City Council - Regular Meeting

We call the election commission meeting to order. Clerk, please call the role. Commissioner Gerainy here. Stringham here. Felder here. Here. Still here. Bining here. Mayor Clark here. So, uh, next. So this is our meeting of the election commission uh for the May 5th, 2026 special election. So everything we decide tonight will will be just for that election. Um the first item of business is the approval of minutes from um October 6th and October 28 of 2025. Thank you. And if there's no comments on the uh minutes, we need a motion to approve.

Motion to approve the minutes from October 6th and October 28th, 2025. Second. Motion from Commissioner Hayer support by Commissioner Stillgrave to approve the minutes. We can do all in favor. All in favor say I. I. I. Thank you. Next, please. Uh the next item is the item 5844, resolution delegating election duties to the clerk treasurer. It's in your packet. It remains um fairly unchanged uh from previous resol previous copies of the resolution. Right. It's here in the resolution or if there's any questions on the resolution. If not, we're looking for a motion. Councilwoman Geriney,

I'll move to approve a resolution delegating duties to the clerk treasurer for a purpose of conducting the May 5th, 2026 special election. Support motion by Commissioner Command, supported by Commissioner uh Stringham. All in favor sign. All in favor say I.

I opposed. Thank you. Next item, please. The next item is item 5847, election inspector appointments for the May 6, 2026 election. So I gave um you a copy of that at your desk. Uh there is one inspector um Billoy who is actually going to be the chair or co-chair at precinct 1. He is a D. So there will be balance between the R Carl Kramer and Billoy who is going to be a D. Um everything else is is uh no other comments on anything else. Any questions on the election inspectors? If not, uh a motion.

Councilwoman Stringham. I move to approve the election inspector assignment list as provided by the clerk treasurer. Support motion by uh Commissioner Stringer, support by Commissioner Germanian item 5847. All in favor say I. I. opposed. Thank you. Next, please. The next item is item 5849 and uh this is clerk's authority to appoint election inspectors. All this does is allow me to add um election inspectors if necessary uh without coming to the election commission first. Any questions on item 5849? If not, a motion counser

move to app Resolution delegating authority to treasur to make appointments of election inspectors for the purpose of conducting the May 2026 special election support motion from commissioner still support by commissioner Vining on item 5849 clerk please call I'm sorry all in favor say I I opposed thank you

um the next item is item 5846 approval of AV counting boards you'll notice in the motion that it says move to authorize a maximum imum of two absentee counting boards. Um, which I there's a typo there. Um, I did that because I'm not entirely certain we'll need two. So, of course, I'll I'll decide that. But I wanted the flexibility to be able to have two if necessary. Any questions? If not, a motion. I can make a motion. Okay. Uh, Commissioner Germaine

move to authorize maximum of two absentee count boards to be administered by clerk treasure Lavoy at her designate for the May 5th, 2026 special election at Monroe City Hall. Supported by Commissioner Germaine for Commissioner Stringham item 5846. All in favor say I. I. Opposed?

All right. The next item is um item 5845. And this um just gives authorization to have our absentee counting boards pre-process uh ballots if there is a if there are enough to warrant it so that we're finished very early in the evening um on the actual election day. Okay. Any comments? Uh, Commissioner Stra, I'll move to authorize absentee counting boards for the May 5th, 2026 election to process and tabulate absentee voter ballots subject to all applicable state laws on any of the days allowed under state law prior to the May 5th, 2026 special election. Second.

There's a motion by uh Commissioner String by Commissioner Felder on 5845. Clerk, I'm sorry. Uh, all in favor say I. I opposed. Thank you.

All right. The final item on the regular agenda is item 5848. It's the need to schedule a public accuracy test. Um that is where we need a quorum of the election commission. We generally hold it the week uh prior to the election. However, I will be at the treasure um certification training to get some additional um professional certification for for my job as treasurer. So, if we could hold it the week of the 20th, um perhaps near the end of the week, that would be great. And we need four election commission members. It there's only one item on the ballot and there are six items to six ballots to put through the tabulator for the test. However, we are now mandated we are required to uh test the uh voter assist terminals as well. So, that's going to just add a a little bit of extra time, but it should still be I would say 30 to 45 minutes roughly. So, looking at the city calendar, uh the Friday the 24th is um 9:00 is the uh manner at Arbor Day at Manor, but I I'm certain we'd be done by that time. So, that's probably not it. So, if you're later in the week, if there's any

uh date in which seems to work. I I'm available the 22nd, 3rd, and 4th, and we've started at 7:30 in the past, and I'm happy to do that again. So, I'm available. So, is there a date? We need to fill in the date in in this but we don't first got to see what four people we have. I'm available those days. So our usuals. Okay. So we we have five at least here if not six. So do you want the names now or do you want to fill them in by we respond? Um so I saw I saw Robert Clark, Kathy Stringham, Michelle Gerainy, Mike Hater and then of course any other election commissioners and Dev Strave. So any any election commissioners are welcome to come. We just need at least a minimum of four.

Okay. So, and and that is going to be then on which day we didn't find is all good. Any day. I don't care. Well, we on the 23rd. So, we don't have to you have a fallback date in case something comes up that uh consumes everybody's time. So, I think the 23rd is good. And um 7:30 on the 23rd. And you have the names. I have the names. So, just need Commissioner Feller. Uh just a point on that motion. I believe that's for the May 5th election, not the May 6th. Oh, yes it is. Thank you. There's a typo. Um in the packet it says May 6th. I believe it's for the 5th. Yep. So just a note. Thank you.

No problem. Okay. So I have the we'll need a motion to hold it the at public accuracy test for the May 5th election on the 23rd at April 23rd at 7:30. Commissioner Stringham. I move to hold the P public accuracy test for the May 5th, 2026 a general election on April 23rd at 7:30 a.m. at city hall with the test to be conducted by the commissioners. Do I have to mention them or that's fine. The ones that we talked about,

don't make me start laughing now. There's a a motion from Commissioner Stringers board by Commissioner Stillgrave on item 5848. Uh clerk, you want roll call. All in favor? All in favor say I. I posed. Very well. Thank you. Uh there are no further items on the agenda and I have no comments this evening. Any comments from commissioners? Seeing none, I know this seems tedious, but it's it's required. So I appreciate everybody's patience as we get through the elections commission because it is important that we ma uh manage these items uh in today's elections clerk if there's nothing further further. So

here for citizens comments any comments from those present here this evening seeing none at this time I'll adjourn we should take a motion a motion to adjurnn. Sorry that's okay to commissioner Germany supported by commissioner her to adjurnn. All in favor say I. I I opposed. Thank you.

Thank you. here.

Here Bining here. Mayor Clark here. Next item, please. The next item is any public comment. As we start the work session this evening, any comments from those present here this evening? Any public comments? Seeing none. Um, next item, please. The next item is the work session agenda item 5821 2026 27 goals and objectives presentation.

Thank you, manager Robinson. and honorable council members. Um, as you know, as we began this process at the beginning of the year and we had the January 10th work session that we all worked through and this year as we did this, we kind of uh put our thoughts into strategic visioning and with coming up with specific tasks that would fall under the the goals and objectives. And I think that we've had um many conversations and work sessions and and and interaction between the administration and council members in order to establish the list and the the consensus from the council members was the goals and objectives are fine that the way they were from the 2425 the way they were they were broad enough to cover the same directions we were going. And so what we did is we refreshed the uh the visual document by our our uh communications division putting our uh city colors etc in that and and now we have that but we also put together and and and you'll see I I left it on on your your desk there and it's been forwarded before it was showing it was the list of the prioritized tasks that council provided to the administration of things they wanted to be completed within this time period over this 2-year session of of city council. And it's obviously going to be a living task list. And as we go through the year, there'll be times that you will add things to this list. And we'll continue to add things to this list. But from the list that we started with, you can see that all of the items at some point fit within one of the goals and

objectives. out of the five goals and objectives that we have and the many objectives underneath each goal, they all fit within those areas, which I think was a a verifying role that the goals and objectives were accurate for this upcoming two-year session. And I think the idea of putting the strategic vision that you as a council have towards the things that you want to see specifically accomplished during this time period and relative time periods. If you remember we did an exercise where we wanted what you thought needed to be done within the first 6 months and then what after one year and then what was everlasting out through that. Well, so we have created all this in a document, but I think uh what the administration did is we went back and we had our think tank and and um people from our economic development office and our communication department and everybody participated and we came up with an actual uh Gant chart that uh I provided in front of you, but Mark is going to put it in on the on the thing where each one of These tasks will be in the um the uh the Gant chart and then there's two versions of this. There's ones that can be public facing that you you guys will be able to access right from our website to see where their progress is. And then we also have an internal one where we have a couple different columns that um give us certain target dates, who's assigned to to accomplishing the task, etc. like that to help us track internally while we work through these uh these tasks that you have given. and

and you know after last week's uh the last city council meetings agenda and this city council agenda, there's going to be a lot of uh changes to this Gant chart as we go forward as we continue to complete a lot of these things. Now Mark, would you like to explain a little more about how this chart came to be and what it can do?

Sure. Um good evening honorable mayor, city council, clerk treasure Lavoy. Um, so this was a chart that we put together that sort of sets out the vision for the remainder of your term. Um, we went item by item and looked at where where we were at with each item as well as what actions are needed to be taken for each item to begin to schedule those out both for the remainder of this year and also all of next year um based on the prioritization that you discussed when we gathered um back in March. So each of those items that are on the the word document, the list uh that the city manager provided um we have here this is the public facing version of this document. Um the behind thescenes document that uh we're going to use as administration lays out exactly who's responsible for each task, which goal it relates to um that we kind of use as an accountability and and tracker um internally. But there's also another document where we're going to work with each department head um excuse me each director for each of these items. What are the steps that we need to take to get to resolution or to move these items forward and then how are we scheduling those out? So this document is just a snapshot for you and as the city manager indicated, we're working with the communications department to have this available publicly as well. Um so that if you get a question or if you can uh awake in the middle of the night at 2 am wondering about an issue and when this is going to be brought up um this will be a tool that you'll be able to log on to the city council page of the website is where it will live because it's your goals and objectives um and pull up this chart. Now this chart is also going to be updated regularly. So the other chart that lists each and every step for each of these goals will feed into this

chart. So those tasks are going to be driven. We've got um that broken out by month. So we're looking at um for example the uh data centers update was already done. Um but we did that in the first quarter of 2026. So there was uh I think in February we discussed that um there was a mark in February which updated this chart to now show that is uh complete at least in the sense of this uh particular item where council wanted to have a discussion and an update on it. So this will be our way to communicate to you um all of your priorities and when they will fall in the calendar um certainly you know based on priorities the the ebikes um that is planning to come to you uh yet this quarter um because we know that is a seasonal item and so that is how we based on based out the timing but uh I'm I don't want to speak for the city manager but if you have thoughts or input on this it's it's a living document as he indicated So

that's excellent. I have one question. Can I speak? So how often do we get the reports? Quarterly. It'll be updated because it's it's a lot to control.

Quarterly. You can get them as often as you would want, but uh at a minimum I would think you'd want them quarterly, but you should be able to look at them because they will be updated probably weekly or bi-weekly at at the latest. You know, we're and this will also be something is if you reach out to me and you have a new task that fits the the mold of our strategic visioning, that is something that needs to be documented in here. That's not just something that's a quick phone call. I get an answer for you and and call you back. But if it's something more of that's going to take uh you know the administration and different departments to accomplish something, it'll be added to this list as well and we'll put a timelines in and all that. But yes, quarterly at a minimum we can uh I can actually generate a report in one of my manager update reports to you and uh you'll see exactly where you're at.

All right. Thank you. Other other questions? So Mark I and the manager I see that you know for instance the data center one it's an update and of course we received an update and there's possibility there' be additional information that might be important for council to have. I I just saw an article two days ago and I thought, "Oh, this is interesting." And I know the things that may be of importance or significance that while we've done the update and it just can't linger it just because there may be new information, but I would think that it's information came through that might say, "Oh, this something they could send out through a um just a correspondence type thing or attachment or however they get a hold." So, council has the opportunity to read it if they haven't seen it. You know, we get those. It would be great.

Perfect. any other comments? I don't see them. So, as I look through the list, I I see there's some that don't have anything in the boxes. That doesn't mean they weren't important because they're on the list. So, there may be things that just aren't um don't have a kickoff date, so to speak. Uh because we have things of I think are on here that don't have a a start point yet. and doesn't mean it not is may not come up in, you know, by the end of this year or even next year of this term, but it's just not placed yet because there's maybe some additional information or research. I'm just I'm thinking why it's not there. I some may some may fall off may not be something we get to, but if it something did come up, we'd be able to insert that. Correct. Yes. If you if you found something.

Exactly.

Okay. If I may too, partly the some of the ones that don't have um a start or a targeted end date are because these are indicators that you have told us it's an ongoing priority to build into our everyday work. So um I I would say an example of that is about foster a culture of civic participation. There is no start date to start that and there's no end date to that. But um if you adopt your council goals and objectives this evening, you're telling administration that that is a priority for council as we're doing our daily work and carrying out our our duties uh in administration that this is a priority for you and we will look for ways to weave that um into uh our processes, procedures, and practices.

That's what I was actually looking at when you're saying that. So just cuz I think we do that and we look for that. At the same time, it might just be be a a uh event or opportunity to present itself that the city uh the city council kind of weighs into or it could be a community item that we just support as well. Okay. Other thoughts or questions? I don't see any. Well, just so the council knows, this will be popping back up on our agenda later tonight for you to formally adopt the goals and object objectives for this session of council.

Yep. It's well noted, it was stated that there's I can see right off the at the start here that have second quarter is targeted complete. There's items on tonight's agenda that are related to some of those that will be uh quickly transitioning to a different uh stage. So, I appreciate the uh um compiling it all and I think back when we had our Saturday goals and object uh objectives work session and information and uh get this compiled. So, I appreciate all the all the work done by uh administration and staff. I think we're done. Anything else? Something next. That should be it. Just the next item.

Just the next item. Let me take I mean there's it's like cliffhanger here. So uh clerk our next item is the next item is item 5825 overview of state legislation to preempt local zoning authority for housing. Thank you manager Robinson.

Yes your honor. is as I think we have touched on before in conversation that there are are a series of bills that have been brought into the legislature have all having to do with housing. And I know in some of my roles serving on the public service commission with the MML, this was a shocker to the MML. They were not consulted or advised of of any of these things because a lot of the items that have been put through by these the the legislators that authored this really didn't consult anybody locally and on the effects it would have on on local um on the the local planning and and uh the locals having a say in their their own zoning etc. Um, some um there's been a lot actually a lot of cities that are putting together resolutions to formally send to their legislators about opposing these bills. And I think this is where Mark's going to talk a little more about the, you know, partnership over preeemption of of these uh these legislative acts that are currently in our in our uh house. Mark. Mark.

Uh, good evening. So, um, we wanted to bring this down to a local level. So, we some of us were at the MML Capcon and heard a lot about housing. You all received the emails from the Michigan Municipal League and Simco and other partners to talk about uh these bills that really take away our authority to address the challenges with trying to encourage more housing. Um and we wanted to uh both take a step back and think about what where we've come with housing in our city. Um what we have been able to accomplish on our own um and then what these bills would mean for us and then what the next steps are. So, um, if we go back, uh, coming off the heels of the conversation of your council goals and objectives, um, last term, the last two terms, this has been one of your priorities to talk about how we address the housing challenges across the whole spectrum in the city from affordable housing to lack of housing to the need for different formats, um, activating city-owned property for the purposes of housing. And so, um, with that being one of your priorities, we have participated in 2021, this work actually started. Um, but in 2022, the state of Michigan released a statewide housing plan. And as part of that plan, they broke up the state into 14 different regions. Um, and Monroe County is part of what is called region K, which is a Southeast Michigan Housing Partnership. That partnership meets on a regular basis to look at within our region uh which includes the uh mineral lenay Jackson um county outside of uh Ann Arbor and some of the western communities um how as as more rural communities and with urban areas sprinkled in how are we addressing housing? And so each of the 14 regions

also develop their own housing goals. So, if you'd like, we can provide you a copy of that. If again, you're up at 2 a.m. wondering how region K is uh planning to address housing, we've got that for you. But in the original 2022 goal, the state established a goal across the entire state um to build 75,000 new housing units. Uh a couple years later, they came back and updated that to 115,000 housing unit uh goals or units. Two years later, as part of that housing plan, MISTA put forward a couple different programs that we were able to tap into uh through what's called the My Neighborhood program. If this sounds familiar to you, it's because we received $50,000 from MISTA to update our zoning ordinance to tackle housing overall. Um we also received uh $75,000 for the Altrusa Park development because they looked at how do you lift up neighborhoods? How do you lift up communities to encourage more housing? But the one we're going to focus on is the $50,000 that we received from the state as an incentive to update our zoning ordinance. And so uh in 2024, we got to work uh working with the planning commission and other stakeholders. Uh we looked at all of our districts in our zoning ordinance that were zoned for residential whether they were traditional R1, R2, R3 or residential mixed development areas, commercial Monroe, commercial telegraph. Um, we looked at each and everyone and each and every property within those districts and thought about um to update and and address some of these items that the state recommended we look at what is unique, what it what should our city do that's best for us and best for our neighborhoods. Um and so in uh this past July, city council adopted um the outcome of that grant and all that hard

work that went into that document where we looked at things like minimum parking um before for and we'll go through the chart to see what we updated. Um but we reduced the minimum parking that was required for each housing unit in order to allow for more space on the lot for housing development. We looked at what are our setbacks. Do we have such large setbacks that it's preventing um efficient housing to be built? What is the minimum lot size? Uh multi-units by right. So, this is a a hot topic in the state right now about duplexes. Um and where should we allow for the transition of a single unit residence or a single family residence into a duplex? And so we looked at all of our neighborhoods, uh, accessory dwelling units, uh, granny flats, in-law suites, whatever you want to call them. Uh, it's converting an accessory unit on the property. Typically, that's a garage or a large shed or something like that into a a residential living unit. Most of the time it's for multi-generational households, but um, we allow those in our zoning ordinance. Now, cottage court developments. Um, there's a great visual for this, but it's where on one property you may have, uh, four or six residential detached units, smaller formats from about 500 800 square ft, but they face each other with a common courtyard. So, it creates um smaller format housing, but it also creates a sense of community and neighborhood on a in a more dense fashion on one lot. And then we also looked at live work units where you may have a home occupation plus uh somebody living at the at the property as well. And so our zoning ordinance we updated across the board in July 2025 which or yeah adopted in July which all of those standards were somehow um all in these packages of bills that were introduced at the state the preeemption

bills and we'll we'll go through those but um the state incentivized us and said for you to address housing we'll give you funds to because it takes time we need expertise to do that. Um, and we took advantage of that and carried that forward, but we made sure that the changes we made were right for Monroe. And then this year, a series of housing bills were introduced at the state level, as the city manager indicated, much to the surprise of a lot of people. Um, that would take all of our authority away to regulate many of the things that I just talked about. Um, it would create a blanket set of regulations that would have to be followed in every community across the state of Michigan. Um, in every neighborhood across the state of Michigan, um, a one-sizefitsall approach um, and and takes away our authority, which is a core government function to address land use uh, in our own community. So, real quickly, I'm going to go through these, but um, these are the packages. I didn't print them all for you, but we can send the links if you'd like to read them. Um, House Bill 5529 and 5530 really deals with minimum lot sizes. So, saying that we cannot have a minimum lot size greater than,500 square ft. And I've got some visuals cuz I know it's hard to think, well, how big is 1500 square ft? Um, when you think about all of the neighborhoods that we have across the city. Um but uh in general all of ours are about 4,000 square feet or more is what we require even after our revisions. So you see it drastically reduces the size of a lot a minimum property. Um study requirements. House Bill 5531 uh if somebody is proposing a development we can request certain studies. So in our zoning ordinance a lot of times we look at infrastructure capacity studies. Um we look at traffic studies. uh what would a traffic impact

be? And we can require those and under this bill, we can still require those before a development uh or application is turned in for site plan. But it does create a 60-day decision shot clock for us. So, if we get a site plan today, city uh planning commission or administration has to act within 60 days to either approve, deny, or conditionally approve. Um and it also limits afterwards what kind of uh studies we can request after that. House Bill 5532 um expands the qualifying petition area to 300 ft and sets a 60% signature threshold. What that means is if we have a zoning ordinance that um someone may say makes no sense or it's restrictive and uh the zoning enabling act allows for somebody to file a petition against the city to amend that. Um right now they have to they the requirements are 100 ft from the property line and you have to get 20% of the signatures uh for one in five property owners within 100 ft. Now we're required to go out 300 feet and 60%. So you're requiring more people to protest against this than what's required right now. And that's state law, not our ordinance. Uh dwelling size. So um this says anywhere across the state of Michigan, uh we cannot require a property, we cannot state a minimum area for a house to be more than 500 square ft. So, right now, uh, and I've got a chart that shows where we're at right now, so we'll come back to that. Uh, House Bill 5582 says that we cannot, uh, set a requirement that more than one parking space per unit in a multifamily residential use of a property. So, if you, and uh, this is our ordinance right now. It used to be

one and a half cars or autos. Now, we require one auto per unit. So, if you have a five unit uh structure with five housing apartments in it, we cannot say you have to have more than five parking spaces for that. A lot of challenges come with that that that I'll show. Um but also, this is one I think that that sneaks in that some people don't or realize. Uh under this bill, mobile homes would be required in any residential zone. Um, and this is not what we think of when because we've done presentations with council in recent years about manufactured homes where these are stickuilt offsite, brought to the site in sections and assembled on the site. These are your traditional mobile homes which means it's built on a chassis and designed uh to be used as a dwelling with or without a permanent foundation when connected to utilities that includes plumbing, heating, air conditioning, electrical system contained in the structure. So, this is your traditional mobile home. Right now, the city only allows those in mobile home parks in our zoning ordinance. We do not allow them in other uh residential districts, but we do allow for manufactured homes or those prefab homes because that is becoming a very efficient way to build a house to have it assembled, mass-produced under one structure, and brought to the site in pieces and assembled. So, we're talking about two different things. Um, House Bill 5583 talks about setback requirements and we'll talk about what ours are right now. Um, but in if this were to pass in any of our residential districts, we cannot set a setback of greater than 15 ft from the front property line. So, think about from the sidewalk to the front of the the house. We couldn't say it has to be more than 15 ft. Um, also the property lines, we would be required um to have nothing

more than 5 feet from the side lots and 5t from the rear lot. And I've got a photo, a demonstration that shows what that would look like. Uh, duplexes by right. This would require that any residential district, uh, anybody would be able to, uh, either build or, um, change a single unit into a duplex. um there would be no special use requirements for that um like we previously had and this is one that we did update. So in our zoning ordinance right now in any residential district we allow duplexes by right and then uh house bill 5585 talks about the accessory dwelling units and mandating that these be required or permitted in any residential district. But the kicker here is that you are prohibited from using these for density calculations. So right now when we have a lot, you can only cover that lot to a certain maximum percentage because that is to encourage yard space, green space. You can't have a 20x 25 lot and put a 20x 25 house on it. You can't cover that whole lot. Um right now in our zoning ordinance what we use to calculate that is both accessory uh building so a detached garage the house sheds um we have a maximum amount that that lot can be covered. Um if somebody were to build an accessory dwelling unit we couldn't use that as our calculation. We couldn't uh require additional parking requirements. So remember that last slide said we can't require more than one parking space per residential unit. The conflict here is accessory dwelling units are considered a residential unit but we cannot require parking be provided for those and then we can't require an owner occupancy. And then this also again restates that mobile homes would be allowed in a residential zone.

Questions on that so far and thoughts? It's a lot. It is a lot. I know we've had uh these House bills come before us and sent uh through whether it be the Lager or SAMCOG, but um Kathy, I'm I'm just wondering like you had mentioned quickly a few things that we had put in place. Can you summarize which ones would be changed or maybe if you already got that in your That's the next three slides. Oh, Kelly, I was just curious, Mark, on the ADU ADUs. You said um converted buildings. Does that apply to new builds? Yep.

And then with the cottage style, they're generally between five and 800 square feet. Um do we allow for any smaller or would this bill allow for any smaller? Because um I'm thinking tiny houses. When you say cottage style houses and Most of them are around 400 square ft. They could be even smaller.

So, where the 500 ft comes in is the state building code requires a certain percentage uh for a residential dwelling unit. And that's where our code update came in for 500, but we do go as low as 400, I believe, for an accessory dwelling unit. And I I believe that's how the state based their um calculation to based on the state building code. Thank you. Mhm. Okay.

Okay. So, the next few um slides on the left talk about what are we talking about. In the middle is what the state if these bills were to pass what the requirement would be. And on the right is where we where our ordinance currently stands. So, even after the changes. So again, parking um for any residential dwelling unit, the state preeemption standard would be one parking space including guest parking per dwelling unit. So if you've got five in a apartment building, you provide five parking spaces, you're not allowed to say where guests have to park. That would be up to the guest to figure out. Um but that is in line with also our zoning ordinance right now except we we do require if you have an accessory dwelling unit on your lot that there is also has to be parking provided for that. So we tweet we treat accessory dwelling units as a residential unit and require parking to be considered for that. to make this park in a driveway.

So, we can uh under the state standard, we would say you can have a driveway, but you can't have more than one parking space. So, if the if there is a single family house or a single unit house and an accessory dwelling unit, the state is telling us we can only require for that property only one parking space. So, somebody could build a driveway that only accommodates one vehicle. And if there's a challenge with on street parking, which we hear quite a bit about, they have to find an on street parking space, but we can't require it be dedicated for that housing unit. Um, mobile homes. So, uh, again, the package of bills, we would not be able to exclude mobile homes from any residential district. Um, and in our zoning ordinance right now, we only permit them. We have a m it's called MHP which is a manufactured um or mobile home park district where we allow for mobile homes. So um the next is minimum lot size. So the state is telling us that uh we if these were to pass that we would be allowed to require no more than 1500 square ft for uh detached single family residents if it's served by public water and public sewer. Um, again, when we updated our zoning ordinance, we went district by district and um I can show you the map uh or provide the map where you can see where all these districts are, but we also condensed them down because we used to have a bunch of different residential districts and we condensed it down to make it not so confusing. Um R1, which are traditional neighborhoods that have single family or single unit housing, our minimum lot size is 6,000 square feet. And then R2, R3, um we go 4,800 to 4,000 square feet. And then RM, which is residential mix, where uh think about those areas as um

uh where they have mixed use or neighborhood mixed use. Those the minimum lot size is 6,000 square ft. So a drastic change where in an R1 district right now, we require 6,000, but we would be required a minimum lot size of,500 square ft. uh dwelling size. So again um we could not say that a minimum area has to be greater than fi 500 square feet. Right now our zoning code if you have a singlestory house it the minimum square feet is 800 square ft in all zoning districts. Um but if it's a twostory then the first floor of that house can be 600 square ft because then you've got upper stories that are also adding more living space. Um, and Councilwoman Bining, to your uh question, for accessory dwelling units, we do uh go down to 400 square feet for those for efficiency apartments or efficiency living units. Mar right now if if I'm propos say I'm proposing a um 600 square foot and and I come to the city with my proposal and you deny it due about because it's um the 600 square ft

for a single story. Could I go? Is there a recourse for me to go uh a next step to maybe get approval to do my particular project?

Sure. So, anytime somebody wants to um propose a development that varies from the zoning ordinance, the recourse is the zoning board of appeals. So, you would make a file a request before the zoning board. I take that back. There's two things. You can request a reszoning or a zoning amendment for the city to update the zoning ordinance to allow for that. Or if that is denied or you don't want to go that route for your particular property, you can go before a zoning board of appeals, then there's certain criteria that they have to follow in order to consider that. That's what's called a dimensional variance. So there's dimensional and use variance. Um, and when whenever we look at these, it's not just the square footage of the house that we look at, but also the setback requirements. So, and that's that's the next slide. So, we look at the development as a whole, but that is the the option that anybody is afforded,

Michelle. So, if to be considered twotory, does that include the basement or is one floor and then upstairs? main story that's considered the first floor and then the second story above above grade. Thank you. Mhm.

So for setback requirements again this package of bills would require that we can't say a property has to be um more than 15 ft uh from the front property line and then 5t on each side or the rear of the the property. So right now in our R1 district, these are our traditional single uh unit houses or single family houses. Uh for front yards, we require 25 ft. Um 35 ft from the rear property line for the backyard. And then we do say uh if you only have one sideyard, so if you're on a corner lot, uh 5 ft from that sideyard. But if you're if your house is in the middle of the block and you have two sideyards, then you have to be 15 a total of 15 feet. Um, in the R2 and R3, it varies slightly. Um, you can see instead of 15 ft, it's 14 ft. Um, we had some discussion on this in the office last week, how important that that 1 foot was in the R1 district. Um, and that's something we can take a look at. And then the RM district, which again is the more mixeduse residential, it's 16 feet on either side. So again, quite a change when you're looking at dimensions and setbacks of houses from the property lines. And then um the duplex by right, if the state laws were to pass, we would be required to mandate uh we would be mandated to permit duplexes in any zoning district where single family residences are allowed. and we cannot subject them to any different standards from a single family residence. So, um we did update our zoning ordinance and in any residential district you you are permitted by right to have a duplex. Um but we do have slightly different standards for duplexes uh like entryways, porches, including parking um

from single family uh single family residences. And then again, accessory dwelling units uh permitted by right uh in the state laws uh in any zoning district not subject to a public hearing. We would be prohibited from calculating those in lot coverage, parking requirements and owner occupancy requirements. We do not require owner occupancy by the way um and permit mobile homes in any residential district. Right now, we do allow by right accessory dwelling units in any zoning district that's residential. Um, however, as I mentioned, we do require that one parking space be provided for those as well. And then the the protest position uh petition, our ordinance does not speak to this because it's mandated by the state. So right now again if somebody doesn't like the ordinance they have and want to submit a protest uh anybody who's within 100 ft 20% of the property owners not the occupants have to sign that petition. Uh that would be increased to 300 ft of the property line. So a greater area and 60% of the property owners within 300 ft would have to sign that protest petition. I'm just curious why would they uh take such a huge jump there? You have any thoughts on that?

The best way I can say make it frankly is harder to change because it's much harder to get 60% of property owners with 300 ft than it may be if you only have five properties within 100 ft. you only have to get one of them to sign for it to be considered before council. But if I have do the leg work and get 60% of everybody within a greater area, it's going to make it a little harder to get it across. So

So that's the the language in the bills and the language in our current zoning ordinance and what would change. The next several slides are just to provide you some examples from across the city. So, um, this one is right out on Second Street. Um, this is for perspective. Uh, in the upper right hand corner, that's the city employee parking lot. And then the upper leftand corner, that's the corner with the city hall parking lot. So, this is on Second Street. And you'll see this is a 2,35 square foot lot. So, if we were if the bills were to pass, we would have to take about five 535 feet off of that lot to make it smaller. Um, that property, if you can see the house, it's set back 10 ft from the front yard, which would fall in line with the state law because it would require 15 ft set back. Um but uh the six-foot sideyard setback um the house could be expanded out further to the property line on each side by a foot. Um and then the state law would also require a 5 foot rear yard setback. So um this one right now is 10 ft off the rear yard. Um and then again 2 ft on the other side currently. So, this is not conforming with our existing zoning code, but uh this house is also 784 square ft on the first floor. So, they exceed the minimum, which would be permitted. Um, but if you were to break up this entire lot, we measured it out by acres. Um, you can see right now there's about uh 2 4 6 8 probably about 20 houses on this block. Um, with the new dimensions, uh, this could be carved up into 50 new lots with mobile homes, add on top of that an accessory dwelling unit perhaps on each lot and require a

maximum of 50 parking spaces on that on that block alone. Um, and also for perspective, this is a historic district, so the houses um are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but we wanted to give you the perspective. Right now, there's about 20 houses on that lot. With the new new dimensions, this could fit 50 new lots on this lot. And also, they could be duplexes. So, we can only require you would be uh required to provide 100 parking spaces if they were all duplexes in that situation. Um this is another one uh in green 111 West Fifth Street. This is getting closer to the size of the minimum lots that the state would require us. Uh this lot and you can see the building outline uh faintly within the 111. Uh this one is about 1,600 uh square ft. Take another 100 off that. Um it's got a 13 ft front yard set back. So about where the state law would be. Um the rear yard setbacks and the sideyard setbacks are um little off. Those go nearly to the the property line on the one side. Um on the east side border in 109, it does have a zero foot setback. So it's built right on the property line. Uh and this house is about 572 ft. So it's about the size of a house that uh would be the new minimum lot size. So, if we broke this entire lot up, especially with the alley going through, this could be 63 new lots, double that if they were all duplexes, turned into about 126 new residential units. Um, and you can see what that would do when we think about our infrastructure and storm water. Having the the backyards, having the yard space, the green space helps absorb some

of that. Um, but if these are completely built out, where is all that storm water going to go and how is that going to be absorbed? Uh, we would have to look at our sewer system capacity. Um, so this one will be the next several slides. This is 381 Armmitage Drive. Um, so Armmitage Drive is in the um the western end of the city. The vacant space behind it is Mson Park. So that gives you perspective. Um 381 Armmitage is about 9,000 square ft. Um it's got a 21 ft front yard setback. So we would have to if a new house were to be built on that lot today and the state laws were in effect, they would have to move it about 6 ft closer to the sidewalk. Um it does have a five yard 5 foot sideyard setback on the south side. You see that? Um, it's got a large backyard at 82 feet, but again, we would only be required to permit five feet there instead of uh the larger backyard. And then the the one sideyard on PAC uh right now is 23 ft. So, we would be required to take that back another about 18 ft for the minimum. And then this has 984 square ft. So, about 400 square ft more. uh this single lot alone could be six new lots um especially with the configuration on arbitrage and pacing. So take that same block um the next few slides. So, imagine this is not Elm, this is Pac. Um, we did play with Chat or Gemini AI a little bit to help create these graphics, but uh imagine uh we've got PAC Avenue and Armmitage just like that. And so, the dimensions that you see in between Crampton and Armmitage

are the same size as these lots. Generally, it's about 60 by 130. Um each of these houses on the first floor is about 800 square feet. They each have one parking space. Um we did ask for the houses to be situated 15 ft from the front setback and 5 ft from the side and rear setbacks. So these are in general situation the the current situation on Pacin Armmitage and Crarampton. Um, what we did was plugged in the new state standards and said, "What would this neighborhood look like if these were all turned into 1500 square feet lots with 5t front year or side and rear setbacks uh 500 square ft with one parking space uh and a 15 ft front yard setback and this is what the neighborhood would then look like. Um, so you would be about tripling the number of houses on that lot. um looking at the st the same street configuration, the same street layout. Um we did not calculate storm water and and sewer uh service on these lots, but that gives you an idea of how if these laws were enacted across the city, how all of our neighborhoods could one by one be transformed and changed based on the one-sizefits-all approach that the state has um considered. Also, we looked at our historic district and where um this is Washington Street. Um we took out one of the houses. So, say one of the houses falls into disrepair, um if that house were to be removed in the future, if this law if these laws become uh enacted, a mobile home could go there. So when we think about our community and the diversity of our neighborhood and the characteristics of all of our neighborhoods, if the state were to pass all these laws, we would lose all control and all authority to still make these changes and still

address housing while keeping the context of the neighborhood because they take that away um in this one-sizefits-all approach. So obviously this is a rendering thanks to Gemini. Um but it it gives you um and it's it's you know certainly not a statement on the validity of mobile homes as as a h housing units. Um but we look at this being the national register um and how we can uh address housing while still fitting the format and character of the neighborhood. Uh if the state law were to pass, we would lose a lot of that authority. Any questions before we go on to the next steps? Um, Andrew,

my understanding is that with current uh city zoning policy and um zoning law, zoning ordinances that are in place, we could establish a PUD that prioritizes density and um affordability of homes in uh essentially deliberately and constructively uh put a neighborhood similar to the one that you had on the screen a couple of minutes ago. There you go. um through deliberate choice of the neighbors who want to live there in in the city establishing that that PUD it's it's within our ability to allow for that now if there is a desire on the residents to do so

what this would say is that we're going to the the state policy is going to preempt all local control over that process that we already have the capability of doing ourselves and essentially saying we're going to give you no say so over how you construct the neighborhoods take away any local character and make homes that are radically dissimilar from one another and not architecturally uniform within the same neighborhood.

Um and and so I would just, you know, in addition to the other infrastructure demands that it puts on a neighborhood, um it's it's it's easy to see that that this council has stood in opposition to uh to state preeemption to local control in the past and I intend that we do so again in the future. Um, you know, if if there is a desire, I know that density has been a priority for us in the past as we examine new and different housing types to try and explore that, but that needs to be done deliberately um with the um with the the consultation of the residents and the council rather than just the state preeemption. So, I I appreciate you bringing this forward and um having the presentation, mayor,

if I may. Sure. So, a couple examples to speak to what what you just said. The fire station site, I think, is one example. Um, that right now, I believe, is an R3 district. So, council with the planning commission updated that to a PUD, and we're working with Woda Cooper on a three-story residential development there, which wouldn't otherwise be allowed under the R3. Um, but through that process and collaboration with the developer, we we dictated what character we wanted that development to have. We said if you want to build this dense development, it needs to fit the neighborhood as well. Um, and so we looked at parking and and site situation and green space and even the for the um the materials used on the building. Um, the properties that are currently being installed or being built at Le Pleasant and Jones is another example. um that is smaller format and we did reduce the minimum square feet for those based on the lot size and the development uh working with that developer and that was zone PUD in order to make sure that all the utilities were there the site circulation uh in that move forward and then Mason Run 2.0 no was the other one. Um we cracked open that pattern book and made some significant changes to that but made sure it still fit the neighborhood um with some minor tweaks. And I think we showed with with our incentive that we got from MISTA as well as the desire and uh prioritization of council to move this forward. We showed we can do that and still achieve that without the state telling us we have to. Kathy.

So, just to clarify, I just want to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So, in this I know you're using these examples of things could be. Yeah. But if this is um an established neighborhood and the lot is being sold, let's say the house burned or was demolished, it's being sold.

How how does the state come in with this requirement? Is it still going to force something? Yeah, that's a great that's a great question. So, if there's an existing lot in an existing neighborhood and it's vacant for some reason, we own quite a few in the city, right? Vacant lots um that we are trying to reactivate right now. If somebody says, "I want to divide that up and I want to make it into different lots." We say, "Well, it has to be an 800 ft lot or or 6,000 ft lot." the state would require us to update our zoning ordinance to say they could turn that into two lots if it's 1500 square feet and it meets um they could build multiple 500 square ft residential units on that property. Uh so if it's a vacant lot, they've got every right and request to make those modifications as long as it meets our zoning ordinance and our zoning ordinance would have to meet the state laws.

Does that help? It it helps, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around the roads. The roads are already built. They're already in existence. So, if you split that up, how would that you would have a house behind a house or? Yeah. So, this is uh 381 Armmitage. So, uh you could split this up into six new 1500 ft² lots and have all of them pacing facing pacing. So, think about the singlestory apartments that were built behind Aldi at the Lazy Boy site facing Huber. That's what you could have on this lot. But what about 375? That one doesn't have the corner with an extra road, right? That's where I'm

and again, you can only require one parking space. So, somebody could say, I want to build a,000 square foot structure on that, turn it into a duplex. we can say, well, you have to have two parking spaces and you can put an accessory dwelling unit in the back, but you don't have to have parking for that. So, um, and that's when I asked uh Jim and I to do this, I said, "Please don't change the roads." So, you can see how they split it up and put two houses side by side on each lot. Some of them have a driveway, some of them don't, but you could put driveways in front of them. So, um I wanted to when I first did it, it built all new roads and turned it into a whole new development. Um but that's why I mean I it probably wouldn't happen right where somebody's going to come by this lot or this block, tear it all down and rebuild this, but it could happen a little bit at a time over time. So, it's certainly just meant to be demonstration, not a proposed development at this point. But

other questions yet? Okay, Mark. Further?

Yep. So, um, so if we're against these bills, what are we for? And so, um, I'm just going to give a quick rundown on your, um, in front of you, you do have this packet. Um, this is, and you've probably seen this before. I know Councilwoman Vine and you referenced this a couple weeks ago. This is what the Michigan Municipal League has put forward as their compromise to work with the legislature um in opposition of the current bills. But here are some compromises that we can bring forward and this is called the My Home program. So what it does, it uh provides $5 million annually for the My Home Readiness Incentive Grants. Those are like what we got, the $50,000 where they said, "We'll give you money to update it, but you need to address these things." Um, the my home grant uh funds would be available to developers. I believe it's up to 100,000 per unit for a new build, 50,000 for each rehab. Um, but it would um unlock funds if that development meets certain criteria, and we'll go through that. And then the my home fund is a revolving loan fund which is meant to provide gap financing for a developer. So in addition to a grant and you need to get additional financing to get your project across the finish line, there would be a revolving loan fund established. What that means is when I pay my loan back, it goes back into the pot for somebody else to be able to go back and uh get a loan from. Right now there is the my home employer program. This is where employers provide workforce housing. This would provide match to those programs um on an ongoing basis. And then promoting local zoning reform. And this is I think where the main difference comes in for us is uh it's sort of like the redevelopment readiness communities program where if you um enact 50% or more of the following recommendations, we would be

considered what's called housing ready. and then that would open up the opportunity to tap into those grants and loans if somebody is doing work in our community. So, they provide a long list, but you'll notice in this list um and it's three pages long, and I won't go through each of them because you have it in front of you. Um but it talks about uh for example, adopting preapproved plans. Um the MML working with partners adopted a pattern book several years ago. Um, it doesn't tell you what you have to preapprove, but as long as you have a set of pre-approved plans where if somebody comes and says, "I want to build houses in the community." We can say, "Here's a set of pre-approved plans. You're ready to go." If you're building this, you don't need additional approvals. And that's just an example. But, um, uh, I think an example, reduce allowable dwelling size. It doesn't say it has to be 500 square ft, but as long as the local unit of government is looking at that and addressing that as a zoning amendment uh to updating it based on the needs of their community, you would qualify and check that box. So, they don't push what exactly you need to adopt, but as long as you're adopting at least 50% of this list, you would qualify for that. And again, um the second point here I just wanted to call out allowing modular as a permitted use in residential. That is different than a mobile home. Modular is those pre-manufactured built and we do allow those right now across in any zoning uh residential zoning district in our city already. So, um I'm confident that if this package were to pass today, we would qualify automatically because of what we accomplished in our zoning code update recently. So, what's next? Um, on your agenda this evening, you've got a resolution uh that's a a template that as the city

manager indicated, communities across the state are starting to adopt these to signify that we're against that preeemption. Don't take away our authority. Um, and so that's on your agenda for consideration to adopt that tonight. um as well as providing that to our state reps, the M Michigan Municipal League and the Michigan Association of Planning and then um continue to work and this was this has been the stance that the Michigan Municipal League and Simco have all taken is we want to work with you on this package. As a city manager indicated, these were introduced in the dead of night without any warning to local communities. There was no collaboration in developing these laws as you can see. Um and so what uh us and the Michigan Municipal League and SIMCOG and Michigan Township Association others are saying is allow us to work with you. So, um, if you adopt the resolution tonight, we would forward that on and then be be at the table to help craft some of these and even put forth our zoning amendment changes that has been approved with some of these modifications as an example of what other communities across the state can do for the good of their own community without the one-sizefits-all approach. Any uh additional questions for Mark? I think I know that from capital conference and from those that were present at the press release at SAMCOG uh with Kathy and uh Cler Lavoy myself. Um we've we've had a lot of re uh discussion. I think that the council's at least informed and understand what they stand for and what we're our position is. So any final comments for Mark or administration? If you'd like, I can send this presentation out to so you've got that side byside comparison and visual.

Yes. And if you did you send me the region K housing? Yep. Thank you. Just a question. You know, if uh the Michigan municiple or SMCOG or um I know they're collecting uh or at least accounting for resolutions. Mhm. You considered sending this to him? Yes. So, in your resol Oh, the the PowerPoint. Not yet, but we can send it along with the resolution because your resolution, like we said, if you adopt it, you direct it to be uh sent to those folks. So, we can include uh this as well as a link to our zoning code so they can see it.

And it's it's very informative. I think if there's resources that are going to have contact with uh state legislators uh that um may uh not may be embracing the bills that we oppose. Uh this might give them some visual and some information to help uh impact their decision, maybe uh convince a few. Mhm. I know that our our representatives here are supportive. So there's many others. Mhm. All right. Any further questions? Uh, manager Robinson, anything further? I have anything further for the work session, sir? And this will appear later on the council agenda. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

If there's no other questions or comments at this time, we have a few minutes. Um, so I think I'll clerk, I'll look at clerk, there's nothing further, right? There's nothing further. All right. At this time for the work session and then the council uh meeting, we'll start at 7:30. So, at this time, we'll close the work session. Thank you.

Call the city council meeting to order. Clerk, please call the role. Council person Germainey here. Stringham here. Felder here. Ader here. Stillgrave here. Vining here. Mayor clerk here. Ask we all please rise for the invocation. Remain standing for the pledge of allegiance. Guide us in our deliberations and discussions this evening. May our efforts promote the good of the residents of this city and all who visit. 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, clerk. Next item, please.

The next item on the agenda is the approval of the regular agenda. Thank you. Uh, Manager Robinson, any amendments to the agenda?

Yes, your honor. I'd like to amend section 8. It's the consideration to go into close session to add an item which is add attorney client privilege communication to the close session. Okay, thank you. Are there any items or does the council have any items to uh regarding the uh regular agenda? Seeing none, we need a mo a motion to approve the regular agenda. Councilman Hater. Motion to approve the regular agenda.

Motion by Councilman Hater, supported by Councilman Stringer to approve the regular agenda. Clerk, please call the role. And I'm going to amend that to um to include the I'm sorry, addition. with the include the addition that the city manager gave in supports there support support I apologize I should have uh said that um clerk please call the role council person Germany yes stringham yes yes her yes stillgrave yes vining yes Mayor Clark yes next item please the next item is the consent agenda and approval of payments the amount should read $1,947,675 $5.51 947675.51

Thank you. Are there any items on the consent agenda that council wishes to have pulled for further discussion? Any items on the consent agenda council wishes to have pulled? Seeing none, excuse me. Are there any items on the consent agenda? Those present here this evening wish to have pulled for further discussion. I know there's many people here this evening. So the consent agenda is um uh let's see about five items that are uh identified. They're not part of the presentations, communications or public hearings that will come later. That'll be done individually. So anything that's on the consent agenda if not pulled will be passed uh collectively through one motion. So I'll ask again, is there anything on the consent agenda those present here this evening wish to have pulled for further discussion? It's uh uh you can see it's a change order. A change order on sidewalks, change order on concrete, street concrete, the lawn maintenance contract, and water dis uh distribution uh truck replacement. Those are the consent agenda items as well as the minutes and the uh amount for payments that were mentioned. Last opportunity, any items on the consent agenda? Seeing none, um mot Council Felder.

Yes, your honor. I'd like to make a motion that all items on the consent agenda be accepted, placed on file, recommendations carried out, and resolutions adopted. Motion by Councilman Felder, supported by Councilwoman Stilg that all items on the consent agenda be accepted, placed on file, recommendations carried out, and resolutions adopted. Clerk, please call the role. Yes. Stringham, yes. Elder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Bining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. The next item on the agenda is under presentations. communications and public hearings. We have recognition of Hannah Trombbley.

Thank you. I'm going to come down to the podium to to make this presentation and I'm going to ask uh that Hannah join me. So, we have a we have a um a certificate of rec recognition here this evening that uh council uh we had on our agenda and the idea is how we want to recognize youth in our community that are doing great things that sometimes gets missed. But I know in this case look looking at the letter I received there is much than which Hannah was done and this um in this particular uh undertaking she example of how she has action in her community uh leadership demonstrated by a sophomore student. Uh so the uh one of the items that's uh about this was making uh inviting those that came to the uh uh the live uh um live demonstration and live activities was uh making food donations and from that Hannah's original goal was to support the food pantry at St. Michael the Archangel. Uh through generosity inspired by her efforts not only was the pantry filled but donations also overflowed to support the pantries at St. John's, St. Mary's and Monroe and the Oaks of Righteousness. So, it's these type of uh uh unexpected donations that uh total as well as cash of over $500 and subsequently donated uh to the Hispanic community in Mro County. So, a lot of thought went into her project her thought about how she delivered in a sense you you start small and you saw with a little generosity, a good vision and and message you can get others in your community to inspire and be participants. So, we have a a a a significant I'm sorry, certificate of recognition awarded to Hannah Trombbley. It's in recognition of your exceptional

leadership and organizing your first drive through your uh living activities and demonstrations and also your dedication to planning and community outreach resulting in a significant contribution to our local food pantries. We celebrate celebrate your initiative and incredible impact on your first year success. When I saw that, I'm thinking I think we'll have more of this, which would be wonderful for community. So, Hannah, I want to present this to you and say thank you and congratulations. You're welcome to speak.

Um, thank you, Mayor Clark, for this honor. I am extremely grateful. Um, this living nativity was something that I felt very strongly that I wanted to do. And when I initially reached out to Mr. Carol about doing it. Um, my principal, he was very open about it and very encouraging and really wanted it to be a success. And, um, I just I worked very hard to make sure it was organized and simple and easy to understand, but also had a deep meaning. Um, and I'm very grateful to my parents and my grandparents for helping me um, with this. And also to all my incredible teacher and student volunteers that helped me during the night. Um, they really just made the event incredible. Um, so many of like my classmates when I got back to school, they just told me how incredible it was and how happy they were with it. And I just felt very grateful that I was able to share that experience with them. So, thank you so much. So I as I uh other part of the letter that I received here of course from principal Joe Carroll, I thought it's important to read because it really shows that um um how working together and inspiring others. But uh as we were sharing it, it was shared for us under the city council and of course city council support for this recognition considering uh the consideration of uh acknowledging Hannah Trombly's exceptional contribution to our community. And it says her actions embody the values of service, faith, leadership, and compassion that we strive to instill in our students serving as a powerful reminder of the impact one young person can have when guiding by purpose and conviction. So, I just want to say congratulations again and maybe we'll see you next year again, right?

Thank you. Yes, of course. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Clerk, next item, please. The next item on the agenda is item 5814. It is a communications to council, a charter amendment request from Omar Ferdin. Thank you. Uh, manager Robinson, I know this is a communication received. Um, any other additional comments from that? Um, and I might have a comment after.

Yes, your honor. This was uh it's a letter that was sent by Mr. Omar Ferden to the city clerk for city council consideration for a charter amendment request. Not much different than the charter requests that we spoke about before to council at the at the previous work session where I explained there's time periods and certain language things it has to do that and as we put those out leave it on council to reach out to me on those they feel strongly about for us to be able to do the research and and language etc in order to put those forth. And I believe that this item had come up in the past um about th this same uh uh request from Mr. Ferdin and there was no interest at council at that time to pursue that and I believe he was told at that point in time that citizens themselves also can begin the uh ballot language for proposals to go on a charter amendment as well. But this was for this time in front of this council and just looking for guidance from council on how they want to proceed. So I I'll see if there's well coun city council um has received this and uh in the past uh there's not been communication with the um uh administration. I I just want to highlight uh in our city charter section uh C37 which was highlighted by Mr. Ferdin is it it talks about um automatic disqualifications of individuals with past uh convictions. That's the item which he is speaking about and he also provoke has some proposed language. I think as manager Robin said if the council has taken up charter amendments in the past we had one a couple years ago and uh did not pass after we put it forward. Uh sometimes it uh there's a

way to get the message to see if the community support of what that might be. Um the council if uh if there's an interest in moving forward it the direct path would be through the city administration the city manager and something that we could have a discussion in a work session if that's uh so desired. Any thoughts or questions from council? Uh Councilwoman Vining.

Thank you. I had a question. Um, I thought I printed the letter out and I did not. And since we do have so many citizens in the building this evening, would it be possible to have the uh letter read into the record here this evening? I mean, we're talking about a letter, but we're not uh stating exactly what the what the proposed charter amendment. Right. So, I know you just briefly state.

Sure. When we receive letters, they get put in form of of uh into the uh clerk. It just becomes a a record of the document. It's not something that doesn't get shared or saved. It's actually put on the uh um I'm looking at the clerk along with the council packet, we we'd include that. Uh I'm going to take a minute and read it because I just think that uh since it's come up to before and it's addressed to the honorable members of the city council, I'm writing to respectfully request the city council consider placing before the voters a proposed amendment of section 7 I'm sorry C37 of the city Monroe charter titled inel in ineligibility of defaulters and felons. At present charter contains language that is more restrictive than both the Michigan constitution and state of uh United States constitution specifically. Our charter automatically disqualifies individuals with certain past convictions from holding office within the state and federal const constitutions only oppose restrictions in limited circumstances such a conviction for infamous crimes that's in quotes under the state law or disqualification through impeachment at the federal level. It is an it is an interest of consistency and good governance. I believe Monroe's charter should be aligned with those of higher government documents. Doing so would eliminate potential conflicts between local and higher law and ensure that the city of Monroe follows the same eligibility framework already established at the state and federal levels. To that end, I respectfully request that the council vote to place the following proposed language on the ballot for the next regular election. And of course, as we said, there are timelines and uh when things need to be submitted. It's not just taking the language I'll read next and say there it is and put it on the ballot. It has to go to the state. It has to be reviewed by the state. It has to meet well first our city attorney would look at it because if council wishes to invest that time then they should uh please let the man uh manager know. The proposed ballot language is sh uh shall section C37 of the charter of the city of Monroe be

amended to align in eligibility requirements for elected office for those established by the Michigan Constitution and the United States Constitution. This language keeps the focus on aligning our local government with higher law and allows for voters of Monroe to make the ultimate decision and how eligibility of office should be defined. Thank you for your service to your community, our our community and for your thoughtful considerations of this request. I look forward to your review of this matter. One thing I see with the language, and I think we did talk about this last time, it it it needs to be specific to what you're asking for the change. uh just be establishing it for the Michigan Constitution, United States Constitution. I'm looking at Mr. Buds and I'm not the attorney, but I know some of that language is there's other things in the Constitution and the Michigan Constitution that would have to be then accounted for that we that may not be here in this uh section C37. Not I'm not saying it's correct. I'm not saying it's not. Uh it I just feel that it if the council wishes we need to send that to the city attorney for review and I'm looking to the clerk as well. She has the timeline and know when these things have to be submitted uh to get to the state for the state review to get on a ballot and I think the next election is May. Correct.

Correct.

And there was and I didn't bring that with me and we had the timeline that was sent to us. Um the the items I believe would have been had to have been approved in February um because the uh ballot is developed and is sent out in March. So but there is a there are specific timelines available on the Bureau of Election website for the August the August and November elections which are upcoming. I also make another comment because I know this has been discussed. I think the manager might have mentioned it that ballot initiatives that uh can be uh submitted through a petition by any resident uh to ask for that change as well and it requires certain amount of signatures. I don't have that exact information. That is the clerk treasurer's role and I'm sure that if there's a contact with the clerk treasure lavoy that information could be obtained. Okay.

Thank you. All right. So, this is uh a letter that gets put on file as I stated. It will be available through the city's um packet of things to get posted from this meeting. Your honor, I'd also like to note that it is currently available online at the on the agenda page of our website um so as part of tonight's agenda. So, it is already publicly filed. Thank you. You're welcome.

Next item, please. The next item is item 5833, public hearing on delinquent blight invoices to receive and review comments on the special assessment role for the expenses of unpaid blight fees where the owners have failed to pay. Um, and there was a uh an attached um document that listed the blight in a previous meeting and then the council was given an updated meeting uh list this evening meeting. And there are no comments on file in the clerk treasur's office.

Thank you. Before we uh open the public hearing and and uh manager Robinson may have a comment as well, but I'll just start by saying we two we have six um public hearings this evening. Six public hearings and for different reasons of items that were um about assessments or special assessments. It could be related to blight rental housing inspection. I'm going down the list in order. Weed and grass cutting, uh delinquent, uh on demolition invoices, snow removal invoices, and then the last is a uh is something different on a proposed ordinance. So, as you as we go through the public hearings, if there's one if there's persons here today that wish to speak to one of these, just I'll make sure we repeat which one it is that that you may want to talk about. if it's, you know, the first one's blight. So, if that's not what you have on your list and it might be a different one, please come forward. Uh, as we have a public hearing, we take comments from those present if they wish to make them. Uh, just be mindful of the rules of the chamber. You have three minutes. Please state your name and jurisdiction of residents. Uh, the reason for that is the clerk and, uh, later we can have a accurate record of who's speaking here. We have many people here this evening. Manager Robinson, anything additional? Your honor, I think it it's pretty clear that really the next five public hearings are for delinquent payment of invoices where they were build by the city for items. And this is the statutoily the statutoily uh accurate way for us to be able to collect because the state statute allows us to apply those to their tax bills if they were delinquent in paying the city on these items.

Thank you. Okay. At this time, I'll I'll start the u the public hearings that are on the agenda. So, at this time, I'll open the public hearing on item 5833, public hearing regarding delinquent blight invoices. Any comments from those present here this evening regarding item 5833, blight invoices. Please come forward, state your name, jurisdiction or residence, and uh your comments.

My name is Ariel Cooper. Um, our residence is Monroe County. The home is in my fiance's name, Lee Cornado, just so that's clear for the record. Um, and so we got the inspector notice from Jim James, whatever he put on the paper at the time about clearing up a bunch of stuff. We cleared out all the stuff that he wanted us to do, sold the camper, made my uncle move his car, cleared out the tore down our garage, everything. The last thing that was needed was to uh we had a fence that was up. He put on the paper that we needed to needed to repair or tear it down, but he didn't specify which one he wanted done. So, we repaired it. We put new panels up. We were in the process of painting it. I left him voicemails each time updating him on everything that I did so that, you know, he knew where we were at and let him know like I was trying to get it done in the right time frame. And then one day I just showed up and like he didn't never get back to me about if I had to tear the fence down or not. I thought the repairs we did was fine. And then one day I showed up and there was just someone tearing the fence down. They told me or getting ready to tear the fence down. I asked them if we could just do it ourselves and he told me it was too late for that and we were going to be charged for it. So I'm kind of wanting to know if there's a way to appeal it because there was no communication.

And uh when when did this uh when when was this original or the contact? Um he tore the fence down last summer. I I believe it was around May. Okay. I'm I'm looking at the list and I I missed something here. Um so it's um Thank you. It's under Coronado. Yes. Lee and it's the one two three fourth one down I believe on the list. And it looks like the billing they they can be a little difficult to read but I believe the billing was 613205. Yes, that's that's the date June. I couldn't remember if it was May or June. I apologize.

That's okay. That's close enough. I I just didn't get the right line here. I can see it on the sheet here. So, uh you're you're looking for consideration regarding this because of the cost

be not necessarily because of the cost because I feel there was not we did everything in our attempts to try to get it tore down. I was also I'm been having eye surgeries the last few years so I was pretty much trying to do stuff on my own while he was working. And I did express that to Jim as well, like I'm doing I had my brothers coming over and helping and we got everything cleared out within like a week and three days. The last thing was the fence. And had I have known it needed to be tore down, not just repaired, I would have did that. Like there was there was no reason for me to not do the last step left, I just didn't know cuz like I said, the paper stated repair or replace. So our first was approach was to try to repair it and we thought we did okay. And then he just was not responding to my messages or my my emails or my voicemails. So then I ended up me and the guy that came and tore it down. I even told him I'm like I can have I have three brothers. I can have them over here and we can get it tore down this weekend. Like it now we're you know. So I just feel there was not very good communication on Jim's part, which I know he's retired now, but I was leaving him voicemails. I was trying to find out what exactly needed to be done in order to avoid the charges.

Okay. So, let's start here because you have a date and you have some information. You probably have some photographs or recollection. I know when the when the staff goes out that uh they do the same. So, and others may hear me say this because you're looking to have the the fees uh not paid, right? To be waved. So, um city manager Robinson is at the end of the DA here. Make sure you connect with him, leave a phone number for contact. He'll review the file and he'll get back with you regarding this. And just for everybody here, the council and then our charter doesn't give us authority to wave fees. That's that has to go through an administrative review. The council is engaged and that's why we do this public hearing and this process. So we have awareness, but also then the manager and administration or the staff gets back with the city and and of course the clerk to know uh what the outcome was. So before you leave, make sure you make a contact with the Mi Manager Robinson. Okay.

Yes, sir. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Thank you, your honor. Yes. If I may, just one thing for purposes of the record also being clear, this is one that did go to the circuit court for blight abatement through our office also. So, there was notice and provisions that went through that court process also. Well, I appreciate that. That's a uh and I guess is if these come through please let me know again if there's additional and that means that it went only was through here it went over to the to the court for u review and and uh weighed in other comments for this public hearing regarding delinquent blight invoices. Yes sir.

Yes sir. Please come forward. State your name and um jurisdiction of residence. Uh my name is James Cook. Um I live at uh 1217 Michigan Avenue. Um we received the public hearing notes for the city council meeting tonight for um a notice of blight. So, we had a home renovation project that we were doing um fully permitted, went through the building department, and it was the um demolition of my current front porch, some pulling of some landscaping, and then the um refurbishment and and put up of a new structure on the front of my house. So, we went through a majority of the demolition project, which was pulling a whole bunch of hedges and shrubs and all that out of there. We removed all of that super promptly. And then as we were destroying and demolitioning the existing front porch, most of what was there as well, we ended up hauling off and taking to the dump and disposing of it. We had a small little bit left that was sitting out at the front of my house and had plans to remove it. So um uh I can't recall what day that is actually. Hang on. I can tell you I can tell you what day it is.

17th I want to say. So yeah, this was in September September 22nd.

September September 17th. September 17th was the particular day that we were talking about. Uh that's when they showed up to pick up what they deemed as blight at the front of the house, which was a like I said, a small bundle of wood. And uh we never received any correspondence on that at all. I was not aware that that was uh in in progress of of becoming a blight notice. I never received a call. Um there was no tag present. Uh I never spoke to any officials or anything else. My first known knowing of the matter was when the city of um city workers showed up to the front of my house and said, "Hey, just so you know, there's some people on the way to come and pick this up." And I said, "Well, you know, okay." I didn't really know anything about it, didn't know the process or anything else. And they said, you know, once we get started on this, there's no nothing really you can do about it, which I thought was odd, but I said, "Okay, whatever. If you're going to come get it, that's fine." You know, I didn't think anything of it. Um, so after they loaded this little bit of stuff and took it away, which was um by like a front end loader, a 15 foot flatbed truck, and a Chevy Chevy Silverado, which I thought was a tad excessive for a small bundle of wood. Uh, we received the blight notice a couple of weeks later that I was responsible for the charges. Um, and I called the building department and said that I didn't I didn't agree with that because we had been super timely with the disposal of everything else at the time. And had I known that that particular thing was an issue and it was, you know, brought to my attention, I would have gladly cleaned it up well before the period that I would have been responsible for this for.

I'm just writing something. There's photographs available to what they picked up in the active construction going on. Pardon me.

All right. So, I just wrote Let me finish this. So, if you have photographs and we have the date um um as manager Robinson will do for any that it may occur today because we want to compare yours to the records that are here. Um so, uh I can't speak to why that what equipment they use because they're probably out doing other things and they stop by with whatever equipment they be using for the day. I don't I don't know that for sure either, but I think um if you can see the manager with your direct contact information, he'll uh get with the uh um the departments, find out uh what files we have. Uh hang on to your stuff for now and then uh we'll get back together to see what that is. Okay.

Okay. See if there's consideration through the administration. administration has the ability to review if we find that there's something that might be uh missed in a correspondence, something that was sent but returned. I mean, there's there's variety of things that do come up at times and sometimes they don't. So, okay, I appreciate you saying this. You make an appointment with the city manager. Yeah, just contact him and you change your phone number and then they'll make an appointment with you. Got it. Thank you very much.

And you might want to go that way first and get we get keep them in order, right? Other comments regarding this public hearing on blight. Any further blight comments? Seeing none, I'll close this public hearing. Clerk, next item, please. Next item. Just take me one moment here.

All right. So, the next item is uh a public hearing for delinquent rental inspe rental housing inspection invoices. public hearing to receive and review comments on the special assessment role for the expenses of unpaid rental inspection fees where the owners have failed to pay the same and there are no comments on file in the clerk's office.

Thank you. Um well I I think we'll start and I'll see if uh there's any other comments regarding this either for the administration or from the city attorney regarding this item. So at this time I'll open the public hearing on delinquent rental property inspection invoices. If there's any uhbody wishes to speak of that, please step forward, state your name and jurisdiction of residents and yes, sir. Good evening. Scott Bred Schneider um 402 East Front Street. I'm also the vice president of Moro County Landlords Association.

I would like this council to be aware that 20 years ago when this rental inspection program was forced upon landlords, the rental inspection fees were $25 and we were told that these fees would never go up. The inspection fees are now $150. That's a 600% increase. In addition to that, this program does not include homeowners. It does not include businessmen. It was very specifically targeted towards landlords. That is persecution and discrimination. I believe this entire program ought to be abolished. You're putting yourselves in jeopardy of a federal criminal lawsuit. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for comments. Other comments this evening regarding item 5834, the public hearing for delinquent rental housing inspections. Other comments this evening? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. But you want to speak on that? Well, I'm not sure if my comment falls under that, but I do have a comment and maybe you can tell me if it falls under that or not. Okay. I'll reopen the public hearing uh regarding a rental and housing inspection. We'll see if this applies or if it's through a different uh item that's on the list. Your name, please. And jurisdiction of res.

My name is Barbara Renan and I also live in Monroe County.

Okay. Um, I have a home that was rental inspected and passed the inspection and then the home next door was taken down. Um, I had a ve I had a very nice young tenant with two young kids and when I uh they recently uh left the rental unit and I walked in and I was absolutely appalled within one cupboard, one upper cupboard that was 12 in x 12 in there were over 50 just on the bottom shelf 50 cockroaches. I couldn't understand it because I'd been in the house and had had a parental inspection this summer. I didn't know know what was what was going on. All the furniture, all the clothing, everything was left and it just didn't seem like these people would do that. Well, I found out shortly thereafter, the reason they left all their belongings and everything is when the city took down the house next door, it was loaded with cockroaches. And when they terminated that house, cockroaches went to at least four or five different houses right there in the same street. I would say that if the city is going to take a home down, they need to inspect it, they need to call an exterminator out if it's bad to that extent. My young tenants lost all their belongings because they were scared to take them to their next house. And I mean nice belongings. I opened the refrigerator. There was even cockroaches

in the refrigerator. It was unbelievable. And I have pictures if anyone would like to see them. Okay. But uh I believe they should have paid they should pay for the um they should pay for the extermination of the surrounding area too since it was absolutely their fault that it was t taken down and allowed to uh contaminate the whole area. I do pay my inspection fees. That's why I'm not sure I fall into

unpaid. I have your comment. So, it's here or later in public comment. This is fine because we're talking about we're talking about properties and rentals and demolition. So, do this for me. Um, see Mr. Robinson. I because I don't know which house it was. I don't want to have to know the street. I will gladly tell you which house. Talk to Mr. Robinson. He'll get at the very end down there. He'll raise his hand. See you down there in the end. If you see Mr. Robinson, make sure you leave a phone number. He'll want to get some particular information so we can follow up on the house demolition and what uh what process we did or didn't do. I don't have that procedure in front of me, but that's something he can look into to find out what it might be. All right.

And and then I would also like to comment on the home inspection. I am a member of the landlord association for Monroe County and I was against it when it first started for 25

for $25 because of the right of privacy for my tenants. But the comment I would like to make about it is I have a four unit $600 inspection fee and each unit was they spent less than 10 minutes on each unit in there and it uh I have a special needs tenant. We always went through, we went through two days before the inspection and made sure everything was perfect and everything was and then they had the inspection. Well, that special needs tenant went nuts the night before and did some damage on it. So, of course, we had to do a reinspection.

I I think the fees are atrocious. I rent to lowincome people and they can't afford those fees. And you know, and I know and everybody in this room knows, you have to charge them, you know, for the inspection fees. It's included in their rent. I I won't get into that conversation because that's a that's a conversation fall under unpaid fees. Hold on. No, it doesn't. Not in this area in this under this public uh hearing, but if you would give Mr. Robinson provide the information we talked about earlier and um and uh he'll see what he can find out about that demolition. I'll be happy to. Thank you.

Thank you. comments uh regarding delinquent rental housing inspections. Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Clerk, next item, please. The next item is item 5835, public hearing delinquent weed and grass cutting invoices, also known as mowing. Public hearing to receive and review comments on the special assessment role for the expenses of unpaid weed and grass cutting fees where the owners have failed to pay for the same. There are no comments on file in the clerk treasurer's office.

Thank you. At this time, I'm going to open the public hearing on item 5835, the public hearing, delinquent weed and grass cutting invoices. Comments from those present here this evening regarding this item. This public hearing regarding this public hearing. Close public hearing. Clerk, next item, please. Okay. The next item is item 58:15, public hearing delinquent demolition invoices. Public hearing to receive and review comments on the special assessment role for the expenses of unpaid demolition fees where the owners have failed to pay. Uh there are no comments on file in the clerk treasurer's office.

Thank you. At this time, I'll open the public hearing on item 58 15, public hearing, delinquent demolition invoices. was present here this evening regarding the demolition invoices. Seeing none, close the public hearing. Clerk, next item, please. The next item is 5842 public I'm sorry, 5836 public hearing delinquent snow removal invoices. Public hearing to receive and review comments on the special assessment role for the expenses of unpaid snow removal fees where the owners have failed to pay for the same and there are no comments on file in the clerk's office.

Thank you. Uh, at this time I'll open the public hearing on item 5836, public hearing regarding delinquent snow removal invoices. Any comments from those present here this evening regarding this public hearing snow removal? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Clerk, next item, please. The next item is item 5842, public hearing on proposed ordinance 26-003. public hearing to receive and review comments on 26-003, an ordinance to amend section 22-9 of chapter 22, boards, commissions, authorities, and committees.

Thank you. I know Mad Robinson, I know this is also later on agenda, but this is the public hearing. Any uh introductory comments? I'll go to the public hearing.

Yes, your honor. This is the public hearing that we had the first reading of this amendment to the ordinance in regarding our board's commission authorities and committees where we are looking to remove term limits for the citizens planning commissions. that that committee is is the only one where there are term limits that are regulated by an ordinance and in order for you know there are term limits in some of our boards and commissions and those are usually regulated by bylaws etc in in the boards themselves and so we're looking to have the uh the citizens planning commission be managed in that same fashion so to remove it from the uh remove that from that ordinance.

Thank you.

So, at this time, I'll open the public hearing uh on item 5842, a public hearing regarding proposed ordinance 26-003. And this is regarding term limits, boards, commissions, planning commission. Any comments, not present here this evening regarding this public hearing? Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. Clerk, next item, please. The next item is uh item 50 5838 resolution spreading the expense of blight on the summer tax role. And I did just want to note your honor that the resolution mentions um placing those items on the list that you were provided tonight on the taxes. But of course if there are any adjustments made by administration andor if anyone should happen to come in in the next couple of days to attempt to pay you know those those payments can still be taken for a few more days. So the adjustments will be made to the list as necessary.

Understand. So I think that uh council's aware what these resolutions they go in line with what we had the public hearings were on uh the list that we have that were pres present. I thank uh clerk Lavoy for uh stating that those that had comments about those um particular areas are in the manager's review currently and uh city manager and clerk treasure Lavoy will finalize this list that's before us today if there's any adjustments. Any comments or questions from council? If not, uh motion is in order. Councilman Hair.

Thank you. I make a motion to accept the proposed resolution from the Kirk treasurer authorizing the city assessor to spread the special assessment role for the expenses of blight removal fees on the 2026 summer tax role and recommending that the resolution be adopted and the charges be placed on the summer 26 2026 tax roll support by Councilman Hater support by Councilwoman Stringham item 5838 resolution spreading the expense of blight on the summer tax role clerk please call the role Council person Germany. Yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Still, yes. Bining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes.

The next item on the agenda is item 5839, resolution spreading the expense of rental inspections on the summer tax role. Okay. I follow through as we have with the previous is there's no comments from council. Motion would be in order. M string to accept the proposed resolution from clerk treasure authorizing the city assessor to spread the special assessment role for the expenses of rental housing inspection fees on the 2026 summer tax role and recommending that the resolution be adopted and the charges be placed on the summer 2026 tax ro

motion by counciloman string support by counciloman stillgrave on item 5839 resolution spreading the expense for the rental inspection on the summer tax Clerk, please call the role. Council person Gerainy, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. Next item is item 5837, resolution spreading the expense of weed and grass cutting on the summer tax roll. Um, if there's no questions or comments from council, councilwoman Germaine,

move to accept the proposed resolution from the clerk treasurer authorizing the city assessor to spread the special assessment role for the expenses of weed and grass cutting fees on the 2026 summer tax role and recommending that the resolution be adopted and the charges be placed on the summer 2026 tax role. Support motion by Councilwoman Gerine, supported by Councilman Hater. Item 5837, resolution spreading the expense of weed and grass cutting on the summer tax role. Clerk, please call the role. Council person, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Ter, yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please.

The next item is item 5816. Resolution spreading expenses of demolition on the 2026 summer tax roles. There's any comment from council? If not, a motion regarding 5816. Counciloman Stillgrieve

move to to accept the proposed resolution from the Kirk treasure authorizing the city assesses to spread the special assessment role for the expenses demolition fees on the 2026 summer tax roll and recommending that the resolution be adopted and the charges be placed on the summer 2026 tax roll. There's a motion by Councilwoman Stilg by Councilwoman Ving item 5816 resolution spreading expensive demolition on the 2026 summer tax roles. Clerk, please call the role. Councy, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please.

The next item is 5840. Resolution spreading the expense of snow removal in the summer tax role. Thank you. If there's no is there any comments from council? If not, a motion would be in order. Councilman her. Uh, make a motion to accept a proposed resolution from the clerk treasur authorizing the city assessor to spread the special assessment role of the expenses of snow removal fees on the 2026 summer tax role and recommend that the resolution be adopted and the charges be placed on the summer 2026 tax roll. Second. Motion by council hair spread for councilwoman Steelgrave on item 5840 resolution spreading the expense of snow removal on the summer tax role. Clerk please call the role. Counci, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes.

Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. The next item is 5808, resolution amending the trust agreement for the postretirement healthcare trust fund. Thank you. Uh, manager Robinson, any introduction or comments on this item? I know we've had work sessions on this as uh as well as other discussion

discussion and we have worked on this for at least a couple of years and really truly this attached resolution is recommended to you uh to the amendments are recommended to amend the PRC agreement to strengthen the fiduciary government's expand the trustee board from three to five members and to establish establish parameters for utilizing trust fund and the assets specific specifically allows for the reimbursement of the city for the bond debt service that was taken to invest originally and the provision of additional entirey retirey healthc care benefits including dental and vision while maintaining strict funding state safeguards. These amendments are structured to ensure the city continues to meet all uh postretirement healthcare obligations and responsibilities.

Thank you. Any questions from council or any additional comments? Councilman like to make a motion that we move to move that city council adopt the proposed resolution. Support. A motion by Councilwoman Stringum, supported by Councilwoman Geriney on item 5808, resolution amending the trust agreement for the postretirement healthcare trust fund. Clerk, please call the role. Council person Geriney, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Vining. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. Next item, please. The next item is proposed ordinance 26-004, amendment to chapter 127, retirement system ordinance.

Thank you, manager Robinson.

Yes, your honor. This is uh meant to be the first reading of this ordinance 260004. It's to amend chapter 127 of the retirement system ordinance and uh it reflects the the um advice of our pension board attorney Cynthia Billings Dunn that that we memorialize the established limits on the eligibility for non-union public safety members who attained retirement eligibility in 2025 and have continued employment with the city under an employment agreement. It's a safeguard that she felt we should have in by amending the ordinance in order to do that and this is set for the first reading. Thank you. Any questions from uh council? I know we've had the conversations along with the postretirement healthcare trust fund in in the past and work sessions. If there's no questions or comments, uh this item is up for action. Councilwoman Germaine

move that city council place proposed ordinance 26-004 on the floor for its first reading and schedule public hearing and second reading for the Monday April 20th 2026 at 7:30 p.m. report. It's a motion by Councilwoman Germaine, supported by Counciloman Stringum. Item 5799, the proposed ordinance 26-004, amendment to chapter 127, retirement system ordinance. Clerk, please call the role. Councy, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark,

yes. Ordinance 26-004 section 1, amendment of section 127-14B of the retirement system ordinance of the city of Monroe.

Next item. Yes. Next item, please. 5823 budget ordinance fiscal year ending June 30th, 2027. Manager Robinson, I know that uh we've had multiple conversations regarding the budget and is for us here today.

Yes, your honor. We're here to as in last week we presented the the city's budget for the next fiscal year um on what was it last week at the at the special work session. And this is officially submitting the budget ordinance for the the ordinance for the first reading and requesting a public hearing and proposed adoption to be scheduled for April 20th, 2026 as uh we are required to do so by the end of April by the city charter. Thank you. Any comments from council? If not, uh motion to set the uh public hearing and second reading.

Councilman hat her. I make a motion that the budget budget ordinance 26-005 the budget ordinance be placed on the floor for the first reading and that the public hearing second reading and adoption be scheduled for April 20th 2026. Supportion by Councilman Her by Councilwoman Stilgrave on item 5823 the budget ordinance fiscal year ending June 30 2027. Clerk please call the role. Council person Geriney yes. Stringham. Yes. Felder. Yes. Hater. Yes. Stillgrave. Yes. Vining. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes.

Ordinance 26-005, Budget Appropriation Act, July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027. An ordinance to approve the budget for the city of Monroe for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2027. Thank you. Next item, please.

The next item is item 5826, resolution to oppose local zoning authority preeemption by Michigan legislature. Thank you, Manager Robinson. Any additional comments? I know that our work session, we had a presentation. If those weren't able to be here to watch, it is available, can be watched uh through our replay or on YouTube, but um manager Robinson, any comments? I don't have any comments, but if you'd like just a short recap from Director Cochran, from what we said, being we have so many people here, it's interesting that that we know uh how we're requesting a resolution from this city council to oppose the bills that are currently in the legislature,

right? About presemption, of course, housing and and impacts they may have on our city, which some legislative uh proposals, bills, and proposed bills that are in Lancing.

Yeah. Good evening, honorable mayor, city council, clerk treasurer Lavoy. Um, as has been indicated during the work session tonight, we reviewed a series of about six or seven bills that have been introduced at the state that would remove uh local units of government's ability to uh provide for appropriate land use and zoning to deal with the housing shortage across the state of Michigan. Um, the the bills that were introduced take it a step further than what the city has already done. Um, we received a grant through MISTA last year to take a thorough look at our zoning ordinance to make uh amendments and changes that would make it more flexible to allow for um uh more unique uh residential opportunities across the city. Um the bills that were introduced later would uh take it a step further and much more restrictive and provide uh for a one-sizefitsall blanket approach um for things like parking setbacks um housing formats across any residential district uh completely disregarding the character of each local uh unit of government. So, this resolution tonight, if city council adopts it, is uh similar to others that have been adopted across the state that ask the legislature to uh not proceed with those house bills, rather work with local units of government to address the housing needs uh and requirements that they have in their own community.

Thank you. Uh any questions from uh council? If not, um um looking to approve this resolution. I I guess I'll make a comment. I think of how these bills went through and in and we have many communities across the state from here to Monroe to up to the upper peninsula in Marquette and you can go from east to west from Sagen and go over to uh you know Grand Haven and to think that there'd be one only one model of housing for all communities is why we're uh proposing uh this resolution. It's difficult to think how our needs would be the same as what it might be in Sue St. Marie or Traverse City or or Buunav Vista Township. I mean go anywhere across our state. I think of communities and how how differences we have but how similarities we have too. And as Mr. Cochran uh stated we've revised our uh um our zoning through the some funding in 2025 which addressed many of the items that the um legislators are trying to think to impose. And it's so the the comment is we want partnership uh uh over pres preeemption and we should have the ability to think about how you as a community have input in the housing. I I could go on, but I think about the time that before being in this seat and I look at the council members here that have served on boards and commissions, planning commission, I know that uh Councilwoman Vining and myself, it's the planning commission of your community residents that are voting of what and how we develop and what works and what fits. It'll remove those uh voices and I just don't uh find that to be uh a fashion which we should operate. So just giving that as a little additional. So any other comments from Mr. Cochran? If not, I see that Councilwoman Segreg may have something or ready to go.

I'm going to make the motion to move that the city council adopt the resolution to oppose legislation introduction in the Michigan legislative that would preempt local zoning authority for housing development. Motion by Councilman Steelgree, supported by Councilman her on item 5826, resolution to oppose local housing authority presumption by Michigan legislator. Uh legislature clerk, please call the role. Council person Geriney, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, hergrave, Vining, yes. Mayor Clark,

yes. Next item, please. The next item is item 5817 2026 27 goals and objectives adoption. Man Robinson

item is simply in front of uh the council now to officially after working through work sessions, Saturday work sessions and other work sessions and correspondence and and through the strategic visioning that the council has had uh looking forward for this 2-year period of of council session for 26 and 27. These would be the official goals and objectives that you've you have derived from from your sessions and talks together and we're looking for official adoption of those at this time.

Thank you. And I also say that this evening's work session at 6:00 that was prior to this meeting. Uh this also was reviewed uh through the work session can be viewed uh if you want to watch online YouTube to see uh what some of those discussions were and kind of a flowchart or um gant chart that will document how we move forward through each quarter of achieving the goals and objectives for the community. There's no other questions. I need a motion from council. Go ahead, council string. Um I'll make a motion to move to um adopt the 2026 2027 goals and objectives.

Motion by council string the support of Councilman Germany on item 5817 2026 to 2027 goals and objective adoption. Clerk please call the role. Counci Mayor Clark yes. Next item please. The next item is 5806 resolution one paving special assessment district alley east of Maple south of Lorraine. Thank you Robinson. Comments. I see Mr. Lewis is coming forward. To this item I see there was a petition that was submitted on this particular item how it came to council. Correct.

That is correct. Um honorable mayor and council and clerk treasurer uh Patrick Lewis, director of engineering and public services, interim director of water and wastewater utilities. I'll just give you kind of a short primer because it's been a while since we've actually had a special assessment district petition that's come in. Um I think actually it goes back 10 years since we've had the last project that was a special assessment district. So, uh just briefly, the city charter gives the um authority to the city council to to order in a special assessment. Uh typically we like to start that process with a petition so we know there's at least some support from the adjacent property owners responsible for that assessment. Um and paving jobs are usually done on a frontage basis. So, uh, we had one, uh, lady that requested a petition. Uh, she circulated that among the adjacent property owners. We do have just under 50% of the frontage that that, uh, endorsed the petition. However, uh, one of the tenants of the other property signed on behalf of the landlord. So, we'll have to work that out whether that's truly support or not. And supposedly the other two were she was unable to make contact. So, we do we do want to proceed with the with the project. And that's because generally the city has been supportive of permanent capital improvements like this. Um so uh the engineering department typically when we get to this point requests uh there's a five resolution process essentially that uh governs this. And so the first step is that you authorize the engineering department to start work on it. In other words, you've acknowledged that there will be costs incurred and sometimes the project goes forward and sometimes it not it does not. So, um, we anticipate this one will probably go forward and we do have the advantage in this case where we could build it this year because we do have, um, as approved on consent tonight, a concrete contractor that's already in going to be in the city. So, um, provided that, uh, we were able to get through the design process, we should be able to build this this year. So, um, it's pretty straightforward. Like I said, at this point, uh, it just requires a 5 to2 vote at each step or greater, 5261 or 70 to keep it moving by the charter. Um, and we will have two public hearings and one informational

meeting that will be uh specified public outreach as called out in the charter. So, the next step would be we get it surveyed, get the design done, and then invite the residents in for anformational meeting. Then, we would bring it to you for a public hearing on necessity, whether it's a necessary project or not. Um, the alley is in uh fairly I'll say it's not in bad shape for a stone alley, but it's still a stone alley. Um and obviously the public services department grades those once per year. Um but it is alleys are considered a localized benefit which is the reason that there is this special assessment process. Um because it's probably not fair to ask the general city taxpayer to pay the entire uh share of costs to do an alley which essentially serves just a small group of residents. However, I will say that u most of the projects we've had in the past have had some city uh atlarge contribution. uh we usually pay for the approaches to the streets, any sidewalk lowering that we need and a lot of times the storm sewer if we need to drain those areas. So uh we'll start to massage those cost estimates as we get a little further into design. And then uh if necessity is found, that's when we will award uh look to award the contract to a to a contractor uh and have one less last public hearing before confirmation on the assessment role. And that's we divide it up among the residents and say this is how we've proposed to establish the role. Is that fair? and the council has to endorse that before moving forward with the project. So, you'll have um four more votes after this that you'll have to take to approve the district and we'll have two public hearings associated with those and anformational meetings. So, we'll have plenty of time as this thing develops, but we are hoping to get the project built this year. So, uh probably a little more uh primmer than you really needed tonight, but I wanted to get that out there. review because it's been a while since

of where uh they're in in their neighborhood. But uh and I appreciate I'll just say the photographs that came with the presentation. Any questions or comments from council? If not, um this item's up for action. Councilman her I move that the attached resolution one be a be be adopted which directs the engineering department to prepare plans specifications and cost estimates for the this project and that the finance director be authorized to transfer up to $10,000 from the capital projects fund and survey and design activities

support motion by Councilman Hater supported Councilwoman Stringum item 5806 resolution one paving uh special district assessment district alley east of Maple South of Lraine. Clerk, please call the role. Council person Geriney, yes. Stringham, Felder, Stillgrave, yes. Vining, Mayor Clark, yes. Next item. Item, please. Um 5800 M do maintenance agreement US 24 sidewalk construction. Thank you, man Robinson. I'll defer to uh Director Lewis as we move forward on this one as well. Mr. Lewis,

this one's a little less complicated. Um, MDOT will be, and I know this will make a lot of people cheer here, uh, is planning to resurface Telegraph Road through the city limits in 2026. So, that in itself is a is a big victory for those that drive that frequently. Um, one of the things that the city has done in the past, and uh, since my career here, I've started about 28 years ago, we have installed sidewalks on North Telegraph Road on most of that. So from basically the river up to uh well effectively Lazy Boy, the old Lazy Boy side on the east side and then to Frederick's Drive on the west side. So we've been kind of a leader in making sure that our sections of Telegraph has sidewalk, but there are a couple of gaps that still exist in Telegraph uh within the city limits and those are there's rationale behind that. There's the uh one small parcel just north of Frederick's that was not done and then there are a few gaps on the west side and east side of South Telegraph that lack sidewalks. Um and so MDOT approached us uh because of our known advocacy for non-motorized uh facilities and said uh would the city agree to a maintenance uh maintenance arrangement where we construct the sidewalk but then the city is responsible for future maintenance. In other words, replacement of sidewalk slabs. And given that we've put our own money into constructing most of the system to begin with, we are certainly happy to do that. Um and that would any replacement would be covered under the Trails and Streets millillage just like any other sidewalk replacement. So there's really no more risk to the city than we we have at present. Um I did want to mention one other thing too that we have started discussions u because one one area we would like to look at in a lot more depth is the Telegraph Road bridge. Um, we were told that it is not part of the scope of the resurfacing project and that's probably a fair statement given that that would require some structural analysis on the bridge, but we in conjunction with this are wanting to ask them to take the next step and help us out looking at some options to hopefully separate with a barrier wall the traffic from telegraph and the sidewalk which may include some modifications to potentially widen that sidewalk area.

So, we are we are looking at taking that next step. This agreement does not include that work, but it does include uh uh installing sidewalks basically the rest of the way up to Steuart Road, which also includes some Frenchtown Township properties. So, I think I'll leave it at that unless Mr. Robinson has anything else. Thank you. Any comments from council? Not a motion to move. Councilman Stra motion we move that move that the attached resolution be approved committing to the city to future replacement and maintenance of the new sidewalk and authorizing the mayor and city clerk treasur to execute the contract on behalf of the city. Support

motion by council Stern support by counciloman Germaine. Item 5800 M dot maintenance agreement uh US 24 sidewalk construction microphone clerk please call a role council person yes stringham yes yes her stillgrave yes vining yes mayor Clark yes thank you next item please the next item is uh item 5802 resolution for the 2026 city manager performance review yes your honor Robinson,

this is just the formal step by by by resolution to forally start the process in in the evaluation of of the city manager's performance. And this is the first step as as the council has uh established in the in your practices for the evaluation. Right now, the information is available for those that may be interested what that entails, what the criterias are, what the uh selections and or the areas of um u performance that are reviewed and you know what that process is and the timeline in which it needs to be done. There's no comments. Looking for a motion on this resolution. Councilwoman Gerine move to approve the resolution for the 2026 city manager performance review. Four.

Motion by Councilman Germany, supported by Councilman Steelgrave on item 5802, resolution for the 2026 manager city manager performance review. Clerk, please call the role. Council person Geriney, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, her yes. Yes. Bining. Yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. The next item is 5768. Congressional directed spending request submitt authorization.

Mor Robinson. Sir, is in recent years the congressional delegation uh is permitting members uh to submit community project requests for federal spending uh for the offices of uh uh Rep. Senator Alyssa Slotkin and Senator Gary Peters. Our requests are for three projects. They are the real realignment of Detroit Avenue and Battlefield Parkway as as recommended in the river raisin heritage corridor master plan. St. Mary's Academy, Infrastructure Improvements, and the redevelopment of Altrusa Park are our three asks of uh those legislators.

Okay, there's uh any questions from council. Otherwise, uh a motion regarding this item to send forward the uh uh direct spending requests. Councilman her. I move to grant authorization for the economic and community development department to submit the congressional directed spending request to the office of Senator Alyssa Slotkin and Senator Gary Peters, the city manager to sign all required documents and adopt a resolution of support.

Motion by Councilman Hater, supported by Counciloman Germaine. Item 5768 congressional directed spending request submitt authorization. The clerk, please call the role. Council person Germainey, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Stillgrave, yes. Bing, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. The next item is 5780, ordinance 26-003 to amend city code section 22-9 CPC term limits. Thank you, Manager Robinson. This was what was in our uh public hearing earlier. I think it was explained at that point, right? Right. It was explained at that point. And at this point, we're looking for the second reading and adoption to change uh for this ordinance.

Thank you. If there's any comments from council, otherwise a motion uh to move this ordinance uh proposal forward. Councilman her. I move that city council place ordinance 26-003, an ordinance to amend section 22-9 of chapter 22, boards and commissions, authorities and committees of the code of the city of Monroe on the floor for its final reading. Motion by Councilman Hater, supported by Councilman Stringham on item 5780, ordinance 26-003 to amend city code section 2219 CPC term limits. Clerk, please call the role. Person Gerainy, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Stillgrave. Yes. Fining.

Yes. Mayor Clark, yes. 6-003, chapter 22, boards, commissions, authorities, and committees. An ordinance to amend section 22-9 of chapter 22 boards, commissions, authorities, and committees of the code of the city of Monroe. The city of Monroe ordains. This ordinance pass. Person. Germainey. Yes. Stringham. Yes. Felder. Yes. Hater. Yes. Stillgrave. Yes. Vining. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. Next item, please. Item 5805, authorization of 2026 free building permit incentive program.

Thank you, manager Robinson. Mr. Honor, in 2024, the council authorized our building division to implement a permit-free week where people could come in uh property owners come within the city could come in and get permits uh at no cost in order to do construction as an incentive for home improvements, etc. It was so successful that in 2025 we extended it to two weeks and we've a lot of people took advantage of this. It was a very successful program. And so here we are for this year asking that we can uh again have uh uh two weeks, two separate weeks where we wave building permit fees for a period. And this is asked to be between May 18th through May 29th and August 3rd through August 14th for the free permit free uh free building permit incentive program.

Thank you. Before we uh take a motion on this item, it was uh over the past couple years very successful and it's an item where the um homeowner or property owner has the ability to um take advantage of not having to pay for the permit fees. It's a reimbursement back. So, because there's a time frame in which the work needs to be done, it's all spelled out within the uh process. So, those that are looking to do projects and you know that you're going to need a permit, look at those dates and time frames. make sure you're prepared to get uh through to the end and so you can come out and get your inspection that it's done and then the reimbursement will come back to the owner uh um and a reimbursement. So with that be a motion to move this forward. Uh, Councilman Stra,

I move to have city council wave building permit fees for a period between May 18th through May 29th and August 3rd through August 14th in accordance with the conditions and procedures as outlined by the building official zoning administrator. Support motion by Councilwoman Sting by councilwoman Germanium item 8 5805 authorization of 2026 free building permit incentive program. Clerk, please call the role. person Germany. Yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. Next item is item 5811, renewal agreement, city attorney services.

Thank you, manager Robinson. I know that the two years is coming back up. Yep. It's the the end of two years and every two years we need to renew our agreement for our city attorney services and uh the renewal agreement uh for for city services and supplemental retainer agreement for code enforcement with more buds law and uh I'd like to say from an administrative standpoint we are very satisfied and happy to have this firm uh represent our city and are requesting city council to approve the two-year renewal. Thank you. Uh, Councilman her I move to approve the two-year renewal for Moore Buds Law PLLC.

There's a motion by Councilman Her by Councilwoman Stilgrave on item 5811, a renewal agreement city attorney services. Clerk, please call the role. Council person Gerainy, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark, yes. Next item, please. The next item is 5822 facilities use agreement with Monroe Area Soccer Association. Mor Robinson.

Yes, your honor. We're simply with this uh as we all know, Mesa has been a staple in and provided youth soccer services and and leagues at uh since the mid 1990s at Mson Park. And over those years, we've never truly had an agreement or expectation of being it's a city-owned park of the uh the formal agreement to to deal with the clarity and the rights and responsibilities when it comes to the use of Mson Park soccer facilities. And this is we've worked with uh with Mesa and much like the contract we have with the family YMCA, uh this has been renewed by the Mesa board of directors and is being put forward for council's consideration for us to have this agreement with the Monroe Area Soccer Association.

Thank you. Any uh questions or comments from council? If not, this motion, this item is up for Councilwoman Stram. I move that city council approve the facilities use agreement with the metro area soccer association and authorize the mayor and city clerk treasurer to execute the agreement on behalf of the city by counciloman string support by councilwoman Germany on item 5822 facility use agreement with Monroe Area Soccer Associations clerk please call the role council Germany yes stringham yes yes her yes stillgrave yes vining yes mayor Clark yes

the next item is item 5824 approval of ALCC lease agreement with MCOP. Thank you, manager Robinson. Comments? Yes, your honor. We are looking to uh as we are getting close to the uh ALCC project uh coming conclusion with the occupants of the building, we are now putting forth the the new lease agreements that we have with uh with MOP uh the Monroe County Library System and the public schools/arning bank. And this item in particular deals with our uh lease agreement with MCOP for the operation of their services in our building.

Thank you. Is there any questions for Manager Robinson regarding this item? If not, we're looking for a motion to approve the lease agreements. Councilwoman Geriney move that city council approves the lease agreement with Monroe County opportunity program and authorizes the mayor and clerk treasurer to execute the agreement on behalf of the city. Support. There's a motion by Councilwoman Geriney supported by councilwoman Vine item 5824 approval of the ALCC lease agreement with MCOP. Clerk, please call the role. Council person Geriney, yes. Stringham, yes. Felder, yes. Yes. Still, yes. Vining, yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. The next item is item on the list.

Yes. Then is 5810 approval of Monroe Public Schools the learning bank lease. Yes. Manager Robinson. Exactly the same uh as we were talking about with the last item. And this is the agreement with Monroe Public Schools, the learning bank and their leased uh their portion of the lease at the ALCC building. Any questions or comments? Otherwise, uh, a motion to approve this, um, pending lease. Oh, I'm sorry. Counciloman Stillbury move to approve the lease agreement with the mineral public schools on behalf of the learning bank and authorize the mayor and city clerk to execute the agreement on behalf of the city.

There's a motion by uh, Councilman Steelgrave, supported by Councilman Stringham and item 5810, approval of Monroe public schools and learning bank lease. Clerk, please call the role. Many yes. Stringham. Yes. Yes. Stillgrave. Yes. Vining. Yes. Mayor Clark. Yes. I have no further items. No more items. No more items. No more items. That next is uh council comments. Um and this is April. So we start with Councilwoman Geriney.

Thank you, your honor. Um I just want to say that I was quite impressed with little Hannah. um she's not little, but she is a fine example of our future leaders and what she did was a great accomplishment and I know we're going to see her in the future. Also, yard ways started today. So, um starting today, put out that twigs and grass and everything we clean up in our yards. That's all, your honor. Thank you. Uh, Councilwoman, Mr. Ram,

I was going to mention the yard waste as well. I have quite a few bags out in front of my house. So, um, and my neighbors as well. So, just encourage everyone to be patient. I'm sure it'll take them a little longer to get through the first few weeks as we're getting all of the things that we collected since that for me the tree dropped the leaves and then it snowed and I never did get them leaked up. So, um, be patient there. And, um, also just want to mention I hope Michigan wins tonight. Councilman Fowler, happy spring, happy Easter to everybody. Hope hope it was a good one. Um, thank you to Morbuds Law for their many years of service to the to the city and congratulations on a renewal of a contract. So, that's all I have this evening, your honor. Thank you,

Councilman her. Thank you. Um, I just would like to congratulate uh Miss Hannah Trembley on her uh endeavor and uh thank her for uh her service to the community. Thank you, Council Stillg. I have nothing this evening, your honor. Uh, Councilwoman Viney, your honor. Um, I had a couple questions actually, one for the engineer, one for the director of community and economic development. Okay. Well, I uh through the manager, if you have a question, please do.

Okay. U Mr. Manager, I was curious. I know in the past um we did um some alley pavements. I think it might have been through a grant that we received. I was just wondering um I was thinking about one particular alley, the alley at um going into the new campus development that we're doing. Um do you anticipate any funds um or grant monies coming available for that? I think that uh type of project

we have paved the alleys. those were in the uh were eligible for CDBG money and that's why we were able to not have an a special assessment for for for those because they were part of grant funding from the federal housing and urban development uh through CDBG.

Not to compare the two. I'm just curious, would do you think there'll be an opportunity for that particular um alley with all of I just think with all of the development going on in that area and then to have that um alley there um paved. I mean, you know, the kids riding their bikes up to the new campus and things like that, it might um might be nice.

Well, in particular to that alley in itself, I don't know if it falls geographically within area that that that was eligible. for the CDBG grant money. But uh we certainly always look at ways to try to to help with uh getting the infrastructure to where to where all these things, but there are some times that that if it's for a private properties where they're the ones who utilize it that they have a stake in the game just as we do as well. And that's really council's decision. I was just curious if the engineer heard of any grant monies out there. I I wasn't trying to compare it to the to the assessment. Thank you though for your answer. And um I didn't see the uh Navar Library lease and I was just wondering um why not.

It's Yeah, separate. Go ahead, Mark. We have a separate agreement. I could have missed it. Um, you did not miss it. Uh, that one is going to come back with their funding agreement. So, that one, the lease agreement, we've got a lease agreement and a funding agreement with the library system. So, in discussion with library leadership, we said, "Do you want to do lease agreement now?" And we're going to work with them on the revised lease agreement, which will pretty much be the same as it always been, but bring those two together rather than separately. I see. So probably next meeting. Thank you. Mhm. That's all I have your honor.

Thank you. I I before I have one before that uh the the conversation on um funding and grant funding. I know that our our staff has been very successful in in millions of dollars of grants coming in, but they have to meet the specific nature in which you apply for. The community development block grant funds are possible. I know that uh while those come in and then council has ways in uh where uh some of those spendings come so or how we spend and what particular areas that's eligible. So there opportunity I think will be there for a conversation that comes in. I know we write the grant with things in mind and some things uh change as as priorities or urgencies uh come up. So it's just one another one of the items I think can be there. I have one item that I wanted to review here today. Um as as we know that uh many of the staff members as well as the council members uh the clerk uh uh human resources director have been involved with the Michigan Municipal League through training. But I have one that's different and special and unique for one and it comes from the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks. In fact, the clerk is a certified uh through the Bureau of Elections and is state certified and has always been. but through an interest of continued uh education and awareness. I I just going to read the first paragraph because it comes from the um Michigan Association Municipal uh clerk's president says the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks is an organization that promotes and educates Michigan's clerks through our Michigan professional clerk admissionable clerk certification program. Clerks are recognized for their knowledge of the multiaceted clerk's profession. We are pleased to announce that your clerk treasurer Michelle Lavoy has met the program criteria and has attained a level one. It's called uh my uh PMC certification. And while you think think about that, okay, level one,

right? But it's three years of training and education and involvement to lead to achieve level one. So I I want to give my personal congratulations to Clerk Lavoy, clerk treasure Lavoy for her achievements and give her a round of applause. you know, I could I there's, you know, from the capital conference and that I know that uh clerk Lavoy also achieved her uh first the uh elected officials academy as well, level one for that. And I think that uh we may have talked about that before. The idea is that there's opportunities and not to miss those become u um I'll say more informed and and a great service for the city. So those are my comments here this evening. Clerk treasure Lavoy, now you get to say something. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Um, I actually started it uh the certification program um shortly after I was elected and um but I never felt that I couldn't be here because I knew my duty first and foremost was to those who elected me and so showing up for council every time I was supposed to etc. um is what I did. But it it became apparent to me that finishing that certification was really important for the continued development and especially as the clerk's um role has become more complex not just with elections but with other uh statutory responsibilities. It just seemed like the right thing to do. So I appreciate um my the the team and the clerk treasurer's office because uh I leave them for a week and I don't leave them very much though because I still have my laptop and we work every day together. But um but it it's an effort on everyone's part and of course my family. So I I appreciate that and um yes, I'm actually at level two with the MML.

That's right. I said one of it too. Sorry, I apologize. Um so anyway, so uh I appreciate I appreciate all the opportunities I have and of course the city is very supportive as well. So thank you and I look forward to continuing to to serve with uh some additional newfound knowledge.

Thank you. Yeah, I should have known that. I should have said that correctly, but but I'm going to throw one more that many people may not know about. And I think uh it's an important uh when you think about what you get engaged in and what educational opportunities and how you represent the city. Uh uh clerk Lavoy took on a uh assignment through the Michigan Municipal League, filled a vacancy on the uh insurance and liability pool board. And what is that and why does that sound interesting? But when you talk about collectively across the entire state, there is a board for uh hundreds of municipalities that pull together for uh litigation op uh if you're uh items that come forward and how do you mitigate those uh liabilities and how do you come up with better policy and handle things that occur not maybe here and maybe somewhere else in the state of how we um u become more preventive in in uh from litigation. But uh it it is about risk management and if you manage the risk then you'll lessen the liability. So I appreciate you're taking that task on here for within your first year for that but you have many more for those to go. Uh manager Robinson comments this evening?

Well then I would like to thank uh the council for being patient and all the reading it took to read the entire packet. Tonight is probably the I thought last week's last time was the biggest packet and I think we beat that. But uh and also my staff that for how hard they work getting those agenda items in and even though it's a a one and 3/4 page fact sheet that you get it it's good to remember because a lot of those take weeks and months of work in order to bring to this point. So that's credit goes to the city staff and the workers that that bring that that bring that forward. That's it. Just thank you.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is citizens comments. So uh as we uh move forward in citizen comments and the rules of the chamber mindful uh when you come forward uh state your name, jurisdiction or residence and mindful of the three minutes. I see somebody standing up already. Come forward please. Hi, my name is Ellie Richer and I live in Monroe County and I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. I love living in Monroe and um just coming forward with a potential resolution. Um I have the opportunity of serving our community as a program director of a local shelter as well as a missions director of a local church. So I get to interact with a lot of citizens all the time and and just here just um just wanting to celebrate Monroe. And so we were discussing just ways that we can lift up the city, ways that we can celebrate the different spheres of society. And um I've only been living here for about 8 years. And so I had asked, have we ever celebrated Monroe's birthday? Have we ever done that? Have we ever thought about um Monroe days? Something to that effect that would really lift up the businesses, the education systems, the the media, the um the churches, the social services, all of those sorts of things. And so we started to chat about that and looking into the fact that we actually have two birthdays. We're just that special that we have two birthdays. So, um, looking into that and just hoping that we can start doing something like that that would be an annual event for our city. Um, our two birthdays are marked by when we were established as a village in 1817 and then when we were established through the state as a as an actual city in 1837. And so our hope is that we would be able to move forward in um marking that as an annual event and just bringing our city together in a more

fruitful way and also just letting people that have a past and a present and a future um flock to our city um hopefully starting next year. So

yeah, so I'm Jamie Lindsay. I also live in Monroe County. Um, like Ellie, I am involved in different facets of our community through working um in a uh working with the homeless population, but also having my own nonprofit um and as Ellie said there, you know, every community has its problems, but Monroe has a lot to celebrate. And so we want to honor that and bring people together. So, what we're hoping to get from all of you is guidance in what would be the next steps for us to do this because we would love for it to be something that was endorsed by the city. Um, that we would have a community uh a committee put together that would be responsible for planning it and that infrastructure could be in place so it could be sustainable and not just a one-time celebration.

So, I might guide you to, you know, we have uh events that people put in for what they might want to do. Obviously, yours is something you're looking at to be continuous. Uh, sorry you missed the bsentennial, the 200th anniversary in uh, 2017, but I know we're going to wait for the next 200 years. Maybe the 2037 for sure. That'll be another. But if you uh I I guess you could uh have some conversation or a look at the uh event page and it might be something to start to get it that it gets into the process gets to the uh correct department and then they'll call you and start having a conversation about what all you might be thinking of for that because we get many requests and we're trying to filter all of our requests like that through the uh events page. That way we're got one location we can uh uh I'll say cover those. Okay. So that would be my direction.

Okay. Thank you. All right.

Other comments from those present here this evening.

You go ahead.

You already standing up. Oh god. I'm so sorry. Hi, Chelsea Wade Monroe and I was looking at the um city council objectives and one of them is to grow and sustain a thriving community. Um and I feel like the homeless shelter um Oaks of Righteousness is a huge part of our community and it's a huge part of how we help our community to thrive. Um and so I would really like to share if you're not familiar with the closing of Oaks. Um, I'm hoping everybody around this area is everyone hopefully that's watching or a part of this room may not know that. Um, and I think there's a lot of things that need cleared up and I'm not going to sit and clear all those up today, but I do want to just come speak to you from a place about the leadership of Oaks. So, with the short time that I have, I just want to acknowledge something very openly and transparently. Um, in the past, our organization has fallen short. There have been gaps in transparency as far as staff, we've experienced it, too. Although people online seem to think um we all were aware of everything that had been going on for all of the years we've been operating, that isn't the case. Um there have been gaps and and trust and accountability under previous executive directors. For that, we recognize the concern that it's caused within our community and among leaders that might not feel like they can back or support um the tremendous work of our organization. However, what's equally important and what I want to share tonight is that our organization today is not the same as our organization was even just 6 to 12 months ago. Over the past year, Oaks has served over 53,000 community members of Monroe. That data wouldn't even be available, and those numbers couldn't be shared if it weren't for new leadership, new reports, and new ways to track transformation and change. We've undergone significant transformation. We have almost an entirely new board of directors, including a new board president, treasurer, secretary, and several dedicated new board members. This board has demonstrated a strong commitment to transparency, active oversight, and

accountability from the day they stepped into their responsibilities. In addition, we have a new executive director who has set a clear standard for leadership from the very beginning, prioritizing open communication, consistent reporting, and creating a culture of honesty with us on the staff and our board. But beyond words, we've seen action. This new leadership team has not waited for these problems to surface. But if you haven't known from reports of the city who stated that it was our own leadership at Oaks who proactively came to the city to initiate a process of change and to better our facility for it to be safe, compliant, and properly maintained because it shows a shift not just in leadership, but a reminder to the public, especially our city council, of our core values. Oaks is committed to doing things the right way. We are committed to rebuilding trust and committed to being an organization that this community can rely on and that city council members can speak on and encourage change and support without fear that you can't trust what's happening behind closed doors. We understand that trust is not rebuilt overnight. It is earned through consistent action, transparency, and accountability. And that's exactly what we're working to demonstrate every single day. We're asking just for the opportunity for you to simply hear some of the things we would like you to hear about our organization and about the detriment of the closing of Oak Shelter tonight so that you can continue improving and serving our community with integrity and care as we do from our facility as well. Thank you. Good job.

Next comment, please.

Hi, my name is Kathy Caesar. I live in the city of Monroe. I'm from Oaks of Righteousness. Also, uh, with these three minutes, I think it is very important for the community as well as community leaders to know exactly what happened with clients from Oaks of Righteousness. Oak's leadership scrambled to place u most of our clients on and on Friday morning just hours before the exit needed to happen. We did get additional assistance from Teesha Jones, MDHHS emergency shelter program director for the Salvation Army Great Lakes division for the remaining six clients that had nowhere to go. Um Gemstone took they have three of our clients right now. They had four and one was exited. Fair View took two of our clients. Uh, Salvation Army took out a large number of our people. They took 15 clients originally and then after 12 days of care at the hotel, Salvation Army case management took over care from MCOP for six of our residents, bringing the number in their care up to 21. So, that was a huge lift for them. Um, it is important to note that after only 12 days of emergency support for our clients in hotels because there was no shelter that had space or availability for them. We received an update and said at this time funding for MCOP supported motel stays has been exhausted and guests will be exiting from the motel today. To support continuity of care, TSA Mineral Family Shelter has coordinated additional temporary motel placements. The Philadelphia House took seven of our clients originally. Five of them have since been exited. Um, one client sustained a serious injury within the first 24 hours of his placement was a 66-y old man who fell off of his bed. Oaks Leadership is currently serving 16

clients, including one single mother with five children. These clients are in rogue placements, which means they're with their friends. They're on couches. They're sleeping in their cars or we had to give them tents and they're outside right now. We are assisting with food box delivery, laundry assistance, general housing stabilization, and housing application and supports. We would like to invite you, Mayor Clark, and anybody on city council who's interested to come to the shelter to hear more about this situation and to hear about our experiences firsthand. Thank you. Thank you.

My name is Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, Sonia Ferdin, um, City of Monroe. I also work at Oaks of Righteousness. Um, and I just want to say that we as far as the staff, we are taking all of the violations very serious. We care about the people from the from the people to the building. Um, and we have had inspections in the past. 2019, we had a fire inspection and we've done our best and are doing our best. the what what worries me a little bit is the handicap accessibility violation. Um I feel like all of the violations we can handle, but the handicap accessibility turns an uphill battle into a treacherous mountain hike. Grandfathering, the lack of handicap accessibility would help to expedite our reopening. and it is in the city's overall best interest that we do reopen. Um the Salvation Army shouldn't have to take on homelessness across Monroe on their own. Um and in the past, we've kind of worked together to make sure that the homeless um community was taken care of. Last week, I gave tent a tent, a sleeping bag, and a tarp to a gentleman who is a long my whole life. He's lived in Monroe. I've always known him. Um, he had struggled with alcoholism and he wasn't homeless when we closed. He was living with a girlfriend and a domestic dispute landed him in homelessness overnight. Um, he hadn't been drinking prior to being put out of his um, house, not having a shelter to take him in. he returned to drinking to be able to minimize the effects of the cold weather. Um,

it's not good that he returned to alcoholism, but it's also not good that he was only given a tent in a sleeping bag. He's not going to leave Monroe County. I don't want Monroe to turn into a tent city where we're just passing out tents because there's not an open shelter to take people who have struggles like alcoholism or mental illness or other things. We're the only low barrier shelter and we've served so many people in our period of being opened as a shelter and I really want to see us reopen in the most timely fashion that we can taking in consideration all of the violations that we've already started working on. Um I had looked for the video of the March 30th budget meeting, workshop meeting. I was out of town that day. I did want to attend and I wasn't able to find it on YouTube. Um I looked on the city of Monroe's website and it wasn't there um earlier this afternoon. So I just wanted to see if that could if you guys could just check to make sure that that's available for us.

Thank you. And obviously in in tonight's agenda as well, but we we'll look into that. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Patricia White, 1437 Peter Street. So, I am the administrator of the Oaks of Righteousness Homeless Shelter. And I just want to take a few minutes to talk about something that often gets lost in conversations like these, something deeply human. When our organization was forced with very little notice to shut down operations, eight employees lost their jobs suddenly and without the kind of transition anyone would hope for. These were not just employees. They were people who showed up every day to serve some of the most vulnerable members of our community. They built relationships with clients, worked long hours, responded to crisis, and gave their time, energy, and heart to this work. And in an instant, that stability was gone. For eight individuals and their families, this was not just a professional disruption. It was a personal crisis. It meant lost income, uncertainty, stress, and difficult questions about what comes next. And at the same time, many of them were still carrying the emotional weight of the clients they had been supporting, people that were genuinely that they genuinely cared about, people they worried about. That kind of loss ripples outward. It affects households. It affects morale. and it affects the broader mission we are all here trying to support. But even in the face of that hardship, I want to recognize something important. The resilience and dedication those employees have shown. Many of them have continued to step up in whatever ways they can, supporting clients informally, staying connected, and continuing to care even without the structure of their roles. That speaks volumes about who they are.

As we move forward, it's critical that we acknowledge not just the operational challenges our organization has faced, but the human cost as well. Because behind every closure, every transition, and every policy decision, there are real people whose lives are impacted. And not just the lives of the unhoused, but the lives who so deeply invested and cared for them. Tonight, I ask that we keep those individuals in mind. That we recognize their service, their commitment, and their hardship they've endured. And as we work towards solutions and next steps, that we do so with an understanding of the full picture, not just systems and structures, but people. Thank you. Good evening, honorable mayor, esteemed council. I have a list of questions I'd like to read because I've not been able to find the last meeting on YouTube posted. Katrina Kalan Ramos, 108 West Front Street, Monroe. This is a This is an inspection. Why are reports being issued after 5 days? Why is 5 days important for inspections? Wondering why a five-day regulation was not regarded. wondering how 19 days would ever be appropriate. Wondering

Oh, I got a better question later on. Wondering how. Sorry. Wondering where the photos are. Wondering where the extra documentation is. Wondering how could this ever be considered a formal report. issued by a city building department. Wondering how social media had more information in it than the employees and staff of this report. Wondering why six individuals would ever agree to submit a report like this after 19 days citing critical life and safety issues. Three days is critical life and safety issues not 19. How after all these questions listed, how could any of this involved in this packet of paper be considered a a legally binding or a formal report. wondering how a city manager is able to put forth such a report without the building officials report in it. the only what's the word um authorizing my apologies um the only issuing authority building official building administrator not present. Wondering how an inspection that supposedly Wondering how inspections that had never been done exist

online. The city stated that they hadn't been done and yet I've got a stack. How is this possible? Is someone lying? Is there deceit? Let's see. Yes, there is a license in here issued by the state even. And how exactly does a state issue license if the city hasn't even off authorized a certificate of occupancy? I look forward to the city manager retracting the report fraudulent fraudulently put forward in regards to the oaks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for your time. Thank you, council, for listening. I apologize that this time around because the video is not posted has been a bit choppy. Have a good evening,

please.

Hi, Mr. Mayor and city council. Um, my name is Sandy Liborf. I I live in Monroe and I've been um the volunteer nurse associated with Oaks for a long time. Um, I I just wanted to um finish some of Kathy's comments here that she didn't get time for. um about the some of the people. Um the our peer recovery person is still actively working with nine clients that uh she had at the shelter and she's continued with engagement and support to them to help them with the plan that they had put in place in place for their um addiction treatment plan while they were at the shelter. she's still out there working with them and doing her best to help them out in the community or wherever they're placed right now. Um, and what what does Oaks need right now? Well, we didn't have enough shelter beds in this in this county or this city before. Um, as evidenced by people that are on the street and people that are in tents. Um, my daughter lives on the quarry. So besides volunteering at Oaks, we get to see the tents over at the quarry all the time. And as soon as the um as soon as the announcement came out that Oaks was closing, two tents popped up. People left Oaks and went right over to the quarry and pitched their tents. So um we get to observe the homeless population out there in their tents all the time, too. So um we know that we need those beds. It's it's we didn't have enough beds before and so we really need to get the you know those beds back open up again. So what Oaks really needs is there needs to be financial support to sustain emergency housing and assistance for the clients who don't

have anywhere to go. Um I got a call one day last week um from the mom of five in a hotel. It was 10:00 a.m. and she had to be out at 11:00. She kind of has been lost in the system. Um, we had to get somebody over there to pay her her that night until they could get it straightened out. And they did and she got another week paid. But at 10:00 in the morning, I got a call, people in tears. I have to be out by 11. Um, that's really hard. That woman has five children. Um, and it's another thing that oak. So, we need to make sure these people are supported in the placements that they're in. Several of these people have already been when we say exited, that means they've been kicked out of their placements um for not following the rules. Um at Oaks we we sometimes had to exit people but you know we had a plan in place for people and we tried to help them and um and and now those people are again on the streets. Um, we really need those beds and we need an understanding of where we are currently are at and assistance in sharing that well with the community and what we are we are doing everything in our power to get this done as quickly as possible. Um, we need Oh, don't want to I got two more points. You want to hear them? Okay. donations of bread, milk, lunch meats, cheese and things that these people are in placements where they don't have food so that they can get something to eat and um seeking licensed professionals, business and community partners who will donate labor services and things to help us. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Rachel Jonice. Um, I live in Monroe. So, a little over 5 years ago, I was in a homeless shelter with my disabled son and I was pregnant. Um, if it wasn't for a homeless shelter, I wouldn't be where I am now. I'm currently in school getting my master's in social work. Um, my life is so much better. I have a housing choice voucher, so my um, rent is based off of my income. And I just think that other people deserve the chance in life that I got to be able to further my education, to actually be able to do something productive with my life. And there, that is what homeless shelters provide for people. And I'm just appealing to you guys to help Oaks out because other people deserve this chance. And I'm very grateful that I got it. Um, and I agree that the the handic handicapped accessibility really needs to be considered to be grandfathered in because with that building, I don't know how they're going to do it and that would cost a lot of money. Um, that's all I have to say. I just I will want to see other people get a shot at life like I got. And without a homeless shelter, I'd never be back in school. So, thank you.

Gary Moore from Monro Michigan, executive director at Oaks Village. Um just good evening everyone here. I thank everybody for the opportunity to be up here. Um I the rest of our staff and board members um I wanted to give them a chance to share first. I think they did a good job explaining you know a lot of the things challenges we've been through over these last few weeks with the residents with the displaced staff. Um and there's a lot of there's been a lot of confusion and I've expressed this in meetings with the mayor and the city manager and assistant manager. Um, but the thing is we are looking to rebuild and we're going to to reopen. We've been working with the local government officials from the city, from the county, from other agencies. Um, and and we are striving to be compliant, to get up to code, to do things properly, to restructure not just the outside inside the building, but the organization as a whole. As they've stated, we have almost entirely new board, all new executive members, all new chairs. Um, and it's about being open, transparent, and accountable. Accountable to ourselves, accountable to the community as a whole. And that is what we're striving to do. We cannot change the past. We understand there have been broken relationships between this council with the county and basically everybody and the oaks of righteousness. We are looking at a fresh start. You know, we know down there it's a ministry. It's not just a organization. It it's a ministry with a mission to take care of those that need it the most. And that's what we're striving to do. You know, we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and he makes all things new and we are

allowing him right now to remake us new as well. So, we just ask for you guys' support and compassion in this matter. We're already working on uh a lot of these things. We've already done the electrical upgrades. We have the plans already for the upgraded smoke detection, fire alarms, carbon monoxide, emergency lighting. Those were those main life endangering things or life safety systems. So basically th those will be done in a matter of two to three weeks. We are struggling with those other things with that ADA compliancy, but we have met with an architect. We have had some good suggestions from people, met with contractors. So, we we we're making a plan and we know it's going to be a few months, but it's a plan to we're developing to transform the shelter, to renovate it, and provide a safe environment and a higher level of care to the people we serve. So, I thank you guys here. You know, we are here tonight because of the decision that was made a few weeks ago. And there's lots of different opinions on that report. I've heard a lot from all sides. I'm not a legal expert to decide those, but I know people are welcome to look at it. I know there was some false information. It's been proven with uh the certificates, the permits that we did have, and um several other things that just seemed exaggerated and misleading. But it's that's all to the side. We want to rebuild and get things right. Thank you.

Hi, Amber Reed, 328 Crarampton Drive. I just want to speak on the impact Oaks has had on our community and the difference I see every day because of them. I think we all wish homelessness didn't exist. Um Oaks most of all, I'm sure, wishes that. Unfortunately, that's not the reality. I've worked in the city, both downtown and the on the east side, for over 20 years. I've noticed a huge difference since the day Oaks opened. We work with them all the time. I think I call them at least weekly to line up services for people, walk kids down to the shelter to get clothes sometimes, all kinds of things. Um they've helped so many people with shelter, food, job placements, addiction help, health services, and anything else. Yes, the city has other agencies and shelters and they're great. Not at all putting anyone down. We just need more help. Oaks has left a big hole with them being closed. Um, we have a lot of men in particular who need shelter and there's only one shelter for that and you know that one's full and not everyone is a good fit for every shelter and Oaks does a great job of working with individuals especially dealing with these kinds of crises in their life. So I just encourage you guys to work with Oaks as much as possible um and to provide resources to help them get back open. Thank you. Hi, my name is Carlen Stiff and I'm actually Hannah Trombl's Grammy and I just wanted to thank Mayor Clark and the council for recognizing Hannah tonight and I just wanted to share a very short story about a little bit of insight when she was 5 years old. Um, we gave her a birthday party, invited the whole kindergarten class to come to our house and she got many gifts and um, most of them ended up in uh, toys for tots for Christmas. And she said, "I don't really need all this stuff." And in the meantime, she had gone to the animal

shelter, Friends of Companion Animals, uh, to volunteer for being a cat cuddler for the kitties. And so every birthday party thereafter, she requested no gifts and just necessities for friends and companion animals. So I just wanted to give you an insight that this started early in her life that she loves community and um she just has a kind heart. So tonight just made me smile, made my heart smile to see her recognized for that. So I just wanted to share that with you. Thank you for your kind comments and for listening.

Thank you. Other comments this evening? Further comments this evening? See? Okay. Here we Yes, sir. Hello. See Cody Crutchfield, Monro County resident. I al want to echo the sent been said tonight regarding oaks of righteousness. I do believe that it was unfair and suspicious how it was shut down as it was, especially when many of the residents there had nowhere else to go. I believe that a lot more needs to be done in order to regain some of the trust that some people I feel have lost in the community over that and see I believe that a lot needs to be done in order to help rebuild the institution so it can better serve members of the community in need. I also want to speak out as well in favor of the U. M state of Michigan reforms regarding zoning laws. I believe that approving those would help people in particular those in the situation at Oaks by helping with housing costs as well as see revisions needed to many buildings. I believe that that and many other things should be done for the sake of other people in this community. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments. Further comments here this evening. Further public comments. Seeing no further public comments. All right. I guess the next is we still have uh items to do. So uh Councilman Felder. Yes, your honor. I would make a motion that we go into closed executive session for the purpose of land acquisition and attorney client privilege correspondence. Support. Motion by Councilman Felder, supported by Councilman Her to go into closed executive session for the items stated. Clerk, please call the role. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Mayor Clark. Yes. And thank you all for being here this evening and the comments. Go boom. See