Board - Regular Meeting

to make money. I bought two two houses. I bought land that way through the years when interest rates were 18% to buy a house. I bought a house at 10% land contract. But you had to put in those days you had to put more down like 25% down. and you can get the house recossessed. You miss two payments and take it back. You lose your down payment and everything. So, it's riskier for that was typically low closing cost. That's for sure. No commission. I may have to

Hello. Is anybody on the on the phone? I really want. It's what we always did when we were young kids. Looks like you got you got you got a lot of tan. You made it on vacation or what? Well, no. Just probably next to my white shirt, too. What do you guys talking about? probably contaminated. Yeah. Did you see that? That

lady that interviewed with us that company went under. Yes. Where do you She was a controller right here. She knew it was happening. They were called, right? It's called I think they went to Are you Are you ready? Looking for the packet. So, let's wait.

There it is. I'm ready. Ready? Yep. Well, I know you have the hair for Call to order. Charter Township of Plymouth Board of Trustees regular meeting July 22nd, 2025, 6:33 p.m. Roll call. Trusty Buckley here. Trusty Clinton here. Uh, Supervisor Kermy here. Treasure Dor Chevas here. Trusty Roth here. Trusty Stewart

here. Clerk Borba here. We have a quorum. Pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So, approval of the agenda. We need a motion. Approval of the agenda. Mr. Supervisor, I move the approval of the agenda for Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025. Second. Second by growth. All in favor?

I. And next week, we're going to have to move the minutes up to C1 and a half. Um because u you were absent last week, so you can't vote for it. This would be for everyone except for uh Trusty Growth only because she was absent at the time. I move for the approval of the minutes of the June 24th, 2025 uh board of trustees meeting. Second. Second. All in favor? I. Motion carries. So, approval of the consent agenda. Mr. Supervisor, I move the approval of the consent agenda for Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025. Second.

All in favor? I I motion carries.

Public comment limited to three minutes on non-aggenda items, including the reports are considered non-aggenda items. I'm Dale Burnernhard. The board just approved the current township bills. My comments are directed for future appropriations through 2026. In the board packet, page 80 is an entry for Plymouth Township to pay Risen Christ Church $150 this month for electronic equipment storage. Below this entry is a notation 12 months at $150 per month. So, there is an obvious desire by clerk Vorva to pay this fee for 12 months and probably into 2026. I've discussed this fee with the board in the past. I feel we have the ability to find free storage, but the bigger issue is Clerk Vorvo wants to keep the equipment there because last year we paid Risen Christ $50,000 to host early voting. I can imagine Clerk Vorvo wants to pay them $50,000 again to host 2026 early voting. The job of this board is to be good stewards of paid taxes. This voting site fee does not show good stewardship. Five reasons why it does not. Number one, $50,000 is way too much. I have found better facilities willing and able for less than half the $50,000. Number two, Risen Christ location is not centrally located. It is at the

southwest corner of the township. Number three, Risen Christ also hosts a children's school which is open during voting hours. Number four, candidates and their supporters have a democratic right to hold signs and campaign not closer than 100 ft from the voting precinct entrance. 100 feet on the west side voting precinct entrance is in the road easement. Number five, it is my understanding that the number of our precincts may be reduced to six from 12. It makes sense to determine the early voting site when the number and locations are solid. So, I'm asking the board to pull our electronic surveillance equipment now from Risen Christ, put it in free storage, firm up the precinct locations, and do not approve giving 50,000 taxpayer dollars again to any facility that hosts early voting knowing there are better and less expensive locations. Thank you.

Thank you. And that was my phone that I thought. So we're anyone else with non-aggenda comments? I think you're probably here for that. All right. Hi. You guys know me. You shouldn't. Um, I live in the ruined, I mean, updated Esau neighborhood, also known as the Toll Brothers Development Driveway. So, first of all, I want to thank you all for being here and pretending to care about the residents of Plymouth, the people you work for. Um, just a reminder, back in February, I was here telling you about the damage to my houses in my neighborhood, cracking. Uh, my house is luckily only in the ceiling and the walls, but my neighbor has her floor cracking. That's structural. Don't know if you know that. You said you'd look into it, but I know you don't care. So, nothing ever happened. Anyway, today I'm here about the construction in my neighborhood. Um, you know, they redid our road. Oh, super great. Um, and I'm sorry, there's no other way to say this. It looks like Um, they spent months redoing the road, adding drains, curbs, allegedly regrading what's there to be better. Um, my sidewalks still flood. That was the biggest thing. They're not going to flood in the winter or summer. Doesn't matter. They do. Um, the seed, the grass seed, weeds. Uh, the road already has two patches that look horrible. So, it's already starting off on a horrible integrity for the road. Um, there's tarp marks. There's rough sidewalks. Um, and my new driveway that I paid for myself has splatters of concrete all over it. And some of the

sidewalk has splatters of concrete that they did not replace, but that's just what we should expect for the almighty Toll Brothers to have their development. Anyway, I talked to Philip from Spalding and before that, Joey, the project manager, whatever he is, uh, and I was basically told that yes, this is horrible. It could be better. And I should just be happy that I don't have a dirt road anymore. Why? They told me my neighborhood is too flat for these engineers with their PE license to fix. And yes, the curb's higher than your sidewalk, so it's going to flood. But like in the summer, your grass is going to drain. But what about the winter when it's frozen? It probably not going to do anything. They lower the road 8 to 18 in, but the curb is still higher, like I said. So, I don't know why these couldn't these engineers couldn't fix that and work with our neighborhood or, you know, pick better contractors. It's it's it's embarrassing that I live in Plymouth Township, which is supposed to be a really nice area, and you guys are allowing this to happen. And just being like, "Oh, well, talk to the contractor. Talk to the contractor." Um, you know, it's just I know you didn't approve it, but it's your problem now, and you need to do right by your citizens and fix the problem. Come through the neighborhood. It's I'm telling you, it's horrible. I'm sorry, but there's no other word to say. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. Uh I'll do a little comment and then Spalding to Decker who is here you know you saw me out there throughout the building. I I'll tour you and

so the just let me talk the engineering optimization of the lay of the land which was flat was the optimum they could do because the grade of some of the homes is low. So they had to balance the grade of the house and potential flooding with the road. So a lot of engineering money went into it. The patches are there because there was some problems with water pooling. So they fixed them. The damage to your house, I am disappointed. I was assured by Main Street and Spalding to Decker in February that they would be handling a claim. They're going to do that now. They're coming to visit you on Friday. Not for that.

Well, you you'll be able to talk to them about anything you want. Um, so also the value of your house will rise. It'll be easier to sell uh because you have a paved road. So that is the one big benefit. In addition to the flooding, not it's not flooding, it's pooling. And with the sand there, within an hour to two it will go down. But in the winter time that will be an issue. It was never part of the scope to repair all of the sidewalks. The scope was to and it was all negotiated. I was not part of it. Uh I voted no against this project, but now it's in my lap and it has been since the day I took office uh in November. So Spalding Decker will also answer some of the detailed technical questions in a layman's terms um when you're out when they're out there and if you have another one they'll answer it right now.

I I have no final one and mine's flooding. So I I can't wait for it to crack and my driveway is flatter over it. Well, that could probably be scraped. Wait, you could probably ask to have that scraped off. I know. We should never have done that in the first place. Just like they should have had our road. He was the cheapest, worst contractor. Like it embarrassing for Bloom Township. Embarrassing. Come out to the neighborhood. All of you. I I drive through it almost every day. It's on my It's on my way to work. That's horrible that I'm going to fix. Embarrassing.

Spalding. All right. Spalding, do you have any anything to say that's uh short specifically about submitting a claim which has been a d loop? Uh and I will I witnessed that because it's very unusual to collect for that type of damage to your house. Very difficult to prove. I believe the uh the claim was uh addressed through uh through Phil and he asked uh he asked her to send your claim and he would forward it to the contract to Main Street. There's no claim. You just want pictures. There's no form.

Okay. Send the pictures or you didn't do it in February. All right. You already did it. Okay. Anything else to talk about? Specifically the the pooling of water on the sidewalks which is a difficult challenge.

The pooling of water I believe was caused to um the as the road commission added gravel to the road over the years. It raised it up more and more. So a lot of the water went towards the sidewalks. What we've done is we've lowered the road. So we've decreased the drainage area by approximately 1/3. So there's less drainage to the sidewalks. Um, and it'll always pull a little in the sidewalks temporarily. There's throughout the township that that occurs. It's a common occurrence. And it's partially due to over the years as people mow their lawns and leave the clippings over the decades. You know, the ground gets higher and higher. I think that ground probably 3 in higher than the sidewalk. Photos will show that. Um, the sidewalk hasn't been sinking over the decades, but the grass has been building up higher and higher. My own mom is the same way. have to put the miles 35 years. But

is it working now? Was there any consideration for scraping some of the road off? Oh, they did. Yeah, they lowered us from 8 to 18 in. Wow. Hundreds of loads of taken out of ground and put in storm sewer curb and got you know there was no ditches previously. There's no drainage in place. It was a road substantially a road improvement project and uh some things were done to improve drainage but the goal of the project was road improvement. The goal of the project was to have Toll Brothers have a driveway which people do speed our neighborhood when it opens up kids going to get killed one day. Toll Brothers never wanted that road through there.

Well, it is but they I know but other people were involved in that. Wayne County didn't want it. Toll Brothers didn't want it. Some people who sat up here wanted it. When I got a new sidewalk, I know you keep saying old sidewalks. My sidewalk is And it's not puddling. It's like bloody like there's inches of water that sit the winter. What's going to happen? Cuz that was the promise is you're not going to have the frozen sidewalks that you want. I really wish I knew Yeah, I wish we had a fix for it, but I don't anticipate any fix. So, you guys don't care about us.

We do, but we're locked into a contract that was let many months ago, and it it is the state that it's in. It looks great. Let's talk about the grass. The grass. The best time to plant grass seed isn't in September. Well, that was one of your concerns. Also, you didn't mention it today, but the weeds that are there that it's that's called crab grass, and that sprouts at late July, and that will be taken care of in September when the best time to plant grass seed is. But I'd urge you to mow it at least, and water it for the seed that's there. Give it a chance.

All right. So, on Friday, Spalding Decker is going to be out there. Yeah, I know. Did they Did they give you the time? I don't know. Pardon? 1 p.m. 1 p.m. All right. Okay. I'm sorry you're dissatisfied. Uh, fortunately, you didn't have to pay anything out of pocket, but uh I would I don't want any a dime.

All right. Any other uh comments? Thank you for coming today. We Any other All right, let's move on. to the next item which is going to be uh I'm going to draw we're going to talk about I want to get your input the board's input um on the idea of selecting a consultant to uh give us some uh hard data to make some decisions on generally three things staffing levels HVA performance and relationship and um what is happening? Analyzing calls or runs to see why the call volume has moved up. What is driving it? Is it binning errors? Is it people aging in the community? Uh was it freeway construction? Don't know. So, I'm going to draw lots here to see who goes first because we have people on Zoom. You think we can How do we get them on? How does it work, Bob? How do they Are they already on there? Yeah, they're on

here. Gary, pick a pick a number. Drum roll. And the number is it's CPSM Joe Poso Center for Public Safety Management.

Joe, are you there? Yes, I am. uh supervisor. All right. And introduce yourself. Uh everybody can hear in the audience. Okay, sir. Uh you have about 15 15 minutes. Okay. All right. U just one question. Am I allowed to share my screen for a PowerPoint or would you

Sure. Why don't you go ahead and try R right now? You're in an infinite loop, but go ahead and try and let's see what it what happens. That's the one. Pick multiple.

Where's Bob Jinx? Okay, Bob, we may need your brains. If we can't, sir, I can just I I can move along. Well, let let's take another 30 seconds and see if we can solve it. Better to do it right the first time. Yes, sir. Our IT director is here and he's going to give it a shot.

Infinite loop. I didn't try. What about up on view up there? Top right. Joe, did can you try to share your screen? Uh, I don't have the menu uh on my end that I think is the problem. Uh, it and it it could just potentially be just the way the the Zoom meeting is set up.

That's odd. Normally, you can share your screen in Zoom. Yeah. Well, you you can, sir, but uh I don't have your menu in front of me to do that.

Post and panelist. Yeah, he's a panelist. He's a panelist. He should be able to share. Right click on him and see. Make sure he's a panelist. Joe Poso at the top. Oh, right. Promote him. Promote. Yeah, I think you might have a little

patience a little more. Maybe we'll get lucky. There you go. There you go. We can see you, but we can't see his screen, right? Okay. Well, let's we're going to try. Okay. How about now? Yeah. Yeah. So, do you remember what we did? We just hit buttons until it started working.

Okay. All right. I'm Joe Poso with the Center for Public Safety Management Board uh and Supervisor Ger. Thank you so much for having us uh in this evening uh to present our proposal to you. I'll look a little bit to the left. That's just where that's my other screen and that's where I have my presentation set up. So, who are we? We are the center for public safety management. Uh we are affiliated with the international city county management association. In fact we are uh their uh exclusive provider of public safety technical assistance. Uh we have provided more than 450 uh fire EMS and law enforcement studies uh in 47 states in Canada. Uh we do many many things. Uh really the backbone of our processes include uh data analysis uh to determine workloads, response times and resiliency uh of certainly all of our public safety studies. Uh we do strategic and sustainability planning uh police and fire chief selection. In fact, today we just finished a fire chief selection uh in Upper Derby, Pennsylvania. Uh standard of cover studies which I will propose this evening. risk assessments and really any fire and EMS assessment or law enforce law enforcement assessment uh that a client may want. We have a lot of experience in Michigan uh which includes just in the last three years uh city of Battle Creek fire and EMS assessment, city of Midland and Larkin Township together fire and EMS uh assessment and potential consolidation of services. uh cities of Northville, Plymouth uh which included an analysis of uh HVA or Hiron Valley ambulance, city of Seline again included an analysis of Hiron Valley ambulance, city

of Sterling Heights uh where we just completed a standards of cover city of Fenton and the city of Mount Pleasant and Union Township. Uh we have a current engagement right now with Farmington Hills. It's a strategic uh plan for their fire and EMS uh department. So our proposal this evening is a standards of cover. And so what's a standards of cover? Well, it's really a a comprehensive planning document that is used by fire and emergency services. And really uh it is to take a deep dive into service delivery performance, response standards, resource deployment, community risk. Uh and as you will learn depending on well whoever does your study, community risk uh really is tied to uh staffing and deploying fire and EMS agencies across the country. If you understand what your community risk is, which includes buildings, social determinance of health, which drive EMS demands in any community, uh environmental hazards, etc. So all of those things drive demand and certainly drive how you staff and deploy your service. It also serves really as the as a data-driven foundation for making operational decisions and certainly improving public safety. Tied to our standards of cover which are tied to any standards of cover across the country. doesn't matter who is doing uh the study or the analysis is a data analysis where we take a deep dive into again response times workload which is very important we'll look at the workload of Huron Valley ambulance as well and then what's the resiliency right so resiliency really is the built-in uh piece of how

does the fire and EMS agencies recover from one two three four or five calls and how do they absorb those calls calls and how can they respond uh to maintain uh public service. So what's our methodology? Well, we will interview key fire department and township officials. Uh we we do a lot of engagement certainly with the fire and EMS departments. We will do that for you. Uh I think an important piece again is Hiron Valley Ambulance. We have done a lot of work as a firm with Hiron Valley Ambulance. I know Carl Rock the operations manager. I just worked uh pretty closely with him on a project in Seline uh and as well on other projects we have done. Uh and so again we want to look at the current state of the agency all the hazards sponsson deployment analysis delivery of EMS ground transport which I know is a key item uh in this study uh and you know why is the demand gone up right what is driving that new demand uh and so certainly when we do our community risk assessment we will do a uh a a deep dive into an EMS community risk risk assessment which includes uh looking at all the social determinants of health which which includes access to health care uh you know certain age groups drive EMS demand uh who what's your poverty level is and and and who may be on uh you know need nourishment uh and food and and transportation all of those things drive EMS demand up for for the people who certainly do not have access to all of those things. Uh so that's a big EMS demand driver. So we include that in our community risk

analysis. Uh we certainly will get data and information from both departments, right? Or both agencies uh Plymouth Township Fire and EMS and HVA. Uh we'll look at uh their national fire incident reporting system, EPCR reports, CAD data. Uh we have worked with the CAD systems in Wayne County uh in the Detroit area exclusively. So uh they know CPSM, we know them. Uh so it's very easy. We know the data that we're going to get. We're also going to do an on-site visit, right? So we'll be there in person, hold in-person stakeholder meetings with uh with certainly Plymouth Township Fire, HVA, and then uh certainly uh with board members if so desired. So key elements again of a standards of cover community risk assessment right where we'll look at all the uh the risk and uh make determinations on those and provide analysis back and then we link that back to staffing and deployment of fire and EMS service area and demographics. As I said, uh we look at all the population unique challenges uh that you may have in your community, building risk and again social determinance of health and another and again one of our backbones and the backbones of what we do is our deployment analysis where we look at all the stations apparatus personnel. We look at station distribution in this study. We look at resource distribution in this study and it includes both the fire and the EMS agency because the EMS agency is staffed a little differently than the fire agency does which is a static deployment. The MS agency is more of a dynamic deployment. So we'll take a deep dive into that and see regionally what that effect is on Plymouth Township.

We look at response time goals. Uh response time is important. It's always a measurement in fire and EMS. And we benchmark all of that against national standards such as NFPA 1710 in the case of Plymouth Township. Uh what we also benchmark against 1710 and other national standards is staffing, deployment of resources, uh fleet, and things such as that. future planning. We're certainly going to give you recommendations on uh adjustments perhaps to resources, staffing, station locations based on projected growth and changing community needs. All of that is included in a standards of cover. Our project timeline is about 180 days uh to draft report uh back to the township and those are just all of the different categories uh and how they benchmark out, right? So we always do a project kickoff with the uh primary stakeholders initial preparatory meetings then we get going on our gap analysis right so we collect all the CAD and RMS data uh from uh from the fire and the EMS agencies uh then we will deliver uh a workload and response time and resiliency data analysis to the township to review uh and provide input back. We will certainly do internal stakeholder meetings, right? We develop all of that. Then we come out and we do a site visit. We spend two or three days on the ground. Uh we get a feel for that as we go through our project. Uh then we go into and we develop the operational uh you know fire and EMS standards of cover, give you a draft report, give you time to look at it, review it. We're not perfect, right? So there's nuances in your community that we may miss. uh and and just in all of our discussions and data collection. So we give you a chance

to look at it, review it and then provide us comments and we clean the report up and then we deliver a final report. All along we have uh progress meetings uh stakeholder meetings and those are virtual uh just to give you updates or to talk about project issues and challenges or to clarify information. final report uh is a is laid out uh in along the standards of the center for public safety excellence which is the accreditation agency for fire and EMS across the country. So when we do a standards of cover, we follow their program uh and their in their uh report layouts because many communities uh that uh that are in the accreditation process or are planning to get into the accreditation projects. The standard of cover is a document that is required. So we follow their format and that's all uh laid out there uh as it as on the screen. So we become your team, right? Our team is your team. We work with you very closely from project kickoff to final delivery uh of the final report. We're here to assist you certainly. Uh and we have a great team. We have a lot of expertise particularly in Michigan. Uh we've done a lot of projects there. So we're very familiar with uh Michigan fire standards, Michigan EMS standards uh and the like. uh and as a strategic partner for ICMA, we prescribe to those same ethics standards and have been re and certainly have been recognized by that organization as the exclusive provider of public safety services for them. I'll answer any questions you may have. Before we start, everybody, will you please turn off your mics because

there is some feedback that allegedly is happening. Don't know what it is. Question. Um, so I didn't see uh any uh financial analysis as uh one of the elements of your scope. Was was that that's out of scope? Uh no sir. Um I saw in the agenda package that you have our um that you have our proposal. Yeah. Uh so um I just thought you would have that. I didn't get into it. Um I'll certainly go over that with you. Um, we have a standard fee uh that covers

No, no, that that's that's not my question. My question is financial analysis relative to recommendations that you would make for staffing models and

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. We we we will include any uh analysis that you so desire. Okay. A standards of cover typically doesn't have that. uh and we were operating uh on a scope of work uh just through discussion with the fire chief. Uh however um financial analysis uh such as if we make a recommendation that you add an additional ambulance uh or if we make a recommendation that you add additional staffing uh we certainly will provide in the recommendation what the cost of that uh additional service will be. Yes sir.

Okay. Any other questions? We could come back at the end if we need to. Have they done one for Plymouth Township before? They did the one uh IPMA, the former company that they spun off from, did uh the study in what was that 2004, 2005? 10. Was it that late? Yep. uh 200 just before the divorce with the city of Plymouth with uh so they they were the ones that did that uh that study and per their recommendations. How did that pan out for the town?

Well, I don't I don't think it was recommendations, but it but the city made a decision to go off uh uh with Northfield Township. So, that's when we split split off, but it wasn't because of a recommendation that it made. It was because the city decided to do that because they frankly they couldn't they said they couldn't afford uh to continue the way that we were going and there were some personality conflicts at the time too. Yeah. We didn't treat them like a customer or a partner. So that's kind of a losing way. Who the city Plymouth Township. Oh,

did not treat Plymouth City like a customer or a partner. Usually, you'd pick one or the other, right? We picked none.

All right. And the drum roll, Public Consulting Group, PCG, Steve Noble and Sarah Cisio. I don't have either of them. What was the first one you said? Noble is the last name.

Oh, there we go. Can anybody hear me? Yes. Very good. Yes. I don't have the controls either to share my screen much as the previous. Yeah. Let me see what we're going to try to duplicate what we did. We we pressed buttons until we were successful. Excellent. Sounds outstanding. What was it again? Makes it more sporting.

Bobby may have to rescue us again. What did we do? We made him a promoted somebody to the promoted pan. Yeah. Right.

Promoted. I'm just uh let's see. I don't know. Close. Yeah. Go to Go to panelist. Wait a minute. I'm sharing. You're the only panelist, it looks like. Yeah, I'm sharing. I need to unshare. Sharing is good. You can't share if you're I know, but I need to unshare here. Made him a panelist. Uh, no, not Noble.

Steve Noble as a panelist.

Steve Noble will be be joining the webinar as a panelist. Oh, there he goes. Now he's good.

So, they have to leave and come back in. Yeah. You got to click on There you go.

How are we doing? Can everyone see the screen now?

Okay, they can't hear me. Go ahead, Steve. Hello. Testing. Yeah, we can hear you.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Yeah, I was just making sure everyone can see the screen here. Okay, very good. Thank you everyone for having us. Um, I have a partial team here assembled, but we can't all get on screen. Um, it's myself, Steve Noble, and Greg Weman. We're the two subject matter experts that would um be partnering on this project given the opportunity. Um so we are from public consulting group uh looking for this uh great partnership with Plymouth Township. So public consulting group we are a national fire and EMS consulting team here um under an umbrella of a very large organization that's a Bostonbased that's been around since 1985. They have four major uh sections of um work that PCG does, but we are under the health division and then public safety consulting is where we we fall into that. Um my name is Steve Noble as you can see there. Uh be the subject matter expert on this. I come from the fire service. spended 26 years in Tucson, Arizona with Northwest Fire Rescue District, a firebased EMS agency that did multip multiple conversions from thirdparty vendors to in-house ALS to full transport services. So, I've been through several conversions with EMS um and the firebased uh world there. Greg Weman is with me. I'll let you speak up, Greg, if you want to introduce yourself real quick.

Oh, sure. Good evening, everyone. Uh my name is Greg Weman. As Steve said, I retired after 27 years from the Memphis Fire Department. Started there as a firefighter paramedic, finished as the chief officer for the Office of Emergency Management uh for the city of Memphis within the Division of Fire Services. I actually have a a little extra background in EMS. I started as a private service, worked with a hospital-based service, and then moved on to the Memphis Fire Department where we had a fire-based uh first responder and transport service.

Very good. And you could see a couple other team members that are listed that uh we're actually at a a senior retreat out here and they're in a working session as we speak. But uh Chief Ken Riddle comes from Las Vegas Fire. He's a project adviser. He's had 30 plus years of consulting experience and Caitlyn Edwards be the project manager. So our experience um as you can see here that uh projects I I don't know if that's on your screen blocking that there 24 states working on three national projects 100 plus years of collective SME experience uh amongst our group here. Um, we do have full-time fire and EMS pro uh providers, board members, industry contributors, experienced project management, um, being uh, Greg here especially and Caitlyn being project managers, financial and analytics spec experts. That's what our group as PCG brings along with us is the vast amount of experience we have with data analytics, financial analysis, financial predictions with actuarials on site and um our all of our financial team that would work on that. So the proposal of this project is really just it we keep it very simple. We're coming along the side side beside you I should say um working hand in hand to support this operation. We would be working very closely probably starting off um from kickoff with weekly meetings with the project team from uh Plymouth Township any uh internal external players that be a part of that on a regular basis. Provide actionable recommendations. Ultimately everything we're going to be doing is benchmark against national standards. But what it comes down to is we need to benchmark and evaluate what works for Plymouth Township and the Plymouth Fire Department and the community and really align those capabilities with the

community growth and their ultimate support of what the community needs are. All of our reports start out with a demographic section that we will outline everything um from community vitality to population trends uh to uh the social demographics and then what we do when we get into the data analysis, we benchmark those across from each other much like um the previous uh presentation has said as well and then we start coming up with those actionable recommendations. So, the scope of work, we're going to start out with a comprehensive staffing analysis. Um, not just for the operation side, but for the administrative side as well. Really, we want to come along and say, how does the Plymouth Township Fire Department operate? Uh, are they heavy administrative? Are they light administrative? Can they not support the operation side effectively? Is operation side uh understaffed possibly that we're not meeting the standards or meeting the needs for the community? evaluation of the performance of the current EMS transport model. We want to look into especially the HVA system component and see where there's gaps and where those uh those are identified and how those can be filled also with Plymouth Township personnel potentially even maybe taking over an EMS transport service down the road. Detailed review of the EMS call data. So what we like to do, we'd like to minimum have three years of call data. uh five years would even be better that we can start identifying trends, start looking at call volumes and call types. And we really want to identify down to the granular level of what actually is happening. Of course, that includes response times, but we break down the data into calls per month, calls per day of the week, calls per hour, and that just helps us identify any additional staffing levels because there are opportunities to upstaff or down staff based on those trends. analysis of dispatching protocols and procedures. We certainly want to look at

the entire system as a whole, not just the components of the fire department, but going back to even the dispatch side of things and seeing if there's a any analysis or areas of improvement from the dispatch. And of course, they work hand in hand, not just from getting calls out, but working emergency incidents and look at those policies and procedures and see if there's any gaps that can be identified. want to go for an overview of succession planning for the department. Uh obviously staffing but also recruitment retention was identified as a critical area to I be um to address. So we always want to look at that and look at any opportunities for growth within the department, opportunities for development within the department to help build that succession planning and also that retention recruitment piece that we can bring personnel into the department in the future. want to do a compare uh competitive wage analysis. Uh see how Plymouth Township is doing with other organizations. That might be a obviously a recruitment and a retention piece. Are we losing people to great employees to other organizations because our uh compensation just isn't up to par or we might be above the trend as well. So it's something we'll definitely take a look at. Coming up with strategic recommendations ultimately uh for service delivery for the community. We do propose um an on-site presentation at the final report to um city council and anyone else if we need to do multiple. If the department wants their own union representation, we're willing to come on site uh a second time and do a final presentation of the final draft methodology engagement. We do propose those two on-site visits. One would be early fall that we'd be coming out to do a full assessment of capital. We want to look at all the stations, all the apparatus, equipment, take a look at

policy procedures, on-site uh meetings with staff, with council members. Uh that will happen virtually as well. But having that one-on-one and face to face is critical and having that real touch and feel of the department and the town township is going to be a key piece to driving actionable recommendations. Um departmentwide survey. So we plan on doing um internal and external surveys with the stakeholders and this will just be an opportunity for them to give very candid feedback on very specific questions that we will drive that a lot come from our interviews and that will be part of the report so that that uh not that anyone gets called out. It'll be anonymous survey but we give that uh opportunity for candid feedback that not necessarily you get always with one-on-one interviews. So internal external uh surveys and then that data analysis and benchmarking piece I was telling you about. Um take a look at the strategic strategic organizational documents internal external stakeholder piece um and pay plans. Those are some of the things that we'll be asking for to do our full analysis. Some comparable projects that were done by us and wrapped up just recently in Marian Fire Department Iowa. This was a complete uh comprehensive assessment of the EMS system. It wasn't just the Marian Fire Department. It was more of a feasibility study for them. What it was was a breakdown of the entire county and the EMS system and all the providers that provide medical transport and all the dispatching centers. And really the similarity comes down to is what we plan on doing with Plymouth Township is including everything from dispatch response times, protocols, internal external stakeholder surveys, a full administrative operational analysis and then a capital assessment that we would include with PIM Plymouth Township as

well. Um Marian Fire Department had 19 scope of work elements with 10 key recommendations at the final. Another project was Sandy Utah. This was a complete administrative, operational, and capital assessment of their organization. They're a fivestation department um just south of Salt Lake City. Included in theirs was a little more extensive some key areas of wildland urban interface and their special operations. So we did analysis of their technical rescue and their hazard materials, but really we benchmark again against their current strategic plan and identified any gaps that they would have with five to 10 year forecasting for the fire department with the staffing evaluation. And again, I I mentioned the administrative operations and capital evaluations. Uh we broke down all their EMS data into a granular level that was um actionable to the level that we could tell them exactly what was happening internally. of the department and externally with their um neighboring stakeholders as well that had 21 scope of work elements with 30 key recommendations in that project. And then Tybee Island, Georgia was actually very very similar to Sandy except for they're a one-station department, very remote, so they had their own challenges, but it was a full operational administrative and capital assessment as well. Full uh they they needed extensive policy and procedure evaluation which we went through there. We also helped with the hiring of their new fire chief. We were involved in that process. Um that had 14 scope of work elements and 24 key recommendations including recommendations to uh manage their huge influx of visitors during the summertime being a remote island, a very desirable location in the summertime. Deliverables at the end of this is a strategic assessment report. you know, working closely with uh the team that we'd come together and have a draft

report and work through everything that that final report and that final presentation. Um in involve a road map uh probably a strategic planning and a master planning section at the end to help guide those recommendations, station capital and planning tools would be provided and datadriven community line strategies. Our project timeline for this would be a five to six month timeline. We usually give a little bit of buffer in there. Oftent times the if things get pushed, it's all has to do with the data data gathering. Sometimes it's hard to get all the data that we really want to make these recommendations. So if there's a little delay, we might push that all the way to six months, but we hope to do a fivemonth timeline on this in a three-phase section there. our project initiation, stakeholder engagement, data analysis, and then the development and draft of the final report and presentation. Any questions for us at this time? We thank you for your time.

Um, so uh all of you had had come from, uh, cities that are midsize to large. What challenges do you run into when you're trying to scale down your analysis to a smaller community where uh we, you know, have to deal with a minimum staffing issue. Um, but there's times when we could require three times as many uh people, but of course we can't afford to to staff to to the high water mark. So coming from my question is coming from large communities uh and when you're doing your analysis, what challenges do you run in into when you're dealing with communities of this size? Uh, excellent question and uh the the great thing is having national experience and to give you a little more background I've also taught nationally to organizations a lot of hazard materials some technical rescue instruction even some international. So I I've kind of been everywhere from New York City FDNY to much like that project I brought up with Tybee Island, a single station department with um very minimal staffing, two to three per day. Um, so ch I don't want to ever call them challenges. I I look to them more as opportunities. So yes, there's national standards and we can bring out NFPA standards all we want and say that you need four person engine companies and your response n times need to be under x amount of time. But it comes down to being realistic and that's why taking that wide view that we always do a usually a county profile down to a city or township profile down to a department profile to drive that picture of the actual needs of not just a town but the all the surrounding communities. We take

a look at all the neighboring communities and any working relationships that Plymouth Township Fire Department may or may not have and opportunities to grow there to augment staffing and effective response force. So maybe Plymouth Township doesn't need to up staff, but if we can get a working relationship with a neighboring agency that we can get that effective response force. So these are just opportunities and I'm not saying this is exactly what Plymouth Township needs, but we want to look at opportunities to effectively serve your community. Um, and it's not necessarily throwing more people at the problem. Can it be part of the solution? Absolutely. But a lot of times there's opportunities. Are there volunteer opportunities? Are there call reduction opportunities, risk reduction within the community that we can say, "Hey, if we can implement other strategies and reduce all these fall injuries that you're going to at your elderly care facilities, we're helping the problem, right? and you're helping your community at the same time. So again, they're they're challenges and that's just taking a holistic look through a different lens at not just the fire department, but at the community and saying how can we serve this community with the resources we have. And then yes, if it ultimately comes down to you've been underststaffed, you've been short staffed, you don't have enough units, whatever that might be, it's coming up with a plan over three, five, seven, 10 years to implement that plan because we all know budget is a constraint with everybody these days. Even the large communities, the large fire departments, the large cities, it's always a problem. So, it's coming up with a solution. So, I hope I answered your question.

You did. Thank you.

I have a question. My I my question for you is that I am attempting as a community member and a board member to understand what hiring your company or any company can do for us in terms of the issues that we face that we are not able to do for ourselves by analyzing data. You know, that's a great question and oftentimes we even partner up with other cities or towns that are very capable of not only analyzing the data but breaking it down to actionable levels. Sometimes this is merely an opportunity to have a third party lens look at and give the recommendations from an outside source. um whether there's political strife between departments and cities which we run into quite often and they just needed to hear it from somebody else and usually both parties in that case like things in the report and they don't like things in the report. So often times that's the best thing is getting an outside lens, getting a third party, getting the experience from Greg, getting the experience from myself, getting the experience from Ken bringing into this report and saying, "Hey, look, from our experience, not just from our departments we worked at, but from our experience working nationally, what might work for Plymouth Township and working with your team, that's when the final report comes drafted together and we make sure these items not only make sense to you, and they are very digestible by Plymouth Township and the Plymouth Township Fire Department, but they're actionable. And that's a report that you can take with you and not throw on a shelf, but open it up and use that master plan at

the end and say, "These are the steps we need to take." I hope that answered your question. Other questions from the board? Thank you for coming today. Thank you. We thank you so much for your time. Everyone stay safe and have a great week. All right. Number three. Are your questions just for the No, we don't want public.

When we deliberate later, people can talk. Okay. Stone Productions. Rich Marinucci. He's in person. There's four total, right? Yes.

Good evening and thank you for the opportunity to make a very brief presentation. Have the slides give a little introduction a little idea of how we approach a very project and video questions. We have what is we are local. We are mission based particularly southeastern Michigan and uh our experiences are uh particularly in this area but they also cover a lot of the country and in some cases a little bit of international work. Um my partner Greg Flynn uh who is the current chief of West Bloomfield Fire Department was unable to make it here today due to a family commitment. Uh but Greg has 27 years in the fire business and he is uh very well read and very wellversed in all aspects of the fire service. He is a graduate of the National Fire Academy executive fire officer program and also the Naval Postgraduate School where he earned his uh uh degree master's degree. He also has served on the board of the Michigan Fire Chiefs along with the International Association of Fire Chiefs Great Lakes Division as their Michigan rep. And he is well traveled and uh communicates well and still does a lot of work with a lot of fire departments in the state of Michigan. So, next that's me, Rich Marinucci. Uh, I've got almost 50 years in this business. Uh, those of you looking at this youthful appearance, I started when I was seven, so it gives you some idea of where we're at. Uh, but I've been in the business a long time. About 34 of those years have been as a fire chief in three different fire departments. had an opportunity to serve as the president of the international association of fire chiefs and got to travel around to a lot of great places, meet a lot of wonderful people and understand uh a lot of the fire service

across the country. One of the things in my travels that I learned is that there's about 33,000 fire departments in the United States. And the issue is that if you know one fire department, that's exactly what you know. You know, one fire department. There are idiosyncrasies and you have to look at it specifically to find out what each one has to offer their communities, what their strengths and weaknesses are, how they operate and so forth and so on. I also uh spent seven months as the acting chief operating officer of the United States Fire Administration on the exchange program with my fire department. I was recruited by uh the federal government to come in and try to address uh some of the issues they were having at that particular time. And once again had an opportunity to uh learn from uh some wonderful people throughout the fire service and across the country. Next uh what we want to talk about is uh we want to want to put the bottom line up front. What are we going to do for you here? We're going to look at uh what you do right now. We're going to evaluate it based upon common sense uh realistic uh uh approaches to this. We're going to be very practical in what we do and we're very simplistic. Uh this doesn't have to be a complicated pro program. Uh we can look at it through our years of experience and look at it. Uh we're going to evaluate uh your risk, what the willingness of the community is to uh put up with risk, what their level of service expectations are, and then of course uh the ability and willingness to pay for particular services. You have to have a strong understanding with respect to that. across the country there's fire departments uh from one station minimal staffing all the way up to the largest fire department in the country FDNY that has over 12,000 members. What happens in those particular cases is that there are different levels of risk and different levels of expense of what people pay for their fire and EMS services. And so it

now comes down to talking to uh folks here in Plymouth Township to say what is your tolerance with risk and then how do we provide the best level of service with the funding that you're going to provide to match that up and to make sure that you're getting what you want. When somebody dials 911, they're having a bad day. Nobody picks it up and says, you know, I'm not things aren't too bad. You know, just send me a couple guys. I think it'll be okay. They want somebody to come fix their problem because they're having a lousy day regardless of what it is. Now, we on the fire service side might look at that and say, "Wasn't that big a deal, but that's not how it is. It's how the people view that. They're having an issue. They're having a problem. They couldn't figure out who else to call and so they want some help." And so, how do you provide that to the level of the expectations of your residents and that's what we're trying to match up when we do our evaluation? And the evaluation is not much different than what everybody else does. We're going to look at your data. We're going to look at your processes. We're going to look at your personnel. We're going to talk to folks inside the fire department, outside the fire department, anybody else you think has input that can be helpful to us. And then we'll mix that all together. We'll come back and give you some recommendations of different approaches to take. If you do X, here's the expectation. If you do Y, here's the expectation. so that you then as the policy makers for your community get to make those particular choices of what you want to do and how you match up uh your willingness to pay and where your funding comes from and how that matches up with your risk tolerance in your particular community. What you'll get from us is bone honesty. Uh we have no other reason not to do that. We'll tell you what we think, but when we do that, we will be tactful and diplomatic in our approach and we will be very respectable and honorable to you. And we'll also be open to any suggestions or any comments that you may have uh along the way and we'll answer and to the best of our ability as we go along this. So we will also look at the national standards too but with the recognition that it now becomes much more of a local decision. Okay, the national standards

are just that they're national standards. They can be used in a lot of different ways. we will mention them just because but the reality is what do you want to do in Plymouth Township and how is that going to match up with what you realistically do with the resources that you're willing to allocate to the fire department. So we're open-minded through the whole thing. Uh we have no pre perceived notion though we do have knowledge of this particular area of southeast Michigan and also the state of Michigan but we still look at each one individually as we go along. So, uh, with that, I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

How how do you, uh, run data? Well, there's there's a couple of ways there, you know, there's the the pure the pure way to do it when you look at it and then there's the practical sense of when you can look at it from your experiences and you can evaluate what are you really going to and again this comes back down to your risk analysis and your risk tolerance nature. So, we can look at the EMS side of the the issues and say, okay, here's what happens. In most cases in EMS, if you have a very serious event, it's about getting the right amount of resources and the right amount of time to to change the outcome. As an example, if somebody goes into cardiac arrest, you have about 6 to 8 minutes to get there and start treatment. If you don't do it, you're not going to affect the outcome. Okay? So, we would look at it from that perspective. Uh you want to look at the same thing applies on on fires, too. you have to get there in in the time frame that is going to change the outcome and stop the damage that's being done. So, we'll look at it from both of those perspectives. We'll look at it from the standards perspectives that's going to tell you, okay, here's what the national standards say are going to do it, but then we're going to try to look at it practically and say, okay, what can you truly accomplish? And so, we analyze the data. It's going to be based upon separating out here's what EMS functions are to be done and here's the analysis of the fire side of the calls. Any other questions from the board? All right. Thank you for coming.

Oh, you got you got he has a question. Um I have the highest respect for your profession and your view because I know that Maryland. Um, I spent some time at Lake Superior State. I gave a commencement address there. I hosted them in Lancome. Do you have the affirmative support of Chief Connelly, firefighters Smith, and Tacoma for this study? I believe we do. Otherwise, it wouldn't be on the agenda tonight. Correct. If we waved, we know what the end goal in mind is. You you've heard of the concept of begin with the end in mind.

Correct? If the firefighters have done nothing else, they have proven that we need and may want more staff. If we didn't have a study at all, could we take that fee and whatever other monies and hire two or three more firefighters in the next three or four months? Oh, could hire him for about two weeks. Depends on whose fee you're talking. Rhetorical questions, but you are putting on record that you have the support of Chief Connelly and firefighters Smith and Tacoma who have, you know, you gave us 169 pages to leaf through. He never said that.

And as I said, I have the highest respect for and I love studies and data and all that. I work for the Michigan Municipal League in Ann Arbor personnel. So, uh, I just want to, you know, put this on record. But what on record? I'm I'm not absolutely clear what you mean by support from the chief. Obviously, I've talked to the chief and I've explained to him what we do. He asked me to send him the scope of work, which we did, and then he so we followed through. That's the extent of of the discussion. I have not had any personal discussions with anybody from the labor side. Okay. All right. Do any of the three of you want to speak?

Not yet. No. Not yet. Okay. Okay. Uh All right. Next is Thank you. Thank you. Emergency Services Consulting International, Joe Powers, and he will be by Zoom. So Joe, you have to leave and come back in. You've been promoted.

Perfect. Can you guys hear me? Okay, we can hear you. Awesome. And I am sharing my screen. We can see it.

Perfect. Hey, look at this. The uh third time's a charm. We got this thing figured out. Hey, I appreciate Mr. Supervisor and Trustees. Thank you so much for allowing me to come uh um and and and present to you. Uh my name is Joe Powers. I'm the managing director for ESCI or Emergency Services Consulting International. Um I come from Virginia. I've got 27 years in the fire service before joining ESCI. Um mostly in a large metro department and then I worked for a small um or a midsize city before uh coming here in in 2022. So interesting thing I I really enjoyed listening to everybody else's uh uh approach to the project. And I think one of the the the key things to take away here is that there is not a a single pretty box that we can stick a project like this into. And everybody's going to have a different approach to it. And I would love to so you know everybody that spoke today um are are some of the greatest minds in the fire service and I and I and I love I love the fact that they're here trying to help your your organization and I would love to put everybody together on and be part of the dream team um with with uh with those great minds. So I mean there's there's some really truly um great people that have put some stuff up. So, whomever you you would choose at the end, you're going to really have the the information that you need to move forward. Um, but just like everybody else, I think we have a a slightly different approach to the way that uh um we would conduct your study. Uh obviously, our scope of work is is relatively flexible. So, as this project moves forward and you're looking for specific things, you know, those can be kind of brought together. Um quick a little background on ESCI. ESCI is the consulting firm of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Uh we've been around since 1976. Started out in Oregon helping small fire departments uh uh work regionally with other um small fire departments to be slightly bigger fire departments. Uh in 2008 we were

purchased by the International Association of Fire Chiefs and we've been the uh IFC's consulting firm ever since. Um in 2017 uh we expanded and and brought in some promotional testing uh industrial organizational psychologists uh to um to expand our divisions. Uh we currently do some pretty major things. Uh we work throughout the country um and in Canada and in Mexico on master planning and strategic planning. Uh working through cultural assessments with our IO psychologists. Um obviously doing some risk assessments and standards of cover like some other folks have talked about today. uh and everything uh that has to do with data analytics. Um ESCI as well and and included in that. And then obviously we're doing some uh some executive recruitments and testing throughout the United States. Um at any given time we've probably we at any given time we have about 50 um uh management consulting projects working and also about 50ish uh promotional processes at um you know that we're working through. Uh we have 20 full-time employees. Uh, and they're mostly uh well actually half of our uh half of our full-time employees are are located throughout the country from Florida to Washington state um Illinois and I'm in Virginia. Uh and then uh we've half of our employees are out of our ESCI headquarters uh that used to be co-located with the IFC in Chantelli, Virginia until they moved to Tyson's Corner and just left us all by ourselves to to fend for ourselves. But um we have two major divisions. Our human capital division uh handles our promotional processes and executive recruitments, planning and strategic services division is working mainly on uh on management consulting projects. And then we've got uh because we've got these these great minds on both sides of the uh um the organization. We do a lot of crossover projects where we bring in IO psychologists to help with organizational change and change management in the region. We've got some great

projects that we've recently completed. We were in uh um H Heartland, Deerfield working on a station location study. We were in Texas Township a year ago with a strategic plan. Um we do all of Detroit's uh promotional processes. We're down in Dearbornne with a master plan. Um and Morton Township with a community risk assessment and standard to cover. Uh from a similar projects around a fire department evaluation, um we have just completed within the last 12 months in Lafayette, Indiana, Newport News, Virginia. uh Shaunie Oklahoma and Shaunie Oklahoma's uh project uh transformed into a a partnership project with their EMS provider which was React EMS. Uh so we dove into the EMS side um with that community. Uh completed a project actually just uh uh last a week ago a week ago tomorrow completed a project in Aurora, Colorado. Um and then Lton, Colorado or excuse me, Lton, Oklahoma and Bethl. Um exactly the same type of project. Obviously, all of our projects, you know, are a little bit different because each of our communities are looking for have essentially have different questions that they're looking to answer from an agency evaluation or a fire department evaluation. We're trying to answer one major question. You know, where is the Plymouth Township Fire Department today? And we're going to you we're going to do that by looking at, you know, a variety of things. And we'll kind of go through some of the uh um the individual phases and and what that looks like here in just a minute. Um but from a t from a team standpoint, from an ESCI team standpoint, I think it's really important to kind of know what the who the people are that are working. And it's not just me and it's likely not going to be me because I don't have the background of a large fire of a of a small fire department. My entire background is large fire departments. So, we'll bring in a full-time project manager um that works for us uh on staff that has that that small town um uh background. Uh but before all of that happens, we'll hook you up with um a guy named Chris. And Chris is going to uh

Chris is out of Florida and he's going to be your primary contact for the onboarding phase because so you know the in order to make a a project really really successful, we want to make sure that we have all the information or as much of the information as we can get up front. Um, so you'll have a a full-time onboarding liaison to meet with you a couple times a week, make sure that we're getting all of the information you need and make sure you're getting the support from ESCI to move that forward. Um, you you'll have a full-time project manager, you'll have some some contracted consultants because we want to make sure that our team mirrors the the type of organization that you need and has the skills, the knowledge, skills, and abilities to uh to answer the questions that you're looking for. Um, we have full-time GIS uh and data analytics on staff. So, our our data analytics and um GIS program manager, Katie, she'll uh coordinate that with uh our senior GIS analyst whose name is Trisha. And then we'll have Keith and um and Rodney working on that as well. And then Sarah will come in right at the end with um developing the the the actual report and making sure that it reads well, it's well organized and it uh um and obviously it's everything is spelled right in the uh the punctuation. She's our English teacher that uh supports the entire thing. Um our our pro our approach to this is essentially over six different phases. Um during that phase one, that's where Chris, your onboarding liaison, will work with with you and the fire and chief Connley um to to get the you know, not only the, you know, three to five years worth of incident data um but also some policy documents, some past staffing. We'll I want we want to look at um overtime usage and leave usage. We want to bring in all of the data that we can get from your EMS provider to be able to, you know, to look really closely at how HVA is is is staffing things and is responding. Um, so we'll we'll work really closely during that phase one. Um, the phase two is when and depending on how quickly we

can move through phase one. You know, nine out of ten times we can get through it within a couple weeks. Sometimes it takes a little longer. Um, but as soon as phase one is done, uh, your project team will be assigned with your project manager and the and the contractors, um, or the the other people on the team, not specifically contractors all the time, but your project team will then take a look at all of the the information that's been provided, meet with Chief Connley, meet with your your points of contact to make sure that there's nothing else that we're missing. And then we'll immediately move into phase three. And phase three is where we have some in-person face-toface conversations um with maybe some of the trustees, maybe the supervisor, uh you know, labor groups, you know, firefighters, the chief staff, um and and be able to not only just have interviews and and and focus groups, but also look at at facilities and apparatus. Um and because what we're trying to do is like, hey, as of today, what does the Plymouth Township Fire Department look like? Uh and then moving into phase four, um where it says the evaluation of current conditions. This is really the meat and potatoes of our uh of our project. This is where all of the magic really happens. We're going to do some in-depth data analytics with our our full-time uh project or data analytics team. We'll dive deep into the EMS data. Um, one of the biggest issues and I and I and I heard a couple of the other folks talk about it that it may not be that big of an issue, but one of our biggest issues working with thirdparty EMS providers is to create a good solid relationship with them so that they're going to provide us the data. And within your your local ordinances or your your contract, you may be able to we may be able to get the data that we need relatively easily. Um, but you know, we'll we'll dive into understanding where the performance is, where the staffing is, how um how you're able how quickly you're able to get resources and staff to the to the incidents, and we'll look at that over the last three to five years. And then we'll also project into the future, you know, what that could look like. Uh phase five gets into the the recommendations. Here's where we're

going to start working really collaborative collaboratively. I have a hard time talking today. I'm working really closely with uh with Chief Conley and the other folks that are part of the uh uh the Plymouth team to say, "All right, this is what we're looking at and how does this start to align with what you guys are looking for?" Um and then obviously all of that goes into a draft report. You know, collaboration during that uh that draft report development is really good. We want to make sure that, you know, we're not stepping on the wrong toes, but we're also providing you with an honest uh approach to to the project. And then we'll provide you with a final report. And then depending on how you want us to present this out back out to the um to the trustees and the supervisor, you know, we can make that happen as well. Um you know, especially since uh um COVID, so many of our clients have have opted not to do the in-person um presentation at the end. They're looking for something a little bit different, but we're open to, you know, aligning with whatever your needs are um and how your community wants to approach that. Um our project timeline is about six months. Um the uh you'll notice that phase one is kind of grayed out with a minus one. Uh we don't start our project timeline until we um until we've worked with you to get all of the information from us and we've provided you all the support that you need in order to do that. Uh that way that you know there's um there's a really clear expectation on when the timeline starts and when the timeline ends and and we'll work through that. Obviously some some things will pop up and we'll end up finishing finishing very early. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but you know, most of our projects we're ending on time or or early. That's probably the fastest presentation I've ever done to a board. So, I would love to have any questions that you guys may have and I will uh see if I can stop sharing here. Perfect. There we go. Anybody have any questions?

The red light's on. Yeah. So in your documentation and you mentioned this in your presentation just now, you spoke about the evaluation of third-party ambulance performance. And the last sentence in that paragraph says, "Historically, third party EMS providers have often been uncooperative with performance analysis studies. How will you work around that since that's a major issue and probably the impetus to even having this study done?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. I think it's all it's all within relationships and I think that the first thing that we can work through is understanding what your contract is with which with HVA to figure out where where the um the requirement if if there is any for them to provide information for performance analysis. Um and if there's not then it's you know it's working with them um through Chief Connley and making sure that we create a good relationship that we're not what we're not trying to do is provide you know a punitive you know analysis. We want to make sure that we're providing you know good informed decision making support for your community um and and how that performance from the EMS system is providing good service to the community. And then second question is how strong or to what degree are the boots on the ground, the the firefighters when they give you information um is taken into account in your analysis.

That's an interesting question. I think that it really depends on on where the so we we work with fire departments routinely and and we've we have we have organizations that have really high morale and the and the information that's being provided is is you know right on on par with being you know being a good contributor to to forward progress. Um, we also work with organizations that do not have good morale and the information that's being provided to us is not helping toward progress. So that's where I think that when we start to have those issues, you know, we bring in our organizational um our industrial organizational psychology staff and say, "Hey, what's the right approach to to gather good clean feedback from from especially operational firefighters um which, you know, you know, all honesty, I was an operational firefighter for a long time and I understand, you know, some of those challenges. Um, you know, if if things start to pop up where we're starting to realize that maybe we're getting poor information or we're, you know, we're uh we're starting to be played, which happens quite often, um, we can adjust our scope of work and say, "Hey, we'd like to we'd like to do some some, you know, uh, member surveys. We'd like to do some additional um, focus groups." and and when we do good facilitated focus groups and good facilitated conversations, I think, you know, we can get, you know, down to the uh down into the weeds and really understand what the the true issues are.

Okay, thank you. So, what data analytics methodology would you use to evaluate runs or other data for example HVA data?

Yeah. Yeah. So the the in that scope of work um and I would I don't have it in front of me. I have to pull it up and then I think that I'm going to end up not end up hanging up on your on your Zoom call. Um there's a whole service delivery section that would be um we would we would run that for the fire department and then we would also run it for the EMS department. So, we're looking at um not only, you know, not only how quickly does it take for uh for a firetruck or an ambulance to arrive on scene, but we're going to also look at the concentration and distribution of resources. We're going to look at how quickly we can get a certain number of people to a to an uh to an incident. And then the data and charts is always, you know, a great thing to have in a report. Uh, however, I think that the the best way to visualize data is through GIS, which is why we've got some really solid GIS folks. Um, because when you take GIS, you're taking data and you're visualizing it. You're being able to tell a story. And I always, you know, when when I was in the fire department and we would bring information and and put it on a kitchen table of a firehouse and say, "Hey, can you tell me what this is without me actually explaining it to you?" Um, and that worked out really well for my board. So I could give that to a, you know, board of supervisors and or a city council and they would be able to do the same thing. Um, so we have some pretty strong methodology on our what we call our first pass of data analytics. Um, and then once that comes back, we we all sit down and we do it during the site visit and and and say, "Hey, what is it? What else are we missing? Are we answering all the questions that you're looking for?" If not, then we we take our second pass and we start to dive in very specifically around, you know, certain elements of performance. I think that's probably one of the pieces that I think as the as a managing director of ESCI, I think that's the piece that I'm most proud of is the ability to dive in deeply into the data analytics in a way that that's easily understood. Um it's well presented and

we've got really really solid people on our team, you know, providing that those analytics.

Any other questions? All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Super, Mr. Supervisor. Thank you so much, trustees. Thank you for allowing me to be in your uh um in your community. Thank you very much. Thank you. That's the last one, right? Last one. Right.

So, we can take a a few minutes here. Let's say 10 10 minutes and discuss a little bit about what we saw and what you think you want to do. Um, I think we saw four very good options. Uh, very difficult to uh separate them. Um, I'd like and I'm I'm in my mind right now. I'm trying to make sure I associate uh with the right organization what I heard. Um, but I like I I like a lot of what I heard. Um, I think you know one point when you're building an organization like this that was spoton is you have to analyze your risk tolerance versus what you can afford to do. Um, and that is one of the key questions that we're going to have to answer is what level of risk are we willing to accept given the fact that uh we don't have unlimited resources.

Yeah. I agree. Uh some people think we don't need a consultant. Should you know does anybody think think that I think you maybe don't think that we need a consultant? We could do it internally. I think that we need to educate the public about how the fire department operates because I don't think they understand it and if they don't understand it, it's difficult for them to make decisions going forward. I don't I think these are have to be board decisions. These are not public decisions. I I'm talking. This is why you were you're on the board. Are we not We don't have our mics on. Oh,

red button. Yep. I'm I'm talking about the fact that when our citizens don't understand what we have and what we don't have as we move forward, if there ever has to be an issue of supporting a millage or whatever it is that we have to do. It's just much easier to do it when you understand what's going on. At that point, that does become a citizen decision, not a board decision. Well, I do think the firefighters have presented themselves very well and I don't I still think there's not support there. So, it would be good to have, you know, an unbiased third party, you know, if they came back and said the exact same thing, you know, which affirmed what they've been saying. Um, then I think, yeah, to your point, there would be more support. Okay. Apparently, we are very understaffed and we're at a high risk here. It's not it's not just, you know, Trusty Buckley running her mouth or the firefighters complaining again. There would be some legitimate support there. Uh I like that.

Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Um and I do like um the fact that ESCI um really honed in on uh the HVA and the evaluation of that. And I think that's again why we're here to to begin with is we're trying to listen to our fighter firefighters and their concerns and their concerns with the HVA. We're also going to have that contract up for renewal again. So um probably about the time that this uh I think presentation is done.

Yeah. I I think where we're at in all this, I think it's probably a good idea to have a third party. At the same time, Sandy, I think maybe some sort of survey uh of the um of the public

uh with information about the the the uh number of runs that are out there, how many people we have on some maybe we can incorporate from them some some input from the the public. We do that when we're talking about master plans. We do that when we're talking about recreational plans. So maybe we can incorporate your idea with these people. They can help us with that. But I think I think where we're at right now, I think we're we're kind of stuck if we don't have a third party independent group come in and give us a and give us an analysis.

And I think that we heard a lot of very good things tonight. And I certainly think that these people are capable of providing it. I just overall I have always felt that the public doesn't understand how the service is performed. And I so I do believe that that factf finding and that explanation of how you know people think that because I drive by a fire station and I see a fire truck and an ambulance, there's somebody there and there may not be somebody there. And people don't understand that as we sit here tonight, any day there are six people on duty, which happens frequently, there is no re first response of an ambulance to any anyone in Plymouth Township who's in station one's area. We have to wait for someone to come from station three or station two. Those are very basic logistic issues that I'm saying people need to understand. They don't know. And it's You don't want to find that out when your neighbor's having a heart attack and needs assistance and all of a sudden it's What do you mean they're not coming from right across Hagerty Road? What do you mean they're coming from station two or Station Three? People just need to understand how it operates. That's my That's my issue. So, so expanding on what Trusty Growth has said, I would like to ask if the firefighters accept the responsibility of a inform, enlighten, and educate page in the next township newsletter, thus establishing a case for need. because I I hear from the firefighters all the time that they want to tell

their story. So, let's put it in writing. But, and I totally agree with Sandy. I think the modern day firefighter is doing a lot more. You know, I'll never forget a dozen years ago when Dave Fox had to educate me on what Narcan was. So, I'm sure there's a lot more things going on today. Um but that that's putting some substance to what Trusty Growth has suggested. Um the the firefighters have to prepare uh a two or three page uh narrative for the newsletter to inform, enlighten, and educate. Thank you.

But how would we do that without causing fear? because that's been that's been a um a point of contention if you will when the information is put out there i.e. news reports Facebook um there's been a lot of backlash that it's inciting fear. So if we put that in the township newsletter what exactly is it going to say? Is it going to be like a doomsday report or you know that's why we're hiring a third party. Yeah. So, I'm I'm more on because it'll have more buying inclination to go that way.

I agree with what you're saying, Trusty Buckley, because uh sometimes the firefighters are not the people to be delivering that information because in general the public perceives that in a threatening way, in a self-serving way. It's our right trusty or excuse me, Treasurer Dorch Chavez. It's our responsibility to really let the public know what's going on and using a consulting firm might be a great way to get that information out there. I just think it's really important that that we be sure that we are educating them as to what the actual operations are.

Anyone put a price tag on the table as to what this consulting study would cost? Well, it depends on who you go with. It's it's in the package. It's 20 to50. Okay. I just want to put it on record. Are we talking 300,000 plus? No. No. 20 to 50,000. It's in It's in your packet. $20,000 to 50,000 and 6 months timing for the study. Well, I know the six month. Yeah. Okay. So, you're talking 20 to 50? Yeah. Okay. What is the supervisor's recommendation? I don't have one yet. That's why I want to hear what you have to say. Okay.

And then we would come back. Um because we've we've gone with IKMA before. It's kind of like getting a um a second opinion. So now we can bring someone else in that's fresh. Gives us a fresh perspective on Plymouth Township. Their pricing is moderate. So it's not the two top tier ones that have been presented on the table. Um so that's that's who I would recommend. So ESCI was the fourth one for people's

I might suggest that we short list uh because I'd like to go back now and look at uh all four again when I have the time to digest a little bit more. I might suggest we short list down to maybe two and then uh have the finalist come back at a next meeting and we can be prepared more questions um and then make a decision from at the next meeting.

Well, then we'd have a contract and we'd have to agree with uh so what's all right we'll do that. Um, you know, you have you have I think the four here you have one that has a a lot of Michigan experience, right? One that may be pro- Union, one that is a fire chief uh uh slant. Uh another one that is um kind of middle of the road. Uh um so it's a you can see if you play close attention you can see some of the potential slant of each one based on where they get their money. And why don't you come back with your recommendation for us at the next meeting.

Well, we're going to short what we may is shortlist it. That's a good idea. I I would like to recommend that we also as we you evaluate shortlisting that you look at uh people who are local because they have a better understanding of the local market, the local area, the local operations. When you're dealing with people from out of state, I'm they know a lot of things about a lot of different places, but I think understanding where we are is important, too. So we only have one local one. So that would be an easy decision. Yes. Uh but so number three was the local one. Yes.

The other side of that thinking is when you see things from outside your area, it provides some receding of new ideas. So there's always uh that other that's the other side of it. So all right. Um what I we're going to take five minutes and if there are any comments from um the public now now couple hours you got to come up to the podium you got somebody who's racing you somebody what you were being well come on don't take three minutes I hope

all right no I won't succinct

Dale Burnernhard U before I make any kind of decision, I want to look at reviews. What's the performance of these companies? Do they have satisfactory reviews? Five stars, four star, three stars. Isn't that something that you would want to maybe look at first to see how their customers have rated them? Number two, Sandy is absolutely right. I I personally think they should have a local SL at least understand local. They don't have to be here local, but have done some local work in southeast Michigan. We have a lot of issues. We have construction issues, other special needs that affect run times. Okay. And the other thing is I want to make sure that they are experts not just in fire but in EMS too because in some of this stuff I'm seeing it's more slanted to fire. I want both fire and EMS. Thank you. Hi, Bill Ikes 12855 Hidden Creek Drive. Uh, two points I want to make, right? Of the the four presentations, they're all good. Okay. The two that probably know HVA the best. Okay. And locally, number one, CPSM, who used to be ICMA that did that study in 2010, okay? They were very extensive on police, fire and EMS. Okay, they know HVA inside out. In the presentation, they very clearly showed the fact that they were just in Seline. Okay, they had worked with Sterling Heights. So, they may have a nationwide presence that brings the fresh eyes perspective, right? But they know this community well. They were assisting the city of Plymouth as recently as two years ago. So another difference between

the city, the township, what obstructs getting vehicles to and from. Uh second thing I want to point out here is when you go through the data and the data is what drives every decision we should be making. If you go back to 2010, the runs at that time were city and township, right? If you look at the firefighters data that they spoke to back in February, and that was uh uh fireman Joe. Okay. Um the runs had gone up by 7,000 and that was for the township only. So I struggle with how we have less miles, less houses to get to and less area to cover, right? On how the runs could go have gone up by 25%. Okay, with the township only versus city plus township and and the data and the deep dive of HVA is key, right? Um God bless the firefighters, right? Love them, right? We'll save our life. But I just want to point out that we may have two situations. We may have HVA doing a little bit of uh sketchy coverage at time. I don't know. The data will tell us. We may have the firefighters pumping and dumping, right? Because we had firefighters standing here saying, "We always send an ambulance with the firet truck because more people is better." HVA doesn't have a fire truck going. They just have EMS. So, we could have metrics and that's why people that know HVA is so important, right? Uh so all due is respect right uh local is always nice but knowing HVA I think is key because it's it's those two entities combined and not separate and it's the township only now so we have enough data and who is CPSM now they know this area inside out that's all

you might have misspoke you said 7,000 increase I think maybe said 700 no it was 7 we only have 3700 runs a year. You're right, Chuck. I was off by a factor of 10. Sorry. Okay. It It was a factor of 10, so it's 700. Still 25%. So, thank you for correcting me on that. Okay. So, we'll u attempt to bring this back next August 12th if we can turn it around that quick. Um I don't think this is that hard of a decision that we can't make it tonight and get get the ball rolling. and it already takes six months.

Well, I think I I think that um Treasur Chevet has a good point. He wants to just look at this um succinctly and and and carefully and I don't think it's going to hurt us to to all of us to kind of take a deep dive into all of this data plus process these u these things. Uh I I have one that I like, but I would like to really think about it and hear what have us rank the top two. All of us can individually rank the top two. The intention was not to vote tonight. No, no, just we can rank and then send the information to you or or Bob or Bob's a good number guy.

So, I see the union getting up. You guys probably would be better to talk in the office. Would you rather do that than in public? In other words, be on our team. Uh, it's your choice. Kevin, if we uh if we did a uh sorry uh if we did a um offline had everybody rank, you know, rank choice their uh you know, four points, three points, two points, one point, something like that. If we did that offline, are we running a risk of open meetings act violation?

If you do it outside of an open meeting, yes, you cannot deliberate or vote. But we're not deliberating, but we could just send information. What are my top two people? I haven't made a decision. If I were to select some, I would be those two. It's kind of like a polling, isn't it? We do that with our uh you know, for our um goals. Goals. You don't have to send all. It just be supervisor. If you do it, don't make it a group email. Yeah. No group email. No group email. Okay. Send them to the supervisor. Send them to the supervisor. Yes. Okay.

Individually send your comments. So, uh, the union president is here. If you want to say a few words, go for it. It's your choice. Just uh, real quick.

My name is Chris Smith. I'm the presidential firefighters Local 1496. And I just wanted to thank the board for taking this step. Um, we talked about this a long time ago and you had told us that your interest would be in conducting a study and learning more about it and we do uh to Trustee excuse me to Trusty Stewart's point um we we do support the study. So um yes, thank you so much for taking the time and putting the energy in for inviting the different consulting groups and um we look forward to working with you. So that was all. Thank you. All right. Do um Are you done, Chris?

Yes. You're done. Do you want to take a five minute break or do you want to go on? Can't we just join? We got just two more issues. They seem pretty. Hold on. John's ready for a break. All right. We'll we'll take a five minute break. So that means we'll be back here at 8 20. Just a little past 820 if we can do

Back in session. Hopefully we didn't lose everybody. We lost some people. Okay. Uh now we're going to do budget amendments with uh Carol Rashan, our interim finance director. And that is item F2. And it's not back yet. Let's see if we can um gather him up. Hold on. He might be preoccupied. I think he is.

Oh, there he is. He got button holes. These are amendments to the 2025 budget and typically a budget is a planning document is not always set in stone. it doesn't mean you spend the money. And so we make modifications when we notice that there is a fund that is going to uh exceed its resources and go over which we don't want to do that throughout the year we make changes. Go ahead, Carol. So we just have uh some housekeeping issues for the accounting department.

Is your microphone on and closed for your getting close? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, the the first item on my uh amendment worksheet is um we're just moving um wages. When the last budget amendment was presented for the last quarter and there was an incorrect account number, so we're taking 146 out of the wrong account, which was the board part-time, and we're moving it over to um the supervisor's office part-time. So, we're just out of one department into the other. And that was for our payroll clerk who's doing more HR things.

What is that? Right here. It's number 173. Thank you. Okay. Our next item, we have to uh do an amendment to the supervisor's office for training and development. When we put the budget together, we didn't budget any uh training and uh Supervisor Kermy went to an MTA conference. So, we have to increase the budget to cover those expenses. Was that just mine, but it includes the books we bought for the planning commission or or did it include anybody in the treasury's office? Nope, they would have just mine. Just your department. All right.

Okay. Um we have some equipment that we need to store for elections. And um that's $1,800 for the year. We realized after the budget was done, it was cheaper to store it in its current location than dismantle and move. So we have that item. Um for police, they promoted someone and there was a one-time sick or vacation payout. Um also in police, we have a a capital outlay item. uh they purchased some bodywn cameras and incar cameras. We had originally budgeted 110,000. They thought they were going to lease at that point in time. It turned out it it is um it was a purchase. So they the difference of 259,000. We need to increase that budget. Um they also had budgeted for uh Viper 911. Uh that came in $5,000 over budget. So, we have to increase with that. Um, the fire department.

I'm sorry. Could could you go back to the police one? Yes. Access over a million dollars. I I wasn't sure exactly what you you meant. The body warn cameras. Yes. Yes. There was um body cameras were 239,000 and the incar cameras were 129. We originally budgeted 110 thinking we were going to lease and that would have been the first year's lease payments. So I had to increase the budget by 259,000 to purchase. Okay. Because it was a purchase and they will explain that further at the next board meeting. Okay.

So the million dollar is total capital for police over five years. No, I don't have the total capital number for So the million73 is what? That's the new Oh, that's the new capital spending. Correct. Added the 259. I added 259. So yes, there was an original budget of 814. We added 259. So their revised budget for the year is a million.

Okay. And they will explain that camera purchase further at the next meeting. They didn't get uh I put it on the amendment. We'd kind of got our circuits crossed. So, I'm amending. They'll present next time so you have the information that goes with that. Okay. Um the fire department professional and contractual services, there were some consulting fees for design um that of $3,300 that we have to we had to pay. Uh there will be no more fees for that. That has been put on hold, but this is the final amount of money coming through before that happened. Um the next four line items are for fire for their um vehicles. They've had some expensive repairs. We hope we have the budget up to cover everything for the rest of the year, but vehicles you can't budget for, so sometimes things happen. They also had um two firefighters that have passed away. Um they were retired, Frank Mothersba and Carlos Moss. And we pay out there's a certain years of the contract. They get a $2,000 death benefit. So we don't budget for death benefit. So as those happen, we go ahead and amend budget. Um, and then the first year payment on the body ward cameras and the incar cameras, uh, they come out of a different account than the police account. So, this is for long-term debt because there's a 5-year loan associated with that. So, this is the first payment of 986. So, the general fund had total appropriations of 446,000. Um the Brownfield redevelopment fund

MITC had some administrative costs of 15,000. So we had to add that to budget. And then when we budgeted depreciation um for last year we didn't totally have all of the the budget amount. So we didn't budget enough for the um EV chargers that went online. So, we have to increase budget for DDA for 18,100 for depreciation and also for the new buses and senior transportation. So, that isn't a $3,200 increase to the amount of depreciation. Um, water and sewer, the DPW got a new camera system that was approved back in February. However, they didn't ask to amend budget at the time. So now we're amending budget to pay for those security cameras. Again, their depreciation needed to be adjusted. And then earlier in the year, uh they had to purchase, I believe it's a new card reader for the fuel. So as you go in and get fuel, you swipe your card and that needed to be replaced. We paid for that out of the township revolving fund. So now we're paying back the township revolving fund. We try to keep $50,000 in there for emergency repairs. So, we're going to build the fund back up for the to the 50,000 for um water and sewer. On the other side of that, I have revenue. So, there are some um revenues to be recognized. The police department uh received payment of $40,000 the for tuition for um someone to go through the police academy. So therefore, we got the grant to pay that back. Um, last year the fire department got turnout gear and we received the revenue of the $80,000

that was part of that grant. Um, MMRMA ramp grant. So the the cameras that we already talked about for the police department, the bodywn cameras and the incar cameras, they got $97,200 from MMRA to uh pay for those. Um, I have to decrease the the revenue sharing for the golf course that came in $43,000 less than we budgeted. And um I have to book a a long-term debt for the the cameras technically. Um, so they paid for it and took a loan when they and there's an issue with how that was set up. So it is a loan. when you get a loan, you don't actually get the cash. It goes to the vendor, but it's recognized as revenue as an accounting function. So, I have recognized the revenue there. So, the general fund had $543,200 in revenue. And then just township revolving fund, that's at $20,900. So, it came out of the water and sewer department. We're moving it over to the revolving fund. So, um it's revenue over in the revolving fund. So that is everything I have all of the uh revenue and the expenditures. Any other questions?

I have some questions if that's okay supervisor. Oh yes. Okay. Um I I have several questions actually and first I want to say Carol thank you because your explanation covered some of the questions I have so we don't have to ask those questions. Um, one of the things that I wanted to know is, and you just mentioned it, Supervisor Kermy, that your uh, the payroll person is doing more HR function. So, what exactly is the change that you've made? She went from she got a pay increase, a pay increase predominantly. It's so it's not about more hours, it's a pay increase. Ours probably won't increase much. There'll be some.

Okay. So, she is assuming some of the role of the people that we currently benefits is one and coordinating some uh pay studies. Okay. Ector is here one day of the week, but they're starting they're overrunning their so they're so this will offset some of their potential expense. So that is something that we need to be aware of that. So who's doing that? Uh Graham. She's been doing it. Oh, okay. Graham. Yeah, Christine Graham. We always call her Christine. Christine Graham.

And I don't have a problem with that. I just want to be aware of the fact that ACTHR is not doing they're not really available to do all the things that So, you're reassigning it? Yes. Okay. Um the Jerry, just for clarification, you told me once and I apologize. It's been a bad month. I'm sorry. Um the security stuff that's being stored at um Lutheran. Yeah. Church. Yeah. Yeah. Is it cameras?

Yeah. There's there's several things there. There's um cameras, there's the recording devices, there's uh uh like the firewall equipment, the the rack that's in there, all the wiring that goes in, okay, for the cameras and that. Plus, we are still using their property for the um the dropbox. I mean, that's still on their property, you know. So, the $150 was was to say, "Hey, can we just leave that there till we determine what we're going to do?"

Okay. as opposed to me ripping all that stuff out along with all the W because when you rip the wiring out, you got to repair, you know, and so it was going to cost multitudes or three or four times that amount. I mentioned it to the supervisor. He was agreeable to it because he saw the rationale, right, of that. And so I'm pleased that people are looking at the the the bills and I'm very happy about that. But it was less expensive to do it this way when we don't know where we're going to go. and that will be coming up in the budget. Okay, we have the budget discussions. So, I'll be making a presentation on what I think we should do.

Okay. So, um I think that there's been some misunderstanding. Some people have felt that we were storing voting machines and equipment and that is not the case. This is strictly security electronic electronics cameras and then of course we we've got the the lock the dropbox still sitting there on their property. Okay. And so so you basically are paying them a fee to to maintain that just leave it there. Just to leave it there. Yeah. And and so that we don't have to pull it all out because it would cost us several thousand dollar to pull all that out. Do any repairs to walls and and stuff when you when you rent something?

Okay. Um the I'm curious about and Carol, you may be able to answer or Chief Nitel the the payoff on sick time. there was a promotion and there's a payoff on sick time. I'm just trying to understand how that works. Like so you acrew there are certain employees acrew vacation in sick time, right? So he was promote and you get a certain amount of hours. When he was promoted up, he was promoted to an area that had less hours that he could acrewue. So the amount he was over that difference paid out. Okay, perfect. He exceeded the cap.

I understand that. Um I I did notice the creation of the 98,600 for professional the banking service and fees all related to the camera. So we're going to get a presentation next meeting about all of this. So we understand it. If I can add um these cameras are are being leased. So purchased. Okay. All right. So that's the problem is the the confusion over lease. the the auditors ruled that it's a purchase and I contacted the sales rep and he said it's a purchase. Yeah. So that's what caused this mination. So there was just

there was confusion at the beginning. I don't know what how the sales rep represented it but it was felt they were being leased. The end of the day the sales rep said this is a purchase. Okay. So basically, chief, at the next meeting, you're kind of just kind of give us a summary of exactly what's going on and cuz I just see a lot of um financial implications of of these particular things. So, I'm just curious to know. Yeah. And and we'll look at the agreement. It was a 5-year lease and then we're not keeping this equipment. So, I So, I'm an auditor decided that that was a loan and not a lease. So, we'll have to look at that. The sales rep also said

the sales rep said in the end who owns the equipment. He said the body cameras in three years will be refreshed. So no matter what that they're going to get new body cameras in three years. That's part of the as part of the purchase agreement. The cameras in the cars you can't um just take in and out. There's a so at the end of the lease or at the end of the purchase in five years they would be refreshed and I assume they're the only vendor that does that. So you're going to sign another agreement with them. So they would at that time refresh the cameras there.

Okay, good. Um I have a question or a comment now based on what you said. I'm happy to see that we're kind of putting the fire station too on hold. um and that we're not spending money because one of the things I can say is in in speaking to staff and and firefighters the what I keep hearing is we don't need a new station too. I mean certainly there are some improvements that could be made but that even they are saying we don't need to spend all of that money. We don't need to spend 10 million.

Yes. So, I'm glad to hear that and I'm glad to see that you're kind of putting it on hold because I think that's a a a very that's a financially wise decision to make, especially in light of the fact that we are looking at what are our needs with staffing. What's going on with the fire department? I'm I'm just glad to see we're not throwing money at something that we maybe don't need but kind of wanted there because there's a difference between We sunk about 180,000 into the design. Yeah. And engineering. Yeah. But we have that that those drawings are there or we can sell the design to someone else maybe for 180,000.

Uh and then I have a question. I I did note the tremendous change in expenditures on vehicle repairs particularly for the fire department and I certainly understand you know you got to you've got to keep these vehicles maintained. They're functional. They're first response vehicles so we have to keep them in service. My comment and or question is maybe when we do the budget, we're not being realistic in anticipating repair expenses for these huge capital items that we have to maintain. So, I just wanted to make that clear. That's precisely what's been go what happened. Okay. Yeah,

the reluctance to show the complete story and then you know there is a you can play a game where you come in with a low budget and then amend it up right throughout the year

right and I just would like I mean it they're substantial the changes so I I would just like to for us to be aware of that so that we can um and I know you never know all of it but it'd be good if we could be a little better prepared for that type of thing and then um the uh depreciation and amortization of the electric vehicle chargers. At one point, Supervisor Kermy, you made a comment about maybe we need to look at what we charge for that because maybe we need to be a little more competitive and I know that this is depreciation and that's something different. But it brings the subject up if that's something that we need to be looking at in the future.

Right? We have a cap. Allegedly, we're supposed to break even, but the definition of break even is not completely clear. I raised the price 20% went from 26 cents to 31 cents. Okay. In January. Okay. Bob handled that. Okay. Thank you. So we we may look at it again because people are finding it very attractive. Carol, how's the uh do you know off the top of your head how that uh fund is doing or that account is doing? No, I'd have to we looked at it about

a couple months ago. a couple months ago and we were positive. The price of electricity was less than what our revenue was, which is great, but depreciation I don't think was in the equation. It was in the first pass when we first did it. We um projected uh because there was a grant there was a grant that didn't pay for it in the entirety. But we just need to do update that analysis and maybe after the budget's done, we can refresh that. Yeah, good. Thank you. That's all I have to say. It's popular. People love I mean, people come in there. They come from

five plus miles around just to charge up some as far as Farmington. Wow. What is it you need? Are we not Don't we have our mics on? Okay. Make sure your red dots are on everybody. Thank you. So that's all I have to say about the budget amendments. I'll shut up now.

Any other questions, comments? So I just wanted to I already explained one thing but for the police um uh also for the cameras also in the the very last one for $998,000. That would be the first year's payment on the the cameras because there's um there's the body worn and there's the incar. So there's two pieces that make up that 986 and that's the first year. Some of that is equipment expense. It won't be the following years won't be as much. There was some setup and do you do you have everything that was involved?

I'm confused. I'm confused with two things. I thought thought you you pay it in full. So, why are we having any debt? They're made. They've only made one-year payment. We're going to have payments for five years. It's an installment purchase contract. Okay. I'm sorry. I thought you were going to pay it all. Okay. Yeah, that's that's the confusion. Okay. So, we had to book the whole expense because it's a a capital asset and we we've got possession of the capital asset. We also have offset with a a revenue because we got a loan. So, those kind of wash each other at the end of the day, but we have the long-term debt. It's allegedly an interest free loan.

That's what they said. They said it's interest free. Who's who's the loan come from? Axon, the the vendor. So, the vendor, they sold it to us, but they're lending us the money over five years to make the payments, but it's not a lease. No, they said specifically. I asked I told him there was confusion and he said it is a five-year purchase. We chose to make the payment to own shop. It kind of depends how they really presented it. Okay. Okay. Rent to own. Rent to own. Yeah. It's kind of interesting. And it gets a refresh, but it's not a lease. Yeah. That's weird.

Yep. Any public comment? Did that answer your question, Mark? I didn't mean to cut you off. Well, no, but I'm just thinking for the for the police. It should show up for the police. Yeah, right. For $98,000, this should be for the police, right? This is not for the police. It should be in a different No, that's the account for long-term debt. So, yeah, but it should be a different category. This is the way you book it for accounting purposes. We can in the back of our mind say there's another 98 $98,000 that belongs

as a police expense, but that's not where we pay it from because the general fund does not hold the long-term debt. We move a payment over every year into this account. It's held in account 950 for the for accounting. It it's an accounting function. So, it moves from the general fund into the loan fund. what banking services and fees and then it's paid to the vendor.

So fund 950 would hold the long-term debt because general fund does not hold it's anything longer than a year. So then there would be an entry made every year to move the next year's payment over to this 10191 because general fund does not hold the long-term debt. But they didn't give us cash. That's just how it works when you call it a loan. Technically, you could think of it as they gave you the money, you took the money, and you took it over and gave it to the vendor. So, it was revenue and they handed you that money for two seconds and you took it to the vendor. It's just an accounting function. I know, but it's weird. Yeah. Nobody said it well.

The auditors weighed in on it. We, you know, we'll ask again, but it's uh it, you know, makes your head hurt, but it uh this is the way you have to account for it. and they kind of duped the police department into thinking it was something else. I don't think they were duped. I think I I think they called it.

In fact, we've we've we talked about this for five minutes at a budget meeting and now we're here. Like I you know, we I need to have all the research and the information. Lieutenant Kreb spent significant time on this. We've got $100,000 in the grant we wrote for this. We we spent a significant amount on this. So, um I I I think we should just have due time so that we can present and I and quite frankly I I I don't 100% agree with the soldiers. So, that's the other side of that. So, okay. And I and I could be wrong. I'm not a financial major, but Well, your sales rep said otherwise. Any any other comments from the uh public? I want to I want to I just want to thank

Carol. I'm aware that she's an 8 a.m. employee. She's in her office at 8:00 in the morning and she works very hard. And you also commute and communicate with the supervisor up on the second floor and you don't take orders from anybody else. Yeah. Thank you. That's not true. I give her orders all day long. And she just smiles and says, "Let's move on." You communicate well with the super the current supervisor. Yeah. Yes. She always did. Yeah. She's easy to get along with. Carol's doing a great job. I am prepared to make a motion if that's what you would like. Yep. Somebody did. Somebody said they wanted to speak. Sorry about you wanted to speak. Before we do that, please. You got to come to the podium.

There should be I'm sorry again. I'm Dale Bernham and I'm going to sound like a broken record. I'm really sorry. Um Carol has um identified that $1,800 now is put in the budget. And what I want to alert the board to is your inclination may be to well since the equipment is already there we're going to approve risen Christ for the early voting. I ask you again to look at that closely because that cost can be reduced by half or or more. So just don't line item that and say okay we'll go ahead and do that. Please take care of our taxpayer dollars. Thank you. And and clerk Barbara, you did indicate that you would be

Oh, come on. It's $150 a month. Yeah. And and and to be clear, it didn't cost the taxpayers of Plymouth Township anything. The state reimbured for all of that. That's not the 50,000. It was paid for by the state, not by us. It's $3 or it's $5 a day. Yeah. It's no although if it was paid for by the state, it's still taxpayers. But but what I'm saying it didn't come out of taxpayers of the state paid for it. Yeah.

We taxpayers. Now, I would like to put on record that my conversation with former clerk Joe Bridgeman. He has said there's plenty of room behind the front clerk's office to store the machines and to host early voting. Joe Bridgeman has said that Bob, please don't interrupt me, Bobby. Please don't interrupt me, Bobby. I'm putting Joe Richmond's statement on record if you can hear me. He said there's plenty of room behind the clerk office to store the machines and to host early. Do you understand what I'm saying? Well, Johnny, this is not voting equipment. It's electronics. It's infrastructure. Okay. It's installed infrastructure.

There's still plenty of room in this building. Johnny, do you know that we are violating a basic law church separation of church and state and to give one church in this community over $50,000 a year is wrong ethically, morally, and legally. And we're opening some So, I guarantee you we're going to have a lawsuit within the year. We'll debate this. I guarantee you we will have a lawsuit within a year. And you'll probably be the I know who's going to file it. Other side. We'll debate this during we're nonpracticing law degree. All right. Do we have any other comments from anybody? I will be happy to make a motion, please.

All right. Here comes the motion. I move that the Plymouth Township Board of Trustees hereby adopt resolution 2025-07-22-50 authorizing various fiscal year 2025 budget amendments by the finance director or designate. Second. All right. Clerk Borba, yes. Tr Supervisor Kermy, yes. Trustee Clinton, yes. Trusty Buckley, yes. Treasure Dor Chevitz, yes. Uh, Trusty Stewart, yes. Trusty Grove, yes. Motion carries.

All right. Next item, F3. This is an intergovernmental agreement IG count the grocery store used to be called IG. Anyway, with the Wayne County, uh, which will be diverting $77,000 of the millillage that we pay, we pay 0.25, 25 uh for parks, Wayne County parks, and we have submitted a request to designate this for the refurbishment of the wood play structure to replace that wood play structure. The estimates are 650,000 plus. So, what we're going to do here is we're going to engage professionals, but we will also have some uh parents involved to do painting and things like that. we'll coordinate it so that uh we efficiency efficiently use the money. Um we had some uh opportunity to have some preliminary work done and we were able to be ready for the grant and what'll happen is once this is signed um approved then the Wayne County Commission approves it and then we can spend the money. Uh we have a couple years to spend it. Um, but we're trying some we're looking at some things to uh potentially save some of the like plastic welding to save some of the um slides that you can't buy anymore and things like that. So, we're moving forward. Spalding to Decker is here. They did some of the work also. They pulled it together with the numbers and we had some great sketches done by um some of our residents and we're you can see a great history here of how we bought the land. So, I recommend approval uh to get our uh decent share of money from Wayne County Parks.

I'm happy to see that we're not looking at the DIY for anything that would be questionable in terms of risk. I just want to make that comment. Yeah, I listen to everybody. See that? Good. I do what I'm told. Good. And if if you guys like history, this is a very interesting documentation in here, including letters from the clerk. Yeah. Uh to uh a previous supervis or lawyer. It just was really cool. It was like a reading a a museum piece and going through the apparently it's part of uh Wayne County's requirement to submit all the documentation from how we acquired the land um known as Mccumpa Park Plymouth Township Park. So really cool.

My favorite part was the lawyer's fee was $25 an hour. Wow. How times have changed. I know you guys think my I knew every one of these people that signed these deeds. Did you really? I did two. Are you ready for a motion? Yes. Uh, Mr. Supervisor, I move to approve resolution 2025-07-22-51 authorizing the supervisor and clerk to sign the intergovernmental agreement with Wayne County for improvements to the Plymouth Township Park as indicated in the attached resolution. Second. Okay. Said by by Okay. Um, Trusty Clinton. Yes. Trusty Growth,

yes. Uh, Treasure Dorchevitz, yes. Trusty Stewart, yes. Trusty Buckley, yes. Uh, Supervisor Kermy, yes. Clerk Bor, yes. Motion carries.

All right. Um, that's the formal agenda. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about what's coming up in uh on August 12th. One of the things I just wanted to bounce it off of you, you can email me or you can call me is the LC car wash proposal is it's located where the former Vic Tanny LA Fit now LA Fitness, but it's east of Burger King out here wants to have a 1980 uh agreement, court agreement that restricts the property to not permit car washes. So we have the option to uh pursue that and the attorney will explain here to vacate that judgment or we can do nothing also. Uh so um that the attorney can give us a little background on what the owners of the property are wanting us to do, but my understanding and you can clarify it is we are not required to vacate that um court order.

That's exactly right. The current court order that that is in place today provides that that property can only be used as a health club facility and even then certain restrictions on the health club facility and it can also be used for any purpose in the old office service district. The zoning ordinance has changed since that con that judgment was entered. The current underlying zoning for that property would be OSRC. I've confirmed that with the planner. The owner of the property has submitted an application or had meetings with the township to attempt to vacate that judgment. If the judgment is vacated, the property should revert back to OSRC. I've asked the attorney for the property owner to include that in the proposed order. It was not in the original one. If it reverts back to OSRC, I do not believe a car wash is permitted within that district except as a special use. I'd have to to uh confirm that. But after the property, if the board wants it to revert back to the OSRC district, the property will have considerably more uh flexibility with respect to prospective uses on that property. The applicant, I believe, wants to put a car wash there, which may require either a special use or a PUD. Um I think that's it. And we'd like to I' I've already instructed the attorney for the property owner that the board would like to consider this on the 12th. And for them to have it heard on the 12th, I've I have to receive their paperwork

by the end of this month. So would that be the township, the board of the township that would be requesting that the judgment be set aside? No. It's going to be a motion by the property owner to vacate the judgment. They are convinced that the other people listed in the judgment no longer have any interest in that property. Uh that may or may not be true. Um I've had one is alive. Some is alive. Yeah. Most of them are passed away. All but one is alive is dead. However, they they've shown why they believe that. I think it's Ms. Castanza.

Yeah. uh has no interest in that property and has no standing to to interfere with uh any any motions to uh vacate that judgment or change the characterization of the property. The township's role would be basically to stipulate to the entry of the order um the the owner of the property has done all the leg work. they've still got more leg work to do with respect to um characterizing that property as an OSRC in the order itself. It doesn't it's not that complicated legally to amend what they need to do, but they need to do it by the end of the month in order for me to have it ready for the board's review on the 12th.

So, they might make that deadline. So, this this issue has come up to the planning commission uh at least twice now, isn't it? Um, and it there's a lot of public push back on this, just so you know. Well, if the property reverts back to OSRC, the applicant or the owner would still have to get board approval to put a car wash there. Board or planning commission? Both. Well, actually, it's board planning commission would make a recommendation to the board. We we could do nothing. In other words, not even bring it up as an agenda item. Yes. or they would potentially try to sue to force you to bring it up. They would have to

they would file a motion and if the township wanted the agenda the rule on it. Yeah. If the township wanted to stipulate to the the motion or not stipulate to the motion, it would be heard in court. And I don't think that if uh the township objected to the motion that the court would grant the relief requested. However, the board has to consider is that property better served as an OSRC or as the current judgment restricts the property. That's a discretionary consideration for the board. How is the property around it uh um zoned right now? I believe it's OSC. OS ARC.

Yes. And so what was it when this happened being in 1980? Yeah, it was OS. Okay. So if it gets vacated, what does it go back to? OS ARC because that's the the designation in the corridor Annabra Road corridor. Yes. There is no OS left. I just didn't Yeah, I was just wondering because it was that and then did it revert back? It would revert back to OS. However, the zoning ordinance has been amended and the zoning map has been amended since 1980. So according to planning the proper characterization or the proper overlay of that property is OSC.

Well, but if it I think it I don't know. I think it would revert back to the old one and then we would have someone would have to to to resone it. Reszone it as the current ARC. That's what I think would have to happen. There's a lot of variables in that. uh if the parties both stipulate for OSRC, I mean this this is again a discretionary consideration for the board. Okay. If both parties agree that it's going to be changed from judgment to OSRC, that's what's going to happen. And ARC allows for the car wash.

Well, O ARC allows for the car wash. I don't I'm not sure if OS arc does. I can check that right now. That's that's what I meant. OS arc. So we can procrastinate on this and not bring it forward. Yes. Uh so there's there's no urgency if the board feels no urgency. I didn't think of that. So we can contemplate this. So that's why I wanted to kind of bring a little bit up here. Uh we we can contemplate it. Uh we we want to do the right thing. So contemplating next.

So um next week I I guess you want me to wait till board comments to talk about the next week's agenda or you want me to do it now? I mean not next week uh August 12th. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay. We're going to have an assessing presentation by Wayne County Assessing, which is an outside contractor we use to be our assessor. Um we're going to have the towing contract. Maybe uh you maybe right. We don't know but potentially we've got site visits uh this week and next week. So so I don't know whether we we might be ready maybe not. Um and then what about water and sewer? Are we going to be ready or no? We need to be ready.

Okay. So water and sewer rate increases. Um all right. Uh any other you want to go around the room who Mark any comments? Are we doing last public comments? Yeah, you know. Yeah, you're right. Good point. So, yeah, we we're at public comments now, right? On any item, any any takers?

And I'll make it brief. 20,000, 50,000, whatever it takes. I applaud the fact that you're benchmarking and going out to get the third party assessment, however it turns out. So, thank you for doing that.

Good evening. Um, thank you for letting uh the citizens Oh, sorry. Gonna say who you are. Write it down there.

Hi. I was getting to that. My name is Katie Barrett. I am a resident of Lake Subdivision. and I live on Hamill Lane from the township. Um, thank you for allowing us the opportunity to provide comments. Um, I am here um, last week or the last meeting several of the people in my neighborhood and on my street uh, provided some statements on the increase in short-term rentals that were seeing in Plymouth Township. And so, I just wanted to kind of give my own statement because I was unable to attend. Um, first I want to address the fact that we do not expect a ban. I'm sorry. You do not what? I'm sorry. Expect a ban.

A ban? You don't expect a ban? No, we we do not want people to ban short-term leases. We're not expecting that. Okay. Ban on what? Short-term lease. Airbnb. Airbnbs. Is this hard for me to hear? Okay. Um, just talk a little slower. the reverberation. Yeah. For some of us that have bad hearing. Yeah. Some of us are getting old and we don't hear as well as we used to. Myself included.

All right. However, we believe regulations and restrictions on short-term rentals is not an unreasonable ask. Short-term rentals are increasing nationwide and many people who live in communities are worried about the impact this has on their neighborhoods. And although you may see it as enforcing that the enforcing restrictions is telling people how they should make their living, those residing in the neighborhoods see this short-term loan as a nuisance. We have safety concerns. We also worry about our property values and we worry about the effect on community cohesion. When homes become businesses, it changes the character of the community. There are rules for operating businesses out of residence, but few for when a residence essentially becomes a business. Why can we not discuss limiting the number per street and neighborhood and the number per neighborhood? I also want to point out that when you look at who owns these short-term rentals in Plymouth and Plymouth Township, many are found to be investment companies or real estate investment companies that are not necessarily based in the city. And also, there's some many that are owned by individual real estate agents. Um, which to me seems kind of an unfair advantage for families who might be looking for these homes. Um, now also, um, I want to point out that when my husband and I first started looking for homes, Plymouth was one of our first picks. Although downtown Plymouth was out of our price range at the time, we were still happy to find some really great homes in Plymouth Township. However, there are those those are really few and far between. We put in multiple offers on Plymouth Township Homes and several of the great neighborhoods around here. And finally, a great family accepted our bid. And guess where they moved? a block over in the same neighborhood. That's the type of neighborhood Lake Blake Point is. Families, couples, retirees, folks who care about their neighbors and their community. The recent Airbnb in our street was the home of a man who was an

original buyer and he was a lifelong Plymouth Township resident. He raised his children there and was a teacher of Plymouth schools. And I know this is repeated by some of my neighbors, but he was a great man. and he would tell us all about the neighborhood and he'd chat with us and he'd sit outside in the summertime and he always loved watching us and you know playing with our dogs and all of the kids and we started to have a block party and all of the original neighbors really enjoyed that they were really starting to see life back on the street. You know what what I great what's great about our neighborhood is that we know that all the kids in the community know they can run to a neighbor for an emergency. You know, we have our neighbors who can water our plants when we're out of town. They can let out our dogs when we're running late for work

already. We can pick up groceries for neighbors who are sick. You're going to have to speed it up cuz you're at the 4m minutee mark already. Okay. Well, when there when there's a pinch, you'll watch someone's kids. This is what's desirable and this is why this is a community. What's not desirable is having random people come in every week. And you may not care until someone buys the home next to you. Now, there are many towns and cities with similar concerns. All we ask is for some common sense restrictions and enforcements of tax rules. Myself and my some of my neighbors will continue to reach out to others in the township because with awareness, I guarantee others will have similar concerns. We cannot stop the short-term rentals, but we can prevent blocks full of businesses instead of homes.

All right. Well, thank you. A couple who was the original owner of your house? What was his name? Mac. Um, McKinley. What is Derek? Yeah, Darren. Derek McKinley. Yep. No, I don't think I knew a McKinley who was a teacher at Bird School. That was him. Was he I don't know if he was at Bird. I don't know if he was. All right. Yeah, he passed away. He was about 90 92. Thank you. All right. Any other comments from the audience? No. All right. Oh, okay.

Hi, I'm Ruth Harvey. Um, I'm on the same topic. I was here last month. I gave you all a list of the four houses that we know of that are short-term rentals. I know um I turned them in to the assessor, right? And I think the lawyer was consulted and I'm just at the meeting wondering two of them were properly classified and one may not be good. So you're working on that. Okay. And the fourth the fourth looked legitimate. Okay. It the it said that the people were registered to vote there who were the owners. Okay.

That may be a problem if they don't really live there. Well, that's you had mentioned you noticed that one of them did not live there. So, we just want you to know and she said it beautifully that we're concerned and we will continue to be uh you know waiting to hear something. My anecdotal non-scientific oper observation is most of the short-term rentals in Plymouth Township are owned by people who live here. That's my observation. Okay. All right. Thank you. I don't have any data to conclusively make a decision on that. Thank you. You're welcome.

If that's true, they should be better. They're close by the owners. They should be actively involved in ensuring that nothing is disruptive in the neighborhood as respect for the people who live here. All right. Uh comments from board. I'm all set. All set. Yep. Good. Jen, anything?

Yeah. Just in regards to the Airbnb, I I'm a mom of eight and it's very unsettling um to think of people next door just coming in week after week. I'm I'm with you. Um, I'll continue to look at it and try to work with the supervisor. I know he's kind of indicated already there's not a lot we can do, but there's got to be something some kind of you can pass ordinances. Well, even just one school, so my kids are out all day long. And to think that someone coming in, I mean, are these people vetted? You could have a murderer that come in. I

one of your kids could be a murderer. My kids are not murderers, but it's just like my stomach is turning at the thought of it for you guys and the potential that we could have in our own neighborhood. So, I'm going to just continue to to do some research and see what we can do. Um, one of our employees has on his block seven Airbnbs. Really? One? Yeah. South side of Anna Road. Oh, Road. Green Bet. Yeah. And they're all operated by somebody who's a prominent Plymouth citizen. I know exactly who you know you mean. So,

um he's going to be full up to the Live golf. Yeah. And then um just the last comment like the the the animosity that I'm feeling on the board here and one particular person I'm just I'm getting really sick and tired of it. It's not professional. It's not civil and um it just needs to stop and show respect. Well, maybe we'll have a mediation or something. Nothing here. Nothing here.

Okay. Tonight Uh Canton Township was planning to vote on a resolution for the Salem Township pipeline and it is essentially the same as what we passed. There is no money being transferred from the developer or Salem Township. They're going to attempt to get some benefit potentially from Wayne County because Wayne County got a $70 million grant uh for flooding that happened in August of 2023 in Canton Township. Some of you may recall when there was nearly waist high deep water at the coals on Ford Road. It was that incident. So there might be they might be doing that but they want to make it so that they can connect people who are on septic tanks when they fail to this line. But it is challenging based on the current design because the line is under pressure which means then you have to have an injection pump to inject it into the pressurized line which is extremely expensive. Uh so they may revert to just using conventional gravity feed. It's all got to be engineered gravity feed in the same trench as the force man owned by Salem Township. It's all to be determined.

I think the key point though is that um Salem Township and the developer absolutely refused to to um provide any compensation to any of the communities for use of the right away. and the uh eagle was within days of issuing the permit if we didn't um settle this. So we were in a position where we had really no choice otherwise we would have had a wastewater treatment plant being built. Not necessarily. So can Salem has agreed to withdraw the application. Yeah.

So we'll see. It ain't over till it's over. So, it'll it'll uh it'll be some time yet. The design will take a year. All right. Go ahead.

Thank you very much, Mr. Supervisor. Um we'd like to address a couple of issues. I am really very pleased that people look at the uh our budgets, that people look at how we spend money. It's it's I think that's great and any question is legitimate when it comes up. Absolutely. Um, I would like to refer back to my report that I did after refer back to my report that I did after the election where where I by fact showed that the vast majority of voters who vote in Plymouth Township live west of Sheldon Road and over 60%. And if you count the people who are adjacent to it, which was precinct 5, right next to uh you know um what we always called when I was a cop muddy meadows or green meadows, that number is over 70% of the people live in that area. Therefore, uh the location of the early voting center was rational when we made that decision. Um, and um, the state law is not going to change. Early voting is here to stay. It's not going to it's not going to change. I didn't vote for it, but the vast majority of the public did vote for it. And so we're going to have to provide a facility that meets all the criteria of the law and and the and the and the statute is very very clear about the they enumerate all the issues you have to address when it comes to locating one of these one of these things. And we're also limited by state law of what kind of facility you can use. And so uh when you start making all those kind of limitations, you have to think about all

of them together. You can't just pick one or another. You've got to think the whole thing in totality. And so uh again uh next year we're going to have two elections uh in August and November. There will be early voting. It is required by law. We will have to have a facility that meets all of the criterias of the state law. And matter of fact, the state law quite frankly gives the clerk some really unusual powers in helping to to have that happen. And so, uh, we're going to be obeying the law. We're always going to be thoughtful about uh the cost of things. Whether or not the legislature is going to foot the bill again is to be seen. Uh uh this is a creation that that has happened. And so I'm hoping that there will be money for it, but it's not going away and there has to be a facility for it that makes sense to uh to meet all the criteria. And that's what we're going to do. Uh the budget hearings are going to be coming up here in the next couple of months. Uh I will be making a proposal and then it's going to be open for debate and um um it's going to have to meet that criteria. So this is not done willy-nilly. It's not done for any other reason other than meeting the statutory requirements. So again, thank you very much and I do appreciate your comments. I would um I got to find the real notes. Okay. I would like to request a copy or a date um that would show me the contract between Plymouth Township and our current labor law firm. And I'd also

like to see the same thing between Plymouth Township and McKenna. I think uh for multitude of reasons, we need to evaluate all of our existing contracts and either rebid them or fine-tune them or whatever we need to do to make sure that we are meeting the current needs of the township. And I was hoping to get an update on the current position of Canton Township because um I I still think that a 425 would have been a good way to go. if it's a moot issue. It's a moot issue, but um I'm glad there may be a 425 for some if they hook up septic tank. That's possible.

Right. So, I'm glad to know that that's still out there and it's a possibility. And um I'm just going to say that I do not want to see us allow a car wash on Ann Arbor Road. and also our condolences to you for your stepson and your sister passed away back to back.

John, yeah, I want to thank the public and people who have come here tonight. Um, almost a three-hour meeting. Uh, please don't tell me something you want me to forget. I do appreciate Dale Burnernhard and Sandy Growth in indicating that they've had cursory conversations with Praise Baptist to house the electronics and the voting machines for less than $20,000. I have two very positive other comments to make. One is that uh Lieutenant Kudra is one of 40 assessors to certify police departments and their practices, principles, and procedures. Today, Lieutenant Kudra was at right here local, which is a benefit to all of us in Plymouth Township. He was assessing the police department and the officers at Schoolcraft Community College. Uh the chief is well aware and um he's got uh Cynthia Fel, Ryan Krebs, Mike Fritz, and Dan Kudra ready to get our township reertified, reacredited, which we must do in the next five uh months.

It's already completed. Is it done? Well, the work is done. We had the on-site uh uh two evaluators were here on July the 10th. we go in front of the Emily board in on uh September the 5th.

Okay. I'm pretty conservative. I like to see it in writing and I appreciate your efforts. So when it's done, it's done. You know, I'd like and I I and you know, I hold I support you 100%. Uh I would also know notice a township attorney at one time told me that no bid contracts, you know, have to occur for any contract over $20,000. Now, maybe he wants to I'll give him a chance at some point in time to correct that. But $20,000 if if it's above that, there must be a bid. There must be offering to take it. Now, the state of Michigan has a new building. One new building this year. It's in the upper peninsula. The relevance that it has to Plymouth Township is a deep-seated resentment that I have for a lack of full disclosure. And everyone up here, everyone in this room does not want to be taken advantage of. We want to be given full disclosure. So a year, two years ago, Dale Burnernhard came to me and he wouldn't meet with the supervisor alone or anybody else up here alone and he showed me hard evidence that the Carlo brothers net revenue and income 96% was from gambling and 4% was from harness racing. Our supervisor, no he wasn't. He was trustee Kermy at that time. Very quietly and calmly showed me blueprint B. In the lower left hand corner of blueprint B was a rectangle with the word casino in it. Now the reason that I tell you about the new building in the upper peninsula, brief history, Bay Mills was granted a casino in 1995.

Michigan is now the second the state with the second most number of internet gambling transactions mostly from right here and and a lot due to sports betting. The new building that is opened west of Sous St. Marie is called the Bay Mills Health Center Substance Abuse Program. They are at inpatient capacity and they are now taking outpatients which will be paid for by Medicare, Medicaid and veterans health benefits. So in other words, it's tax dollars. This is a substance abuse center for alcohol, gambling, and opioid addiction. Who could have predicted that that would have happened with a casino that I have been in? Because the night before I gave the commencement address to 6,000 people at Lake Superior State University, the superi the the president of the university took me through the casino 15 years ago and there were little old ladies sitting there in chairs cranking the the handle and their their hands were gray. But now it's become very prevalent in our society today. And we made and I'll end with my we made national attention in the bitter cold temperatures of February when a mother of five drove to a parking structure in Detroit in the middle of the night and left her five children there. She went in to gamble to satisfy her addiction. When she came out two hours later, two of the five children were dead. This is a problem all across Michigan. So, I ask your concern and I'm so thankful that I I'll end on a positive note. I received a phone call

and a letter from Mayor Brian Turnbull. He wants to show me the daylighted river up at the Northville development. He wants to show me the first occupants who will go into the the the level. And I have to thank my friend Nancy Dara uh for they and there was extensive negotiations with the builder up there as what a supervisor should be doing too. They downgraded the development three times up in Northville. So I'm hopeful that they will uh they will have a nice development. Thank you very much and good night. Okay. Do we have a motion for adjournment?

Mr. Supervisor, I move to adjourn. Second. Second. All in favor? I. Motion carries. We'rejourned.