Commission - Regular Meeting

I don't know. I've probably said it a hundred times.

I'm going to call this regular city commission meeting of Tuesday, September 8th, 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,

under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice.

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 this land and inspiring us to uphold our responsibilities to do the same. And with that, we are going to do our roll call, but we do have Sarah checking the sound in the extra room really quick, so we'll take a brief pause, not a recess, just a quick pause.

The last time we had to do a sound check like this, it was Lance's birthday. Oh, yeah, that's right. We're not going to sing for you guys. Is it anyone's birthday? I would like to have happy birthday sung to them.

I think we'll go ahead and let Ben just start with the city manager announcements for a moment, actually, as we get to see some other people filtering in, and then we'll...

Yes, thank you. The first item I'd like to announce is that I'm requesting that the City Commission remove agenda item new business two. This is the consideration of authorizing the first amendment to the development and reimbursement agreement for the Brownfield project. And we need to gather some or do some additional analysis. And I anticipate this item being back on your agenda potentially for September 21st. But I'm asking that that item be removed. And then as far as Typical announcements, if you will, I want to just congratulate Scott Brooks who's our garage supervisor who achieved his second ASE master service technician designation. This is a certification that he obtained through the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence. He, in order to earn that, had to demonstrate proficiency across multiple technical areas including engine repair and performance, drive train brake suspension and steering, electrical and electronic systems and so forth. His achievement of this supports our entire fleet in the critical services that our employees provide by properly maintaining their equipment for safety and optimal service delivery. Also, along the lines of congratulating members of our team, I want to congratulate technology director Jerry Swanson for being named on a Traverse City Business News 2026 40 under 40 class. I also want to congratulate Commissioner Lance Bomer for being on that list as well. And also, congratulations to individuals who serve on other city boards and committees, including Anna DeTore, Jacob Goodman, Merrick Roman, and I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. Apologize if I'm not, but Dana Fluhaft who serves on our Complete Streets Advisory Committee. So congratulations to you all and thank you for the work that you do in our community and that's all that I've got.

Yeah, congratulations Lance and all. With that we'll go back to Sarah. You can do roll call and your announcements at once.

Land acknowledgement.

Land acknowledgement. Oops, I know it's one of those nights.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm probably going to be bouncing around. I'm wearing two hats, clerk and tech advisor for the space station up here. Okay, so roll call. Commissioner Shaw.

Here.

Commissioner Anderson. Here. Commissioner Treadwell. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Ness. Here. Commissioner Funk.

Here.

Commissioner Boehmer.

Here.

Mayor. Here. and announcements. I only have one tonight. The Board of Zoning and Appeals will meet on Wednesday, September 9th at 7 PM in the second floor committee room. Great. All right, and then we do have a proclamation.

I just wanted to also extend a welcome to Zach Learman, who is with us virtually tonight from the Kelly firm. He is serving as your legal counsel tonight. It's also timely that he is serving in this capacity this evening because he's worked closely on the attainable housing item that we'll be addressing later in the agenda. So I just wanted to welcome Zach. Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much.

All right, and then we do have a presentation for Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and Tim Behrens, I believe you're out there somewhere in our sea of people. Yep, right there you are. Right in the obvious spot. I'll meet you up there.

Are you reading the proclamation or am I? Oh, good. You get to say a speech.

I get to read the proclamation.

That's okay.

We'll trust you. So this is City of Traverse City Proclamation of Prostate Cancer Awareness Month of September 2026. Whereas prostate cancer is the most diagnosed form of non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer related deaths among men in the United States. And whereas compared to 2025, more men will be diagnosed in 2026, 33,830 with prostate cancer in the United States and roughly 36,320 people will die this year from the disease, which is one man every 15 minutes. And whereas one in eight men are diagnosed with prostate cancer, African American men are at a rate of one in six men. Veteran men are at a rate of one in five diagnosed with prostate cancer. highlighting a critical need for targeted advocacy, education, and healthcare accessibility. Whereas early stage prostate cancer usually has no symptoms, making routine healthcare visits, early screenings, and public education crucial tools for detection before the disease progresses. And whereas raising awareness about prostate cancer not only empowers men to take charge of their health, but also supports their families, friends, caregivers, and medical professionals dedicated to fighting this disease. And whereas the citizens of Traverse City are encouraged to advocate for their loved ones, excuse me, loved ones, pursue lifestyle choices that promote wellness and speak openly with healthcare providers to reduce the number of advanced diagnoses and save lives within our community. One event that can help is attending the Blue Ribbon Run Walk September 27th on the Boardman Lake Loop Trail. Therefore, be it resolved, I, Amy Shamro, Mayor of the City of Traverse City, do hereby proclaim September 26th as Prostate Awareness Month in Traverse City and commend this observance to all citizens to increase education, foster prevention, and join together to reduce the impact of prostate cancer in the community. And Tim, if you want to say a few words, please.

Yeah, okay. Thank you.

I will be fast because I see there's a pretty big agenda tonight, but I just wanted to say my name is Tim Behrens. And on behalf of my family, I wanted to say thank you to the City of Traverse City and to Mayor Shamero for making this proclamation that September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. The recognition means a lot to me. and my family because prostate cancer has deeply affected us. My father, Kurt Behrens, battled prostate cancer for many years before he passed away. And during this journey and this time, he was part of a local organization called Us Too, which is now called Zero Prostate Cancer. We saw firsthand the challenge of a diagnosis, but also the outcome of strength, hope, and how that can make a huge difference. So through his experience, my brother and I started an event, and we got involved with fundraising and awareness. So for the past 11 years, we've hosted this event called the Blue Ribbon Run. It's right here in Traverse City. It started out as a 5K event. Now it's a run around the Boardman Loop. So it's four miles. And it's more than just about running. It's about honoring survivors, remembering those who we have lost, supporting families, and encouraging men to take charge of their health. It helps support the mission of Zero Prostate Cancer through education, awareness, and support. And this year's run, it's also a walk. It's coming up September 27th at 10 a.m. So there's time to get involved and register and take part. Last year, we were able to raise $14,000 for this organization. We're hoping to exceed that this year. You can go to blueribbonrun.com to find out more information. Thank you again, Traverse City, for standing with us and helping us shine a light on this important cause. For me? Yeah. Okay.

Thank you for Tim and everyone in the organization for doing all the work on that. We appreciate it and thank you for coming here tonight. So with that, Sarah, I will have you now do the consent calendar please.

The purpose of the consent calendar is to expedite business by grouping non-controversial items together to be dealt with by one commission motion without discussion. Any member of the commission, staff or the public may ask that any item on the consent calendar be removed therefrom and placed elsewhere on the agenda for individual consideration by the commission. And such request will be automatically respected. If an item is not removed from the consent calendar, the action noted in parentheses on the agenda is approved by a single commission action adopting the consent calendar. One, consideration of approving the minutes of the August 17th, 2026 meeting of the city commission approval recommended. Two, consideration of authorizing the issuance of a new retail on-premise liquor license with Class C privileges with Sunday a.m. p.m. sales permit to India Garden LLC located at 303 East State Street, Suite A, and authorizing the city clerk to issue such registration adoption and approval recommended. Three, consideration of authorizing the addition of Sunday PM sales outdoor service area and catering permits and one additional member to an existing redevelopment liquor license with Class C privileges with Sunday AM sales permit to the Good Bowl LLC located at 328 East Front Street. And authorizing the city clerk to issue such registration, which is a housekeeping matter. Approval recommended. For consideration of authorizing the addition of Sunday a.m. p.m. sales outdoor service area and one additional bar permits and one additional number to an existing retail on-premise liquor license with Class C and brew pub privileges with dance entertainment permit to Aria Avis LLC doing business as Rare Bird Brew Pub located at 229 Lake Avenue and authorizing the city clerk to issue such registration, which is a housekeeping matter. Approval recommended. Five, consideration of authorizing a request from Up North Pride to allow for the service of mixed cocktails during its events in the west quadrant of the open space from 2 p.m. through 11.59 p.m. on September 26, 2026. And consideration of authorizing the city clerk to issue the related permit approval recommended. Six, consideration of adopting to make permanent traffic control order for no parking signs on the east side of Fair Street, approval recommended. Seven, consideration of authorizing two purchase orders for the purchase and installation of dual port EV charging stations and authorizing the implementation of customer paid electric service and idle time fees at the Old Town parking structure, approval recommended. Eight, consideration of authorizing a purchase order for the video management system license extension at the Hardy parking structure, Old Town parking structure and pedestrian walkway near Park Street public restrooms. Approval recommended. Nine, consideration of authorizing a purchase order for the purchase and installation of a variable frequency, drive at the water treatment plan, approval recommended. Ten, consideration of authorizing a purchase order for asphalt for the 7th Street in-house mill and pave project, approval recommended. Eleven, consideration of approving in concept the installation of artwork at the Cornwall Sailing Center at 650 Hanna Avenue and authorizing the necessary documents as recommended by the Arts Commission, approval recommended. Twelve, consideration of authorizing an agreement for professional engineering design and construction management services in connection with the Brown Bridge Quiet Area Expansion Spring Lake Trailhead Project, which project was supported by the voters as part of the November 2023 Brown Bridge Trust Funding ballot proposal. Approval recommended. 13, consideration of authorizing an agreement for professional engineering services for the 2026 water system reliability study approval recommended. 14, consideration of enacting an amendment to the Traverse City Code of Ordinances which would rezone 314 East 8th Street from C2 neighborhood center to R3 multiple family dwelling district as recommended by the planning commission.

Would any commissioner like any of the items from the consent calendar?

Ken?

Nine and ten.

Any others? Jackie? 11 and 14, please. Any others?

Seeing none, would any member of the public like an item pulled that isn't 9, 10, 11, or 14? Please approach the podium if you would. Seeing none, I'll bring it back for a motion.

Go ahead, Ken.

I move to accept the consent calendar as amended.

Support. Thank you, Commissioners Funk and Treadwell. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. We'll start with item number nine. Ken, you had this one pulled?

Yeah, I had some questions about this. And I guess without getting too wordy on it and going too long, do we currently have a backup? for pump five that we're not replacing this failing pump with? Have we ever experienced a failure of one of the VFDs? If pump five has a VFD, can I assume that there are four other pumps and they have VFDs? Are any of the VFDs interchangeable? What capacity do these operate at? Do we have an emergency service contract to set up so that the backup one that we're going to have rebuilt, can be installed because it seems like it's a timely issue. So I'm just, more of my point is do we absolutely need to rebuild the one if it's only going to get a one-year warranty and a new one has a one-year warranty? Do we have any backups of these? There's a lot of questions, Art. I'm sorry I'm not picking on you.

I just, I generally want to know more about water and wastewater treatment. No problem. Art Krieger, Director of Utilities for the City. Those are great questions. To answer your first one, if I recall right, do we have a backup on hand? We don't. These typically last five years or more. This one is reaching that timeline. And it's one of the largest ones that we have. Pump five is like a 300 horsepower motor. And the other pumps are smaller, except for number four is a 300. They all do not have VFD drives on them yet. We're working toward that. Like each year, we're trying to implement a variable frequency drive on those pumps. And this year, we added two to one at low service, which is down by the lake that pumps the water from the low service up to the plant. So this one could be used if we purchase a new one and get the other one repaired. It can be used on smaller motors. So that's one reason we want to do the larger one. It can be utilized for different motors. And getting the repair just seems like a good practice to have that extra on hand. And I know you had other questions.

Yeah, I definitely had a bunch of them. It was more about capacity. If pump five were to go down, are there four other pumps? There are. OK. So there's a one through four and then there's a five. Correct. So if we did lose pump five and we didn't have a backup, are we going to have, you know, low water pressure out in some of the areas that buy bulk water from us or anywhere in the city?

No. You know, that's the redundancy built into the plant. So we do have another 300 horsepower motor, number four. And then the next one, three, two and one are a little bit smaller. We can run. as many as we need to at the same time and keep up with the demands and pressures, things like that.

You're our expert on water, and I trust your judgment. I just wanted to ask some questions about this. I didn't know we have quite this kind of room tonight, so I'm good. Thank you.

Do we have other questions or a motion?

I'll make a motion. Great.

Go ahead.

move that the city manager be authorized to issue a purchase order to win mueller for the turnkey procurement installation programming and commissioning of one variable frequency drive in the amount not to exceed 39 252 dollars with funds available in the water fund 591 and further that the city manager be authorized to issue a purchase order to kendall electric for refurbishment of the current variable frequency drive to serve as a spare until in an amount not to exceed $21,125 with funds available in the Water Fund 591. Second. Ann Marie Buerkle Okay.

Thank you, Commissars Funk and Boehmer. Any further discussion on this item? Seeing none, any public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor? Aye. Ann Marie Buerkle Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you, Ken. And now to item number 10, which you also had pulled.

Ken Boehmer Yeah. A few meetings ago we approved a bulk purchase for asphalt and was this project not included in that bulk purchase so that now we're buying more?

Chris Weber, I'm the director of mobility infrastructure. So that is our annual purchase of asphalt for all of our repairs, pothole patching, trail work. Typically, we'd done $50,000 a year. We'd increase that to $100,000 a year with some of these projects anticipated in that. Some of the prep work we've been doing ahead of the Cape Seal project has kind of used up more funds than we anticipated. So this would actually be getting funded out of a different source rather than my general maintenance fund. And then that would allow us to not completely deplete our maintenance funds and not have to come back again for maintenance stuff. So this is just out of the 447 Streets Fund.

uh for just this project i wanted to uh i kind of wanted to pull you out to spotlight you because this is something that's been a project that a lot of commissioners have talked about for a long time is what can we do about 7th street to get that fixed so it seems like this is going to start in the next couple weeks yeah as soon as we have the blessing for the asphalt we're planning on starting next week Pretty exciting. So thank you for the diligence to find that money and to work with Ben on that.

So I don't appreciate the believing in the team. Um, and the crews have been excited to kind of showcase their skills and do more work, bigger jobs. Like right now we're milling and paving the trail along F and M park and railroad. We'll be paving that tomorrow. Um, so we're excited to do more work, you know, to provide for the citizens of the taxpayers, um, and give another alternative, you know, to bidding everything out. So,

Great.

Mitch? Yes, thanks. You already answered some of my questions and thanks for pulling this, Ken. I live on 7th Street and I see many of my neighbors out in the audience. I'm glad to see that work is finally being done. You say you can start next week. Do you have an idea of how long the work will take?

To give ourselves time to allow for any weather delays, we plan on doing a block by block. So this project includes Wadsworth to Division, so three blocks. We plan on doing one block segments at a time to allow for easy detours using the side streets and alleys and try to minimize the impact on residents. So we would start at Wadsworth to Oak, Oak to Maple, Maple to Division, doing one block at a time over about a one week period for each segment.

OK. And then looking forward, of course, there's a lot of unknowns and weather delays and whatever. But when is the water main replacement and repaving supposed to happen for next year's project?

I believe that's scheduled for 27.

Yes.

I'm talking about when during the year. I don't have a timeline that's more of like an engineering water department project. but I know that they're working on that for next year. Thank you.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- OK, any other questions from commissioners? In motion? CHRISTIE WOODARD- Yep, please. Thank you. Public?

Two seconds.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- No problem.

I move that the city manager be authorized to issue a purchase order to Elmer's for asphalt in the mountain, not to exceed $71,500 which includes a 10% contingency 65,000 plus 600 with funds available on the street fund fund for 77 support.

Oh, competitive up here. Thank you for that, Mitch, and thank you for the second, Lance.

We're excited to get 7th Street fixed.

Well, it's the start, but just everybody knows there's a bigger repair coming behind that too. Any further comments then from any commissioners? Seeing none, any public comment on this item? Please approach the podium. Just so everybody knows, because this is a bigger crowd, we don't do dialogue during public comment, but if you ask questions when all public comment is done, we will try our best to answer them or let you know how we'll get you an answer. So please go ahead. Introduce, and here's the rules.

Let me read the rules real quick. We ask that you state your name and address, indicate if you're a city resident, non-city resident, and or city business owner. We have a three-minute time allotment per speaker. When your time has elapsed, the timer will beep. And finally, we request that all language be respectful to all parties.

My name's Olga Topash. I live at 435 West 8th Street, so obviously in the city. And I just have a question on, 7th Street is terrible. Glad you guys are doing something about it. My question is, with all the work and the heavy equipment and everything that's going to be rolling around Central Grade School, is it going to just degrade what they're doing?

Chris Weber right here can chat with you and give you an answer to your question. Great.

Any other public comment on this? Okay, seeing no, we'll bring it back. And to answer that, Chris is answering offline, but our staff is always very keenly aware that we don't want to undo the work we've just done or create more work behind it. So they're always very in tune about that and using the best technology and best practices that they can use on those things. That's true. Okay, with that I'll bring it back for a vote. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes.

thank you for that and then we're on to item number 11 and jackie you had that pulled i did thank you um i am really excited about more public art it looks like a great selection of both artwork and artist i did notice that the prior installations from this particular piece of art have been interior and i'm assuming that this one is going to be outside and i just wondered what our plans are for protecting our investment from

weather and possible vandalism and please help me yeah of course um lauren bohack uh downtown development authority deputy director and staff liaison for the arts commission um yes jerry's map if you go down the rabbit hole that is jerry's map there are a lot of different installations all over the world so it's really exciting that we would have one installed here Many of them are interior. There is the assumption that this one was going to be exterior on the Sailing Center. And what we ask as the Arts Commission is that the artist provides the maintenance plan for us so that we are aware of what the needs are in advance. And that would be part of the agreement that is signed with both the artist and Tart Trails. So upfront, we don't have the maintenance plan yet, but it would be something that would be as part of the agreement.

May I ask a follow-up? Yes, yes. Then who covers the cost?

The Arts Commission would cover the cost of future maintenance. So as proposed right now, Tart Trails would be funding and donating essentially to the public art collection and then any future maintenance would be covered by the Arts Commission. Annually as part of their budget, they do set aside a significant chunk. I believe it's about a sixth of the budget is set aside for maintenance of the art collection.

And your annual budget is in the range of $40,000 or $50,000, do I have that right?

Last year it was $60,000, which we were incredibly excited about. So approximately $10,000 a year is set aside for maintenance of all of the existing maintenance. Okay, thank you.

Any other questions at this time? If not, we'll take a motion.

give it a whirl okay you're up for a Jackie right I move that the mayor and city clerk be authorized authorized to execute the installation and selection of Jerry's map on the Cornwell Sailing Center as outlined in the communication from the Downtown Development Authority deputy directors july 30th 2026 communication such contract subject to its substance by the city manager and it's formed by the city attorney with funds therefore available in the public arts trust fund fund 107 as permitted by the city of traverse city code of ordinances chapter 299.05 a1 And further, that the mayor and city clerk execute a funding agreement with the Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation Trails, TART Trails, articulating that it will provide the funding for the Artwork and project management for the project with such agreement subject to approval as to its substance by the city manager and its form by the city clerk. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Any further discussion on this item? Well done, Jackie. Thank you. That was a mouthful. Any public comment on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. OK. And lastly, item number 14. And Jackie, you also had this one pulled?

Yes. I know that we all had an email that was received today regarding possible impact of this zoning decision on some ongoing zoning litigation for the city. And I wondered if it would be possible to delay decision on this until we have some input from our city attorney on that topic.

We do have Zach Learman here who is acting on behalf of the city attorney. And Zach, are you able to speak to that and then we can see where the conversation goes? So this is item number, we're discussing item number 14. One second, we're going to turn up the volume so we can hear you better. OK, can you say that again?

Are we discussing item number 14? Yes. You know, I think I would need a little time to review this and get more background information. I'm happy to get some direction from you guys to hear. I mean, this might not be the right context, but I'd be happy to hear a little bit about that. But I'm not familiar with this project. But if you would like, I'll take some direction and I could have an answer for you guys at the next meeting.

I think then what we'll do is just I'd like to ask the city commission to refer this item, make a motion to refer this item to the September 21st meeting. I mean, that's something that the city commission can consider. I suppose, Commissioner Anderson, you should probably share with the board what your questions and concerns are. I know you said that there was some communication, but can you elaborate a little bit?

Well, we received an email from a citizen forwarding an email from someone who is an attorney at law who is simply concerned that zoning changes that might be interpreted as spot zoning could potentially have an impact on some ongoing litigation in federal court that regards city zoning. don't want to create an issue where none has to exist. And I would appreciate guidance from the city attorney to be sure that we're not taking a step that might do that.

So would someone like to make a motion that we refer this item to our September 21st item?

Yes, I support this idea. I think it needs to be looked at. So I move to refer this item to the September 21st meeting.

Support. OK. We have Commissioner Shawn Anderson. Any discussion on this item? Mitch?

Yes. This is a rather unorthodox move to refer something to a subsequent meeting when we have already had multiple meetings with discussion on this very item. This is finally the final item on the consent calendar. And to the point of spot zoning, this from my perspective as the planning commissioner is actually undoing what has effectively become spot zoning. Spot zoning is when you are looking at one piece of property in isolation from those around it to change the zoning conditions for that. Here, we have a property. that all the properties around it have been converted over the decades to r2 this is the only property that does not currently have that classification and therefore it is a spot zoned property that In my perspective, changing it to the existing classification on the zoning map for all adjacent properties would simply be making a more consistent neighborhood character.

Any other comments on that? I guess I, go ahead, well, yeah, go ahead, Jackie.

I don't disagree with you and having been in the conversations on the planning commission, I understand a lot of reasoning and that this is essentially in some ways could be seen as a down zoning in terms of density versus the current commercial zoning. It is a proposal for I believe R3, not R2. That's okay. But I think there are enough questions here a short pause would just be prudent.

So I think I would weigh in and say that I agree completely with Mitch, but I also say that this is, I think, one of our growing pains of not having in-house counsel. We're used to somebody who's sitting here every day and focused just on us, and that's no knock on us not having in-house counsel. It's that quickness and speed of which somebody has something at their fingertips versus trying to sort through and remember the exact details and be able to give them on the spot. So I think we can wait a couple weeks and let the attorneys catch back up. We've talked about this for months now, and never has that been raised. And I think to the point that Mitch made, we are just smoothing out something that's been – Is the anomaly in that area right now, but better to dot our I's and cross our T's and come back than to push forward and leave our attorneys off foot and ourselves off foot. So I think that was an excellent point, Mitch, but I think that this is just one of our growing pains right now. So any other comments from the commission? Any public comment on this item? Seeing none, okay. The motion again is, oh, go ahead, sorry. Go ahead. And the motion again, just to remind people, is that this would just be referred to our September 21st meeting.

I just want to, Carl Fullmer, Director of the Traverse City Housing Commission. I do want to urge the commission to rely on your professional staff. The Housing Commission has been in meetings with your planning staff since February of this year. We were advised to apply through the land bank for a rezone from C2 to R3 because they considered the C2 spot zoning. Professional planning staff did. We do have a tax credit application we'd like to submit on October 1st. We will not be able to submit it if the rezone does not go through by that date. I appreciate the fact that you have no longer in-house counsel. But to dismiss the directives that your professional planning staff gave to an applicant, I find somewhat disappointing. But I understand the position the commission has right now.

Excuse me. Please refrain from any responses. Go ahead. Sorry, Carl.

That's all I had to say. Thank you very much.

Is there any other public comment on this item?

Hi, good evening. My name is Maxwell Cameron. I'm the community development coordinator for Grand Traverse County. Tonight I'm representing our land bank authority and just wanted to echo a couple of comments that have been said and reiterate what our purpose here is. And so the Grand Traverse County Land Bank is Really our ethos is about leveraging our resources and our property to meet community needs. And there's no greater community need than workforce housing and we have a property that's ideal for that type of development. We've worked very closely with the Traverse City Housing Commission. in their quest to submit for an October 1st LIHTC application for this project. We're hoping that any action tonight won't upend or derail that effort. I do want to reiterate that what we're attempting to do in our view is cure an issue of spot zoning, looking at the other properties that we own in this area plant to own in this area, and also what is surrounding our properties. R3 seems appropriate. And also to make mention, this is a down zone. So with all those things taken into consideration, we'll work towards answering any questions or concerns that come up between now and your next meeting.

Thank you, Maxwell. Thanks.

Justin Reed, 630 Coyote Drive, Apartment 1B, Travis City Residence. I guess trying to find solutions for housing is kind of hard. But I see that this is an opportunity for more housing and to go ahead and to have this dismissed is not that great. I mean, you know, we can't have it both ways. You know, we want to have housing but, you know, I guess not in my backyard is kind of the motion. But thank you.

Thank you, Justin. Any further public comment? Please feel free to line up at the podium as well.

Good evening, Jay Zelenak, 309 East Front Street, downtown business owner and resident. I'm the attorney who sent the email about the equal protection litigation. I don't know if the commissioners follow closely, 326 land in terms of the federal court briefings. I've read a lot of them. 326 land has been litigating against the city for close to 10 years now. I think the federal court claim is for 16 or 20 million dollars. I'm in no way suggesting that those are great claims or anything of the like. Nevertheless, they've tied up the city for a long, long time in litigation. I've heard a comment, I've heard a number of comments, I haven't heard any comment suggesting that any review was done of the federal court briefings in terms of the equal protection claims made by 326 at the planning commission level, at the city commission level. And the argument that, oh, well, this could be viewed as a down zoning, understand that's exactly what future developers will argue in raising an equal protection claim, they'll say. This developer on this parcel asked for a more favorable zoning, in other words a down zoning and they got it. And now we're asking for a more favorable application or rezoning of our one parcel. And we want it down zoned similarly. We want, you know, or up zoned. I mean, they're both possibilities. Certainly, what 326 has done from my read of those is go through numerous if not every parcel in the city, anything that is remotely comparable at all and say, well, this building got this, this building got that, that kind of thing. And I think it just needs to be vetted a lot more carefully. So, I support the motion to look at those issues carefully. I mean, again, the city has been sued for $16 to $20 million, hasn't been collected, but it's been, you know, close to 10 years worth of litigation now. With that, I thank you for your time.

Thank you. Any other public comment on this item? Seeing none, did you want to? Okay. Seeing none, any further comment from the Commission? Go ahead, Mitch.

Yes, in the latest court rulings, the federal judge has ruled on the case of 326 land with the city in all cases. So I don't see this as an example of us needing to read tea leaves on what a potential litigant against the city will do in the future when the city has prevailed on all counts previously.

And also just to clarify that 326 does involve the city. The city commission is briefed on all of our legal actions as we go through them. So the implication that we don't know what's going on with 326 is a bit unfounded. So I just wanted to clarify. Nope, this public comment is over. This is not an exchange. You do not get to respond in public comment. Thank you very much. The rules apply to you just like they do to everybody else.

So please stay seated.

All right, so bringing it back, we'll have a vote now. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Roll call.

Commissioner Anderson? Aye. Commissioner Shaw? Aye. Commissioner Treadwell?

No.

Commissioner Funk?

Aye.

Commissioner Boehmer?

Yes.

Mayor Pro Tem?

Yes.

Mayor?

Yes. But I see that after we had called and closed a public comment, someone came to address.

Is that?

No, no. I was going to say, we can... I will allow for the suspension rules, but we have already voted. So if you still would like to speak, but we've already ruled, then please go right ahead.

I support the ruling, but I just wanted to say my name is Vicki Armour. I live at 700 Washington Street. I just would like to clarify as a participant sitting in the crowd, I never felt that the last gentleman made any accusation about the commissioners not doing their homework and being prepared. So I just wanted to make that clarification.

Thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing that. Yep, what was said was that not sure if we were up to date on it, and I just wanted to let people know that that is legal work that we pay for, so we are up to date on it. Because we are the monetary, the fiscal responsibility parties of the city attorney and the city manager, so. All right, with that, we are now through our consent calendar. And so we will now move on to old business. This is the public hearing on attainable housing. And I know, Benjamin, you wanted to start this off with some statements.

Yes, thank you. And Deputy City Manager Valerie Handy is going to join us up here. And I just want to state I'm anticipating that what most people are here for is for this item. And I just wanted to share with everyone in the audience as well as those watching that I regret the public hearing notice that was issued. There could have been better communication and explanation of what this program is all about. In the future, these types of mailers will go through our communications department to ensure that when they're sent, it's clear to you what the aim of the program is and the substance of the matter that you're being notified of. And so with that, I've asked Valerie Handy, and she's joined by City Assessor Amy Robbins, to just provide a brief overview of what the purpose of this program is, who's eligible, and some of the key elements of it. And so I'll turn it over to Ms. Handy. Thank you.

Great. Thank you all for allowing me to be here tonight. We're here to talk about the potential establishment of an attainable housing district. Let me make sure the clicker.

There we go.

It's at the podium. So just as a background on this item, potentially more for the public that is here tonight than the commissioners. But back in 2022, two new statutes were enacted in the state of Michigan. One was the Attainable Housing Facilities Act and the other was the Residential Housing Facilities Act. These statutes allow for tools that can establish district boundaries for affordable housing implementation is the idea. And the difference, the primary difference between those two was that the Attainable Housing Facilities Act is for properties that have up to four units and the Residential Housing Facilities Act was for properties that have more than four units. So if commissioners recall, we've been talking about this today actually marks one year that we have been talking about this subject over the course of this is the sixth meeting that this topic has appeared on your agenda. This is intended to be an incentive for property owners that will provide, that can provide attainable income based housing units. That's the purpose of the Housing Act, the Attainable Housing Facilities Act. Further, it moves forward objectives outlined in our strategic action plan. You know, this will work towards our pillars related to proactively managing urban design. It works towards our pillar of strengthening placemaking and neighborhood character and also the pillar related to creating complete communities. Additionally, I wanted to point out that as a part of the Attainable Housing Facilities Act, the law itself, we were required to send certified mailing of the public hearing that is happening tonight. So that is a slightly different process than many other notification processes. And it was a little bit special. But it did manage to get a lot of people here. So the owner eligibility, so this, at this point, city commission has, the commission has directed us to move forward only with the enactment of an attainable facilities act. So a district, the establishment of a district boundaries under the attainable housing facilities act. So again, that's up to four units. That's only up to four units, one to four units on any property. And an owner would, a property owner would become eligible for this when a new investment of $5,000 or more is made in a residential property. And then once that investment is made, the owner may request a 50% reduction in the ad valorem taxes for the new structure or the portion of the new structure. And they're able to request that if the property that they own, that they've made this improvement on, is located in a residential area. So we've outlined that as being the district being R1A, R1B, low density residential areas. and or R2 mixed density residential. Those are the areas that were outlined on the map and that notices were sent to potentially affected property owners. Additionally, the property owner eligibility to apply for this reduction in tax would be for properties that contain one to four units. And that are renting units to households with income that meets or is below 120% of the county area median income. So here in Grand Traverse County, that equates to household incomes for a single person, it would be $95,760 or less. And then for a family of four, it would be 136,680 or less. That's the maximum income threshold we're talking about here. Additionally, these units cannot be rented for more than 30% of the household's modified income. And there are some deductions and things that can be taken to modify that gross income. But essentially, what it equates to is that the maximum rent for that, you know, single household person that I cited a moment ago, the maximum rent would be $2,394 a month. And then maximum rent for the family of four would be $3,417 a month for a family of four. And I would point out that the city commission must hold a properly noticed public hearing for every complete application that is sent into the city for receiving this tax reduction. So that's how you become eligible for it. And then at this time, are there any questions?

Go ahead, Heather. I do have questions. But before that, I was requested to declare publicly that I own commercial property on East Front Street. It is all commercial. It is in a commercial zone. It is not in a residential zone. So I see no reason why this would disqualify me from commenting.

Definitely not by our ethics policy. I think you're all good. Okay. Thank you for that. Did you have a question as well? I do.

I do have a question. So my first question is that we discussed in the last meeting putting a cap of 25 applications. So where is that? You don't have to answer it. Let me just give you all my questions. So that's my first question. The second one is that the statute by default doesn't require very strong verification of anything. So it just leaves a lot to local implementation. So that gives supposedly, as I read it, the city some wiggle room on what we can ask for. So this is for.

For Zach and for the city attorney?

Yes. So can we define, you know, how we'll verify the investment, the rent, the household income, the lease terms, and all that kind of stuff? I'm not seeing anything like that in what we were presented with today. And as an example, the $5,000 threshold to apply is really low. And it's not hard to imagine that that could just be somebody changing their carpet out, right? Does it entitle, just because I put $5,000 in and I make an application, does that entitle me to a 12-year certificate? And can we as the city scale that certificate duration to the public benefit?

So really quickly, because you asked a few in a row, I was going to say, I want to give him a chance to start answering, and then you can keep the floor, though. And so just so he can start kind of answering some of the questions. Can we get some start? Because I think there's going to be some deep answers on some of the verification and questions for follow-up on that, too. Zach, do you want to go ahead?

Oh, hold on.

We're having a tech issue.

This is also why. Hold on.

Hold on, Zach, we can't hear you. It's a little different than having the person in front of us and peppering them.

Hey, folks, can you hear me?

Now we can. Go right ahead.

All right, I appreciate the opportunity to appear in this community, and this is an opportunity for me to serve you guys. I just want to say that. Thank you so much. I wish I were there in person. Okay, now, a lot of those questions were tough to hear, but I believe some of those questions were iterated by email. I got to take a look at a lot of these questions. So the initial question was, that $5,000 figure seems low. That seems like a low threshold. that's the statutory number but it can't just be any cosmetic uh rehabilitation it has to be at least 5 000 towards building code compliance so essentially five thousand dollars at least five thousand dollars devoted towards um certificate of occupancy or other building code compliance so they can't very well just come in and put you know five thousand dollars worth of cosmetic Benefits on a piece of property and be eligible a lot of those questions were hard to hear though I would could you reiterate if you have a follow-up question regarding that $5,000 threshold?

Yes, so could we as a city implementing the statute state that a minimum statutory investment of $5,000 qualifies an applicant to apply and but it doesn't entitle the applicant to a 12-year certificate. And can we scale that certificate duration to public benefit?

Absolutely. And I think that just to be clear, I would, you know, This, we're establishing today, we're establishing these possible districts, but these are great questions that we need to flesh out. So this in no way entitles anybody to a certificate. I anticipate putting together like a thorough implementation policy that outlines what you guys can do, where you can't have wiggle room, where you can. I don't see any issue with... um establishing you know the minimum is 5 000 but you the city should be able to establish its own criteria regarding um standards for that amount so i i don't there is some wiggle room with with how you assess that there's also other wiggle room too that other certain facts you guys can look at and certain factors when you're assessing these applications that are coming through okay so um

My last question had to do with, you know, who audits this and who documents this. And, you know, back in July the packet stated that staff time was 138 hours for 25 applications. That's quite a lot. But I feel like the answer that I just heard from Mr. Learman, leads me to the big question. Aren't we putting the horse before the cart here? We would be, where is this implementation policy and why are we looking to approve this statute before an implementation policy?

Well, typically when you establish these districts, we first want to define those districts. And I This is a mixed bag, like discussing these kind of standards. I don't think it's necessarily inappropriate, but also I think it's kind of a continuum. I don't want to get too deep into some of the minutiae, as long as you guys understand some of the most basic standards at which you can apply these. You know, when tasked with this, the timeframe was a bit on the shorter side in terms of how we could put this together. right now we can talk about some of the most basic things we could plug into that implementation policy i think those are public policy considerations that are going to require some city council input or says i'm sorry city commission input um regarding your question and and regarding your audit question it's a valid question that is probably one of the most expensive administrative costs associated with this uh with this what what statutorily you can require applicants to uh fund for their own audit so that i believe that's going to solve that problem there's a statutory basis right there the question had come up whether we could charge application fees. That's a great question. Can we charge application fees? The ordinance is oddly conspicuously absent about whether we can charge an application fee. That doesn't really matter at this phase. It does, but it's a consideration. But I would need to do a little more research as to whether we could put some application fees in there to offset that. There needs to be kind of an enabling act to do that. But to answer your question about auditing, you could certainly charge, we can require applicants to charge for consistent auditing because there are a lot of moving parts and we have to keep tabs on whether these tenants are like below the, you know, whether they make the certain threshold amount and that can change. So we can require, quarterly audits, make the applicant pay for it, and that can pay for it in full, and that could be a part of the criteria in this implementation policy.

Just to clarify really quickly, too, because it relates to Heather's question about cart before the horse, which I think is very fair.

Horse before the cart.

That's true. It makes sense to me. This is the establishment of the district if we were to vote on this today. That doesn't mean we have to start taking applications tomorrow, correct? This means that we are just establishing what the district is from there before we take applications, before we could start any process. We would create the policy to go along with it, but we would just know what the defined borders were.

Exactly. Those applications that come down the pipes, they have to be approved by public hearing, like each one. You can do them all in mass or whatever you'd like to do, but they have to be publicly noticed. So we couldn't just start accepting applications tomorrow. They have to be properly noticed. So this is... You know, given the time frame, too, we would need to act a little quickly. It would entail me working pretty quickly to get you guys a good implementation policy that I would consider to be like an apprehensive guideline, a comprehensive guideline that describes how you guys can assess these things statutorily, these applications that give you guys as much wiggle room as we can get.

And then I was speaking with Dan Kelly, our other attorney at your firm, earlier today, and he was saying that we are allowed, even by statute says it has to be up to 120. This commission is allowed to say, though, as a body, if something's before us, we don't want to see anything over 100 or 80. And that can be our criteria we put out without actually making an official policy that would not be maybe in compliance with the legislation, but allows us to give people the notice of where we're at. It would allow us to say we only want to take so many between now and the end of the fiscal year at the end of June. We have some guardrails. There's some ability for us to put some guardrails on, correct?

That's absolutely true. You, um, the threshold is you can't, you can't have it over 120. I mean, it's really designed to help people that are in the lower income bracket. So if you're under one 20, you know, there's nothing that, I mean,

yeah we could establish a hundred percent eighty percent there's that would be totally acceptable so just as a reminder from prior discussions to that that type of if that was the City Commission's will to establish those types of parameters if you will well it wouldn't necessarily be in a policy as the mayor indicated it would be in the application material so that the lay of the land the landscape if you will would be communicated to folks before they put in the effort of applying. They kind of know what the sense of the, or I should say the criteria that the city commission has and the level of appetite.

And there would be yet another public hearing to have a public hearing where we talked about what we were landing on with that once everything's been established. So this is to establish the district, then we would work on some of the details, and then we'd have another public hearing to share those details and get more input on it.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Mitch, I see your hand, then Laura, and then Heather and Jackie.

Some of my questions have already been answered, but another one has been raised. For that subsequent public hearing, will that also have to be notified by certified mail?

I don't think it does, just the district does. Just the formation of the district needs to be certified.

Because I can commend the public for coming out, but that was a rather expensive way for us to notify the public.

Yes. And required by statute. Yes. Laura?

So I have a couple of questions. One is I just want to clarify that the 120% of AMI is a ceiling and we have flexibility within that to go below it, statutory flexibility. Absolutely. You're nodding. Okay. I really appreciated Heather's suggestion that we scale the certificate to public benefit. I think that's really important. And there are some serious public policy considerations with this. And so I wanted to go to Amy and Benjamin's comments regarding not being able to have a policy, but can we have a scoring rubric that is crystal clear on what this commission's preferences and favors are in terms of implementation of the district.

I believe so, but I'd like, Zach, if you would answer that. The question, just to reiterate, is if there isn't a policy per se that establishes some of these parameters, could there be a scoring rubric that is very clear and essentially informs sort of the scaling to the public benefit?

absolutely the act doesn't spell everything out in fact it's quite absent with some things like for instance fees um whether we could charge fees but the it gives meaningful discretion um at the individual certificate stage to um to establish a rubric and a written policy. And that's definitely conducive to all the other concerns that you have to make sure that we're like, ah, this is evenly applied. There's expectations of what these people, whether they're eligible or not. But it's certainly, there's some neat things you guys can do, including negotiating the percentage of attainable units. I don't want to get into the weeds too much, but you know at least like it's got to be you know four four units or less and um they can pick like you know in under the statute they can have like one of those units just one out of the four be an attainable housing unit and um if if you so if the city commission so chooses to allow that we can have standards that say no you got to have all of them you know um There is some wiggle room.

But to clarify, because we're speaking in an open meeting, and I want to clarify this for myself, if they only want one unit of four, let's say, to be attainable, that's the only unit that gets that tax credit, though, right? The other three don't? That's exactly right. Thank you. I don't want anybody to think that one person doing it in a whole building gets that tax credit, because that's not what any of us are for. Great question.

Yeah. As I, because I had a couple of questions. As a follow-up question to that, can we tie, so if we move forward with establishing the district tonight, can we tie that motion to the implementation stage or the scoring rubric, like we won't approve any certificates until we have a scoring rubric in place?

Or even accept applications.

Or even accept applications. I would like, if we move forward, which we haven't made that decision yet, I would want it tied so that this commission has an opportunity to establish these guardrails. Because as with most things, my grandmother always said, the devil's in the details, right? And I think we do have some work to do in terms of understanding where we need the guardrails. Perhaps it's The cap, having a cap of the number of certificates as Commissioner Shaw mentioned. Perhaps it's lowering the AMI, perhaps it's making sure that we have appropriate audits in place on an annual basis to make sure we're getting what we intended. out of this act. So I think there's a number of items, and I'm sure other commissioners have some guardrails in mind as well, but I wouldn't want to see us move forward with accepting applications until we have that scoring rubric in place, and I'd like to see it tied to the motion.

Well, yeah, and I think we'd all want to have, I think applicants would want to know what they're getting judged on as well. Heather, you were next, and then Jackie.

Right. Well, my question is, is it necessary to establish a district first before we create the implementation policy or the rubric? It just seems to me that the opportunity to let the public know what's going on and to get input from what we're talking about up here as far as the policy and the rubric would be valuable before we vote to establish the district.

Excuse me, please let us have our conversation. We'll have public comment shortly, I promise. The only concern I would have with that is, and we can decide it, is we decided on the districts that we wanted it to apply to and then spent a lot of money sending out a lot of certified mail for this. And thank you for all for coming and engaging in the process. So that if we change it again and say now everybody who got one, we're actually going to pair it back, now people won't know. that we took them out of it, so they're going to think they're still in it. But that's, I mean, I feel like we kind of, what I guess I'm saying is I feel like when we sent it out, we locked ourselves into a certain amount, we could pair it back, or we're going to spend more on a larger mailing, which I'm not in favor of. Maybe if other people are, we could look at that, but I don't want people to think we want to expand it out more either. Go ahead, Ken. If that's a follow-up on this, Jackie's waiting for a new topic.

Yeah, I don't want to take a place in front of Jackie, but I just... I feel like we're agreeing to play the game without knowing what the rules are going to be. And I don't think that's fair. So to speak to what Heather had said, I agree with her.

That's fair.

Jackie?

I too am interested in talking about guardrails. I think the idea of an implementation policy is going to be essential to any success for this. Many, many of the comments that I've seen from residents so far have to do with those implementation questions. And so I think we have an obligation to answer those quickly as we can. In terms of guardrails, one of my great fears, and having seen some responses to questions today, one of my great fears is that we really don't know how big or how small this is going to be. And so earlier in the process, I had suggested actually a beta test, essentially choosing a neighborhood and trying to get a handle and get some data on things that would help us to forecast response and hence better manage the risk to our city revenues. If we don't know how many people are going to be requesting this kind of tax support, we don't know for how many properties, it's very difficult for us give a big head nod. So I have been frankly uncomfortable with inclusion of every parcel in our one and our two districts from day one. But Here we are and so I think a rubric is going to be really important. I think clarifying expectations is going to be essential. I am glad to know that we have some tools to work with in terms of AMI and, you know, those sorts of guidelines that will help us to manage the risk but I believe we owe the community a lot of answers as soon as possible. And I am concerned about our ability to think those through carefully and completely in the time that we have available. And by the way, I am really happy to see something available for the small landlord. You know, our pilot programs to date have been mostly used by large developers for large developments and so something for, the smaller property owner, landlord, to be able to participate in creating workforce and attainable housing makes me really happy if we want a complete community. Other comments from commissioners?

Go ahead, Lance.

I just want to say I would totally support maybe an amendment to the motion to require us to create that rubric before we even start accepting applications. I do think it's super important. I think we've talked about this for, what was it, six meetings now? And we've all talked about what we want to see. we don't even have to have the 12-year cap i think our neighboring community that does this is at four years as their cap so we can change that too so i think it could be something that could go on a study session maybe where we establish what that rubric looks like we've done that before when we hired our legal team right i think we're pretty good at it um so that's kind of where i stand on on it because i do agree with all of you that we just got to put the guard rails in place and of course all of our meetings are public so people can attend those as i would hope they do or watch them on tv i just wouldn't want to stall something uh for the sake of us stalling and we've done six meetings on this already so go ahead ken

Maybe Zach can answer this question. Can you hear us, Zach?

Yes, sir. Yes, Commissioner.

According to the frequently asked questions from the Attainable Housing District question, there's like frequently asked questions on the state website, and there was a link to that in the Bay Brief. And it said that qualified applicants will be granted 100% or a 50% exemption from the state education tax. And that is still subject to a 3 to 6 mil variable adjustment. So I'm trying to understand this. My original understanding of this whole Attainable Housing District was that this was available to non-homesteaded properties, correct? Or is it so PRE-exempt properties Homesteaded properties.

We all pay state education tax.

Yes, we all.

So what that does is give an additional exemption by the Department of Treasury. I think they're the ones who decide that. If I'm correct, because they did that with IFTs as well, where they would cut that six mils in half or even exempt it completely.

Do pilots, like the larger-scale ones we're used to giving out, do that as well? Pilots do not. Okay. That's totally different.

And that was one of the confusions with this is that, Amy, you were quoted in the paper as talking about this as a pilot. And is this a pilot necessarily, or is this an exemption of a certain percentage of mills?

To clarify because you can't always control how people are going to. I know. Pull quote. I just want to clarify. It's not pilots. This isn't a pilot because it is different. It is on a different scale and it's a different program. So thank you for pointing. I actually meant to clarify that that wasn't my intention in that quote either. So thank you for bringing it up.

Pilots occasionally get a negative connotation and this wasn't intended to be like that. similar to what commissioner anderson said was that we wanted to see an opportunity for small landlords people who owned maybe a second home or another opera or another house to turn that into something more than a house that they rent out for three weeks in the summer we wanted to see these houses have the opportunity to get filled year round And if we could do that by offering a tax credit for multiple years and then you would provide that housing for these people, that was the goal behind this initially. And I think that got lost in the weeds with the fear because too many times we've been taken advantage of. So I know that this guardrail conversation is very important. I don't see why it's not inappropriate to postpone this establishment vote until we get a rubric established. really anxious to hear the public comment I know there's a lot of questions and I hope people will enter this with an open mind this but I'm also having flashbacks to a couple years ago when we were talking about the r1 to r2 up zoning and we received incredibly negative public feedback we weren't I wasn't even Commissioner then but I was coming and listening to it and the people in the community said just leave our neighborhoods alone And I hear that very loudly. And I'm just, I share the concern with the audience and the people that send us emails. We've not received a lot of positive feedback on this. And it has largely due to the vague notice that we sent out. But it was a requirement. It was a statutory requirement. We had to send out a notice.

Yeah. We can do better in our messaging of what it says next time. You better believe it. Yeah. Mitch and then Laura had your hands up.

yes echoing a lot of what commissioner funk just said this served a purpose both in state law and we saw a specific utility for this in traverse city people talk about preserving neighborhoods but on my commute here i can see houses that may have been a duplex at some point in time or even somebody just rented out a room in their house but If they lose their PRE for that portion of the house that they're renting out, it is no longer affordable for them to do so. Or if they are doing that, it's only affordable if they are renting it out essentially short term in the summer months to somebody that is paying three times as much. There are people that would love to rent to somebody that is working on Front Street that is a nurse that is somebody in our community year-round but the taxes might be unaffordable to do that. Or they might have a house that would require some investment to bring it up to code to have a second unit in it but they don't necessarily see the benefit to that. Since they don't want to be somebody renting at the highest price available, they want to rent to somebody in the community. This provides a tool for that. Yes, we certainly can put guardrails. We should put guardrails on both the minimum amount or rather the maximum amount that can be rented relative to AMI. minimum threshold over the five thousand dollars for how much work needs to be done we could have a cap initially but I am a little apprehensive about something like that because we don't know what the demand will be like however this is a multi-step process as has been mentioned several times this is the sixth meeting that it has been on the agenda The fact that we approve or even take the next step in approving the districts does not automatically mean that we will accept applications. It is one step in the process and that step as we have heard already in our discussion today will involve an implementation policy, will involve rubrics, will involve a greater criteria for what we are looking for, how will this tool be used.

Thank you, Laura. Two quick comments. One is related to Commissioner Funk's comment in going back to the significant public comment that was received during the R2, R1, R3 conversation. I think we need to be really crystal clear that by establishing this district tonight has nothing to do with zoning. So where a fourplex is allowed today, that's not going to change with any action that's taken tonight. So, and I think that's really, really important that we not confuse those two issues. This is not a zoning discussion tonight. The term district I think can get a little bit confusing. in terms of that conflation so I just want to caution the public about that. I'm open to this tool. I think we should absolutely be having this conversation and it's really important that we hear and understand the public's perception of this. But I'd like to see us start small. I'd like to see whatever policy rubric we come up with a cap on the number of certificates that we look at between now and our next budget cycle because foregone tax revenue is an expense to the city and it does have an impact on our budget. And so I want to make sure that between now and the next budget cycle when we can make those types DECISIONS RELATED TO THE COMPETING PRIORITIES THAT WE HAVE FOR ALL OF THE THINGS WE NEED IN THIS CITY THAT WE START SMALL. AND ESTABLISH THOSE CLEAR GUARDRAILS THAT WE'VE TALKED ABOUT AND JUST MAKE SURE AS COMMISSIONER SHAW SAID AT THE OUTSET THAT OUR PUBLIC BENEFIT JUSTIFIES THE PUBLIC ADVESTMENT.

I THINK THAT'S A REALLY KEY. ONE THING I WANTED TO ASK BECAUSE WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO DO RIGHT NOW BY ALL MEANS IF OTHER PEOPLE HAVE OTHER COMMENTS WE CAN OPEN IT UP IS SUMMARIZE WHERE WE THINK WE'RE AT BOTH FOR Mr. Lehrman to know what he needs to be working on for our policy coming forward if this does pass, but also for the public to understand where we're looking at for guardrails and everything else before we open up the hearing so that we're not just leaving this kind of for them to interpret where they think we have consensus or we don't. So we're all clear, everybody's clear. So for those who are saying they want to wait to establish the district, what would we like to say? I guess to me, when we had the conversation about mailing out to all the Rs and eliminating all the other districts, we said, look, if it's going to happen anywhere, it would probably happen within here. These are the people who need to be notified and those citizens. We apologize again that the messaging was so terrible and that it was very confusing. But if we're talking about scaling it back, how then do we notify other people that they're not in the district anymore? or you know is that something else we have how would we go about doing that do we want there's every saying we're not expanding it which i appreciate but i guess what i'm trying to say is what is the what would be the mode the purpose of of moving this vote on what the district is because once we vote on the district we will then have the rules we can't take applications tomorrow even if some people on this commission wanted to because we have no rules we have no for the staff to judge things on. We have nothing that would say when this comes to us, cuz every single application under this, if it does go through all the way to the end, has to come to the city commission for a vote. So there is no like, okay, great, we're done, now somebody's gonna stamp a red stamp on it, and it's approved, and you get to go do whatever you want at your house. That's not how, and we're gonna give you the tax break. That's not how this process works at all. So that's where I want everybody to put Pin on that one and we'll come back to that. But then what I'm hearing from everything else that we are in total consensus on is looking at having our policy or our potential rules shall we say for application look at is 5,000 enough? How could we look at that being higher potentially? How do we weigh it on a rubric for what's giving us the best public good for it? So we're not just arbitrarily giving out a tax break to somebody who's at the highest level and put the minimal amount of effort into their home or into the rental, if that's what we're talking about and what that looks like for us. I'm really excited here that we potentially have funding for audits and application fees. The state sometimes limits us on that. If we can do that in this case, it's great. That we want to look at the AMI, traditionally this board has not approved anything over 100%. We can go lower as well when we have that conversation. So that is part of the conversation we'll be having when that's brought back to us. But we will not be going to the full 120 as the consensus I'm hearing unless I hear objections. That we want to look at this larger investment as a whole in the community. That we want to look at the shorter terms than the 12 years. That we will also want to hear from the staff how those audits will be run. And so those are all the things that would be coming up next. So that brings me back to, We'd have to establish the district and people to know who it's going to be affected by, and then we can also have the staff look at that and the policy look at that of we're looking at all these. I hesitate to personally say, or I don't hesitate, I personally hesitate to say we're going to pick one neighborhood to be the guinea pig. I think that word has been suggested in the past. Heather suggested it today. I think Jackie has even mentioned in the past. We could do a cap. of we're only going to take 10 applications or 15 applications between now and the end of the fiscal year so we can see what that impact is, we can see what that staff cost is and not just look at a specific neighborhood only though. But we can do something like that as well so we're not just opening floodgates and just letting it fly. We also have the right, and I talked again to Dan, and correct me if I'm wrong, Zach, here, but we can stop this program at any time as well. So if we go through this process, we open it up, we're finding we're not getting the right applicants that are meeting this public need that we're looking for, that it's a floodgate that the staff can't handle, even with caps, and we just don't want to deal with it, we always have the right to end this program. Is that correct, Zach?

That's correct. And I would tie in, I mean, there's a few things you guys can do in this motion to, I mean, you can have a motion that says, okay, we're going to have a phase one that allows four to six applications. And only when we have an implementation policy, we all agree on. And only when it has this rubric that has these factors that are evaluation criteria, you know, whether, whether we you know, you can, kind of bake that into the motion. And in that motion, I would say I would include with the right to, you know, the city commission reserves the right to end the program at any time or to close the application window at any time.

Great. I mean, we'd have to watch that if somebody was actively in process, like about to have a hearing in front of the city commission, we couldn't really cancel it at that point, but anybody behind us. There'd be certain limitations on us, but for the most part, we have that control.

But just to clarify, Zach, for certificates that were already awarded with a period of time associated with it, those certificates stay in place. So if we award a certificate for four years or we award 10 certificates for four years, EVEN IF WE END THE PROGRAM, ESSENTIALLY BY ENDING THE PROGRAM WE'RE CLOSING IT TO NEW APPLICATIONS. IS THAT CORRECT?

That is absolutely correct.

Thank you.

Jackie? And just you were reading off a wish list of things that might be included in an implementation policy. I would add a control function there. You know, I heard mentioned annual reporting. I would be much more interested in monthly reporting. Well, Zach said quarterly, and that seems like a good idea. Well, something that would allow us to have a really good grip on the uptake. And then, yeah, I think that that sort of control as well as a cap for starting off are two good things. I think a conversation around success metrics, you know, what would make us consider this program to be a success and want to continue it. That conversation should happen sooner rather than later also.

And can I just clarify, Commissioner Anderson, when you mentioned monthly and then it was suggested perhaps quarterly are you talking about just report to the city commission you're not talking about audits right a staff report to the commission oh gotcha so that we can exercise our fiduciary duties that's what i thought you meant i just want to be sure heather yeah i don't know if it was in that your list of your wish list but hold on just be fair i'm hoping that's consensus that i was sharing because if it's not let me know because we'll take it off but

Go ahead. I don't know if I heard that the length of affordability commitment was in there. So I would be interested in that. So is there a penalty if we delay this for a while?

There is currently an expiration to the legislation.

But that's not until next year, right?

December 31st of 2027.

So there's no penalty if we were to delay for a little bit. Now I feel like we all voted to include the entire residential districts. So I suggest that we don't. But because of the nature of the notice that went out and the lack of information about this, I feel very hesitant to put this, to vote to approve the districts without having an implementation policy first.

Okay, and then the, thank you for sharing that. And then the other side was to create that, Sir Learman suggested was that we create a motion that ties any enactment of the zoning, or of the, sorry, of the district to all those qualifications being met before it could be opened, though. And then we could do, that would be something we could do tonight. So we'd say, we'd approve the district. but cannot accept applications until a rubric has been established, parameters of AMI have been decided, and the, you know, investment criteria and other factors are established.

Right. But, again, you're saying trust us. And there's been a little bit of a break in trust in that not that we've done anything wrong. It's just that how that letter went out and the way that it was, It was not clear. It was not clear. I've gotten all these emails about zoning and trees coming down and oh my gosh, what a disaster. Why can't we just put the horse before the cart?

What would we like to, and I'm not against that, what would we like to propose be so we wouldn't establish the district for a few months then and we work on criteria yeah in the meantime right does that is that is there stat does the statute allow for that or do we have to have a district before we can create a policy

The statute is silent in terms of what, and that is a policy determination, but would I just please advise that as long as you're not changing the districts, I think you guys should for sure still do the public hearing tonight. yep, just to make sure we don't have to recertify and redo the notice for all that stuff. I just want to emphasize that.

That public hearing in the notice that we've given, it doesn't expire, does it? I mean, do we have like a certain window? Okay, so we're not limited by that. Thank you.

Correct. The resolution has to occur after the public hearing. It doesn't necessarily say it has to happen at the same event, same night. They are entitled to a public hearing and

and as long as you do that tonight i think we'd be good okay thank you so mitch your hands up yeah i um really like the suggestion of of course we will listen to the public and this may get flavored by potentially a lot of public feedback on it but i like the idea of saying hey we've noticed a district let us create that district but have The backstop set up of we won't accept any applications until we have criteria in place because even if we get fantastic public feedback, even if we have a robust discussion, I don't think we'll be able to get a perfect scorecard together tonight. though we can definitely say this is something that we are pursuing. We are taking one step. We are not completing the process tonight.

Correct. And the next step, regardless of whether we vote tonight or not, there is a public hearing once the criteria is set, no matter what. That is part of the statute as well. So we don't get to just, again, say a district hasn't been established. We created some rules. You don't get to have any feedback on them. Or establishing a district, creating some rules, and you don't get to have any feedback on them. There's feedback either way. Go ahead, Laura.

But if we, so getting to Mitchell's point regarding kind of tying the motion of establishing the district, to that, I'm just going to call it implementation policy rubric, and not accepting any applications, essentially we have a district that does nothing. And that's a commission action. That's not a just trust me. If we tie the motion to we're establishing the district, but we will not accept any applications until we have approved the rubric or scoring criteria for those certificates, essentially the district is meaningless until we approve it.

And likewise, if we establish the district tonight and don't ever agree on rules, let's say we just can't- It just goes away. It doesn't do anything. Right, it doesn't do anything.

Nothing happens. Right. Yeah. Okay, Jackie? A question for the city manager. Based on the public input that we received tonight, that's going to drive our implementation policy. How abbreviated can the process be between receiving the input, creating the implementation policy, and is there?

That's a question for Mr. Leerman because that's going to be him writing it.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, both of you. Because I see a study session required also.

Well, I mean, that just depends on what standards you guys would like to hold for this implementation. I mean, you can confer the authority to your staff to implement some of these key things, and you can do that here and now, and I can come up with an implementation policy pretty quickly. Or if you require you guys to reconvene and re-look at it and kind of have study sessions, that's really up to you guys. But there's some flexibility there.

Yeah, I think the city commission probably wants to have that come back to them. And frankly, I would feel more comfortable with that just given the level of interest.

I think that's where I was going with the summary. And I apologize that this is your first time with us. So you're not used to our quirks and foibles here. That's why I was looking for that consensus with the list, which I feel like I got. And we obviously won't quiz you on it. We'll have the minutes and staff get back to you about what we've agreed upon here. the policy that you would then bring to us for an initial look at it would have looking at the investment figure, looking at what kind of audits fees and application fees we could put on it, what kind of AMI change we could restrict and that would come from our input. I would say in general this commission seems to have talked a lot about between 80 and 100. So I wouldn't look at anything over that for sure and we could certainly give feedback at the Next, after we hear from more of this and have some data analysis brought, do we want to go lower? Do we want where we want to be with that? But for an initial bite at the apple, shall we say? And then a potential cap on the number of applications initially at least. So that's, and then other things that you've heard here that were brought up, that's where I think we're looking for all of those elements to be included in any kind of policy. And again, we're not pop quizzing you right now and these are recorded. But that's what I think I'd like to, that's what we're looking at to have you bring back something that kind of embodies a lot of that to us. And then we would pick it apart some more and have our own discussions amongst us. But that's the starting point, I think. and then staff yeah and then you can work with staff if it comes down to okay how does that audit look you can go to them and say who's in charge of that who would be referred to that who's who's man hours or whatever are going to be spent on that but that's where the communication with staff goes we don't direct staff our city manager does so you could work with him on that but I think this is what we're looking for for when applications come across our desk does that seem like a fair consensus Okay. Seeing heads nod. Okay. So that's where we're at with that. Now before, as it works for our rules for a public hearing, we don't have a motion before a public hearing because this is you weighing in on the subject in general, not any specific motion. So we will allow for, I'm going to open up the public hearing in a moment here.

You have your rules for you, correct?

It's basically the public comment rules. And so please feel free. Once I bang the gavel that they gave me tonight, we'll open it up. You get three minutes to talk through this. Know that we don't have a motion, but what I've just summarized for you is where we're at with this right now. Certainly we want to hear your opinion. We want to hear your thoughts on all this. But we know that the wording on the card you got initially wasn't great and kind of confusing, so I hope this adds some clarification as you give us your input that we very much want to hear.

And can I just ask for a show of hands on how many folks intend to speak on this item just to get an idea?

And please feel free to line up so that we're keeping this moving. And we have people in the overflow.

Yes. If you're able to, please form a line behind the podium. This will expedite public comment so there's not a lag between speakers. We also want to have an environment that is conducive to everyone feeling comfortable expressing their opinion. So we ask that there be no reaction to comments given and that you just remain silent as you hear those comments so that it is an atmosphere of respect, and for everyone to feel comfortable sharing their opinion. And I just want to reiterate what the city clerk had said that we do ask that all language be respectful to all parties. Thank you very much.

Okay, we'll give the first speaker just a moment so that you're not having distractions. We want to have the floor on you, so just one moment here. All right, and then please proceed. You all have three minutes.

Mike Mulcahy, born and raised here in Traverse City. The communication, you're right. I'm going to jump right to the bottom line, then I'm going to back up. You need a document and it's got to be written like a sales document. I'm in the dark. I heard 100 acronyms here tonight. We got this young lady over here talking about $722.15. I'm going, what's that? The worst day of my life, of my year, is September 15th. That's where I pay my city taxes. It's a big number. And you're messing with the taxes. And everybody in here, especially people that are old, got their house paid for. That's the biggest payment they make in a year. And any time you mess with taxes, somebody's a winner, somebody's a loser. And that's just on the money. And then on the environment that they have to live in, there are winners and losers. I haven't heard anybody here tonight give me the headline, what are we trying to do? What problem is it we're trying to solve? I didn't hear that at all. That needs to go into a document. It starts out with what is the problem? And what are we going to do about it? Who are the winners? Who are the losers? It's like the first page on the inside of an annual report where the CEO of the company has got to say where we are, where we're going and how we're going to get there. I got no idea on any of this stuff. It's a very complicated thing and I can guarantee you as a manufacturing guy that the administrative overhead on what you're talking about here, I don't even need to know how it's going to turn out. It's going to be mammoth. It is mammoth administrative overhead to keep cheaters from cheating, to keep the weak from getting eaten by the strong, et cetera. You know, you got a long way to go to get me up to speed. And I don't know if anybody else feels that same way, but that's me. That's it. Thanks.

Thank you.

Olga Topash again. I just have some questions as far as, I was happy when Commissioner Ness said this is not a zoning thing, because that's important. I live in the central neighborhood. It's a historic district. Hopefully, I have seen projects going up in this historic district that are not in keeping, and they're still going up. So I hate to think of somebody, I live next to a triplex, hate to think okay they're gonna put money into it and the city's not gonna hold them to zoning and next thing I know I'm gonna have four little squares in their backyard for new apartments I hope you guys will take that into consideration that we do have a nice historic charm neighborhood I'm tired of seeing container housing buildings apartments we're losing Traverse City I agree with the taxes. I mean, if there's people who are not paying 100% of their taxes, you're going to have to go somewhere to get the money. Where are you guys going to go to make that up? So those are some of my concerns, and I hope you address those. Keep in mind that we live in the neighborhoods for a reason, and I understand workforce housing, but we all have made choices of where we want to live, where we can live, and I do. My heart goes out to the people that are you know, working in our service industries and all that that do have a more difficult time. But one of the figures was like $2,349 for rent. That's not affordable. So, we're like, we're talking terms that are really realistic.

Thank you. Good evening. Matthew Sheck, 306 West 9th Street. You know, when I came over here, I wanted to look at documents this past week or the week before, just double checking. They said they would have documents available to look at. Well, Public Act 236 that the 22 legislature gave us was not available. I wanted to get to the root of this thing. I want to find out more about it. But all I could see was just snips and pieces of things that angered me because it led in directions that I thought was totally incongruent with a constitutional conservative-run government. And I don't mean that politically. I'm talking about spending wisely. One thing for sure is that when you label things like attainable housing district consideration, are we really talking about affordable? Are we talking about low income rent and control over people and what that will mean? And I think some of you commissioners anyway were concerned about staff costs like you Like it's nothing. That's not just staff, but it's just the total operation of an immense thing like this is only going to grow. It can't get, it will not get smaller. It will only get bigger. Before I lived here, my wife and I lived in West Detroit. not very far from Herman Gardens. Some of you may have heard of that. Now that is a little bit different. That started out with a deluxe area to live that was part of Henry Ford's estate. He had that built. There were administrators from Ford Motor Company who lived there. But when we were there, it was mostly all affordable housing, low income or no income people, and a lot of the people that made a living there was from taking from other people. Even the neighborhood where we lived, eventually people moved out. This is in the surrounding area. We were a quarter mile away. Vacant houses. We went back in 2016 to look at the house, and the back door was gone. Nobody's there. Other houses around the area. Luckily, this was a cinder block construction. That was an old-style construction back in those days. They couldn't burn that down, but there were homes that were burned down. Homes were pillaged for copper so that the druggies in Herman Gardens would have a fix. I'm sure that's why our next-door neighbor then was killed. He was on Tireman Road in his car. Car stopped. Someone pulled up with a gun, shot him in the head, and robbed him. It's like... When you play to the least common denominator, really, you have good intentions. I understand you guys there. And I agree, good intentions are good. But our Constitution was designed to protect us also from good intentions. There are people that promise to govern well, but they mean to- Thank you.

That's our time, thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, hold it down.

Keith just stole my thunder. Please adjust the microphone so individuals can hear you. Can everybody hear me?

Yep. Good. My name is John Berryman. We live at 436 East State and I can just speak for us. I know we're all in favor of more housing options for the people that make this city work. You know, let's be honest. What I came here hoping was to see that we were at a point where there was some estimate of what we think the impact of this is going to be, whether it's the city's tax revenue. I mean, there's ways of economically modeling these things with variables, saying what you think the range of them can be to what it's going to do to the city as a whole. And I haven't heard that, and I'm really interested to hear that. I think for me, if it was me, I need to know that before I can say whether I even want to proceed with this or not. And I'll keep it short, that's really all I have to say. Just looking, you know, this needs to be fleshed out a little bit better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

My name is Caroline Kolchak and I'm on the 600 block of East State Street, Boardman neighborhood. So I already have a disabled veteran's property tax exemption. So the tax incentive isn't really an incentive to me. But I would really love to put an ADU in my backyard. And if there were something like a no interest or low interest loan, I mean the only thing stopping me is just the high interest rates in a loan to build a small ADU. I'm also a nurse at Munson and I see the need for housing for nurses. They're traveling, you know, an hour and a half, two hours to get to work. So that's the one point I wanted to make is I'd like to see some other incentives. The other concern I had is I have three city lots and what is there to prevent a developer from coming in and buying my house and tearing it down and building four little triplex units on each of my lots. And I know I've served on the Historic Districts Commission before and I think it could be more stringent in its enforcement. But if we were to do something like ADUs in the Historic District, you know, maybe the Historic District could. offer pre approved plans or something like that to give a cohesive look to the neighborhoods. Thank you. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Rolinda Lemay. I live at 711 Calvin Drive and I'm kind of out towards the Coast Guard station. So my question was partially answered or asked by the previous woman and that was, you know, When you have people come in to, you know, say make changes to an existing residential house in a residential neighborhood, you know, are they allowed to just like buy up a house and then build onto it or modify it to create two or four units out of that one residential house and its lot? And if so, then where will the four to eight persons, thinking only of those without children, but where will those four to eight persons, aka four to eight cars, suddenly park? Are they going to pave over the backyard and create eight parking spaces that now the neighbor on either side has to look at and bear the heat brunt of and the degration that comes from taking away trees and things that are in their backyard? And also if they do come in and, you know, do the aforementioned things, does the proposed tax exemption that is incentivizing these actions, that gap in it, is that paid up by me as a taxpayer? Who's picking up the slack? Who's picking up the slack when? This guy gets a tax exemption for however many years and before there was a family that paid theirs in every single year, like the gentleman out here spoke of first. If I'm paying my taxes every single year and all of a sudden there comes a modification to the home next door, it now has four units in it and they don't have to pay any taxes, who's filling that hole in the coffers? So that's one of my questions and then the other was, I had to think it was kind of laughable but I heard the, rent rate of $3,000 a month, okay? $3,000 a month. My husband and I are retirees. We both had good jobs. We have a nice home. We live in Traverse City. We have a nurse for a daughter. We have a nurse practitioner for a daughter-in-law. They do not, even with their spouse's incomes, have the kind of budget that can cough out $36,000 a year for rent. So if you're talking about helping out people who are lower income, you are telling me rents that are going to be $2,500, $3,000?

Thank you.

Got to think about it.

I'm Dee Edmond on 746 Washington, and I'm finding I am masked. confusion here because I looked at this, and you're saying the establishment of attainable housing facilities. And I looked at your map. And then looking at your map, I'm realizing why our entire town is this map. So under the circumstances, and we're all R1, history. Explain that to me. So and the houses are all here. Most of the houses are very old. And we have a couple new ones that have been thrown in. So what on earth are we dealing with here? And what are we trying to establish and do? And not only that, many of them are younger than me. But I'm much older than all of them. And under those circumstances, many that own all of these homes are dying off. And they're not selling them in many situations. They're giving them to their children. And their children are holding on.

Ms. Edmonds, would you, I'm sorry, I'm up here. I didn't say this earlier, but would you please make sure you're looking in this direction and directing your comments to the commission? We just want to make sure they're directed this way. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, well, thank you.

But the point is, is you mentioned in this article of trying to create more density. Why? We're about as dense as we want to be, and I think we're beginning to ruin the city, truly. I hear a lot of people saying that, and I think, oh my goodness, what is going on with us? Is money the most important factor in our lives? Let's start looking at ourselves. and our families and decide what's most important. It's not the money. And it's not the being Mr. This and Mrs. That and I'm perfect everything. Because we're all going to die, just some of us sooner than others. Thank you.

Good evening. Mary Mills, 424 North Elmwood. I'm asking you to slow down the action being considered tonight regarding citywide attainable housing. This is not an argument against attainable housing. Traverse City needs more housing opportunities, and I support finding responsible ways to make this happen. My concern is that we'd be moving forward with another broad citywide change before we have evaluated what we already know about our housing situation. And specifically, what did the 2023 zoning changes actually do? What did they accomplish? Before we take another step, shouldn't we take a hard look at the results? How many attainable units have actually been created? What type of housing is being produced? Who is benefiting? And are we getting the results we hope for? You know, last fall, Aspire North brought in the counselors of Real Estate Consulting Corp to Traverse City. We had 35 local stakeholders participated and the report was completed in January, all around taking a look at our housing situation. And yet, as of this date, I have heard no public discussion regarding the results of that study. What we learned from it or how the findings, if any of them, are being used to help shape our housing policies. I'm also concerned about the effect on our neighborhoods. More development can mean greater density, larger buildings, more traffic, parking concerns, and gradual changes to a neighborhood character that cannot be easily reversed. I believe we can pursue attainable housing while still being thoughtful about where and how we encourage development. So I'm asking the Commission to pause on this action, evaluate the results of our existing policies, consider the CRE report, and establish measurable goals before expanding this approach citywide. You know, we brought in experts. Our community participated. We received the report. So let's make sure we learned something from that before we make another sweeping change. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm Herb Lemkuhl. I live at 1158 Hemingway Lane in Garfield Township. I own property inside the city. I'm here to speak on behalf of Northwest Supportive Housing. I have rented to them for more than 25 years. I only accept whatever HUD pays me for that property. If you try to over implement this and ask for me to do too much, then I'm not going to be able to continue staying there and continue renting to these people. Supportive housing provides support and they surprise, they provide the rent to me on a regular monthly basis and the lease goes to the individuals. So this is really important that some of us that are already there, we're already renting to people that can't afford anything more. You need to continue to keep us in that position so that we don't tear the place down and put something else in place of it. So I just want to say keep it simple and don't overtax us to be able to make sure this continues to stay there. Thank you.

I'm Lucinda Timmer. I live at 3700 Inkitchee Road. No, not the thing out by 72 up on Old Wayne Hill. So I'm in R1A. And I have to say, I have always been active. We've moved around all through our years around the country. And so I've always gone ahead to just see how strong the city zoning commission, the spirit of the city is. And so I attended all of the meetings, even the master plan in 2010. I applaud you you're not making big money and you're getting a lot of criticism so I really do support you as a group the person I really support after receiving this we've all established this was incorrectly worded and never should have been sent at the cost of all of you needing to do it and you needed to do it legally for us so thank you but Heather Shaw and I Heather We've been emailing because I immediately put in my opposition to this and it was generally based on two tenets. One, of course, is let's get real. I have dealt with a history of affordable housing like everyone here. It's always going to be there no matter where you move to, no matter where you live. This is not affordable housing, so I'm not gonna spend any more time, everyone that's come to the microphone has established this misnomer, this word ploy. Because really what we're talking about is taking established residential area, which is the whole city. It's really the whole city. And once again, redistricting for possible income within your property right and the good news is you continue to pay rising taxes because property values are only going to go up. I agreed to that concept by purchasing in a R1A but I walk my dog every day. You see me all through the neighborhoods, Golden Retriever, Jelly Bean. And I've watched over the 12 years we've been here of just more little separate houses and I've accepted that. I understand that if you're in an R2. Because you are the property owner in place. While Heather and I were, she was answering my questions, what it comes down to is something that is not brought up tonight that is an integral part of my opposition is, would you please, if you don't mind, I'm going to read this. No. Heather says, I do not believe the state statute requires the owner. Excuse me, ma'am.

I'm sorry to interrupt. We just have to provide the same amount of time for every speaker. Sir, time has elapsed. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Thank you for your comments.

The property owner cannot be on the property if this passes. That's right. Thank you.

Mm-mm. Good evening. I'm Brenda Quick, 542 Fifth Street. Mary Mills made some excellent points and I'm not going to repeat them because you have already heard them. But while I was listening to the various discussions, there are some issues that came to my mind. First of all, I suggest that you think very carefully. This seems very much like putting the cart before the horse. Until you have more of a substantial program or plan in hand, then I think to even bring it before the public is just terribly premature. We all know that we have parking issues in this city, particularly in the residential areas. So that's a real issue. But you talk about people being eligible. Well, what happens if they get a raise? They're no longer eligible. They don't fit. Are you going to have the homeowners or the property owners have to file annual reports in order to determine whether or not the people continue to be eligible? If they are not, are they going to have to move? If so, then are they not back in the pot again of having to figure out where they're going to go? And who's going to enforce this? That's going to take a real effort and it's going to take cost to the city because somebody's going to have to enforce it. And how do you do it? How do you enforce it? Do you actually have to take them to court to get them evicted? I mean, these are a whole lot of issues and a lot of ticklish issues you need to think about. And I would suggest that, you know, you don't evict one person, but yet you evict this person over here. Are you now putting yourself in an equal protection issue before a court where somebody says, well, wait a minute. This person got the break, how come I'm not? All right, so you can get into a lot of different issues. So I'm simply suggesting that before you take such a big step as approving this, I suggest that you do a lot more research, you have a lot more facts, you have a lot more of these issues resolved before you even bring it forward because it's not something that I'm comfortable with knowing that you want to pass a zoning change to the city, but you don't have any basis whatsoever for seeing that it's enforced as it should be. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Bill O'Toole, 1917 Seneca Street in the city. One of my concerns is certainly the reduction in local taxes as a result of this program and possibly the necessary adjustments are going to have to be made with budgets possibly going short. I'm just afraid of additional millages coming out to support some of those things. You know, what's going to happen with schools, infrastructure, certainly the budgets in the city would be impacted. And it hasn't been mentioned but it came out in some of the other material that was provided or available is that Frankford, East Bay and Northport have already been wrestling with this a little bit and the results there is less than impressive. So I'm not sure if this is the right fit. The intent is good to provide that housing but I'm not sure it's a good fit for Traverse City and I agree with many of the other points that people before me made. So appreciate the time. I look forward to some of the changes. The only other comment comes that I do feel that this program is similar to the pilot that we're using for the commercial folks, and it would be nice to see some of the results of where we're reducing property taxes in lieu of rental payments. I think it might help sway people one way or the other for any future discussions.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Susan Lighthouser at 926 Barlow in Traverse City. I'd just like to thank you for considering this issue and discussing it over a course of six meetings. So I'm sure you have a lot more information and data than other people in this room have. We all wish that there were simple solutions to complex problems, but that's rarely the case. So while this may not be a perfect solution, I think it's useful and I really appreciate the idea of covering most of the city with the district, but capping the number of applications per year or the number of applications approved. So that will allow some test cases so that the program could be refined and to better ensure that the results that are happening are what is envisioned and that meets the goals of what was intended. So I'm just going to thank you for your service and I guess leave it at that. Thank you. Oh, if there's anything you could do about proposal A, that would be great because I know we're losing a lot of tax revenue through that.

Amen.

Hi. I'm Jan Black. I've lived at 416 6th Street for the last 40 years or so. Raised our kids and now raising grandkids in the neighborhood. I love our neighbors. I love our neighborhood. And I see this basically as a density issue. I get the feeling that you just want to go ahead and pass the districts and then we'll try to come up with some rubric or some matrix or some social engineering thing about income and number of dollars spent on improvements and all that stuff to try to solve this problem. But ultimately, what you're trying to do by increasing housing in the areas is by bringing more people in. And those people are non-residents coming into our city. And so I start wondering, we're spending all this time representing non-residents, at one point in time we start looking at, okay, the residents, people that live here, that pay taxes here. And so to me, I like simple things. And I would almost say instead of spending all this money in mailings and things like that trying to come up with work sessions to come up with some type of matrix, I think it would be wise just to poll each homeowner in town one by one and get them to answer a simple question. Do you want more density or do you not want more density? And if you get an overwhelming response, everybody wants density, then run with it. If you get a very negative response, then shut this whole thing down before you even consider developing these districts. I think that would be a simple thing to do, and it would give you a lot of information. My concern is that if you go ahead and pass this task district proposal and then start social engineering, the dollars, the miles, and all the things that you talk about with rubrics, It's just a slippery slope. And so let's go ahead and just be what the people that live in this town really want, the people that work here, live here, pay your taxes, pay your salaries, really want, density or not density. So thank you.

Thank you, Jim.

Hi, I'm Chris Nichols. I live at 426 Fifth Street and I appreciate all the work you've put into this. I think the biggest problem for me in all of this is just not enough information. I think that's where This could be the best deal ever for providing some kind of additional housing for people. But with all the things that are going on in terms of questions that haven't been answered, you've roused our interest. So many of us are here. A lot of us aren't even speaking. But you need to hear our voices and maybe the best thing would be open a website or something that people could ask questions, they'd be answered, then there'd be a repository of frequently asked questions or new questions that could be answered along the way and get everybody comfortable with this thing and then move forward if everybody is comfortable with it. So I thank you for everything you've put into this, but I think we need to put a stop for the moment and bring everybody on board. Thank you.

Hi, my name's Nan Serefka, 516 Hastings. Shout out to Ken. So I've been in the other room, and some of the audible feedback that has come and other comments that folks have made me or made that I've overheard, And I want to follow up with the clarification. I think there just needs to be a pause because there are so many questions. One predominantly is the woman who has jelly bean as the golden retriever who was cut off. Did we hear right that the property owner cannot be on site? Because that kind of defeats the overall purpose of residential property owners expanding their properties to people for housing. I don't know, a catch-22 right there doesn't make sense to me. The other thing that doesn't make sense is the idea of a sliding income. Conceptually, I get it, but that, to me, encourages bad behavior of renting to people with higher incomes that can pay more rent to you. where's the cap for the people who maybe work on Front Street making 30 grand a year 40 grand a year that limits my ability to rent right and that what sliding income is if I'm understanding correctly so we're disincentive sizing the person who's investing in being the landlord if you would and in renting to the exact people who are trying to help because they're not going to be able to afford that money. So I support the woman who suggested that there be some financial incentives to the homeowner who is now expanding their property to make it more affordable to the people that we all want to try to help. Thanks. Thank you.

Fred Bember, 1223 Randall Street, city resident. Just a few different points here. First, the woman in the pink top who ran out of time wanted to make the point that as she understands it after discussing with Commissioner Shaw, this program would require that the owner of the property not be present at the property in order to qualify for this program. If that is actually the case, that seems like an absurd requirement. I think most of us can recognize the property will be better managed, more consistent with its neighbors if it's an owner-occupied rental as opposed to one that seems to invite investors that consider it simply a commodity. You should listen importantly to what city residents have to say about this. A lot of us showed up tonight. Half of us, half of the audience is in the training room. And I want you to understand that when Commissioner Shaw said we should not pass this in a halfway basis and put it in place without knowing what all the standards are going to be, there was applause in the training room. There's widespread public support for that idea. Some of you commissioners have already voiced support for that. Please continue through with that. Don't do this in a halfway basis. Let's see the whole program hold a further public hearing on that, not with all these absurd certified mail notices. You held your notice public hearing tonight. You don't have to act tonight. You can put it on the agenda for a later meeting and there will be opportunities for public comment then. Thank you.

Elliot Stratton, 1700 Indian Woods. I'd like to start off by saying I appreciate all the efforts, service that you guys have put into this. I think I'm personally totally for the idea that voting on the district, all it is, as you guys said, is the lines of what happens or where this would happen. I think it's clear more public discussion is needed. I think I have a good understanding of what this is and I support the intentions. I'm sometimes even fumbling over some of the things that people have said tonight because I feel like there's some inaccuracies that are being displayed around here within some of the public comments. But again, you know, maybe they aren't. And I think that alone speaks to the idea that probably more information needs to be said, clarified, put forth. I think one thing that's really important though is that I don't think you guys are taking simple steps or looking for simple solutions in this. I think this seems to be community involved and looking for a way to involve community members outside of just larger developers and investors. So I think in terms of taking what seems to be a more complex look at this problem, I think you guys are in the right direction with that. So I appreciate that and I appreciate the service that you guys are doing. But it's clear more communication is needed. Because I would hate to see something like this just dissolve away based off of misunderstanding. So thank you guys.

Hi, Tom Elliott, 719 West Orchard Drive in Traverse City. I originally moved in my house 1985, so I've been there more than 40 years. I bought it because of what it is. I certainly don't want it to turn into what you folks really think you want to provide for whatever reason is beyond me. If for some reason this all passes, And the values, after a number of years, maybe even a day, who knows, goes down. It happened, as this other gentleman said, in Detroit. Is the city going to be responsible? Because you'd be the ones that drop the value. As far as housing for the less fortunate, I don't know why we don't go out and buy acreage away from town where it's cheap, put in little houses, whether they be manufactured multiple or stick built, provide house or shuttles throughout the day for these people. It's got to be a heck of a lot cheaper. They don't need, I lived 11 years on a 50 by 125 foot lot in Sylvan Lake, which was a nice area. You don't need large square lot housing for the lots. I guess that's it. Just I hope you don't even consider it.

Justin Reed. I've seen some very reasonable comments. I've seen some very outlandish comments. I mean, Traverse City doesn't have a lot of land. And the whole entire thing about shuttling people outside of Traverse City, that sounds like the townships issues. That needs to be an issue with the townships. As far as having people coming from outside of Traverse City, I don't know. We can always put a wall up and just call Traverse City Traverse City Land. I mean, different nation, I guess. Or, you know, as far as the thing going with, you know, providing lots, well, like I said, there's not a lot of land in Traverse City unless we're going to fill in the Boardman Lake. I mean, we can always do that, too. I'm just saying. And, you know, thank you guys for actually looking at this topic. It's a complex issue where there's no easy answer. I mean, you have to start somewhere, and starting somewhere is a conversation and dialogue, which you guys are doing, so thank you.

Hi, I'm going to make sure, and the mic, because nobody can ever hear. Marilyn Black, I live at 416 6th Street, and I've lived in Traverse City for 40 years in the central neighborhood. And I just might, I guess I'm asking for clarification, I know you can't answer me, that I'm understanding, like... Amy mentioned that there's like two parts, not just building the matrix and all of that, but also deciding on the proposed areas, which are R1A and R1B, whether those would be them. And I guess my question then is, R1A and R1B encompass several neighborhoods. So central neighborhoods, Slabtown, Old Town, the area by the college. Can you exclude certain neighborhoods within R1A or R1B? Because personally, I'll speak from my perspective in Central Neighborhood, I feel like we are so dense already, like people have said. We have lots of duplexes already. We have ADUs. And I don't know that we can have room for, I mean, there's always room, but it would definitely change the character of the neighborhood. I live on 6th Street. I mean, our neighbors behind us and the people in your parking, parking is atrocious. The people on Wadsworth have already requested two-hour parking because you can't find a place to park. The 400 block of 5th Street requested two-hour parking, and that got approved. and everybody shifted and moved to the 500 block. They've just requested to change it to two hour parking too. I can't find a place to park in front of my street because I see people that work downtown get out of their cars all day long. So that's just like where are these additional people going to park? That's just one small issue. The other thing, you're concerned about how would we notify people again if we changed this or reduced it. I think you don't have to send out another certified letter. We have all kinds of public, you can write it in the ticker on the Record Eagle. over the radio and IPR, you could say it. I mean, there's plenty of ways to let people know in those districts without a certified letter that you've excluded certain areas or changed the proposed districts without having to send out or make that a reason not to change that district. And the other thing, I guess maybe this is just me not understanding, if you're reducing the taxes you're getting because people are getting an exemption for doing this, that means the city's receiving less property taxes, then where does that get made up? Like where's the money, where's the city getting that loss of income? Are you going to raise the taxes on those that didn't do it or are we going to end up getting taxed? It has to come from somewhere and that's concerning to me. I think that's everything I got to say. Thank you.

Ann Rogers, 1236 Peninsula Drive. I've lived in the city for probably over 60 years, and I've seen so many changes, a few for the better, but mostly for the congestion and the lack of parking and the monster houses, things like that that don't really contribute to what Traverse City used to be. There are a couple of things that have not been even mentioned tonight. One is climate crisis. I hope you're following it because we're at a tipping point. And more hard surfaces just means more heat, more drought. Pay attention to what's going on. We need to look at our light and power and support what they're trying to do. The other thing is trees. we've cut down trees when they're dead but we're also cutting down trees to build and trees are the big mitigator of the climate crisis so everyone is needs to be preserved excuse me Looking at some of the things we already do is critical. For instance, getting the glyphosate and Paraquat and all of the poisons out of our city. allowing people to have more vegetable gardens. There are many things that can be done. So I hope you look at a broader picture and pay attention to what's going on. Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Dave Petro. My address is in Interlochen. I spend most of my time with Ann. So just a couple quick notes on this here. We've thrown up a lot of things. I mean, it began with Benjamin talking about, well, it wasn't properly worded and things like that. So gee golly, we're doing a hearing anyhow that people don't really know what's in it and stuff like that. First of all, we could look at like, why consider that the meeting only is one night? And when the next few minutes, when everybody's done saying something here, you could say, well, we're going to continue this meeting here in two weeks and go on from there. The other bit about, well, it costs a lot of money to send out these notices on certified mailing and stuff like that. Yeah, it was, what, $18,000 or something like that. But the money that you're losing on doing pilots and tax relief and things like that is in the millions of dollars. $18,000 or whatever it is isn't that much money to do something and do it right if you think it's going to be better. Those are the sort of things you should consider there. I've heard a lot of other people bring up other things about, well, this is not the end of it. We've done other of these projects before. This is not the first time you've got almost two dozen of similar things in here. They give a tax abatement or a 12-year period where you don't have to your taxes don't go up or whatever else for businesses and stuff like that I myself I mean it was 14 years ago I built a garage and when my started building that garage long before it was done my taxes were going up why don't you give it to everybody who builds ads you know improves their property whether they're renting it out and making money on it or just adding a garage or something else or paving a driveway or whatever why don't they get a 12-year abatement on their taxes before you raise the prices you know things like that i mean you could look at this in a total different way than what you're trying to do here and it would benefit the people who live here without just making more profit for people who are profit mongers. So thank you.

My name is Pat Labelle. I live in Traverse City, 741 Birchwood. And my husband and I have paid taxes in the city for 51 years. The fact is, is Traverse City is landlocked. Where do we go? How much is too much? I know personally that if I wouldn't want my neighbor building up to four rental units next to my property. I've invested in my home. My children have all grown up here, gone through public schools. This is our community. You're going to change neighborhoods forever. Really think about that. It's going to have a huge impact. and what our community is. There's plenty of land. I agree with Tom Elliott with his statement that there's land all around us. But Traverse City is, we only have so much. We have enough congestion right now. You know, I'm all for supporting people that can't afford it, low income, but I think his idea taking land that is open and building smaller homes and meeting that goal. But I just don't see where the emphasis has to be on Traverse City when we already have a large population. It's just very frustrating and I really think we're going to hurt our town in the long run. Thank you.

Ellen Beard, 1050 Washington Street. I apologize for being a little late to this party. I had a statement already, but having heard what everybody else has heard here, my first reaction in getting the mailing was what? Because there was, you know, I apologize for not coming to the meetings. I guess I'm just going to, I'm not going to read this, but I would strongly urge that you not pass this tonight until you have everything in place. It just if only for trust, you know, because I think there's a lot of people here who we, you know, need to understand a lot more before this happens. That's all I have to say. Thank you.

Good evening, James Church, 602 West 7th in Traverse City. I've been here a little over 40 years. A few things. I think this whole thing is incrementalism at its finest. You guys are putting the cart down that road with no horse in sight and nothing in front to stop it. This is, to me, a half-baked idea. It's social engineering. I don't know why the city wants to if you will, subsidize housing in a manner that is going to cost taxpayers because you got to make it up someplace. And besides that, rental properties are depreciation. That guy besides getting a tax break is depreciating that property on his income taxes, et cetera, et cetera. And I just think this whole thing is not a good idea. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Barb Zupan. I live at 205 Seventh Street. Well, there were a few red flags when this whole thing arrived at my house, not only the registered letter, but I got the other documents that were connected with it in the 35, 38 pages that you could read if you wanted to know more about this. And one of them is I found very interesting that if you want to proceed with this, it says that the mailing must go out by the end of July. Hold a public meeting in August and I guess this is the public meeting, correct? Public meetings to me would be we interact. Raise your hand, ask a question, get an answer, somebody else ask a question. You can never do this in this forum. Anyway, it goes on, approve the resolution, on and on and on. But I was in the other room and it was very interesting that people just gasped when they said a single person making $95,000 a year would be eligible. I don't know. Maybe there's a lot of people in this room but I worked my whole life and never even approached that whole thing. So it's just kind of shocking to think that a single person would be eligible making $95,000 a year and they can't find any other place to live in town. I think it would be interesting, probably you know this, but how many apartments have been built surrounding Traverse City? It must be thousands of them and people can't find housing. And the other thing that's interesting to me, this is the zoning map. And if you look at this and you know this map, every bit of yellow in here would be eligible for the program. Every single residential property in Traverse City would be eligible for whatever could happen with this. Somehow that makes me very uncomfortable because we've all seen people spending millions of dollars for condos and whatever else. That will certainly change the character of the city when you've got every single residential property would be connected with this proposition. So I'm urging you to take your time with this. Have a question and answer. We all have a lot of questions. And again, this isn't the forum to get a question and your answer. So I appreciate your work. I know you all make a lot of sense in terms of what you want to do for our city. So thank you.

Hello, my name is Jeff Watts. I live at 303 Midtown Drive. And I've heard three of the commissioners say tonight that this is to hopefully complete our community. And my question to all of you is what about the existing residents? And I'm a frustrated resident right now because I live on A Street, which was at one time four lanes, is now two lanes. The homeless shelter is now open year-round. We have homeless sleeping on our benches, in our park behind our condo units. Homeless guys that are running down the street yelling, that's changing our community. And this proposal is going to do the same thing. An hour before I came here tonight, I looked up some stuff online. Ruth Park Apartments on Wellington, 58 affordable housing units, four stories high, immediate occupancy. Riverview Terrace on State Street, 10 stories high, 115 units, immediate occupancy. 690 Station Street, that's to be built, four stories, 75 units, 57 workforce housing units. Why do we need another one on 8th Street where the copy shop is? four stories, 45 units, you're changing our community. This whole proposal is changing our community. It's just not the same. Thank you.

I'm going to let you speak in just a minute. Just because we have people on the delay in the other room, I just wanted to let them know that the line is shrinking. So if people still want to make public comment, please make their way. But please continue with your public comment.

Amelia Hasenorl, 200 Block of North Cedar in Slabtown, city resident. When I got your letter, I was blindsided. You may have met six times. That was my first notice. And I'm still not understanding you're saying we're making a district. To me, that hit me like, oh, wow, they're going to try to rezone the entire city because that's the way that pitch came to me. I live next door to a rental. I have great rental neighbors. The owners don't live there. I think rentals are better done when the owners do live there. Luckily, I'm on a good name basis with the owners so if there's issues, we talk and so forth. When you don't have someone on the property, then it's not being, regulated or handled well in most cases. The other thing was the taxes. Again, you're giving them tax increment or tax breaks. I'm worried about where that's going to come from. My taxes have gone up every year significantly for the last three years. I own my home. I'm going to be one of those people who intends to give my home to the next generation in my family. So I am concerned on what's going on with that. I'm also blessed with 200 to 500 cars rolling in front of my house every day for the school across the street. Should the unit next door to me sell and become a four-story unit with four units? I'm concerned about the noise. I wake up at 5 a.m. from the air conditioning units for the church across the street. That is not a small noise. It's a very loud noise. This is something to consider about how you're going to regulate these units. Where is the air conditioners going to go and who gets to listen to that at 5 a.m. every day? I think you really need to hold off on this. I do not think the public is well informed as to what this attainable housing thing is. Could it be good? Maybe. I don't know. I dug and dug. I'm surprised the last woman came up with what she did. I couldn't come up with enough information to still not understand that you're doing a district, not a rezoning. What's the difference? There are just too, too many questions, not enough information out there. I really feel like a lot of times the commission isn't listening to preserving the neighborhoods, the quality of our neighborhoods, the personality of our neighborhoods. I was very alarmed when that black box went in behind Slap Town Burgers. Prior to that, the zoning was stepped down. Thank you. Your time. It's not stepped down.

Hey, y'all. Katie Bordado, Central Neighborhood. It's been a while. I've missed you. I've been at home preserving what's left of my sanity. But thank you for having me. Thank you for your service. I appreciate you guys talking about this. As a long-term property manager in both long and short term since 2003. So it's my area of expertise. I'm a zoning nerd. I look at this stuff all the time. There's a couple things that I would know. I would hope that you wouldn't make this tool so arduous and expensive and completely defeat the purpose as you're trying to put in some guardrails here. I do think some guardrails are obviously necessary. We can't go forward with this all willy-nilly. I think that we could consider this as a tool to reduce the number of short-term rentals. I'm sure everyone in this room is a huge proponent of short-term rentals and just would be really excited to see more of them. But this would actually probably reduce the number. Because what it is, it's not a zoning change. I think there has been a lot of confusion here. So you can't just take a lot and put four units on it on our one zone. That's not how that works. What it is is it's going to be able to kind of change some of the use a little bit. And as somebody who has utilized a home in central neighborhood that had non-traditional zoning, I raised my boys in a duplex there. It allowed me as a single mom to be able to afford to do that. I appreciate that I was able to do that. And I certainly would never want to close the door behind me just because I was able to do that and raise my kids. I just dropped my youngest off at school in New York. And I want other young families and even single moms to be able to afford to raise their kids in a really nice neighborhood. And I think that this is a tool that can be used for that if it's established properly. I think the other thing to consider tonight, it's been said over and over, is just because you establish the zone doesn't mean that you have to utilize the tool. It doesn't mean that you can't put the parameters in place before you accept applications. And so I would encourage you to continue to take steps moving forward and not get stuck in some analysis paralysis. Thank you.

I'm going to give a very long pause for any last call for public comment. Please approach the podium if you have any more, and please line up if there's more people so that we can see.

Thank you all, and thank you for everybody showing up today. Wonderful. We were blindsided. Most of my friends and neighbors, they just figured this was a done deal. You already decided what you were going to do, so they weren't going to show up. Just two things, I mean I had 100 things, they've all been asked. Two things, if I'm going to do this or my neighbors are going to do this, can the Rubik's Cube do it for Grand Traverse residents and not J1s or people working remote from Seattle? Are we doing it for the new employees of the city? Second, talking to my mailman, this has happened. you put in a residence next door to me now they become i'm at 839 east state street so they're 837 their garage now is 839 and after 50 years in the house where my wife bought she will have to change her address so i'm going to have to notify everybody i'm going to have to change my passport my license call all my doctors change my christmas list That's ridiculous. I mean, I don't know why they're not 837B. You know, it seems simple but there must be some logic behind it. But I don't know if everybody understands that that's going to happen. And it depends on how many units are added of how many of my neighbors will have to change their addresses also. Big discussion, thank you. I'm against it right now just because we don't know what's going on. So there's, I don't see where you should move forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there any other public comment on this? Trying to be very slow. I see some people in the hall. Ritz?

He checked.

Okay. All right, it looks like the public comment has ended. I want to thank everyone for sharing their thoughts with us. I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing, because that is what this part is. Now we will enter into some deliberations and discussion. But it was very, again, it's been said enough times, we're very sorry about how this message was conveyed and all the confusion. We appreciate everybody who has taken the time to come here, though, and to share your thoughts, to ask the clarifying questions, which we're going to move into some answers as we've noted. There'll be some more discussion. And to thank everybody for coming out though and being part of our community and being actively part of our community. We appreciate every single person who got up and spoke, every person who emailed, and every person who was here, because that is very important to us and how we run things. So with that, I'm going to close the public hearing, but we will now open up for discussion. I know the city manager had some points he wanted to address.

Yes, thank you. First off, I just wanted to ask Zach if you would clarify There's been a concern that a property owner cannot live on the property. My understanding from the statute is, of course, it's not more than four units that would be eligible. And the property owner could live on site in one of those four units, but wouldn't be eligible for the tax reduction, if you will, within the unit that they're in. Is that correct?

Dave Kuntz, That sounds accurate. If you can give me a minute to double check that I can be probably Certainly, yes.

Dave Kuntz, So we'll, we'll come back to that as far as Dave Kuntz, Zoning. I just wanted to just make it clear that this proposal, if it was approved, does not change zoning. So the uses allowed by right do not change. It doesn't modify what somebody can do in terms of building a structure, setbacks, stories, all those things. It does not change zoning. I just want to make sure. Folks are clear on that. In terms of some of the comments that expressed someone, let's say, making a single person making $95,760, being at the, by the way, 120% AMI, the city commission has discussed tonight, of course, they've made no decisions, but keeping it at 100% or down to 30. And just for frame of reference, 100% single person income is $79,800. That rent would be limited to $1,995. 80% is an income of $63,840 or a max rent of $1,596. One more example I'll give is 50% would be $47,880. and income with a max rent of 997. That information is on pages 11, excuse me, 10 and 11 of the agenda item for this particular topic. So, if you were to refer back to that, I just wanted to give that just for some context. And then with respect to, you know, financial modeling that is something that i'm if the commission does not take action tonight but regardless even if you did we will come back with some scenarios in terms of impact they will be scenarios only but to just give some sense of what that revenue impact would be to the city we do have some faqs on the city website admittedly they are sort of hard to to locate they're on the assessor's page under uh you know some abatement options we're going to give that a more prominent. I'm going to ask the team to make that more prominent on our website and to also streamline some of those FAQs so that there's just some of the higher level things so you don't have to necessarily sift through dozens of pages. And then I say this with complete respect. This is not meant to dismiss the fact that folks just can't pay attention to everything that's on city commission agendas. And I don't say this with anything but sincerity. I encourage you to subscribe to the city's Bay Brief because these types of topics do come up and are referenced. That's not to shame anybody even. I'll admit I don't read every single Bay Brief, but it is a tool that's there. It's published every week, and I encourage you to subscribe to that. And with that, Zach, have you had a chance to clarify whether or not a property owner is prohibited from living on property that might have an attainable housing exemption?

They can live on the property, but the owner-occupied portion is expressly excluded from the statutory definition of the attainable housing property. So only the qualifying rental property can receive the benefit. Great.

Thank you. And if anybody had a hard time hearing that, A property owner is not prohibited from living on site. They just cannot live within one of the units that qualifies for the exemption or reduction, I should say, in taxes.

So I just wanted to clarify that.

That's something that will be articulated clearly in the FAQs and I think that's all I've got for now unless there are questions the commission has.

Go ahead, Heather. Can I ask a question of Zach? So, this isn't really about adding any density. This is about existing one to four unit rentals and as one meaning like a single house. This is like a bottom-up, I would describe this as a bottom-up housing initiative. This is for people who already live here, who own homes or rentals, and it provides some tax abatements and tax breaks so they can fix them up and bring them up to code so that maybe they won't be torn down. Maybe they won't be purchased by somebody very wealthy. Maybe we'll slow down some gentrification. Am I correct in saying that we're not adding density here? This is for pre-existing one to four unit rentals.

This does not change zoning, so it does not add density. Someone could choose to exercise some of the rights they already have under zoning, which could obviously, part of this program's aim if it was approved is to add dwelling units, but it does not increase eligible density at all. It's simply, it just complements, if you will, our zoning ordinance. It does not change it in any sort of way.

So to clarify Heather's point a little for myself too, you could, as Heather said, repair, upkeep, make something a rental instead of selling it at a higher price so people who live and work here could afford it. You could also, if you're already zoned to do it, not because of this, build an ADU and be able to offer that to a nurse maybe instead of at a full rate that might be unaffordable. if you apply for this process. So there is a chance that you could apply it to a new build and something, but it already has to exist. By us doing it won't suddenly allow an ADU or something to exist in the neighborhood that already exists, that's zoning already. So this doesn't change any zoning, correct?

Correct.

Okay.

Mitch and then Ken.

Yeah. Just again reiterating this doesn't change zoning. This doesn't allow you to build a triplex where you couldn't already. This doesn't allow you to build an ADU where you couldn't already though we allow them in most residential areas. But if you have a small lot size or you're already at your impervious service coverage or your setbacks or such in a way that wouldn't allow Literally hundreds of lots throughout our city to have additional units put on them just because there isn't the physical space there. Yes. And especially if we use this tool judiciously and are applying it to say 30 or 50% AMI for that person that is, a retail clerk on Front Street and makes $30,000 a year. The landlord is not going to be making the sort of return on their investment that would in any way be a profitable move to build a new unit. It costs $200,000 on average to build an ADU in this town. That is a lot of money if you are getting back $1,000 a month in rent. So do we need housing for that retail clerk that makes $30,000 a year? Absolutely. And currently, there are people in that category that are living in Traverse City, but they might be paying twice that in rent. And they have to live in Traverse City because they don't have a car and they can walk to work, but... They're unable to save to buy a car. They're unable to save to buy a house of their own or to take other steps in their life. But with a tool like this where we could allow that landlord through essentially tax break to lower that rent, it would allow that retail clerk that's already a Traverse City resident to then be able to save more money to actually have a rent that they can afford. This is something that will literally open doors in our community, doors that had been shut because it wasn't profitable for or even just too much of a financial loss for somebody to rent out that second unit. They might already have an ADU on their property that, sure, relatives can stay when they visit, but If they wanted to rent it out, their taxes would go up in a way that would make it cost prohibitive. This reduces that burden. And to the broader point of density, Traverse City is 20% lower population than we were 50 years ago. We literally don't have as many people. We aren't as dense. If you talk about the broader area, The Traverse City Garfield urban area is the least dense urban area in the entire state of Michigan because we're 56,000 people but it's 26 miles from Gron to the other end of the urban area in Acme with just continual residential and commercial development. At this point, yes, you can build cheaper property further out but that, new property in Blair Township is not all that much cheaper to build and then it increases the amount of congestion of strain on our infrastructure having those people farther out compared to people that are working at this town, people whose kids go to school in this town, people that want to be residents of Traverse City.

Thank you. Ken, you had your hand up next.

Yeah, I wanted to ask Zach this and I think maybe Leslie's not here. She's not anymore. No, that's okay. I live in an R1B property. However I choose to finance it, I can submit plans and request a change in zoning to R2 by right. Is that correct?

Yes, you could.

By right. I can live in one part of it and I can rent out the other. with this exemption for the rented out part and still be the owner occupied in there. It is not directly changing zoning, but it can indirectly change zoning by the method that I just described.

It doesn't change zoning, it just allows for it.

It changes my zoning from R1B to R2. No.

You would have to individually apply. For my property? Anyone has the ability on any property to apply.

Everybody has that right, right?

By right.

But that is a mechanism how someone could accomplish this, right? They could turn their R1B property into, like I could request a change to R2. No.

No. No, this does not change zoning at all. In order to change zoning, it would have to be recommended by the planning commission to change any zoning and then come to the city commission for at least two public meetings. This in no way changes zoning whatsoever. So what it allows for, if approved, is within the current zoning ordinance parameters, whatever any individual zoning classification presently allows, for you to apply for this tax reduction. Somebody could do the same thing, meaning expand the capacity of their property under current zoning without even applying for this. They just wouldn't be eligible for the potential tax reduction. Change is absolutely nothing with zoning.

Okay.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Heather.

Just one more thing. Katie Bernadetto inspired me to remember something. She said that this could be a tool to reduce short-term rentals. And I'm reminded that yesterday, a resident said to me, wouldn't it be nice if this Attainable Housing District Act went hand in hand with stricter short-term rental regulations in Traverse City? I would really like to see that.

So where we're at right now is, I guess it's up to our commission right now. Do we want to make a motion of some kind? Do we want to refer this to another meeting? What is the desire of the commission at this point? Heather?

I'll go first. I think that it's, well to me it was perfectly clear that there is enormous misconception about what this is. So I recommend, my recommendation is that we go forward with the policy making and the rubric making and wait for the district vote until later.

The policy drafting and rubric drafting to come back.

Jackie? Please. I support Commissioner Shaw's recommendation also. I think that the implementation policy and the details need to happen before the district is established.

I'm going to counter that and say establishing a district is just one piece of the puzzle and I view it as having, as giving us more of a framework in which to discuss the implementation policy and the rubric. We've done that with other policies that we've enacted where we pass one step of it, but knowing that we will have more discussion later to flush it out.

I mean, I was up on the line, yep.

So first I want to start by thanking everyone to come out. It's a late night and really appreciate all your input. I think it's important to articulate that the intention of a public hearing is not just to check a procedural box or to rubber stamp a decision that we've already made. I think it's really important that we listen to all of the concerns and the misconceptions that we've heard. We have an obligation to do that. And that feedback, that input weighs into whether or not we move forward tonight or whether or not we delay in that decision. I think clearly from what I've heard, we need some time to get our proverbial ducks in a row. We need to make sure that we are, that this act will allow us to actually address the problem that we're trying to solve and we need to do a significantly better job communicating. So I'd support Commissioner Shaw and Commissioner Anderson's concept of delaying this decision until we've weighed all of the considerations including the economic modeling, including looking at an implementation policy and a rubric, and communicating all of that to the public. And I think until we've got that done, we really aren't in a position to make a motion and vote on moving forward with the district.

Ken, I know you spoke already, so you don't have to, but go ahead if you want to.

Well, I just, I wanted to check my emails again because we just, We received about 20 emails against, not in support of doing this. We had 30 people speak against this and not in favor of it. And social media commentary towards it was highly negative as well. I'm having a hard time justifying this in my mind as to saying, we know better. We should go ahead with this anyway. That's my gut instinct right now.

I'm ready to withdraw my support for this.

We took a big swing at this, and I think we missed, and I'm afraid of getting it wrong. And this could be a $30,000 mistake that we look back on and say, well, at least we didn't make a half a million dollar mistake in a couple years. I'd rather do it right than get it wrong. So that's where I'm at. Yeah, I mean, that's a big swing from everybody else up here, but I'll just say it. This has been poorly received.

Where do I sit on this? I'm in the middle between, we've talked about this ad nauseum. And while we didn't send letters to the entire city until the last step, which maybe we should start sending letters to the entire city in the first step, we've kind of talked about this a lot. We all know what it does. We all know what it is as a board, right? That's our jobs is to know what we're doing. My caution is around deferring is that We're really great at deferring things and then it never gets done as a city commission. So I don't want to see that happen. This is a very limited time scope. For example, we implement this, we create a policy around it. Maybe that comes back in two weeks. Then we vote on the whole thing to put that, or maybe probably not even vote on the whole thing. We're looking at the end of October likely. This goes away next year, like October, 2027 is the last month for applications to be submitted if the state does not extend this. So we're really narrowing our window. So I would support deferring it with some head nods of my fellow commissioners that will get stuff done and we'll actually put our heads down and actually work on it. I just don't want to see this kick down the can and come back in 2027.

As the end of the row here before we go is I have a question for Zach here. If we were looking at having those an initial draft policy brought back to us, could that potentially be ready by our study session in the first second week of October? Or what kind of window are we looking at for you to realistically get this done?

I could turn it over quickly. You're talking about a like a full implementation, like a draft with all the notes that we've given you tonight.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I could get that turned over very quickly.

Okay. Less than a week. Ann Marie Buerkle Oh, less than a week even. Okay. Well, that's even better, but probably .

Joe Mohorovic And I appreciate the pace with which you can work on that and thank you. I will say from, I just wanted to say from the staff perspective to provide some of this information that's needed from the team, the soonest I think we'd come back and hopefully with a full package for you would be the October 12th study session.

Ann Marie Buerkle And to what I was going to say is I think to some of the points made up here, We did a, we failed the community in this of how we communicated it. So I don't, well I'm not, I'm with the sentiments that have been said here. We hear what everybody's saying. We need more time for people to process this. We need to do a better job of communicating what it actually is, right? This is 30% of income. We're not going to go up to 120 with those three $4,000 rents. We need to do a better job of conveying where we're at with this and what that program actually is. This is for the nurses who take care of you at the hospital. This is for the teachers in our schools. This is for the people working on Front Street. And none of that was conveyed before this. And so we understand that we are starting from behind on this. So I'm also in favor of putting this off. I don't inherently think that as the public is educated as to what this is and we do a better job of doing our job of explaining things and what's going on that it's going to be as hated and negative as it is right now. That's on us. I don't think we can take this initial reaction. There will be another public hearing on the criteria. That's by law. That's not even just us up here saying something and people questioning whether we'll actually do it or not. There will be that. there will be a there'll be another vote of what the district is all of these will come forward and still be discussed there's public we have a rule that most bodies don't have that every motion you get to make a public comment so we're not even asking you just come in and say stuff to us at the beginning of the meeting and not know how it turns out you're going to be there if you want to come and participate still or send us emails That is all stuff that we do as we're making the decision So that is there's still an active part of this process to go it may still not go anywhere This is nothing is set in stone But I'd also don't want us to say we did a really bad job of rolling this out and now it's dead in the water either because I have I've been born and raised in this community, but I also have been in the seats up here enough to know that once our community understands what's going on with something that helps people to live and work here, they usually are pretty supportive. We just didn't do that well with this. That's where we're at. So this is still a big process that's going to move forward. I think if we can all agree that by the October study session, which I don't have the date, is that the 12th? October 12th. we'll have that on the agenda again. So even if you're not getting the Bay Brief and you're not sure, mark that on your calendar and that's the next time we're going to talk about this then. And we'll have a lot more information. We'll have the structure of those guardrails that we've talked about and we're going to have more of this discussion. In the meantime, we are all public servants and available and you can reach out to any of us anytime and um we'll be putting our attorney to work and we'll be putting the staff to work on that with them so that we have a much clearer picture for you all when this comes back to us and to clarify because i know a lot of you this might be your first meeting study sessions by the nature of them we do not take action so there is no motion it won't be that it'll be presented on the 12th and we're going to have a vote and you're going to still feel like you were caught off guard That is just gonna be a presentation of fact and for us to have some discussion that will then shape something else that comes from that So that's where we are at right now tonight and as we move forward I just wanted to let everybody know that I was conferring briefly with Ben here We are gonna pull old business item number two off the agenda which is the pilot overview unless anybody objects at this hour and Graciously and thankfully, and we are very, very appreciative, Willard, Kylie, Kyle, I can't remember if I'm saying it right, has our reserved public comment, has agreed to move to our next business meeting to do that. So we thank him for that. So that will now lighten the rest of our discussion for the evening. As to this item, again, we will be bringing that back for a study session on October 12th without action, but more discussion. That is where we're going to leave that, and now we're going to, go ahead.

And if I may, I just, Zach, I just want to be perfectly clear, get your advice. The city commission obviously held the public hearing tonight. It looks like they're not going to take any action. Is there any sort of motion that they need to adopt in order to continue considering this item, or can we just simply put it on another agenda under our rules? I just wanted to make sure we don't have any legal technicality there.

That's a great point. The statute is, go figure, quiet and silent about circumstances like this. But it is clear that a public hearing doesn't have to occur at the same time that this resolution creating the districts has to happen. So if you want to, I don't know if tabling is the right word, but you know, whatever you're comfortable with in

bill uh adjourning this matter okay which supplies thank you so we can simply we'll plan on bringing this back at your september excuse me october 12th study session and then from there we'll determine what the city commission wants to do from there yep great thank you

Okay, thank you everybody for this. Thank you public and my commission for this discussion and for us doing what we're supposed to do, listening and moving from there. That's what we paid the big bucks to do. So with that, we're going to move on to our new business item number one, which is our pilot request for 314 East 8th Street. This is something that has been before us as well, but I'll let you kick that off, Ben.

Yes, I'm actually going to refer this to our city assessor, Amy Robbins, if you can provide a brief overview. I'd appreciate it.

Sure. So the Housing Commission has applied for this pilot, 43 units, 29 one bedrooms, 14 two bedrooms. They are designating the rents to be between 30 and 80 percent AMI and seven specific units set aside for extremely low income. Excuse me. They are requesting a 4 percent pilot with a 45-year term. Their approval is needed for them to go forward with the LIHTC funding that they were talking about earlier.

Okay. Do we have questions for her at this point for this or I will take a motion? I'll make a motion. Thank you.

That the resolution granting tax exemption for the property 314 East 8th Street as requested by the Traverse City Housing Commission at a rate of 4% and a term of 45 years be adopted.

Second. All right, thank you. Any further discussion on this?

I'm happy to make a statement because I supported this at the Brownfield Authority and I'm supporting it here. To me, this is, we're not going to talk about pilots tonight, but this is the kind of pilot that I think we should prioritize. You know, it's housing commission supported, it's on vacant underutilized site, it's using the LIHTC financing. All the units serve households between 30% and 80% AMI. That is fantastic. With seven units reserved for extremely low income residents with disabilities. This is really different from a lot of other pilots we see where, well, what we were just talking about. And I'm not going to go on because it's too late.

You made excellent points. Yes. Very well done at this hour especially. Thank you. Any other comments from commissioners? Go ahead, Ken.

I think I had mentioned this before. This was put into motion before the election of last November. And I offered my support then and I offer my support now. But this is the last pilot that's coming through right now that was agreed upon prior to the last election. And I think it's time that we addressed a pilot policy. We need to have a pilot policy. We need to know how much money we are not collecting in taxes, how long we're not going to be collecting those taxes, what the percentage of that is compared to the rest of the general fund and the taxes that we are collecting. We just need to know more information and we need to have a really good pilot policy, not just a rubric to score it and say yes or no, we'll give it. We need to say we can't afford to give this or we can't afford. So that's something that we need to do after this.

And just to maybe hopefully provide you with some comfort, that was the intention to a large degree of the item we just took off the agenda. We will be bringing that forward relatively soon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

we had a room full of people that spoke to how are we going to pay for things. And I am of that same mindset. Because as soon as we're done with this item, we're going to go into the formation of an ad hoc to look at the general fund balance and policies related to that and how we're going to pay for things. So I think it's good to have this discussion. I'm not afraid to have it. say what needs to be said in regard to it. As Heather said, this is a good project. This was agreed upon by a previous commission. I'm happy to see this through. But going forward, we need answers to questions in regard to how are we going to pay for things and how are we going to provide these pilots with equity. So that's all I got to say.

OK. Any other comments from the commissioners? Go ahead, Jackie. I will be supporting this but I would like to raise everybody's awareness of the feedback that came from neighbors regarding the project mostly surrounding pedestrian safety, bicycling safety, traffic issues. There are some very important issues that were raised by the neighbors. that at the planning commission level apparently we don't get to address until there's a site plan. And so I am a bit with the neighbors. I am frustrated at the process. I hope we can find some ways to improve that. Maybe it's my failing but this is the first time I've actually seen one of the rubrics that is used for scoring and I think there are some opportunities for improvement. So I guess I am aligned with Commissioner Funk and Commissioner Shaw. This one needs to move forward but I want a better process and a better end result for future pilots. Okay, Lance and then Laura.

So Commissioner Anderson, just to your concern and the neighbor's concern, I actually brought those concerns up to the Complete Streets Advisory Committee in the last meeting. And so we've begun discussion around that intersection, that area right there, and how can we make that safer and more user-friendly for all user types. So that discussion has started and I think will be ongoing now that once this is approved, if it's approved and we have the site plan, then there's a lot more that we can do, I think. So the team is pretty excited.

That's wonderful news. Thank you. Laura?

Yeah, real quick, this is a great project. I'm going to be supporting it. It checks all of the boxes. But I do have a question on the rubric, which is on page 260. I'm not sure who the question is going to be for. But we do have a building electrification policy. And on the rubric, the answer, it says yes, no, NA, and the answer was mixed. And then it says not addressed in the application, but states it will be NGBS certified. There are only expenses for, anyway, it's unclear to me. And I wanted to make sure that it follows our electrification policy.

Yes. And I thought that we had updated all of our documents. But I want to ask Amy to make sure because no is not an option. They have to follow the pilot or excuse me, the electrification policy. If it is determined eventually and we've had this come up with, you know, or potentially become an issue. then they would not be eligible for the pilot. So if you approve this tonight and they're not in compliance with the electrification policy, the approval is essentially void. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from the commissioners?

Last time we talked about this, there was concern over getting the easement for the electric underneath the consumer power lines. Was that achieved?

You can address Carl at the podium. Sorry, I forgot what it's called for a second.

Carl Fulmer, Traverse City Housing Commission. Yeah, we've been working with consumers. They've technically drawn up a plan to relocate above ground the power lines so that a building can be located on the site and have the proper federal setbacks from the power lines. So right now, it's their engineers downstate that are making the official plan. a sketch to show where they could be relocated. It's gonna be about 375,000 is the price that we've been quoted from consumers, but that is underway and they've agreed that it's feasible to do.

just kind of curious there's a few steps one was the zoning request that was tabled till we can get some legal opinion on that that's one component of this the pilot is a funding component of this the easement from consumers is a is a component of this and then i don't know if i said it or not it's getting late but the litec funding component was about it was just over a million dollars and that was one of the

The LIHTC funding is over $11 million and that would be from a private investor. So that's private investment. That's grant money granted to the project if it receives a LIHTC award.

Okay. I apologize. We were looking at there was about a million dollars in funding gap. It wasn't the LIHTC.

That's correct. Yeah. That's after we would get LIHTC funding. already have a commitment from the county brownfield authority that the land bank got uh which would cover part of that including the 375 000 um power line relocation i'm just i'm just thinking

how we're going to see this progress because these things do take time when we're looking at some of these deeply funded projects. They do take time.

I'm sorry. October 1st would be our LIHTC application deadline this fall. We should receive a word from MSHDA whether it's funded or not in January of 27. Then it's getting the and finding the investor to buy the tax credits and everything. It probably, if we were granted LIHTC award, it would be the spring of 2028 before construction would start. So we'd see consumers doing the power line relocation in the summer of 27.

I mean, I remember the process.

And the land bank has to go, had to put together all the four different sites as well. So that was another step, but.

They're huge projects. I commend your persistence towards them. Tonight hasn't been that pleasant, I have to tell you. But it happens. Maybe a small step in the hurdle towards housing. Thank you, Carl.

Any other questions at this time or comments? Okay. Seeing none, any public comment on this item?

Good evening. I'm Jill Noland. I live at 612 Station Street. I want you to take a moment and just think about your neighborhood. Think of the neighbors on the left. Think of your neighbors on the right. Think of your neighbors across the street. I want to tell you my neighborhood. We have the TC Commons in our neighborhood. We have Ruth Park, Safe Harbor, Habitat, Homestretch, whatever that new development is next door that you voted on the other day. Brick Wheels lot, I heard that got sold. It's going to have more housing on it. And East Bay Flats, that's my neighborhood.

Mm-hmm.

Hello, I'm Dan Biron. I live at 242 East 9th Street, and I'm a stone's throw away from the new development that's going to be on Lake Street. I was going to say all the things that Heather already said, so I don't need to say that again. It's a great project and makes a lot of sense for if you look at the property now, it's not like anything interesting going on right now. So it's great to see it can be in a better use. And I'm really happy to hear what Lance said. I ought to say that street is a mess. If we can put a stop sign or something at Oriana, that would make it perfect. That street is a problem, and it's not going to be. It's not a problem because there's housing going in there. It's always been an issue, especially when the 8th Street was cut off. It was a thoroughfare. So I never thought I'd have an opportunity to talk about that issue, but this opened up that opportunity. So if there are some complete streets going on and a way to do better traffic control for there, nothing to do with this project, that'd be great. But I think it's a great opportunity and Traverse, they just have a really good reputation. They've got great projects. You guys can see evidence of that. You know how to take care of their property. You drive by, it looks good. So I'm really very happy to support this as a private citizen. Obviously, I'm happy about it as part of my work too, but I live very, very close to that property. Literally, I think I could, about 100 yards. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment at this time?

I'm Marsha Karpinski, I live at 885 Baldwin Street.

Marsha, grab the mic just so we can hear you. Thank you.

And I'm kind of appalled that you did a 45-year pilot. I want you to think about this. You're all fairly young. This is going to affect you, your kids, and your grandkids are going to be paying for this for 45 years. So I guess what I'm asking of you is I want some kind of a printout that's going to show me how you're going to make up that millions of dollars of taxes that we're going to be losing.

Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comment at this time? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the commission. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Okay, last, I already had it open actually. So lastly, this is a resolution on the right to read, or freedom to read, sorry. Lots of times we get things like this as proclamations. We read the ceremonial thing like we do at the beginning. But this was brought to us by Library Director Michelle Howard, who is also a former commissioner. And I thought this was important to bring to all of us because this is a chance for the commission to that sometimes just gets put away as a proclamation that I signed my name to. We read up front and it's done for the commission as a whole to affirm since it was brought to us that way. So I just wanted to bring this forward. And I guess if anybody has any questions, go ahead, Lance, or make a motion. I'll make a motion.

Move that the resolution in support of literacy and the freedom to read be adopted.

Second. Thank you, Heather and Lance. I'd say Heather, because I know we both come from the publishing background. Yes, read every day.

The son of a second grade teacher. Yes. I think this is very important.

And that's a unifying theme through all of us. I don't think any of us that are up here is thinking, oh, I have nothing to do with reading. So, thank you for that. So, is there any public comment on this item? All right, seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. All right, and as we move through our now more abridged, sorry, my screen has something on it. We can go down now to appointments, and we have the general fund balance ad hoc. Because this is a kind of a working policy one, this is not a random draw. This is some volunteer, so I'll let Ben kick this off.

Yes, thank you. And I know it's late, but I just want to take a few minutes because this is an important item. I just want to give an overview. And this is largely all indicated in the packet, but just to reiterate, or for those who haven't had an opportunity to see it, our city charter, of course, requires every year that the city manager present a budget to the city commission. for your consideration. This current fiscal year that we're in is the first time that Traverse City has had multi-year budget forecasting. So it sort of looks like a three-year budget, but you're only able technically to approve one year at a time. really working to make sure that we've got that longer term aim and are being more intentional, thoughtful stewards with the public's resources. I had shared previously a number of fiscal pressures that I see on our horizon here. And that's why before the budget for this current fiscal year was adopted, I recommended and the city commission approved waiving your general fund balance policy. But I committed to bringing this item back to you in September to establish an ad hoc. And I just want to quickly overview some factors that influence our long term financial picture. They include but aren't limited to substantial facilities needs. As you know, many know, the city is embarking on a facilities management assessment. And last year, for the first time ever, we hired a facilities manager. We anticipate needs to maintain, renovate, and or replace critical facilities to total in excess of tens of millions of dollars over the next several years. Just for some context, the total estimated replacement cost for all city buildings, and by the way, we're not at all thinking that's necessary, We've got a lot of buildings that are in fine enough shape, but just to give you an idea of our total portfolio, it includes a replacement cost of $272 million. Again, I want to be crystal clear that we're anticipating tens of millions of dollars in needs, not that 272. However, I just want to give that context. We also have substantial infrastructure investment needs. We have made significant improvements in infrastructure investments, but just for example, the pavement asset management plan that was presented to the city commission at your July. 13th study session identified just over $44 million in needed preservation type measures, asset management to extend the useful life of our city streets so that we don't have to spend several times that amount in actual replacement of them. I also want to mention, of course, we've got rising employment costs in a competitive market. Nearly a third of the city's entire workforce across all service areas is eligible for retirement in the next two to three years. We will begin seeing, the city will begin seeing the most significant number of retirements that this organization has ever seen. That's due to the age and years of service of our current workforce. And just in terms of more visible retirements alone this year, Deputy City Manager Deb Allen, Fire Chief Jim Taller, Director of Public Services Frank DeTure retired this year. But there are retirements that are much less visible across all of our departments. And I say visible in terms of to the average member of the public. And so, as I said, the cost to attract and retain is rising. At the September 14th study session, which is next week, I'll be providing an overview of a scope of services for the city's future workforce. strategy that is aimed at preparing us for the workforce we need in the future, especially as we look at retirements. It will include reviewing our benefit structure to ensure for future hires that we are getting the best, if you will, bang for our benefits and providing the right benefit mix as an employer of choice while balancing our fiscal realities. And I do want to emphasize that the aim with that would be for new employees to address those types of things. But we'll talk more about that next week. Pension obligations, sort of interrelated with what I just shared, is not a unique issue for public sector employers, but it is significant and it needs to be on our radar as we plan for our financial future. We don't know what's going to happen with the future, for instance, of tax increment financing and its implications on the city budget and what that means. So in 2017, as I alluded to earlier, the city commission adopted a general fund fund balance policy. I am recommending pursuant to the city charter the establishment of an ad hoc committee on general fund fund balance policy. The purpose of that committee would be to review the city commission's general fund fund balance policy and determine whether or not to make recommended changes to the city commission. The committee's purpose is further defined as reviewing with me and the city treasurer the anticipated financial trends over the next three years specifically in our general fund, taking into account the items I outlined already and articulated in my memo. It's my recommendation that this committee conclude its work by December 31st. The reason for that is to allow time for the committee to prepare its report and analysis for no later than the January 11, 2027 study session and to potentially consider any changes to that policy at the Tuesday, January 18, 2027 meeting. That will allow time to incorporate those recommended changes, if any, in the formulation of the upcoming fiscal year budget, which will already be well underway, but there's still time to pivot if we stick to that timeline. I do recommend in order to support that schedule that at the committee's first meeting establishing a regular meeting schedule and agreeing that meetings would proceed with a quorum if a member is unable to attend. that will keep the work on track, support efficient use of staff, and I anticipate consulting resources, potentially some actuary work, and ensure the recommendations can be incorporated into that next budget. Sorry, I know that was a lot, but I tried to be concise and it's important. And so that is my recommendation, and you have a motion in your packet to that effect.

And to that end, I know that, oh. Well, I was just going to say commissioners Anderson and Bomer and Mayor Pro Tem Nass have all expressed interest in serving on it. Yes. So if there's others who do feel like it, we can have that discussion now. But otherwise, we do have three volunteers, victims. It's going to be very intense, and I know they're all up to the challenge. But just wanted to establish that, too, as we move into the discussion and potential motion. So we're at questions right now, or we need a motion. So Laura, did you have a question?

I don't have a question, I'm going to put in a shameless plug. This is right up my wheelhouse. I'd be super excited to participate on this ad hoc and I would be willing to serve as chair.

So does anybody want to make a motion, or anybody have any questions of however you want to do this? It's up to the commission to make the motion and the recommendation.

I'll make a motion to support Laura Ness for the chair of the approach. Make the whole motion, I think. Sorry, you just signed yourself up for a big motion.

And there are three spots in there, right?

Do we want to fill the other spots before we make the motion?

We just did. Sorry, to be clear, Lance and Jackie have volunteered to do it as well.

Do you want me to read the filled-in motion for you?

Sure. Perfect. Great.

I want to give it a stab. Oh, Ken.

I'm here for backup. Ken, you're being very ambitious for 1030. We appreciate that.

One, two, three.

We need a fourth in there?

No. No, that would be a quorum. I make a motion that upon the recommendation of the city manager and as permitted by city charter... the ad hoc committee of general fund balance pal fund balance policy be established with the scope as articulated in the september 3rd 2026 communication from the city manager which was included with the official meeting materials for the september 8th 2026 regular meeting of the city commission and further that the commissioner's lance bomer Jackie Anderson and Laura Ness be appointed to the committee along with participation from the city manager and city treasurer, finance director, and others as directed by the city manager with Commissioner, well, Mayor Pro Tem Laura Ness to serve as chair.

Second.

Looking for support. All right.

Thank you for taking on that Herculean task at this hour, Commissioner Funk. And thank you for the second. Commissioner Shaw, any further discussion on this?

All right. Seeing none, any public comment on this? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. And then lastly, nope, not lastly. I forgot we've got two more. So this is a standard from one of our ad hocs here of a Parks and Rec appointment. Any comments or anybody want to make the motion? Go ahead, Heather.

I move that Paul Wilkins and Christine Dago be reappointed to the term expiring September 1, 2029. Heavens, that's so far away. I know. On the Parks and Recreation Commission as recommended by the ad hoc committee consisting of Mayor Pro Tem Ness, Commissioner Funk, and Commissioner Treadwell.

Support. All right. Thank you, Commissioner Shawn Anderson. Any further discussion on this?

A lot of very interested applicants. It was a tough decision-making process. We found ourselves with two good choices.

Excellent. And we think.

And they both do a good job. Yes.

That's great. Good to have that institutional knowledge and we appreciate everybody who applied as well. Any public comment on this?

Seeing none, bring it back. All in favor?

Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. And lastly, we have a DDA appointment. We ended up with just one applicant, but we did interview them. So, this is our recommendation of Jeff to be reappointed. Does anybody want to make that motion? Go ahead, Ken.

I move that Jeff Debron be reappointed to the term expiring September 15, 2030 on the Downtown Development Authority Board of Directors as recommended by the ad hoc committee consisting of Mayor Shamro, Commissioner Anderson, and Commissioner Treadwell.

Of course. Thank you. Any further comment on this item? Seeing none, any public comment on this? Seeing none, I'll bring it back. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Okay. And lastly, any last minute or end of the night reports from anybody about their... boards or defer to another meeting.

Go ahead, Jackie. The planning commission met last week and we approved some enhancements in language to the zoning for child care. Oh, great. Options. Thank you for that.

We look forward to seeing it. And we wish a happy departure to our former chair, Debbie Hershey, who is moving to Charlottesville.

Charlottesville, yeah. Great, and to those who did the light and power right before this, I thank you for your duties as well. They had a double meeting tonight. Whoa. So we'll save them that. So now we'll move on to, and thank you for the movement of the reserve public comment. We'll do that next meeting, or the 21st, yeah. So right now we'll open up for any general public comment. Anything under the sun? Anybody wants to make a comment?

Justin Reed, Traverse City resident. So I was hearing about the red drive. There is a portion of it that there's a utility that's underneath it. It's the excuse me. It is over at the Grant Traverse Commons. There has been an issue with the one of the culverts over there. And Garfield Township is saying that there is a problem or an issue with a water main that's over there. There could be an issue with a water main leaking over there. That's the problem with that culvert. So necessarily, I guess they said probably next week is there is a possibility of them digging up that culvert. If there's an issue with a water line, it seems like they're trying to pin the issue and saying that that cost is going to be the city's cost. So that is a very interesting that's happening with Garfield Township. And another thing is, I didn't know this, but I guess we're, I guess Travis is on part of that steering committee for South Airport Road, which is fairly interesting. They had an issue with South Airport Road with their cover, not cover, I'm sorry, with their sewer line over there. That manhole cover, there was an issue. So this is going to be very interesting seeing on how that's going to be redone. with the construction because that has to be with the utilities. It's not easy just redesigning a road. That's including all utilities that are underneath it. And yeah, so thank you very much.

Bye.

Ann Marie Buerkle Thank you, Justin. Any other comment this evening? Seeing none from our much smaller crowd now, I'll bring it back and thank all the commissioners for all their work tonight and thank all the public who showed up. And with that, we will adjourn. Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Thank you, Zach. Thanks for the opportunity. Have a good one.