. But when it comes to the asset management subcommittee, we've definitely, and so I'm kind of taking what you're asking to be essential assets that we own. And so the spreadsheet, so what we are tracking in the spreadsheet is what percentage we have in GIS. One first of inventory. So asset management, effective asset management starts first with inventory. What do you own and where is it at? What percentage of inventory do we actually have reach for asset classes? I'm going to start with just three simple ones sewer water and roads Just for examples even though our asset list is I think 34 total asset classes So for those three assets roads are easy. We've got them all we get them all the time. I would say for our water main We have now found 90 high percentage of our water valves. There's a couple cannot. There's a few valves that cannot find. They might not exist. We don't know. They might have been taken out years ago, right? So there's always going to be a small percentage of cannot find. With our sanitary sewer, we have found all of our manholes. So that's inventory. The next thing we track is condition assessment of each of those assets. So do we have those assets? Do we have a condition of every single piece of those assets? Road's easy. We get condition assessment every two years. For the sanitary sewers, we're spending $250,000 a year to CCTV I don't know what the percentage we've gotten today, but we've gotten. I think you only get five minutes.

I want to hear what she has to say, but I also want to use my five minutes. I'm really just looking. We have 40 miles, and those 40 miles have assets. What percentage of those miles are completed? How much money have we paid so far for the mapping of GIS? You mentioned it's $100,000 a year. That's a great system. It's super needed for the city. Once we finish mapping all our assets, does that dollar amount drop? So that's another question. Okay. What percent in my third question that you had answered, which thank you again for your answers, what percentage is completed or how many? So we, that was a question I asked. And then do we own information that's been mapped regardless if we're ongoing agreement with them? And your answer to that was yes, but we might have to need to have a consultant to, uh your response specifically was yes we own the data but we need a consultant's technical support to manage the query the data in-depth use of the the system is beyond our in-house capabilities so we would have to come up with some solution so um Thank you for answering those questions, and I don't know if I want to give you the rest of the time to answer that, so I'm sorry.

I'll be quick. I do think that eventually, yes, the goal is to decrease the investment in GIS as we are using the tools more in-house, but I never envision that we'll never have enough GIS work to want to afford to have a GIS in-house. So we're always going to need a consultant. The more data we get in there, the more we need the consultant to query the data, the more complicated the actual database gets. So although I think it's great that we're getting data and that we're using the data for our modeling, for all of the other things that we're now doing to plan our capital planning, and we absolutely own that data. ESRI is the owner of GIS, and ESRI, people go to school and get degrees in GIS, so we could move from OHM to another GIS consulting firm. So the data is definitely ours to take with us, but I do not foresee us ever being big enough. I mean, the City of Ann Arbor has two or three in-house GIS technicians, and they're how many times bigger than us.

So it would go from 100 down to what if we still needed a consultant?

I'm maybe half potential. Okay.

So our sustained cost for the city would be about 50,000 to have this system ongoing. Okay. Thank you.

Very good. Thank you for those questions. Mayor Portem, Rice, do you have any questions for our DPS director or engineer?

I guess my question may sound a little odd because it's not specifically about GIS, but it's more about asset management and sort of where we are with that. We had an asset management work group and we've had it for a long time and it was really because we were not managing our assets before you came in, Ms. Humphries. Where do you feel we are with that work group and you know, setting future goals for the city of Saline. Are we able to pull back on some of the time spent in that work group now that we've got some things kind of under our purview? And then also for Brandon, since this is now your wheelhouse, like what's your vision for that type of work group and goal setting and or is it beneficial to you? Just like what are your thoughts and feelings on that group?

I'm just gonna start with a brief background. It was established in August of 24 was when the asset management and one of its priorities was to prioritize reinvestment in our essential assets and one of the ITEMS THAT I HAVE REALLY APPRECIATED ABOUT THE ASSET MANAGEMENT SUBCOMMITTEE IS BEING ABLE TO FULLY EDUCATE A PORTION OF COUNCIL ON SOME OF THE CHALLENGES THAT WE FACE. WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO DO A REALLY DEEP DIVE INTO OUR WATER SYSTEM WITH OUR WATER MASTER PLAN. AS WE ALL KNOW, WE'RE UNDER A HUGE WASTEWATER REHABILITATION PROJECT AT THIS TIME. THAT PROJECT IS NOT THE END OF OUR WASTEWATER NEEDS. SO AS WE CONTINUE TO IDENTIFY CAPITAL NEEDS, I THINK IT'S A HUGE BENEFIT THAT COUNCIL IS AWARE OF THE CHALLENGES THAT WE FACE, ESPECIALLY AS POTENTIAL We need to fund these improvements that we're identifying in the future. So I think that is definitely a benefit of the committee. Have we made as much progress in the two years that I'd hoped? I would say no, but I've also had four bosses in those two years. So we've had a lot of turnover here in those two years. So I think we've just been slowed a little bit by some other stuff that's been going on. But overall, I'm really proud of the committee. I'm really proud of the goals of the committee, I should say, and what they were established for. And I do think they're pointing the city in the right direction.

If I may real quick, just I think Engineer Humphress gave an excellent answer, but to provide just a little bit of clarification primarily to our constituents and those who may be watching the meeting, the asset management team was established in 2024, but that came out of a pre-existing group that was focused primarily on the wastewater treatment plant. which Mr. Gierbaugh and several others were a part of. At that time, we found it advantageous to broaden the perspective to focus on all of our infrastructure, not just the wastewater treatment plant. Although that remains a priority, it is just one of the many assets we're obligated to maintain. Please continue.

Yeah, I'd like to also continue the committee as well. Not only again, not just the vertical, but horizontal assets that we have. I look forward to working with OHN, Tasha for a little bit here, and DPW on a more cohesive GIS application. I know that they worked on it in a couple of communities, but basically IT TAKES ALL THE IMPORTANT ASSETS LIKE ROAD, SEWER, STORM, WATER, STREETS, AND HAS ONE COLLECTIVE APP WHERE IT CATEGORIZES AND COMES UP WITH RATINGS AND SPECIFICALLY HELPS US PINPOINT EXACTLY WHERE The core work is needed with multiple assets at one point. For one given street, the street needs to be replaced, but also the sewer rating is this, the storm rating is that, the water main is this old, and it has this many water main breaks. So they do have working GIS applications out there right now that have that information. This is something that Tasha and Dan and I spoke of, and we didn't know that they even had that. So that was something that we want to work towards either this year or at the beginning of next fiscal year to get that all together and continue to grow the information. And then that will lead and supply conversations that the committee meets.

That's a great answer. Thank you so much. I appreciate that insight.

Thank you, Mayor Patem Rice. Council Member Gierbaugh, any questions? Not this time. Thank you. Council Member Dillon?

Oh, thank you. No, I think the only question I would have is, do we need to invest more dollars to expand the program or to ensure that we're doing things at a faster rate so that we have the information at hand?

One of the things that we're doing now is using our engineering interns solely for GPS and GIS data management and data collection. So that's one of the ways we are chipping away to try to save some money at it. I do think that Some years we have actually struggled to spend a hundred thousand dollars just because of sheer workload and other years we've gone and done a bunch of field work and burned through it. So it seems to be a good number that we're hitting consistently and continuing to make progress. At least that's my observation at this time.

And my follow up to that is we've looked at different approaches and it's do you recommend a zone approach or just into or. We've talked about different things, like, while you're in an area working on, say, redoing a road, do you inventory everything that's associated with that road, the trees, you know, everything like that while you're there and cross that off like, okay, this block is done. Or do we break up the city into quadrants like we tried to do with the sidewalk program and say, okay, well, this. Portion we feel like we have a really good handle on because I feel like we've got pieces all over, but I don't know when we're going to actually see the. The vision of the picture.

And I agree, we do have pieces all over, and I think it's always going to be a little bit of pieces all over, because this is a living document. Now, my recommendation as far as zone or all-in would be all-in on the essential assets. Because, like science, for instance, is one thing we don't have any data on, but that's not essential. Sure, it makes it look prettier. Sure, it wouldn't. It's... safety, it's definitely in a category that's worth looking at, but I would recommend that first we focus on the essential assets first, and that would be my recommendation.

Yeah, just to expand on that a little bit to give a more understanding of why that is the case, let's just look at sewer mains in general. The investment of money that it takes to CCTV and clean sewer main is extremely costly. So we couldn't just focus on trying to get just that asset taken care of. You'd be in millions and millions of dollars that we would ask for you to approve in order for us to take care of that in all one year. And then having all that information means that we also need to allocate funds to repair those things that we know are existing at that point in time. you only really get a certain amount of time that you really should act on repairing those things once you understand that they're out there. So that's why certain assets take time and years. You know, sewer mains should have been started years and years ago, and you keep working on it. And so that's just one example of why, you know, sometimes they seem hodgepodge-y, but that's just for the funds that we have, we have to work them that way.

No, I understand that. I just... What I'll look at is the North View neighborhood right now. We were able to leverage a SEMCOG grant because we had already inventoried the sidewalks and then we were able to get a grant to do the ADA. So I guess because we were able to do that whole area at once and sort of looking at chunks, if that's something that we should be more in line with trying to do.

Yeah, the only follow-up I got with that is, again, when it comes to sewer main TV work, we prioritize the areas with OHM on the roads that need the most repair, so we can try to correlate that information together. So that's something that we do try to correlate so that we can come up with projects that make sense of we have to wait until we can do a full rehabilitation on this, opposed to just focusing on sewer main repair or just water main replacement. So we try to group those together when we can.

um if that kind of helps explain it a little bit better no i i appreciate that um because coordination is always a great thing it's very difficult to see a road that was just redone that has uh that has big holes in it or uh steel grates over it um as we've seen in the area here it's it is a bit frustrating so thank you for for coordinating thank you councilmember del arco any additional questions

I have none. Okay. Council Member Halsh?

Yeah, first of all, looking at this, this is so cool. I love a good dashboard. So that's really cool. Just two questions, well, two and a half. You mentioned public-facing modules. Are there any additional ones that the engineering or the engineering or Department of Public Works plan to roll out to the public beyond the ones you've mentioned?

The only one that just comes off my mind would be we could do a public-facing dashboard for sewer cleaning and TV work. More or less, it's showing the cleaning areas and where we're going to go to next. Especially for cleaning, you have the chance of having water come out of your toilet in the bad event that we cause some back pressure in the sewer main. So letting the customers know or residents know where we're going to be and giving them heads up on what they need to do in order to secure their toilets and stuff like that. It's not crazy amounts of water coming out, but at least they know to shut their toilet lids and look out for it. That's really nice. So we can kind of show them what we have accomplished and where we're heading to next and kind of prepare them for that. So that's something that I do see some communities show on their public facing. So that's just something that initially comes to my mind that we could add.

And I'm just going to share something that has been talked about at Asset Management Subcommittee. We're not there yet, but this is maybe our wish list is to have some sort of app that's public facing that someone can go to their street and get all the information on their street. What is my pacer rating on this street? Even though, I mean, what is this rated? What is my utilities on this street? Why is my street not getting done? Because when it comes to streets themselves, a lot of the older streets, like you think like Russell, Lewis that have a utility needs underneath them are failing streets, but the cost to do them is more because we have utility plus street needs. So being able to show the public some of the challenges that we have in some of our older areas is one of the goals of the asset management. And I think that's we're actually close to cracking that nut. We're just not quite there how to show that all. We're not even quite sure how to show you guys yet much less the public, but we're getting there. We're getting close.

That'd be really, really cool. Where do those current public modules live on the city's website?

Yes, the one, the capital improvement plan is on city engineering's website. And I'm honestly not positive where the lead and copper falls on the city. But if you type in city of Saline lead and copper map, Google takes me there anyways, but because it's ultimately on our website, but it was redirecting to Esri because it's an Esri. But, you know, it's really not something we're hosting. Esri is hosting. So you go to RSF and you get redirected to Esri anyways, which is the GIS database.

Awesome. And then you mentioned modeling. Are there any predictive or forecasting capabilities within GIS?

Well, I think it's more when you have accurate data in GIS, then you can use that data to do the modeling. And that's where all the predicting and forecasting comes in. And we have absolutely done that. One of the very cool things we've done this year is converted our steady state water system into a time extended period simulation. So we can look at our pressure in different areas of our water distribution system. It's helping us to Our pumping rates out of the plant is helping to identify issues so that we can help invest in our water system. So being able to develop this straight comes from having accurate data from GIS and using that. And we're also using OHM's modeling team, which is nice when all the data is interconnected in here.

And then just one last question kind of on that same note. Does GIS, or do you think... it will get to a point excuse me um do you think it'll get to a point to where we can start to maybe predict the life cycle or or okay because i think that would be we have once we have enough date but we have to have all the data and like i'm trying to um

I'm going to apologize. What Neil was describing is that it's going to take some time to get all of that data, though, because some of that data is very expensive to get when you're going with the underground stuff. So I absolutely think we'll be there someday, but we have to have all that data to do some of that analysis.

Awesome. Thank you. Very good. Thank you both. Appreciate your leadership.

While we have you here, you just mentioned the sewer cleaning and the pipe mining. We, I think, might have been the first area this summer to have that done, and the pamphlet that was left on our door Didn't even mention any of the things that you mentioned until the very back. It was way too much information. I just needed the information about what you needed me to do in my household. So if you could talk to our contractor. I can't imagine we were the only ones. It was a small area, so I don't know how many homes were affected. But I literally had to sit down with it and go, what is this telling me? What am I supposed to do in my own home? And we didn't understand. It meant like... Low water usage, close to it, things like that. Absolutely.

So I've never reviewed that because literally we started it like a couple weeks ago. So I will get the pamphlet. I will sit down and review it with Ryan and Tesha if we have some time and we can – Ask for it to be updated and we can use those going forward. Yeah, it was just too much information.

It was cool. I get it. I understand what's happening now, but the point of what I needed to do in my house needed to be right up front.

It was literally the last thing. Don't use as much water as you typically do while we line. Thank you very much. Sorry about that.

Sorry about that interruption. You're good. Thank you both. Appreciate your leadership and your time this evening. Have a wonderful rest of your night. We're going to move on to that wraps up the presentation portion of tonight's agenda. We're going to proceed to the consent portion. The following consent agenda will normally be adopted without discussion. However, at the request of any citizen or council member, any item may be removed from the consent agenda for discussion. Moved by Rice to approve as submitted. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Harmount. Hearing no discussion, all those in favor of approving the consent agenda as submitted, signify by saying it.

You just went through that. I do actually have a little bit of discussion that I wanted to make mention of.

Which item did you want to pull?

I'm not necessarily pulling, I just want to have discussion. Regarding the sewer charges, I just want to make a statement that we do have a policy at this point in which People can eat when they look at the name of our actual policy. Excuse me the sewer credit relief policy. I do think at this point that council should revise that it has been probably 4 years since we put in smart meters and there is access through an app through their website to get live information. And so I do think that. We should now put that on our residents that this is on their responsibility to have that and then we can look to relief beyond that if there's an issue with that. But we do provide that and I think it's important that residents have some buy in when it comes to their water meters.

Fair enough. Mayor Pro Tem Rice, would you mind adding that to the laundry list of items to be discussed at your upcoming policy subcommittee meeting? While that might not be an ordinance, I do think having your group evaluate that further before a formal request is made to council would be appropriate. If there's nothing further, there's a motion on the floor moved by Rice, seconded by Hermann to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Ayes have it. The motion carries unanimously. We move on to unfinished business agenda item 26-54, proposal from the Saline River Dam race stop log repair. This is simply a motion to acknowledge receipt of the memo from the Spicer Group reviewing the two proposals the city has received from Fisher Contracting and O'Neill Construction for repair of the Saline River Dam mill race stop log repair. Is there a motion to acknowledge?

Move to acknowledge.

Move by Dillon. Second. Seconded by Rice. Engineer Humphress, are you kicking this one off? Actually, we're going to start with the city manager, please.

Thank you, Mayor and Council. As you were aware, back in March, we had brought forward a proposal from Fisher Contracting for... basically constructing a repair to the stop logs, which are in deteriorating condition and partial failures on the stop logs. Since that time, it's been further evaluation by Spicer Group, reached out to a total of five contractors in an effort to obtain some guidance as well as proposals for cost on what it would cost to basically repair the stop logs in place, as well as some other alternative methods to look at how we could Make those repairs with that we, as you are aware, the proposal from Fisher was a significantly was a very expensive 580,000 dollars roughly for that proposal. A large portion of that was. to construct a cofferdam around to basically isolate the stop log structure in the millrace as well and be able to repair that in a dry condition. Looking at ways to, and the cost of the cofferdam alone was about $300,000, so looking at ways we could potentially reduce that cost, value engineering, if you will, to take a look at different methodologies for repair of that. REPAIR OF THE STOP LUGS. WE DO HAVE A PROPOSAL THAT WAS IN YOUR PACK AT THE EVENING FROM O'NEIL CONSTRUCTION FOR SIGNIFICANTLY LESS, ABOUT ROUGHLY A LITTLE OVER $50,000 FOR THAT. HOWEVER, THERE ARE SEVERAL OMISSIONS, IF YOU WILL, FROM THAT PROPOSAL. THEY DID NOT INCLUDE SEDIMENT REMOVAL FOR TO BE ABLE TO PLACE THE STRUCTURE THAT THEY HAD PROPOSED. THERE ARE SOME OTHER CONCERNS WITH THE METHODOLOGY, LOOKING AT THAT FROM Spicer is not recommending at this time that we proceed with that bid. We need some additional detail, some additional costs for, for example, the sediment removal in particular. So they are continuing to work on that. O'Neill Construction was contacted to add that to their bid, and we hope to bring back a revised bid to you at the next meeting.

So the assumption would be that the O'Neill construction bid, once modified, would be appropriate and come with staff's recommendation to approve at the July 13th meeting. Yes. Okay. Very good. Questions for the city manager? Council Member Harmon.

Hi. Thank you, Dan, for answering some of my questions. Just to clarify, so the one quote, the original quote that we got from the first meeting company was 580, and the second quote we got was from the other company was 51,000. And the 51,000 did not include a lot of other things, so we're So seemingly, even after we add in the sediment removal, there's still a really large gap between the two different companies. Can we get like maybe both of them in to clarify the scope of the work and make sure they're quoting accurately?

So, the main difference in scope work was the cofferdam. So that was about 300,000 dollars. I know there's still a gap there relative to some of the other work. So we can certainly detail that out and have Spicer group probably review both proposals. Exactly what scope was included. But I guess I don't fully understand exactly.

I don't think we need to have both presentations certain that there's a big gap between 2 different companies. And then that tells me that maybe neither company is quoting the same the same scope of work. AND THEN I'M ALSO CONCERNED THAT WE ARE ONLY GETTING, FOR SUCH A HUGE, BIG COST AND SUCH AN IMPORTANT COST, THAT WE'RE ONLY GETTING TWO QUOTES. AND I BROUGHT THIS UP IN THE PAST ABOUT HOW WE'RE GETTING QUOTES. AND I KNOW THAT WE'VE GOT A BUNCH OF TURN DOWN, NOT GETTING NO QUOTES. BUT I GUESS WHAT'S OUR PROCESS WHEN THAT HAPPENS TO GET AN ADDITIONAL QUOTE?

SO THIS WAS A LITTLE BIT UNIQUE IN THAT WE DID NOT HAVE A FULL SET OF ENGINEERING TO GO OUT TO REQUEST FOR We wanted some input from the contractors to work with them on how what methodology would work some additional details from from the site. And so, with that, with that, we, we did not bid this out in a formal bid process. We actually solicit quotes from contractors and so. Because it was a, it was not a clear picture is exactly how the, how the, how the. How to move forward with the repair.

Okay, so now we know what the scope of the repair that's recommended. Can we have that scope communicated to both the companies so that they're aware and they can remove.

We can ask Fisher if they would recall with this term design about, uh. methodologies for avoiding the cofferdam.

And so they were not willing to provide another solution.

Fisher was not at this time, no. Um, if I may, um, assuming that the, um, proposal from O'Neill construction, it comes with staff staff recommendation on the 13th. Obviously, we would make sure there was a representative or representatives from from O'Neill construction on hand along with Spicer to address any questions or concerns that may come up from council members. Very good. Okay. Additional questions. Uh, councilman, I'll just go right down the line here. I'm gonna start with, uh, and with Dylan.

My question is, you mentioned that a couple of them are in failure. How far or close are we? Well, first, what is the worst case scenario? And then how close or far are we from that?

So, 1st of all that we have installed a steel plates to basically hold the flow and hold the water level. And so we're in a stable condition as of right now. However, obviously, that's we can't control the water level. We can't adjust to provide flow for the mill race. And so that is a, that is a concern going forward as well as eventually, obviously, we will need to come up with a permanent solution. So the concern right now is that. That if the, you know, if we're not able to maintain the water level, that slowly the pond would drop. And so that that is at this point we have the, it's been stabilized with the, with the steel steel plate measures and. situation, but there is concern going through another season, another winter with those temporary seal plates in place. So I think the short answer is we need to try and effectuate a repair this season and get away from the temporary measures that we've used to provide for the water control.

Okay, yeah, I think the biggest concern from when we first started having this conversation is I hear the, I hear the word failure or that we're in a state of failure and I kind of always think worst case scenario. So hearing that we have found a stop gap of some degree to kind of stabilize does make me feel a little better as we continue to get more accurate information with the bid. So thank you.

Thank you. Councilmember Halsh. Councilmember Del Arco. Thank you. Just a couple questions, Dan. When I review the original bid, first off, I'll say I'm relieved we're getting a bid where there's not a $300,000 copper dam. The original bid we got from Fisher was actually $703,000, and the reason it came down to where we were talking about was states, in order to reduce costs, city staff will complete most of all the sediment and debris removal and site restoration. But why are they not willing to do that with the O'Neill construction proposal?

So, with the, as I mentioned with the cofferdam, you'd be in a dry environment. So there'd be no right now. The sentiment is basically under about 4 to 5 feet of water. And so when we asked the staff to evaluate the factor truck, and the ability to complete the sediment removal underwater, our equipment is not really set up for that and would not function with under those conditions. Whereas previously, if you had the cofferdam, then.

And then, secondly, the proposal from O'Neill came in at $51,975 with the with essentially the concrete barrier with stop logs on top of that model. But there was also another alternate provider where they just would go in and do what we were hoping to do originally was replace the stop logs in the existing channel. And that bed came in at $19,500. Is there a reason why that was automatically ruled out?

So, that alternate my understanding is that once the other structure was in place, so they, you'd have to place the concrete structure, provide for the water level control and then replace our existing stop log.

So that would be in addition to on top of the $51,000 proposal. That's correct. Okay. So, the other thing that concerned me was the. The assessment was that after you add in the debris and sediment removal and then the engineering cost, that we would be looking at a projected amount of about $160,000. And I can't, I don't have a crystal ball, I can't predict what sediment removal is going to cost from O'Neill's side, but from the engineering documents from Spicer that have already been provided, they quoted us at $70,000 for their engineering cost with the copper dam. And when I back off the $34,000 for the cofferdam design features, developing plans and specifications necessary to install the sheet piling, and then I back off $42,000 for the field engineering that would be in connection with detailed structural analysis of the mill race in a dry environment, I don't see how we're getting to a number that is as high as $160,000 when They quoted this at 70K and I backed that all up. Their engineering cost should be significantly less than $70,000 if we're doing it to the scope of work assumed under the O'Neill construction bid and not the Fisher bid. There's still some upfront permitting costs from EGLE that will... Right, that was in their quote. Yeah, that's all in their quote. So it's detailed in this information provided in the March 16th packet. Copper dam was task one, structure survey task two, administrative as-built drafting task three, task force field engineering allowance. And they have their EGLE permit applications in here too. I just don't see how they're going to... tack on another $50,000 if this was their bid for the other plan. We haven't seen a proposal from Spicer Group yet. Okay.

I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt. It'll be tied to the scope of work for O'Neill if that's what we ultimately choose. All right.

I look forward to seeing the future proposal from Spicer and from O'Neill.

Thank you, Council Member DeLarco. Council Member Dillon?

Thank you. Um, I asked one of my questions earlier today, and that was regarding the inflatable coffer down and, um, Mr Swallow, you had said that that's not an option for us.

AT THIS POINT, BASED ON THE REVIEW FROM THE CONTRACTORS WE SPOKE TO, AS WELL AS SPICER ENGINEERING, THEY FEEL THE INFLATABLE COFFER DAM WOULD BE A PROBLEM FOR A COUPLE OF REASONS. ONE, THE SEDIMENT ON THE BOTTOM, YOU KNOW, IT WOULD BE UNDERMINED, IT WOULD BE DIFFICULT TO SET UP, AS WELL AS THIS IS VERY, YOU KNOW, TYPICALLY YOU'D BE LOOKING AT BLOCKING OFF LIKE A STREAM CHANNEL. THIS IS A VERY NARROW, CONFINED STRUCTURE. SO THEY DID NOT FEEL IT WAS IMPLICABLE IN THIS STANDPOINT FOR THIS PROJECT.

Um, and then kind of just going back a couple of steps at 1 point, we had talked about putting a barrier on the other side. Is that now off the table? Like, so that instead of we right now, the water is stopped going on the back side of it either under U. S 12 or on the wellers property and putting a barrier there. That's dry.

NOT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF US 12. WE'VE NEVER DISCUSSED THAT. I MEAN, THEY'VE DISCUSSED THE POSSIBILITY OF, BECAUSE WHERE THE TRASH GRADE IS AND THE STEEL PLATES ARE CURRENTLY CONTROLLING THE WATER FLOW, IS POSSIBLY WORKING ON THE BACK SIDE OF THAT. BUT THE CONCERN WITH THAT IS THAT IS ALL SUPPORTED BY THE TRASH RACK. AND BY THE TIME YOU START ALTERING THAT AND REMOVING SECTIONS, THAT COULD

Okay, just I just want to kind of understand. I mean, this issue has been carrying on for more than 6 months now. We haven't made a decision. And what's making me very nervous is that every time I drive by, I see people with big poles poking at it and I'm like, it's not making it any better if we just keep poking at logs that are already dislocated. And so I'm just, I feel like we need to make a decision. And I understand we don't seem to have complete information. I guess I need to understand how do we get to that point so we can make a decision and just fix this before there is a failure.

So, just as a side, they're not poking at the logs there, they're trying to measure the sentiment and evaluate what it will take to remove that material. So, I mean, they're working to stabilize us and keep it stable as possible with that. The short answer is there are tried and true methods, if you will, for the cofferdam that was a significant expense. We weren't in an urgent situation. So we took the additional time. to evaluate alternative methods. We're still trying to find a contractor that is comfortable with and be able to work with Spicer Group on proposing alternative methods at this point.

And so when we spoke about this on Wednesday at agenda setting, you had reached out or were going to reach out to O'Neill. Did you give them in hopes of having the information for today? Have they provided a timeline as to when they will have information or if they just want to abandon their quote at this point?

They have not, they are looking at the, they are looking at different methods of installation of this and they, they're still not 100% confident with the, because of the set of removal requirements. So they're looking at a couple of different methods and we have not heard back from them yet.

And is there any concern for the city that that sentiment is contaminated and it's going to have to be treated in a different way.

So when we did the feasibility study for the dam removal, they did sample that sediment and it was not contaminated. So we don't believe there's a concern there.

Thank you very much.

Additional questions?

I just wanted to comment quickly that, you know, one of the reasons why we've gone so deep into this, no pun intended, is that that first number shook council. So we asked for additional inspection. I do appreciate that you brought, you know, four or five different entities out to take a look at it. And it is unfortunate that this is, you know, these are the two that we have to choose from the original and now only one new one. But that's just sort of, I think, the situation we have in these damn situations. Sorry, the puns are just coming out. So I just want to acknowledge that, yes, I hear my council colleagues and we do feel like we want to push this through forward, but I also do want to thank you for going that extra mile and trying to figure this out to not have more than a half a million dollar price tag and trying to kind of figure out where we are with things. So I really look forward to hopefully seeing an update from O'Neill and or getting an update from Spicer as to what they think our next steps are.

Any additional questions, Mr. Gearbaugh?

Just a statement. One of the other concerns when we postponed this was to get a legal opinion as to whether or not we need to provide this and do this repair. It seems like pretty much the decision has been made, although I don't know if Council's completely unanimously made that statement, that we will make a repair to this dam and not seek any other approach at this time.

Well, this is a short answer is obviously council has received some legal review to date relative to the maintaining this water course. It is not required that we maintain the water course. However, blocking it off does eliminate eliminate our ability to utilize this mill race at all in the future.

And the issue of utilizing the mill race in the future for what purpose?

So, for any, you know, for water control measures for to provide, you know, any flow downstream, the other concern of you completely abandoned is you do have to do have to come up with a method to seal it off completely permanently. And the cost for that is likely to be similar to the repair.

Yeah, so the idea now is that, um. It's a, it's not a, it's a push. So either way it is, we have to repair it work to close it off. And so it's still. What are we need to do? We have to fix it.

We have to come up with a solution, but they either shut it off or we have to fix the quotes on what would be completely shut it off.

So at this point, I agree with my colleague. We pushed this off in thinking that we had such an urgency at it a few months ago to do it, and now it seems like we're going to be yet another month off. At this point, we just got to bite the bullet and spend the money. So that's my statement.

Very good. Well, again, this is a motion simply to acknowledge receipt. This will return to council for consideration as an unfinished enumerated action item on the July 13th agenda. If anything changes, city manager Swell, please keep us posted. It's been properly moved by Dillon, seconded by Rice to acknowledge. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye.

Aye.

Opposed say nay. Ayes have it. The motion carries unanimously. We transition now to new business agenda item 26-108, fiscal year 2026, end of year budget amendments. This will be a motion to acknowledge receipt and to approve or not to approve the fiscal year 2026 year of end budget amendments as presented.

I'll move to acknowledge and to approve the budget amendments excluding the rec center at this time.

Okay, so a motion moved by Gearbaugh to acknowledge and to approve excluding, say that language one more time.

Excluding the recommended rec center budget amendments.

Excluding recommended rec center budget amendments. You clear on that language, Clerk Royal? Okay, is there a second to that motion?

I'll second that.

Seconded by Harmont. Okay, City Manager Swallow, would you like to begin?

I know the city treasurer is also in the audience. So, so we can address, obviously the, the other funds budget amendments and then the rec center budget amendments. So, starting with the general fund, there's a lot of number of smaller adjustments, but 2 more significant adjustments are in the fringe benefits category as well as the pension costs. And this is based on now that we have updated actual costs and actual invoices from MERS as well as our, the. As well as our health care and other providers for the retirees. Those are some more significant pieces. We do see increases in salaries as well as for as well as based on. It's for salaries based on the new based on the actual expenses coming through. We also see some attorney costs where we. Overall, I think that there are some smaller adjustments throughout the general fund, and we also looking up at some of the other funds, namely the major road fund. Those are mostly small adjustments to deal with with with the small adjustments relative to. Supplies relative to some small increases in salaries, some small increases in. So, most of those are sorry are smaller increases overall, local roads. There are some changes there as well. And then finally, the fire special assessment we see now that some review has reviewed that. And then on the sewer side, this is catching up really with wastewater treatment plant rehab expenses identified specifically what has been spent on the wastewater treatment plant as well as the bond revenue that we're seeing for the wastewater treatment plant improvements. And similarly, on the water side, we have some adjustments relative to the well rehabilitations that we've done as well as some who's coming in from that so with that take any questions you may have and then obviously Treasurer Finch is available as well before we take questions Treasurer Finch was there anything you wanted to add

I do have just a couple of notes that I wanted to point out. Specifically for the water and sewer, there's a couple of pretty significant amendments there. I just want to highlight that there's no change to the overall authorization or cost for those projects. These are simply capital projects that span multiple years. So we're adjusting to make sure actual progress with construction in this year is aligned with what we have budgeted. There will be a corresponding amendment in 27 where we'll probably reduce how much we're spending at the wastewater plant since we've obviously made significantly more progress in 26 than was originally budgeted. So I just want to highlight that. They've also got that corresponding revenue there for the revenue bonds that are coming in. So that's a net zero between those two items. Same for that TMF grant. That's something that's spanning multiple years. So here at the end, we're just looking to clean that up and align that with actual construction progress. I think the only other statement I wanted to make is while we have several amendments tonight that are increasing and allowing for more expenditures, we have a lot of items that are going to be coming in significantly under budget. So the overall impact on fund balance is going to not be much different than what was presented during the fiscal year 27 budget discussions. I still anticipate we'll be unassigning about $900,000 from the legislative changes line to restore us to that 15 to 18% mark. Um, so the, the overall impact of these is, um, is not going to be material at the end of the day when we consider the line items that will come in under budget.

So, 129,000, right? They ask and change 129,000.

I'm sorry.

Oh, that's the record.

Yes. Speaking. I know your motion is not for the rec center, but I assume I was looking at the net change in green. Yes, that's specifically for the rec center fund.

It's been removed from them by the motion. Okay.

Right. I'm not sure if it's appropriate to discuss that. It's probably worth mentioning. That it's, it's an amendment I'm recommending so that that fund does not have a deficit. It does not carry a fund balance to Lena. So this is an amendment that's an over abundance of caution in the event that there are revenue shortfalls. DIRECTOR LAMBERT HAS WORKED THROUGH THIS AND MADE SIGNIFICANT CUTS TO EXPENDITURES TO HELP THE SITUATION, BUT IN THE EVENT THAT ANY OF THEIR REVENUES DO NOT MEET THE PROJECTIONS, THIS FUND WILL BE IN A DEFICIT AND WE WILL NEED TO DO A CORRECTIVE ACTION PLAN FOR THE STATE OF MICHIGAN.

Thank you for that explanation. I'll start with my council colleague, Mr. Gearbaugh, who made the motion.

So as you said, it's not a net impact. No additional fund balance is going to need to be used to offset these changes?

I don't know that for sure within the next week, but I believe this is... Conservative and the overall impact should be the same as what was previously presented with the projections.

Do you anticipate that? Well, and going forward, we'll do these quarterly instead of waiting to the end of the year.

Yes.

Okay. For me, that's helpful. So we know what's going on any issue for as the city manager mentioned.

the it's approximately a 10 increase serves more than that on the pension and the fringe benefits is that something we anticipated or is it more of a correction that we said that came from mers the pension one is challenging each year when we budget we're obviously using the prior year's actuarial evaluation it's essentially a year behind on data so the next one doesn't release until june so typically at year end is where we're seeing the actual activity and playing a little bit of catch-up so The other piece here is in the past 2 years, we've had pretty significant change over. We've had a lot of staff come and go. We've had some retirements and all of those are reportable wages timers, which ultimately impact our, our contribution to pension.

Okay, thank you.

We'll start over here to my left. Do you have any questions?

I do not miss Dylan. Thank you. Just kind of understanding in your cover memo. When you're talking about the sewer fund, it says staff continues to pursue opportunities for cost recovery where appropriate and anticipates bringing additional sewer relief related adjustments to council in the future. What does that look like?

You all will recall the flood incident in April of 2025 that affected our wastewater plant. We are in the middle of and actually wrapping up an insurance claim. But a big piece of that was there was actual water service that we had to use at the wastewater plant where the water did not actually go through the treatment system. They had to use it for a function of the system. But we ourselves have had to bill ourselves for the water and sewer portion of that. So I am actively working with Superintendent Briggs and the insurance to recover a portion of that cost. But we are working on an analysis now about how much of that water actually went into the system and what did not to potentially pursue a sewer relief credit for our own fund. But we are holding ourselves to the same standards that we would hold any resident to. So we are making sure that we compile all of the data and check all the necessary boxes before we bring that forward.

Thank you very much for that. And Mr. Dearball already talked about the pension costs. I mean, those numbers were definitely a huge jump. Just quickly so I understand, under FIRE special assessment, the BOR tax refund, it's a nominal number, but what exactly is that?

It's actually a prior year adjustment. So someone went to Board of Review and was granted an adjustment in taxable value for a prior year. So I actually have to pay that back to county who facilitates that with the residents. So it's just an expense that we can't necessarily predict.

Okay. That's what I was just going to. And then just for point of order, Ms. Rice, are we going to talk about the rec center at some point? Or are we, I mean, I feel like it's definitely the elephant in the room and it needs a discussion whether or not it's part of the motion. It is part of the document.

You make a good point. Mr. Gabriel, could you clarify your motion? Was it to.

My motion is at this time at this time at this time, if someone else wants to consider the other recreation amendment, but this 1, I want to clearly make sure it's just these general fund amendments at this time. So, just so just, I'm sorry, just so we want to make a motion in terms of supporting the recreation of a separate motion.

But this motion right now, where would we have discussion about it?

Because under the second or second motion, have a second motion to acknowledge that part of it.

Okay. So, yeah, just understanding. Thank you for the. Yeah, thanks for the question procedure.

Mr.

I have no further questions on this issue. Mr. On. Janet answered or asked my question and how to answer. So, yeah, none for me.

Okay, so for this moment, motion hearing no additional questions, we have it moved to acknowledge and approve fiscal year 2026 year-end budget amendments without recreation at this time. and the rest as presented. That's moved by Gerbau, second by Harmont. So we will take the roll. All those are in favor, say aye. Aye. All those against, say nay. Nay. So the motion passes six to two. Speaking of the rec center.

The math.

Oh, I'm sorry because we have one absence. I apologize. It's 42. Thanks, y'all. You know I do this like twice in my entire tenure.

So, is there a motion to discuss to acknowledge or approve? I will make a motion to acknowledge the fiscal year 2026 year end budget for the rec center. Is there a second to that to acknowledge?

Second.

All right, so motion to acknowledge, City Clerk, do you have that motion to acknowledge the budget amendments for the Rec Center for fiscal year 2026? Yes. Acknowledgement only. So let's discuss the Rec Center. And you did just present us with a little bit of information. Was there anything additional you want to say before I get to my colleagues with questions?

No, I would just reiterate my statement earlier. This is an overabundance of caution in the event that revenues do not meet the projections that we have laid out before you. Director Lambert has done a significant amount of work throughout the year to lower expenditures. I would remind you, too, that previously in the year, we reduced, I think, another $45,000 in expenditures related to operations to accommodate the capital expenditure related to the additional work for the DHU. So we've done a lot of work here to accommodate the ongoing equipment and facility needs. And operationally, they're really PUT IN PEN TO PAPER TO LIMIT THEIR SPENDING WHERE THEY CAN. SO I THINK IT'S INCREDIBLY CRITICAL TO APPROVE THIS AMENDMENT SO THAT WE DO NOT FIND OURSELVES WITH A FUND THAT HAS A DEFICIT AT YEAR END. I WOULD NOTE THAT WHILE I'M RECOMMENDING $70,000, WE WILL ONLY TRANSFER THE ADDITIONAL AMOUNT NEEDED FOR REVENUE SHORTFALLS. SO IN THE EVENT THAT, YOU KNOW, WE'RE $20,000 SHORT, THAT'S THE ONLY ADDITIONAL TRANSFER WE'LL DO. This just allows us to do that transfer up to $70,000 in the event that we have any shortfalls.

Great. And Mr. Swallow, did you have anything to add to that?

I think it's critical not to incur a fund deficit. There's obviously a number of changes throughout here. But for the most part, I think the rec center has done a great job at reducing expenses where they can. And I think that this is a reasonable approach to go forward. even though I know there's concern about providing any additional resources relative to support the rec center. I think it's a reasonable ask to provide for some additional resources on the revenue side so that we can balance budget and not incur a fund balance deficit.

So, Ms. Dillon, I'll open the questions with you since you were the mover.

Thank you very much. I just want some clarification to kind of understand. So, I mean, just sort of starting right at the top. I mean, we've got a $30,000 deficit for membership, correct? So, we don't have a deficit. I'm just projecting $30,000. Okay. Yes. And then there are several other, I mean, unfortunately, there's several other things that are coming up here that are in friends. What I'm trying to understand right now is things like it allocation. Salaries, there's a 45000 dollar salary administration South. Is that a salary or. Is that just under the record? That's the total for that 1. so then the 42,000 dollars. Did they actually cut their it costs or is that shifting back to the city's general fund?

It's a change in how we budgeted the it allocation. So we did reduce the it allocation for the right center.

So, in plain language, the city is taking on their it expenses. Or have they reduced their spending their actual spending by 40,000?

There's not direct spending for allocation for basically to cover all of their software costs, all of the overhead, all the staff time. So we've reduced what we've allocated to the rec center for that.

Okay. Because there's also another 1 for 18,000. Um, that's an allocation. There's a professional services for 17,000. There's cleaning of uniforms for 500. Um, so just trying to understand whether these are true reductions in their actual costs, or whether it is shifting those costs back to a different source.

You do see those are true reductions in terms of professional services. They have not utilized those professional services. In terms of the cleaning uniforms, that is an actual reduction. The allocation is based on overall what do we believe that the IT expenses could be for this operation, including overhead from staff time, overhead from Software costs, those types of things. So those are being removed from the rec center budget.

Okay. So, but the city is paying for them that they're not, they're still hard costs. It's just, they're not being part of the rec center budget.

They're not being allocated to the rec center.

Correct. So, okay.

Just comment on the it allocation. Sorry. SINCE I'VE STARTED I THOUGHT THE $60,000 ALLOCATION TO THE REC FUND IS PRETTY SUBSTANTIAL FOR THE ACTUAL IT NEEDS THAT THEY HAVE IT'S A BIG PART OF WHAT HAS BROUGHT US TO THE CONVERSATION MOVING FORWARD ABOUT HOW WE'RE GOING TO BE DOING DIRECT COST ACCOUNTING RATHER THAN SO MUCH OF THIS INDIRECT COST ACCOUNTING SO THAT THEY'RE CARRYING THEIR TRUE PORTION OF THE THEIR IT EXPENSE WHICH IS I THINK IT MIGHT HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN LIKE $13,000 IF I RECALL THAT'S ALL THEY HAVE BUDGETED IN 27 and then they're carrying a portion of the IT allocation, which is strictly percentage based on the size of their budget. So we are really reevaluating the method of cost accounting that we're using, not just for the rec funds, but for the city funds as a whole.

Okay. And then there are some reductions for programs, and these were things that, just trying to understand, is this that there were fewer of those programs? or did you over anticipate the number of programs that there were going to be and you're reducing it or just trying to understand how these numbers are working here?

I admit that Sunshine would be more of the expert on where some of these adjustments come from. But program specific, typically there is an adjustment to the revenue and the expenditure. If there's going to be less people involved and less money flowing in, then we're obviously going to have fewer expenditures related to that program as well. They don't often, they don't always net zero, but there's typically a revenue and an expenditure effect when there's less participation in the program or vice versa. There's more participation than we see increased revenue and expenditures.

So one of my biggest concern is you had made a statement and it's something that's come up a couple of times over the years, which is we don't want to have to file a corrective plan with the state. So the city jumps in and saves the day we keep doing that at what point do we say there is a the system is broken here and they have to I don't want to see them fail, but the city cannot keep constantly bailing them out. I just don't understand we're creating budgets and maybe it's because we're going all the way to a year end. Amendment schedule and said quarterly to sort of see where the sort of the you know the wheels are coming off the bus and kind of because I know that some of the numbers were down because the pool was closed. Well, that's going to be an ongoing issue. You look at all these these projects that they're going to do that pool is going to again be closed and that's going to be a revenue source. So, at what point do we say we can't keep doing this? And I'm not looking for an answer. It's just a matter of, we just can't keep giving them money in this in this in this context. In my opinion. Um.

Councilmember Dillon is basically identifying my concern. The reason why I took this off is if we're going to properly cost account, do cost accounting, changing an IT allocation the 11th month into a budget year has a big question for me. And the concern is we've done this in the past to avoid correct planning. Doing it at this time, for me, seems to be very much a concern in terms of how we do our accounting for our city. I would much rather have that in there and have you identify another $60,000 in allocation required to support it so that we're moving in $130,000 than to change our accounting midstream. And this is a concern for me right now to say that all of a sudden our allocation approach is wrong after we've moved into a budget year and an 11th month. I mean, if it's a major problem, then we're going to have to go back and change it in every single one of our fund balances. And that's the issue. Did we do that?

We are doing moving forward. We're reevaluating all of our cost allocation.

Moving forward. But in this case, we're doing it specifically for this fund balance. Have we done that for every other fund at this point? You haven't proposed a change in the allocations for anyone else, have you?

No, I have not. As was the whole conversation of the work session earlier, the REC fund obviously has a lot going on. So my job at this point is to make sure that this fund does not have a deficit at the end of the year. As far as the operational changes and things, that's not my wheelhouse. So I'm putting together the best amendments that I can to make sure we have a balanced budget at the end of the year.

What you're proposing is that we not show a deficit, which would cause a corrective action, correct?

There is a significant amount of administrative work, as you recall, with the deficit elimination plan for the sewer fund. It takes quite a bit of work for me and my entire team to take care of that on the on the back end. It's never really recommended, right? We want to have all of our funds balanced at your end for me.

And as we talked also the reduction in the membership anticipated revenue for this year, this will be my 4th ask for membership numbers. Not for you. uh... tonight prior to this we're told that the information is available i've asked for it four times the mayor has requested it i have not received that information it was directed by council at this point i'm seeing that as a dereliction of duty for not having that information presented to this council it's clear that that membership numbers are going down i just want accurate transparent information and i am trying to make this clear I don't know how hard it is to do this. I know everyone here is trying to make this rec center successful and everything, but why is it so difficult to get the information I am requesting and to present accurate numbers? This just seems like it's like no one wants to deal with the real issue, and if you want to deal with the issue, let's be honest, let's present it and present the numbers correctly. This type of approach shows some kind of disappointment, whether it was because we didn't want to show numbers for the donors that are giving us money or whatever, but it's starting to give me a marriage of concern, and I'm going to leave it at that.

Mr. Halsh?

So I have to be fair. Obviously, like, I'm a huge supporter of the rec center. And kind of the analogy that I want to make is imagine... It was a football team. Imagine we were the Michigan Wolverines. How many losing seasons should we tolerate before we start having conversations about the team and before we start having conversations around the system? And so I obviously don't want... us to take or need to take corrective action. But I have to agree with my colleagues in that there has to come a point where we have to say the system is broken. And the only way that we can do that is having the information needed to determine how it's broken, where it broke down, and not to assign blame, but to truly find the path forward. So I'm torn in the sense of... No, I don't want to put more work on your department. And I understand you are coming to us out of an abundance of caution. But at the same time, like, As the AD, as the athletic directors, we got to have a conversation with the coach. And so I don't know what corrective action is, if there is corrective action necessary. But I think, well, actually, let me ask, how close have we come to this situation prior?

In prior years?

In prior years. Has there ever been a point? Well, obviously, there have been times where we've had to.

Five years ago, we did it, and expenses were shifted onto the general funds, making adjustments to absorb the costs that were related to fees associated with credit cards, other expenses related to benefits, other things. It was done. It was done as an attempt to try and avoid the situation. And I mean, we can avoid this corrective action by allocating money, but we need to be accurate and continue to show the real true expenses for this. And I can't see why we can't do that because we have to show.

Mr. House, not trying to mess.

I know, but he was asking me and looking at me.

No, yeah, I just wasn't aware of how many times or how close we've come to this situation again. Like I said, I like to think at the system level. Obviously, the system is broken, and that's just a statement of fact, not an indictment against the work anyone is necessarily doing. But I think there needs to be... some serious consideration around how budgeting happens at the rec center. I don't want us to ever get this close to a situation if we can avoid it. And I hate that you're put in the situation to have to. So again, I'm torn as far as what action to take, but I have to agree with my colleagues in that We got to have some tough conversations.

So, you know, I don't think anyone up here is going to disagree that we're in a tough spot right now. I think continuing to work toward getting us in a better place is what we're doing at this time. You... Correct me if I'm wrong. Treasure offense. We're not here for the budgeting process that we went through for 27 when we set out a budget for the recreation center. Correct?

That was before your time for the current year for 26. I just kind of joined the team during the budget process for 26. so I think it's a, you know.

It's a learning curve, and I think, you know, you've been able to see a lot over the last year. I appreciate that you're taking a deeper dive and being able to get to those actual numbers for FY27. You know, I know how this process works. We throw a bunch of money at something because we assume we're going to spend it, and then we don't, and then we don't throw enough money at something because we don't expect a $1.3 million deal you know, Dektron unit to break. So, like, it's, you know, it's the shell game. Let's be honest, it's the shell game. I do completely agree with my colleagues that this sits on the shoulders of City of Saline taxpayers, but we are not putting ourselves, we are not putting the City of Saline taxpayers in a bad position by working hard to figure out how to make this recreation center work, in my opinion. This shell game right here, lessons have been learned. We understand how to budget better for next year. And guess what? They're going to throw us some loops for next year, too, if we get partnerships and things like that. So it's always a tricky game that we have to play with this recreation center, so long as we're not doing something nefarious. And I understand my council colleague, Mr. Gearbaugh, is... feeling that that is nefarious. This is his wheelhouse. He's done budgeting for his entire career. But the truth behind it is not that we're trying to steal money from the taxpayers, that we're trying to do something bad. We're switching money from one city service potentially that it could have been saved for to another city service. This is still a city service. conversations we've had in the past about all city services this is just a really freaking big one right it's a really expensive one it's got a lot of zeros after it so I think understanding that this is a problem pointing it out I'm grateful that we're having this conversation in the public but also I personally would like to dial it down just a little bit for the public to know that we're not doing something nefarious we're just fixing something that we didn't properly anticipate. And next year. I feel very strongly that we have people in place, yourself included, the city manager included. We have an implementation task force. All eyes are on this thing right now. I do not believe that we need to be looking at this from a lens of bad things are happening. We just need to look at it from the lens of how do we fix it and can we fix it. That's where I stand on this, and I don't know if that helps any of my council members also think about this, but like I said, I understand why everyone's so emotionally engaged in this, but I also appreciate what we're trying to do to rectify it currently, right now, with the things sitting in front of us that we're looking at, but also in the future with really looking at realistic numbers for those budget items. With that said, do any of my other council colleagues? Mr. Del Arco?

I can sympathize with all points of view, but I think ultimately we do need to be transparent. And I'd be comfortable making a motion to have this matter come back to council to consider the amendment allocation pending that those documents that Councilmember Gierbaugh asked for are provided.

Let's get through this motion, make that a separate motion. I don't think addending, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I mean, we still have to deal with this matter. Absolutely.

I completely agree. So perhaps after this one, we'll make a motion to bring it back to a date certain.

If I may, my recommendation is to reestablish the IT allocations and to increase the requirement for the fund balance to $106. 32,000, whatever the amount of those allocations that have been removed. You're asking for $70,000 at this point. If we increase the expenditures to approximately 62,000, what are those allocations are? That would allow for you to make the adjustment, avoid the corrective action at this point, and to satisfy the need for this motion to happen in this fiscal year, correct?

Yes, if we reinstate the IT allegations and essentially increase the general fund contribution by the difference to ensure that we are balanced, that would be sufficient.

I make that motion.

Are you superseding my motion?

Acknowledge or... Oh, sorry, we're still acknowledging.

Yeah, let's get through the acknowledgement first and then we can...

But that was a question for you as part of this discussion. Thank you.

Any additional questions about acknowledging... The Recreation Center budget amendments. Let's go ahead and take a vote on acknowledging only. Acknowledging, let me get back to my language real quick. Acknowledging the fiscal year 2026 year-end budget amendments for the Recreation Center. This is for an acknowledgement only. So all those in favor say aye. Aye. All those against say nay. The ayes have it. This time it's actually six people to nothing, or to one absence. Okay, so who would like to make a motion to move forward with this?

I will move to reinstate or require at this point, because we don't have a validation of the allocations, correct them information because I do feel there is enough It activities and things that have previously been charged to that to not change it at this point in time. We have effective data. That we re, estate the it allocations as we're identified in the budget. And then to increase the allocation related for the additional funding to match that reinstatement of those allocations. Basically, the general fund contributions are. So would this be a motion to approve if? To approve the budget amendments as indicated with the exception of the reduction in IT allocations and to increase the general fund contribution to the amount equivalent to the IT allocations plus $70,000 as you originally identified.

I think that Councilmember DeLarco's suggestion that we get those documents be tied to this as well, I think that's a fair compromise.

The only difficulty is we have to do it before 6.30. Otherwise, it's the end of the year.

June 30th is the deadline.

We can't get membership numbers before then.

Why does it take that long to get those numbers?

You can get the membership numbers in that time frame.

You have to approve this budget amendment amendment engine upon receipt of those materials Would you care to do that?

We can as a condition I can make a condition that all in addition the additional information the membership numbers be provided to Council we want the percentage of saline residents from that I

clean city residents.

I think let's just... I just want to stick to make the clear clarification that if this is the intent is to avoid a potential correction of action, that we properly show the allocations, especially for that. I don't know about the other numbers, but those two, I just feel strongly that we should not be changing our budget numbers without a complete evaluation of IT allocations across the entire financial, because I'd ask our auditors about this at this point in time, and they might not support this change.

City Clerk Royal, were you able to capture that? Would you like to read it back to us so that Mr. Gearbaugh can help?

I have to reinstate the allocations of the IT funds to the Rec Center budget and to increase the allocation of the general fund in addition to the membership numbers being made to the City Council.

How about we just say increase the general fund contribution.

Wait, wait.

I think I might have it here.

She has approved the budget amendments as indicated with the exception of reinstating the it allocations as we're identified in the budget and increase the general fund contribution to balance the fund by matching set it allocations. In addition to the proposed 70,000 in addition, the membership numbers need to be presented to council.

Perfect.

That sounds great. Yep.

Okay, do we have a second on that? Thank you. Seconded by Mr. Del Arco. Additional discussion about this? Ms. Dillon?

So, just for clarification, in two spots it talks about a $25,000 flat, like it was a CARES grant. Did we give the grant money back?

PROJECT IS NOT COMPLETED THIS MESSAGE OF THE YEAR. SO THERE'S A REDUCTION IN REVENUE AS WELL AS IN PRODUCTION EXPENDITURE.

OKAY. SO THOSE ARE OFFSETS.

IS THAT WHY I'M SEEING IT THERE TWICE? OKAY. IT ESSENTIALLY WAS A DUPLICATE ENTRY. WE ORIGINALLY BUDGETED FOR ALMOST $50,000 WHEN, IN FACT, WE WERE ONLY GOING TO RECEIVE $25,000. SO THIS IS A CORRECT ENTRY TO ELIMINATE THE DUPLICATE. BUT MR. GERBAUD IS CORRECT. THERE IS AN OFFSET IN REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE ADJUSTMENT.

Okay. And then as far as other things there, yeah, I'm just trying to understand like their IT, and I know we're talking about that now. I don't understand the mathing of this, and I just, I want to make that very clear. They had budgeted, and one line of IT, $18,695. They spent... 10, 920, but they're trying to take back the full amount to reduce it.

They haven't actually spent it. It's just a journal entry that we enter quarterly to actually allocate that expense from the general fund to the rec fund.

One column's a budget, one's a projection and the other one's the new modified number for that.

Quarterly entry. No, but that's showing under year to date activity.

Yes, because journal entries had been made for the first and second quarter. So if we were to adjust those journal entries would have been reversed. But in this case, if they're going to remain, then we'll record the remainder of the entries. Okay. It's not a true expenditure. It's not actual funds leaving the city.

So help me understand then. So now we're picking a dollar amount when before it was like an up to number. Correct? You said that you're asking for 70, but it could be as low as 20. So what exactly are we doing now? Because now I'm really confused as to what's going on.

The up to 70 remains will transfer what we need. The difference is that if we are maintaining the IT allocation expenditures, we will transfer that amount. It's about 60,000. So it'll be 60,000. plus up to 70, whatever we need to address revenue shortfalls.

Right. It's just a more granular accounting.

It's an estimate. There could be less if we don't know what the actual expenditures are going to do. Her projection is $70,000. Had we taken out the IT allocation, her assumption is that we may be a deficit of $70,000. But it could be zero if all of a sudden some expenditures don't come in. But there's somewhere in there between of what she feels comfortable. Otherwise, we'll run into a deficit situation.

Like, it's a precautionary measure, there's going to be some expenditures that can come under, but there may be some revenues that have a shortfall. For example, when I looked this morning, the membership revenue is about 22,000 dollars short and with. 8 days to go, I have to be realistic that that we might not meet that number. Right? They had 2 days of 8,000 dollars worth of membership revenue, which is fantastic. But. That may slow significantly over the next 8 days. So, the 70,000 is a precautionary measure to just make sure we don't end with the deficit. Okay.

Did that number include this past Friday after the event? There were some membership incentives during the event on Friday and encouraging people to sign up. It was an open house. So just curious if any sign-ups took place.

I'll be frank. I don't recall if it was through Thursday or through Friday. We are posting daily now, but one of my staff members actually posts the entry and then I review it. So I'm not sure what the last posting date was. So this is something I'll be watching.

Yeah, and even still, it went late into the evening, so they may not even have recorded until today or tomorrow. So, okay.

So I just want to end with a comment to the city manager. Moving forward, we can't wait until two days before the end of a fiscal year to bring these if we're going to have possibly have questions. Can we roll this back to where it's a month in advance or at least a meeting in advance where we have a bit of a buffer if there's something that we need to have come back to us? I mean, it's really difficult when we're up against a time wall. that we created.

Well, that's the comment that I agree with is that if we do these quarterly, more regularly, that you'll see them and understand them. It is, I mean, it's obviously difficult at this point to project out more than a month potentially as to where some of these expenditures are going to come in. And so I think it is most accurate to do it as close to the end of the fiscal year as possible.

I just feel as though it's really put us in a precarious position.

Close, but not this close.

But it really is.

To your point, we probably would have seen it last quarter or even the quarter before at this extent, right?

I think you had anticipated doing this, well, we thought last meeting, but unfortunately it got deleted this time.

And these projections were in the fiscal year 27 budget papers. It's just not something we can do a deep dive on when we're trying to focus a year ahead. Sure. Um, and yes, it was our intention to bring them the first meeting in June, but it just didn't work out that way.

Yeah, it is our, you know, it's obviously council's hope that, you know, now a year into the position and then a year into the position, you know, y'all both kind of came in, you know, just within months of each other that we will have a more standardized. Um, and I do hear that that's, that's what your goal is. So, um, we'll just have to make sure that we, um, we keep on that. Those who make agendas, things like that. Um, ANY ADDITIONAL DISCUSSION BEFORE WE VOTE ON THIS LENGTHY MOTION THAT I MAY HAVE THE CITY TREASURER READ ONE MORE TIME? COULD YOU READ IT ONE MORE TIME, PLEASE?

TO APPROVE THE BUDGET AMENDMENTS FOR THE REC FUND AS INDICATED WITH THE EXCEPTION OF REINSTATING THE I.T. ALLOCATIONS AS WERE IDENTIFIED IN THE BUDGET AND TO INCREASE THE GENERAL FUND CONTRIBUTION TO BALANCE THE FUND BY MATCHING SAID I.T. ALLOCATIONS IN ADDITION TO THE PROPOSED $70,000 INCREASE IN THE GENERAL FUND CONTRIBUTION. In addition, the membership number information is to be presented to Council in a timely manner. Can we put a date specific to that? To be presented to Council?

First meeting. July 13th.

I would say by Friday.

Two weeks is a long time. Three weeks is a long time.

They're comfortable with July 13th.

And they can do their year-end wrap-up. Okay, so we've all heard the motion. So let's all in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Nay. So four to two. Dillon and Rice. And one absent. Mayor's absent. Okay, thank you for that discussion, colleagues. I appreciate the candor. All right, new business number 26-116, OHM FY27 as needed engineering and DPW assistance. This is to acknowledge receipt and to approve or not approve a new contract with OHM for fiscal year 2027 as needed engineering assistance. and Department of Public Services General Assistance in the amount not to exceed of $64,000. I move to acknowledge and approve. Second. Okay. You were not first. I started hearing him. Moved by Mr. Gearbaugh to acknowledge and approve. Seconded by Ms. Harmon. Thank you for that. Do we want to start with the City Manager?

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. This is ongoing work from OHM, obviously the lead engineering firm that we worked with on a number of items throughout the Department of Public Services and Engineering. Some of the items included in this proposal include right of way permit review and management, some pump discharge applications, responding to MISTIG tickets, investigating and responding to resident requests, assisting the city with process improvements, managing state permits, and other tasks as assigned. And certainly, is there some key items that OHM provides support where we have maybe a gap in and our existing staffing to be able to complete some of these more technical tasks. So I don't know if Director McNeil wants to add anything to that and how we utilize OHM on a somewhat regular basis in the department.

I do think that was a good summary. I do want to invite perhaps Izzy up and anybody else from OHM that may be able to answer some subsequent questions that the council may have, if that's okay.

That sounds great, yeah.

Sorry to make you wait so long. Come talk to us.

I'm here now, and I'm here to answer any questions you may have. Jennifer Morris, I'm a principal with OHM. I've been before you in the past. It's just been a little while to see a few new faces. Marcus was unfortunately unable to attend, so I am here in his stead and can answer any questions that you may have. Brandon referenced Izzy, and she's one of two that Spend quite a bit of time in the, in the, so she decided to take her evening to spend with with all of us tonight.

Great. So I'll start to my left with council member harm out for any questions or discussion.

No, I think we've talked about your services and I think it's in the budget.

So, thank you. Mr. Guillermo? For me, could you describe? Part of my thing is hoping that the six months will provide us with the assessment so we can determine whether or not we can hire additional staff or how we will approach this going forward. My understanding with the city managers that we will be able to basically recover our costs somehow through chargeback to our users. So could you explain how that would happen? The chargeback or? Basically, overall approach that you're going to be doing for this. Just understand what are you going to be doing actually for us?

Well, I mean, it's really, it's a continuation of what we are doing as the city manager said right now. I mean, you know, we will be assisting with various services that, you know, either have staff doesn't necessarily have the time to handle and so is ERMC. Have been on site to do that and then we also assist off site as well. So it's really a combination of the 2 and I wouldn't at this point envision that necessarily changing unless there's a need moving forward where maybe there's an additional gap that needs to be filled and we can certainly do that. So I don't. I don't really see any additional change in how we are currently handling that.

Oh, go ahead. So there are some revenues that come in with the right-of-way or permit applications, for example. So we do offset some of the costs that we utilize for OHM by utilizing those revenues that come in through the city and those permit application fees.

So in addition to that, there will be services that someone has been doing but we're shifting them to you to handle?

This, no, this is a continuation of services. So these are services that OHM has already been providing previous years. And this is just an ongoing service that we do feel that we have a need for. And so that's why we're seeking approval from council.

I know we've gone back and forth on who's been responsible for these, either DPW versus community planning. And so trying to understand, but also understanding that I don't necessarily want to have us incurring it unless we can charge it back too. So, okay. Thank you.

Thank you so the reason why I want to have a conversation about this because the this is for $64,000 for half of the year so we're talking about a $128,000 a year a $150 an hour that we're paying somebody to basically be a permit tech. And so I guess I'd like to understand what other duties are they doing and how much of that are we realizing on the one 50 an hour.

we realizing back in revenue from fees obviously depends on how many right-of-way applications things we have that come through the front door and so this is an estimate of what we'll need for the first six months and you know I think it's definitely a little higher level than just permit tech that the services that OHM are providing so we're looking at you know more detailed process improvements we're looking at fairly detailed plan reviews those are those are our higher skill level that we

have to have a you know either engineer or a higher skill level person in house to complete but these are not engineer positions but yet we're paying 150 an hour for their services i i just i want to understand is this a stop gap or is this a permanent you know solution that the city thinks it has

I mean, are we going to hire somebody in house or do we feel like there's enough volume to fully justify, you know, in each of these areas to hire expertise in these areas. So this is a way that we can obviously access multiple multiple professionals within based on our specific needs.

Okay, and then I always get nervous when I see other tasks as assigned what that entails. And if because you're giving an estimated. Level like of time that they're going to have so it's 14 to 16 hours. So what if you give them a task and now all of a sudden they go from 14 hours to 40 hours.

I mean, I guess I want to sort of understand what the, what the parameters are around this and it's contract oversight to absolutely director McNeil as well as other the other staff are going to. Ms. Anderson, others will have to monitor the work that they're doing and make sure that it's justified. And if we don't feel it's justified, then either we have that conversation with OHM or look at other ways that we need to accomplish the task.

And there is no one in our skilled workforce that can do these tasks?

There are, but the volume in each of these areas add up to beyond what we have the staff capacity for currently.

Okay. If I may, correct me if I'm wrong, this contract we originally approved was to replace the assistant city engineer who we lost, correct? Correct. At least partly, yes.

Okay, but this is not an engineer position, is what you're saying?

They're doing engineering work.

So are the staffing, are they certified engineers? Are they PEs or have the credentials? I'm just trying to understand that. what level of expectation we have from them that, you know, they're reviewing right of way permit. Is that an engineer that we're paying to do that or is that a staffer?

So, obviously, it's allocated based on what they feel that level expertise that's need that's needed the right away permit. We probably do have that as an injury level position. Some of the others, like the process for mistaken things that requires a lower level staff person. And that is 1 of the advantages that utilizing is that they have that ability to shift between different expertise.

But we're paying 150 dollars an hour, no matter what they're doing, according to this. So I guess what I'm trying to ask is, is there different staffing levels available for the workload? Or can some of those basic tasks be shifted to current staff? And the engineering part, I understand outsourcing.

So the $150 an hour is the rate that they're quoting based on this average. But we do see different hourly rates based on what staff person at OHM completes the task.

Okay, because that's not what I'm seeing here. So I'd like to understand that a little better. That's not what's showing in this agreement in front of us. It's showing a 150 dollar an hour flat fee based on typical.

That is the rate for the staff person that completes most of these. But I know reviewing invoices myself that based on the level of expertise is needed. We do see different hourly rates.

Okay.

This is a way to average it.

Can we let the person from OHM speak?

So, you know, in order for us to come up with an estimate, instead of figuring out this person charges at this, this person charges at that, is that we came up with an average amount, and then that's how we determined the cap for this contract. So, yes, it depends on who's going to be here is the rate that they are going to be charging. But that is how we came up with that. That estimate. Is using that 150 times the, the hours that we had estimated. Okay.

And then the proposal, it does say not to exceed basis.

Right. So that's how we came up with with that particular number.

And that average is based on past need of the city. Correct. Yeah. Correct. Okay.

Just kind of understanding. I just would like to sort of see long term visioning. I thought Mr swallow when you and I spoke about this, that this was a stop gap while you train somebody on staff to be doing these bringing some of these services back in house.

Yes. Okay.

If I may also add that is also why this is a six month contract. And why we didn't propose it as a year so that there's, there's some time for the city to make some of those assessments in the interim. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr.

I have no further questions. Mr. No questions.

Okay. And having no additional discussion, then we do have a motion on the floor to acknowledge and to approve the language. Sorry. To acknowledge and approve the new contract for OHM for fiscal year 27 as needed engineering and the Department of Public Services general assistance in the amount not to exceed $64,000. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed say nay. The motion passes. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thanks for your time.

Thanks for joining us everyone. I'm sure you have had seen how the sausage is made today. Okay, so moving on to our final new business of the evening. 26-118, purchase of two police fleet vehicles to acknowledge receipt and to approve or not to approve the purchase of two police fleet vehicles with the total cost not to exceed $113,000. Move to acknowledge. Move to acknowledge. Do I have a second? Second. Motion to acknowledge by Ms. Dillon, seconded by Mr. Gearbaugh. And is this Mr. McNeil? Is this your item?

Yeah, so this is a proposal to purchase those two Tahoe vehicles. As you mentioned, I worked with Chief Rasnick and Alex, our mechanic, in order to work through the bidding process where we were going to select these vehicles, which is we chose my deal, which is the prominent vehicle. in Michigan to get pre-bidded vehicles. Also, we looked at what was needed for outfitting at that meeting and discussed the needs of the police department at that time. And so, therefore, we contacted Berger Chevrolet. They are the My Deal winner for Chevy vehicles, and they do carry the Tahoe police license. And so that's where we secured the pricing and the quote that you see. So this amount allocates enough funds for us to put these Tahoe's on hold for us while they are procured. SHOW THAT WE DO HAVE THE FUNDS ALLOCATED FOR IT. AND THESE WERE ALSO ADOPTED AND APPROVED IN THE CIP AND BUDGETED PLAN THIS YEAR THAT WAS APPROVED BY COUNCIL. SO THIS IS JUST BRINGING THAT FORWARD TO YOU GUYS AND SEEKING APPROVAL SO WE CAN GET THESE SECURED.

ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS, MR. SPAHL?

No, just as mentioned, this was budgeted out in the 2027 Vehicle Equipment Replacement Fund. It is anticipated based on the needs for the police department, and we did follow the state bid price through my deal.

As the mover, Ms. Dillon, would you like to discuss?

Thank you. I have a couple questions. I sent them in earlier just sort of to recap what they were. So it appears now that the city is moving to Tahoe from the Explorers. Was there a reason for that?

Yeah. Speaking of Chief Radznik, me and her talked previously to this meeting. And overall, the Ford Explorers, I think they're expeditions or explorers. They're ongoing vehicle issues with these models. I've also seen it at the city of Clio where our police chief switched over from the same vehicle to the Chevy Tahoe. So the chief complaint with them is there's too much ongoing maintenance in order to keep up with them, and therefore they're trying to switch to a vehicle that's more reliable.

Okay, um, well, the reason I mentioned that is that we moved to Ford's from the Tahoe's because for the exact same reason. And so I'm not going to deny that Ford has a lot of quality control issues right now. So I can see that from your side of the table. If that's the issue part of the reason I ask is that we also. When you start mixing, we used to be able to sort of Frankenstein our vehicles and take pieces off of one and put it on to the other and things like that. When we started crossing over into different types, we were no longer allowed to. We couldn't do that. And I mean, even with changes in model years within the same, sometimes you can't do it. But there was a concern about that. There was also a concern about. I hate to use the word targeting that by officers having a different vehicle. It was easy to identify which officer was out. And so, at 1 point, there was a mass movement that we had all the same vehicles, all the same color so that you really see who was in those vehicles and there wasn't that issue. So, I don't know. I assume that's something that, you know, feels comfortable with having different vehicles now, but I know it's something we talked about in the past typically not assigned to a specific officer.

They're rotated based on, you know,

So, in the past, they had their own assigned vehicles per shift.

that or they got used to using the same vehicle so please to present should you know for her direction she could assign either police officer to either vehicle that she decides is appropriate. So she has that ability to change what people there and daily if she's chooses to do so that's fine.

We also had made a conscious effort to move to hybrid vehicles are we moving away from that now.

So, per her comments, the Ford Police Interceptor is the only pursuit-rated vehicle that is offered in hybrid.

Okay.

Yep.

So, okay. And then we talked about that these were bid out. They're also black and not blue. Is there an issue?

So, we are waiting for an updated quote. Blue is not an option. However, we are getting them in silver.

Okay.

So, they will be silver. We, we try to go with the blue that that's not an option and there are other options that we could go with. But we talked with police chief and the lieutenant and they thought this was the best solution.

Okay. My, my last question is that these are 2026 models. That by the time we receive them will be a whole model. The 2027 are coming out in 6 weeks. So these are going to be a full model year old before we even sit in them. And I just are we concerned that we're taking such a hit on depreciation because we keep them like such short amount of time and like, should we be looking at the 2027 and ordering it now for when those come out?

So I'm not too concerned with the depreciation. So the reason why we have to go with the 2026 model is that's currently what is available through MyDeals is the 2026 option. They are not offering the 2027. They still have to go through the state bidding process to figure out who's going to be the supplier of Chevy, GM, Ford vehicles when it comes to the 2027 models. So we are limited to what is available in the MyDeal pricing.

Okay, and do you know, I'm wrapping up, I promise. So there's 2 questions left. 1 is that the vehicles themselves will be about 113,000. Do we know what the upfitting is going to be?

So currently we do have a price through priority one that does most police vehicles. The cost is right around $22,000 per vehicle, so that will put us under the total allocated amount of $80,000 per Tahoe. Then we are also seeking an option to see what it costs to purchase those equipment items and then internally have the DPW mechanics install the equipment as well. So we're trying to offset... The cost savings for how long it would take for them to be done internally compared to if we got those done with priority one or another. We'd have to get more quotes if we were to outsource them and see what makes more sense. As far as the timeline to get those out in action for the police.

And then will we, with our deep mission police vehicles, are we keeping them and putting them into fleet? Or are we going to sell them off on the market?

So 1 of them is going to be still kept in the motor pool for the police officers to use for other functions. I'm not sure what those functions are. The other one would be at the discretion of the city manager, I believe, to decide if we could use that for another purpose, whether that be rec center, pollution control. You know, we'd have to take all the equipment out. Or if it doesn't fit a need here at the city, then we look at selling it.

Thank you very much. Do we have any additional questions about this motion? Motion to acknowledge? Let's go ahead and vote on the motion to acknowledge receipt of the purchase of two police vehicles with total cost not to exceed $113,000. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. All those against, say nay. The motion passes.

I move to approve.

All righty. You answered my question. We have a motion to approve the purchase of two fleet vehicles with the total cost not to exceed $113,000. We have a motion by Mr. Garibaldi. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Mr. Del Ocro. Thank you much. Do we have any additional discussion on this topic? Easy enough. So let's go ahead and do a vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed say nay. Motion to approve passes 6-0 with one absence. So that is it for new business today. That moves us on to our discussion portion of the program for reports and other announcements, and we do have a couple of additional topics to discuss as well. Let's go through reports and other announcements, and then we'll move on to those additional topics. I'm going to start to the right just to mix it up a little bit. Mr. Halsh.

I actually was not able to attend the last Arts and Culture Committee, so no other reports for me.

Mr. Dillinger? I won't have any until next time either. Okay.

As far as urban county, I did not receive any feedback from council members. If anyone was interested in being the 2nd, alternate to that committee, if there is any interest, please let me know. Otherwise Mr swallow has graciously offered to attend. They are on Wednesday. You may not be able to. Just because there are Wednesdays currently in the afternoon, but due to quorum issues, they want to move it to the mornings, but it may conflict with Watts. Oh, okay. Yeah. Gotcha.

Thank you for thinking ahead.

So that may not work for you necessarily. But if there is anybody that has a desire to go over to the county building on hog back. Um, there's no more metal detector, so it is easy to get in and out of now into the part that we go to and it's it's a very robust meeting with a lot of county, um, people. So, um, if you want to be a part of it, let me know as the alternate. Cable commission met and we are still discussing the schools need to get some new equipment. Um, the city is still working through our microphones and what we're gonna be doing for that right now. And so I think that's gonna come back. I don't believe we're gonna have a meeting in July. So we're gonna meet in August again. So, again, if there's any feedback from council members about things that you feel we have a shortage of or need. something for Council Chambers, please, for that information to me. All right. Thank you. Mr. Yerbaugh?

Since it's been a couple weeks, I've got a number of things. Fire Board has been meeting, I mean, Fire Board will meet on July 1st. Steering Committee and so forth are making a recommendation for the new millage, and we're moving forward with the Fire Authority and that aspect, so hopefully that information will be available, and we'll start developing a communication plan for that. I've been working on as part of the personnel committee, the union contracts and working on a negotiation. It looks like we're moving forward on that pretty quickly. Planning Commission met on the 10th to discuss the green space was presented. There was a request by one of the members of the Planning Commission to clarify on the appropriate and get a legal opinion related to whether or not the green space needs to go through a formal site plan review as supposedly identified in the Michigan's Land Zone Planning Act, I guess. In addition, we're reviewing a new signed ordinance review. A lot of it's being cleaned up. Due to some of the conditions, the way that it was written, it could be a concern related to freedom of expression and how you regulate whether you say it's an election sign or that type of thing. So we're going back through and reviewing all of that to determine how that can be corrected. And then that will eventually come back to council at some point for their final approval. But we just did a first draft.

You said that's a policy committee before council?

Actually, that's more of a... Planning commission issue, so it's not really close to policy. Oh, I was, you know, come to council as a part of it. It's generally reviewed by planning and completed and then it comes to council for review. It's part of an ordinance versus a policy thing. The other issue, risk management met. The city manager has developed approximately 20 priorities of which we will be addressing. We're looking at trying to clean up the risk management matrix, and we'll be discussing other approaches for that coming forward. Asset management did meet, and we talked about Morgan on the 12th related to some of the water needs and so forth. Just to let everyone know, wastewater treatment plant is approximately we're looking at a completion date hopefully in december it's approximately six months behind um and we're looking at other resolutions related to what those ramifications means in terms of liquidated damages and hopefully that completion will occur within that period of time and then lastly um there's one other thing what was my other thing i was going to mention Oh, I just want to let everyone know about the annual open house on the 27th this coming Saturday at the depot related to our celebration of our two fiftieth, but really are kind of a 4th of July source type of it. We'll have the last speed out. We'll have the people open. And so we welcome everyone to come out and kind of check out the depot and celebrate our city and our celebration of our independence.

MISSION MET ON THE 17TH, AND WE DISCUSSED A LOT OF DIFFERENT ITEMS ABOUT HOW TO TIE IN WITH THE CITY, AND ONE OF THE ITEMS THAT WE'RE LOOKING AT SCHEDULING IS FOR A RECYCLING EVENT FOR E-WASTE, AND WE'RE LOOKING TO PARTNER WITH THAT TOWARDS IN THE FALL. I GUESS IT'S KIND OF THE THOUGHT PROCESS. On a separate note, I would like to bring up for discussion and maybe put it on some future agenda that we get back to our commission for commissions and we look at standardizing our bylaws across all of the commissions and make sure that our expectations are consistent and we are executing that consistently with our expectations. I think that there's a lot of disconnect with our bylaws and I am going to be the champion of pursuing us, developing more processes and procedures across the board, but starting with more commonization with our bylaws at the committee level.

Thank you for that. I mean, I think I would definitely be amenable to that, and Ms. Dillon, you were on that with me. My question, Ms. Dillon, is your thoughts on

meeting with that group first and then going to policy or seeing if policy has any insight that would push over to that group i think if that group just sort of got its ducks in a row policy's got a lot on its agenda right now yes so so i don't want to see to sort of get lost if there's something specific

So for me, the Parks Commission is in very intermediate stages, so don't put your hackles up yet. August the 8th, during Summerfest, but in the morning after the 5K and before the Miss Celine program begins, we would like to organize a ribbon-cutting event out at the new— Saline River Valley Trail at Mill Pond. We just kind of looked at a date in the last Parks Commission meeting so we're doing some kind of behind the scenes talking to some folks. We'll shore up that date and then we'll actually do some planning for it. So just kind of wanted to put that into everybody's heads. We'll have some official requests come out to see if we can shore up that date. Did talk to the Summerfest Lead today on how we could kind of incorporate that into, hey, you'll be able to ride your bike or walk from downtown all the way to Mill Pond and back now. So very intermediate stages again. And of course, we'll invite other community groups. when we do that. The Parks Commission social media is very active right now so keep your eye out because there's lots of little things happening in the parks. Story time in the parks with the libraries and some other cool events are popping up and so keep up with that social media and the Rec Center social media as well because we promote them both in both spaces. Speaking of the Rec Center, The Rexner hosted its 35th anniversary slash birthday party on Friday, and it was really cool to go there. There was lots of, you know, there was touch a truck and bouncy houses and lots of activities. When I was there for a brief moment in time, lots of folks playing basketball in the gym and a ton of kids in the pool and all sorts of cool stuff. But we also had... Representative Dingell attend as well. And the best part of her attendance, not to mention her support, was that she put into the congressional record for the 119th Congress second session a proclamation. And so I'd like to read that proclamation because I think we need to share this with the community. And then this is going to go up at the rec center and we've shared it with everyone at the the rec center many of our longtime employees we're very excited to see this acknowledgement so it says House of Representatives honorable Debbie Dingell June 19th 2026 in celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Saline rec center Mrs. Dingle says, Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and celebrate the 35th anniversary of the Saline Rec Center located in Saline, Michigan. For three and a half decades, the Saline Rec Center has served as the heartbeat of the community, fostering wellness connection and a lifelong love for recreation. Since its doors first opened, the facility has evolved alongside the needs of its residents, transforming from a simple athletic venue into a vibrant multi-generational hub where neighbors become friends and families build lasting memories. The impact of the Saline Rec Center spans far beyond the walls of its state-of-the-art facility on Woodland Drive. Through an extensive array of year-round programming, the dedicated leadership and staff at the Saline Parks and Recreation have made physical fitness, mental well-being, and social enrichment accessible to all. From introducing toddlers to the water at the Saline Swim School to engaging youth through kids camp, youth soccer, and NFL flag football leagues, the Rec Center ensures Saline's youngest residents build strong foundations for a healthy future. Furthermore, the center has stayed at the cutting edge of modern recreation, embracing community-wide trends by hosting popular programs like the Pickleball Paddle and Rally classes, comprehensive group fitness initiatives, and beloved local traditions like the annual Mini Mastodon Fun Run and the free Rec on the Go Playground program. It is a place where adults find camaraderie in evening softball leagues and seniors discover vital spaces for health and connection. The strength of the Saline Rec Center lies in its unwavering commitment to community engagement, whether coordinating with local Girl Scout troops to plant native pollinator gardens at Canterbury Park or partnering with the Saline Library for story time in the park.

The center consistently weaves itself into the broader cultural and environmental fabric of the city.

On Friday, July 19th, the City of Saline will gather to mark Should have said June. On Friday, June 19th, the City of Saline will gather to mark this remarkable 35-year milestone with a community-wide celebration. This anniversary is a testament to the visionary leaders who first championed the Center's creation, the dedicated staff who manage its daily operations with commitment to excellent guest experience, and the generations of loyal members who energy gives the building life. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the Saline Rec Center on its 35th anniversary. We thank everyone who has contributed to its enduring success and wish the center many more decades of health, happiness, and service to the people of Saline, Michigan. so this is going to hang up in the rec center and it is beautiful and it was a very sweet sentiment from our representative who truly does you'll notice if you you know read the news she truly does value senior centers and recreation centers often showing up I don't know how she does it to all events and all of those spaces so thank her for that So with that, that wraps up reports and announcements. We have a couple of discussion items. The first, we'll get to this one, the downtown social district. And I believe Mr. Swallow, you were going to give us an update.

Yes, we've been working with the liquor control commission, Michigan liquor control commission, and they have basically reviewed their guidelines for for how the social districts may be established. And long story short, the 1, I think concern previously for the council was that that was not to cross. US 12 and that has been relaxed and so we are able to submit an application to include the obviously the the north side of US 12 to include particularly Dance Tavern in with the social district so we'll be presenting developing those maps and you see Mary Dettling is in the audience from Sleen Main Street she has helped with some of the previous submittals and the maps and things that were generated so we'll be submitting that with that application to the state to modify our social district that will require a resolution from city council and so that will come most likely also at your July 13th meeting.

Well, that's wonderful. I know I was a huge proponent of trying to figure out a way, and I'm glad that the state of Michigan is getting on board with that. I think not only does it help sales at Dan's Tavern, but in those evenings where folks like Fine Print Bookstore and Miss Mercantile and other locations on that side of the street can stay open and we can peruse with a BEVY IN OUR HANDS IS GOING TO BE REALLY COOL. DO ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES HAVE ANY QUESTIONS? MR. GEARBALL?

JUST REAL QUICK, BUT IT STILL MEANS WE CAN'T TAKE BEER ACROSS MICHIGAN AVENUE, CORRECT?

STILL NOT TO CROSS WITH THE OPEN BEVERAGE UNITS.

BUT THE OPENNESS OF IT, YOU CAN GO ACROSS AND WE CAN CREATE THE STAFF. OKAY, GREAT.

MY PREVIOUS CONCERN, LET ME CLARIFY, IS THAT The guideline says you need to have two licensees within the social district, and so by being able to merge those, in essence, you can now include dance because there's not another licensee on the north side.

That makes sense because I know Coldwater and a lot of those other cities have already lost their two on one side, so it's happening anyway, so now that we can do this is great. Thank you. Awesome.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this forward. We've been talking about this for a little while and the one thing that I would ask is that we see some stuff in writing an updated opinion maybe from our attorney because that was very strongly worded and that was I think the reason in which this body chose not to pursue that. So understanding that Whether it's notification from Laura, but I think we need to have something in writing that shows that there's been a change to that to justify our change for it. I do think that it's a very good thing. The 1 thing that Mr and I had also spoke about is that we may need to modify on the. South side of the street, the alleyway, which is the entrance into Max is actually not part of the social district. So, theoretically, you're going in and out of Max with your drink, but it's not part of the social district. So I'm not sure how we work that or if there's some way in which we need to correct it. Um, and so just understanding that, but, um, I would. I would love to see this issue move forward. Any additional comments about that?

That's wonderful. I do have something. If we're going to be pursuing the social gathering space, shouldn't we just amend the social district to include that whole space? Just as a pre...

We can take a look at that. I mean, obviously, if it's not available now, I'm not sure how, and it's not accessible directly for people to utilize it. We may have to bring that back as a separate amendment.

Are we allowed to just, like, amend it yearly? Like, could we just resubmit yearly so by the time it's done?

By the time, obviously, it has to be processed by the Liquor Control Commission.

Ms. Dillon, you had another discussion item you wanted to add?

I did. I actually have two. One, I'd like to kind of start up a conversation again about data centers, but then I had also mentioned that I'd like to have a discussion regarding funding grants, donations in kind. Whatever the case may be that this approach for the city, so I can start with 1 and I don't know if we want to have a full on dialogue about it, but just sort of bring it to the forefront. I'll start with data centers and I, I want to understand right now. We currently. Council created a moratorium on a 1 year moratorium. What I haven't seen yet is. what's next for us. I know that I'm seeing in a lot of communities are being very proactive if I if the city chooses that we do not want to have data centers within our our purview of our city limits then I think that we really need to start working towards that.

That was one of my requests for a meeting for the policy committee was an update for Mister Atkin and for Mister Swallow so that the policy committee could start Thinking about how council wants to address them.

That's one of the things that I have had conversations and there's some school of thought that you know absence Any mention of it? It means it's not allowed but we also have industrial properties for which it would fit into and so I think that we just need to decide if it's something we want to pursue then and not move forward, make sure that we do not open a door for it, I think that we really should start looking at that now and making sure that we have whatever is in place in place.

Mr. Swallow, is Mr. Atkin actively working on that or is he waiting for additional context from the policy committee slash council?

He's been actively doing research as to what other communities have done, what are the, obviously you do have to allow for some industrial uses and those types, and so what would... You know, standards could be applied to a data center if it is a use that we want to include in our ordinance. So he's been doing the background research, but he is waiting for some more direction.

Yeah, we should probably meet on that sooner rather than later, maybe when we all get back from our little holiday vacation sometime late July, early August at the latest, get that in front of policy so we can at least understand where he's going with it and then we can reopen the discussion up here at the days.

I just want to make sure that sometimes we talk about things but I do feel as though that this body really needs to moving forward start attaching timelines to things so that it doesn't get back burner and we miss out on things because we're just not doing it. My other item I wanted to discuss was the idea about funding and grants donations, whatever it may be. And right now, I mean, everyone has heard that there has been a very large sum of money gifted right now, tentatively gifted to the city.

They've only pledged. They haven't actually done anything.

Right. Well, I mean, I want to understand what that is. Council has not been a part of any of those conversations. There's continuing conversations for which council is not a part of. And we've not been given any information about it. And for me, that's not acceptable at this point. Any meeting in which the mayor is at, there needs to be another council member that is in that meeting also. And we need to have clear communication back to this body in a very timely manner. just I I'm really getting concerned about the fact that there are ongoing discussions and Council hasn't even had an initial discussion about it so could you give us an update on what that looks like noted I mean at this point is a pledge we've requested that additional details from each entity as to what you know what that looks like

There's assuming that would be a donation agreement together with that working with some of them would prefer to go through community foundation to basically utilize the funds as a donor advised fund. So, with that, we're gathering that information. So we can present more detail to council.

Mr. Garbaugh? And as I mentioned and suggested to the city manager, as Ms. Dillon had said too, recommendation that a member from council, someone be identified to be part of these discussions. The mayor is not empowered under charter. This is a council decision and acceptance, and I think at some point council should make a requirement that this type of a discussion, especially in these type of dollar amounts and promises and what conditions I think there should be another voice in there that hears what's going on so we have a clear understanding from both either the mayor, the city manager, and a member of council.

Is it because it's a private or a corporate donation, but we wouldn't require that from like a government donation, right?

I mean, government ones have guidelines and things that we request. This is a private donation of this type of thing. But obviously there's been negotiations and things going on for months. And since we're new to this, generally from this perspective moving forward that we know there's a pledge available, I think we should have a second understanding of what's going on with it.

Yeah, no, I think, I mean, I think, I don't think anyone would disagree with that. I do, you know, I felt like we had gotten a couple of updates in the past that said that they were, you know, meeting with them. And in my mind, I was like, that assumes that real digital or whoever it was, was going to offer us some sign, some sort of in-kind donation. I think, I completely agree. I actually really like the idea of a second council member because typically when council members make requests, it's not individualized council members. It's two council members at a time, which kind of reflects that multiple viewpoints have made this request. It's not coming, you know, and I think that that kind of applies to all. things I think if one council member is making requests of a Lot of time spent doing anything it there should be a boundary there where it needs to be more of the full body's Request less than just one council members request. So I think that's a process issue That not only applies to this but applies across the board. I completely agree. I

My 1 concern was there were statements made that city officials had made a determination that this was the best use for these monies and that never was a discussion that we as a council had. And then there was concerns of how the money was asked and so forth. So I want to make sure that we have good relationships with our townships and especially saline township. And us going out and separately asking for money without a cooperation from an organization that's not even in our city starts to build bad relationships. So I know they're wanting to give a lot of money, but I think we all know and understand that There's a lot of money out there, and coordinating and understanding could have made a bigger benefit for a number of organizations, the city, and even the other townships that surround us.

Well, yeah, and to your point, I mean, if you read any event or things these days, it's presented by or brought to you by Oracle. And that's their MO, right? That's what they want to do. They want to have good favor in the community. Whether or not we're buying... It is another thing, but they are having good favor in the community, and they are providing money to lots of different entities, and it's very...

And we're having the same discussion at the fire board level, too, because of the big donation that was made of that and one individual going out and asking for it and then trying to coordinate with a settlement and some other stuff. So this is a whole new market and approach for us all to understand it, but I think there needs to be a few more people involved that make it less of a... I shouldn't say it the way people look at it from a conspiracy support. We want to be very much on board and want to work with these groups because I think this is our opportunity to get a lot of things done and make priorities.

Mr. House, I'll get to you in 1 second. I just want to follow up with a question to Mr. Swallow. Did they reach out to us or did we reach out to them? I guess to clarify that for the donation or did related digital come to the city and say we would like to know more about your city or did we reach out to related digital and say, will you meet with us.

So, I'm not sure the original contact, I was not involved in that. So we have had ongoing communications though. I was involved with the obviously when a large group from the data center came, we did provide tour the city and identified several different areas that are in need of assistance. And so, in that case, they, they want to know more about it and help facilitate that meeting. of the larger group. And we toured several areas of the city, including stops at the schools, as well as downtown and several locations around the community.

And I think to Mr. Gearbaugh's point, that is how it typically works. These conversations do happen, but... Again, we are a full body, and having one, at least one additional viewpoint from this body, I think would benefit us in not only our transparency and, you know, confidence from the community, but amongst each other as well. I think it would really benefit. Mr. Hush?

Yeah, so I have two points, and actually something you just said, City Manager Swallow, kind of stuck out to me. I think it's incredibly problematic that you didn't know how that first contact happened. And that's not because you failed in any way or that's not an indictment against you. But the problem is, is that, to me, that seems as though there's no clear point of contact.

A clear point, too, that was, the first point of contact was prior to my tenure, before I was even city manager. Oh, that tracks, yeah.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Because I'm like, I feel like one of the first people that should know about these things is you, or you should be that point of contact. My issue with the... My issue with this kind of whole thing, obviously, it's been an incredibly, almost like a black box type of thing. And I don't really like that, especially because being on the implementation team for the rec center, we kind of heard... that there was a willingness to give, but I'll be completely honest, hearing 10 million was not in the realm of possibility of what we thought that they were giving. So that was a little bit concerning, but I think for me what was most concerning is the rush to announce that without having more information.

And that was just to be completely clear. That was completely on the donor side that they that shows how to make that announcement. In fact, as this was clearly. Communicated Council, the amount and the partners and who was going to be the donation was not made clear until the day before the announcement.

June 1st. Understood. It's just, I think the fact that there hasn't been discussion amongst us as a body, anytime that I see something that is put on city letterhead or released on part of the city in my mind, and in a lot of people's minds, um, it's representative of us all here and so when when things are put out and there's not a lot of detail and in particular like i know the mayor is absent but we had a conversation when it first came out um and a lot of what is being discussed here but a lot of the chatter online were all things that i told him we need to think about and address and so For us to kind of put this out there, understanding, obviously, that the companies need good PR. They wanted to get this news out there. I'm not someone who moves. just because we feel like we have to, or just because we feel like it's the thing to do. I like to move and speak from a place of certainty. So I would have loved, and in the future, I hope that before we do release something that is with city letterhead and is supposed to be representative of us, even if that is in an official capacity or if that is how it's going to be perceived by the public, that I would want us to have more details and to have discussions far earlier in that process because I don't think it's fair that the first time anyone could voice their opinion or ask any questions about this pledge happened essentially as we were preparing to release a press statement. So that kind of was my issue is I don't like to just rush and put something out and then we have to update it or retract it or just I like to move from a place of certainty when I do things like that.

And as I'll just repeat, you know, that the announcement was made by the donors literally, you know. The day before of the groundbreaking June 1st, and then after that, they made the public statement.

For the city had the opportunity and that's ultimately that's fine. But I think as it relates to the city and the statement that we put out. I felt like we were forced to put a statement out because the company put a statement out. And I don't feel like that was necessarily the case. We didn't have to put a statement out because they did. I felt like it would have been great to have more information. It would have been great to have more conversations because, again, A lot of people weren't necessarily aware until the statement from the city, or even I know there were some people who weren't aware until the companies announced that. And that's just not how I like to move. So moving forward, I hope that that is considered when hopefully these things happen in the future.

So I would like to go back to something I talked about. Many years ago and what we were supposed to have spent $50,000 on through a contract that we canceled midway through. There's been years of discussion on how we need a communication strategy in the city. I do not fault our communications team for the work that they do. But without a strategy, that's why these things happen. You're just willy-nilly. You're trying to clean up messes. You know, there's risk communication strategy. There's public communication strategy. And without... having procedures or having those conversations and having it down on paper, you're always kind of chasing your tail when it comes to communications, right? And I think this is probably the most evident, maybe the first or second most evident thing that has happened where I've said communication strategy might have slowed that down and might have had us thinking about it. Now, again, I hear you that Those guys will stand up in front of the microphone and say whatever they want to say. But there's always a pause. We call it in the PR industry a holding statement where you put a holding statement out and you say, you know, the pledge from Oracle and the other entities is a wonderful pledge. The city of Salina is working through how we may be able to accept and implement that. And that sits well. Until council can talk about it. So these types of things come up when you have a communication strategy. So I would really love to see this be kind of a case study for why we really need to get back to focusing on that moving forward. Because it goes into public communications as well. And just how we get out ahead of things, how we interact with our community. Because I fully support... I fully support this initiative, as I've been yelled at on Facebook for the last couple weeks about, but it does, it puts us behind the ball. It has us having to explain ourselves, too, right? So, like, you know, I could say all the reasons why I think it's great to have the money, but we hadn't actually strategized on what that looked like, you know? So that's my two cents.

I would like to request that a policy gets put into place after this meeting, maybe reviewed for the next meeting, of who has the ability to communicate on behalf of the city and for what reasons. So, I mean, there's a lot of responding to community members on social media, responding on behalf, like it's the city. I just think we need to have a policy in place. Again, not one person on this dais, even the mayor, who is an additional city council member, per our charter, he's the week mayor, has the right to speak on behalf of city council without the consensus and agreement of city council. But we're allowed to have an opinion. You can have an opinion, but not on behalf of city council. There should not be a speaking. I think we need to have, before we start agreeing, maybe we have a policy in place about what the dollar amount, if we have that, we have to have a process in place. We should have a communication process in place about who communicates, how they communicate, when they communicate, and things that involve the rest of us. And if it's a decision of the city council, it should be a consensus, and we have a point person that's dedicated to be able to speak to that so that people know that it's been approved or whatever.

Well, we do have guidelines, and the guidelines are that we are not to speak on behalf of council. We can have our own opinions, but we're not to speak on behalf of council. But I do agree, that's what a communication strategy is. Com is comprised of is like, who I would say more of a policy as well.

Not just a strategy, but a policy in place where you can make a policy was pushed back by members of council.

They, they, it was a decision that was made for it to just be guidelines. I'm not disagreeing with you. I think it should be a policy as well, but I just as an explanation of historically that was set as guidelines so that. From what I recall, the conversations were so that we still felt free to have our First Amendment and open opinion rights instead of making it a policy where we could find ourselves in trouble and tiptoeing around things.

But if we're scheduling coffee hour and speaking on behalf of What the city is doing on behalf of City Council that that to me? Maybe we need to have a policy around that and maybe it's okay But maybe we all need to agree that that's okay And what is you know what's agreeable and what's not agreeable when it comes to? Proper communication, and I just don't think we have a communication policy. Yeah Again, I completely agree a lot of money, and we still don't have the very basic thing which is how we're communicating to the public and

Yep, I think that point has been well made. Ms. Dillon?

So what this is bringing about for me is that we need to have another council retreat. We need to decide what this body wants because there are different pieces that are happening outside. I feel like the gears are not all in sync all the time. And I think that we need to kind of figure out what we need to kind of row the boat together and how that's going to happen. I've been advocating for this for a while. I think that we need to do this because we also need to put some guard rails up. There are some things that are happening. And as far as that funding was. by the mayor being at that event being called out and such it implied that the city was a part of that and that is the piece right there that we did not it's a perception issue whether that's the case or not, but this body needs to decide how that's going to happen. And I think we need to have some conversations about it. So I would and I'm going to again ask that the city manager schedule a council retreat, a follow up council retreats for us so that we can kind of work through some issues on our end and make sure that we are giving the city of the best that we have to offer devil's advocate is an election year.

Should we wait until after January? Just because now we have gaps in our election year, so it would get us through to a following?