Common Council - Regular Meeting

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. Heat.

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] I know. [Music] Hey. Hey. [Music] Oh,

[Music] [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] I understand that everyone is having an absolutely wonderful time chatting in the audience. That's great. You are welcome to stay after the meeting and hang out too. It can be a total social hour. Unfort we're having a good time up here too. But I do have to start the meeting. Uh if you guys will please join me for the pledge of allegiance. We'll get this started. To the flag of the United States of America and to the stands nationy andice for all.

Liz, when you're ready, can we do the uh roll call? Absolutely. Councilman Alvarez here. Councilwoman Weidenbach here. Councilwoman Hurst here. Councilman Parnell here. Councilwoman Vazquez here. Council Pwoman Amler here. Councilman Zilly here. Did everyone have a chance to take a look at the minutes? Are there any corrections? Um, or is there a motion to approve the minutes? Motion to approve. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. I. Don't vote. I'm sorry. I was wondering if Pastor Parnell, could you also lead us in prayer? Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for today, your blessings. Thank you once again for that wonderful privilege to call you God and father. Lord, we're thankful. We're thankful this evening to uh to be Americans and we get to celebrate, Father, here in just a couple days our freedoms and we thank you for that. Lord, remind us of your scripture which says where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty and we thank you for that. Tonight, Father, we pray for America. Not only America, we pray for our city. We pray for our citizens. We pray, Father, for those uh uh families of the firefighters that were shot and killed there. Uh Lord, um in in Idaho, Lord, we think about them this evening. I pray for their families. I pray, Father, for the continued protection of all of our firefighters and our police officers and our city employees and all of our citizens. We ask, Father, now for your blessing upon this meeting. Give us wisdom and guidance. This we pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord. Amen. Thank you. That opens our communications and correspondence and announcements um from the mayor. I'm going to be brief myself, but I wanted to take advantage of this meeting to be able to highlight some extraordinary work being done by a

team in our city. Um as you guys know, I believe it was late last year, we formally created a IT department. It's just one person and that's Trevor who left his previous employment with the company that was our network contractor. Along the way, I also got to meet Bill, who uh with believe will introduce himself with Trevor. Bill is somebody who, if it's okay if I speak a little bit to your credentials, Bill, um he walked in as a new resident of the city of Portage, and he said to me, "I'd like to know what I could do to help my new city." I asked, "Uh, what did you do in your previous line of work?" And he was the head of IT at Velparzo Public Schools. And I'm like, I need to introduce you to Trevor. and in a very feels like a long time, but really a short time when you think about it, they've been working together and they have identified a tremendous amount of cuts and savings and potential that we have in the city. Um, when they gave me the update last month about where they were at, it kind of blew my mind in a really good way. I wanted to make sure I was sharing that with you guys as the fiscal body as it does impact the budget certainly for this year, but I also think it will impact certainly next year as well. Trevor and Bill, would you guys mind coming up? All right. So, I'd like to get started here and let everybody know that uh where' they go. Um I speak into this thing. Much taller guy was using it before me. Um, so before we get started, I just want to let everybody know that everything that we're cutting and reducing here is either something we no longer use or a service that we can now get better for cheaper just so and no one thinks that we're getting rid of something that's good or reducing any coverage for anything. So, uh, getting started here, we're looking at a frontier bill that we're paying about $7,000 a month for. These are for alarm lines and for elevator lines. Do you want to kind of speak a little more to that one? Sure. One of the things that um you when we were tasked with building

the budget for next year and for all intents purposes this is the first IT budget uh for me it's my 26th budget been doing this a long time and actually just as a side note this young gentleman here was at Memorial Elementary when I was the IT director. So what goes around comes around. Now he now he has to sign off of my bill that I hand out. So what uh we when uh we looked at the bit different areas of the IT budget, one of the larger ones that I've noticed was the phone uh bill, which for me was kind of alien because at Belpo that was we made it one of our smallest because Frontier as um uh no matter what you think about that company really has very little that we can use. Um their infrastructure that we are currently using is antiquated. It's copper wire that I kid you not in many cases is 60 to 80 years old that they have not replaced. This was copper that they purchased from their predecessors Verizon who purchased it from if for those you are old enough GTE the same copper servicing many of our buildings as well as Valparezo uh throughout Northwest Indiana. This is nothing unique. Make a long story short, when I began looking at this, we began delving into some things, cost savings, and I want to assure you members of the council and the mayor, we took a an immense we took a very deep dive into these services that we were looking at to make sure that they were not going to be that they're not being used. We in fact some of the leadership that we sat down some we kind of um bugged at nauseium. I think they got a little

tired of us asking questions but we wanted to make absolutely sure the services that we were going to disconnect were not being used or we're going to cause some type of deficit to that department. So we did uh justice in going through to the department heads making sure a lot of them were encouraging us no we have not used those in quite some time. So at that point that Trevor and I decided to sit down and uh contact Frontier and now this is going to be a long process. This is not going to be and I'm going to make this short as possible. Frontier invoices for anyone here has looked at one are very confusing. it it's like reading the Da Vinci code and it it's I am serious this is not an easy invoice. So we had to interpret it make sure we had all of our numbers that Frontier and then called them disconnect. So let me assure you the process that we used check with department heads make sure that they knew what we were cutting make sure it wasn't going to affect their departments specifically the emergency services. I did not even want to be responsible for making being uh in the front page of the news with uh police officers or firemen not being able to communicate. But we made absolutely sure that was not the case. The second step in that is some of these lines we can uh move to a different type of service. The uh the city has what's called a VoIP system. Voice over IP that is voice over the internet. It's basically its own telephone company in sense. We don't have to go to a telephone company. We don't need their services. We can move some of these over more economically through that service that you already enjoy and uh are able to take much more economic advantage of than going to a frontier or any phone company. So that's

pretty much the investigative work and um work that we have done to reduce the budget. And I think we're looking at an annual cost of about $87,000 per year that we're going to be able to reduce the IT budget by and as a whole with the city. And we think that's going to be more because again these invoices are I think it could be up as high as 101,000 with all the associated costs with those lines. So yeah, and we've had to go around. It's probably taken what about a month and a half so far to get any of them disconnected and Bill donated an old hospital telephone that we're going in and plugging into everything to test them. So uh it takes time and it'll take time, but we'll be getting done with that. And I'd like to note too that that month uh that bill was about $3,000 a month maybe two months ago and it skyrocketed up to like $7,000 a month now. So it's going to continue to rise. So we caught it at a good time. Uh we're going to need some services to replace that. As Bill mentioned, those are probably going to be about $42 per line. Probably going to be about $5,000 a year in spending to replace those services, which comparatively is a little better than the 87,000, but um so that's one of the bigger cost savings we're looking at and we're still working on that one. Um a couple other things. Let's see here. Something related. Uh I know Austin's mentioned in a meeting or two about uh IT for next year and how we're going to be working with Portage Schools to be our service provider for IT. Uh that's they're kind of helping us right now go through our budget and determine what things they've done to save money. Uh we had a meeting with them about that. Uh going into that, we were talking with them about our telephone cost for our VoIP system. As Bill mentioned today, I believe we pay about $4,500 a month for these phones and the schools pay about $700 a month for their phones and they have a lot more f I think he said they have like 1,0 phones and we have like

250 maybe. So our cost there should drop dramatically. Um going into cyber security insurance, our premium last year was $29,000. We've got that lowered now to $25,000 for this upcoming year. Uh just by going through enabling certain settings, enforcing different protocols to make things a little more secure. Um let's see. And one thing I do want to note, one thing that uh I think that we are need to do which I um is look at with our IT provider that we had. We were isolated from quite a few discounts that we could have had through Microsoft and Cisco. There is a thing called the uh state of Indiana QPA which allows us to take advantage of negotiated price that the state has already made for us that any municipality or school district can take benefit of. So when uh Trevor is talking about the difference large difference between what we're doing with Vo now compared to what we could be doing those are us participating in that QPA. Um so we're taking advantage of negotiated pricing that our state government has already made for us. Yeah. And kind of towards that effect too, uh we we're looking at our police laptops and we have about 70 of those uh that were without antivirus over the last year. Uh we were able to take advantage of a grant through the state of Indiana it were quoted initially on getting antivirus on those laptops. it would have been about $10,000 a month for all 70 of those laptops. And through a state grant, we were able to get that anti virus for free. So, that's another thing we've been able to take advantage of there. Um, let me see. In that same vein, we've been utilizing a service called No Before through a state grant. Uh this is kind of helping us bolster our cyber security by sending out fake fishing emails, fake, you know, spam emails, see

who clicks what, uh having people finish different trainings, show them what's a, you know, a risky email, what's, you know, what do you not click? That's another thing that we've gotten for free through a state grant. Um, moving along here, and that's one thing I want to say that Trevor has done an excellent job with the staff that came in. And I recognize he's done an excellent job with a single person educating the staff. You've heard and I witnessed um luckily the city has not been affected by uh any cyber attack or u ransom attack. Um and what these are things are sent to the staff members within the city and it judges their reaction. Um I'm still quering about the Tinder one I received but we'll discuss that later. It wasn't targeted at you. So, but any rate, it it is uh I'm sure that was fake. I My wife is listening to this. So, um but with that uh it it tries to trick them into clicking and that's where this uh uh the cities, municipalities, um school districts have been crippled, literally crippled. and Trevor, I I got my hat is off to him. Uh, one of the things when I first came on is is aggressive work in making sure that the city personnel were were very and to the point of shaming some uh but but it needs to be done. It it really we're not in a safe world anymore. So, rolling right along with the costsaving stuff, uh, we have to look at our Comcast bills. There are certain bills that we've had through Comcast for 10 years. Some of them are inactive. Some of them we had some pricing for, you know, 7 megabit per second internet at $200 that we can get, you know, up to normal speeds now for a lower price. Uh so we're going to be looking at combing

through those bills, uh getting those things done. Uh we're going to be auditing our our cell provider uh for FirstNet to see certain devices that we can put on a usage base program for hotspots. So depending on where it would make sense, if they're not using a lot of data for their role for police or fire, probably more likely fire. If we can do that, we can put them on a usage based program that if they only use so much data, we only pay so much. Uh that needs further investigation. Um we're going to be investigating our Microsoft email licensing. uh we use kind of a standard business license and most people use a government license that not only gives us more features and and options on what we can do, but correct me if I'm wrong, it's cheaper, too. No. And that's what we need to start doing. Take advantage of the discounts available to us as a municipality. Again, the state QPA helps there. Microsoft has that licensing available to municipalities and schools. that we are not taking advantage of currently because we were dealing with an IT provider. We don't have to deal with an IT provider. We go directly to uh Microsoft to work on that. Yeah. Um another thing, it's maybe not necessarily a cost savings up front, but uh we're looking at for the fire department replacing their tablets up in the front of their rigs uh with a more expensive rugged tablet. Currently, they're using Microsoft tablets that are pretty fragile. I think they only have a one-year warranty and they're about $1,000. We're looking at getting the fire department into something that's about $3,000, but they have a three-year warranty and they don't require as much attention from me every month to go and take a look at them and see what's wrong with them. So, it probably works out to be the same. Uh, and they're more reliable for our fire department. Um, moving on from there, just some cyber security things that we've been working on in the city. Uh, we talked about no before. Um, I will be hopefully by the end of the year transitioning us from

a.com email to a.gov email because that makes sense as a as a government. So, we'll be doing that and that's at no cost to us. So, we might as well get that done. Um, we're hopefully looking at as well consolidating our uh security systems throughout the city, trying to go with one provider for everything instead of the five, 10 different vendors we have for security, which should not only reduce cost, but also reduce confusion. Uh, the last thing that we're going to be working on as an IT department is working on creating policy, different acceptable use policies for what you can do with your computer and what you can do on our network. um policies for how long it should be before we phase out old equipment and old devices. Um making sure that we're working with each department on any new software, any new hardware they're installing so we make sure that we have the best deal on everything and we can roll everything out smoothly. Um next year we're going to be working on making sure every device is up to date and and patched and a you know acceptable to be on our network. So that's most everything that we're looking at as far as cost savings and as far as IT stuff. So that's all I've got. Thank you guys so much. Any questions from the council? Thank you. Thank you. I'll turn it over to you, Liz, for the clerk treasures report. I'm going to be very fast with my report. I just wanted to let everybody know the state board of accounts is still in the city doing their audit. They um they've been here, I believe, for four and a half weeks and uh they're going to wrap up this week, they told me. Um, so I want to let it I wanted to remind anybody who did not send their fraud and questionnaire in from the council or department heads, will you please send that in to them so that when we do our closing exit, your name will not be mentioned as one that didn't fill it out. Also, I did want to report that we are still having our weekly financial

meetings with the department heads, um, the mayor, myself, and my staff. um any questions uh that the department heads have, they can also call me anytime during the week and ask them and then we could have an answer for the Friday meetings. They are right now scheduled every Friday between 2 and 4 and we try to keep it between 2 and 3. We try. Yeah. Well, thank you. So, that gets us to unfinished business ordinance 2522, consumer use of fireworks. Um, council president, I think that there was something you wanted to say on this. Um, yes. There's still some, uh, sections in the ordinance that needs legal review. So, um, at this time, I would like a motion to table this. I'll make a motion to table indefinitely so we don't keep putting it on the agenda. I'll second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Any discussion? Is there any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? believe it was unanimous. I mean, we could all be at our second terms. We could just still be, you know, tableabling this every month, but this is a little smoother. It could be a fun tradition. All right. So, that'll get us to new business. Um, introduction of ordinances. Um, speaking of council, uh, woman Vasquez, um, do you want to continue the tradition of reading zoning changes or would you like me to pass that to somebody? So, if I could ask if you could do our first reading for um ordinance 2533 amending chapter 90 article 5 city of portage municipal code entitled zoning map. And just and just a friendly reminder, we don't need to read the entire legal. We need to read the title to put it out there for the crowd. Are you saying you don't want to hear my voice? No, I'm saying I don't want you to have to read a meets and bounds legal

description for 375 acres again in public ever. Duly noted. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Ordinance 25-33, an ordinance of the city of Portage, Indiana, amending chapter 90, article 5 of the city of Portage Municipal Code entitled zoning map. Be it be it and it hereby is ordained by the common council of the city of Portage, Indiana as follows. Section one, this ordinance shall amend chapter 90 article 5 of the city of Portage municipal code and accompanying zoning map in the following manner. The zoning shall be changed from R2 low density residential to R4 city core residential at 2240 Chrisman Road. The legal description listed below parcel description 2.0 acres plus or minus in its full description accepting there from in the full description. Section two conditions precedent none. Section three, conflicting ordinances. Any ordinance or provision of any ordinance of the city of Portage in conflict with the provisions of this ordinance is hereby repealed. Section four, severability. The invalid invalidity of any section, clause, sentence, or provision of this ordinance shall not affect the validity of any other part of this ordinance which can be given effect without such invalid parts or parts. Section five, effective date. This ordinance shall be in full force in effect from and after its passage and adoption by the common council and approval by the mayor of the city of Portage, Indiana. Pass and adopted by the common council of the city of Portage on an unexpected date of a to be determined month of 2025. Attorney Mccclure, um this being a zoning change, it can't it needs to have a second reading at the next council meeting. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So, is there anything left for us to do

agenda-wise on that one? So, that'll take us to ordinance 2534, amending the 2025 salary ordinance number 2435 V18. Um, uh, Councilman Parnell, would you mind uh reading that one for us? Oh, he might need the actual Oh, no. I was kind of thinking that Bob could, you know, read mines or, you know, read all those figure. Yeah. Salary ordinance budget year 2025 ordinance uh number 25-34 an ordinance established in the amount of salaries and compensation be paid to all appointed employees uh and officers of the city of portage porter county Indiana for the year 2025 and hereby is ordained by the common council of the city of portage Indiana salary schedule as presented by Austin Bont mayor to the common council So the city of Porters, Porter County, Indiana. Section one, at the first pay date in January 2025 through the last pay date in December 2025, effective date note on attachment to pay scheduled for the employees and officers of the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana to be fixed as follows. Thank you. Make a motion to suspend. Second. We have a motion to uh suspend and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none. Um, all in favor, please signify by saying I. I. I. Any opposed? Motion to adopt. Second. We have a motion and a second by Did you catch it? Sure. Can I give an explanation of the ordinance change? Yeah. So, we recently

had an increase to the police salary that came through a police contract. Separately though, this is to I guess the right term would be catch or match that same increase to our police administration. Um there's an important piece to making sure that there's a proportionality to those. So, this is a change for the police admin. It's for all of them. It it's the all the changes for the the contracts that were already approved matches the contract as well. Sorry, we wanted to make sure that this also included the admin. Oh, it does. And just noting for sanitary treatment plant, sanitary field, and storm water department, there's an Excel error. It didn't copy the date correctly. It did a series of dates. So, they're all effective 1125, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. Just just for the record, they're effective 1125. All right. We already had a motion in the second and we are certain that these match the contracts, right? Okay. On that note, all in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. That gets us to the second reading of ordinance 2532, amending schedule of fees established under chapter 14, buildings and building regulations. Um, attorney, this still has to be read as I mean as a second reading, right? Could I ask Councilwoman Widenbach if you could read that one for us? Ordinance 25-32, an ordinance amending the schedule of fees established under chapter 14 buildings and building regulations section 14-84 for the city of Portage, Porter County, Indiana. It is hereby ordained and established by the common council of the city of Portage, Indiana as follows. Attorney McClar, does the whole thing have to be read? Let the record show it's been read in its entirety. Motion to adopt. Second. Second. So, we have a motion and a

second. I'll just state um for those of you who remember last meeting um this passed unanimously when we believed that it could be suspended, but because it can't be suspended, we had to wait until this meeting. Um unless there's any other discussion, I think we're in the clear. So, all in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Any opposed? Hearing none. It passed. All right. That gets to reports from city officials. If anybody like to come, come on up. He says it'll be quick, but he's not even running to the podium. Yeah, a couple things. Um, Fourth of July obviously coming up. Um, you know, there's been stuff that's happened in the past uh in the country and things. So, I just want to let you guys know um that we are prepared to have extra officers out for Fourth of July. Um I think right now we're bringing on between the um the parade, the festival at night, and then it's probably our busiest working day of the year for us, um we're going to end up bringing on 16 extra shifts. So, um, and you know, we do plan for this with our overtime and stuff, but when it comes up, you know, and you wonder why we spend the money we do, um, this is a good example of that. Um, you know, to staff something where we're going to have possibly eight, nine, 10,000 people down at Founders Square Park. Um, you don't want two police officers down there. So, um, these are some of those events that cost money. um costs money to to be safe, but uh I think it's it's what the the city expects to have these nice events and be able to to have these celebrations and so it's it's on us to provide the safety for that. Um so just a little bit of behind the scenes of what what it takes to do that. And then

uh just real briefly um market on the square started a little rocky the first couple uh or one or two I think of the year. Um, I think we've adjusted pretty well to figuring out what some of the issues were down there. We've added an extra officer on there and kind of figured out where the problem areas were. And I think the last two, I don't think we've had any issues. So, um, I know that was something that was kind of debated a little bit in the public forum. So, I just wanted to give you guys an update that I think it's been been pretty smooth since then. We kind of adjusted the way we were going to patrol the area there and uh I think it's kind of taken care of some of the issues. So I can tell you chief, we had a couple people, but one that really comes to mind was a grandmother who told me how excited she was that she brought her grandkids to the market for the first time once people in the neighborhood were talking about just how much even better that was getting. So thank you guys. What you're doing is being noticed at every level. Awesome. That's all I got. I said I'd be short probably first time in six years. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anybody else? With that, we'll go on to reports from standing committees. Anything from ordinance? Nothing to report uh this month. Thank you. Petitions, remmonstrances, and public input. If you'd like to come up and speak, uh feel free to come up to this podium. I guess you could come also come up to this uh spot here if we prefer this podium if that's okay. Oh, hello. Good evening. Um, Chuck Helming from EventRebel Productions. Just want to thank all our city officials who helped us get this Rocksfest on the way that we had two weeks ago. It was a pretty good success. So, anybody that was like liking, sharing, and getting the word out there, we really appreciate you. Um, our police and fire that staffed out there that helped us, they they were

phenomenal. Um, just want to pass on several of the tour managers were impressed. They didn't think this was our first festival because as organized as it was and looking forward to Rocksfest 26. We're going to have a meeting tomorrow. So, we just want to thank everybody, Tom, Cherry, Redevelopment Committee, everybody, all the people that helped us get this. It was pretty good success and the public liked it and people are wanting to know more. So, stay tuned. Put it simply, it definitely did not feel like the first one. So, I mean, even if you guys have wanted to put up a sign that says the third annual Rocksfest, just to give people the impression it's even more, we'd be all for it, I'm sure. And thank you guys for giving people were looking for you. They were wanting to meet you. So, Tom got to go meet Theory of the Dead Man and had a good time. So, he was like a kid in a candy store. So, awesome. So, thank you guys once again for letting us have that event. Thank you guys. Thank you. Anyone else? hearing none. Is there Oh, I'm so sorry. Please come on up. I apologize. Oh, yeah. Oh, no problem. You'll come up and you can say your name and then I try to ask people to be brief, but I understand that sometimes that can vary. You know, I was to the planning department last uh last month. My name is Robera Spur. I at 2212 Chrisman Road in Portage. It looks like the old grocery store, whatever drug home that it was when it was confiscated by the United States of America, US Marshall's Office. So on the agenda, they Habitat for Humanity wants to put in eight homes on the corner where the old

school used to stand. I'm hoping that you guys will consider opposing this. They all of the driveways will either face Chrisman Road or Portage Avenue. The traffic over the last 30 years has grown exponentially. Some of our residents have tried to back out of their driveways and have been hit from speeding cars going down Chrisman Road. Also, when they tore down the school, they dug a hole, they buried stuff, and they covered it up. Even though dire construction said it's good, we that live there watched this happen. So by disturbing the soil, the city will be responsible if they find hazardous waste, meaning asbestous, lead poisoning. It will need to be cleaned up. By not bothering the soil, there's no contamination that could to the residents around along with the V1 church uses that as parking. They maintain it. So, I just hope that you guys will all consider that it's a bad situation for the people coming there and not knowing the risks of how the intersection and the consequences that could happen by this high traffic. Thank you very much for your comments. I won't weigh in too much because um and you're welcome to stay or listen, but

when we were at ordinance um 2533 amending chapter 90, that's the proposal that you're talking about. Yes. By law, we have to wait two meetings. We have to have a reading and then we have to wait till the next meeting. So, it'll be the August meeting when that is up for a vote and consideration by the city council. That's a state law matter. It's one of only, I think, two things that we're not allowed to suspend rules on. Not that they would, but just to say that that's one of two things. The other one is fees actually, which we also did the second reading of today for the building fees. And just to say on two spots there, a zoning change, I don't say this by any means in a defensive, but so you have a whole, you know, picture to it. A zoning change does not mean that then things get built. There is a whole process around that. It also doesn't mean that there can't be conditions. So to your point too about a number of homes or to your concerns, which I understand because across the street there's property that got sold for I believe it's a Starbucks they're building. I don't believe I know it's a Starbucks where it was sold in such a way where they then had to do testing and discover that there were things that had to be remediated. So it is to say just to put it simply there are other pieces that need to be looked at with that and it will be looked at ahead of the upcoming meeting in August. I would encourage you to come but I just want you to assure you that it's not as simple as this body votes and if they approve it's either all or nothing or that people are in some sort of danger. You know I also can't speak to what was filed to IDM when the building burned down and was demolished. Right now we're operating on what was reported. But whether it's a new neighborhood in an empty field, um whether it is a new neighborhood where there used to be something, there are other processes which I'll make a note to make sure are explained. I'm going to be walking your neighborhood very soon and I apologize. My intention was to do it before this meeting. I was very public about that with the heat wave that went on. I just kind of was trying to find a time where

people didn't think I was crazy. And in the event that we get into July and I'm not able to do that, I'll invite everybody here. I could do that anyway, but I do love walking door todoor and talking to people that way. I think that there's something a little bit more, I don't know, transparent about that. So, you'll see me at least one more time before that meeting if that makes sense. You can come and sit in my driveway and watch the traffic go by. I actually I I don't want to scare you. I I haven't sat in your driveway, but I have sat in that field and watched the traffic go by. Good. I'll also there are some people here I believe for Habitat for Humanity. If you'd like to talk to them some of what they do, I'm sure they'd be willing as well and I just know it because I see somebody here in the audience and then someone else wearing a name tag who I think might be with them. But the one guy I know, he's actually kind of famous if you know his backstory. But uh the other the other piece and I'm sorry, I just want to state too with the church. The church doesn't maintain um that property. I just want to make sure that's for the record. The church signed a waiver with the city which allows them to use it for parking when they're having a church event. It's the city that maintains the property. That was something we worked out with legal through both the redevelopment commission and the civil city. But that's something that's open to anybody. And I'm not trying to be joke. If you were having like a big family get together and you wanted to use that land for your family get together, I'm sure there might be some other rules apply depending on what you were doing at your barbecue. But the waiver for us is really about if somebody parks there and trips that the city is not liable. Okay. I'm sure if you want to know the legal side, but I just wanted to clarify there's no arrangement where the church is directly running or operating the property. They also have I don't want to speak for them because I talked with the pastor not too long ago. They have dreams of building a bigger location somewhere else, which makes sense given that the parking is so overflowed. It's definitely all said and done. I'm sure someone will find use for the building. But it is to say it's a temporary solution because technically we could tell people to just park in the street, but we know how not everybody likes

having strangers park in their street. So yeah, just making sure you have the whole picture there. Okay, thank you. Anybody else like to come up? Otherwise, is there anything else that needs to come before this body? Just a brief question for those uh people at home who are planning to enjoy our um Fourth of July parade. Uh could you just clarify the route and the time that the parade will be starting? Yeah. So somebody I forgot who it was. Someone told me like recently it almost felt like a complaint that the forage parade is like the same thing over and over again. I don't remember who said that but yeah but so I knew it was somewhere my memory man. It's it's funny. I can remember all these voting details, but but but who said something 20 minutes ago anyway? So, uh it's going to start at the Portage Mall entrance. Um the people who are the participants, they're going to be further back where where Roxfest happened. They'll be in that same area. So, they're going to come out on what is actually Vivian Street and then turn on to Central Avenue. They're going to take Central Avenue past city hall where we're at, where the grandstand is. They're going to take it to the intersection of uh Willow Creek and uh Central. And we don't have a roundabout there yet, and I'm sure we never will, but maybe one day people will walk around a circle and get stuck if that ever happens. But for now, it's just a simple left turn, and they're going to go down south on Willow Creek and they're going to go down to where Nativity Church is over by Sunrise Avenue. Now, um, this year, if I didn't say already, that's going to start at 10 am. And this year is very special, and I hope every year is special from this point because it is a bit different. The Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes. I'm so glad till the end to tell you about it. So, but uh this year we have our sensory quiet zone, and that's for families with children and adults who sometimes might find um challenges or find it

challenging to handle certain stimuli like loud noises, bright lights. So, we've officially put it as the spot, the best spot to be in terms of making sure that you get the full effect if you're looking for a quiet experience is really from about the gazebo at Frank Gilbert Park down to sunrise. It'll start getting quieter right about Malberry. We just know that logistically there's going to be some buffer of people turning things down, you know, what have you. But yeah, so 10:00 a.m. start and then going from uh central to Willow Creek and down Willow Creek more or less ending at Nativity Church. Very good. Thank you. We could even write an ordinance if you want so that we never have to worry about I'm kidding. We won't set the parade route in an ordinance. Thank you. On that note, um just question for Chief Kra. Where is he? Is he somewhere? Oh, he's over in the corner. Um and I guess Chief Candyo, too. It's supposed to be particularly hot on Friday. Do we have any additional plans than we normally do with how hot it is? I mean, we're talking like real feel of over a hundred for the festival for the parade. We haven't really taken anything because it'll still be early enough for the festival. We also have some additional person. So, in addition to the sensory quiet zone and a cool down area at the fest, I probably should mention one other new feature this year, which I just I mean, I remembered, but now now that I now that I'm at a spot where I'm like, tell us more. Like, tell us what other new things. And maybe this happened before and I don't remember it. But this year at the fest, we have live pro wrestling, which is a really, I think, new thing that we're trying out. Um, I'm very excited to see if that is as big of a favorite with the families, but it's something that's really neat. Our public relations specialist with the city who helps put the event, really runs the whole event together. This opportunity

came in to have a pro- wrestling show at our fest and we set up to have that for free for attendees. I hope that everybody likes it. I am not the biggest pro wrestling fan in the world. I'm more of a if you tell me, hey, there's a pro wrestling event somewhere. I'm like, well, cool. I'm going to go check it out and see it, but I don't seek them out, you know. But if this is something that a lot of people like, it might become a new tradition as well. But we're kind of giving our test run with the pro wrestling show this year. Anything else are matters from the council? Bet you didn't expect pro wrestling to be talked about at this at this council meeting. All right. Well, hearing that, does anyone have a motion to close the meeting? Motion to adjurnn. Second. Second. All in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Cool. [Applause] [Music]