Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to the East Lansing City Council discussion only meeting of Tuesday, September 15th. It's 6 p.m. The meeting will come to order. Could we have the roll call, please?

Here. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? Moved by Meadows, second by Whalen. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. The agenda is approved. That brings us to a special presentation from Advance Peace Michigan Public Health Institute. Mr. Boggin, if you would care to sit or stand as your preference dictates. Thank you for being here tonight.

Thank you, sir. Questions for Mr. Bogan?

MR. Yeah, thank you. I echo Councilmember Whalen's remarks. Although I haven't had many years of working with you and being around your organization, I did get a taste of the impact through our recent Welcome Weekend initiative, and I got a chance to meet a couple of the field guys. I have their cards, but I don't remember their names exactly, but they were very impressive. actually went out there and spent time and I felt like knowing there was another layer in the community for de-escalation and equipped to address conflict arguments for shoving fights which I saw many scenarios like that wi

One follow-up to your presentation and then an additional question. The numbers that you cited, I think there were six and two. Is that specifically within East Lansing?

Last year, we, within the City of East Lansing, were looking to help support our community, address a number of issues we were seeing unfold downtown. And happy to have your nonprofit engaged, recognizing the prior work. Are you still doing work within City of Lansing as well? And I believe you got recently a state appropriations for $500,000. Congratulations on that. Thank you. That's important. And is that going to be focused within MidMichigan for the work that you're doing within communities?

And then remind me, because I think when we first heard a presentation from a dance piece, we may have reviewed this information, but recognizing the engagement, the relationship model, what do you build towards?

Well, thank you for that, for recapping that this goes long beyond just a night's activities or engagement. It is much offering supports for a life map, ultimately. So I appreciate that work, and thank you.

Just a couple of quick things. I can't remember who suggested that we engage with Advance Peace, but that was a great idea. And I appreciate that you will be here through October on our weekends. That's extremely positive for us. And I'm just wondering whether we have a plan to have you come in after that and give us a report on the entire period I'm hoping that happens and then we've got to talk about next year too because I think this is a very, very positive advancement and anybody who's been downtown at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, 3 o'clock in the morning knows how chaoti

I just have a question about how the contacts work in the downtown. So I've seen some of your team down there when I've been there, and they've been wearing an Advance Peace t-shirt. Do they all wear that as a signal so people know about the organization and so they are willing to come over and talk because that's what you're wearing on your t-shirt?

And I've been down there when your team has been there, and it's been great to see you there. As you say, it's another layer. Any further questions?

Thank you for your work and thank you for your presentation tonight. It was great for us and for the community to get that briefing about all the different work that you put in.

That brings us to communications from the audience. I do have one slip for tonight. Christine Root.

Ms. Rue, could I ask you to work toward concluding your remarks? The three minutes has expired. Okay, I'm sorry.

Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else who would like to address the council during public comment? Before anyone starts, I just want to remind people that we are now in the new phase where we're having three minutes per speaker during public comment. And I should have reminded people about that earlier. But I will take the opportunity to do this now. So please just leave it up there and we'll pick it up later. Thank you. Go ahead.

Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else who would like to address the council?

Seeing none, do we have any callers? There are no callers on the line. OK, we have no callers. All right. That brings us to item 4.2, communications from the council, Councilmember Singh.

I'll pass for the seat well I one quick comment is we had just prior to this meeting had the University Student Commission's first meeting of the year so yes the students arrived back to town in August and we had our University Student Commission again their role is to help represent student organizations and the student community at large with our operational government as well as our community events at large. So I'm really excited for their ongoing participation supported by Elise Hodges who's been wonderful in the staff liaison role as we last updated our commission ordinance to reflect to

operating and of student body organizations so just really excited to continue to work with that that body uh and that's it for the evening thank you mr grigsby yes thank you um i don't have any report i do have an announcement to make on september 24th at 5 30 at the traverse pie company um council member singh and i will be doing a community conversation we encourage everyone to come down and say hello and let us know what's on your mind if you can't make it please reach out in another way but hope to see there the community especially for those who might necessarily not come to council and

Thank you. That brings us to the first of our three discussion items, item 5.1, discussion of bond financing for capital improvement projects. We have Director Drenke and our Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Kincaid.

I just had a question about the income tax renewal initiative and just really how important that is to, um, I wouldn't say necessarily educate but inform the community about why that's important and what exactly we're doing with that money. Um, and what that money means to our future of East Lansing. I just want to emphasize, uh, I will be prioritizing that and I would like hopefully I know that you are and just really making sure that we really have a pathway forward with that communication and that information that's available for the community.

A couple questions. One, I just want to, again, ensure that I heard you. For the water and sewer work, we would increase races or rates to recapture?

Ron wants to jump in. Yeah, Ron did. He perked up. He's being called to the stage.

And they assume the public has a line of sight into that 10-year model?

My head's going in a couple of different ways. I do have a bond question as well in terms of, guess what? Bonds have been in the news a lot. US Treasuries have been in the bond news a lot. Will that impact or not impact our municipal bonds that we would be pursuing. I shouldn't assume anything, but that's a big question because that impacts what we will have to pay back and that also impacts what we may or may not be raising rates on our community members on. So this is all what's the dollar figure? So I don't know if you want to start with the bond question first.

Thank you. That's helpful. And I guess, especially as we're looking forward to September 22nd with a possible vote is from my perspective, I just want to ensure not only me who will be voting on this, but also our community has a good understanding of what the city will be on the hook for to pay back and, or. what the outlook looks like in our rates over the next 10 years, because there's a push and pull there. At the end of the day, I'm really concerned about people's pocketbook right now across the community, our state, and the world, frankly.

Again, you mentioned oil markets before. I think both the Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times reported that they're predicting this war could go into beyond January of 2020. Nine. Um, so I just, again, as we all watch the news in terms of the middle East is erupting on top of what's happening in Russia and Ukraine. Um, even now we're supposed to have some sweetheart deal with Venezuela. Anyway, I say this all to say that the outlook's not great. I can't imagine the outlook is that good. If we're doing this in two bites, like even though the first bite may safeguard us to some deg

Just a follow-up on that last point. So the resolution we may adopt on the 22nd does not necessarily identify exactly the bond issue that we will ultimately vote on after the 45-day period, correct?

And the more specific amounts could be less than the total but not more. They could involve projects that, it could remove projects from the list but not add projects to the list, right?

And the 45 days starting September 2nd, how does that get us to a resolution in October? Or am I missing something there?

So we can act before the 45 days is up, but you can't act until the 45 days is up because the people have an opportunity to say no. Right, right, right.

Okay. Thank you. Further questions? Mr. Meredith.

I've got a couple. Number one, I guess, I think we need that 10 year rate model to be made public so that the public knows what's going to happen. But that only takes care of, as I understand it anyway, the DPW project. So where's the cost to the public on an annual basis or through their property taxes for the rest of these? Do we have that?

So those general fund revenues are being used for other things right now. What would we be switching?

If I'm going to vote on this on the 22nd, I need a little more information on how we're going to pay for all this. And then I do have some, number one, you know, I do feel that Based on the Financial Health Committee's recommendations, I really support the idea of us bonding to do this type of work within the community. But, you know, we've got $17 million or so, almost $18 million of DPW stuff, which I have zero problem with. They have a plan on how they're going to pay for it. So I don't know why we're going 10 million and not taking care of that, like right in the get-go, if this is the bes

And before you respond, let me just say that on other bond issues that we've had in the past, we have bonded even though we know we're not really spending that money for two or three years. And we've earned it, so we had a bigger pot of money. At the end, are you saying that this will not produce some revenue on these funds or we are prohibited by some law from obtaining earnings on this?

And then I know you had something to say, so come on up.

Yeah, and then just a couple of personal comments here. I don't have any problem with anything on this list, but I do have questions regarding the City Hall investments. I mean, if we're still thinking about moving City Hall, We're talking about putting another $3 million into City Hall with significant upgrades that we haven't really had the discussion about what are our other options with regard to this building and that location. I think we need to have those. In terms of... of the building we're in right now, I don't have any problem with, you know, we're committed to this building. I mean

Well, that's very interesting. We have had a child care program operated by the city in the past, and we've run into trouble with the state. So I think we can operate a better child care program. This might be the location. It may not. But certainly, we've given that a chance before. Bottom line, I need to know what this is going to cost our citizens overall. So if it's program fees that are expanded, I need to know what those are going to be. This is a time within our community and all across this country where it costs a lot more to live right now than it ever has in the past, and mostly on

Yeah, and I think that's a pretty good argument for us to look at what are we gonna do about City Hall as we go forward.

A couple of questions. One concerns the, I mean, my big concern is the general fund, right? Because that's the fund that's under stress. And with a 30 million, with a debt service for the total of 30 million, the debt service is about 2.1 million. 15% of that is about 315,000. Is that correct? Okay. So that would be, that would, 315,000 would be the burden on the general fund. I just wanted to check my math there. I had a similar question about, so the parks and rec fund proportion would be 23% and the idea is to recover that through space rental and program fees. You started to address this w

So I guess I think it would be helpful – You've worked through these analyses? You've started to. I think it would be helpful to have some of that attached to the AIR for our next meeting because it makes sense to me that we want to go to a full cost recovery model, but I think we in the community need to have some sort of proof of concept that that's actually going to work. And so I think some sort of analysis along those lines would be helpful.

That's great and that's perfect. It doesn't have to be. Thanks for reminding me that it doesn't have to be by next week. Further questions?

Okay. Let me say one last thing, which is that I think the message that we give to our citizens is extremely important with regard to this. If there's a 45-day referendum, we have never had a single citizen who isn't willing to sign a petition or to get this on the ballot or for a referendum. And that means they've got to be convinced, our community has to be convinced that we're headed in the right direction. Right now, I don't think we have enough information to make that argument.

just because just responding to what you offered and then also some of bond counsel this next step doesn't strap us anything so we would still have a runway to hear from community but we need the you know the final what it's going to cost and what the impacts on rates and all that to your point it's going to take some time so i would say i'm still open you know to supporting this next week if it's on the agenda i'm recognizing it doesn't hamstring us in any way i'm looking for the nods from the bond council as well i see yours okay would the interim city manager care to add anything to this di

So my last question is actually for Bond Council again. And if I could ask you to address it. So you said, I mean, appropriately enough, it's up to us to decide what our strategy is going to be, right? The two tranche versus one tranche. And you recommended a course of action based on certain characteristics of having one tranche be below 10 million, right? That would save us some money. But I don't think we have an analysis here that says exactly what the benefits would be projected, right? You're making that recommendation based on your analysis that has a suggestion that we would save money

I think we're interested in doing our due diligence and also making it clear for the community's benefit that we're doing our due diligence. And so even if it's not necessarily, you know, chapter and verse of ten pages worth of numbers, but some outline that describes the different parameters you thought about that leads you to this particular recommendation I think would be helpful. And if I heard you right a moment ago, you suggested that if we had too much money, we could spend it on other things. But my understanding is that we can't do that, right? We have to spend it on what we propose t

it's all part of the fact that you can't predict the future right and so you need various mechanisms to make sure that you can get as close as you can yeah okay any further question so that I thought this was really helpful so thanks to everybody for their questions and input thank you thank you that brings us to item 5.2 discussion of police and fire department updates Chief Newman.

Thank you, sir. I provided it to you, and we'll give this information

You said this, the difference between the mutual and automatic. OK. Can you break that down for me? Yes.

Mr. Meadows. You know, looking at the documents that you gave us tonight, you know, I'm looking at the calls to MSU campus and it's clear that, you know, we're looking at, you know, May where a lot of students left, you know, June and July. But by the time we get to August where we had about 10 days students back on campus, you know, we jumped, we doubled the number of calls on the MSU campus and that's just 10 days. So what would we be expecting or would you be expecting that number to be in a full month of students on campus?

Yeah, I think it would be very useful, and I know you're doing this now, so we will have that information. But, you know, this helps us in our relationship with the university as well in talking about maybe the contribution that they need to be making to maintain our station on campus and the service that we're provided. So I think the fact that you're getting that information or accumulating that information at this point is very important. And then just one comment on the the mutual aid received and given. As we've talked about stronger relationship or a different way of us providing fire se

I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but I just, the training that you're doing, especially with the regional training, I just want to throw in your ear, because I know you've got a lot of different things going on, but to have a community aspect to that, we talked about that, I believe, several months ago, and just kind of really giving Not necessarily just the community members, but also people like myself who don't normally get a chance to really see the type of training that you're doing or what it takes, even if it's just an observatory type situation, I think is something that would be re

I'll just note that, you know, I do remember being fully encased in a very heavy fire department outfit, crawling up the steps into the third floor of Hanna Community Center, which was full of smoke because I was in citizen training that the police department was offering. So that's a really good suggestion. I'll just note that it's a hard job. And that type of training will demonstrate to people in the community just how hard this job is. I think we cut open a car. I'm not sure. I think maybe the clerk was hanging from rafters on something during that training as well.

questions councilmember Singh just on the and forgive me if I miss this but I know the EMT paramedic program and then prerequisites you're still down in terms of being able to fully staff the third no what we are we were

And I know when you've presented in the past, I mean, when you look at your total staff, non-paramedic or EMT, is there interest to pursue that? Or what would you say percentage that you've seen over the years that people want to pursue that?

Couple of questions. So in terms of the mutual aid, well, first of all, I wonder if you could repeat your answer to Councilmember Whalen about cost recovery. If you could repeat the question, if you can remember it, and the question and the answer about cost recovery. There was a particular type of run?

And that's not included in the runs to campus that's in the data you give us tonight?

So my question, what I was aiming at, is looking at these numbers that you gave us, about 20% of the runs, of your total runs, seem to go to campus, roughly. It's a little bit lower in July, but the rest of the numbers are pretty constant, about 20%. Do we get enough 289 money back or by other channels to cover that?

Yes. Okay, great. Yes, and then the mutual aid The the the asymmetry with the city of Lansing is pretty stark Yes, 19 runs versus 102 Does that concern you?

Any further questions for the Chief? Okay. Thank you for your update. Absolutely.

Next we have Assistant Chief Kraft, who's here with Lieutenant Steeman and Captain O'Hario. Thank you all for being here tonight.

But just jumping back to the text signal.

I just have a few questions about what you mentioned here in your presentation here with the tech signal holster, I think it was called. Is that also for non-lethal? Is that for the TASER II and for both? Okay, I missed that.

Oh, it's not just the individual officers?

Gotcha. And I apologize. So... I remember for like the camera thing, is there like a delay before the actual camera comes on?

Thank you. I got to say, the 24 hours from MCOS and us hitting 98 hours is pretty impressive for the training standard. I don't know what it is nationally, but that just seems like a huge investment in to what you're doing and how you're going about that. And I think that's huge. So I wanted to acknowledge that. I do have some technical questions. You can refer me back to maybe some of the, which you had in your presentation if you want, but I do have a couple of different questions here, if I may. So we haven't had a chance to kind of really talk in a while because of the break and whatnot, b

Thank you. So as you consider those priorities, what are the three most significant obstacles to that then? I mean, are there limitations? And what support does the department need to be able to accomplish them?

I do have a couple more, if that's OK. Excuse me. So I've been contacted by a few community members in relation to the flock cameras. And what's going on with that? I know there was some local reporting done with that. And if I understand my numbers correctly from wrong, there was an investment of, a two-year investment of $60,000 for the flock mobile cameras. We're getting billed for that, about $30,000 a year. During the 30-day period, recently examined that East Lansing Police Department conducted fewer than 200 searches, while agencies conducted tens of thousands of searches involving East

No, just share it, because you know that I inquired about this, and so I think it's important to have community conversation about what is going on. And so if you want to divulge what you want to share that you feel is beneficial, that'd be helpful.

Yeah, I appreciate the thorough answer and just really trying to explain this in this format. So I appreciate that.

So we had a citizen, not a commissioner, speak tonight about the monthly reports and just really the access to that. She made a suggestion about maybe council members benefiting from seeing those reports. I'm just wondering if there's any issues for us to be able to have access to those monthly reports when they're sent out in regards to whatever policies that are in place or isn't. I know they're unredacted, too. So I know there may be another issue there because that's part of the issue.

OK. That's what I was curious about. And then the other thing is there was a question, and I wanted to ask about the injury field part there. Did you guys hear that part of her presentation where she's asking about those minor reports and there being some discrepancy about the injury field part there? Do you guys know what I'm talking about? Okay. Could you take note of that and just as you are doing your evaluation that whatever information that is pertaining to the injury field, just making sure that that's consistent. But that's all I really had overall.

sorry about that no not at all further questions we hadn't talked in a while we hadn't and these are excellent questions and i made a bunch of notes in response to this conversation so i'm going to go on for a long time too maybe not that long mr meadows so um well let me let me start with your last comment i get an unredacted report

So if I get an unredacted report, I don't see any reason why every other council member shouldn't be getting an unredacted report. In fact, I assumed that those reports were distributed to other council members, so I apologize, or I would have brought this up a long time ago. Let's talk about Flock just briefly. Because one of the questions is what data, and you've already identified that, that you're using it as a plate reader, you know, some kind of a discovery item, and that the information that you would receive from the Flock camera would be something that you would buttress with further

And so the, you know, when we look at my truck parked out in the parking lot and somebody walks by, they could write down my license plate number. They could contact the state of Michigan and say who owns this thing. It's public information, correct?

And so my question is really in terms of the other, I guess, the real worry that was exhibited in the person who was contacting you is, you know, what about these other agencies that get this information and how do they use it? I mean, this is just the information. And my question really relates to FOIA because if I can get it from the state of Michigan, by making a FOIA request, then this is information that theoretically would be available to any of our citizens within the community by making a FOIA request to us. But there is section 13 of the FOIA which provides that a public body may exem

Yeah, and I would expect, you know, what I was going to suggest is that I think the flock issue within the community is worth having another presentation with regard to it at some point so that we get a better feel. for the entire, we don't have a lot of flock cameras, obviously.

And I think we had, this is for a period of time so that we can check it out and see if it's useful to us, right?

Okay. So those are my fly questions. I have a question involving training because some of the training, especially if I can get back to my... There we go. I looked at this training by Ike McKinnon, by Dr. Mike McKinnon, and was that off-site or did he come here and do training?

Okay, I just want to suggest to the city manager anyway that, you know, this is the type of training, ethical policing, building trust, professionalism, obviously good training. But one of the questions I have is, can we offer that type of training to, say, members of LAPOC so that they would know the training that has become more, I guess, knowledgeable about the actual training that is that is being presented to the police personnel. And I look at some of these other ones like Joe Samara, the advanced de-escalation, I think that's coming up, but trauma recognition, mental resiliency, all thi

What is it again? ICAP. ICAP. And, you know, I'm just wondering what sort of the genesis of that was. Is this something that LAPOC members have attended? and receive training in?

And we don't know whether they actually have gone through the training.

Okay, because I think that training is useful for members of a commission that are taking a look at whether the police department is doing the right thing anyway. So if there is some kind of estimation of the cost of sort of expanding our training opportunity, you know, I would like to see us to have a discussion with regard to it at some point in time. I guess, you know, and I'm not talking about Citizens Police Academy because everybody can apply and participate in that if they want to. As a graduate, I would say that it was very good training. And then, let me just make sure I got it all. O

And I wasn't being critical of the technology. I think it's good. But I wanted some information on when the body camera normally would expect to be on. So anyway, those are all my questions.

Further questions, Council Member Singh?

I just want to follow up, actually, to Mr. Meadows. I know Christine Root sent us the ICAT training information via email background, which I shepherded over to ELPD as well as our city attorney's office and just to give you you know the police executive research forum is who puts on the ICAT training and I was just pulled up their website so like you get the chief from Nashville, Austin, Texas as well as some other communities that are on their board so just to give you some background in terms of where that or at least what I'm aware of where that came from. So, sorry, I got candy and all so

Yeah, and I think that's, and again, I have a workforce background and have worked at the cross-section of kind of higher ed as well as Fortune 500 companies, but, and from that work, It's who wants to pursue leadership opportunities, not only special skill sets, but also kind of a core foundational community priority, and I think departmental priority as it relates to some of the I know we've spent a lot of time about use of force, de-escalation, the crisis intervention. What are those, almost like that core curriculum that is beyond the MCOL's requirement that if you want to work in East Lan

I'm a huge believer in that, and for all the reasons that you mentioned, and deeply appreciative you understand the investment that we've made, including increasing personnel, funded personnel as well as training. I guess that's what I'm asking for, a layer deeper to have an understand beyond MCOLs, recognizing you have additional hours that officers are participating in training, we've sat up here and said what we've heard from the community and have purposed additional dollars like on the Joe Schmarrow piece, right? And okay, but like what is the continuum? Okay, is it Joe Schmarrow? Is it I

Thank you. I didn't think I was going to say anything more, but I'm going to. So I forgot to mention, and I think this is really, really important, not the fact that you've been phenomenal in being able to get talent in here and recruit. I think that's something that you had talked about. maybe in our third public safety presentation that you were doing that and you have been doing that. I want to commend your efforts and the team of making that a priority. But within that, the diversity aspect, There was a speaker here that spoke who was a Michigan State professor who wrote a book about repre

Other comments? So I have a couple of questions. You see, Kraft, you mentioned 27 stops, 11 citations, I think, for noise. Were those just in the downtown or were those throughout the city? Throughout the city. Throughout the city. So there was a media report earlier that suggested there had only been four stops or two stops or something and then everybody...

No, it's on people's minds. I'm on the lookout for others who may be listening. I'm on the lookout to get people's impressions because people's impressions are important because that reflects what they're bothered by, right? And my impression in the past few months is that it's been a little quieter. It's been improved, but it's not solved by any means. And I'm getting emails from people saying, for example, I got an email from someone who lives close to Michigan Avenue who said last Friday was probably the loudest Friday on record down there. So there are other, you know, it continues to be a

So it's always on, but you're throwing away the old stuff. Except you go back two minutes. When it's activated, yeah. When it's activated. Correct. And so that way you capture the lead up to the incident. Exactly. Essentially. Okay. I just wanted to make sure we all sort of understood that. That's a neat feature. AC Creft, you mentioned the In response to Mayor Pro Tem's question, you were working on new ways to direct complaints that were more centralized. Could you say a little bit more about that? Does that have to do with dispatch?

Yeah, my hunch is that when you start tracking those complaints, they're going to add up real quick, and it's going to be pretty impressive how much response you engage in.

A couple of questions about flock. It sounds like, so you've got an internal policy that sounds like it's similar to the policy to the law on lean access, which is basically there has to be a purpose and you get in trouble if you do not ignore that. Are those comparable? Is the internal policy for flock similar to the law for lean access?

OK, that's helpful. Thank you. The other question I had about flock was you mentioned that when officers get a lead, the fact that the source was flock is not documented in your reports, right? So it's a little hard to make them searchable.

So the context for my question is, if there is a way to quantitatively document the value of the system, that would be helpful. That's purely the context for the question. So it sounds like it's maybe not as easy as it could be, because there's no checkbox to tick off. But if there are other ways to say, we got so many leads from this system, and so many paid off, or so many didn't, which is fine.

I mean, those examples are helpful. And all I'm saying is the more of those, the better. And so I think that the data we heard, well, there were only 200 searches. Well, from my perspective, 200 searches is a lot of searches. You're using that tool for good reasons. And that's a lot of use. And that says to me that it's useful. But if there are other ways to I don't want to create more work for people, right? The last thing we want to do is create more bookkeeping tasks. But if there is a way to track some of these things so that we have more of these sorts of examples so that we can evaluate

And then on that subject, so I've spent a fair bit of time downtown after hours on busy days and I've learned a lot by doing that and one of the things I've been really surprised by, this has happened multiple times, where people who are down there, down there to have a good time, they come up to one of your offices and say, How do I apply for a job with the LPD? I've seen that multiple times. And then the officer has a conversation with them about, well, here's what you've got to do to apply. So I think that's just interesting. People come up late at night with an interest in joining the forc

So, yep, we source people from everywhere, everywhere we can. Yeah, well, and thanks also for your efforts on the recruiting front. And then I guess my last question is my impression having spent time downtown, sort of welcome weekend, a couple of nights, and then the game day after that, and then 80s night, one of the impressions that I have and also the time that I spent down there last fall is that a lot of the officers spend a lot of time in our downtown. That's sort of my impression after hours. And we have to figure out how to portion those costs appropriately because people also want to

Thanks for that context. That concludes my questions, and I want to thank my colleagues for their questions because they prompted some of mine. Any further questions or comments? Mr. Meadows.

I want to follow up on what you were just talking about a little bit. Because when you look at the sequence of the population of the police department, I think I mentioned before, when I left for the legislature, we had 63 officers. When I came back, there were 43. And in the meantime, just before I left for the legislature, we doubled the size of the city. And now those neighborhoods in the northern area are built out. There's 448 new houses in northern East Lansing. And we have fewer officers. And one of the other things that was mentioned by you guys is the importance of experience. And it

I just want to thank the fire department and you guys for the conversation and the preparation that it takes to come in here and talk with us we didn't have that before and I thought that this was a great opportunity to kind of do these things so I really appreciate the fact that you guys come prepared and ready to try to give us and the community a better understanding about what the priorities should be and what we could do I mean we're not a perfect product And we're working for that. And I talked to Chief Brown early when I first got on that striving for excellence is the goal. And I think

Any further comments? Any closing comments from the team? Thank you for your preparation. And again, I want to thank my colleagues for their questions. I think this was a lengthy conversation, but it was really important. So appreciate your being here. And so my last question on this agenda item is actually for my colleagues. So we have, it has been four months since we had our last update because that was our most recent discussionally meeting. We previously were getting these updates monthly. I found this more substantive update after a longer period of time to be very helpful. And I was won

Mike? I say I don't have a problem with a quarterly update. No, it would take in the entire fall season, which is football season, and start a basketball season. So it would be good.

So that was going to be my suggestion. Do people have thoughts about this?

I don't mind that. I think it's important to have that consistency, but that's not a hill that I'm I think if there's any special circumstance that happens in our community that we have the opportunity to be able to like, Hey, look, I don't know. We had this plan in December, but let's come in here and talk on November. Uh, outside of that, I'm pretty good with it.

That was going to be my suggestion. So that if someone, if there is a special circumstance or someone has a particular question, um, that they want to address, then we can treat that the way we treat other deal meeting agenda items, which is anybody can ask for an item on, on the agenda. Council member Singh.

And that's for DO, so it doesn't take two of us. Okay.

So maybe sooner than four months, maybe three months is good.

Okay. So I think that gives our staff some direction about where we go next. All right. Thank you. Thank you all.

Yeah. We're only required to have four DOs a year, right?

I'm just working through all the numbers that in terms of and and we've already have I think at least in the August meeting three of us talked about bringing the policies before this this body so and we can do that at a separate meeting dedicated to that if that's what people want I'm just thinking in terms of the general periodic updates Yeah, no, well, this would be a vote. So we would need it on the business agenda. Correct.

Yep. OK, so I think we got a plan for that. So that brings us to the presentation of the city's wet weather resiliency program. We are three hours in. Does anybody? Any one of us or any one of our audience need a break? Or do we want to keep going? Okay, let's invite Cliff Walls and our HDR staff and thank you for your patience. We have a whole team here who have been working for over two years I believe now on this. study and I think we're all looking forward to some important and potentially expensive updates.

We are going to get a copy of the slides, right? Okay. Can we go back to the slides you were talking about where you started with the five sort of projects? Can we go back to the first one for one thing? I've got a question on that. There we are. Just keep going. I want to see the sort of little map of the first one there. Okay, yeah, and I think you mentioned this, or one of you did, but the, you know, we had a long dialogue with regard to what was happening at Michigan Avenue during the construction of the Red Cedar Project, which is all the apartments and restaurants and the senior housing

Okay, so what we're talking about specifically is how we're going to hook up.

Is that it? Okay. Yep. Good. You've answered my question on that one then because I was about to call Pat to say what the hell. You know, we already paid for this, but can we go to number two now? And this is the Valley Court sort of storage piece and I know there's a, we have a project within Parks and Recreation that is sort of the redevelopment of Valley Court Park. I'm just not seeing how we can use that for stormwater retention. in any way. So I'm not sure whether that was part of the redevelopment discussion as that went through Parks and Rec. So I'm just trying to find out if that was.

Well, you know, given that one of those parts of that project is the construction of an amphitheater so that we have, I just don't want people sitting in water while they're, you know, listening to their music. So I want to make sure that's going to be part of it. Okay. Can we go to number two? I mean, the third little map that you have.

okay and that is the downtown neighborhoods this would hook into the existing giant i guess it isn't as giant as i thought it was when we put it in but the giant cso that we have going down grand river would we have to expand that expand the tunnel Yes. No. Okay. That was my question when I was hearing this, is whether there's another sort of disruption at Grand River that we'd have to deal with.

And we've been talking about this for several years of improving those. And I think, I think we, did we do the work in Chesterfield Hills that needed to be done? Cause that's like a hundred years old, but. I don't know, but that's a different downtown area. And then the other question with regard to this, okay, the tunnel underground river, then Harrison, then the water treatment facility on the Red Cedar, is that where this water is going to end up?

I was talking about the water treatment facility at the Red Cedar and Harrison Road.

Yeah, we don't have to expand the capacity of the treatment facility in any way.

Can we go to the next one? Okay, you've got a couple of council members that live in this green area, I guess, or this area, but including myself. So I want to just mention that the neighborhood I live in, which is directly across from the green area on the right-hand side, discharges all our water into that green area on the right-hand side. We have a retention pond that overflows into that area. That area, at least over the last three or four super rain events that we've had, have also overflowed into the apartment complex that's directly next to it. There is a pond in White Park that is a l

The pond in White Park, right? Is that the one you're talking about? Yes, potentially. Okay.

Okay, and then you know there's a you know the I can't forget the name of the drain, but the drain that runs through Let's see, which park is it? Azacadiaca. The Sanderson Drain also runs right by Council Member Singh's property, basically. Is there an expansion of that drain proposed to deal with the Harrison Meadows proposal that you have?

The neighborhood I live in was designed to run water from every aspect of that neighborhood into the pond in the neighborhood, which overflows into this area. The streets that are adjacent to us are a little bit lower than us, and there are constant water problems within those neighborhoods. So, you know, I assume this is going to be a big boost for taking care of that problem. Can we go to the next one?

Okay, and then to follow along with your comment there, the area north of Bessemer is, you know, our recreational trail goes through there, but that is a big swamp in that area. There's no plan to sort of increase the capacity in there that's a protected swamp in some way?

Yeah, the two duplexes that are next to that generally are full of water any time we have a rainstorm that's significant, if I put it that way. Can we go to the next one? Which would be my last questions. So this is the White Hills drainage improvement and be your neighborhood. And that is White Park that you're targeting there, right? And that's that same pond that's sort of on the other side of the thing. So we're using that whole area for two full neighborhoods, I guess. That was my question. Okay. Then just a couple of comments. You talked about the authority over the drainage by Deer Path

Okay, and one last thing. I just think it's better to have too much than too little. So if you're looking at your plan, you know, to the extent that we can make it a little bigger so that in 50 years somebody isn't sitting here talking about this all over again, I think it would be the way to go. And I know it's expensive, but I think this is extremely important.

I have just two. One, you mentioned earlier, early in the presentation, MSU land is blocking us access to Red Cedar. There's no conversation there. Do we need it?

Okay. And then the, the 300 million, is that any part of the bonding discussion that we talked about earlier?

So I would say two things on this. One is if there are components that we need to be thoughtful about on the bonding conversation for this fall, then bringing that forward would be helpful to peel those off and understand. SRF, there's going to be a new governor. and which always uh in new legislature but always an opportunity to change how some of these programs function i'm looking because you've got inside info too but at any rate that that may be something if there's provisions that we want to think about as a community i'm sure there would be other communities that would be interested in

Yeah, no, all of the people, our current legislators, like everyone.

It may be a risk communities to qualify for it.

I mean, listen, we've had community members here with us all this time this evening. I mean, this is top of mind. We know, I know you guys are on the front lines of picking up those calls to be responsive. So it's like we need to think holistically of the financing side and how do we... move to action as quickly to build. Listen, I don't want to be a Debbie Downer like I was earlier. I hate to do that. But I mean, listen, climate change is real. I'll leave it there.

A lot of my technical questions were addressed. I just, I got to be honest with you as you were doing the presentation, you were talking about the scale of this thing. I was just, my head was spinning a little bit. And I just really appreciate the effort and expertise that has gotten us to this point here where we can actually start making the steps forward. and You know when I ran for office and wanted to do something for the city and really have an impact I think this is one of those major things that I think is a lasting impact for long before after Hopefully still here but in the position

So one of the good things I think I'm hearing is that there's pretty strong support for action from the council on this issue. People seem to treat this as essentially an existential issue, and it is, right? So a couple of reactions. In line with the scale of the whole project, I'm trying to... $309 million is enough zeros that you start losing track a little bit. So I tried to come up with a couple of numbers to give people a picture of where this fits. So our entire budget, including all enterprise funds, not just the general fund, but all enterprise funds, is about $150 million annually. So

Just to echo, so, you know, the reward for great work is more work, right? And so you've done great work and now it kind of sounds like we need to become famous for this study some way, right? At a policy level because no one else has done this and if we don't leverage it, then It's sort of a lost opportunity in some way. I don't know if that's feasible, but that's kind of what I'm thinking. Because a lot of people don't know this stuff, right? A couple of years ago, I made some flip comment about how solving these problems is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Well, okay, turns ou

Yeah, that's what's the cost of doing nothing. So my last comment is this is a generational project, right? This is like a longitudinal study that's going to spend 50 years and the problem with those studies is the management across the years. My question is, what are we doing so that in 10 years and 20 years, the model is still active and the results are still active and everybody who's here knows what to do with it because it's going to be guiding our decisions for a long time. It seems like that's got to be part of the project.

but also succession planning. We talk a lot about that, but here's a case where if we want this to continue to be useful, we have to plan to make sure that it stays useful.

That's right, and keep everybody active and engaged in it. Last thing that I wanted to do, we've talked a lot about the stormwater utility, and we did budget for a feasibility study, and so I wanted to ask the city manager to give us an update on sort of where we are with that.

Any final comments or questions? Mr. Meadows.

I just want to point out that two years ago, the mayor really started to talk about this. And two years into this, we are in a better position to go forward than I thought we would be, for one thing. I think there is one element, it wouldn't be the plan here, but I don't think we've completed our development standards analysis and changes that need to be done that will support this all the way through. I know you're the liaison to the Planning Commission, but I think we need to get that done. When you mention mid-sized city, that's great, but we're also the third most educated community in the

Any further questions? Anything else we need to know from your perspective? I shouldn't have asked. But I want to thank everybody on our staff, but also HDR. There's a couple of other people sitting behind. And thank you for all your presence at the community meetings and so forth. It really was a big and deeply engaged team. So we're really grateful for your involvement with this. OK. With that, thank you for the presentation, which was also beautifully crafted, I have to say. All the presentations were focused and on target and efficient, and so thank you for this. I'm really glad it's part

And I want to thank our community members here who stayed all night long for four hours just to listen to this.

okay great so that concludes that item which brings us to our very last item which is adjournment is there a motion move to motion by Grigsby second by Whelan to adjourn it's 11 10 p.m. or all those in favor of adjourning please say aye aye any opposed that motion carries we are adjourned at 11 10 p.m.