City Commission - Regular Meeting

calling the legislative committee

legislative committee meeting to order. Um since I'm the only one here, we got the minutes from uh last meeting. Um the the first item on the agenda is the appointment to the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority. Mr. Barnes, you have anything you want to say to the committee or it's up to you why you want to serve? Um, and 2026 is our 30th year of existence. So, I'm really excited about that. Um just a couple things I do, but I'm um excited to serve uh uh in the capacity of on the Brownfield board if if I'm fortunate enough to be accepted.

All right. Okay.

Okay, that's fine. I will make a recommendation to send this appointment to the pool commission and the pool commission will go at our next meeting. All right. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Thank you for serving us. Yes, ma'am. The next item on our agenda is the ordinances. ordinance to create impressions.

We've been uh talking for some time about trying to improve a situation. Uh I can recall as far back as about a year year and a half ago u um commissioner raised the question related to most all of our tickets were uh misdemeanors and were getting on people's records and so forth. And we started talking then about how to try to exact enforcement but without it messing up people's chances for employment or whatever. And since that time, as we started to look at other factors involved in this, even just the um practical reality of trying to get service to write a ticket, it goes over to the courthouse, maybe a month or two or more before anything happens. And that means that our situation just goes unabated. Um, and then they add insult to injury whenever something was done. If he led a $50 fine, we'd be lucky if we got $2 of it. This is a mechanism that will uh step up this process and allow us to write a ticket and if the people want to abate the situation, I can come right down here to the window and pay for it without having to go through two or three court appointments and long delays and all of that kind of thing. Of course, if they don't abate it, then they still have to go to courthouse. But from there, uh, Sarah, want to expand on it?

Thank you, city manager Little. I think that's a very good overview. I think at the end of the day, this is about serving the citizens well and serving them even better than we have in the past. Anytime you get a ticket in the city right now, you're going through the court system. So, even if it's a civil infraction, and I'm looking at some of the lists here. So, if you are charged with a noise violation, you have to go to court. You get a ticket, you go to court. Um, usually that requires at least two court appearances and that means people have to take off work. It means that they have to find child care. There's all sorts of barriers in there when you have to go to court. And again, it's it's a noise ticket. It's a city ordinance, so it's not a state law. It's not a county law. These are our ordinances. And the thought behind all of this is, you know, we we want to make things better and easier for our citizens. If we allow them to come here and pay the noise ticket, they can. I want to be very clear that this doesn't mean that people can't dispute a ticket. So, I want to talk just very briefly about what happens if you get a civil infraction ticket and you dispute it. If you don't dispute it, you can come in and pay the fine here. What the Civil Infractions Bureau doesn't do is allow any argument. So the staff doesn't find a they don't they're not finding facts. They're not making decisions on are you guilty or not guilty, are you responsible, are you not responsible. If someone believes that they are not responsible and they don't want to plead and they don't want to pay the fine, they still have the option to go to court. So nobody is forced to come here and pay a ticket. But if they say, "Yeah, you know what? I was loud. I'm going to just go pay the fine and be done with it. I won't have to go to court. It gives them, you know, approximately 10 business days to come in and pay. They can pay at 5:00, you know, they I shouldn't say 5:00, but they can pay at 4:30. They can come in at 8:30 before they go to work. It gives them a lot of leeway to do this kind of business. Whereas with the court, they tell you you've got to be there at a

certain time. If there's a busy docket that day, you could be there for a couple hours. So it really again is to try to be more convenient for the citizens and to get things done more effectively and more efficiently. Um none of the things that are allowed to be paid at the city are misdemeanor. So if you you are charged with the misdemeanor, you have to go through the court system. We also cannot take any kind of uh fines for traffic tickets. Traffic is a separate issue and that has to go through the court because it involves your driver's license. So, these are just minor minor infractions. I don't even want to call them crimes because they're not crimes. They're minor infractions that, you know, the city has chosen to name as civil infractions and we want to allow people to come here to pay the fine to just make things easier for them. So like trash loud noise ticket someone this ticket is coming from enforcement typically not the police.

Yes. And I I can't say it would never come from the police because they are authorized. But most of these the majority are going to come from code enforcement. And I'll you know I'll use the first one as an example. having a dog on the beach if they use the restroom on the beach. You know, that's one of the tickets that you could come here and pay at city hall instead of having to go to court for. Um, pets in Jean Clark Park, that's a civil infraction. You could get a ticket for that from somebody that's working down at the beach and come here and pay it. So, on the very last page, we did include some of the specific civil infractions. There's noise, nuisance, pets on the beach, vending, water supply, rental registration. We require our rentals to be inspected and registered. If somebody doesn't comply with that program, they get a civil infraction ticket. They can correct that, allow it to be inspected, and come pay the ticket here. If I might just add, uh, we I would expect a number of these will be coming from police because I'm meeting with them and telling them that I want them to enforce these situations like dogs uh walking on the beach when no dogs are allowed. If a police car is going to pass by somebody walking the dog on the beach, why should they believe that anybody else is going to do anything about it? And likewise, uh, people, uh, caught dumping on lots and things like that. Uh, I want the police to stop people, write them a ticket, um, and if, uh, necessary, impound their vehicle even because, uh, we wouldn't put a stop to this stuff. So with the with the dogs on the beach. So sorry.

So with the dogs on the beach, that's a really good one. Um and it's it's like that quite a bit um at at Jean Clark Park. And so are there signs up telling people not to to have their dogs on the beach? Okay. Um, can I ask a person? Yes, sir. Go ahead. How much is that fine after say the third time? So, per the ordinance, the fine is $500 per time each time. Each time it's a $500 fine. Yeah. Thank you.

Nasty with their dogs. What is the housing violation?

So that gets into some of the city's housing codes and some of the requirements they have for um maintaining like maintenance and that will again that's why the fines are a little bit higher on those. They start at 250 instead of starting at 100 because those are a little bit more they're not they're not state crimes but they've been deemed civil infraction civil infractions from the city for like maintenance issues. Somebody ask if So, one of the most common ones we see is um a home that's uninhabitable for a certain reason. And it might be um because there's trash blocking the doors. It could be because there's there's no doors. It could be because the doors are all boarded shut and you can't get in and out. So homes can receive tickets for things like that. And what we hope to do, what we always try to do, we don't like to write tickets. I always like to tell everyone tickets are our last resort. So we try to work with people and get them to make homes habitable if someone's living there or really it's about safety. It's not even about habitability. It's about safety for people who are in and out or living there. So we try to work with them and if we have to write one of those tickets, we can. But those I want to be I want to maybe make something clear too. What if we write someone a ticket and there's a compliance issue and let's say it's it's an issue where the windows are boarded shut and someone's living in a home and it makes it unsafe. We have the option of going to court to get a what's called a compliance order. The city does not have the right. We did a little fact sheet and it kind of talks about this, but the city municipal civil infractions bureau basically can accept the fine if you say that you're responsible. If you say, "Well, I want to keep my windows boarded. I want to have tenants in this house. I want to keep the windows

boarded and I'm not going to unboard the windows. I'm not doing it." We have the right to take that ticket to court to get what's called the compliance order. We as a city can't issue those orders. We can't make someone comply. We have to go through court. So there may be tickets in here that we have to go through district court even if we could potentially do it here and get a fine. We're not looking for money. We're looking for compliance more than anything. They get a ticket. Where would they go? Police department downstairs.

Let me uh ask a question. Um, one of the things I'm also talking to the police about is that uh there's a whole range of things that do involve automobiles but not necessarily uh moving violations. Um people parked on the wrong side of the street. Um people parking on sidewalks. These sidewalks are 4 in thick. They're designed for people to walk on and ride a bike on, not to park cars on. And uh I want them when they see that to stop and and ticket the people and if necessary have them towed away because we want behavior change. But on an item like that, if a ticket is written, is there any reason that can't be paid as a civil infraction, if it's not a violation of the vehicle code?

There really isn't, especially if it's just a violation of the city code. If it's a state violation, we we have some limitations. But if it's just a city ordinance like time of parking, place of parking, that should be able to either be a civil infraction. Usually it is a civil infraction and it could be paid here. Is there any questions?

When you talk about the dogs and matter, is that in the parks or is that throughout the whole city? I believe it's public. I did read that before like maybe two weeks ago because I went through all these to see what they were about. I believe that is on someone else's property or on the city's property. So, if you allow a dog to defecate or cat to defecate on land that's not yours, you can be cited under that section. But on public, you can be Yes, because you don't own it. So,

so there has to be a witness. That's the hard part with all of these is they all make sense. And we all can probably agree right here that all of these should be enforced, but catching someone in the act is hard. Especially if someone's walking their dog really early. You almost need a witness like someone who saw it happen or somebody on camera allowing it. That would be the code enforcement. Yes, it is. That's what we're talking about. It is, but somebody would have to see that ticket, you know, see see somebody do that call, you know, make a report and that kind of thing,

you know, the city. And that's one of the reasons I'm wanting the police to get more involved in it because they're riding up and down these streets 24 hours a day. They see a lot of this stuff. In my most recent discussion with him, one of the things that I heard was we used to do that, but then when we would, the people come crying to either commissioner or to the manager and they wind up telling us to leave them alone. Well, this manager is not going to leave him alone. We need to clean this town up.

There any other questions? Cuz this will go to public safety. They'll And then it'll come back to the commission. So it won't go to us on Monday. It will go to public safety commission committee in two weeks. Next week there

depending on what the discussing to public safety and then public have cats. I don't know if they belong.

Yeah, but I don't know if anybody owns the cats running loose like feral cats that need to be cleaned up. Well, there's an ordinance that you're supposed to you can't let your cat run wild. You got to put it on a leash. Well, that's what she's saying. Some of them aren't own.

They look at you like you pulled them in my yard. They do. They dare you get out the car.

So, we'll send this to public safety.

Yes, that's my review again. The next item on this agenda is the emergency medical services ambulance. Well, I'll I'll start it off. Um, Medic One is an organization that the city township St. Joe were involved in starting back, I believe, in the 70s uh to provide ambulance service. They serving a significant portion of the county now. And in fact, they're even talking about merging with a another ambulance service further up. I became aware about a month and a half ago when our representative uh the um public safety uh deputy for fire uh Brian told me that they were looking to raise rates and at that time they were talking about around buy an additional $91,000 a year and he suggested that I needed to perhaps attend a meeting which I started doing and um really when I attended the meeting the whole concept we just need $2,500,000 because we want to do this this and this and this and I thought to myself hey I'd love to have an opportunity where all I got to do is say I need this and here everybody starts paying but uh I explained to them I said the city cannot afford to pay this if if it's done. I said this needs to be more reasonable. I said there are other organizations that the city's uh member of that it helped

to start and the um organizing communities typically have have uh received consideration for the investment and so forth they put in to start with. Well, I was told something like, "Well, that did happen and you got it for a long time, but now we've got to change it." The underlying thing that I was picking up though is there's a lot of criticism that the city has more rides than anybody else in the county and that uh the city's riders in their opinion uses it like a taxi cab that um the Medicaid and Medicare pays and what they don't pay gets build to the uh user and users in Benton Harour don't pay. Now that was part of the underlying logic that I kept hearing announced. I said to them, I said, "Look, you could do 10 or 15 or 20 rides from Benton Harour to the hospital. It's a 5 minute to 10 minute trip." I said, 'You could do 15 pier different rides, probably the same cost you would run one ride from way out here in one of these townships up to the hospital. I said, this doesn't make any sense. I said, I wouldn't even be surprised if you took this large number of riders and what revenue they get paid from the Medicaid, Medicare insurers may total up more than what you're getting on these rural rides. But the factors they wanted to deal with were SEV, which really deals with

ability to pay and would have made more of the burden fall where it's good on on the others. Um, they didn't want to deal with the miles per trip and revenue and and that kind of thing. um they they two or three formulas where a flat amount and then after that uh percentage based on other things and whatnot. Make a long story short, this appeared in the newspaper uh last week and I think we put some out in case you don't have one. And essentially what it did is that it increased the the rate that Benton Harbor was paying was $100,133 uh a year. They increased it to $256,964 which is $156,831 more. The same thing happened with the township. Ben Township's payment was 158114 and with this new rate $365,164, an increase of $27,250. And if you look at the number of the others on there, there's some small increases for some of the other communities. Um, I think St. Joe got an increase of 60,000 which is more than most and so did Lincoln Township but many of the others are actually getting reductions. Bainbridge Township a reduction of 21,735. Col uh Township a reduction of 51,144.

Hangar reduction of 19,897. New Buffalo Township 36486. Pipstone Township a reduction of 4,053. Watery a reduction of 9,610. That's watery township. Um New Buffalo City a reduction of 64,311. There's nothing fair about the process that they use there. I went to a meeting last week, no it was or the week before where they had a consultant in speaking to him and one of the things the consultant said, you don't make any money on rural runs. And I think that's probably very factual because again the it's the same item that we were considering when we're dealing with bus service that a full bus running back and forth here in Glen Harbor to um the Meyers or to u Walmart, Walgreens, uh Home Depot cost is going to be considerably less. than talking about running a bus for example from Waterl down to uh the casino or somewhere maybe got one person or two people uh and maybe nobody returning you know that kind of thing. U there's a reality that relates cost to the distance and that type of thing. And I and I'm going to do a um um request for Freedom of Information Act

request to get these numbers so we can take a look at them and see what they are. In the meantime though, if we're going to address this at all, which we cannot uh do with the budget, there's no way that the money is not there, then we may need to look at putting a millage on and letting the people vote on it. And um I asked our attorney to put some materials together. and if you would uh sir explain how and what's involved there.

Thank you, Mr. Manager. So, before you tonight is a proposed resolution and again I there are there are different ways to fund ambulance services. I think the increase of, you know, approximately $150,000 came as a shock. I don't think anyone was expecting that. And I think, you know, once that was voted on, um, it became imperative for the city to look at how do we pay for this? We, we cannot be in a situation, I'm going to start by getting on a soap box. We can't be in a situation where we're not providing ambulance service to the citizens of of Benton Harbor. So, that leaves how do we pay for the $150,000 increase? I worked with the city manager to come up with a proposed millage rate if we dec if the city decides to go that route. Um I want to be clear if you do I I'm going to kind of go to the end first and then work back. There's timelines and deadlines for millillage proposals. If you decide to do a millillage, that would go on the August ballot. And August sounds like a long ways away, but you have to have the city has to have any mill language into the county by I believe it's Tuesday, May 11th. So, you have a very short deadline. And we felt like it was better to get this out there, get the information to the public, and let the city commission and the the different um committees look at this and and make a decision. So, we have this before you tonight and this shows what it would be to get to $150,000 if you collected the money through an ambulance millage. It would be 8/10 of 1 mill. So, it would essentially be 80 cents per $1,000 for all the value throughout the city, the taxable value. Um, it would be8 and that would raise 155,000. Um, it doesn't have to be exact. If you went down to 79, I think it would be a little bit too it wouldn't be quite enough. So 0.8 which is 8/10 of a mill

was the lowest that you could go to collect the 150. There are other options. You can also do a special assessment which is a whole another procedure. We can talk more about that if we need to. This puts the this puts the question right in front of the electors. It lets the voters decide. Again, I've in 23 years now of practice, I've never seen anyone vote down an ambulance mill because it's so vital. It's so important to what you you need in the city in every city, every township, every village. But this would put this particular resolution would put this to the voters in August on the August ballot.

I just have a couple questions. So, with the mill, sorry. So with the millage, it would be an increase um a tax increase for homeowners. Yes, it would be 8/10 of a mill tax increase.

So I have another question. So it wasn't illegal. You said other municipalities have had to do a mill.

Yes. So, there's different ways to do this. As always, there's a there's an abundance of ways to make up this difference. Um, one way is, so I live in in Niles Charter Township. Um, I we started out, I believe in 2020, we paid $20 like a household for ambulance service. Ambulance service, to be fair to what Medic 1 is doing, the rates have increased. So, we got notified back in the early two 2020s that our rates were going up. I have smackus. I have a different service, but it's the same concept. Everything is going up. Labor is going up, gas, the cost of equipment. So, we had for 20 years in Niles, almost 20 years in Niles Township, I paid $20 for ambulance service. And then all of a sudden, it was going to go up to 50. So, per household now where I live, it's between it's it's going up slowly, but it's between $40 and $50. and it's going to go up to 50. We've been told that that is an option that you have is to do a special assessment and to do it like per household. There's special um you know for apartments it's different. The landlord gets the assessment but it gets usually passed on to the tenants. The millage is just per valuation, but you can also do a per household. I don't know if we've run those numbers yet because we kind of just found out about the amount of the increase. I think it was just voted on, but that is certainly something we can look at and do alternatives. I think the important thing is we just wanted the citizens to know that this was happening. We wanted the committee to know and we wanted everyone to know what this looks like. We can the the commission can vote on this on at their May meeting, but this is your last legislative meeting before the May meeting. So, we wanted to get this on there. And so they did this in so they had a board meeting for

so medic one had a board meeting. So was that all of the townships or they Yes. All of these municipalities met. So how did they determine some of these like you said have gone down based on SEV is is actually they had three different choices. They had three choices in terms of a formula to look at. Um each one resulted in different distribution of the payments. Uh this is the one that was selected.

So both Benton Township and us we got hit with the highest look like um increases out of all of the m municipalities. And what was that? We did and also St. Joe and Lincoln Township. St. Joe and Lincoln Township also got hit, but not as hard as we did. But uh the rural areas that really cost the most to serve is basically getting a reduction many of them.

So how was that? I mean there's no way to fight that or to because it seems it sounds like it'd be criminal for them to do that to say that we unless we another $150,000 that we're going to um not have ambulance service. I understand increases, but that's absolutely ridiculous for a struggling city already. And I know you guys probably think the same thing. There's no um legal avenue for us to go. Sorry, legal avenue. I'm actually very upset about this. Let's see.

I'm very upset about this and anybody that hears this should be now. This the kind of stuff that Louise needs to write about. If she wants to write write a story, write about that. This is wrong and it should not be happening. So all of the black communities are getting 150 or more increase. Both predominantly black communities. That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. And no, I don't want to put a put a um a millage burden on a resident or a special assessment. It's ridiculous. Unfortunately though, in order to continue having service as there are no alternatives available right now, we may have to do something while we try to pursue um some means of equity in this situation.

Yeah, cuz right now this this is not equity and this is not this is not okay. City match, I understand that we got to we have to do something, but this is not okay. Um, I'll take some questions because I'm going to head to Facebook when I get done. My question is, um, you put in the mic so that So, if people are listening, y'all hear this. They have increased our

My question is why would it increase so much when we're the closest to the hospital? You can't even You can't justify the mileage. It's what 2.3 miles from the hospital, then increase $100,000. And next question is why don't we do our own hospital, our own uh our own ambulance service. We have the fire department that's already trained in that field. We have buildings that we could allocate to have um our ambulance because what's going to stop them from increasing 300,000 next year and then they hold a gun to us to you have no choice. If you're gonna do a millage, do a millage so that it can be operated in Ben Harbor where the residents can have a chance to have opportunity to work in Ben Harbor to bring the economics up because they're charging us and the township and and who knows the township will leave maybe use our service. You know, you don't it shouldn't be only one option.

So, if you don't I

No, no, you can say something. I was Go ahead. One of the things I didn't point out is the language that we used in here which was very intentional. We put services for a millillage of up to8 ms or 8/10 of a mill. This is because we just found this out and we don't have a backup plan except for this right now. I think we need plans A, B, C. I I like different plans. This is the worst case scenario. You have to levy up to 0.8 and put it on the ballot. So there are other alternatives and I think both the city manager and I we've all we've all collaborated and talked about this. There could be grant opportunities because of this. This is very unexpected. This is a very big increase and it's completely unexpected. I think there could be again grant opportunities. We could band together with Benton Township and perhaps do a grant for both at once because of the size of the populations of both. There are other alternatives, but I I feel we would be remiss if we didn't talk about this and at least have it like let's say this is plan C or D. There's other things we need to do. We need to look for grants. We need to talk to the state. We need to talk to the feds. We need to see if there's money out there to help bridge this gap. But this is sort of a worst case scenario. And the way that this is worded, it says of up to 8/10 of a mill. You could end up levying zero if you find another alternative like plans A, B, and C. And that's my sincere hope.

Well, I think plan A should be that we start our own services because if they did this now and we don't have a lot of times and if you're going to raise the taxes, let taxes be the benefit Ben Harbor not be against us cuz at any time it's like it's the monopoly. They don't have they don't have the right to be the only emblem service in the area. And I'm pretty sure and and to me when you when you give um Bara is it only went up 27,000. somebody went down 21 and you look at the distance from the hospital. Those are the cities and townships who should have increased, not somebody that lives almost across the street from the hospital. And then they always feel like Ben Harbor will tax Ben Harbor and they keep us in the always on the on the offense. So, we just need to start doing something different in Ben Harbor. We don't, you know, we shouldn't have to only do business with them. And of course, anytime you're dealing with medical and with the state, the state has no problems with funding those things. And I'm pretty sure y'all have people who can find the funds for that. You also have federal funds that could come in. And I used to be the accountant for Medicaid in Louisiana. So I know by funds and where money will be allocated if you have x amount of customers that's going to use this service. Say you got 2,600 homes, they're going to allocate you even before you open that facility up a couple of whatever it is that they'll give you for that. Same thing with hospitals. You apply for it, you get it. That's all I just I'm kind of like Commissioner Henderson. It's not fair and we should not allow people to keep holding us up like that because if we are we just stand and take it then they're going to keep doing it.

I think they need to have this. I think the discussion needs to be held by by everyone. Yeah. Um, when I listen to the plans A, B, and C or whatever and I think about my residents, you're asking them for a small amount of money. That didn't work in 2008. That didn't work in 2009 or 10 or 12. Now granted, they give dollar ride in the library, but try another one. We better go and try to find some other means to make this happen because if that's our last resort and on a time frame, a speedy time frame, that means we're not going to be able to get the information out to the people as fast as we really should. What happened when we didn't get it out? They got the wrong information. It didn't pass. So let's please let's look at other avenues and I too pretty pissed off about the mechanism. That's real slimy stuff that's happened to us. But it's not just coming from one source. We're being attacked like custard. They're coming from every avenue and it's not going to work. We're winning. We're gonna hold on. It's not going to work. We're gonna find Mr. Little is going to find ways to get us out of this

with this item. We will send this to public safety um next week. Is this on is there any presentations planned for our um uh Monday night meeting or No, I wouldn't think so if it's not on the agenda. So uh but I think it's um through the committees we need to get them, you know, get the word out. Now if um this is ridiculous.

I think that's the only right way really to do it. I don't know. I mean, go ahead. If anybody wants a recap, um there was a presentation at the last personal and finance committee meeting um by the chair of medic one if anybody wants to get on YouTube and rewatch that. Okay.

Is there any other questions or comments? That was the last thing on our agenda.