Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm going to call to order this regular city commission meeting of Tuesday, February 17th. All please rise for the pledge of allegiance.

I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. As always, we begin by acknowledging the land on which we gather as the territory of the Ottawa and Chipua peoples who have stewarded this land through the generations. Thank you for your strength and resilience in protecting this land and entrusting us with our to uphold our responsibilities to do the same. Um so we'll get the meeting started here. I just wanted to say um today is uh Marty GR fat Tuesday or for Northern Michigan Punchki Day or our Polish friends and it's also the beginning of the lunar new year. So, if anybody is celebrating today, I hope you are enjoying your festivities. So, with that, we'll go ahead and get started. Um, and we'll go ahead and do roll call, please.

Commissioner Anderson here. Mayor Promesses here. Commissioner Treadwell here. Commissioner Funk here. Commissioner Bmer here. Commissioner Straw Shaw Strong. We're all stumbling. I can't talk today. Mayor here. And see, I didn't make you do Shamro. Um, from the city manager.

Uh, thank you. Good evening. I have some uh meetings and uh or no, not meetings to announce. I'm referring to old habits. I have a couple of announcements for this week, the week of February 16th, 2026. Of course, under this evening's uh report section of the agenda is an update from me on the objectives and key results. And I just wanted to share that uh we've begun uh the staff team, the employee team has begun a lot of really exciting work to align around those objectives and key results and develop a work plan uh for the six strategic objectives. And I will be presenting that work plan to the city commission on March 2nd, which will give us a little bit more time to further refine resources uh dream big and also have uh some reality mixed in there. Uh, and then I just want to reiterate on behalf of the city of Traverse City that we invite community members to join us this Thursday, February 19th from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the opera house for the city strategy in motion, a team Trevor City celebration, which is dedicated to reflecting on the progress made this last year and importantly very much looking ahead to what's to come in 2026. That's from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the city opera house. Everyone is invited. Uh we'll have uh some appetizers and there is a cash bar available for those who uh would like to enjoy a beverage. And that's all that I've got. I look forward to seeing all of the commissioners and hopefully a whole lot of members of our community and our employee leadership team at that exciting event. Thank you.

Great. And we'll keep that going with the uh city clerk announcements, please. I have meetings scheduled for this week. This is what happens when you have a meeting on Tuesday. We're all out of sync. The riparian buffer committee will meet on Wednesday, February 18th at 3:30 in the commission chambers. The arts commission will meet also on Wednesday the 18th at 3:30 in the committee room. The local officers compensation commission will meet on Thursday, February 19th at 3 p.m. in the committee room. The downtown development authority will meet Friday the 20th at 9:00 a.m. here in the chambers. And the city commission study session will meet Monday, February 23rd at 6:00 p.m. at the senior center. And the session will not be recorded because this is a continuation of your

what are we calling it? Retreat. Yes. Um and then just to remind you to speak into the microphone so that the public um at watching at home and the recording of this meeting is easily heard. So you want to be careful when you're turning your head side to side. Just make sure you're aiming at the front.

Thank you. And with that, we'll continue and have you roll along with the consent calendar, please. The purpose of the consent calendar is to expedite business by grouping non-controversial items together to be dealt with by one commission motion without discussion. Any member of the commission, staff, or the public may ask that any item on the consent calendar be removed there from and place elsewhere on the agenda for individual consideration by the commission. And such requests will be automatically respected. If an item is not removed from the consent calendar, the action noted in parentheses on the agenda is approved by a single commission action adopting the consent calendar. One, consideration of approving the minutes of February 2nd, 2026 and February 9th, 2026 meeting of the city commission. Approval recommended. Two, consideration of clarifying the motion previously adopted to make permanent traffic controller verse 749 to correct the street name, which is a housekeeping matter. Approval recommended. Three, consideration of authorizing a purchase order for a tractor loader backhoe and attachments for use by the cemetery and garage departments, which is a scheduled purchase, and consideration of declaring a 2011 K Cabota tractor loader backhoe with attachment surplus. Approval recommended. Four, consideration of authorizing a purchase order for a subcompact tractor and attachments for use by the parking services department for parking deck snow clearing, which is a scheduled purchase, and consideration of declaring a 2015 subcompact kabota tractor with attachment surplus. Approval recommended. Five, consideration of authorizing necessary documents to amend the comprehensive opioid stimulant and substance abuse sitebased program, COAP, from the Michigan State Police to provide for an additional grant amount of $12,500 for a total of $585,50 over a 4-year period ending September 30th, 2026. Approval recommended. Six, consideration of authorizing an amendment to the legal services agreement with Kevin Schumarker of Glasson, Reed, McClean, Cample, and Shoemarker for professional legal services associated with oil and gas

matters, which would increase the not to exceed cost for this year by 5,000 as recommended by the city attorney is required by the city charter. Approval recommended. Seven, consideration of waving the competitive bidding process and authorizing an agreement to complete the updating of project plans for the drinking water state revolving loan fund and the clean water state revolving loan fund programs. Approval recommended. Eight. Consideration of authorizing an amendment to the agreement for consulting services to assist the city with management administration, coordination, and operation of the food composting pilot project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture with the cost of the consulting services to be covered by the grant. Approval recommended. Nine, consideration of authorizing amendment to the agreement for food scrap hauling services for the food composting pilot project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture with the costs of the consulting service to be to also be covered by the grant. Approval recommended. 10. Consideration of introducing an amendment to the Trevor City Code of Ordinances which amends the composition of the parks and rec commission introduction and schedule for possible enactment on March 16th, 2026. Recommended. 11. Consideration of introducing an amendment to the development regulations for the Grand Trevor's Commons to allow for additional sheds at the community garden as recommended by the Grand Trevor's Common Joint Planning Commission and consideration of scheduling the ordinance amendment for possible enactment on March 16th, 2026. Number 12, consideration of the enactment of an amendment to the Traverse City Code of Ordinances, which would codify the permit requirements of asbuilt drawings and testing documentation for public sewer and water mains connection. Enactment recommended. This one referenced an attachment that somehow did not get attached and it's referencing from the January 20th meeting and you guys were provided to it, but the public can find that

attachment on the January 20th meeting. 13. Consideration of adopting the poverty exemption guidelines for purposes of determining local property tax exemptions. Adoption recommended. 14. Consideration of accepting the audited financial statements for fiscal year 2024 2025. Okay. Okay. Does any commission would any commissioner like any of these items pulled? Other

six. Six. Okay. And just so the public knows, well, first of all, is there anybody from the public that would like any of these items other than six pulled? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. And of course, some people just to remind the public and to Sarah's point, some of these are caros carryovers that needed five votes from the meeting where we just had a quorum of four. So, a lot of these have been seen and questioned in the past as well. So, I'll take a motion if we have one. Go ahead, Jackie. I move that we adopt the consent calendar as modified. Support. Thank you for that. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. So, item number six, and you had this pulled, Heather?

I did. I asked the city attorney if she would if she could explain why we have this extra um funding going to the the work that's being done. And she said that she would explain.

Great. Sure. So, this is uh an attorney, a specialized attorney that we um have uh engaged for oil and gas matters, which is a specialty. Um and just bringing him on board um and getting him up to speed on the several leases and agreements that we have on the city's oil wells, which are um primarily at Brownbridge Quiet Area. Um took some extra time. He then uh took the time to come up and meet with the city commission um recently kind of to do an educational piece um because it's quite a complicated subject. Um, and additionally, we're um, as everyone probably knows, bringing on some additional adjacent property to Brambridge Quiet Area hopefully soon. We're working through the grant process to acquire that right now on behalf of the city. Um, and that also has active um, oil and gas on that property. And so, just all of that together has been some additional time that he needed to spend. Um, I hope and anticipate that in the future that shouldn't be an issue, but he was just getting up to speed and we're expanding Brownbridge Quiet Area hopefully soon. So, that was what was behind that. Yep.

Great. Other questions or does anybody want to make a motion? I'll move that the mayor and city clerk be authorized to execute an amendment to the contract with Glass and Reed, McClean, and Campell and Schumacher. I added an extra and uh an in additional in an additional amount not to exceed $5,000 in legal services associated with oil and gas matters such contract subject as to its substance by the city manager and its form by the city attorney with funds available in the city attorney budget support.

All right. Uh any further comment from the commission on this? Seeing none, any public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. All right. So, with that, we'll move on to our old business and we'll start with the uh balance polic balance fund policy that we brought up at our last study session. And Benjamin, I'll have you kick that off.

Yes. Thank you. Uh so, of course, as the mayor just referenced at the last study session, we talked about uh you talked about the recommendation from the city treasurer and I to suspend the general fund fund balance policy for this fiscal year. Uh and our recommendation is to in September appoint an ad hoc committee consisting of three members of the city commission. Uh myself and the city treasurer. That committee scope at least at this point in time the envision scope is to uh develop a plan for the fund balance. Make any recommendations regarding potential changes to the fund balance policy and consider recommendations on the city's underfunded pension liability for uh our employees other than police and fire. I I recommend waiting until September to convene the ad hoc committee for a few reasons. One is we uh as has been stated and reported on uh our accounting cycles will be more complete uh by then. Also very importantly uh while we have an excellent employee team, they do have finite capacity and there are a number of ongoing items underway including our first ever multi-year budget uh projection effort which requires a lot of work. We also have a key member of the treasurer's office who is uh going on leave uh who is important to these types of efforts. Uh and so for that reason uh and others I recommend waiting until September to convene the ad hoc committee. And just as a refresher for those who may be tuning into this topic for the first time, uh we have a uh policy that requires that the city have no more than no less than 15% or no more than 20% uh in budgeted general fund expenses in our fund balance. Uh we do exceed that, but we have a number of uh uh items that are going to put uh some financial pressures on the city and will require prioritization. And I think it's important to wait to develop that plan

until we have um more of an idea on our facilities needs uh which are significant including building a new structure for ambulance service. We have had to increase employee compensation significantly to be competitive. As I had mentioned, we have some underfunded pension liability. Uh and we also have objectives and key results that we're going to be working on. So, we need to take a look at those things through a strategic lens and that's why I recommend this this action tonight. Do we have any questions or would anybody like to make a motion? Some questions. Sure.

Um, we talked about the pension liability for the Merse pension and it was my understanding that we were we weren't going to wait till September to cut a check. We were going to get to that very soon with some of the excess money in the fund balance. So that would make us whole and it would be it'd reach that 60% for the funding level. That it is correct that uh this coming budget has 1.2 million uh budget I believe right Heidi uh this coming fiscal year budget we're going to is it the 2024 to 25 that we are underfunded at or are we projecting for the 26 to 27 budget that we will be underfunded?

It's both. Uh and I think the underfunding level is actually worse than uh on paper right now because uh the last uh actuarial report we have goes through 2024. It doesn't take into account these significant uh increases that we've needed to provide to employees to be competitive. Uh and so uh and also uh the actuarial assumptions I would say are rather optimistic and not necessarily uh realistic. He's good.

Just one thing to call out. So in the 2526 budget, we have an extra 300,000 that was to be contributed, we've already we made that uh payment on July 1st. So if we wanted to u budget additional fund balance out of this year before June 30th that would take direction of the board in a budget adjustment, which we can definitely do otherwise, we can build it into the 2627 budget, which is at this point what we're doing is building it into the

That's what the plan was for that. Okay. I I thought the the assumption that I had was that we identified that there was a underfunding now and we were going to take corrective actions now to bring that up to the 60% and then with the 26 to 27 budget we would increase the the the contribution to the mer pensions reciprocal towards the pay increases that those all those employees got. Well, just to be clear, uh the 2627 uh proposed allocation that we intend to propose uh is what would bring us potentially to the 60% minimum funding level. Uh that's still not adequate. Uh it it it satisfies the state's requirements, but we should be higher than 60% funding level. Uh and and even so, uh it won't the the funding level isn't calculated using

the totality of those wage increases yet. Am I missing anything, Heidi? Nope, that's correct. Okay. So, we will build a $1.2 million um additional contribution over and above our annual required contribution into MS for the 2627 budget and that should get us close to 20%, but there's no guarantees once the close to 60%. Right. Once we get the um actuarial, it it's always like I said, it's a year behind. So the December 30th, Jackie, you have Sorry, Ken. Did you have another?

I was just going to say I that makes a that makes a lot a lot of sense. It makes more sense and it satisfies my questioning with it. And it's with with a pension like that that's reamorized. I said it right this time. Better practicing. It's okay for I I I feel it's more com I'm comfortable with it being at 60% funded because you you don't want to overfund that. We reamortitize it every year. So, I'm I'm okay with that and that's why I think it's the state minimum. Yeah. And the ad hoc committee will certainly look at that strategy uh starting in September on the pension in general. Okay. In-depth discussion. Yeah. Jackie,

quick question. With the uh uh ad hoc not being convened until September, when will the appointment process happen? Uh this motion uh uh would have uh that um establishment of that committee on the September 7th regular meeting agenda. Uh and and the process would be unlike uh ad hoc interview committees where the members are randomly selected by the city clerk. The commission would make uh nominations uh to that committee. Great. Thank you.

Like our polic Yeah. Our policy committees tend to our ad hocs tend to go that way. I had a quick question. Um, kind of piggybacking actually Ken sparked it. Um, we hope to with the budget get that you like you all said, we'll include this money to make us whole to the 60%. But with these corrections in pay and new hires, etc. If we're under that 60% again when it's all said and done, you know, you've talked referenced in the past that we're on a plan by the state basically like we're being checked in on this by the state. Is that a process of they give you a couple of years and check in and work with you on that or do are we on like a ticking t I can't talk ticking clock it's hard tonight till like 2027 or 28 to get everything in line.

So we've this will be our third year I expect to get the uh the notice here shortly um and we had been on a progressive we my first year we did 250,000 this year we did 300,000 the intent was 350 and to kind of progressive so I think us making that 1.2 2 million will make them very happy. It's not a specific deadline. It's making progress is what the state's watching for. Great. Great. Thank you for that. Do we have any other questions or a motion? Oh, go ahead. Heather, if no questions, I'll make the motion.

Thank you. um that the city commission I move that the city commission fund balance policy be suspended for the fiscal year 2026 2027 and that the city clerk calendar formation of an ad hoc committee on the city fund balance and pension liability as outlined in the February 11th 2026 communication from the city manager for the September 7th 2026 regular meeting support and I have a comment so all of us received an email from uh former city commissioner Gary how during our last for some reason. You didn't get it? I didn't get it.

Oh well, it's very interesting. I'll forward it to you. Um but I I think his question was is valid about why the why haven't those funds already been moved to address the pension deficit or the facility repairs that they were collected to solve. So I I my comment is I hope that over the next few months that those questions are absolutely the treasure and I have already for a while we're we're gonna absolutely we've already connected on that uh briefly and we're going to in in an in-depth fashion here. So yes. All right. Any other questions or comments? Go ahead.

I have a comment. Uh I maybe this is just the fiscal conservative in me. Uh but I really do think we should be raising our our fund balance um above the 20% anyway. Um, I think this is good. It's good policy for us to look at this going forward as we should be having a healthy savings account. Um, not knowing what federal funding or state funding looks like over the next couple years. U just look at the state budget uh and what happened to that and how many programs were um rearranged in a in a very um intense way where several millions of dollars were lost uh for different programs. So, I I would support us in the future looking at maybe not just suspending this policy, but actually reworking the policy where that fund balance uh is increased. That's just me personally, though.

I agree. I pointed out last time, I think, that one of the conversations we had back when we originally did it was, "Oh, well, if something terrible happens, FEMA will come in." And now we don't even know if that's the case. So, that's very much a lens to look at it through. Very good point. Any other comments at this time? Seeing none, I'll open it up. Any public comment on this item? Okay, seeing none, I will bring it back to the commission. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Okay, with that, we will move on to our discussion of two-way traffic on State Street, the hot issue tonight. So, I'll let you kick that off, Benjamin.

Yes, thank you, Mayor Shamro. So, uh, of course, uh, there has been a, uh, pilot, if you will, for having, uh, State Street between Boardman Avenue and Pine, uh, Street is a two-way traffic. Uh, and the traffic control order that allows for that has technically expired, but we've of course been keeping the commission and the public uh, up to date on that. And so in your packet, uh the packet that's published online, there's a variety of pros and cons to whether or not to keep State Street two-way or revert it back to one-way traffic. And the employee team didn't reach a consensus. We don't have a traffic engineer on city staff. Uh the DDA retained progressive AE uh as the engineer to analyze this pilot project and present professional recommendations on that. uh because we don't have a traffic engineer on staff as I just mentioned and uh uh out of the need to provide the city commission with professional advice. Uh our city engineer Anne Pagano retained the services uh of Wade Trim. Uh and Lori Pollock is here tonight who's a professional engineer and a traffic engineer. And I will say that both progressive AE and Wade Trim retained by the city uh independently recommend keeping State Street 2-way. Uh Mr. Zul is here to provide about a 10-minute presentation to the commission. Miss Pollock about five minutes. Uh and really what the recommended motion in here is uh my advice is for the city commission to follow the advice of a professional and qualified traffic engineer retained by the city uh to direct me to present traffic control orders to the city commission that would make two-way state street permanent and at that time and to also present a recommendation to the commission on improvements and the pacing of those improvements and how they'd be funded. So, the decision tonight, if you will,

that if you were to make what I'm recommending is to have me come back to you with the official traffic control orders and with a funding plan. Uh, and so that's really just giving me some direction. This wouldn't be final action, right? So, I just wanted to make that perfectly clear. Uh, and with that, Mr. Zul, if you would take it away.

Thank you very much. Good evening, commissioners, mayor, uh, city staff. Appreciate the opportunity. I come tonight with a a bit of excitement and optimism. We've been having this discussion and living the pilot over the last three years. We've learned a lot. I've shared a lot of information over the last few few years. Looking to hit the highlights and kind of progress through that discussion um and appreciate the opportunity to to hear uh Lor's review uh as well. So, a brief agenda. I'm going to move through this fairly quickly. We've talked about a lot of the information I'm going to show show. It's included for completeness, but you've heard it largely before in the past. We're going to move through fairly quickly. So, is two-way the right way? How does this improve Traverse City? We've talked about uh what it would look like, how to set it up. We studied it beforehand. We collected data. We analyzed it. We measured it. We used a methodology based on case studies. We wanted a datadriven approach. We engaged the public. We had a couple of different alternatives that we evaluated. We included a lot of stakeholder feedback including uh city departments, beta, DDA, elected appointed officials. And there's also some cost estimating that leads to some of the decisions in this process as well. So, we know that back in the 60s, the suburbs were thriving and downtowns were struggling. As a result, the traffic engineering best practices at the time were to make it more convenient, faster to get into and out of downtown. Hence, the reason why many downtown streets were converted from two-way to oneway. So prior to 1967, uh the sections of State Street, Pine Front, and Boardman operated as two-way. So almost 60 years ago, they made the

conversion to oneway. Again, at that time, it was controversial as well. So through our process, we looked at national best practices. There's been dozens of cities that have converted streets in their downtown back to two-way operation. I outlined some of the benefits and the challenges. We've heard from city staff. We've heard from the public. We know that maintenance operations under one way operate a little bit differently than they do under two-way. And we we understand that. Um we identified how it operated as a one-way system. We modeled that. We then took that data and modeled it under two-way traffic conditions. Then we collected data, modeled it again and continued to see that the system. The spoiler of this is both ways work. We can move traffic, we can move people under both scenarios. So moving towards implementation, we went through several walking audits. We had several rounds of engagement. This was partnered with the front street uh reconstruction process. We looked at two different key design alternatives. One converting all of downtown to two-way and the other being primarily state boardman and front being converted to two-way. In November of 22, we made the decision to convert to a one-way the state pine and front to from a one-way operation to two-way operation on a temporary basis, which was just in time for construction of the parkway, which impacted how our downtown was operating. So, the pilot was extended through 2025, and we continued to collect data. We've learned a lot in this process. We've had some iterations along the way. We've added some signs. We've adjusted some pavement markings. We've bagged some meters, removed some parking

spaces, added an all-way stop uh as a part of this process. And there's still work to do if the decision is to make it permanently two-way traffic. So, we had talked about what some of the key project goals are. again slowing vehicle traffic rising to number one creating a safer more comfortable environment for all modes primarily pedestrians and cyclists. We wanted to help enhance the public realm encourage private development and provide more connectivity within the grid system. So I bring that into uh a summary of those goals and metrics. Then we get really into measurements. How did we do? So the data that we were able to collect prior to implementation uh showed uh 26 miles per hour as the the 85th percentile speed on a one-way street through the years July of 23 24 and 25 we had seen a meaningful decline decrease in the 85th percentile speed. We know that speed is related to safety. Your chance as a pedestrian of surviving a crash at 20 miles per hour is much greater than surviving a crash at 30 miles an hour. So every mile per hour matters. We looked at the number of drivers that were operating at or below the speed limit. Prior to the conversion, 78% of vehicles were operating that way. Post conversion, the most recent data shows that 94% of the people are traveling at 25 miles per hour or slower. Putting that in numbers of vehicles, 900 uh uh speeders previously, we're down to approximately 400 speeders today. We also looked at excessive speeding, those traveling 35 miles per hour or

greater under the one-way operation. Our data showed that we had 16 traveling that fast. Our data over the past few years continues to decrease. We're down to two uh from this past year traveling greater than 35 miles an hour. crashes. We looked at safety. We looked at crashes. We had four crashes of people uh walking or cycling uh in 2022, 21,22. That's been uh down to two total crashes uh over the the last two years. We've also measured pedestrian activity approximately a thousand uh before and then we had seen increasing pedestrian activity with a very high water mark in July of this past year. We also measured on street parking utilization. the state street uh parking uh uh utilization has increased by almost 20% while at the same time front street is only increased by 1% so that we had a comparison obviously that's impacted by the availability of on street parking as well. We had also looked at property tax revenue and we've seen an increase in the value of property tax uh uh revenues on state street. However, even though we've been able to put this uh number in our presentation, I can't make a direct connection between converting the street to two-way and the growth uh and the investment on State Street. As a part of the process, the DDA has continued to stay connected with his businesses. had some survey uh and found that there was uh strong support for keeping the conversion uh to two-way. There's several different slides around the data that they had uh questioned. And so as a result, the two-way operations improves connectivity for all road users. Traffic volumes along State

Street have increased under two-way operations, facilitating more two trips uh within the downtown area area. And thankfully, there are no longer any wrongway drivers on State Street. So, in order to make this happen, there are some next steps that we need to get into. Uh we have the opportunity to make one of these three different decisions. We can end the pilot, convert the streets back to oneway operation. That is absolutely something that can happen. Uh secondly, we could make the conversion permanent uh and set up the opportunity for additional modifications through your typical capital improvement program or we could extend the pilot or expand the pilot you know with immediate modifications. So this final decision uh or the recommendation uh is going to be sooner uh that it's better sooner than later to set up for those capital improvement projects and your budgeting process. So, looking at the conversions to make it permanent today, there's a couple of changes that are recommended. One of them has already been completed. That eastbound stop sign uh at Pine and Front has been installed. We also recommending uh uh repaving the front and Pine intersection to remove that sunken island to help remove some of the confusion with that intersection. And then there's the potential to expand expand the pilot um on um Front Street if you're interested. We're estimating that around $100,000 of investment uh which could be programmed into your next capital budget. Again, those are the highlights that are shown in the red circles uh here on the map and that's my summary and both together or separate question separate.

Okay. Does anybody have questions for Chris at this time? We also do have one more presentation coming. Yes. just a a there there has been some commentary and and questioning about um data validity and whether our sample sizes are significant enough to to find this directional information uh projectable and I wondered if you had any comments on that. I I was noting particularly the the low number of crashes which is great news but are those numbers big enough to really know anything? So those the crash data is reported based on the actual crashes that are recorded. So that's all of the number of in incidences that are available. From a traffic volume standpoint, pedestrian standpoint and vehicle standpoint, we've collected over 95,000 points of data uh as a part of our our pilot over the over the few years. And I can say with with great confidence that u it's statistically significant. the the data that we've collected absolutely is not uh a random impact. The results are true to form.

Great. Would it be possible to see some more analysis especially on the speeds? I think that's probably where you have a a large number of data points and if we could get a 95% confidence level on on the the actual ranges that would be helpful. Thanks. Absolutely. Ken,

um, real quick, there was some conflicting information between the presentation that we just saw and the packet. Um, it was to the the Wade Trim memo from or I'm sorry to the city engineer on in the February 5th letter to the city engineer from Wade Trim on page two under public and city engagement. It reports 47% of the people surveyed reported supporting keeping the two-way design. However, on page 10 of the program that we just saw, um 47% of the people pulled supported keeping the original one-way pattern. So, one place it says keep it two-way at 47%. The other place it says keep it one way at 47%. So, I'm not Did you Anybody else pick that that out?

The Wade Trim. So, there's a memo to Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm asking the Wade Trim that um memo's a separate study, right? Yeah, it's it wasn't in that PowerPoint. It's not a study. It's it's a memo. Yeah. So, in the memo, it's about halfway down the page. Additional support from study indicates the following. 47% of the people pulled supported keeping the existing two-way pattern. So, I believe we have Lori who's doing the next presentation coming up to answer that real quick. Um, am I correct? Yes. Okay. Y just one moment. We're looking at the presentation.

Yes, that was from Lori. The the memo is from Lori Tahan. It is. If you're at the whole packet, Lance, it's three halfway down. It's the first paragraph. Public and city engagement. And this is 47% pulled supported keeping the existing two-way pattern. That should and then that conflicts with Yep. this slide right here. 47% keeping the existing one-way pattern. So I I don't know which one it is. Did more people did 47 like two-way or did 47 like one way?

So the data that's being referenced here was a part of the initial engagement phase prior to implementing the conversion. This is when we were talking about uh performing the pilot. We had pled the public and 47% of the people uh agreed that keeping the existing one-way pattern prior to implementation again this is the data before we had done the pilot believe that the oneway uh was was working. Okay. Was in favor of one way. Has there been any public engagement or polling after

other than the business owners? Was there a a a broader survey of to match that 4753 post? So, uh just the Boardman neighborhood uh was was engaged u with some followup on the conversion. I think that happened twice. Okay. Thank you. There's a head nod to the twice for the public, but nothing more broadly to to reflect kind of a a pre-implementation post implementation. Correct. Not um not a communitywide survey. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Do we have other questions about this presentation about that one? I guess no.

Okay. That was a good point. I don't have that clarification. Thank you. Okay. Um then we'll all set and we'll hand it off to Lori then.

Thank you. Good evening. Um I don't have a formal presentation, but just wanted to give a quick summary. Um I'm a professional engineer, traffic engineer as well. Um licensed in the state of Michigan and been practicing safety and traffic engineering um for the past 26 years. And uh as requested by the city, I conducted an independent review of the progressive analysis and study. And I uh agree professionally with the findings of the study. Um it demonstrated positive impacts to safety um showing reduction in crashes as we were just discussing um positive impacts to operations and business access. Additionally, the safety data and the speed data show um in general and with other studies as well that two-way streets have slower speeds and an overall better impact and more comfortable environment for pedestrians. And as all of the data uh that was shown today uh point to improved conditions with the two-way configuration, um there's not really a compelling reason or any um severe crashes or anything pointing to reverting back to a one-way operation. Um additionally, analysis is recommended and we agree with that. um particularly looking at improvements on Front Street to accommodate uh the keeping the two-way operations um on State Street as well as um looking at as we talked about parts of Front Street or all of Front Street uh being converted to two-way. Were there any other questions? Okay, I don't see any here for this one, but thank you.

Thank you, Lauria. So, I think now we're at the point where I uh we need direction from the city commission on if you want uh me to return uh to you with a traffic control order to make uh two-way state street permanent also to present the recommendations on uh the improvements and how those should be phased in. Uh and so I'm just uh looking for direction from the commission in the form of that motion or uh if there's an alternative that you would like to see, I'd like to hear that too.

Go ahead, Heather. Um, I I personally found the two-way on State Street convenient for getting in and out of t downtown without traveling down Front Street. It also seemed like a good way to reduce traffic on the heavily pedestrian blocks of Front Street. However, the input that came in from the employee team, the pros and the cons, so many more cons than pros, I I I was kind of shocked. There are maintenance issues, says our staff. uh maintenance issues, emergency vehicle issues, delivery issues, continued issues with parking and bike lanes and this huge cost. Um also uh they noted that no feasibility study had been conducted. It was promised but it wasn't fulfilled. I also want to point out that this this body last year on March 17th established an ad hoc to advocate for pedestrians and cyclists during the pilot extension. mayor uh the mayor the prom uh that was Mark Wilson and Mitch Treadwell Commissioner Treadwell were to serve on that ad hoc I can find no evidence that this committee will ever met um I'd like to know and uh the ad hoc may have addressed this how this plan that we are looking at right now fits in with the proposed mobility action plans vision of a bike network um that study which is from 23 I think um shows that that there's low cyclist stress on State Street between Boardman and Front. Think about that. And there's also low cyclist stress on the entire length of Front Street. I I don't think that's aligning with the current conditions right now. Um, finally, I am really concerned with the heavy focus. I it seems like a bias to me on traffic flow and safety and

also this big push for two-way on front. I I don't see why how that belongs here. Um I'm for returning State Street to one way. Um you know the construction's over with on the parking lot on the parkway. Um or I'm also in favor of tableabling this. If we table this, I support getting this in front of the complete streets advisory board as soon as possible where they can consider a real actual safe east west corridor for bikers that's not sandwiched between traffic and parked cars. I know that there's some urgency about this. Summers is coming and the street as it currently is right now is not safe for pedestrians. It's not safe for bikers and at present it's difficult for emergency services. It's difficult for deliveries and it's a gigantic huge frustration for drivers stuck at those intersections. So just to um address very the very fair point about the ad hoc my recollection and Benjun you were clerk and then interum at this point so you might remember more too was that there was kind of a let's establish this but then the complete streets took off and the idea was that it should go to the

streets was already in operation at that point I know it was and that we were waiting for that that this would actually be better evaluated by complete streets. So I agree with what you're saying about having this be vetted through that. So that's that's where that got lost in the mix and that should have happened. So apologies on that. Um so just wanted to address that that I think I agree with that on complete streets. Lance and then Jackie. I have a long- winded question. Um

but it's going to address a lot of things. Uh so I think a lot of our commissioners have probably heard this too. Um Facebook Warriors come out in full force when we uh talk about State Street being a two-way. Um and I've heard several complaints about it. mainly focused on like just we like it the old way. Um which I don't think is a great way we should run our city. Um just we like it the old way doesn't work. Uh if there's a better way. Um and I looked a bunch of people up who were commenting and they don't live in the city of Traverse City. Um NACTO or the National Association of City Transportation Officials uh actually prioritizes two-way uh street safety through traffic calming. because it does traffic calming, it reduces turn speeds, um and there are often separated and protected infrastructure uh that goes with that. Um public safety is one of our duties as uh city commissioners. Um and the data doesn't lie. Uh slower traffic equals safer streets. One of the reasons we established the uh complete streets policy. Um but I do believe there's more we need to do. Uh, and I don't know if this, this is getting to my question, I don't know if this requires this to be in a pilot to do this more or if it requires it to be made permanent so that we can then do more. Um, and that involves something like potentially moving parking um, away from the curb uh, and putting, you know, the bike lane uh, be protected by by parking. Um, but also we need to fix the issue of Cass and unions uh, churning, right? I think that's probably the number one complaint that I've heard uh is that those left turns just are terrible. Um and if it's making a left turn lane, cool. If it's just changing the way the signalization works, um also cool. Leave that up to our our very good professionals uh on how they can recommend that. But so I guess the

question really Ben um is do we have to enact this or give direction to enact this as a permanent uh two-way model for you guys to at the city to go do those things like you know potentially a little bit more experimentation um or do we leave it as a pilot? How does that work uh from that standpoint? you know what what are we what are we limiting ourselves with by essentially making it permanent versus piloting.

Sure. And the answer is and I'll get more specific but it's sort of semantic. So you can do what you're suggesting and the way to do it if you if the commission wants to would be technically uh it needs to be the traffic control order needs to be adopted and made permanent. Uh and then the commission in that motion could direct that that permanent status of the traffic control order be revisited and the city commission has total authority to resend that traffic control order. So it's basically like a continued pilot. You just can't call it that technically. Does that answer your question? I think so.

I have a quick piggyback on it. if if we do make it permanent and with that those caveats as we're looking at potential funding for fixing some of these things that Lance pointed out that definitely need to be fixed does having it be permanent help us if we are applying for grants or other things as well versus we need money for this pilot program? Uh yes uh it does but we and I know it's not what you're suggesting but we also want to be you know genuine when we're approaching funders and not pretend it's permanent if it might be reverted. Well my thought for Sorry, just to clarify because this is a public meeting. My thought on that was more we would make it per, you know, if we made it permanent, the goal would be to fix these things. If we don't get the funding over a period of years or things continue to not operate smoothly, we might want to revisit it, not being disinjected,

right? Absolutely. Fair point. Thank you, Jackie. Oh, go ahead. You had another followup question. Um, if I could um revolve more around timeline, right? So, from my understanding, what what you're asking us is to give you direction, say make it permanent. Um, but then you're going to then bring us traffic control orders that would actually make it permanent. So, like our vote here doesn't do that. Um, it doesn't actually create permanence in this. It just instructs you to bring us uh those orders. Yes. Um, as well as a a recommendation on making the improvements.

As well as recommendations on making the improvements. Okay. Um, and what does the timeline look like for you presenting those TCOs uh and those recommendations for improvements? Um, I'm saying this because I I'm asking this question in a way that I want also our media to understand that us voting on this today doesn't mean this is permanent and like we made this permanent at the meeting. I think that I'd be prepared to, you know, bring some to bring something back to you by the first meeting in April. In April. Okay. And so by then we will have just so my fellow commissioners are aware we should have the complete streets advisory committee in place by then. Um and this is something they could review as well. Great.

Good point. Thank you for patience Jackie.

And that was going to be one of my comments is that I would very be very supportive of tableabling this or referring it at the earliest opportunity to our complete streets advisory board. I think they are the ones who are empowered and best positioned to examine it from the um perspective of all of the users of of these streets. And uh and I would put forth a request that we seriously reach out and and try to find a way to integrate public transportation into the equation and the considerations because anything that in my mind we can do to reduce vehicle traffic of all kinds is going to improve safety. And um I would I would like to see us um examining opportunities for that to be enhanced.

I have a question for clarification on that, Jackie. Um right now like the bay line, which is probably the most frequent ba ba line is goes down State Street several stops. So when you say that, what are you actually asking about? Sorry. And just to clarify, are you talking about like making sure there's pullouts or what are you looking for? Well, and I don't have all of the all of the uh the potential solutions worked out, but one possibility might be a downtown circulator, a shuttle bus that um you know ran between parking decks and allowed people to park on the fringes of downtown rather than taking vehicles deeper into front and and state. Just one possible.

That's a fair point. And I'm going to use that as a moment to say the Bayine runs through downtown. And this is not at you. This is just to remind people. The bay line runs through downtown. You can park at out side lots at Meyer. You can park over by the hospital. You can park over at Acme and they will take you right into downtown and stop um every block throughout downtown on State and Front. And I'm just giving that as a plug for the old beta line there for because I think people stopped using it a lot during COVID and it's still a really great way to get through downtown without having to park downtown. And so anyways, and I just for the refutation, what's that?

Thank you. Just on Commissioner Anderson's point, if if it is the will of the commission to have the complete streets committee make recommendation, it it's probably going to be more like middle of May or so by the time something came back because that committee uh probably won't be in place until midappril. Yeah.

Well, question on that just to clarify both where Heather and Jackie are coming from. If we did the motion as it was here and Benjamin brought us back something kind of the preliminary early April like he's talking about and then we had we could send that to be vetted as well by complete streets for additional comments and such. Would that work to keep the process going give them something to work on but not um take that out of the hands of the complete streets? Would would that be in line with also what we're thinking? Okay, that sense. Okay,

just doing that. Okay, go ahead Laura. So, it's pretty clear from the the vast number of communications that we've all received that we have a split community on this. Um, and as the consultant highlighted, both ways work.

Um, so really this decision can't be about feelings and vibes. It's got to be based on credible data that we've received from the traffic engineering report, data analysis from the pilot study, making sure that it's consistent with our policies and plans, including our new strategic action plan and the new complete streets policy. I completely agree with that. And with our stated long-term outcomes, we've talked about safety. As Lance said, slower streets make safer safer streets, mobility issues for pedestrians and bikers. And as Jackie alluded to, our need for public transportation and of course the vitality of our downtown. Um, so where am I landing? I'm I'm kind of sitting with extension of the pilot so that we can address some of these issues. Um, I've heard a lot of optimism about the two-way. I've also heard many unresolved concerns. Um, my inclination is to continue to study this with the improvements because we really haven't had we haven't had a controlled variable. Even last summer, we had parkway construction, we've had bridges under construction, we've had the fish pass, and all of those all of those variables have impacted some of the data that we're seeing. So I think um having the complete streets policy involved with this or the complete streets advisory committee involved with this would be important and I think we ultimately have to lean on the data that's been presented.

So we don't go ahead Mitch and then Ken. Yes. Uh for just from the top I want to say that I do not have a grudge against this project because I got hit in an unreported crash uh within the first month of operation. reported it.

Uh but I do have concerns because yes, we tried it. Yes, we can see the data that says that it achieved some of its goals, yet we don't have um a real control case to compare it to. Uh we had both traffic that was uh disrupted by construction and we've had an overall um trend of increased uh use downtown since the pandemic that it's hard to say that just because uh parking revenue or foot traffic increased that it was due to this. And if you had extended back the trend line um from 2020 and then compared it to a trend line from 2014 to 2019, I'm not sure that you'd be able to pick out what actually happened here that was different. Uh but I have seen uh some confusion. Maybe not accidents, maybe not uh people driving in the wrong lane, but in the number of turn operations that are available at Cass and at Union specifically, turning onto and off of State Street results in much farther car stacking at the stop lightss. And it does red because of that car stacking and people trying to get as close to the curb as possible if they are turning right even though there is no right lane and left lane to separate them. It does make it harder if you are a cyclist and are approaching the intersection. Um, I'm sometimes pinned with only a foot between a car's wheels and the curb, and I can squeeze through as best I can, but

it doesn't feel safe to me. It doesn't feel safe for the car either. Uh, does that actually result in accidents and deaths? No, it hasn't. Uh, but it is not an ideal situation. I see a design where we do have one bike lane going eastbound on State Street and one bike lane going westbound on Front Street in line with traffic circulating that way as a way that yes, you might not be able to get your bike uh right in front of where you want to park, but it can more safely navigate the downtown area. Um, and for the overall purpose of traffic calming, I see the midblock crosswalks that we have already approved part of the CIP um, going in on State Street to mirror the mid lot crosswalks on Front Street to actually be a more significant uh, factor in uh, getting cars to have more eyes out for people walking. if they get to the middle of the block and there will be a crosswalk. So during July there will undoubtedly be somebody that wants to cross and they will have to grow go slowly. I am with Commissioner Shaw that I it was nice to test it. it. We got some good data, but I um would be fine going back to the way it had been and uh do not see an overwhelming case that absolves um some of the flaws that have come up.

Ken, did you have comment? Yeah. Are you done?

Yeah. Okay. Um there was this is a this was a lot to unpack. This is a big study and everybody's had their kind of say on what their thoughts were. Um, I'll just read read what I put together. Um, as I began to read this packet on page two, there was a reference to mid midblock crossings, which there are currently not any on State Street. I believe this was referencing the two midblock crossings on East Front. I believe this this was a pretense to what quickly materialized into what was the intended conversation of Front Street being transitioned to two-way traffic and then presented in the documents recommendations for transferring downtown Front Street into two-way. My original understanding of why State Street was converted to two-way traffic was to provide construction traffic relief for the Parkway and East Front Street reconstruction which I believe was an appropriate decision and a usage and usage at the time being. This seemed very reasonable. Then it was desired to be kept in place to examine the economic impacts of two-way traffic on State Street for a period of time. Then it was extended to provide a longer period of time for further data collection which whether that was for data from businesses or as it now appears it was time to collect more collect and analyze more traffic data. I think it's very important to note that on page three, which is up on the PowerPoint right now, 78% of businesses did not notice a change in revenue during this project. The conclusions reached on page four, which I will say that I respectfully disagree with. I give professional recommendations a lot too, and people disagree with them, and that's their right. The evidence that demonstrates positive impacts on traffic operations, safety, and businesses was not an improvement based on what I saw and experienced as a regular daily driver of the downtown area and is consistent with the feedback that I've received from many residents. Reductions in speeds and accidents can most definitely be attributed to gridlock traffic. That is due to

intersections that were not designed to support two-way traffic. Waiting through multiple light cycles of cars turning left presents situations where street crossing pedestrians were put at risk, increased risk, and contributed to frustrated drivers who could not wait to finally go and accelerate aggressively around corners and through intersections. This isn't statistical data and numbers that can be accounted for in any study. Rather, it had to be felt, lived, and experienced on this day by day for residents of our community and members who drive through our downtown on a regular basis, as well as the pedestrians who frequently frequently travel this piloted area. We only have data on crashes and injuries that did occur during this time. What is not referenced to is near miss data and it can't be accounted for, but it shouldn't be ignored. It is not surprising that we're receiving a recommendation for an after study as well as this. um for the full-scale traffic analysis that occurred in 2020. Right in tune with that recommendation is the recommendation to require traffic studies on oncoming developments to examine their impacts and potential mitigation efforts. I guess where I'm going with that is, is anyone surprised that a company that studies and analyzes things would recommend further studying and analysis? If anyone is left with more questions than answers right now, this whole process was successful in creating a situation where we analyze this to death, which historically city commissions have done. On top of what we are presented with, the possible repercussions of not following expert opinions and best practices as mechanisms to force decisions that we feel against our or against our own better judgment. I recommend the return of State Street to its original one-way traffic flow, which is consistent with its original engineered design and what have been 60 years of safe and efficient traffic flow around the downtown area. Now, despite all that, I will say this. There will be a point in a time where we

are faced with the demand and the need to replace downtown underwater, sewer, excuse me, water, sewer, and storm water infrastructure. At that time, it will be apparent the needs to do a curbtocurb re-engineering that incorporates parking, multimotal transportation and vehicle lanes. At that point, I do believe that we will have the time for public engagement and advisory committee input and a reimagining of our down the design of our downtown, but it isn't today. Changing the surface amenities of the roads and traffic flow from its original intended design and engineering is not what I feel is responsible utilization utilization of our city tax dollars at this point in time. Thank you.

I hope some of you will join me in moving this back to one way till the appropriate time.

So, thank you for that, Ken. I'm since everybody else has weighed in, I want to take a moment to because first of all, something that you said, Ken, um the the implication was the intention was to create a study to create studies for some other reason. And having been on this and part of this for year since 2020, which was the first time we went two way on State Street, 2020 is what sparked the thought. Some some of the businesses didn't like it, some of them did, but pe there was a lot of public support for why don't we close down Front Street all summer long. Why don't we do that? Well, to do that, we'd have to have State Street two ways. So, that was part of the impetus for starting the conversation. Part of it was the oncoming uh construction that was coming up. We'd gone through the four bridges already though, so there had already been some major disruption that consistently happens downtown. We have a very vital downtown, so I think that happens a lot. Um, so that was the kind of the need for four-way. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but it wasn't a or the two-way. That wasn't though some thought up high in the sky that we just should, you know, we've got this traffic thing happening because of construction and and let's just make it a two-way. Um, I will say last summer, everybody's referring that we haven't had a summer without construction. We did have construction last summer, but most of it was so far west of town that that really didn't push a lot of traffic onto State Street and Front Street beyond the normal. The summer before was in was out of control. But, but last summer was not, I think, was probably more a line of what we could look at if people want to keep looking at things. But I want to say that these the we were faced with this decision last year. It was well let's have one more year of a pilot because we had the construction last summer and the construction this summer shouldn't be that bad. So let's look at it through that lens. And now that's kind of some of the sentiment up here is well let's look at it for another year. And I this is the will of the body. But I want to point out that this idea that the city commission always looks at studies and doesn't make a decision.

This is kind of part of how that happens.

Um and that's okay. My my thought is too and one thing I've said since 2022 is I wish they had taken data at like eight or nine o'clock at night because traffic at 8:00 at night on State Street when it was one way was not 28 miles an hour. It was 35 or more. And I think people are forgetting how fast traffic moved through downtown. the racing downtown like this is very this is very common and that's anecdotal so it doesn't count towards this but I remember that having worked nights downtown for many many years and watching that happen and watching people I know who did critical mass on their bikes get pegged and and things like that and so I just you know I I feel that to your point though Ken maybe this isn't the time to do it maybe that is a time where we wait until there's more reconstruction being done but I also think that we are charged with making future decisions and slowing traffic down. But potentially what like the motion was asking for and what Benjamin was potentially asking for is let's say that we might be interested in my where I would be is let's say we might be interested in keeping it two-way, but then give staff that opportunity. They're not going to come back with more studies, but they're going to come back with here's if we do do this and you want to make this permanent, here's the money and here's the timeline that it would look like to do it the way we want to do it. So fixing those issues at the turns at the intersections. What are we going to do with parking versus bike lanes? All of that stuff that we would have them presented to us with a timeline. And we might say, "This is going to take five years. We don't want to do that. Put it back to one way and we're not going to vote to make this permanent." But the other option might be, oh, in three years we could not just have this be a safer, slower two-way. We could have this be the two-way that we really want it to be, that the safe streets would want it to be, that they'll have input on it. But I think we're kind of my concern is that we're getting a little into again our own kind of interpretations up here where we could get a little bit more information to have in hand. I won't say data because we're not going to do another study, but some of this data that staff could bring

forward of what's feasible and what's not feasible. And that would be where my interest would be as we're having these conversations. But that's ultimately up to this whole body and that's ultimately up to somebody if they want to make the motion or not. Ken, you raise your hand. I I would say then Heather, sorry. I would say we we could talk about that and have staff look at it, but maybe is this the right time right now and that's fair.

We are talking about doing a three-year budgeting forecast for major infrastructure improvements and looking at some big capital stuff. We're waving the fund balance, but we're also considering spending money to look at some things and consider it and spending staff time. We've talked about the finite amount of staff time that we have. I say we don't kick the can tonight. we move this back to one way. When this is scheduled to happen under a major infrastructure improvement of the downtown area, that's when we talk about it and that's when we we look at it. But I think for right now, it's it's really simple. We don't kick the can. We say one way tonight and then we're done talking about it. Lance, but the first but first Heather.

Yeah, I just want to point out that there are are other ways. I I totally agree that a slower street is a safer street, but there are other ways of slowing street other than making two way and particularly when you have such a narrow street with parking on both sides. We bumpouts and crosswalk walks u highly visible crosswalks work really well. We I think we pride ourselves on being a familyfriendly downtown and myself personally letting loose my grandchildren downtown I would feel much more secure having them crossing streets that are one way rather than two way. It's just it's just dangerous. You've got left-hand turns, right hand turns when you've got that two-way traffic and it's so heavily pedestrian downtown. I would feel much safer having those two streets

one way. Lance, go ahead. Yeah, I absolutely would not support uh moving this back to one way tonight, just so my fellow commissioners are aware. Um Ben, I do have a question though because this we're supposed to be asking questions now. Um, and my question would be, um, if we chase take no action on this, um, which it kind of sounds like that's the route we're moving towards, uh, what are the ramifications? I'm actually going to ask Lauren that if you wouldn't mind, in terms of, uh, uh, if the traffic control order just expires, uh, what does that really mean? Right. So, if the traffic it is expired already, it continues to stay expired,

right? So, I mean, I think it really comes down to um there's a cost to I'm assuming we haven't talked about it, but there's a cost to taking it back to one way um and there's a cost to keeping it the way it is and improving it and making it be work better that way. So, either way, the commission really needs to decide how they're going to authorize money to make either uh option happen. Um, and if that's not done, that really leaves staff at sort of a loss of what to do. Um, and it it leaves the city kind of hanging out there with a an expired traffic control order. So, it it's really it would be uh the best if the commission can come to some con consensus about how you're going to move forward and and make those um adjustments that need to be made either to move it back to to one way or to move it forward to two-way.

And Lauren, one thing that's kind of gotten lost as we've had everybody, we've all shared kind of where we're at because though there is a motion in here, we kind of were left with the three options at the end of the presentation. Um, we do have recommendations though that this is ultimately a safety issue too. What's your thoughts legal? Is there any legal thoughts on that though too that we could be that we should be thinking about as we're making our decisions?

Uh, you know, ultimately um there is uh governmental immunity for the commission for decisions that you make. Um, but like I think I've said before, when the traffic engineer gives you a recommendation, um, as an expert, uh, and if you act against that recommendation, then, you know, that can be that's out there in the public. So, it's something to consider, um, moving forward if something uh, were to happen in that instance. So, Heather, did you have your hand up? Yeah. So we you can go.

I was just going to say really quickly. So we have this kind of idea that it's hanging out there right now. We have a motion that would instruct staff to bring it back to us for possible adoption but with information on what it would cost though to make keep it two-way Benjamin. And I know time is finite for staff so I asked this very honestly and I wanted an earnest answer. Would it be possible if we did that to also bring back at the same time the cost to put it back to one way? Yes. Okay. So, we could do that as the motion and amend it to say uh all the things that it says there and then at the end say and or and information on the cost to turn it back to a oneway and the timing, right?

And the timing for doing so. Yes, there was some information in this report that kind of alluded to costs for turning it into tempor the modifications for two-way traffic. And one of the things that was recommended is the turn lanes at Cass and State and Union and State in regard to the left-hand turn situations because we have one lane going left, straight, and right.

To do that, we are going to have to remove bumpouts. And one of the things that we know is we talked about bumpouts a lot in this community in regard to why we do that. It decreases the amount of time that somebody's actually crossing the road. It brings the pedestrians out closer to the road so that they are more visible. And it was ultimately for a safety reason as well. So we're going to be reducing the size of our bumpouts in order to accommodate this two-way traffic this. And that's why I get back to my original comment was when we can re-engineer this road from curb to curb. I am supportive of it going to two-way at that time, but right now because of the amount of money it's going to cost, it will cost more to take this to two-way than it will be back to one way. I think that's a pretty pretty easy thing to look at and recommend and say, "Yeah,

I mean, we haven't seen that. We I was going to say fair enough. Fair enough." Yeah. You know, if we don't direct staff to do anything or both of them, we won't we won't see that. Fair Um, so and and I I don't think I think our staff is pretty creative in a sense that maybe they don't have to add turn lanes, but we can actually make the turning better. Um, because I know that there's other possibilities out there that might not not be in this presentation. Our staff didn't put this presentation uh together. They weren't that study. So, I think we kind of owe it to them to, you know, at least

I would be okay with uh adopting something that has both and you bring both to us. um because I do think that that can then go to the complete streets advisory committee. Uh both of them can and they can evaluate that against a rubric um and then bring that to the commission and say, "Hey, here's a recommendation whether it's my opinion or not." Like I don't want it to be my opinion. I want it all rooted in data. Yeah, I I would agree with that. It's got to be rooted in data. And I guess my question is would be would we be looking for the complete streets advisory committee to make a recommendation or is this just involving them?

So what we're asking what I think I'm going to before we get too far field what staff is asking us for and what the motion is asking us for that we can amend to add also the cost and information on doing a oneway is directing staff to spend the time to get that information together. We're putting the cart way ahead of the horse by trying to figure out where complete streets comes in and everything else. We need to give them the instruction to spend their finite time finding this information for us so they know that's worth their finite time. Go ahead, Heather.

I just want to remind everybody um on page 237 of our packet and 236 of those issues that were brought up by staff including maintenance, emergency vehicle issues, delivery issues, and they do talk about the cost between a half a million and a million dollars to implement the two-way. So it's this is our staff talking and this there are what one, two, three, four, five, six. I mean there are just a few handful of of pros and a whole column of cons. But I think we also have to weigh that against the traffic engineers report.

But right but the traffic engineers report is about traffic and flow and safety through the city. It's about getting cars through the city. That's what it's about. So, real quick, if one of the things in this study referenced one-way traffic and how it reduces crime and it's safer and it's less safe, are we prepared to do something about Seventh and Eighth Street because they're also one way. That was my thought is if we're just going to get rid of one-way streets because they're less safe, what's our plan for Seventh and Eighth Street because they are also one way. seventh and seventh has been brought up many times and been kaibashed but it'll it's on the list too to be discussed. Correct. Yeah. So that is on the list to be discussed.

So back to my point is that even though it's more safe as a two-way and it's being maintained as a oneway, it's the same thing with state right now. It doesn't it doesn't make a difference one way or another. I I I don't mean to say it like that. If state if seventh and eighth can stay at one way and we're not worried about the safety conditions there, why is it such a a focus of our fear and concern for state?

I'm not going to um argue that the two-way the one way isn't is not safe as as safe as a two-way. I think for us to say I think we always have to be very careful of saying hey we've got this thing in front of us that we've made two-way to make it safer and we're deciding right now are we gonna keep it that way or not to saying why should we do this because we're not doing it two other streets at the same time because we are again like there's finite time for staff we have finite money and focus both of those streets in various points have are on plans to be looked at in the next couple of years so we're not just saying state street only and to hell with everybody else. We're saying here's what we're looking at right now and here's because of this pilot what we're working on. We aren't saying that we don't care about Seventh Street and we're not saying that we think that Seventh Street inherently should stay. We're not saying we're going to change it either. I don't want people in in the neighborhood to think that we're going to come after the one way because some people really love the one way and so but that's we're not by not doing Seventh Street at the same time we're looking at State Street. We're not ignoring the questions and the concerns there either.

Yes. Yeah. Would would anybody be interested in a motion that says uh that the city manager be directed to present traffic control orders to the city commission and present a recommendation to the commission on improvements to make permanent a two-way state street or a one-way street? I think that's a great motion. I think that's the motion. Are you a motion? Are you seconding that, Lance? Did you make that motion? I could make that motion. You just did. I can mark it down. It's just Can we repeat that motion? Do you want to make it? Well, but you you either make a motion for people to vote for or not or you don't. You don't. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. So, this will bring back from staff recommendations about how do we perceive basically about cost. This is really about cost and and a timeline. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. one way returning it to one way or going forward with the big two-way project. When are we going to see this again? Um early and then complete streets will see it. Well, that's a good quest clarification, I suppose, because um my thought would be that the staff would put the we would put that information together and then complete streets would look at it and then we bring it to the city commission. I don't see a need to come back to you an extra time unless you feel differently.

Does that work for everybody? Is that Does that need to be with the motion? Does that need to be included in the motion? Make a motion first and then So So Sarah here is where my brain is. Sarah. Well, yeah, we just were trying to clarify too. Do we need to put in with complete to send it to complete streets first or is that implied as part of the process? I think it's implied as part of the process. So I think yeah because the complete streets policy says everything has to go. Okay. So,

um, a potential friendly amen amendment, tell me if this works or not, but that would be to, um, for this, uh, summer season to return it to one way, uh, and at the same time turn it over to complete streets for a longer longer term assessment of the oneway versus two-way while getting the information regarding costs and timing. I I think that that would probably negate the process of them getting us the finances first. Um, you know, and so I would want to understand what those are to to Commissioner Shaw who made the original.

Yeah. I I don't want to confuse everyone. I think that if we make a a change, it should be we should make a change. So, it's either we're putting it back to one way or we're leaving it at two-way, but we don't go back to one way and then decide we're going to go two-way. I think that would be more confusing. Okay. My I mean I would have to return to the city commission to return it to one way because it would exceed my spending authority just to be clear. I I don't have the spending control order that has to be approved by

right. So the just to clarify again for what commissioner Shaw what was said was we're going to direct staff and including part of this process in par it's not in the motion but would be part of the process also send to complete streets to get information on what it would take take to make two state street two-way permanent including cost and the cost and what it would take to convert it back to being a oneway. Correct. Okay. And is there an implication then that it stays at its current two-way configuration until that process is complete? Yes. Yes. Can I get a Okay. So that's the motion. Go ahead. We're open on We're on open discussion.

I can repeat what I said. Would you like me to say that the city manager be directed to present traffic control orders to the city commission and to present a recommendation to the commission on improvements to either make State Street uh to either make the State Street conversion permanent or to return to one way. That's pretty awkward, too, but that Sarah. So working on it. I'm curious when is the complete streets committee ad hoc so that we are going to appoint these people to this committee? The first week of March.

First week of March. When is their organizational meeting? Because they don't even have bylaws yet. They don't have a chair. They don't have any officer positions. The first week of March is the interviews. Interviews. It's not. Yeah. So then you guys will approve the appointments and then they will meet. Committees have bylaws. It's an advisory committee. The advisory committee. They just get to tell us what they think. Kind of. Well, they're they're guided by the policy, right? Yes. Exactly.

When So when we designed that policy, there was all the scheduled work that was going to be done on city streets through the year. It was going to go through engineering and all the different master plan reviews and all the staff time and then they were going to have the complete streets committee look at it through their lens because we talked about that flowchart and where they fit into this. Is it assumed that any any they're going to give us an opinion on any kind of road construction process that's going to go happen in the city going forward? Mhm. Everything as specified of not not just the annual projects that we're looking at. If it's a street reconstruction, yes. Okay.

If it's something like a mill and fill extending the life of a street, it's their involvement is not automatically triggered. It is not if it's a mill and fill, right? But if it's a reconfigure, which should definitely be the case with this. Yes, I can support that for now. Okay. Okay. So, further discussion on this. Go ahead, Mitch.

I'm a little concerned uh with timeline. Uh right now we are despite the melting snow in a period uh when you can't really change anything. But uh whether we are going back to one way or continuing as two-way, I want that to be firmly established before May when traffic really starts picking up and people start uh falling into their summer driving habits. And uh we do have a couple months, but is that enough time for um committees and everything else to meet and to weigh in? I I think they've been thinking about it already. The potential um members of this advisory board, of which there are quite a few, have been thinking about this. So,

yeah, I hope they can get it together and that we can have something done by June. Go ahead, Ken.

Um I I want to bring back up the seventh and eighth street. I use that to emphasize my point. We use this risk to the public. I mean, yes. Is it very serious to take that into consideration? Absolutely. But I don't think we should use it as a tool to bend opinion every time that we want to make a controversial decision because there are dangerous things that happen against best practices and professional recommendations on a regular basis around the city. We don't have to talk about what they are, but just trust me, they happen. And I don't think that it's fair to us to get that tool used against us as leverage to make a decision.

So, just saying that going forward. just just and I'm not being defensive. I just want to uh um just have the understanding that in this case you do have a recommendation from traffic engineers. In the case of seventh street you don't uh and the reason you have it for State Street is there was this pilot project that was implemented and we haven't done that with seventh street. So when you have information uh it it it is different than not having it. Right.

Correct. And I and I guess I would say to that end when we're looking at stuff that has legal implications that is part of our due diligence and duty to the city as the corporation of the city and the citizens and so um there are probably things out there and when they if they get brought before us we would be forced to look at them and make those changes too. So I think I would say the opposite of instead of us saying well it's already like that let's not worry about it let us know and let's make it better. Fair. So other comments? Go ahead, Jackie.

Just just to say that this feels a lot circular that um staff has gathered outside information has come to us for direction on whether to let one way let the traffic control for two-way laps or let it continue. And I think we're turning that around and saying, well, we want we want staff to come back to us with a recommendation. Um, I I feel that we have enough feedback, not only from staff, but also from the community at this point to allow the two-way state traffic control order to lapse, to turn it over to the um newly formed um complete streets uh advisory board for a fuller and and broader treatment. And um so I I I am supportive of Commissioner Funk's original original idea to um let it lapse. I can I can in the interest interest of consensus I can support Commissioner Shaw's proposal, but it I I just it feels as though we are in going in circles here a bit. Any other comments at this time? Any public comment at this time, please?

Harry Rholder, executive director of the DDA. I just want to clarify that certainly we did look at vehicle circulation as part of this effort, but also pedestrian safety and reducing speed. So, I want to make sure that that is on equal par with vehicle movement throughout the downtown. I would note also that we do have several two-way streets within downtown, Park, Cass, and Union that function just fine. So, we are used to dealing with maintenance issues and plowing issues on two-way traffic throughout the downtown. So, this isn't new or challenging. It's actually been something that we've worked with the city to address over the last couple years. And I would just um like some clarification if it goes to the complete streets committee. I think Commissioner Anderson is correct. Are they deciding on the pilot or are they deciding on taking State Street down a different direction with a hole in the design? because that's my impression of that committee. To me, the the decision on two-way traffic versus a decision on recon redoing the street are two different things. So, I'm just I'm looking for some clarity because I'm going to have to report this back to our DDA board for kind of next steps and those funding implications.

I think the complete streets ad hoc committee would be advising the city manager and the city commission uh and and looking at whether or not it should stay two-way or go back to one way. uh but that is advice and ultimately uh the decision and I know you know this but decision of the city commission but I think what I'm hearing is both options are on the table. Do we have any other public comment at this time? Please feel free and you can line up it. We ask that you state your name and address. Indicate if you're a city resident, non-city resident, and or city business owner. We have a three-minute time aotment per speaker. When your time is elapsed, the timer will beep. And finally, we request that all language be respectful.

Um Justin, 63 Kais Drive, permit 1B, um TU, Michigan. I'm resident. Um either way, one way or two way, um the traffic signals downtown are going to have to be upgraded. Um they're pretty much I don't know um old and um any kind of configuration um would have to be would have to um cost. Um there was I saw the diagram for the um for the recommendations um being the bumpouts um downtown and also with um some parking spaces actually going away um with um the turning configurations off from Cass and State. So instead of if you're going um if you're going towards if you're going towards Union on state um coming off from park there is a um there's no left or right turn lane. Um there would have to be um a bump out to be gone and also um there'd be some parking spaces that would have to go away. Um so with any kind of new configurations um there would have to be major considerations of parking being lost. And I'm also redoing some of the um bus stops that are along um State Street with

the example on um park and state where there's a bump out and um that diagram shows that bumpout being removed and um or the other alternative is to go ahead and leave the bump out but um take away um couple parking spaces on State Street. Um thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment? Please feel free to approach the podium and line up if you have comments.

Frank Dur, director of public services. There was a mention earlier about maintenance downtown. I just want to let you know that this winter has been a real winter in Traverse City and have really had no maintenance concerns with operations with our contractor and with our uh maintenance operations with the uh two-way streets as they are.

Thank you. Hi, Noah Roth. Uh 309 West Front Street. I am a resident and I use State Street every single day and I definitely support keeping it 2-way uh just for convenience sake, but also just because I think it provides us with a much better baseline for wanting to do a lot of these improvements because I do see like many of the issues that you pointed out, I don't think that it's perfect in its current configuration at all. But I don't see why we would go back to something that we've now seen improvements on. They might not be every single improvement we wanted to see. But I think it's going to be a much more logical step to go from uh you know a better baseline than trying to revert uh back and forth, which I also do not support uh trying to go back and forth, especially if this is something that's going to be decided on, you know, with a full reconstruction at some point to go back to a two-way. I don't see why we would go back, you know, from what was a one-way to now a two-way, back to a one-way into a final re uh reconstruction of 2-way. So,

thank you.

My name is Miriam Thompson and I live on Sixth Street and uh so I am a city resident and um I just recently heard that this meeting was happening today. So, I'm trying to get my thoughts together, looking things up online, etc. Um, and looking at um something that was posted by 9 and 10 News on 213 of 26. And so I did not have a chance to read the complete study that was um in in online but um you know I just wonder with the study you know is this um involving like other small towns we're talking about basically four blocks for front street and um when they talk about you know changing state street I think eventually then we're going try to change front street, you know, it's the followup that will happen. And I have to agree with um Miss Shaw that uh definitely, you know, it's to me it seems safer to cross Front Street with it all traffic coming one way. And I think that being a tourist town, you know, this must be really confusing for people that come up once in a while or maybe even every year and this all this back and forth. So, um, you know, I I think because I go to get my mail at the post office, I think that it's a real hassle when I get on to is that do they call that pine? At that point, I can be backed up in the summer to Front Street to wait to get around because somebody wants to make a left-hand turn on to Union. It's I don't think it's convenient. I

don't think it's smart. And um you know, uh the gentleman that was speaking about riding his bike, Mr. Treadwell. Yeah, it it's dangerous when you're trying to navigate those intersections and people are waiting to get going because they've been waiting so long. So, um you know, and the study is also right after CO. So yeah, you know, it's everything is is what we're looking at is after COVID and you know, I just I just know that if we if we keep State Street two-way, you're the next step is to change Front Street. And I think also, not that it's important to most people, but I think that's what makes our city really special. And we're only talking about four blocks,

you know, people might have to go around. I I don't know how many other cities they were evaluating and and how long the streets were. So that's my point. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. Any final comments from commissioners? Go ahead. I do I I want to address Jackie's point about this the circular, you know, here we go back to staff, back to the commission, back to The only thing is is that we've added complete streets and that's a big deal and uh I know that it's a lot of pressure on complete streets, but I think they can take it.

I I agree. Complete streets and I think it'll be good for us to have numbers. That's a big We can guess how much things would be, but we're going to see some more pencled out and what's worth it and what's not. Do you want to go? I just have a quick question. Who seconded the motion? Uh it was Thanks, Lance. We we have talked about unelected bodies making decisions for the community before. We've talked about that. People being left with largecale decisions that have longlasting implications. We've talked about those unelected people making those decisions in their first meeting in existence. That's comp completely unfair to do that to the complete streets committee.

They're not going to be the final say though. It still comes back to us. It's just their recommendation. We just said that their recommendation is going to hold a lot of weight. So, I mean, it obviously put a lot of pressure on them. So, a recommendation is fair, but I let the public know that we'll make this decision. Yes. And that they're that the complete streets is a recommendation. Yes. That is which we may or may not follow. And that's that's how the policy is written. They're not they're not even recommending anything to us. It doesn't even exist yet. Right. No, the policy does. The the policy exists, right? Um they're recommending things to the city manager um who recommends things to us. they don't even communicate to the board. Um and and they have to do it based on how the policy is written. So it is it's in step,

right? But I agree there's a lot of pressure.

But on on top of that, I think in in addition to involving the complete streets advisory committee, as Amy said, we will we've requested additional information. And I think knowing those specifics in terms of costs and the difference between restoring it to a one-way, how much will that cost and or keeping it as a two-way, how much will that cost? That's just a responsible use of taxpayer dollars. I mean, I think we don't have that information in front of us. And they we can all acknowledge that one, the community is split. There's no consensus among staff. There's no consensus within the community. The consultant said both ways work. And so here we are. We have to make a decision. And in order to do that, we need some additional information. Both advisory from complete streets because that's new since this process unfolded and two is an understanding of the cost.

So again, just to remind everybody that we are voting for staff to continue and gather this information. This is not a final vote. So I mean it's a final vote on that, but not going to make the decision. Can we establish when the final decision will be? Uh we it's not in the motion, but rough ballpark. When do you think that'll be brought to us? I think that uh it it seems to me that the complete streets committee will first be convening in April most likely. Uh and they may need a couple of meetings and I I think that it'll probably be sometime in early June would be my guess. We can't mandate when we make that decision, right?

Could be brought to us in May and we could have two more meetings where we ask for more information. There's no guarantee. So, unless we are putting it on a specific agenda, but but then even then the decision isn't guaranteed. I've seen that happen many times. So, all right, I'm going to call the question. I just want to mention just, you know, the the recommendations will ultimately come to you and I'm I'm estimating that would be sometime around June, but if uh depending on what you decide, that all has to be engineered. So there might not be any real changes on the ground until next year. And I just want to be clear on that just so everyone's expectations are um respectfully realistic. Yeah. Heather

and that would be true even if we were to vote and say let's go forward with the two-way right now because you're not going to get anything done. Right. Right. So good point. All right. I'll call the question. All in favor? Opposed? No. Roll call, please. Anderson, yes. Shaw, yes. Treadwell, no. Funk, yes. Bulmer, yes. Ness, yes. Mayor, yes. Motion passes. Thank you all for your input tonight and the very good discussion that we'll continue with the complete streets, which is great to hear from. Okay, so now we'll move up to the move on to the west end parking RFP. Go ahead, Benjamin. You can kick that off.

Yes. Uh, as indicated in your packet, I engage the services of Mission North owned by Rob Bachalupi to assist the city in developing a request for proposals or a request for qualifications and ultimately to assist us in the evaluation of the proposals that are received. Uh, and so, uh, Mr. Bachalupi convened discussions with our design team uh particularly uh on February 3rd where there were different uh options and items to consider that will require direction from the commission. Uh Mr. Bachalupi is here to walk you through a fairly brief uh presentation that was included in your packet and he has I believe three questions that he needs feedback from the commission on to develop the RFP or RFQ and I anticipate that that could come back to the city commission for approval to be issued at your March 16th meeting. Uh so with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Bachup. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. And uh thank you commission for the opportunity to help with this um project. As uh the city manager indicated, um we talked with design team about this. We've got um a lot of good details and um had some questions come up. Some of those questions we're going to continue to work on kind of internally. Um, but we did feel that it was important to check in with the city commission first before we came back to you with an actual draft um, so that we could assure that your goals are reflected in a draft RFP. Um, so with that, uh, just a reminder, um, hopefully folks at home can see a little bit of that, but this this is a map of the six parcels. You can see that four of them front on state uh 130 um going backwards

down to 120 and then there are two that are off pine. So um those are the six parcels that are in question and um I hit all the points here. Okay. So little kind of background in terms of the history of this whole process. They were per these properties were uh purchased over time using parking funds. They were they were purchased for public parking. That was the intention. um the DDA who at that time was in control or uh managed the parking system, they had engaged Fishbach, a team led by Fishbach to design a mixeduse building that would that contained 534 parking spaces and um I believe 30 uh 30 some odd residential units. Um they the DDA then decided to shove that plan and then after that point uh parking management was transferred over to the city. So just a little kind of overview of the history of what's been going on with those properties. Um, in thinking about this discussion tonight, I think before we talk about goals, I I think I probably should just go to these two processes first and just talk a little bit about them and then maybe we can go back and talk about goals. Um, they're very they're obviously very similar um in terms of the timing. um they are designed to be relatively quick because there are opportunities that are kind of at play right now. One of which is a DDA um is

actually a state grant the DDA holds for site assessment and John Jackson from out lobby is here um he can answer any specific questions that they come up regarding that grant. So that's at play. Uh there's a there's a there's a ticking time clock on that grant. Um the grant's been used partially so far kind of with the in originally with the intention of this mixeduse building that I mentioned earlier. Um there certainly are options to potentially um amend that grant or transfer it to another property. So there are options that John could go into if you have questions about that. Um so that's one kind of opportunity. The other one is the fact that there are a number of projects on the west side of downtown Traverse City that are kind of looking for parking or they need parking. And so there is this opportunity right now to kind of lead that process um and provide some answers to where the parking is as opposed to kind of leaving it up to individual developments where they might end up kind of peacemealing um parking together, which may be fine, but it could end up with um you know more parking decks uh than than we had originally kind of envisioned on the west side of town. So, in terms of these two proposals, there's one one is a request for qualifications um and the other one is a request for proposal. And like I said, they're very similar. And there certainly are other options um that are available to the city. But these are kind of the two that that kind of came to the top in my mind. Uh one is where you have a clearly defined project. You might say that um we would we simply want a develop a developer to come in and build what the

DDA had designed, which was a mixeduse building with public parking um and some amount of housing, potentially workforce housing to serve folks who uh work downtown. Um, and I believe uh, you know, I haven't talked to to John Sox, but that I that's kind of feels like what he did is he sort of uh put a development together that looks a lot like the fishback design. But if you go the request for qualifications route, um, you're you're going to dictate most of the details and you're really looking for a develop a developer team that is most qualified to build what you want them to build. Um, so that's one option. And the other option, which again is very similar, is to be a little more open, leave leave possibilities more open and instead just do a qualificationsbased. So you're still looking at qualifications um based request for proposals where you're asking folks to propose something on those properties and um there might be some variation and um you know, you might end up potentially with um maybe high-end housing instead. um maybe less parking, you know, that sort of thing. Um so those are those are kind of the two sort of directions I thought um you know you might go into and again there are others but uh those are the two that came to the top in my mind. So with that in mind um you know there really are just some fundamental questions um that we'd like a little guidance on. is does, you know, is is the goal to provide public parking. Do we want to um say yes, we definitely want whatever happens on this property to be to include public parking um we we could

even go so far as to say, you know, close to what was designed by the DDA. So, that's one question. The second question is um do we want to insist that there be housing and do we want to put some parameters around what that housing is? Um and again the details you know we can we can kind of work out at the design team design team level and come back to you to uh flesh those out at at a future meeting but um we're really looking for just kind of some over uh some guidance on on those two issues. And then of course the third question is are there any other goals that we're hoping to um tackle with this project. So with that

I have a quick question for staff and it might be in the back. I apologize. I've got a splitting headache and I can't keep that. Um that um did we do we need to make anything whole from these properties or are we essentially net neutral right now to give us this open field before we start having this general conversation or in theory are is there like a million dollars out there that we need to really get our hands on or is there some other amount that we legally have to get our hands on or will be obliged to?

That was not in the packet but I'll ask the city attorney to to respond to that. So that is something I talked to the city treasurer about and she isn't here. But um we talked about whether these were all purchased with parking funds and this property was assembled out of the parking fund which is an enterprise fund. And so she indicated that um there's strictly under Gazby under the um accounting standards that we have to follow for um governmental accounting it's not strictly required that those funds would be uh returned to the parking fund. that that would be her strong recommendation to make the parking fund whole. Okay. Um and not take a loss in that fund um for purposes of doing a project like this.

So that what's that dollar amount approximately then if we're supposed to keep that in mind? I'm reaching in the cobwebs, but I think it's somewhere around $7 million. Yes. Okay. So, but we don't have to.

It's not legally required, but that is what uh Miss Shepy would strongly recommend that. So I I put that out there to everyone of we don't legally have to, but it's there's a certain obligation out there that's hanging that we would have want to consider as we do this. So I I say that as we talk about things like workforce and attainable housing and bids that we might want to see. So with that, open up the discussion though and ask whatever questions or let Rob know whatever you're thinking. Go ahead, Heather, and then Mitch. Um I I I like the city design better. No, wait. the city goals better. I I think that looks like governance uh to me and it's not picking a developer, it's picking a a kind of public outcome. I think that the uh city design one is too narrow and it's really just built around one uh proposer. Um

for the goals here, um number one, yes. Number two, yes. And the third one is um integrating the downtown into the fabric of the rest of our neighborhoods. Uh adding that workforce housing I feel will will integrate the downtown into the fabric of our neighborhoods. There are only 100 people that live downtown and they're probably not there right now. They are in Florida. So having that allseason full-time workforce housing will make a big difference on how the rest of the neighborhood neighborhoods uh in uh interact with the downtown, I feel. Okay, Mitch, you're next.

Yes. Uh well, first off, uh I'm curious where Commissioner Shaw gets the number of hundred because according to US Census data, I can count 260 in the downtown. Amy Shamro has said it many many times that it was the tiff 90 sorry the tiff 97 yes there's 100 people but the overall downtown if you're going beyond the tiff borders no this is within the tiff borders I go census block by census block by census block add them all up and I get 260 oh are they I'm not saying it's a huge difference are they homesteaded

I don't know and that's for census versus tax purposes and does make a difference and for voting uh But I see for the goals um the inclusion of public parking as a critical aspect of this since that was the original vision here and uh if we are getting something here uh there is an undeniable need for parking to be in the west end of downtown and if we have the land that was specifically acquired to provide parking then that needs to be part of it. Uh, I do see housing, especially workforce housing, as part of our vision for downtown and a need for our community. Um, is there a way for us to um allow for that that isn't part of uh these six properties? Say if a developer has an idea that would allow other vacant, underutilized um or surface parking properties in the downtown, particularly the west end of the downtown to then be redeveloped in a way that does uh provide housing. That's can be just to clarify, are you kind of saying like let's say because this was a big piece of property that just went became available the somebody bought like the record eagle building and wanted to use their parking and create parking there but as part of a bigger development that in might include these parcels you would want that to be noted and considered as part of the bid.

Yes. Okay. Thank you. I was just clarifying that that's and I'm just wondering if we can uh have a scope in achieving these goals that is broader than just these six parcels that are um part of the city parking fund. Go ahead. I I believe that Mr. Socks is including like the that new hotel that's going in on the other side of uh Front Street as part of his parking plan. And then there's the a bank or whatever that thing is on the corner they're part of the so it is pretty I mean the plan that was originally proposed by Mr. those take in a lot more.

That's what you're saying though. Is there a trade-off though? Yes. Yeah. So that we'd want to include or consider that as part of the RFP process incentive.

Yes. Um Jackie and then Laura. Um I I am likewise supportive of the RFP versus the RFQ. um in terms of defining the city goals, uh I think that we need to hue to our strategic plan and that um that incorporates things like mainstreaming downtown as another neighborhood of the city. I think it includes workforce housing. I think it includes parking. I also think we need to be sensitive to the issue of yearround u housing that um we we uh look to create a neighborhood of downtown that thrives yearround not just seasonally and that we reexamine our policies downtown for short-term rentals in connection with that.

Laura,

yeah, likewise, I I lean more towards the RFP. I think it gives us more flexibility. Um, in terms of the goals, do the goals include public parking? I mean, I think absolutely they need to include public parking. And what I like about this approach, the RFP approach, and looking at those properties is that it's much more proactive and intentional. And so we're not really looking at this kind of peacemeal approach of individual developers just picking a spot and doing a small parking lot or a parking ramp and then we have a whole bunch of them. So I I really like that. Um in terms of workforce and attainable housing, I mean that fits right in with our strategic action plan, the refocusing of downtown as a key neighborhood within the local community fabric. I think that's essential and that OKR includes working with the DDA to reframe the approach for supporting businesses and infrastructure and helping encourage a live and work environment. So agree with what's been said in terms of that yearround focus. I don't know if there's a way um within this to just outright restrict short-term rentals um within this development of this property because I I view that as counter to what those goals are. So, that would be a question. Um

that is an option. Okay. And I would like to discuss that option. I think that makes a lot of sense for where we're at in terms of the OKRs and and what we're trying to accomplish. Um, are there other city goals? I should we discuss public bathrooms? I mean, that's been something that has been discussed um and was included in in Mr. Sock's proposal and that's something I think is is needed downtown public bathrooms.

So, the question I think I would put and this is just for clarification for the RFP if we were to do one is right now the DDA has a twofold, right? We have some that the city manages and then we have some that a p the business themselves that's one of the businesses in there offer up their bathroom to the public and then they get compensated with toilet paper and other you can't necessities. So I think that would be either we'd say public restrooms and to be negotiated or that would just be something that we'd say one of the tenants has to include a public rest accessible restroom as part of it.

However it happens. I mean, I think that would all be negotiable based on, you know, what we get in terms of responses, but if we're outlining in the goals that access to restrooms on that west end of downtown would would be desirable. That's that's good. I just want to make sure we weren't totally just for like radio. I don't know where it'll land in the end, but I'd like to see that. Yep. Great. And then I saw a lot of head nodding really quick because it's come up and I'm kind of just tallying as we talk. Was there a lot of consensus that we would want to ban short-term rentals and whatever happens with this? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Completely. So, no no short-term rental would be allowed on the property. Yep. Okay.

And and this is in reference to the housing element that would be built with this. So, this housing element is this is facing straight state street. We're not talking about the north the north side of the alley development whatsoever at all. No, that's private property. Yeah. Right. Right. Other thoughts? Go ahead, Heather.

Yeah, I I I also think we need to be thinking about um well, okay, I think that we need a ground lease structure so the city remains retains ownership of this property um while leveraging the the capital wherever it comes in. Um I think that that preserves a certain flexibility for future generations because I think this is all about future generations. This is a generational decision and those properties are worth about $7.6 million I think and this is a long-term strategic asset. You know this is a big chunk like um prom ness is talking about this is really a huge opportunity to make something coherent down there. Um but I think we need to you know proceed very deliberately and

very transparently with a clear um criteria of how we're going forward and the the problem with the parking uh deck uh fund reimbursement is a big red big red problem and we need to figure out how to how we're going to handle that too. I you know I I would like the RFP to go out and live in the wild while we're figuring all this stuff out because we don't have that much time. But those are the things that I want. Retaining ownership and parking fund and um those two things.

Um really quick, I saw I think Ken and Lance, so just one second. Um, is like that something that I'm just looking at our attorney that you'd be able to work out with Rob before we put the RFP of what kind of language that would be if we did want to return?

Well, I I think that there's it's two separate things. So, um, if the consensus is to retain ownership, then there's no need to recoup the $7 million because the city retains ownership, right? If if the request is to basically uh you know give the property to a developer for a dollar which is something that comes up not just with this property but with others sometimes then that is the that's the issue of you know of the $7 million or if if the property is outright sold

um for a development then that money would be ideally according to the treasurer returned to the parking fund and not like the general fund or somewhere Um, really quick. Yes. But really quick, but then a follow like follow up or clarification on that then if we retain the land, what does that do for the taxable value? Well, it we're going to have to look closely at how that would be structured to understand that because that's what I'd be curious about. Go ahead.

Yeah. And and the original proposal that u Mr. Sox made to me like over a year ago, it was a lease. It was like a long-term lease. And so that still we still maintain ownership and we would not be required to pay back. Right. So, so the question I think is for purposes of the RFP is whether the city commission wants to specify that in the RFP or leave it open and let people propose different structures themselves. I'd love to leave it open. Yeah.

Um because I think it it gives us more flexibility and we can really look at the possibilities of what's out there. I I think the leaving open makes some sense because everybody's got different ideas, but keeping in mind that we have that $7 million. So, Ken and then Lance,

um I I support the RFP and I just kind of want to because I think it leaves it open for, you know, more opportunities for people to look at it, but I wrote down a bunch just a list of things of my thoughts on this um and things that I wanted to see. um as many income based housing units on the residential portion of the parking garage structure development. The longer the length of time for the uh income basis, the better because there there was discussion of the pilot on those. I think with Northshore's initial uh presentation, they offered a AMI pilot um period of time. They they said we'll make these income based for a period of time as part of their pre initial proposal. So I think the longer that length of time is on those 80 to 120 AMI the better for me anyway.

Don't we want to go 80 and well let's hold on let's

I I I I agree that but I'm just see consistent with what that was original presentation because I do obviously this is going out into we talked about to everybody but this was initially presented with by Northshore. I mean we wouldn't even be talking about doing something there right now if it wasn't for them. So, it just in respect to that, I will say that the 80 to 120 is better than nothing. I'll take it. Um, if we're cutting a deal, let's talk about the units. And this this could be a nugget. I just we have to talk I want to I think it's an opportunity. If we're going to cut a deal, let's talk about the units on the front street side of this development on the north side of the alley. If we need $7 million for the property on State Street, Northshore wants to pay a dollar. the closer we could get to having those units on the corner of Front and Pine as not available for short-term rentals or deed restricted against short-term rentals, the less important it is for me to get that all that $7 million back. So, what I'm saying is

those I forget how many units are in the five building development site there on Front and Pine, but with four new incoming hotels within 300 yards of that site, do we need more short-term rentals downtown? and are they going to be as valuable as they could have been? Short-term rental hotels are a concern of mine. Um, just because undesirable things are going to go on there. They're unmanaged. So, the profits from the front street development increase with parking whether they are long-term or short-term. So, that's the thing. If those units on front and park right there, if they have parking, they're worth more whether they're short-term rental or long-term rental. Is there a break even point on where the value of those with parking as long-term rentals meets short-term rental without parking? So, I guess that's kind of what I'm saying is is that something that we can look at making those deed restricted, not available for short-term rental. Yes. And I just I know that that is a private development though,

but we own the land. But when that RFP comes in, if they say we'll take all these five buildings right here and we'll deed restrict them for long-term against short-term the ability to short-term rent them, the amount of money we need on that $7 million property is considerably less. It's not private property right now. It's ours. So, we can say no short-term rentals, period. No, I'm not I'm not talking about the state street side. I'm talking about the the front and pine development that's going on. We can't do that. That's private. Yeah. Okay. Um, I understand that, but I just there's I thought that there might be an opportunity there for that. We'll do this. If you do this, if there was a pilot associated with that project, that private project, then you could. Okay. Yeah.

Um, I would hope to see public restrooms on the ground level. I would hope to see public parking uh with a revenue sharing agreement of some sort as a potential component of the parking fund refunding for the original property purchases. Is there a possible potential for the DDA to contribute funds as reimbursement to the city and parking funds originally purchased for the properties there? There were um Northshore who presented this property as a as a development now privately developed. They were partially promised parking with that parking garage. So, is it a component of who of somebody to get DDA funds back as part of that? I'm just I don't know how to say that the right way, but it's something we're thinking about. Um because they wouldn't have continued down this path knowing that that parking deck wasn't going to happen as proposed. At the end of the day, I want to see tax dollars collected off these properties. Um that's worth more in the long run than the money from the parking enterprise fund getting returned right away. sooner we sell this, the sooner we start collecting tax dollars on it, the better off we're going to be. Um, and what are the long-term care, maintenance, and ownership implications when this potentially goes into private ownership and management? So,

that's a fair question because because once it's gone, they could sell it. Sell it to somebody. We have the opportunity to put deed restrictions on and other things that we can do to protect that. So, okay, that's a fair thing to say that if we're going to I guess that's a fair point to bring up really quick. And I'm going to look for some head nods. We all want workforce housing.

Um, you know, that can slide depending on, you know, certain pilots are only available for 15 years or 20 years. Some are available for up to 50. If the deal, if the, um, developer themselves is offering an 80% AMI, like they're going to be doing it, we can write in that they must have it for x amount of years. We have all that flexibility because it is our um property, right? This isn't private property. It can it'll be one way, shape or we might keep the land and lease it. We might sell it with a deed restriction, but we have those options. So Rob can kind of hear what we're saying right now and integrate that into it of we're looking for some affordable housing with some guarantees behind it. If we want to keep it relatively open, that can leave people open to what creative numbers they might be looking at, but we can dict we can dictate that. So, um, Lance, go ahead with yours. You had your hand up.

Yeah. RFP, parking, attainable housing units, non-expiring permanent deed restrictions, uh, on the short-term rentals and on the property as a whole where the units cannot be sold off as condos uh, post attainable housing pilot ending.

Cool. So, really quickly too, to just because I this got brought got brought up, I appreciate that because you've just I dashed all of those as we talked. Um the parking deck down there, we hear this a lot from the original proposal and others is we were promised parking. There was discussions of it in the TIFF extension. A parking deck down there actually exists right now in park in Tiff 97. That's just not going to happen. And so that that was part of the original TIFF 97 plan that still sits in there. That was part of the discussions about the ex the possible extension or renewal or whatever of TIFF that was taken out. And so as of right now, that's still not happening. Um, so I just want to clarify that there was no promise of parking that we owe anybody. That was part of plans that still had to go through other processes that didn't go through the other processes because there wasn't the support and or funds for them.

And so that's I just wanted to clarify that as we have that conversation. I think we've gotten a lot of good consensus from what I've heard here just so I can summarize and let me know if I'm missing anything or if anything pops up at anybody. RFP process, public parking included in some way, shape, or form, workforce housing or affordable housing. We'll leave it open for whatever the bids might come in with or the proposals might come in with. No short-term rentals completely ban them. Public restrooms of some kind. I do want that clarified though because if it does end up being like, oh well, there's going to be businesses on the first floor. We want to make sure that's clear from the get that when they eventually go out and lease it out, that's going to be expected of whoever they're leasing it to and so we don't get into, oh, the store opened and they're, you know, a private salon and they don't let other people in or something. So, just being very clear on that because that was the consensus I heard here. Um, and so that those were the big

and then potentially interested in leasing the property versus owning it ourselves. That can definitely part of any proposal. um as well as other um things that we might want to look at with deed restrictions. If somebody did want to buy the property, we'd want it to be very favorable to the city. Making sure that all of these things were enshrined in it. Um doesn't mean it would get picked, but if somebody says, "I don't want to lease it from you. I want to buy it." That we'd want to make sure that these um all were protected very very long term and that we retain. A question I do have for Lauren as far as making these things whole um if we did the lease that wouldn't cause obviously you just said that would not we wouldn't have to pay ourselves back then. But if we did some kind of a sale, but to get all of this stuff, nobody's going to be able to pay $7 million to us. Um, well, maybe they could, maybe we could ask for it. Not not expecting it. Is there a way that we could say some of the revenue that comes in from that gets earmarked or is that not allowed to happen through tax collection?

I'm not totally understand. That's part of your question. So whatever this up to $7 million, a portion of the revenue collected from that property would go towards paying back the parking fund specifically or we can't do that with property individually. You you can uh allocate the funds if if it were to be purchased back for the 7 million. Um that's what I was or for any amount. Not the purchase. I'm saying if the tax collected on the the appreciated as as it gets built out um and people are paying they start paying taxes well we tiff might not exist in two years that would make it a tiff though essentially

essentially well that's what I'm asking like is it basically can we do our own version of a tiff of this property once it's developed we'd capture up to you know over the years until it hit $7 million a certain portion of it um I'm guessing no from your look on your face no I I just don't I the I think the answer for as I sit here is I don't Okay. I'd have to sit down and kind of Can we just say we want a revenue sharing a percentage of revenue shared with the parking? Is that what you're referring to? No, it's not. It's I over it's it's something that can't happen. So, we're going to drop that. Don't call it a tiff. It's not a tiff. I don't understand why you'd want to do that anymore. Well, another parking deck or something.

If we if we're looking to get $7 million back, but we want a bunch of workforce housing, as many units as possible, you can't buy the property for $7 million and put affordable units in it and make the numbers work. that we we've seen this time and time and time again. And so my thought was can we look at it through some other way of me collecting the money from the value prop the value on the property to tax collection for through tax collection. And the answer is no. So we're moving on from that. This isn't this isn't just housing though. The component of it is also the parking garage. There's going to be revenue generated off that parking garage. And that's if you want to get revenue recaptured from the prop the land value. It's there's a potential there for a percentage of like we need some of this money. Well, if we retain ownership.

Well, and I was just going to say that that'll be could be part of it, but I as the person who was I was on the parking deck ad hoc eight years ago and for us having complete control of it and taking all the revenue, we were still going to have trouble making the numbers work per spot with all of it coming to us. So, even if we do some revenue sharing, we can get some money back. I'm not optimistic that the seven million would get made we'd be made whole on seven million in any kind of realistic time time span but again we're looking at trade-offs is that okay compared to getting some work more workforce housing and things like that I think at the end of the day the best case scenario for us is that we're going to get money off the taxable value of the property or whatever is built on that property

that's going to be the that has the longest lasting and longterm implications and that's what we're weighing. So, I appreciate that and I appreciate Heather's suggestion. I really think that's a really great one, too. If somebody wants to lease it from us, then we don't lose the property or the money and we get to see all of this stuff happen. But, we got to see what people and what they create out there. But I think that's, you know, that's another good way for us to work. And maybe and maybe Rob could clarify this with the RFP. It kind of presents all the options are available to us then versus the RFQ. Yes. Yes. I mean, I think obviously we want to give some direction. um given these goals. Um but yeah, there would be more options um on the table for developers to propose that you can consider.

Oh, go ahead. A question I do have is with respect to deed restriction or requirement for workforce housing being there. Is there a length of time? I don't know if that's something that's important, Rob, to specify. You know, you said long term. Is that 15 years? Is it 30 years? Is it in perpetuity? I I would deed my my thought would be deed restrict around the length of a pilot legally allowed right so make sure that we look at that

um but then deed restrict against uh STRs and against the sale the individualized sale as condos I think that's where a lot of our residents come into um we look just look at a building over on Garfield Street uh that you know essentially had this and they sold everything off as condos and now they're short-term rentals, right? Um, so that's what we want to I think I would want to prevent. The longer the better. I know your trailside 45 is what you're talking about. Yeah. The only caveat on that they can be named is that it, you know, we're talking about these these being rentals and rental is not an asset and a condo is an asset.

We just can't we wouldn't be able to restrict them the sale price of a condo. I I I doubt that we have to control business, which we can't, right? There's a statute there. So, I I have to say I I like your idea of tying it to a pilot because yeah, um you know, I'm thinking from the developer standpoint, um you've got the incentive, the incentive goes away and then you do have and then once after that it's a market rate apartment which is an asset, right? and is and could be sold as a as a as a full unit, not as individual units, but as a an asset that the developer, the investor could sell at some point. So, I I think that's a good approach.

So, Rob, really quick, for where we're at in the discussion you've heard so far, do you feel like, you know, you were talking kind of they want people want some direction before they put a proposal out. Do you feel like what we've given you you envisioning? Yeah, I can imagine exactly like the RFP or not exactly the RFP I'm going to write now because you I have enough information and get the gist or do you need more from us right now?

No, I I this has been great. Uh I like that you're all on the same page and um um and yeah, I think I have a a great amount of direction to write it. Can I just ask a quick clarifying question because I I think it would be helpful and and anyone could find this on the website, but could we include um the strategic action plan or reference to the strategic action plan? Because I think in terms of keeping the the goals of the developer aligned with what our goals are other than these specific goals, just having that referenced in the RFP, I think would be extremely helpful.

I think referencing would be good. They don't want us to get into a link, right? That that it's there. It could be two sentences that it's there. Here's the link. And then I mean, for a smart developer, they would look at that and say, "Oh, someone did my homework for me and this is this is my goals." Look at the bells and whistles I can add that meet all these. Yep. Okay. Anything else from the commission that you want to share with Rob? Okay. Feeling good about what we gave you? Yes. Thank you very fantastic. All right. And I'm going to call a quick fivem minute recess. Um I think there might be some people that need signatures. If you need them, we can do that right now, too. So if not, feel free to hang out and we'll be back in five minutes.

What are you doing? I believe so. But that's the best question for Heidi. I'm not good for math questions, Jordan. Yeah.

She's wandered the I'm just worried that we might get there a little late. We shall see. ET at 8:15 in the morning. How long? Oh, just a few minutes. All right, I'm going to call the meeting back to order. Know that people kind of wander in, but we can get the attainable housing facilities. Oh, no, Lauren. Sorry. Missing Heather. We're gonna Well, more big thing. So, I guess actually we'll get started in about a minute. Sorry to our camera operator out there. Um, wait one more minute.

I don't know what you're talking about. Um, and as we're doing that, we're gonna have Lauren kick off our discussion about the attainable housing and um I forgot what the other one's called right now. Uh, residential. Thank you. Yeah. Right ahead.

I can never remember them either. So, um, this is a, um, we're picking up a discussion that we had previously about these housing tools. Um, I want to acknowledge that Susan Lighouser Ye is here as well in case you have questions from her. She's an expert in this uh field as well. Um, and so really uh the last time the city commission um discussed these tools, uh the sort of consensus was, yeah, let's um let's move forward with these. Um and so we're bringing these back to you uh with some requested actions that would move these forward. I realize there's a little bit of maybe sticker shock with how much it would cost to do the notices because the statute requires um certified mail. And so um we have a map in uh the packet that shows um the districts that were discussed at the planning commission. Um and they do over overlap a little bit. Um, if the city commission wants to move forward as is, then we would ask you to confirm the districts, authorize the funds that it will that it will take to send out the notices just for that mailing. Um, and then to set the public hearing and bring it back in that window um that the statute sets for the public hearing after the notices have gone out. You can also look at this and say, uh, that's a lot of notices to go out. That's going to cost a lot of money. Maybe we want to scale it back or something like that. that's open to you as well. I just want to let you know that. But this is um this is where we left off. So, this is where we're picking back up. And then what would happen is we'd bring the public hearing um after the appropriate time when the notices went out for the resolutions to be um adopted. You would have the public hearing and then you could at the same meeting adopt the resolutions and that would set the table for folks to use this tool. If somebody wanted to use the tool, they would still have to apply and

come back. So, it's not just opening up to these districts, anyone can just move ahead right away. There's still more process that would happen along the way after that, but this would set the stage for folks to be able for this tool to be available for property owners to use. So, sorry question. It's Mitch, uh, Laura, and then Ken, and then Okay, guys. I definitely see uh this is a lot of notices compared to a typical uh zoning process that yes, you have to notice, but it might be noticing a couple dozen people and this is noticing a lot.

And I do have a week I'm proposing that makes to no difference, but that is removing the industrial districts. Uh since the purpose is to be industrial in nature and thus is poorly suited for housing. Mhm. That's a That's a fair. Okay. Thank you for that. Mitch, Laura, you're next. Um Lauren, can you remind me, it's it's been a few months since we discussed this in a study session. What was the benefit of looking at the whole city as a district? Is it because it gives us the most flexibility? Is are there other benefits? And I'm just trying to weigh the cost benefit of the mailing with

um the flexibility and balancing that. And are there opportunities if we started with a smaller district, could we then expand it later or is it your recommendation that we look at the whole district? Okay, good questions. So, I think that what the planning commission really looked at um when they discussed the districts is uh the residential district for uh for the I always get them mixed up. The one that's forain and less, right? And then for the other one um some of the more intensive districts. So they correlated the um the uses in the different districts to where it would be most appropriate. Yeah, I saw that.

So that's really where that recommendation came from. The other part of the question is um whether you could start smaller and scale it up. That's going to depend on whether the legislature extends the program. So if you start small now and they don't extend the program, probably you're going to be stuck with that district, which is fine. I mean, that's totally open to you. Um but there's right now there's we would limit ourselves. So the just kind of talk me through the timing. This could sunset in like September, right? And if it sunsets in September, it's still available for use for another 10 years, 12 years. I believe that's the case. But but the districts would be

so if we do the whole if we did the whole district and it sunsets we have more flexibility over a decade versus if we start with a small district and then it goes away we would be stuck with just that. Okay. I believe that's true and I Susan may know more than I do but there was talk of extending the program but I don't know where that's at. I I we don't need to I feel like while we're doing this let's not get into too much prognosticating on whether we think it'll go forward or not. Quick question though and the same thing. Once we've done this, if they extend it past September, we don't have to send the notice out ever again, right? I don't believe so. Okay. So, this is a one-time gives us the flexibility with the whole city. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Ken, you're next.

Um, just real quick, we keep saying we once we establish this district, then we have 10 12 years to utilize this. The this is a all the properties in the city are now have access to this tool. So it is the owners who will have the ability. When we say we we mean the owners this because that's not any any development that spurs from this is owner initiated. Yes. This is not the city changing things. This is we're allowing owners of properties to take on the opportunity to redevelop at a tax incentive for them. Correct. But we're offering the tool and we have the control.

Correct. Right. But that's well we won't split the baby because you're both right. like arguing with I'm just we we say we and I I just I don't want to put fear into people's hearts because we're not making them the city is going to come through and up the zone again. That's important. That's very important. That's what I'm trying to differentiate on this is that we're not like this we're we're creating this district that allows residents to make investments in their in their properties. Correct. And without the district that opportunity would not be available. We have to include everyone because in September this could potentially be over forever. But if we get this done and everybody's in it starting now. Yep.

If it sunsets, you still have 10 or 12 years, however much, however the length of time was to do this, right? So that's I think the important thing to emphasize for people. Yep. Absolutely. Good point. You want to say Susan? Lance, you're next. Um I think uh Commissioner Ken just took it right out of my mouth. Yeah. No, no, no. Good consensus. All right, Heather, you're next.

Um, okay. Well, I'm kind of a downer. I I'm really not on board with the ahfa. That's this the lower one, one to four um residents. It has a I really researched this thing and it has a huge f uh fiscal impact because of the taxes. It It's a gigantic It looks like a really gigantic burden on staff. Um, I I also think it has little effect on our lower income housing, 50 to 80% AMI, which is what we're really missing around here. And I, you know, I think of all the policing that's going to have to go on. You have to police incomes every single year. You have to police the rents and the rehab investments. And ultimately, you could get a few really nice ADUs. Um, and they will be renting at 120 AMI. And then our residents are going to look around and say, "Well, you know, you just gave tax breaks to the rich." Um, I think that we have a lot of other things that we could do like starting an ADU um plan library. I think it would cost half the amount of this 75,000 uh dollars that you have to pay in mailing out notices. Um, I think you could do a permit freeze or rebate. You could freeze property taxes for 5 to seven years. if you do, you know, a rehab, there's that would reward actual investment and I think it's much uh much simpler for staff and for our our taxes. Um I do however think that the RHF1 FA1, the one for the larger developments could work because it's focused on where the market is is really failing and it would involve more professionals and um and that would mean better documentation. So that's less staff time. Um

it's our fiscal exposure would also be more targeted because I think we'd have less, you know, it's not this gigantic entire city. It would be more targeted to our where our commercial districts and our corridors. It feels more like a real tool for housing production and less like a kind of time sync for our staff and a um tax giveaway. Jackie. Um I $75,000 for certified mail I fear could pale in comparison to the hole in our property tax revenues that this has the potential to enact if we do this citywide immediately. I think we need a smaller scale test of concept. I think that it would ideally be happening in a um a place where we already have relatively modest housing costs and relatively large lot sizes like Traverse Heights for instance to make that an incentive for backyard cottages. Um I am very concerned about administrative load on our staff um executed citywide. We we don't know the financial consequences. We don't know the administrative costs to enact this across the city is um high risk. And I think that maybe it's the level of unknowns that have caused such a low uptake uh statewide. As I understand from the planning commission brief, there there are only a handful of communities across the state of Michigan that have taken action and adopted this. So I am I am treating this with extreme caution just because we don't know what's going to happen and I think it deserves to be tested on a small scale. So before we get too much into a

discussion here two things. One I think um everybody had a chance to give some feedback. It sounds like though there are some thoughts on the size if we were to go forward the size that's been identified seems to have the majority of support. I'm not saying that because what I'm say that it has to be that. What I'm saying though is we can continue with questions or we need a motion. So questions. Yep. Go ahead, Ken.

So, um I'm comfortable with any size. I I I think it was a nice idea. I I I can go either way with this. I could go citywide. I could go neighborhood basis. But what I want I didn't ask earlier that I wanted to ask was have we had a chance is anything happened with the neighborhood association's president's council? Have we had a chance to present this information to anybody anywhere and gotten any kind of feedback from the neighborhood associations?

And so the question if we can get that answer and also I think to to the point that Jackie raised I mean you guys are bringing this back Benjamin you've been weighing everything looking at this and I know you've mentioned for a couple items tonight you're worried about staff capacity. Is this Have you been looking at this and factoring this in as you think forward or um you know do you have thoughts on that right now? I don't have thoughts on it right now. um because frankly I need to know more about what the true um implications are for the employee team. So I can't I can't give you a good answer right now on that. As far as um there was the other question that we had an answer to. What was it? The neighborhood

neighborhood council has not been involved in this uh like they have not been approached and asked their thoughts on this issue.

I just I would just be curious to get some sort of feedback. I don't I don't want to advance this to the point where we're going to vote on this and it's going to become the thing or official and we have a a lobby full of people who are like we didn't know about this, we don't like this. So, I mean, I do want some more community input and feedback on this. But I think it's a good idea and I'm comfortable with doing it citywide or doing it on a small neighborhood association basis for people who can we see some benefit in this and this could help our area out. Um I would Yes. Thank you. And so um one thing to point out to um to the question of how it's been rolled out. This is relatively new past legislation

and I know there was a presentation at it on the house at the housing summit in October. um Leland was two two places in Lelena were looking at it. Frankfurt's been looking at it. So it was a matter of them in their cases what they were reporting is they had support. They were just figuring out the rules and how they wanted to do it. So I think that this the lack of uptake is it's not it's some it you know we're not reading a crystal ball but this isn't as simple as a pilot where we have the prescribed rules. We go in and we know exactly how it's going to be implemented in every community. Every community has to figure out where it fits for them which is what our discussion is right now. So, I think what I would be looking for is do we have some more tweaks to this? Do we want to ask for something to come back or do we want to have a motion and move this start moving this forward is really where we're kind of at at the matrix right now.

Can I ask two questions? You can. Um, one is what what exactly do the notices say? Like once we send out the notices, is that a commitment to we're doing this? The notices are required in order to set the public hearing. So at the public hearing, it's not you're not locking yourself into a yes vote. Is that is that kind of That's exactly what my question was. So we're sending out a notice saying we are going to do a public hearing and then we can hear from people

on this. Um and then my next question is we still control the the um the depth of of how much gets done with this. So to Jackie's point about a concern of kind of a just a slog of um an overwhelming number of people that want to do this, at some point can the city say, "Okay, we have enough." or do we have to open it up to every single applicant that comes through and they meet a criteria and then they're approved? Right. I think that that is to be determined. that would be set up through because the application process h is set up by by the city and then

but legally like so if if we say we're going to take advantage of this tool and then just hypothetically we we're overwhelmed with the number of applications that we have to the point that it's impacting staff capacity, it's impacting our uh property tax capture and we just say, "Oh my, we didn't expect this." Can we then say we're going to take a pause? I'm I have to opt out on that. The other question I would have while you're checking that is um you know is there the opt out option and we have a rubric right now as a city for pilots, right? We expect them to get a certain score. Could we do that on this as well?

I think this so I think that's the application process that is um that is required in in the in the statute that it comes back to you with applications. So I think so what we know so far is I think Mitch's suggestion I want to lose it to exclude anything industrial unless anybody disagrees with that no matter how if we move forward and when you guys bring back numbers or question answers to questions we can exclude the industrial um again this and this is where I think the the weight would be if we get them this do this motion it is to hold a public hearing and send notice is not linked inherently telling us that we're going to do it. It would be a notice delivered to everyone in the affected areas and right now it sounds like other than industrial. The support that's there seems to be for citywide and different you looking at the different criteria. So not everybody's getting one for every single thing. They're getting ones that apply to their district or their area and then we would have further action taken at that point if it was decided by the body. So I want to be clear on that if we if somebody makes a motion we vote on it tonight. We are not saying this program goes into effect and we're starting an ad hoc and creating a pilot or a rubric for the pilot program. We're saying we're going to hold a public hearing

in this particular motion just so you know because it's a little unusual would require five votes to pass because it is a cost. So that is where we are at right now.

Go ahead other but if I don't agree that the uh AHFA the one to four dwellings is um sustainable for staff or fiscally responsible then I can't vote I can't uh support this correct but you could make a motion just on the you can support the motion you can split it if you would like one for the AHFA and one for the the RHFA yes if that were the case I would just say I don't know the breakout on the notices for the cost. So you you just want to say like not to exceed or something like that.

Yeah. I mean if well yeah something. So I have a question. Um, you know, I've talked to probably no less than a hundred people about this, uh, if not maybe like more like a thousand people, uh, throughout the campaign. Um, as and I've written about it, uh, fairly extensively, uh, as well, specifically around the Attainable Housing Facilities Act. Um, we do have the opportunity to change the actual numbers in there, right? We don't have to say it's 120% AMI. We could actually say it's 80% AMI uh, as a commission, right? So, we can we can limit the scope and it's really not focused um I'll get to a question because we have to ask questions, right?

It's really not it's not focused um from my understanding and maybe the professionals can can tell me if I'm wrong, but it's not focused on creating more uh units. So, not just like building more ADUs and making those pencils, but rather taking the existing housing stock that we have in the city

and then converting this. Personally to me, I see it as a way for us to give the city a carrot uh to get rid of short-term rentals or lessen short-term rentals and make that short-term rental owner say, "Oh, this pencils, right? I could do this. I can rent it to a teacher or somebody who is making, I don't know, whatever we set that 120% AMI or less and instead of doing a short-term rental." Um, and I think that the broadness of the scope um was centered around um just being fair to everybody in the city uh with the short very tiny timeline that we have and knowing how we all take sometimes a few meetings to make decisions and um so that was that was what I I saw. Uh, I guess my my question would be um maybe to the whole commission too, like do we want to do we want to wait till the next meeting until we have these questions answered um and just table it uh until the next meeting and then you could get us some more answers to those questions that have been responded.

Yeah, we won't we won't go do an official table because that's a whole Robert's rule. So, but we will I think we could say we'd like to refer Yep. defer this to the next business. Yep. It's refer to the next business meeting. So, with that in mind, do we have other questions? we would like to have answered at the next one. Go ahead, Heather. Um, yeah, it's a follow up on Lance's question. It's how do you justify the amount of staff time it would take to um basically it's policing the the investments, you know, what you bought for that $5,000. Uh, keeping track of the uh incomes and rents are corresponding question. So, I guess that would be Benjamin bring it back to Is there what staff time would look like?

Put a cap in so we don't overwhelm everyone. Is there another community that we could call and ask like does this require a whole person to do this? Is it let's let's just say we're going to have we're going to ask Benjamin to look at staff potential staff time commitments and bring that back to us. Jackie, do you have a question?

Um I had a a followup to Lance's comment. um that uh while the idea of incentivizing conversion of short-term rentals to long-term rentals is near and dear to my heart, um we simply don't know. The last time we made a citywide um decision to upgrade our our density and zoning, for instance, um in the two years since we took that action in 2023, there are only 15 building permits that have been pulled against that increased density zoning. We don't even know if or how many um actual structures have been completed. So to my my point is we don't know we don't know enough to know what we're getting into. We don't know where the pitfalls are. We don't know the costs. We don't know the benefits. And I think a smallcale test would allow us to answer a lot of those burning questions before we adopt a citywide policy.

We're already bringing this back for the next meeting. So that'll be part of our discussion with some of those answers, the ones we could possibly know. Some things we just don't know. So, anything else that we'd like them to have information that we'd like to have for our discussion when it comes back at the next business meeting? How long are we establishing the tax forgoance period? It's not complete tax forgoance. It's just kind of like a it's a abatement. How long is the tax abatement period going to be for? They're short. They're um no more than 12 years. But we have the ability to set it or so we can decide how long it's going to go for and And what percentage too of of AMI?

80% AMI to target for the years. Okay. Um any other questions that we'd like answered for before our next meeting? And you can always email staff if you think of others, but while we're having this discussion and hey, if we're sending out thousands of notices, we'll probably get some feedback. Yeah. Well, that's that's only if we are not voting right now. We're not voting on anything. If we vote at the next meeting, we are just voting about holding a public hearing. So that would be part of the intended unintended consequences is we would get more engagement from people. Go ahead. We are tableabling this to when? Till next business meeting, which is third or second. Thank you.

Like uh I I hope that the the word can get out and we can get some feedback from particular neighborhoods who would like to opt in or opt out. So well, I'm going to reiterate again though that when this comes back, it's still going to be that we'd be voting to have a public hearing. So, we'd be voting to have a more public discussion, too. So, I don't want people to think that if they don't show up on the second that they'll have no other chance to express themselves or or Yeah. have any voice in this. So, okay. So, do we feel like we have enough to bring this back? Great. Thank you everyone. And again, if you think of anything else, email staff and they'll look that up as well. Um, okay. So, our next for our new business is the agreement for water generative power. So, please go ahead.

Yes. uh invite Art Kger, our director of municipal utilities, uh to give a super brief, like about two-minute overview. He knows we've got a big close session we're going into. So, uh Art, if you could give the uh very high level executive summary, that would be great. Thank you.

Great. No problem. Uh good evening everyone. Art Kger, director of utilities with the city. Um, this program is like an emergency incentive program to help the local power grid in event of a potential brownout condition in our area. In the past, we haven't really seen anything like this. We've heard about them in other states. Um, but times are changing. There's more demand for electric out there in the grid. So, we want to be helpful in a way we can. So, uh, we were approached by this company named Voltus, and they offered an incentive program to be available upon notice uh to turn on generators that are at the water treatment plant and the wastewater treatment plant. Um, they're sizable enough to help relieve the grid of some power. We could be self-powering at those plants during a 4-h hour period, possibly up to four hours upon their request. And um they would pay us a significant amount of uh to be on their program about $57,500 per year. Um it's a six-year contract that we're looking to sign. Um and we would receive that amount annually. I don't know if there's any questions I can help answer. Yes.

Okay. Just a couple quick ones. Did you reach out to Voltus to become part of this program or did they reach out to us? They contacted us initially. I had not heard of them. I confirmed with Traverse City Light and Power that they were already working with them for this kind of a program. So, yes. Um, have we heard it from any other municipalities who are already participating in this program and their thoughts, feelings, and what they've experienced with it? I haven't heard of any other programs, other communities joining a program like this. I think it's kind of a a newer type program. Um, has the city attorney had a chance to look over any of the fine print of this agreement that Oh, she's gone.

She she talked about that in agenda review that she she has looked it over. I think she had a few minor comments on the the contract language that she was looking to have changed. I mean, I'm excited about this, but it almost sounds too good to be true. It's like free money. It's just amazing. Yeah, I I agree. It did sound too good to be true. So, I I did investigate it quite thoroughly before I brought it forward. Um, was it Yeah. Was it 50,000 for each generator or both combined? Believe they went by per megawatt. They were paying $50,000 per megawatt and we're like 1.15 combined. So, okay, it's combined.

Sorry. And uh and we're like to how this is going to work. They're going to say we want you to run to see how much you'll reduce the impact on the grid. We're going to power our own infrastructure. We're not back feeding them for support other places. This is for us to we're just going to run our own facilities with that generator during these periods of time. Yes, that's how I understand it. we'd be self-sufficient and that would allow more power to be used outside the city facilities or the grid. Are both generators or both facilities natural gas powered or they they're actually diesel.

So natural gas um from what I understand has a tough time creating the amount of uh demand that we need at both of these plants. So diesel is a better uh fuel. I wondered about Yeah, you can get more generation of power out of a diesel generator. Do we do we look at like the cost of how much it will be to run those during those periods of time where we need them?

It's basically fuel and on and is done routinely throughout the year, operation maintenance procedures. So um I don't have a number for you, but I don't think it would be much. And we do run them to test them quite regularly. Yes. Monthly. Then did you want to re ask your legal question or were you happy with Oh, sorry. Okay. I I guess we I can't remember us talking about it. We talked about right after the legal review, but it was a I just wondered if our city attorney had a chance to review this contract agreement and if there were any fine print issues that she was concerned about or anything that made us not want to move forward with this. No, not at all. I think I mean anything that was in there that I might have noticed I have confidence that we can work out with the with the provider. Yeah,

that's all I got. Um so this is kind of responding to um former commissioner Tim Wernner's very upset email. Um where he was like how why isn't staff figuring out how to replace generators battery backup? Um, so my research says that we have to have emergency power under state and federal law and that there is no scenario today, please correct me if I'm wrong, where batteries alone are considered sufficient for multi-hour mission critical wastewater operations and that sol the solar project at the wastewater treatment plant even with batteries can't replace the emergency emergency uh generators yet.

That's exactly right. We actually talked about that this afternoon, Mr. So my question is as a kind of consolation prize, can we earmark the revenue, the 57,000 a year, and put it towards um a battery pathway. And that's something we can absolutely discuss. I'm going to ask you to remember that we need to discuss that. Yep. Yeah. Because I think that that was going to get you know that that supports our electri policy, right? Yeah. OKRs and or the electrification policy for that in general, right? Yeah. Great. All right. Do we have more questions or do we want to do a motion?

I'll I'll make a motion. Uh I move to approve entering into a contract with Voltus and complete the related necessary forms to receive payment of up to $57,500 or more per year for enrolling in this 72-month term program. That's actually Sorry to interrupt, but that's the the piece out of Arts Memo. If you can read the motion that's in mine up above, it's on page two of that bundle. Oh, yes. Motion.

All right. Redact everything I just said. Uh motion that the mayor and the city clerk be authorized to execute a six-year agreement with Voltus for the emergency generation demand response incentive program resulting in There we go. I like this better. uh in projected annual revenue to the city of uh $57,500 uh each year with such contract subject to approval as to its substance by the city manager and its form by the city attorney. Second. Okay. Any further discussion on this item?

Seeing none, any public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you, Art. Thanks, Art. Money for nothing. All right. Uh Benjamin, did you want to take on the next one?

Yeah. So, the next item is a consideration of approving the evaluation process for the city manager and city attorney for the next two this calendar year and next calendar year. And uh Commissioner Anderson made some uh good suggestions, I think, to consider. Uh and so my recommendation is to uh not to essentially remove this item from tonight's agenda and discuss those uh at the end of our study session next Monday with commission to approve the process on March 2nd based on how that discussion goes. And so um that's my request. Well, we don't have to move. We're just going to as long as there's no refer it again. Okay. Great. Then we'll uh we'll cover that on uh Monday night.

Um great. Okay. So moving on. expected to interrupt the process. It'll be at the end. We'll still be able to complete it in time. Yes. Um Okay. So, moving on to our last item of business here. Um the close session for attorney client privilege. Do we have a motion for that, please? I can make that. Oh, go ahead. Okay. Um, I move that the city commission enter into close session immediately following the public comment portion of the agenda to discuss an attorney client communication as authorized by MCL15.268H. Second. Okay. And there will not be any uh action when you emerge from close session. Thank you. I was going to double check on that. Okay. Uh, roll call, please.

Commissioner Anderson. Yes. Mayor Promnes. Yes. Commissioner Treadwell, yes. Commissioner Funk, yes. Commissioner Bmer, yes. Commissioner Shaw, yes. Mayor, yes.

Okay, we'll move into close session after the general public comment at the end of the meeting here. Okay, and do we have any reports from our commissioners from any of their bodies? Seeing none. Okay. All right. Now, this is the opportunity for any general public comment. Could be about anything tonight or anything in general. We appreciate you hanging out with us this late to just watch the process. All right. Well, then with that, we will uh close the public general public comment and we'll go into close session. Again, we do not anticipate action at the end. So, we'll just come back and adjourn. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

I'm end of the road guy. Like I ride it out. If you could be here, I can be here. Yep. Sure. Y Okay. Good. Good.

You just need to stand here. The cottage will need we I'm adjourning the meeting for February 17th.

It's okay. We need to sit down. Don't worry.