Commission - workshop

We'll get started in about a minute here. Okay, I'm going to call this study session of Monday, July 13th to order. All please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We begin, as always, by acknowledging the land on which we gather as the territory of the Ottawa and Chippewa peoples who have stewarded this land through the generations. Thank you for your strength and resilience in protecting the land and inspiring us to uphold our responsibilities to do the same. And with that, I will hand that over to announcements from, or no, sorry, to roll call. We'll skip the roll call. We're one of like 10 people in the room.

I know, it's okay. Commissioner Funk. Present. Commissioner Anderson. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Ness. Here. Commissioner Treadwell. Here. Commissioner Boehmer.

Here.

Commissioner Shaw. Here. Mayor. Here.

Now on to announcements from the city manager.

Thank you. I've got just a couple of announcements for this week, the week of July 13th, 2016. I want to start out with a special thank you to the Traverse City Fire Department and Traverse City Police Department, especially for their outstanding preparation and long hours during the 100th National Cherry Festival. Their commitment and professionalism, of course, helped ensure a safe event for our community and our many, many visitors. So thank you to them, as well as other city departments that certainly play a role. But I wanted to highlight our public safety professionals. The city's next quarterly community blood drive will be held on Wednesday, July 15th. That's Wednesday, July 15th from 10 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. That'll be in the lower level cafeteria of the governmental center. And if you're able, please consider donating on helping save lives in our community. And appointments are encouraged through Versity or by calling 1-866-MI-BLOOD. But Watkins are welcome. And that's all that I've got. Thank you.

All right. On to you, Sarah. All right. Apparently the 15th is a very busy day around this area. Meetings scheduled for this week are the Hickory Hills Advisory Committee will meet on Wednesday, July 15th at 1.30 PM in the second floor training room. The Traverse City Arts Commission will also meet on Wednesday, July 15th at 3.30. the second floor committee room. Hickory Hills is in the training room. The Grand Traverse Commons Joint Planning Commission will also meet on Wednesday July 15th at 515 at the Garfield Township Hall and the Downtown Development Authority will meet on Friday July 17th at 9 a.m. here in the chambers.

Fantastic. And I just wanted to echo on our behalf our thanks to the Traverse City Police Department and Fire Department and all the volunteers and all of our staff because the permitting and everything that goes through with that, everybody here is doing a lot of lead work on it. Also a special note to our clerk, Sarah Lutz, who did take some vacation time, but so she could work longer hours at the Cherry Festival last week. So I saw her all over as well as a lot of our officers and firemen. And so I just wanted to thank everybody for making it such a great event. And I just also wanted to note, I forgot it was coming up, I think on the 15th or tomorrow, we also want to thank We Are Coast Guard City. And seeing that as part of the participation, Commander Han will be leaving his post and retiring to here and welcoming Commander Lee. She was around during the week and is going to be, I think, a really great addition to our community as well. So we're very excited for that. So with that, we're going to move on to our topics for discussion. Just a reminder that this is a study session, so we don't have motions. We don't have public comment throughout at all until the very end. So we'll get it rolling with a very special welcome that I'll let you tee up there, Ben, that I'm very excited about as well.

Thank you so much. I am thrilled that after a nationwide recruitment that attracted over 100 candidates, 20 semi-finalists, and then three excellent finalists, that we have Valerie Handy starting today as our new deputy city manager. Valerie is an incredibly intelligent, tenacious, kind person who brings tremendous skill set in community development and leadership. She led a federal agency for the entire state of Michigan, has helped invest literally billions of dollars in local communities throughout the state of Michigan. A key element of our strategic action plan is nurturing regional relationships and building a thriving year-round community, and I am just thrilled to welcome Valerie to the team. She has a lot of excellent education credentials to bring in a tremendous amount of energy. And this is an exciting new day. And I'm not going to steal all your thunder. And that's all that I'll say. Valerie's got some things that I wanted to make sure she had an opportunity to introduce herself formally to the Commission and the community. And so I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks Ben. Well, hello city commissioners. I'm very excited to be here with you tonight as I begin my full time tenure with the city of Traverse City. I've previously worked elections before and look forward to doing that as well in the future. This is my hometown and I feel very honored and privileged to have been selected from over 100 competitors from across the nation to serve this place that has raised me. I was born at Munson Medical Center. I attended Traverse City East Junior High back when they were the Timberwolves. And I graduated from Traverse City Central High School. Go Trojans. I am filled with gratitude and humbled to have spent the last two weeks since my appointment was announced recalling how many people and institutions in this community have invested in developing me into the leader who is here before you today. I'm proud to be taking on this new role at this time in the city's history. For those of you I'm meeting for the first time tonight, hello, I'm Valerie Handy. You are welcome to call me Val as soon as you're comfortable doing so. I'm a certified economic developer and as of today I'm your deputy city manager. I enter this role bringing a combination of economic development experience, public sector leadership experience, community engagement know how, a passion for data driven decision making and a proven track record of building regional partnerships. I believe all of these elements align exceptionally well with Traverse City's Strategic Action Plan and accompanying objectives and key results. Much of the Strategic Action Plan is centered on helping Traverse City achieve its preferred future of being an equitable, sustainable, regionally connected, and year-round community. The plan calls for stronger regional collaboration, thoughtful growth management, housing and childcare solutions, sustainability initiatives, economic diversification, and increased community participation in shaping the city's future. These priorities closely mirror the areas I have built my career around. I have extensive experience in convening stakeholders, leading regional planning efforts, facilitating action-oriented partnerships, and helping organizations and stakeholders from all walks of life align around their shared goals. My work leading asset-based planning processes, business expansion initiatives, and community development programs demonstrate the type of convening and coalition building capacity that has been envisioned in the Strategic Action Plan. Through my leadership positions and past roles, I've overseen the deployment of, as Ben stated, billions of federal dollars of investment towards major public infrastructure projects, business development programs and attainable housing initiatives. This experience has contributed to my expertise in identifying funding opportunities, aligning resources and creating practical implementation pathways that are based on local priorities. I come before you having recently left a 22-year career that was built around evaluating projects, structuring investments, and maximizing limited resources to help move high priority initiatives from concept into execution, all while maintaining accountability and measurable results. A distinguished strength I have that seems to align especially well with the OKR framework is my expertise in performance measurement, data governance, and data visualization. I have established key performance indicators, developed accountability systems, built leadership dashboards, and created data tools that improve evidence-based decision making. As the City of Traverse City transitions from planning to implementation, I believe that my experience in designing meaningful metrics, tracking progress, and communicating results will be essential to supporting successful execution of the City's OKRs. I look forward to ensuring that community priorities remain connected to measurable outcomes. And equally as important to successful implementation outcomes is my longstanding personal commitment to community engagement, honest and thoughtful communication, and public service. These are characteristics of who I am at my core, and I think that they align with the Strategic Action Plan's emphasis on community-driven decision-making. From facilitating public planning processes and delivering hundreds of stakeholder presentations to managing public communications and serving in numerous leadership roles across civic, educational, cooperative, and community organizations, I have consistently demonstrated the ability to build trust, foster productive dialogue, and translate community aspirations into actionable strategies. I look forward to fully utilizing my knowledge, my skills, and my abilities in collaboration, resource development, performance management, community engagement, and vision implementation as I provide direct support to the city's strategic pillars and OKRs. I'm excited to begin helping turn the city of Traverse City's ambitious community goals into achievable and measurable results. Thank you.

Thank you, Val. We're very excited to have you. And to the commissioners who didn't hear it earlier and to the public, today is literally Val's first day and gets to kind of cap it off with a meeting. So we're excited to have you here. Look forward to seeing you at more. And I know all commissioners are excited to get to know you better as well. So thank you. We're excited.

I'm pumped. And I'm just so proud, Valerie. We've got, this is an exciting new day for the city and the team is really thrilled. And so thank you all for your support too. And it's going to be a great partnership. Thank you.

So with that, we'll now move on to item two, which is pavement assessment management report. And so you can kick that up.

Yeah, this is timely, isn't it, when we talk about asset management? And so, of course, our strategic action plan calls for thoughtful stewardship of city resources. And, of course, that should be a basic tenet of city government. I do want to say, and I want to welcome Chrissy Black, our GIS analyst, to the dais. But I want to say that the state of Michigan has acknowledged that the city of Traverse City is advanced. in its asset management efforts, especially when compared to other municipalities across the state of Michigan. And that's in no small part thanks to Chrissy Black. And of course, the goal of effective asset management is essentially effectively stewarding our assets and investing in them and maintaining them to cost effectively ensure their longevity. And an important part of asset management is pavement asset management plan, or the PAMP. And without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Chrissy. Thank you.

Hi, welcome. Thank you for having me. So this is the follow-up. Our pavement asset management plan is finally finished. So I know it's kind of a long process. so hopefully we can just hit some of the important, is it the big one? Yep, there you go. Okay, so real quickly tonight I'm just gonna go over what is an asset management plan. We're gonna go over the inventory and our current conditions. Well, here, you guys can read this. I need to read it to you. Okay, so. These are the main components of an asset management plan. In this case, we've done it for the pavement. I do want to make sure everybody realizes this is just for the pavement. This is not for anything outside of it. So if we're adding mobility, infrastructure, or upgrading stormwater, that sort of thing, The plan itself is just to replace what is existing. So when we're looking at costs, that's all we can go with because we don't know what it wants to be when it grows up, right? So we have 78.4 Centerline certified with Act 51. That includes both major and local roads and does not include our alleys. Alleys are only funded through SIDs. We don't get any state funding for alleys. So it also includes a very, very small portion of Sheffer Street that is still unpaved. We do have a goal of paving all of our unpaved roads, but that one is in that development stage with the Millworks project, so we wouldn't want to completely tear it up as things start to progress with that again. Let's see here. Mostly what we have to make sure that we're doing is first of all we have to have our inventory. Then we have to make sure we know what condition our inventory is in and then we want to make sure we do the right treatment at the right time because all of our roads have about a 25 to 30 year lifespan. We can increase that and get that full lifespan out of it if we do some preventative maintenance in the meantime. So part of this is to look at all of that from, you know, birth to, you know, end of life. don't know if you guys have seen but we do have the pacer dashboard out on our website it has quite a bit of historical information on it and i encourage you to go ahead and take a look at it we are one of very few communities that actually pays a rate every single year we do it every october that way all of our road construction projects are usually finished up by them and we can have our best conditions of the year in that time frame As you know, winters are kind of hard on our roads. So that is something that we like to take into consideration and get the best ratings at the right time. So this is what we use to go ahead and know how likely or in what condition the roads are in. Now. We went ahead and based on an informed review of targets used by other agencies across Michigan as well as staff professional assessment of what level of service aligns with our community expectations here in Traverse City, we went ahead and used these pavement condition goals for this actual report. So if you look at it, we have a 50% It's 50% good, 40% fair, and 10% poor is what it's supposed to be. They're the same for both majors and local roads. Sorry about that. Now, here are our current condition ratings versus our goals. I think it's important when we look at this to realize that this is a work in progress. And the goals that we set are not out of reach, but we want to make progress. We want to have good roads. We hear everybody talk about how we want better roads. So this is a good example of our current road conditions versus what we would like them to be. Now let's compare them to what the state averages are. And I think this is important because we all think that our roads here are in such poor condition. But if we take the statewide average, we're actually doing pretty well. Down at the bottom there, I just thought I would highlight that, I mean, fair is still reasonable. Poor is not good. Like, last stop needs to be reconstructed. So if we add our good and poor together, 83% for our local majors versus 69% for a state average.

You mean good and fair, not good and poor. Yes, sorry.

Pretty good, right? I mean, I think that that says quite a bit there about how we're doing on our major roads. If we move over to locals, it's 74.8 versus 57. Again, we're still quite a ways ahead of the state average. And I think that, you know, putting that in perspective, we're doing a pretty good job. You know, they, even the TAMC, which is the Transportation Asset Management Council that we report to every year, has noticed these. So with that said, now we can start looking at how much funding we have and what we can do to get to our goals. And this graph is kind of, I'm going to explain it here a little bit. We've got the existing three are current years and then the shaded out ones to the left or to the right are forecasted with our goals at the very end. and the dotted lines are the trends and as you can see through this major roads are are trending pretty well we look to meet our goals roughly you know by 2028 or so um and these are um because we have most of our emergency routes most of our travel all of the BREs are a lot higher on our major roads so we do pay a little bit more attention to our major roads Okay, and this is for our locals. As you can see those dotted lines are starting to level out for our locals. So our locals are not performing as well. We also have more in the poor category here. Those are total reconstructs. So I think that that is important to keep in mind. They are going to be our largest challenge here and improvements have been occurring as you can see, but we still have a big chunk of fare even that we would need to address to keep them from going into the poor. So what does all of this tell us? Without continued investment and investment in the right age and stage of each road, we are going to continue to see things fall into our poor category. We need to be doing the right type of pavement treatments at the right times. And if we can't do that, then they're going to keep falling. Life cycle costs also rise when you start to have to do reconstruction because it's hugely, vastly more expensive than our treatments are. with planned investment we can stabilize which we have seen that we've been doing in the last couple years and more funding can be directed towards preservation rather than reconstruction so I don't know if you guys have noticed we've had some pretty decent preservation projects over the last couple of years and it's made a difference So the next thing we did was we looked at what we are doing versus what we should be doing. And that tells us what we need to change to improve our condition assessments. So some of the other things, as I mentioned earlier, that we really need to keep in mind as far as costs go are that we don't have a funding mechanism for stormwater management. And as we are reconstructing these roads and are upgrading them, if they need storm improvements and or rehabilitation for storm water, that's an extra cost that is not included in the pavement management. It obviously gets paid for, but that does come away, that takes away from the pavement condition, right? So we have to then put stuff underground for it. And then, yeah. It's easier to do pavement preservation and cheaper is essentially what we come down to. So I do want to highlight those, the gaps, okay. So the first, the top treatments are what we did two years ago. We did three, and they're in miles. So three miles of crack seal for majors, six for locals. Total of nine miles of crack sealing. Crack sealing prevents all of that water either through rain or snow, ice, from getting into the cracks and breaking it all apart. It's pretty important. We really should be doing 13 miles and 22 miles. So when Chris went to do his budget this year, he actually budgeted for over 44 miles, which is what we need to do in total. We were missing about 35 miles of streets that need to be crack sealed. So going forward, we're going to crack seal everything that needs to be crack sealed. We're going to make the investment in preventing the degradation of our pavement. Same goes for Cape Seal. We were doing three and one and missing out on five miles and seven miles. So again, that's a low hanging fruit. We did a Cape Seal project again last year and we have one going on again this year. Mellon fills one, one, and then we're missing one and two. Again, we, as you can kind of see here, the other part of this is we're starting to run out of preservation projects. We have a heck of a lot of shortage in reconstructions. Those numbers are big. And when we're talking like three to $4 million per lane mile, That's a huge amount of money. So those amounts that are there, the $14 million and the $29 million, are the cost today to do all of those things that were short. It's a pretty big chunk of money. Not that it all has to be done today, obviously. I don't think we could get a contractor here to do it in one fell swoop if we wanted to. And it would drive the whole town nuts. Right. So, but just at today's price. And we know that it's only going to skyrocket from there. So we did, yep, over, $137,000 this year was our crack seal instead of like 65, 60 to 65,000. So that is a much smaller investment of preventing these roads from breaking apart than to pay for that reconstruction afterwards. And I think that that's the biggest message here. So here's some project expenses, just some, It just kind of gives you guys an idea of what we're talking about here. We'll go back to 8th Street. Now, mind you, these are numbers back from 2019-2022, not current numbers. But we just wanted to illustrate that the total project cost was like $4.5 million. And out of that, we had 2.1 that was just the street reconstruction. And within that, $207,000 was stormwater. Again, there's no funding mechanism for stormwater. So right off the bat, that comes off the street costs. Multimodal, $364,000. Just something to keep in mind and I think we're going to try to give you guys like those costs and do better with that when we bring projects forward. But again, Carver Street, that was last year. We did that multimodal bike lane reconfiguration when we did the Cape Seal. And the total project cost, as you can see, is there too. And again, these are, especially for the bike lane, that's a reoccurring yearly fee to put striping back down too. So that's the other thing that we're going to try and give you guys more information on is, okay, here's the project cost, but going forward, yearly, this means A, B, and C. So funding versus our desired outcome, right? Like I said, we picked some goals based on what we felt was attainable and what other communities around the state were doing. We looked at Ann Arbor. We looked at Grand Rapids. We looked at Kalamazoo. Really did some research on what we felt was acceptable. Doesn't mean that that's what we have to do. It's just a starting point. And it gives you guys an idea of what it would take. to get to that. We want to make it less than that, we can do that too. So this gives us a starting point, right? And in the process of getting this report, we now have a way to take whatever amount of money we're given and tell you guys what the best use of that money is going forward and give you those projects and get them to you in a way that makes sure that we're addressing the things that are most important first and that's that risk of failure and consequence of failure that's that um bre it's called equation inside of the report So by not doing this the right way, I'll say, or under investment, we risk the level of service not being what we want or expect from us. Again, we risk a higher cost down the road if we end up with reconstructions instead of our pavement preservation projects. it just creates a massive backlog of those reconstruction projects. And like Monroe is 0.6 miles this year at a cost of $4 million, $3, $4 million. So if you figure that's how much it costs to do less than a mile of road, that's a lot. So we want to keep them from getting that far. And then here are our key takeaways. We're holding right now. We are going to run out of those middle of the road projects and we're going to end up with total reconstructs if we don't start trying to keep the ones that are that fair out of that poor category. and then we'll continue to do annual condition assessments we do those in-house and we'll continue to coordinate we always do every year we overlay the water the in the sewer asset management plans and all of the those are taken into consideration when we do reconstructs because we're not going to want to dig up the road and not take care of our utilities at the same time and then have to dig them up again later It's just an absolute must. We have to do that. So that has been happening and it will continue to happen. And then we will update project priorities annually. after we've redone the condition assessments each year. So this isn't just a plan that's just going to sit on the shelf and we're never going to update it. We're going to go through these steps every single year. We'll redo the BRE. We'll redo the list. And we'll look at things like we had a particularly harsh winter this last winter. So I'm eager to see what our PASER ratings will be in October. And then we'll reassess the list. We can't reassess what we've already put out or what we've already started designing. But definitely that next year will always be in flux and we'll always be doing this. It's not just going to sit on the shelf. I do want to mention that because I feel like we did one in I think 2017 and then we haven't updated it since. So I do want to assure you that this is something we'll be working on every year and re-looking at. And then we'll just monitor towards our condition goals and If we change our funding and what's available for funding, then we already have a list and we'll just get the next one on the list and we'll get her done. So I think we have good bones, good structure now so that we can duplicate this every year.

So, Chrissy, I have a question, and I know I'm sure my commissioners have several, too. But a lot of this comes down to funding. Your last one is identifying sources and level of service. And I very much appreciate this complete picture we've gotten. Kind of both a two-prong question, but with a little preface, is a reminder to everyone in the city that We right now our road millage is always passed with the county and what is passed by that what comes from the city goes back to the city. What the county collects from the townships and other jurisdictions that aren't us goes to them in the county road commission. I'm curious, and if you don't have this answer, this is more of like teeing this up as we think about all these alternatives, is have we looked at, or when you were looking at all these other places, places like Ann Arbor, do they do their own Rhone villages or are they dependent on their counties as well? Which I know I won't put this on our new attorney but when I our previous city attorney I had spoken to her and she said that we are totally within our right to go to do our own road millage and not wait for the county when our next one is up or do additional so I'm curious if others do that as well as Kind of really in that same vein what that could look like for us to make up some of these gaps and make sure that we're getting kind of the support we get since we don't get any from the county anyways through the county road millage. It doesn't seem to matter if we're with them or not.

We actually do get some money from the county road millage. How much do we get?

It's not very much though, is it?

Yeah. I mean.

Is it a project application base?

No, actually. It's a flat amount.

Okay.

I do want to say though, too, this would be remiss if I didn't make a plug for the work that we're going to do on a statewide legislative change for an accommodation tax. road maintenance and that kind of infrastructure needs are directly tied to the six million visitors this relatively small city gets in a year and that's one of the reasons why we're going to band together with destination communities across the state because they're facing those same issues and so that hopefully that's we can't put all of our hope in that basket but we need to work very hard on that and that's a strategy that we're pursuing currently

Yeah, so we get, we got 1.2 million from the county was estimated.

Per year over the total?

That was per year. Okay. But it, just so you understand, it can't be used for sidewalks or utilities. So it's pretty specific.

that's what yeah so we get a little bit more than i thought but it is pretty conditioned yeah okay and so did so when you were looking at an arbor and other places like that did any of them have their own road millage or were they all with their counties it varies okay so some do though yeah okay yeah thank you absolutely i think i mean i think really

And I pointed it out on a couple of those slides, stormwater and the multimodal mobility. Excuse me, always tongue-ties. I think stormwater, I know we've talked about that back when we did the SAW grant. If we could... get some help in that sense, that would be helpful I think.

Absolutely. I totally agree with you on that. Yeah. So, others? Mitch and then Heather.

Yes. Two things. One, we know roads deteriorate over time and the rate depends on a lot of factors like as you just said, the unusually severe winter that we had does put more strain with more plow trucks going over, more salt usage, other factors. But has there been any investigation for how changing road design can affect how well they last and thus long-term maintenance costs? Like with the redesign of 8th Street, there is roughly the same amount of paved surface, but by changing part of it from driving lanes to bike lanes, the bike lanes don't wear out as fast, and I don't know how well the driving lanes hold up.

Right, and that actually went from concrete to asphalt, too. We talk to engineering about that when they reconstruct. I really am just saying, hey, this is the low-hanging fruit. This is where we should do it. This overlaps with our utilities. This overlaps with the highest business risk score, and this is where I think we should do it. And then I leave it up to engineering to... um you know reconstruct it and how it's built so but we did like cape seal was something we started we do that like eight years ago for the first time i think so we have we are exploring other preventative maintenance treatments and starting to use some of those so like keep sale and my other question we know um funding sources either from the road millage from uh

Dave Kuntz, grants from our own general fund are all limited, is there a way that residents on a street or set of streets could. Dave Kuntz, decide that they want to go the route of a special assessment district and either move up the reconstruction or repair of their street or have it repaired to a higher standard.

I don't know that that's a question for me, but what I can say is that I know that we cost share with special improvement districts, and so that would still take money away from those top programs. So I don't know. That's kind of not my decision.

Yeah, so it's not 100% from the special assistance.

Yes, but it would be additional funding that could be.

it's potential right and that what that's ultimately then with special improvement districts there's typically a match of some kind from a city general fund dollar so that's part of the equation that would be the the key underline there because in theory a street that has people that are willing to pay more might bump themselves up to the front of the line then chrissy's talking about a little bit more fair and balanced approach i appreciate that yeah because like a half a million or yeah half a million dollars was our you know whole cape seal project so if we spend

3 million, even in an SID, that could be more than our match and might mean we can't do like a Cape sale project for the year. So it's just, you know, whatever. It's just all one, you know, whichever basket we want to put it in doesn't matter to me or to the asset management plan. So.

Go ahead, Heather.

No, I totally agree with you, Amy. This is a bias. You know, if you've got a rich street and they put a lot of money in, that's a slippery slope, by the way.

And it's how we did it a lot and why we had to go put a bunch of money into driver's sites a few years ago.

So I'm all about no more millage. We don't need another millage. Nobody wants another millage. But the hotel tax that you're working on, I think that that's the way to go. I mean, we've got 6 million people coming here. But that Act 51 is based on our population. And it doesn't count that 6 million people at all. So this is super out of balance. And it's just not fair that we're having to scrounge around to pay for the infrastructure to support tourism. And 97% of people who come here are driving. Only 3% of tourism comes through the airport. And they're still driving, because they're running a car. So you get the tourist here that all this money has been spent on from Pure Michigan, and then they run into these bad roads. They run into bad roads. They run into dirty parks. So it's wasted money, basically, if you're bringing all these tourists here and then they're bumping around saying, well, wow, I got sold a bad bill of sale or something. So anyway, that's what I have to say. Now I have two questions on top of that. But just to emphasize, I think we've really got to double down and try and get some money back from the state.

We do have to fight it in Lansing though because we can't just go and ask for it ourselves. And so all the sausage ends up getting made we hope will include.

That's why banding together with a bunch of communities is critical and I foresee us collectively hiring a lobbyist and yeah, we're going to pursue that.

Didn't Grand Rapids get some? They did. They did.

Everybody south of 10 got something when it was a statewide proposal. All right. Nobody north. So it's phase two.

All the tourism is up here. Yep. Okay. All right. So I have two questions. I read all the bottom stuff, you know, after the presentation and this one sentence really jumped out. It's on page 51 and it says, in particular the increased desire from the commission and now the complete streets policy to accommodate bicycle traffic as part of roadway projects regardless of roadway classification adds to the cost. I'm not really sure that that reflects the complete street policy. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, it does not require every street to receive bike treatment. It just is asking the staff and the advisory board to look at that and evaluate it for all users.

That's correct. Yes, that is correct. Okay. Yes. And we should make sure we have language that. Yeah, sorry. Okay.

And because there is, you don't have any examples of added costs that have gone into a street just like in the last year or two that,

Carver Street, we redid all the bike lanes.

But staff supported that.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. No, it wasn't meant to say we don't support anything. I mean, we're good with whatever the community decides, or you guys decide we want. It just is an added cost. That's all. So however we want to, whatever we want to invest that in.

Okay, one other thing and this is more of a question for us and for Ben. So the report treats bicycles and pedestrian facilities as added costs rather than as assets with their own service value. So like in the opening slide, the definition of PAMP, it defines asset management as maximizing the value of public infrastructure and minimizing lifecycle costs. But later the report actually says we're only modeling pavement.

Yes, it is only the pavement asset management plan.

But if the city's policy is to provide transportation to everybody, cyclists, pedestrians, transit users, people with disabilities, then bike lanes and crosswalks and sidewalks and curb ramps and refuge islands are all part of transportation assets. Yes. Do we want to think about this?

think that absolutely I mean I'll just chime in here and say that this is specific to pavement right but I your what you just said is absolutely the overall operating paradigm that we need to be moving forward with this is very specifically just pavement one like I said when we started it's literally to put back what's there that's it yeah well I saw Jackie's hand up first and then Lance's

Thank you. Because the 8th Street reconstruction happened before I was joining this body, could you explain to me how the bonding was handled there and what period of time and a little about how that decision was reached?

Christy's shaking her head and looking at me, and I honestly can't answer that well for you right now. I'm sorry.

Later is fine. We had a lot of grants that helped with that, too. So I'll be curious, too, to see what the number shakes out to be for bonding versus grants versus other things we got.

There were a lot of charrettes and public involvement. That was how we got there, yeah.

Yes, I was interested in the financing specifically.

That was early in my tenure and so we had some revolving loans and we had some, but there were some grants that came with that too because of the uniqueness of the project. So I'm curious what that bonded for too.

And I have a couple other questions, but I'll defer to Lance. We'll come back. If you're good with that, I'll come back to you after.

Yeah, I want to stay on the same string as Commissioner Shaw because I noted that it was just the, Presentation, I love it. I'm glad that we're moving in this direction. But I just noticed how it characterized our policy, our Complete Streets policy, and which is a little concerned that it's essentially treating bicycle and multimodal elements as add-ons. And so really what the policy calls for is considering all users in the planning process with context sensitive exceptions, right? And so I guess I would just ask the team to maybe correct the framing so we're not making commitments or really fielding like public expectations based on a stricter standard than we actually have. So we're not just, you know, framing it as this versus that, right? And I appreciate you stating, Ben, that the paradigm is like we're thinking about that. But there are some streets where it's not contextually appropriate to put a bike lane, right, like on that street. And so that's part of the planning process. I just don't want us to be like you have to put it on every street and it's just not correct to how the policy works. Point well taken. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Becky, you can go ahead again. I wondered if staff could advise us on whether there are any technological advances that they see on the mid to long-term horizon that might help us be more effective with the budgets that we do have?

And I think for that, Chris, can I put you on the spot? Can you come up to the dais and just respond to that? As well as, you know, some of the investments we're making in equipment and technology in your department.

But for as far as like technological advances, I think the design of the roadway mainly is, you know, handled by the engineering department. I know there are advances in different types of pavements. But one thing that we've invested in internally is the inter is the in house paving projects. So will you guys approve the purchase of the asphalt zipper? Um, we've expanded our knowledge and our team and our equipment to allow us to do mill and fill projects in house. perfect examples just last week we're able to mill and pave uh one block section of washington street between rose and prospect um and it's a street that because it's a local street with not a whole lot of traffic it was a terrible condition but the low traffic low impact um it doesn't score very high based on the asset management plan because it takes into consideration what the classification of the roadway is. Is it an emergency route? Is it a dead end? There's other ways around it and it's just a very low impact street. So it wouldn't have scored very high, so it would have fallen so much further down the list. But with us being able to do that work in-house with different funding sources with the actual street maintenance funds and stuff like that, it opens up the doors to allow us to expand that and do some more streets that maybe wouldn't have been able to get done. But as far as technological, I know one thing that we've kind of looked at, this is something that asset management had kind of taken on, was there's technologies out there that will actually have cameras in the vehicles and it'll actually rate the roadways. So as you're driving, it's recognizing the cracks and the potholes and whatnot. And it's preparing, you know, reports to say, you know, this is the rating of the road. There's this pothole and it can tell you where all that is. So you'll know it's there. So instead of myself and Tristan, out driving around, you know, raiding the roadways. The cars are doing it themselves. So that's one thing that's kind of out there and we're kind of in the development stage of working with the company. You know, they say, hey, can we put your stuff in your vehicles? We'll give you some information. So it's been kind of cool to see. That's cool.

They actually came to us and asked. We are participating in a pilot with them right now. And because we rate every year and we have such a good rating system, they came to us and said, hey, partner with us. You'll get this for free and help us develop this.

If I can say it, I think I'm just really excited about your approach to innovation and change and being willing to look for new solutions. So, thank you.

Yeah. And then just one thing on the way that the roads are designed. I know the city streets, we designed them to like class a specifications. So I noticed like in the county wide, they'll do frost law restrictions, um, in the spring, like load restrictions because our roads are designed to that higher standard with the thickness of the base and the base material and the thickness of the asphalt. We don't do that. We don't, we're not required or we don't impose those weight limit restrictions in the spring because our roads are designed to that higher standard. So that's one thing that allows them to last quite a bit longer. so that's good to know and it gives us those options down the road with the thicker asphalt to do uh treatments like a mill and fill if there's enough asphalt there we can mill off the top two inches put a brand new surface on it so and that gives us like another 10 ish years so it really extends the life

Yeah, Chris just pointed out a big hole in how our pager ratings work because Washington Street doesn't rate highly for vehicle traffic, but that's how we get to town on a bike. And it's been terrible. I mean, you have to really watch out. I'm so glad it's paved now because it was full of little holes and dings. So, what can, you know, so.

Let's chew on that.

The BRE was high on that one though. So, that's like the emergency route, traffic, all of that goes into that consequence of failure versus. probability of failure and that was a 25 so that but it was only a block so to have them have a contractor come in and mobilize for that just isn't really cost effective which is why it was great for us us to do in-house so it was on the top of it was it was a low-hanging fruit like it needed to be done it was it rated high on the bre scale

But as we make streets like Carter is now, you know, across town street, I think they're trying to get Carver, they're trying to get maybe Hastings, I don't know what they're trying to get, Hastings or something to get it, that you be aware that those are, may not have a lot of vehicle traffic on them but they have bike traffic on them. Yes.

That will be taken. It's a pacer, it doesn't take into account the classification of the roadway or anything. It's just blinders on looking at the condition of the surface. So it doesn't care if it's a highway or a local street. It's just the condition of the surface, and that's just one factor in that equation.

Yeah, we could definitely put that into the BRE ratings, like the risk, the consequence of failure rating. Right now we look at emergency routes and daily traffic and a few other things, but we could definitely, you know, like, not fit you, for example. There's no other way up the hill, right? So geographic issues. We could definitely throw in like crosstown, you know, bike path as, you know, an extra point or something. Yeah, for sure.

Ken, and then I see your hands back up for Jackie.

Jackie and me must be on the same page because she asked the question and it was related to Chris's answer about the Washington Street between Rose and Prospect they got. That's considered a mill and fill, correct? Correct. They just milled off the top about three or four inches?

Oh, it wasn't even that.

yeah it was about two inches asphalt yep milled off the top and they were able to replace it and it turned so what was the pacer rating on that before the mill and fill and then we would consider that a 10 now as a new road right uh no so the way that the pacer works only a full reconstruct can be a 10. um mill and fill cape seal anything like that can only be a nine up to and a brand new road can only be a 10 for one year okay so at least takes it to a nine it was a two before right and i think that it we we wanted to make investment i remember when we bought that asphalt miller because or asphalt zipper because we said we can do a lot of this stuff in house we i'm i know we've had a the asphalt machine for a while we bought the zipper it sounds like we probably need to make an investment in a roller before too long um But being able to provide this stuff cheaper in-house I think is an amazing option. It's something that we strive for. And we can get more of these guys that do this road work, per se. And I think there was a desire to have people painting lines and clearing sidewalks in the winter. Well, maybe that won't become a reality. But if we need seasonal workers that can clear sidewalks, maybe they can be laying asphalt in the summertime in some of these areas. and improving our PACER ratings. So I'm really encouraged by this and thank you for all the hard work that you do on it. So.

Jackie and then Laura. I am really in awe of how detailed you can be in terms of the level of service measurements and how you approach those. I am finding myself wishing for a little more resident oriented input to go along with the technical measurements and just wanted to bring up the possibility other communities I think including Grand Traverse County have ongoing resident satisfaction tracking studies and maybe on a regular basis gathering community input about our roads and how residents believe they're functioning and how they're being used might be a nice complement to the technical side. And maybe we could piggyback or partner with Grand Traverse County on something like that.

Just a thought. Laura, do you mind if we pause for a second? I think Lance wanted to comment.

Yeah, I just wanted to comment right on that.

I'm good.

So, for example, I know in Indianapolis they have a strong mayor, so they call this the Mayor's Action Center, but we can maybe call it the Manager's Action Center here. But they allow residents to essentially, on an app, point out where they're where they're standing and say there's a pothole right here um and so then that pothole go that message goes to you know the the team fixing it and it's fixed within a day or two days maybe depending on the weather so there's there's things that we could do yeah so i would encourage like a resident action something i'll say something and this is specific to michigan maybe it's not in indiana and don't take this the wrong way but it's just like fuller context uh under michigan law with governmental immunity

If we get a notification that there's a defect with a street and we don't fix it within 30 days, financially it opens up the city to a whole lot of exposure. So it's a matter of how many resources do we have to really be able to respond to that type of feedback. It sounds wonderful in concept. I just wanted to paint that other –

I was going to say, I think we could let you mull on that a little of what something like that could look like. I would hesitate to make a committee or anything too formal because as someone who waited for a pond that existed for five years to have the street filled or clean fixed around it in Trevor's Heights neighborhood. I know that the money is there when it's there and the project gets there when it gets there. But I think having that input of people at least letting us know where there might be conflicts in some way that's not putting us at liability. would be something that could be good for pursuing in that vein. Yeah. Laura, you had your hand up.

Yeah. So I thank you for the presentation. It was great. It was thorough and I think it gave us an opportunity to really look at some of these big infrastructure issues more proactively. I'd just like to bring it back to the funding. You mentioned that there's a $44 million gap between our goals and where we are today and that's a pretty staggering number. And I'm wondering, and the message was heard, deferred maintenance isn't free, it just costs more later, right? Yeah. So what I'm wondering is, is there a way we can integrate this discussion into our annual budget discussions proactively so that we can look at the, the decision-making framework that you've laid out the targets that you've laid out more in sync with our budget period that makes sense to me so that we can incorporate some of these goals into the budget cycle and then also you know our other funding opportunities aren't just from our annual budget, but as Ben mentioned, our quest for the possibility of accommodation taxes. And then the other item I wanted to mention is could we also add this to our list of discussion topics as it relates to our existing fund balance and that conversation that we're going to be having in September. I think that this would be worthy of folding into that conversation as well.

one thing i wanted to say really quickly going back and fair enough heather like i wasn't by the way proposing a new millage my thought was just as we go into our next phase of millage discussions whether it's with the county or on our own if we're finding that that is limiting us i think we have to be willing to look at the bigger picture of if we're all paying to a certain millage percentage and want more flexibility in how it's spent or what it might look like keeping that option open because we're not we're gaining a little from the county with some major restrictions on it But what ultimately do we need when we have a $40 million gap that might need to be part of the conversation? We just renewed it a year or two ago, so we've got a few years left. This isn't tomorrow, but just putting that out there as we think about all these. The other thing I just wanted to state as we have this commission sitting here now, I really appreciate this presentation and how it's been put out. A couple years ago, we had a grant brought to us, I think it was, that we were applying for. And at the time, we did not get enough votes from the commission. It was going to try and help us with some funding for Seventh Street and a few other major projects because the time it was seen as too pavement and car focused. I think having this presentation through this lens and part of the kind of the more organic complete conversation is really helpful to us. Next time something like that is presented to us, next time staff sees something like that, there won't be maybe the echo of hesitation that, you know, can sometimes happen with staff of, well, they didn't like it last time. I don't know if we should bring it to them this time. I think this gave us a much better complete picture of how these pieces all fit together. So I just wanted to also state that because I remember that coming. And it was a million or so, I think, that we didn't end up getting. And so I just wanted to underline that as we're having this discussion as well. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, so just in conclusion, I think the funding piece is really critical. And if we can have those ongoing discussions, particularly as it relates to our annual budget and within that cycle, I think it's really important. And I agree, Amy, wholeheartedly that whatever funding mechanisms we have to look at that afford us the flexibility to move this dial forward I think is really important.

Ken, go ahead. I just, the investments that we've made in-house I think are going to make it, much more flexible and allowable for us to keep these roads like that section of Washington street from falling to that too. And then we can very quickly in house, bring it up to a nine as significantly cheaper costs. So I'm like incredibly encouraged by that. And because we all have those streets that we know that are just, how is this one never getting fixed? How is this one never getting fixed? And we can do a mill and fill. And we improve its life for a considerable period of time. And then we can do the crack sealing. And we can do a cape seal on it. And we can get a lot farther with the money that we have. Yep. It's a great point.

Appreciate it, yeah. The only other thing I wanna say is, as we go through this, I'm really, like I said, really appreciative of the conversation, really appreciative of how innovative and thoughtful our staff is. And I'm always surprised sometimes when they're saying like, we found this, and we think we can make it work for this, and it's way I wouldn't have thought about it. I will say we do sometimes have a tendency up here as a body to say, this could be $2 million coming back into the general fund, or we might get this money from something. And in conversation I've already heard up here, we've spent it three times over in different ways. And so I just want us to think about, as we're coming with these big problems, where we as a group, we've done our OKRs and everything else. But a lot of the stuff we talk about is high ranked on all those, and there's only going to be so much money to go around. So that gets into encouraging staff, however you find the funding, wherever you find it. to bring it forward and keep the great efforts that we know that the city manager and staff are working on. And, you know, I'm always hesitant to rely on Lansing because sometimes the sausage gets made in a way where, yep, you're going to get a tourist tax and it can only go to parks or something, which we need money for parks too. But I don't want us to count on that always ending up where we want to. But I know that there's going to be some good initiatives to try and get us as close to that as we can, as well as other factors. So any last words for the staff on this. I think we're all pretty excited in that way that we all get about roads, like you all do too. So thank you for that.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you very much. And lastly, but not least, and Chris, I think we're going to see you again in just a second here. We're going to talk about winter sidewalk snow removal.

Yeah, Chris Weber, our director of mobility infrastructure who you all acknowledge and I do too is very innovative and likes to think of different ways to approach things more effectively. And I asked Chris to just come up with some different options for sidewalk snow clearing removal and sort of those service level standards. And without further ado, we'll turn it over to Chris and he'll probably make you laugh a couple of times. Oh, I hope so.

So Chris Weber, I'm the Director of Mobility Infrastructure. I'm still getting used to saying that. But as you can imagine, that encompasses everything and how people get around. And in this town, in northern Michigan, it's all year round. People want to get around. So walking, biking, all that good stuff. So you heard a lot of numbers in that last presentation. I have a number for you. There's only 161 days until winter. See, there's a life number one check. This was a very popular topic this winter. With the severity of the winter that we had, equipment issues, staffing issues, they were all things that were kind of exacerbated and brought to the front of the line as far as noticing where sidewalks were getting done or a sidewalk in a residential area maybe didn't get done for two or three days. when typically that's not what we had done so it was a very hot topic kind of this winter with level of service and it kind of brought up this conversation of where do we want to go how do we support that so this is just kind of kind of walk down a couple possible avenues so we've prepared a little bit of a presentation for you here and I'll try to keep it brief and stick to the slides so So just a little bit of the program discussion, just evaluating the desired level of winter sidewalk service and corresponding operational investment. Currently, the city, by ordinance, requires that adjacent property owners keep their sidewalks clear of snow and ice. The city historically, as of a courtesy, has provided this service because we're already out there required to maintain the sidewalks adjacent to our own properties. And it's kind of grew into this thing where we're doing every sidewalk, every trail. And it's something that the residents have not only come to love, but come to expect. Just kind of it was brought to the limelight, the front of the line this winter with maybe where we were lacking and just started some conversations of where we want to go from there. As kind of what was mentioned in the asset management plan is infrastructure continues to expand. With every sidewalk, we're trying to infill where maybe sidewalks are missing or we're adding bike lanes or trails. So with the added infrastructure, that's added work for us to clear for the winter. And with six routes, it's already a full-time, you know, eight hours to get a route clear on a normal snowfall. Seasonal staffing has become increasingly difficult to recruit and retain. As you can imagine, telling somebody that we're going to pay them $18 to $20 an hour to come in at 3 o'clock in the morning in the worst weather to sit in a tiny little metal can,

Is that how you pitch it?

No, I saw it a lot better. You get left alone. You listen to music. You can't hear the radio, but it's there.

I've seen them, and they look like they're having a lot of fun.

It's what you make it. But it's difficult to retain because just with the way the job markets are going, $20 an hour is really not that attractive to people, especially when it's not – uh, guaranteed 40 hours a week. It's an on call as needed basis during the worst weather, early morning hours. Um, and you're out with some, you know, elevated level of responsibility of operating a piece of machinery on a sidewalk or a trail that's shared with pedestrians. And then you're crossing roadways that are being occupied by cars and trucks and whatnot. So, it takes quite a bit to be able to jump in and do this job successfully. Um, and then with that, with the expansion and the, uh, kind of the expected level of service, it's continued to rise. You know, they want, everybody wants to be able to walk and bike, you know, and that's what we sell ourselves as, as a walkable bikeable community. So, and that's not just during when it's nice out, it's year round. Um, So our current program, like I mentioned, it's kind of evolved into over the years where we're doing all the sidewalks all the time. It's not required by ordinance, but it's something that's come to be expected and appreciated by the residents. It seems like they care more about the sidewalk getting done than the road getting plowed. So we get more calls about sidewalks not being snowblowed than we do the road not getting plowed. We currently have seven dedicated sidewalk routes, six being maintained by city staff, and the one downtown being maintained by a contractor. The downtown one is triggered by a snowfall in excess of two inches. The residential streets, it's kind of whatever, an inch, whatever it is. If it snows, we're basically going out to clear the sidewalks. This supports year-round mobility and accessibility. Our current system includes neighborhood sidewalks, the shared use pathways, Tart Trail, bicycle facilities, downtown. And then one other caveat to that is the Boardman Lake loop. which is currently contracted out that's paid through that endowment fund. We have a contractor currently. That could change. You never know. Maybe they don't want to do it anymore. Something else comes up. That's another thing that's very looked forward to for residents and visitors is the use of that loop year round. So that's something also to take into consideration. But right now, the way that we staff that is we have one dedicated full-time person, and the rest of them are filled by part-time. We had a really hard time recruiting and retaining staff. We had, in an instance, two people made it through the first day of training in the backyard going around cones, and they quit. They called and said, nope, I'm not coming back. So it is a lot of stress, if you can imagine. um being able to to manage sitting in that thing all day by yourself and the added level responsibility of sharing that you know sidewalk with people and crossing roads and whatnot so as i mentioned some of the challenges staffing um we do get help from water and sewer um as you can imagine it's it's their slower time of the year it's not like they're out you know doing water taps and stuff like that for projects so it's been a good partnership where when they can they will give us one two employees to run a route which is nice because it's a seasoned full-time employee that knows the route knows the equipment they know exactly what they're doing we don't have to you know, tell them what to do. They show up, they go do it, and it's great. But like I said, it's been hard to retain people. The unpredictable availability of people, you know, they have a doctor's appointment, they've got another job, whatever. When that person's not here, we don't have another body to fill that route. So it just kind of builds up. Just to kind of paint the picture of what that looks like, on a typical day we start at 7 a.m. for sidewalks and roads, but on what we call a full call out. So if we get a fair amount of snow overnight or there's a lot of cleanup that needs to be done, we'll start at 3 a.m. And a lot of times we're working 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. or 4 a.m. to 3 p.m. The sidewalk operators, they work until their route's done or until they have to leave. We currently have nine dedicated sidewalk machines, four trackless units, three whacker nuisance, which are the mini loaders, and two multi hogs. So as I mentioned, we have seven routes, six of which are maintained by city staff. You would look at that and go, wow, we have plenty of equipment. We actually have extra. um well the parks department uses one of the whackers to you know maintain their ice rinks if we have any breakdowns or equipment issues service whatever that takes us down another one and before you know it we don't have enough equipment to get all the work done So then that's something we work closely with the garage, the fleet management department, to make sure that we've got the best equipment and that it's up and running. And that's one nice thing about having on-staff mechanics to keep that equipment going. With the equipment I've named, it's very specialized. So with a specialized piece of equipment, the cost goes up. It has to be narrow enough to fit down a residential sidewalk. It has to be short enough that it'll clear all the branches and everything. It has to have enough horsepower to get the work done. And it has to be light enough to go over some of the boardwalks. So like the Boardman Lake Loop, it was like 66 or 6,700 pounds. It's not easy to do. They actually had to strip some of the armor off of these vehicles to get them light enough that they would go over. So with it being very specialized, it's very expensive. A sidewalk piece of machinery can cost about $200,000. Yeah, so it is something that we use year-round. The Wacker Noose and Mini Loaders are very handy because they're very small and nimble. We use them year-round. We use them during the summer all the time for projects. All the machines we use all four seasons during our leaf pickup. But if there were other avenues that we could pursue with a dedicated trail route, those trails are wider, they usually have good clearance above they don't have the weight restrictions we could get into maybe like a kubota or a smaller tractor with a cab and a front mount blower for a fraction of the cost so that's something we'd have to evaluate but then that machine would only be able to be on that route so that's something we've talked about um all right so What we kind of wanted to go through is kind of the best case scenario, worst case scenario, and the in between. We had originally coined the option one as the Cadillac level service, but I don't know that it holds the same weight that it used to. So we went with premium. Option two is status quo, what we're doing now.

Lance has a Cadillac, he's just greatly offended.

I think they're great. Just kidding.

And then option two, status quo, what we're doing now, how we can maybe make some improvements, make that a little bit more reliable. And then option three, we say, you know what? We're not required by ordinance to do this. It's the property owner's responsibility. We'll take care of ours. We expect the residents to take care of theirs. Obviously, that may not be the most popular option, but we'll go through all of them. So option one, premium level of service. What would that look like? So that means having dedicated staff and equipment that we can pretty much guarantee that we're going to have that route done, all the sidewalks done within a short period of time. If you talk to other municipalities following a snow event, They don't even say that they're going to clear the roads within the first 36 to 48 hours following a snow event. Well, we are typically, the roads are plowed and all the sidewalks are done within the 24 to 36 hours. So having full time dedicated staff that we can pretty much guarantee that they're going to be here, they're going to show up, they know what they're doing, they're well trained. And with having full time dedicated staff, you got to have equipment to put them in. So there's investments in staff and equipment. Um, some of the enhancements would be like that dedicated multimodal route saying, uh, because right now a residential route will pick up segments of trails that are adjacent to their routes. So the entire trail might not get done all at once. We'll do, you know, this guy will do this segment while he's doing his route and then the next person will pick up the next one. They're in the area. I'm having dedicated, trail or multimodal route with a piece of equipment that's maybe a little bit cheaper and fits that use a little bit. It's a wider snowblower, we can get it done faster.

Thank you. That was not very subtle. It was better to get up and do it.

I flipped the page, but I forgot about the clicker. So the dedicated multimodal route, we increased the equipment redundancy, improved the service times, consistent citywide service, and we reduced the dependency on seasonal employees. That looks like five additional full-time jobs. staff with benefits, you know, you're talking about $600,000. So that's pretty good investment. And then another 200 ish thousand investment in equipment. Some of the pros, high level of service, consistent citywide maintenance, improved accessibility, mobility, dedicated mobility route, reduced staffing uncertainty, better supports the walkable goals. And then the cons, obviously there's a significant investment in and ongoing investment with those legacy costs with employees, the additional equipment that would likely be required, and then like I mentioned, the long-term personnel.

Chris, I know it's on your slide, but if you can go back, you mentioned five additional FTEs, but can you say some of the things that they'd be doing when it's not wintertime?

So that's something we have to look at is, okay, we bring these employees on during the winter, and what are they going to do during the summer? And that kind of ties into some of the other conversations that we've had with the possibility of in-house painting or expanded in-house paving operations stormwater maintenance with the MS4, uh, you know, permit coming. Um, so there's, there's things to consider. So you got to look at that with full time employee. That's a year round obligation. Um, and then that's more work for me and Jeff to keep those people busy. Um, so that's something you also need to look at is weighing that out to make sure that we've got work to keep them busy year round. Um, I think that covers it. CHRIS JERRAMSEN. That's great. Thank you. CHRIS JERRAMSEN. And then option two, status quo. Like I mentioned, right now it's a mix of full-time employees, mainly part-time, the six sidewalk routes, the one downtown part-time supplemented by full-time, and then the existing fleet. with scheduled replacements of course. The fleet management department does a really good job of having a projected lifespan of a piece of equipment and, maintaining them, making sure that they're operational through that. And then when it needs to be replaced, when it's already scheduled, it's planned for, the money's accounted for, it's been thought out through the entire process. So the expected outcomes currently, like majority of sidewalks are cleared within a reasonable time frame. Reasonableness is a standard that any, you know, it's up to the person looking at the standard what they think is reasonable. But typically, I would say 24 to 48 hours. We try to have everything done, as long as it's not over and over, like multiple clipper systems or the lake effect train setting up and getting multiple days worth of snow. But as this storm this spring showed us, it was four plus days before we had all. It was even longer than that, five, six days sometimes to get all the sidewalks done, because it was just so heavy. There was so much snow. It was such slow going. Some routes may experience delays. continued recruitment challenges, which we've talked about with management and HR, like maybe there's some incentives or maybe there's some pay increases for those to attract maybe better part-time staff, and then maybe an incentive to get them to stick around all winter, like some to consider. But then we have the continued equipment, you know, we're just dealing with what we currently have with the scheduled replacements, we have breakdowns, we have not a whole lot of overlap. The cost is there's really not a whole lot of increase. It's kind of what we're already doing. And within the preparation of this, we worked with the Treasury Department to pull some numbers. Last winter, with what we code for our job codes, it was about $188,000 between labor and equipment costs. does not include, I would say, management. So myself and Jeff's scheduling and all that good stuff. So roughly, currently, I would say $200,000 plus is what it's costing the city to do the current level of service for sidewalks. pros no major increases existing programs familiar to staff no ordinance changes are required maintains current expectations the cons are we have the reliance on seasonal staff the difficulty with recruitment limited equipment redundancy you know we'll still have delays during those majors events and then it's difficult it's becoming more and more difficult to sustain long term When I started, we had a group of volunteers from TART that were looking for something to do during the winter and kind of crossed paths. And it was, hey, why don't you guys come work for the city? You guys can snowblow sidewalks and trails. You guys aren't really doing a whole lot on TART stuff during the winter. It worked out great because they came back every year. They knew what they were doing. They knew the routes. It seems like every year we're training a new person. And it's hard to convey those little things like, oh, I remember right here there's a boulder, so I got to jog around it, or the sidewalks makes a little dog leg turn here. So every year we're tearing up somebody's yard because it's hard to remember all that stuff. But yeah, that's where we're at currently. And then option three.

We know you're going to go with this one.

It's my personal favorite. Just kidding. So I loved being in the sidewalk machines. It's like your own little place. You get left alone. You just sit there. You put your headphones on, put on some tunes. It's a good time. Option three, like I said, we got that Cadillac, that top end service, and then we go down to the bottom is we fall back on that ordinance. And we say, OK, this is costing the city a lot of money. It's becoming increasingly more difficult to hire and maintain retained staff. The ordinance does require that property owners keep their sidewalks clear of snow and ice. We will maintain ours, and we will expect the residents by ordinance to maintain their sidewalks. which I will say, while we're out and about, we do encounter residents that have already cleared their sidewalks. And we do our best to not leave any extra snow when they just shoveled and whatnot. So it's happening out there, but it's just not citywide. Our municipal responsibilities would be like city hall, parks, public facilities, and any sidewalks adjacent to city-owned properties or trails. Additional considerations would be it might require additional enforcement staff, like code enforcement, if that was something that we considered. I will say that in some other municipalities, the level of service that we provide is not something that you see across the board with northern winter climate regions. It's very unusual to see a municipality doing every sidewalk. Frank, you know, Frank who recently retired, he constantly, you know, would talk about Albany, New York is that they have a team of code enforcement officers and after a snowfall, they give X amount of hours and then they go out and start ticketing. So, It's something that is more common than you would think that the city doesn't provide that service citywide. Some of the pros of that would be the low operating costs, the consistent with the existing ordinance, reduce the staffing needs, reduce the equipment needs. One thing I did while preparing for this talking with Joel, our fleet department of fleet management, So the way he worded it, I'm like, wait, repeat that because I like the way you said that. The whole reason we have this specific piece of equipment is to provide the service. Like I said, it's very specialized. We could have other equipment to mow with or to do brooming with that are probably a heck of a lot cheaper, but because it's required for this, it's the one machine that can do it all, you know, so it provides that year round and it meets the sidewalk snow removal needs. Um, so when he mentioned that, I'm like, all right, that's really good. I like that. So we fall back on, okay, we can get a cheaper lawnmower to mow roadsides with or, you know, a tractor with a front broom instead of this or whatever it is, you know, um, so there could be reducing some of the equipment costs. Obviously the cons would be, change in public expectation like I said it's something that other than leaf pickup sidewalk snow removal is probably top two for what the city residents appreciate and what services they're getting for their taxes you know it's one thing we hear over and over again leaf pickup and sidewalk snow removal so The other con would be inconsistent sidewalk conditions, increased enforcement demands, additional code enforcement, and then that reduced accessibility, so accessibility concerns. So just a little bit of a comparison here. You know, you got your premium, your status quo, and your property owner responsibility, high, medium, current, and the limited. The staffing impacts, as I laid out, the high end, you got five employees. The current is what we currently have. the property owner could be reduced possibly, um, or no need for additional part-time staff, but maybe an increase with, uh, enforcement. And then the costs, since I kind of laid out 600 for employees, 200 for equipment, um, what we're currently spending 188 to 200, and then the low cost of the falling back on the ordinance. So some of the takeaways, uh, The city sidewalk and multimodal infrastructure continues to grow. We see it with all the projects that are coming in. We're adding connectivity. We're completing sidewalks where there maybe never were sidewalks before. We're adding trails, bicycle lanes, dedicated bike separated facilities. So it continues to grow. Staffing has been increasingly difficult to recruit and maintain. Some of the reliability and the redundancy of equipment. Service level expectations must be balanced against the available resources and future direction of what level of service do we want to provide and what can we reasonably maintain with where we're at. If we do want to do any increase, how do we get there? Some policy considerations. We need to evaluate the desired level of winter sidewalk service and corresponding operational investment. The current ordinance, like I said, it requires the property owner to maintain them for snow and ice. It's historically been us. Like I said, it's something that's become greatly depended on and expected and appreciated by the residents. And then the direction would be what level of service should residents expect? Should the city continue the citywide sidewalk maintenance? Should property owners assume greater responsibility? And then how do we pay for it if we do want to increase?

So considering Chris even laughed at us going for option number three, I'm guessing that nobody really wants to argue to keep that on the table. So. I think one thing I would add to the conversation for us policy consideration outside of what would be under his responsibility is as we move forward with whatever we decide next, also do we need to re-examine our ordinance to adjust it accordingly? Which is not on your department, that's on us as a policy board. But we kind of have played around with this the entire time I've been elected for almost 11 years now plus. And we keep saying, well, it's technically the owner's responsibility. And everybody expects us to do it. And then we're stuck with a lot of money that's not really being accounted for because the expectation is there. But people aren't realizing that's actually extra strain on the budget until this wonderful presentation. So thank you. And I saw Mitch, then Ken, and then Lance.

One, I do see some value to having the ordinance and I. Not saying no ordinance, I'm saying we'd adjust it. I actually could see a possibility where we say increase enforcement in the downtown area where it's currently contracted since that is the place where you do have business owners that are here through the winter. In a lot of our neighborhoods, looking at my own street, I can see many houses that in January, February, there isn't somebody physically there to shovel out the sidewalk. But in our downtown, I could see a scenario where putting more onus on the property owner would result in

faster snow clearing and more consistent so you're saying though we're penalizing people who are not here or who are here year round versus people who leave and leave it for us to take care of also just a note that and i meant to bring this up before the the um downtown removal right now is currently paid for by tiff so if that goes away that would be a city expense that would come on to us too to keep that up um but just wanted to make that and ken you were next

um yeah i was just gonna we're talking about the ordinance and it it's been suggested by people to me before that what is the point of this if we're not going to enforce it i have received a ordinance violation for leaving my leaves out a day past the pickup and it was unsettling for me and i didn't have to pay for it out of my own pocket it was very frustrating so i can only imagine what it would be like if we started enforcing for snow removal. So we definitely need to revisit this policy and adjust it before winter.

Yeah. Lance?

Yeah, I think probably a majority of houses that either don't have their sidewalks done are probably second homes. We have a ton of them in our city. So I would love to see maybe a little bit of an increase in code enforcement. Like if you can afford to have a second home in Traverse City, then you can afford to probably pay somebody to come do your sidewalk. Just a thought.

So in that vision, Lance, you're kind of going with where we're at now, that option, but a little bit of elevated enforcement?

Yeah, I'd like to see a little bit elevated code enforcement around it, since we do have the ordinance. And we weren't in place when that was put in place, but obviously it was done for a reason. I do think, I don't know, and maybe you can tell me, it was brought up by a couple neighbors, plow speed and how very fast-moving plows can sometimes completely undo the sidewalk that was just done or just shoveled by a neighbor. And so just a concern from the public that I wanted to surface.

We have a cartoon hanging in our office with a snowplow going down the road, throwing the snow. And then there's a sidewalk guy and a snowblower pulling it right back in. And it's the constant battle. And we hear about that. You would think, you know, look at our trucks with those big front plows, like you would typically consider that like a county plow. But you got to think about is our obligation is to clear the roadway curb to curb, especially with our stormwater inlets at the curb. We get those warmups, December, January, whatever it is, that water needs to be able to get to those inlets. And if there's three foot of ice built up, we got to be able to, you know, get the water to the curb. And then with that curb, you got six inches of curb. It's always in these older neighborhoods. The grass is six, you know, the sod is six inches higher than the curb. And then you had three foot of snow on top of it. We got to have those front plows to get the snow up and over the bank. And sometimes it goes a little bit further. So, and that's something we try to optimize our routes so that the snow blowers, getting there after the snow plow truck and not the other way around because then we're just, you know, but it is job security.

So really quick too, and this goes into something that's been a mini pet project of mine, is we do through GIS and everything have the ability for people to track where the plows are. which would be a great fun thing for us to name it every winter too. I'm just gonna say that so people could see when the plow is coming through the neighborhoods so they can kind of have an idea of like, oh, I was about to go out and shovel, but plow hasn't been through and it looks like they're a few blocks away.

Live interactive, like a map?

I mean, you don't get to watch them, but it's like bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. But wouldn't it be cool if we could name them too, like a lot of other winter companies? Plowy McPlowface. Yeah, like Plowy McPlowface and things like that.

One further question around how you kind of prioritize. For example, I live on a street that doesn't have sidewalks, so our access to leave the house is through our alleyway because the the even just getting to the street is a challenge because we don't have a sidewalk and the this winter we got up to like five feet and so what's what does it look like for streets that don't have sidewalks where alleyways are pretty much the only accessible way for potentially somebody with a disability who can't you know climb through a pile of snow so the way that we prioritize roads we

Mainly do the highway and our emergency routes first. Majors, we work our way into the neighborhoods, and alleys are typically last. And that was something that really stood out with that big storm we had in March, where we at least had one pass down most roads, but then alleys hadn't been touched. And they're like, I can't even get out because my car's in the alley. It doesn't matter that the roads plowed. I can't go anywhere. So that is something that we, you know, we can look at when we're open to optimizing. And anytime, like we put a new driver in a route, we tell them the way that the previous person did it. And then we say, well, if you can figure out a way to make it more efficient and work better for you, go for it. You know, and even on the routes I was on, I made some changes. I'm like, well, instead of doing, you know, two lefts and a right, what if we just do a couple of loops, you know,

and then we don't have to be turning around on the main road and it you know save time it was safer so we're we're always looking at making things a little bit more efficient okay perfect yeah i just want to encourage you to think about those streets that don't have sidewalks that alleyway is their only access from a prioritization standpoint heather ken and jackie

Yeah, the Montana option, which is option number three. Well, Montana does nothing ever. You just, they don't even plow the streets. You're just driving on two feet of snow. Until it melts, it does. It's not free because if Chief Richman has to hire people to go out and hand out tickets, you know, there's maybe five extra employees on that side. You know Marquette, they have a whole mobility strategy which is they clear everything and they get more snow than we do because they really believe that walkability is, And we do have our complete streets policy, which is also that sidewalks are a transportation infrastructure. They're an asset. So given that philosophy, open sidewalks don't end in November. They should be open all year round. And I also think that it's economic development. We have an older demographic here in Traverse City that continues to arrive. If we don't say, if we have unplowed sidewalks, that we want you to drive. And that's not just for the older demographic, but that's for younger people who are moving in maybe to some of our new apartment buildings. And again, if those sidewalks aren't cleared, then we want you to drive. And so we're just adding to congestion. I feel like our, as far as the extra five employees that are called for, I mean, couldn't this be some kind of public works? workforce would all of those five people or four people or whatever would they all have to work for roads all year round could could they do also do park work um yeah i i was showing chris today uh bryant park that rain that we got last night which was super fast and i mean it was like 20 minutes got over half an inch of rain it blew out at bryant park just these huge um I don't know what you would call it, like drainage ditches. There's a crater around each of those stormwater. I mean, huge, like this, like four, three, four feet. Chris says, well, usually we can get people, somebody over there to push the sand back in so that the public doesn't see that. But, you know, everybody's busy and a lot of stuff happened last night. So it didn't get done. And so the whole beach is like, whoa, what happened here? And as also Chris said, there's a lot of stormwater infrastructure there that cleans the water before it sweeps in there. But if you're somebody who doesn't know that and you're on the beach, you're thinking, oh my gosh, what happened here? And maybe I don't want my kids to go anyway that's off-topic but couldn't those five people also be doing park maintenance yes so you're advocating for I mean maybe it's not quite that big but sure let's aim for that you've hit on something else that I was would have mentioned commented about in the park I don't know if you ever seen that in real time when the waters coming out

amazing it's like the hydrostatic pressure when it pushes those manhole covers off and then the water starts to wash out the beach i'm really curious to see what this shoreline stabilization study will say about that and how that because i mean sand is obviously washing out the water too so i'm really curious about that but if you never saw it as it was happening you wouldn't know that it happens and people clean that up afterwards so appreciate their service to that but um You hit on another note that I wanted to comment about, and that is our residents and our population is aging in place. And they're either going to pay someone to do this, most likely, or they're going to pay through their taxes. So it's getting paid for by the resident one way or another. So I'd like to see it continued. And I don't know if I would call it Cadillac anymore. I would call it maybe the Denali package.

The Denali package.

I don't want to trademark that, but.

I think it's already, Cadillac already has that package, don't they? I'm just kidding.

Is that a Cadillac thing? I thought it was a Chevy thing. Oh, maybe it's a GM. Got the car guys. But I just, I see our population aging and to put more physical burden on them to get out and actually clear the sidewalk when they may not be capable or able. and then put the financial burden of having to pay someone to do that, whether it's $20 to the neighbor kid or a landscaping company in the winter that can come and do that. Can't find them?

You can't find them.

Can't find the $20 neighbor kid anymore.

Even the services get back to Jackie's point. Even the service gets backed up sometimes because there's only so many.

Yep. And so I like to see the premium in-house option pursued because those people can be – paving roads in the summer they can be working for parks doing some mowing in the summer that's that's all contractual stuff that you have to work out with those labor groups so i mean we kind of we're idealistically thinking of how we'd like to see that done and we gotta put that on you to make that those possibilities into realities but the direction that you're looking for i think from me is the increased staffing with that increased cost

Jackie? First off, I want to thank Commissioner Funk for acknowledging those of us who maybe have aged out of doing our own snow shoveling. I would really be grateful to see ADA considerations put at the top of our priority list in terms of allowing our demographic, our growing demographic of people aging in place to be able to stay here successfully. I am all about bringing, shared human resources you know looking at what can be worked out between streets and parks and you know but having having the staffing in-house rather than outsourced because of the efficiency and and and the control that we can exert and then finally I was really enthusiastic and and pleasantly surprised to hear about the the relationship with TART and winter maintenance on trails and whether you think that can be resurrected or expanded I think of TART as just a a fundraising powerhouse and if they put their people and their resources and their attention on this issue of making the trails available year-round, I think that would give us a huge advantage, a partnership like that. So, your guidance on that would be appreciated.

Although just to clarify, what Chris was saying was people who were volunteering for TART came and worked for them in the winter. It was not volunteer because TART when we completed the loop and other- But they were the connecting point. Well, what I was just going to say was that there is a maintenance fund that comes from Garfield Township for the loop too that includes that cleanup. So that is partially them and partially us for depending on what part of the TART trail we're talking about.

So I just wanted to clarify that.

Thank you. yeah but i mean i agree if we can find people elsewhere um i just wanted to really quickly chime in of i think um you know chris you guys did too so well with the line painting solutions and finding those compromises as we work forward i'm kind of with everybody but in between of i'm not inherently expecting five ftes in the next budget but if it makes sense to add two or three because you can definitely see where parks and everybody else needs some and then you're cutting down on the number of extra people you might need to find in the winter. If you need all five and you've exhausted everything, I think that's a fair thing too. But, you know, we've seen when we've had these kind of options brought to us that there can be that kind of middle blending or doing X to get us to Y point until we finally end up at Z at the end. So I think however that might look for you all to delve into that. I know when we have this conversation on its own, I agree that we have citizens that can't do the sidewalks anymore. I think some of these things become a given of why isn't it done when it's really, okay, this is an above and beyond for us, though, and especially Frank's example of Albany, right? That is a snow-laden city, and it's great that we don't do that to our citizens, but I think we have to really underline that that comes with a cost, as we have more of these conversations and as we've been having them, a lot of them indicate then we need another employee for X or Y, and we do. But I think that as we sit down and say, well, I'm curious to see that in the budget, or I'm curious to see how we can do this here, and this isn't about your department, this is about all of us in general and really our work, is we can accumulate a lot of staff really quickly if we're doing every wish list. So I think some of it on us is to be who of us is to of. It's not always A, B, or C. Sometimes it's combination or sometimes it's us being a little bit more realistic or sometimes it's us changing an ordinance so that it's not out there to beat people over the head with when we don't have any intention of using it so I just wanted to kind of frame that in the perspective of where we're at and as we go forward but the bigger picture as well so Laura and then Mitch

Real quick, so Amy, I think you and I are really aligned on this. And Chris, I just want to comment that I don't think you're giving your crew enough credit. I think we're pretty darn close to a premium service already. So it's for those of us who go out and and attempt to shovel those those big drifts it's it's not easy but every higher service level is going to have a price tag and i really appreciate this presentation because it helps us helping us understand the trade-offs helps us develop better policy so these options in detail i think are really helpful I am concerned about passing on costs, option three is just not an option to the aging, our aging population and our disabled population. They would have to hire for that service to get it done. So I'm with Amy and I know you're super creative, what's the most creative efficient way that we can accomplish some of these goals or move towards some of these goals, maybe not at the Maybe not five FTEs and the legacy costs that are associated with that, but trying to continue the premium service I think we already have with maybe a slight elevation and some more consistencies so that we're operationally efficient because it sounds like we have some built-in efficiencies. I'm always concerned with an ordinance that isn't grounded in reality. So I want to get back to Amy's first question to the group, and that is, should we look at amending the ordinance? We have something on the books that it just doesn't happen. And so I think as policymakers, we have to make some decisions. And then our ordinances have to be framed from that policy perspective. I'd like to see both things happen.

Sorry, Mitch had to stand up.

You mentioned a bit about training and people individually experienced with a given route, but I'm wondering are there additional things that could be done either on the city side or in the public side to improve accuracy, whether it's say better marking where the sidewalks are or cleaning up where there is say a gap or a slight jog in it due to there used to be a tree here but and the pavement is good but let's just straighten out this little bit of sidewalk here and then we can run the plow a little smoothly because yes On the streets, you can grind against the edge of the curb and you know that that will be there because you can hear it. But on the sidewalk, you don't necessarily know until you start spraying dirt.

Yeah, I tell them when the snow coming out of the chute starts looking like cookies and cream ice cream, stop. Good visual. On that real quick, something I've seen just in my short few years in management, when I first came upstairs four or five years ago, we were only buying like 600 plow stakes. you know, and we recycle them. Um, we pull them and recycle them. Um, but we've increased that. So we're trying to be more accurate and having a standard of where we place them. So we know it's like the, the buoys in the bay, red, right return, you know, or whatever it is. Right. So the stakes always go on the city side of the sidewalk. So you always keep the stakes,

you know that type of thing so we're trying you know to increase that that little bit of like standard and accuracy so we can limit some of those you know lawn damage calls in the spring I guess this is like this is an operational question is it accurate that so we have X we get a big snow the guys that are gonna run the plows and clear sidewalks show up in the morning and then they start is it accurate that snowblower joe isn't going to redo that route until every sidewalk in the city has been cleared like i'm kind of wondering do we clear everything once before we start clearing a second time because that it kind of gets to the question of equity like because that's always a big thing this neighborhood always gets it first this neighbor what do we do everything at least once before we start doing something a second time we try um we do have like i said some of those guys that have experience in those routes and

certain neighborhoods maybe that's where we typically put a part time person for whatever reason. Um, and those are the ones you hear about. Like we know we're never getting our sidewalks done. We're always, you know, last to be thought of. Um, but yeah, we do try to, once that was done, we move on to the next one. Um, and we have some guys that are doing multiple routes. Um, if we don't have a dedicated person for each one, our, our goal would be one person in each route. They all get done in a day. you know eight hours everything's done complete and then we move on but you know some of these times this winter we had guys going out plowing the one day and only a third of the sidewalks get done so then the very next day the roads are good we're pulling those drivers and putting them in machines to try and get caught up you know but we also have snow hauling pothole patching because that doesn't end during the winter so there's always you know things we got to try and balance that what's it the most important so

So I don't want to be too short, but what I keep hearing and what I think we're going with is people are interested, well, not number three, and getting us some more people. Maybe it's not the highest end dollar of the Cadillac, but some kind of blending of definitely keep doing what we've been doing, see if we can improve that service a little bit, putting it to you all to get creative with both the funding and the manpower. The only thing I would add to is, and you might already look into this, but different programs, both certification programs as well as degree programs, sometimes will give you work experience, credits and things like that, so maybe there's a tapped resource there and through Michigan Works of people who are needing some things to be filled that fit into as maybe non-traditional. We think of office people as, oh, they can do an internship That's going to count towards credit. There's a lot of things like that that go towards work experience that might actually apply to some of the work you all do now, too, for some of the state certification programs.

So just throw that out there. This is going to be a good opportunity for Val and Chris to get to know each other really well. And we will bring back, and we'll aim to do that probably at the August study session. I'm saying that because if we're going to a look at potentially adding some employees, uh, depending on the approach, you'll have to make a budget amendment and then we need to get to work on recruitment, but we'll, I want to acknowledge that the commission is asking for some increased service level, but every employee we add obviously adds cost. And we are currently right now using fund balance for city operations as they exist today. So I just want to be sober in that way. Like you said, when things are brought to you, and I don't say this to dismiss, but Right now, it sounds really great, but we want to help you look at the whole picture, and we'll bring that back to you. And then we, I saw your hand.

I didn't want to interrupt you, but I wanted to speak to that note. This is an incredible ask, because I recall the budget presentation. You said this is a multi-year budget without recommended full-time employees increases. So this will take that amendment. This will be an extra ask.

And we'll return to you with a creative recommendation for your consideration. And then the ordinance discussion sounds like that needs to come back. And so I think that we should plan on bringing that back to you for discussion here in the next couple of months.

Well, yeah, I was going to say I would think though that we want to hear from you on the budget and what's realistic right now before we change the, because I also would say that in the past we've had, again like we've talked about ramping up right so maybe it's maybe you guys ultimately come with us with one fte or this year until we have the fund balance conversation we'd like to maintain it for one more year but keeping x y and z in mind so i want to also say that while we're having this larger conversation and moving in this direction because we are thinking more multiple years as a collective now is keeping that in mind as well that we're not expecting the yep, we want three full-time people, we're going to hire them all this year and that's it. I think we can, if there's a plan that can be laid out before us, I think we'd all be interested in that too.

Yeah, I thank you for saying that. I mean, my right now preference as your city manager would be to really wait on adding FTEs until we have that broader discussion because that's broader and it's going to be more global and we've got a lot to consider in terms of funding needs and our revenue constraints.

I support the City Manager's recommendation on that. I think this has been a great conversation, but I think we just need to be really careful and deliberate about the adding of full-time employees. So I like the concept of the added service in meeting people's service expectations. But I think we have to recognize that comes at a cost. And if we can be creative and efficient about it, I would support it. But adding five full-time FTEs isn't something that we're positioned to do right now.

And I think we can get really, I'll say this and then stop, but I think we can get really creative with some of those seasonal employees in terms of retention bonuses, guaranteed dollar amounts if you stay with us and available, and increased hourly rates for them too. So we'll come back to you with some different thoughts and expect that in August. But with a likely, let's not look at adding too much before we have these long-range budget discussions.

that's totally fine okay and I think the idea of maybe bonuses or something for the part-time but you know I'm seeing our parks in the summertime need a lot of help and then our sidewalks in the winter time need a lot of help so yes creativity is called for yes absolutely challenge accepted I echo

Commissioner Shaw on that.

Well, I think we'll look forward to seeing what you guys bring back. And again, knowing that this will probably be an evolving conversation too. So we don't expect the ultimate best plan you could ever imagine in the next month. We'll just see where you guys are at and get the updates. So thank you for that.

yeah and i just want to say that i do agree that um just kind of based on the trends what i saw like while researching this and other municipalities we are providing a pretty top-notch service already and i think that maybe the proposal that we come up with will be you know you throw out that high end that low end and you know maybe that's strategic and we come to the middle ground of a balanced compromise where we're still providing a very good service and maybe it's those incentives with part-time employees it's you know it's something in between um so something that works for everything great perfect love it thanks guys all right well with that we will now move into our final public comment of the one public comment of the evening does anybody want to make public comment

Go right ahead, please. All right, I'm going to read the rules real quick. We ask that you state your name and address, indicate if you are a city resident, non-city resident, and or city business owner. We have a three minute time allotment per speaker. When your time is elapsed, the timer will beep. And finally, we request that all language be respectful to all parties.

Hi, everyone. I mean, you talk for two hours and I just have seconds. I will try to be quick. Jesus Villa, 1004 Boyd Avenue. Mi casa, su casa. Igualmente. So, okay. So I'm surprised. So I have been living here in Traverse City for four years with my wife. I'm surprised that we don't have a stormwater fee here in Traverse City because, I mean, at the end of the day, the freezing water is what destroys the roads. And Heather, yeah, you mentioned it, like the tourists and everything. and yeah, like the hotel taxes, I don't know what are you trying to do, and also it makes sense, but also, for me at least, it's not fair. So, like parking lots, commercials, you know, with like, Yeah, the parking lots. So most of those projects are required to retain their own water. But others don't do that. So I don't know exactly how it works. I mean, you have all the information. What I'm trying to get into is, OK, I saw for the 8th Street. So there's a budget for the pavement or street. but some went into the storm water so i think that it will be good for you to show all the residents like how much i don't know downtown maybe the streets maybe or something how much money actually goes into a storm water how many how many money is going towards that um Yeah, the strong water. And maybe I don't know if you also have run a simulation of, let's say, we have a deficit per year of this amount of money. There are, I don't know how many properties, 10,000, 9,000 properties in the city, and maybe doing some simulation. Because I mean, I wouldn't mind sacrificing a pizza a month, $15, $10. I have mixed feelings because I received my yellow property taxes. I have mixed feelings. But also, two winters ago, I broke my hip in Division and 7th Street with my bike. So my parents, they flew from Mexico to take care of me, and my dad sprained his ankle in 8th Street and Locust. You know what I'm trying to get at? I'm trying to, I'm, yes, so I wouldn't mind, like, okay, we got a stormwater fee or something, but make it fair, like, that we are capped or whatever, but like the thumbs, parking lots, et cetera, okay, they're going to pay the equivalent. And to you know, and I won't mind only if the commission commits if you go decide to go to that route or something to commit and like the free money go into or so. So also, you can finish your sentence.

Go.

Okay. Also in like winter safety because I mean, that wasn't like your fault. It was that destroyed them because I wasn't in the sidewalk, I wasn't in the road. You know, the slush and then the and it like, I don't know what the layer of freeze or whatever, you know, but so basically that's my background in this and hey.

Well, that's above the time's limit, so we'll let you, we'll stop there for tonight, sorry. But thank you for that, and we agree. The one thing, is there any other public comment before I decide? We have looked at doing a fee for stormwater. That is not legal though, right?

Or is that one of the things we're- We're evaluating options. Okay, so- Marquette also.

They managed to keep their water.

And Snowstorm is just frozen water.

Yes, Snowstorm is frozen water, so yes. It will all melt. We appreciate that and we are looking at all the other options as well with that. So, definitely, but I want to hear more about what happened too. So, sorry about that. As we don't have any other public to make a comment, any final thoughts from commissioners? Seeing none, I wish you all a good evening and we will be back next week. Thank you all.

All right, great. And we all lost back. I know.

Laura was the closest.

Well, to be fair, I thought she would be right.