Commission - workshop

All right, I'm going to call this study session of Monday, what month are we in? September 14th to order. All please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

We begin, as always, by acknowledging the land on which we gather is 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. With that, Sarah, I'll hand it over to you for roll call, please.

Mayor Pro Tem Ness? Here. Commissioner Boehmer?

Here.

Commissioner Funk?

Here.

Commissioner Shaw? Here.

Commissioner Treadwell? Here. Mayor? Here. All right. And we'll continue on then. Any announcements from the city manager?

I don't have any. Thank you.

Okay. And the city clerk. Back to you, Sarah. Please. No problem. I know.

We went really quick. I just have two quick meetings scheduled for this week. The Complete Streets Advisory Committee will meet on Wednesday, September 16th at 830 in the second floor training room. And the Downtown Development Authority will meet Friday, September 18th at 9 AM here in the chambers. Great, thank you for that.

Okay, and so today is a study session. We haven't had one in a few weeks now. So just to remind everybody that no action will be taken on any item today. We will do presentations and we do only do the public comment at the end for today's meeting. So with that, I will hand it over to you, Benjamin, to kick it off with our future workforce strategy.

Yes, thank you. Good evening. This was the main story on today's ticker. I know you get the packets, of course, and the public does as well. But I'll just recap some of the key items. And this was touched on briefly at your meeting last week when the city commission established the general fund balance ad hoc committee. But I want to talk tonight and share an update on the future workforce strategy. And the reason that we're talking about this now is that a third of the city's workforce is eligible for retirement in the next two to three years. Upcoming retirements, of course, for an agency like ours where we provide critical services, create succession and institutional knowledge risks. We want to be prepared for all these things. Service demands and community expectations, of course, continue to evolve as we see our city and those who are the residents of it continue to change. And Traverse City's destination economy, of course, creates significant seasonal fluctuations in terms of the types of services that we need and what we call service surges. And the city needs a long-term staffing model that is operationally resilient and also fiscally sustainable. So we intend to, my office intends to issue a request for proposals for an independent third party consultant to do a number of things. And I want to start out by saying that this is all a proactive measure about preparing for the future. This is in no way an employee or organizational reduction initiative. This is a strategic look at how we're going to look and exist over the next 20 to 30 years. We're in a unique place in our life cycle in terms of human resources, capital resources, infrastructure, facilities, and so forth. So we need a third party to assist us for what will be likely the largest wave of employee exits that this organization has ever seen. And you've already seen some more visible, though we respect all of the employees, but some more visible higher profile retirements. Our deputy city manager retired this year, our director of public services, our fire chief, and others. And so that's going to continue. We're going to continue to see lots of retirements and new faces. So we need to evaluate our organizational structure, evaluate service delivery models, staffing capacity, and we also want to look at our benefits or total compensation mix to make sure that we are providing the types of benefits and compensation within the city's means that is attractive to tomorrow's workforce. And I want to say that as we do look at things like benefits, our intention is not to create substantial benefit changes for existing employees. This is for new employees coming in under a different arrangement that might be more appealing to them. And we are very cognizant of the fact that different career tracks or professions at the city employees prefer different types of benefits. And that's this type of thing that we'll have to look at strategically so we can attract and recruit and retain employees for these critical services. So this proposal would also identify opportunities to modernize processes, reduce duplication, and strategically realign our resources. It will deliver actionable three-, five-, and ten-year benefits. workforce forecasts and an implementation roadmap. The assessment will look at things again like organizational effectiveness, our reporting relationships, and administrative layers appropriately aligned. Do we have the right supervisory spans of control to effectively ensure accountability? Where do functions overlap or present opportunities for consolidation? Where can technology or process improvements remove bottlenecks? Workforce capacity, we're going to look at things like staffing levels aligned with service demands. Where we see or where they help us see retirement, recruitment, and succession risks the greatest. And then identifying positions that could be reallocated through attrition. or vacancies not reallocated in terms of certain full-time employees? And then how should staffing adapt to seasonal and future service demands? And importantly, for the employees within our organization, reviewing career ladders and internal opportunities for transfer, whether it's into a leadership role and preparing them for that, or it's cross-training and having more variety throughout your career with the city is where anticipating younger employees are going to be very interested in. So five basic phases, baseline, structure, reporting relationships, staffing, vacancies, labor constraints, trends for headcount trends, turnover, retirement eligibility, recruitment challenges. And we're also going to look at where it makes sense operationally and fiscally when we should encourage and incentivize in certain ways employees to stay beyond when they might otherwise choose to. We see schools doing this type of thing more and more for instance. And then again assessment, demographics, seasonal demand, shared services and technology. And then through realignment over attrition or through attrition, Vacancy management, consolidation, and redeployment to high demand or critical safety services. I already mentioned this would be three, five, and ten year. Just want to clarify, just to be clear, what this project will and won't do in terms of the intention. The aim is for it to do the following. provide independent data-driven organizational analysis, identify macro-level workforce and succession risks, recommend structural process and technology and staffing improvements, and develop a practical long-term workforce strategy It will not conduct a comprehensive position by position audit, perform exhaustive individual department workload studies, or rely on disruptive workforce reductions as the primary strategy. Obviously, that wouldn't make sense. We're talking about a third of our employees being eligible to depart in the next two to three years. And it will not replace city leadership's responsibility for implementation decisions. key deliverables and we've already really covered this I don't need to repeat that maybe guiding principles is to protect core services and build a long-term capacity so we need to maintain public safety and essential municipal services account for seasonal demands preserve institutional knowledge through succession planning and then In terms of long-term capacity, use attrition and vacancies strategically, modernize processes and align staffing decisions with fiscal sustainability and future needs. And I do want to underscore, as I have shared, Of course, we're all aware that the employment market is more and more expensive. This is an expensive place to live. Housing costs continue to rise, and that's also going to affect the wages that we need to offer employees in order to fill these positions, all the more underscoring the need

I'm sorry?

Oh, it is the last slide.

It's not going anywhere.

So that is an overview. My intention again is to issue a request for proposals for a consultant or consultants to assist the city with this work. And then we will bring that contract or contracts back to the city commission for authorization. This scope has been shared widely with the employee team, so they're aware of it. And like I said, we've wanted to make it clear what this the aim of this is not to do. We're not trying to create fear within our organization. This is truly about preparing us for tomorrow and creating hopefully more opportunities for employees that are going to be with us for their own career development. And we will continue to support their professional development to help build that capacity within themselves and therefore within our organization. And with that, I would be happy to entertain any high level questions that the commission may have. But just respectfully pointing out that staffing is a management decision and just asking the commission to stay at the governance level. Thank you.

Heather I remember Nate Geinser brought this up this is the first time I heard it when he was interim city manager I don't know how many years ago that was maybe not three years ago like forever and I was shocked so my my question has to do with you know you've got some You've got some current full-time employees that may have 20 or 30 years' worth of experience on everything, systems and just infrastructure and relationships. So I'm really interested in how you're going to capture that employee knowledge. I think of Chris Weber and Frank Dutturi. That seemed to work really well. I mean, from my position, it seems to have worked really well, and maybe that's a model that you can use. But that's my big concern because it's so easy just to lose all of that.

Agreed. And that is part of the scope for this work, absolutely. Very important. Thank you for recognizing that.

Laura?

So, quick question. First of all, thank you for the strategic and proactive look at this. I think it's really important. You mentioned a couple of times, first in your opening remarks and then towards the end, kind of an assessment of benefits and compensation package. But I didn't see that in the scope or in the phases. And I'm wondering where that analysis for the benefits and compensation package for new employees will fit.

That is aimed to be part of the scope of work. Okay. Yes.

And I assume there'll be some type of a financial analysis along with that. Absolutely. That would come as one of the deliverables.

Absolutely. Okay.

Because I think that is really important just staying aligned with the market for both benefits and compensation.

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Other questions right now? Go ahead.

When we ask or when we bring up the subject of this whole, workforce strategy and we the one thing that we talk about first is that we're going to lose a third of our workforce in two to three years nate brought it up initially and i was concerned that it was going to be five years times moved on we're getting closer to this cliff it's always been about replacing people and obviously the wages and benefits component is one of the things that will have to be looked at but I'm just curious if do we need to study a workforce strategy or do we need a PR and marketing firm for advertisement and promotion of like aggressive headhunters for employee positions versus like looking at how we do everything versus aggressively focusing on attracting employees? Because that's and I just a good for instance, Six months ago, we would get two to three applicants, if that, for fire positions. And we've had a lot of positions for a while. The last two lists, we've had six, then eight, and the next test coming up is 12, 12 people. We haven't had 12 people apply for one of our tests, and I couldn't tell you how long. So I'm really curious is when these new people come to test, we ask them a lot, but I don't know what other departments do. where did you hear about where did you see this advertisement where did you see this posting what's working yeah for the the marketing and the advertising component of it because something changed i don't know what it was there was a new contract in december um a month and a half ago we got a facebook page and i i can't believe that would be the sole thing but it's what's changed those two things sure well i

I appreciate you thinking about it, and I will say that that is part of the scope, is to identify recruitment strategies. I was talking quickly, but that's part of it, is to help position us. On top of compensation and being competitive, we have to get in front of people for them to even know about the opportunities. Absolutely. That is definitely a part of the scope and an important part of it.

And can I say, can you bring up a really good point, because having been in this side of it, like up here, over the last few years, we have tried to look at, you know, creating different pay scale. Obviously, the new contract, I know that was brought up before by the union and things that people don't want to sign with a fire department that doesn't have a contract yet. And so, to that point, what you're kind of talking about, I think, translates really well into the overall picture I think that this will bring us is, You know, do we have to adjust that pay? Do we have to adjust what that compensation looks like to make that marketing of it more attractive? Because you can market really shiny things, but if at the end of the day they're going to not live up to everything else, it's the TEMU version of a job, right? And so, sometimes you want the higher quality. So, I think that's a really good point that you brought up with the fire department actually being very comparable, so.

Yeah, I'm just curious. Is it the website? Are you going to different websites? Where are you running into this type of media marketing for the advertisements? And I'm curious what other departments are running into as well.

Yeah, I got a couple of emails about why do we hire a consultant? Do we always hire a consultant? But we don't need a consultant to tell us that we need to put butts in chairs. Right. We need a consultant. We're hiring consultants to give us some options about what this city is going to look like in five to ten years. I don't know about 20 or 30. Right. And only just happened three years ago and look what happened. Right. Yeah. But so it's a whole, so. Recruitment is one thing but first we got to figure out how many butts we need and what it's going to look like. Right.

And this is something unlike, you know, we've ever experienced before. This trend that we see coming and I think that it's really, I think it's important to say when you need help and we don't have the expertise in-house. We have wonderful employees but We need help with this strategy to position the city for success and everyone will benefit because we did versus pretending, oh, we can just do this on our own. And I say that with respect to the employees that we have, but we need some help.

I mean, I agree with you and I know that when staff asks for tools, it's important to assist them because they're asking for a tool for a reason. It's to perform something. And this is a tool that we're being asked for or a study that we're being asked for to help get some tools to put some butts in seats. I just have questions, concerns. And are we thinking this is $30,000? Are we thinking this is $150,000? I mean, I'm kind of curious.

I hate to put a number out there because we're asking for competitive bids. It will not be cheap. It's a comprehensive professional strategy that we're asking for HR professionals to help us with, and that is not a cheap endeavor. But it's an important investment, I think, into our future.

I didn't see this as a threat to the employees and their job viability, because you ask any department, we need more people. All of them will tell you that. We're drowning in work. We need more people. Just curious how much it's going to cost at the end of the day. Well, it comes back to us. But I know it's a tool that we need.

It will come back to you for authorization. Yep.

I think that's an important reminder here of Ben has a certain amount of spending authority, and he has been good even on things like this that are public facing, which unfortunately I don't think it'll come in under his spending authority on this one at all, of about $9,000. But these things do come back to us. So we have these study sessions to introduce the idea, but the more fleshed out will come to us, the final decision on, as with any spending on anything in the city, comes back to us for our final decision and final conversation. Mitch, you had your hand up? Yes.

this is a study session we do not have public comment on each item but it wasn't the main focus of the ticker article and there's there was community conversation and I'm a little disappointed to see that the conversation was overwhelmingly negative seeing this as yet another example of spending money on consultants and studies rather than simply doing the job I'm not sure If any of those commenters want to work for the city or.

I don't know how many of them are city residents. And I just want to respectfully say I wouldn't characterize Facebook comments as community conversation. I say that respectfully.

They are members of the community. Sure. And they are conversing but it's not the same as when people are actually coming to our meetings and speaking to us or even emailing or calling us.

Although I will say having been up here for 11 years now, I've also seen the opposite that when we do hire a specialist because we recognize a need has emerged for something, I think this happened on TCLP when we got someone who was more into development, not development, I don't think we called it that, but kind of looking for grants and organizing projects and things like that. Then the question was, why are you spending money on somebody to do that full time? So sometimes we end up in this catch 22 of we can't win no matter which way we do it. This is clearly looking at one very specific, I would say to the public, this is looking at one very specific example of this retirement cliff we are facing that hopefully we will never see again that hasn't been seen before and to bring a staff person on, even if it's a larger contract, a staff bringing a staff person on or another halftime person that's financially not going to make any sense at all even if we get one big number you do that with our benefits and our pay over years and that gets negated pretty quickly so any other comments on this right now questions All right, well, we look forward to seeing what comes back, and thank you for bringing this to us.

Absolutely.

And now, as we're in September, I thank everybody for not bringing this back in August or July. We're going to be talking about sidewalk snow removal, and thank you, Chris, for coming up and doing this as a follow-up of our great initial conversation a couple months ago. Of course.

Winter is coming.

I'll just say real quickly that of course this was discussed most recently at your July 13th study session to talk about how to elevate the service level for sidewalk snow clearing in the winter. The feedback that we heard from the commission was to look at options that elevate that service level. But don't create lots of legacy costs in terms of being mindful around adding full time employees. And so Chris is gonna present a strategy that tends to involve the strengthening of our reliance on seasonal employees and positioning our reliance on them for success. In other words, to be an attractive seasonal employer. And also, in support of the city's strategic action plan pillar surrounding regional collaboration, encouraging that, I spoke with Patrick Pressure, who is the new director for Beta, when he first got here, and we talked about ways to collaborate. We're currently exploring potential partnership where they need more bus drivers in the summer. We need more seasonal folks for things like this in the winter. And so those conversations continue. And with that, I will turn it over to Chris. Thank you, sir.

Hello, everyone. Chris Weber. I'm the director of mobility infrastructure. Speaking of jobs, we've got a few here that we need to talk about how we're going to recruit and fill and come up with some ideas on how we're going to accomplish that. I know in the last presentation I mentioned, we were in the hundred and some days until winter, 98 days until winter officially starts per Google, 57 days until the first measurable snowfall. So it's coming. Um, but like Benjamin had mentioned, we spoke about this in July. Uh, we heard you guys resoundingly supporting continuing this high level of service. Um, but being able to deliver it without making those investments in those full time employees. Um, and then how, how we do that with seasonals. So what tools we have to recruit, retain, um, and whatnot. So, um, yeah, I'm just going to try and stick to the script as best I can. So like I mentioned, we had the concern, especially with not only the upfront costs, but it's the legacy costs with those full-time employees. And then we had interest in exploring flexible staffing and operational strategies before making those significant staffing commitments. All right, so the current program, there are seven established sidewalk routes throughout the entire city. The city staffs six of those seven routes, with one of them being managed by a contractor in the downtown core area, which is currently out for bid here later this month. We're hoping to get those bids back. That way, we can continue providing that service in the downtown area. So right now our level of service for the sidewalks, basically any accumulation of snow, we're out clearing sidewalks so that we can provide clear travelable sidewalks for every resident. And then that also supports our goal of the year round mobility and accessibility. So our system currently includes all the neighborhood sidewalks, shared use pathways, TART trail segments, bicycle facilities, and then the downtown pedestrian network. Like we mentioned, that big dollar amount with those full-time employees, with those six city-filled sidewalk routes, we have one dedicated full-time employee that's in a sidewalk machine. So that would leave five vacant routes. With adding five full-time employees with just wages and benefit, it's about $600,000 a year, plus the equipment for those people to have a dedicated machine to be in around the clock.

I did want to just jump in because some folks have asked about the $30.5 million figure on current citywide staffing costs. And I wanted to just point out that a substantial portion of that sum is for employees who support our regional infrastructure. So things like our water plant, for instance, and also the added the voter approved millage to support our fire department providing primary medical transport. So I just wanted to give a little bit more context there. Thank you.

So I think we landed on the term premier level service, which I think you guys pointed out. And I do agree that we're already offering this very high level of service. If you look around the surrounding municipalities, it's not something that every agency does. You travel around northern Michigan, it's pretty hard to find a town that's got fully cleared sidewalks within a day or two of a storm event. And that's what we strive for. We'd like to build the capacity redundancy before adding the significant permanent staffing, strengthen our seasonal recruitment and retention, create more predictable seasonal employment right now. It's hard to market to people when you tell them They're going to come in in the worst weather at 4 o'clock in the morning and only when it snows. So we're at Mother Nature's will here. So coming up with ideas how to offer a more stable, dependable schedule for these people. So that's filling it with other projects when there's not sidewalks to do. As Benjamin had mentioned, exploring the regional workforce partnerships, I think that's a great idea. Because obviously not every employer has those staffing requirements year round. They want to keep good employees. We would like to have good and dependable employees. So there could be that mutual benefit there. And then tracking performance and determine whether additional permanent staffing is ultimately warranted. Currently kind of tossing around things to try and establish some sort of rubric of how to evaluate whether or not we're successful with what we're doing now, where we failed, where we could do better, where we're succeeding, and then kind of put that all together and paint the picture of what we need to do. So something I'm currently working on. So seasonal workforce strategy makes seasonal employment more competitive and more predictable. Like I mentioned, it's hard to market to people when You tell them, you're only going to work when I call you. So people want that dependable, reliable schedule and that income. So competitive wages is a big thing. I've been here 10 years, and seeing those seasonal wages increase from the teens to the $20 an hour range, it's hard to get people, especially to come in at 4 o'clock in the morning. So evaluating those wages, looking at step wage increases during the season to reward people, and give them the incentive to stick it out and work through the entire winter season. Those full season or retention bonuses or things like that, a sign-on incentive, increases or return a season incentive for experienced operators. Thankfully, we've got a couple that are going on four and five years. So we're starting to come back around with some people that are experienced so you don't really have to do the training. They know they're out inside and out. They know where the sidewalk stops. So that's a big thing. And then earlier recruitment. As much as I like talking about snow in September, it's also thinking about recruitment. So this is something I plan on engaging with human resources within the next week or so about getting that ball rolling. Don't want to be too early, because then it's not relevant. People aren't thinking about it. And then talk to people. And then in that interim time where we have no snow, they find something else. So it's balancing being ahead of the winter far enough, but not too far. And then that gets into the consistent work, dependable schedules, identify secondary projects to keep the seasonal staff busy, providing more consistent hours where feasible, and then improving the city's ability to retain the trained seasonal operators through the season. So one thing we have to evaluate is use of our current workforce. Maybe there's other departments or divisions throughout the city that maybe the winter is a little bit slower for them, and they've got full-time employees that they could use help with keeping those employees busy. And that could help us as well. Hickory Hills, with the possibility we're in that A point right now where they're evaluating that management contract. So that could free up a full-time employee for Parks and Recreation. I don't want to speak for Parks and Recreation. I know they have a lot of their own work to do, but it is a possibility. Identify qualified employees across departments throughout the city that could support sidewalk routes. This is something we're kind of already doing with water and sewer. When they have people that are available, we use them to fill those sidewalk routes. It's something we could look into with, either garage or other departments as well. And then just balancing sidewalk support with each department's core responsibilities. So it's just, it's a give and take. We don't want to take away from anybody else's requirements or things that they have to do, but if they have the ability to help, we would greatly appreciate it. And then this gets into that regional workforce partnerships. The beta opportunity, preliminary discussions have taken place, is my understanding. potential winter availability. You think about somebody driving a beta bus with all those people on it, somebody that takes responsibility and care for not only their passengers, but everyone else out on the roadway. That's the kind of mindset we would like to see in a sidewalk operator, because they're operating a heavy piece of equipment on a sidewalk occupied by kids, pets, all kinds of things. You're crossing streets. So somebody that has the wherewithal to be be able to manage all that stress and know what's going on around them is something that we would obviously look for. And then HR to HR discussions between beta or other regional partners. So some items to evaluate, scheduling and operational needs, compensation and payroll structure, training and equipment qualifications, insurance and liability, labor collective bargaining considerations, and then the ability to expand the concept to other regional partners. All right, so the proposed workforce model, build redundancy into the workforce rather than relying on a single staffing source. So core capacity, the existing full-time city workforce, how we can utilize other full-time employees throughout the city to help assist with this goal, seasonal capacity with those competitive wages, incentives, and predictable work, and then internal flexibility cross-trained throughout these other departments. It's really nice because they work in the city. They know where things are. They know where Washington Street is. They know where this is at. So when they're in a sidewalk machine and they break down, they know exactly where they're at. So it's really nice to have somebody that knows the city inside and out. And then those regional capacity, the possible regional partnerships or workforce sharing. So what does success look like? Uh, premier services and outcome, not a staffing number, a reliable completion of established sidewalk and trail routes, improved response. Um, I would like to say we would have a defined goal of on a typical snow event where we would like to say we have 75 or 90% of sidewalks completed within X amount of hours following the conclusion of a winter event. And then try to, that would also help us evaluate our successes with those rubric and kind of see where we're at and where we can improve. Fewer delays caused by staffing shortages. Just like full-time employees, part-time employees also have a life outside, so there's days off and stuff you have to manage. Same with the full-time people. So having adequate backup staffing during major events. improved equipment reliability and redundancy, worked very closely with the Department of Fleet Management. Joel Tapio, I know he's been getting costs and availability of new sidewalk machines, what they're costing now, what the availability is, so we can be ready when we need to. if we have equipment that's due for replacement or something happens. Providing consistent service across the city's multimodal network and building a service model that's operationally and financially sustainable. So for this winter recommendation, we'd like to strengthen the existing program and test new workforce approaches, maintain that premier level of service, develop an enhanced seasonal recruitment and retention package, identify meaningful secondary work that can provide seasonal employees with more consistent hours, cross-train available city employees to provide additional winter capacity, Continue discussions with beta regarding potential workforce sharing. Evaluate equipment needs and redundancy. And then track service performance through the winter. So establishing those guidelines or those baselines to see where we are at and where we'd like to go from there. I don't know where to point at. So I just kind of pointed all over the place behind the back. evaluate and report back. Um, it doesn't give us a whole lot of time. Like I mentioned, those numbers, you know, we're getting, getting close to the first snowflakes in the air.

So, um, I'm smiling, but it hurts.

So, um, yeah, see, yeah. see where we're at. Obviously, the full-time employees isn't really an option at this point. It really makes sense to see where we can expand within our current staff members and then expand those seasonal staffing. look at route completion times, where we delayed or missed routes, our overtime, equipment downtime, and then evaluate the financial, the seasonal staffing costs, incentive costs, overtime, contracted services, and then comparison with permanent staffing. Weigh those two options back and forth. Sidewalks and snow.

So I have a really quick question because actually we were just talking about Nate Guynzer pointing out the retirement wave and I remember having a conversation with a city manager even before that about offering incentives because this is tough to fill. So appreciate you identifying it and bringing it to us. And so it's kind of a question for both of you, Benjamin and you as well. We've got this evaluation and reporting back at these different phases but If we are going to be offering these incentives and we are looking at kind of making this more robust and doing some cross training and potentially sharing employees, are we anticipating that some budget amendments might be brought back to us and or should we let you know ahead of time that we are okay with that if needs be to make this happen or how are we looking at that financially?

With the current existing full-time employees, obviously those wages are already budgeted. And then we already included in our budgets for seasonal employees to fill these positions. So I don't anticipate, but it depends. It depends on how much snow we get, what those incentives and the hourly wage looks like. But at this point, I'm not really sure.

But that is why we're here, so that we're getting sort of a pre-authorization or head nod, if you will. And I appreciate you asking that, so that if we do come back with a budget amendment, obviously always the amount of snowfall is contingent. That could be the case. in terms of these incentives and so forth. We have in the past been pretty defined and not been tremendously innovative with our seasonal employment practices and this is a way to perhaps level that up, reliance upon them in a way that is attractive to those employees.

Mitch, you've got your hand up.

Yes. I appreciate looking outside the organization towards other synergies that could be realized. And with Beta, both our plow truck drivers and their bus drivers are represented by the same union, Teamsters Local 212. But is either contract currently worded in a way that would preclude such collaboration?

Not that I'm aware of, especially with these being seasonal or part-time employees. I think once we would get into any, like, exceeding that part-time parameter, that's something where you'd have to look at those bargaining agreements.

Or the HR to HR conversation. Right.

I have a question. Go ahead. What's the hourly wage you offer a first-year part-time employee?

Typically, it depends on experience. I've seen in the last couple of years, starting in that 18, 19, 20, returning in that 22, 23, 24, 25 an hour. I don't even think we've reached that 25. But it's been a make or break with some returning people. One guy said he was going to retire. We're able to talk about, you know, adding a couple dollars an hour to his wage, and he stuck it out one more winter. So that was huge. But. Thank you, .

And these are seasonal part-time employees, so they don't get any kind of retirement or, well, I mean, just any kind of retirement or benefit, no health insurance or anything like that. It's just straight hourly for these.

And you pay your taxes, too.

And you pay taxes on them. So I just don't.

Right. That's correct.

I'm still, think about the McDonald's on Front Street. was advertising 20 an hour well up two up two thank you it's fair yeah but i i recognize the unique skills that it takes to operate those snow sidewalk clearing equipment i mean that's if we were to see a budget a budget amendment for you know pay increase to make that seasonal employees more attractive i'm i would be comfortable with that if that was something that we saw

Laura?

Thanks for asking the question about the budget amendment. The other related question is down the road if this is successful, will we look at an ordinance amendment also? Are we going to leave the ordinance on the books that says you're required to clear your sidewalks?

I think that's a to be continued type of a conversation.

Okay.

Mitch? This is mainly focused on the portions that are handled by our own, but is there going to be any retooling of the sidewalk clearing in the downtown area that is handled by a contractor?

Yeah, and that kind of aligns really well with the previous contract expiring. So like I said, we are currently out for bid. I've met with a couple of contractors that are required uh, pre bid meeting, um, that showed interest in it. And we probably will be implementing some changes, um, adding some areas. Obviously there's a few parking lots that are not available to store snow in. So we're going to have to make changes as it is anyhow. Um, but it's establishing a level of service that we've had that two inch mark in the downtown is kind of our threshold for doing a full cleanup. Um, but I do anticipate I've been working closely with the parking department,

parks and recreation kind of seeing what their expectations are where they'd like to see changes and improvements and then implementing that into this contract because yeah I see that as certainly the highest foot traffic area in the city an area where it's important that we do have clear sidewalks And it could be an area where at least some enforcement does help us in those times when there, say, might be ice that can be removed by a property owner easier than the contractor.

And that's something I would highly recommend is during our operations in the downtown, we're not applying any ice melt or salt. We're simply just clearing the snow from the sidewalk. So that's something I would highly encourage. property owners or business owners and anybody, residents, to keep those sidewalks. When we go through, we're not scraping it down to clear, bare concrete. So if it's just you walking out to get the mail or walking to your neighbor's house, getting your kid from the bus, whatever it is, try and keep them clear of ice and snow as best you can.

Great reminder.

Sorry. Go ahead, Lance.

I just wanted to say I appreciate you continuing to focus on this. You said 58 days until measurable snow. That's terrifying. I think it really works with our new complete streets policy as we're focusing on being able to get people around town for all uses. Also, I really enjoy that you've collaborated or begun collaborating with Patrick and the beta team. As you know, I'm the vice chair of that board of directors representing the county. And so I think there is a desire to collaborate from that board as well. So it's very exciting. I would support, if you needed something, a budget amendment, just so you're aware.

CHRISTIE WOODARD- Chris brought up snow storage. with all the horse trading that is going on with the county with the facilities and all this kind of stuff boy i would really like to see snow removal removed from the city that working regionally to get the snow out of the city okay um could be possible understood we'll see where that goes totally hear you

Well, to that end, too, one of the things that's kind of been brought up by these comments, to summarize it a little bit more clearly, though, is we've done all of these numbers and all these conversations based on current levels. And so I just kind of wanted to do a two-fold reminder of the downtown that we just had questions about and we're talking about is paid for right now by a service agreement for the DDA. That can depend on funding in a couple of years whether that would remain or if that would then be an additional cost to the city's general budget. As well as people who already, and it was kind of touched on by you Chris and Mitch and others. People who already have been kind of helping out with that, please continue to do so. If we want to get everybody to that perfect scraped-down level, that's even more premium service, more workers, and more cost. So this is just so we can maintain what we've been doing and keep it viable and feasible at the level we've been doing. But as was said, for our walkability, bikeability, for our mobility, and for our own budgets, if you've already been kicking in, we appreciate it, and please continue to do so. I think that this isn't going to be the magic cure either that every sidewalk is going to be down to the cement every day because we've got this plan. So I just wanted to hopefully get you a little bit of breathing room there, Chris, on that. But on the other side, I will also add that if anybody is interested, they get to work with Chris and his team. So that should also be an incentive to maybe want to help out.

It should, shouldn't it, Chris?

Yeah. One more quick question. Who's going to plow or is the new sidewalk on Garfield by the airport, is that going to get plowed?

It will be maintained by the city.

Wonderful.

Thank you. I would just kind of Go back to the fact that we are already providing this super high level service. I've spoken with other neighboring municipalities, and I've even had some inquire like, hey, what would it take to have the city do our sidewalks? Would you guys entertain? you know, putting a number on helping us out and that it ties into the regional collaboration and stuff. And, you know, it seems like, you know, if we can get sidewalks out into the neighboring townships or whatever, they're coming to us, you know, people are going to those. So it's, it, we'll see how this goes, but it could also lead to a more regional providing, you know, we can be the shining star and then assist with our expertise, um, or, you know, staff or equipment. If it came to that, um, I know certain township just went out for RFP and they got nothing for sidewalks. So it's, it's not an easy thing. It requires specialized equipment. Um, and it's the equipment isn't cheap. You know, you can't just buy a cheap tractor, and go out and do it. You've got to have specialized equipment with how narrow they are, the horsepower you've got to have to get the snow off.

Our expertise there. Thanks for that. Any other questions or comments?

When I think about being that regional leader and other townships and municipalities reaching out to us to extend our service abilities to them, I can't not think about road marking and long line painting, and I hope that that's a conversation we have in the future. When we can offer that in-house, we know that we're on an island up here. There are very few companies that provide that service, and that might be in the future how we meet that need. for our snow removal in the winter and our line painting in the summer. And I haven't given up hope on that.

We're all for regional cooperation and even more so if it comes with a really good price tag on it. So we can expand those services and look at that as we do because we do have these exports. So we are very grateful for that. Any other questions at this time?

right one thing i just wanted to clarify and i apologize because you were relying on me when you said this uh is the um downtown snow hauling uh that is paid for by streets and parking funds so not under that specific service agreement so sorry i told you wrong okay thank you yep all right well if there's no more questions thank you for that thank you chris thank you chris and we're going to move now on to the west end development and ben i'll let you tee that one up please Yes, so the West End Development Project, this all came about just to refresh everybody's memory. Last December, John Socks presented a proposal to negotiate directly with the city on potentially acquiring a series of properties that the city owns to develop. And I recommended to the city commission that rather than, and I say this respectfully, in negotiations with just one party that if you were interested in looking at possibilities that we issue a request for proposals. And at that time it was of course understood that there is no commitment that the city commission has to move forward with any particular proposal. it was more that we wanted to see what could be presented what the possibilities were that surfaced and so a request for proposals was issued we the staff team used a scoring rubric which was approved by the City Commission which signaled priorities and what you might like to see in a development proposal. I want to underscore that it, of course, took the city a long time to assemble these properties. $7.6 million was the purchase price cumulatively that was paid for them, and that was all paid for from the parking services fund and so with that said this development project of course presents a significant opportunity for the city and it's not often that there is an option or possibility of developing multiple contiguous parcels however We do need and it's critical as part of the discussion is to understand the city commission's perspective on what you're looking for when it comes to evaluating these proposals and I want to underscore and of course Mr. Bacigalupi is going to walk you through some questions, also an overview. I don't want the city commission to feel rushed to make a decision. This may or may not require a conversation at a series of meetings. That's entirely up to the commission. At the end of your conversation tonight, you may feel there might be enough direction where we would bring back an action item at a future meeting for you to authorize a city attorney and I to negotiate with a developer. I do want to point out that what is typical is if that were done, then there's a 60 to 90 day due diligence period where we're negotiating various points. So this isn't the typical process that a city commission sees where you're super clear on all of the elements. It's high level direction that you would give and we would go into that negotiation process and return to the city commission. And so with that said, I will turn it over to Rob Bacigalupi with Mission North through the city engaged to help us with this RFP process. Because like we said with an earlier agenda item, this is not something we deal with routinely. And so we needed the assistance of a professional and I'll turn it over to Mr. Bacigalupi. Thank you.

Thank you, Benjamin. Benjamin mentioned the some of the process but just to kind of reiterate some of the highlights of the process the City Commission authorized the RFP in April and proposals were due June 11th At that point the design team narrowed it down to two of the three responses that we got and there were interviews on June 30. After that the design team reassembled and kind of finalized their scoring of the two finalists. And then that brings us to tonight. we are reporting out what we found but I thought it was important just to take a look at the kind of the layout of each of these including elevated which was not one of the finalists just because I think we're going to talk a little bit about the the layout of each of the proposals. So this is the elevated proposal. Again, this is just a conceptual drawing. You can tell it's conceptual because there's a mid-sized city skyline in the distance. but elevated proposed and automated parking garage which takes up less real estate and therefore you can fit more non-parking onto the site and you can see that what they're kind of conceptualizing here are the parking garages underneath what would be potentially housing. So just to give you an idea of, how that lays out and then this is a less pretty picture but it's more the most instructive one I thought that I could show you for the next one which is Endeavor. And Endeavor did things differently in that they oriented the parking garage kind of in the middle of the block from Alley down to State Street which is down here. and then had some walk-up units along next to the parking garage with some surface parking behind. And then, of course, they're utilizing the little flag that kind of comes off to the west on Pine Street. And then finally Shore North, these are in alphabetical order. Shore North, and this is actually looking from north to south, but I think it illustrates the best how it's laid out. And this follows the original DDA's fishback design where the parking garage is along the alley all the way to the east end of the property. And then if you can see, it's hard to see, but along State Street here, There is a liner building which is these are the residential units that kind of mask the parking garage from State Street. So they're all very kind of very different layouts of the three of them. And we might need to come back to these. later as we talk about the aspects of the proposals. So this is just the design team scoring. You can see that Endeavor scored the highest followed by Shore North. These are average scores from the design team. And then comparing kind of some of the aspects really focused mostly on parking and housing which are kind of the two main physical components of the proposal. Endeavor has 365 spaces versus Shore North's 534. So Shore North has quite a few more spaces available to for both public and private parking. One difference with Endeavor is that they kind of offered an option to be either developer owned or city owned. And then housing wise, 56 units for Endeavor, Shore North has 90 units and also offered to deed restrict their current project which is called The Loop which is right next door to the north precluding short-term rentals. And then in terms of compensation to the city for the land, Endeavor said that they would pay a million dollars if it was developer owned and Shore North would not compensate for the land. And then finally with city incentives and this chart differs from what you see in the packet because I added in land here. They both have payment in lieu of taxes but they also both, you know, are asking for at least some write down of the cost on land. Benjamin mentioned that this parking system invested over $7 million into the land. None of these proposals would get that back, would make that whole, so to speak. I already mentioned the difference in the number of parking spaces. What I did mention about Endeavor is that because the parking comes right up to State Street, it doesn't quite meet the zoning ordinance. There's a zoning requirement for a setback there, so that's of note. And then with Shore North, they indicated that they would need to have TIF in order to in order to do the project so that would of course in Traverse City that would mean going to a vote of the people and going through that process. They also, and we talked a little bit after the, whoops, after the fact about, you know, what is there another non-TIF option and they did offer up the fact, the option I guess, again, after the fact. that they could do their project with automated parking, again that smaller footprint and perhaps avoid going through that TIF process.

Can I ask really quickly to find, is this for all of us, is this the TIF that would be potentially, that's on the ballot this year or is this Brownfield TIF or a different TIF?

This is different as I understand it. This would be a separate TIF vote specifically for the project.

Okay, so it's a different program. It's not one of the currently existing ones, but it would be still subject to a vote. Correct. Thank you. All right, sorry, thank you.

Thank you for asking that question.

They would want a separate tax increment financing tool?

Yes. Or would they want to be added to the Brownfield?

Yeah, it would be part of a Brownfield plan.

They want to be added to the Brownfield plan?

Yes, as I understand, it would be part of a Brownfield plan. And in the plan, they would be asking for TIF for parking. OK. Let's see. OK. So, just some takeaways. Both of the finalists said that the, you know, the need for putting a liner building to, which is kind of sort of, um encouraged by the zoning ordinance with that setback um so if i go back to this picture here this is shore north and again you know they have this liner building um you have 165 feet of depth here and in order to fit in a full parking deck um and you know and get the number of parking spaces that we kind of sort of asked for in our rfp um you have to you end up having to put a liner building along the street, which is fine, but it ends up being so thin that it's kind of like Radio Center 2, if you're familiar with that, that building along Park Street where you just have a hallway and then only one side of the hallway has, in that case, offices, but only has stuff on only one side of the hallway. You end up spending a lot of money building the building for what we call a single loaded hallway. Instead of having stuff on both sides, you can only have stuff on one side but you have the same number of elevators and stairways and it ends up becoming quite costly. So that was something that both of the developers pointed out to us is that, The single loaded design which was part of that original fish back DDA design is an inefficient design and that just drives up the cost of the whole project and makes it harder for the project to pencil out. And we talked a little bit about the TIF and without TIF available or pursued, there's got to be some give and take somewhere else, whether it's an automated parking garage that shrinks the footprint or some other financial consideration, whether it be other grants. It kind of comes back to the the fact that yes, there's $7 million invested but the developers in order for the math to work, they need something, some other incentive to make the math work for the project. And that's kind of brings me to the third point which is that ultimately this is for the developers, thinking from the developer point of view, this is really a math problem And the two biggest uses for this project don't pay for themselves. You know, you've got public parking which doesn't pay for itself and you've got below market housing which doesn't pay for itself. So either way, if you want to have those two things in there, there has to be some way of closing the gap financially. Okay, so Benjamin kind of alluded to the fact that really all, there are many options and I just put a few of them down but obviously one option could be authorizing staff to negotiate with one of the teams and bringing back an offer to the city commission to look at after that period of discussion with the developer. You could just, you know, instead of complicating things with the housing, you could just pursue the parking deck as the city. Obviously, you know, I said that it's a math problem for the developer. Well, it's also a math problem for the city. The city would have to figure out a way to finance that parking garage and, you know, so that would be something that, you know, we'd have to dig deeper and try to figure out. Thirdly, you could put the parking aside, leave that up to the private sector for that end of town, and then just focus on housing. You could just issue an RFP for housing. Or you could just short-term maintain surface parking, kind of put a hold on things, maintain surface parking and take some time to kind of further refine options for the properties. And certainly there are other combinations of those and other options but those are just some that I thought were worth throwing down on paper. If you were to either go with one or two, then I think some of the next steps for staff might be to obviously work with, if it's working with the developer, kind of refine exactly what this proposal is and then part of that is identifying the contingencies that would be that would need to be taken care of after approval such as you know if it's a project that requires brownfields if then you'd have to obviously build that into the schedule have a vote of the people and that sort of thing but there may be other contingencies you know if you if you wanted to pursue it just as a city deck, there might be some steps that you'd have to go through to set up funding for that which could include, you know, special assessments or some other thing that might take some time to put in place. And of course that means you'd have to, we'd have to identify a timeline or staff would have to identify a timeline, refine the city costs and try to align those or at least compare them to the city benefits And if you're doing a city deck, then obviously, you know, again, it's a math problem and you'd want perhaps a city pro forma to really figure out, okay, if we're going to build a deck, how is that going to happen? How is the city going to afford it? So, I guess I'll take a break at that point. I think I've thrown a lot at you. I think in general both of the really all three of them but certainly the finalists all have some each of them have some reason for hesitation you know for example with Shore North you know requires TIF so that's a whole process that would have to be gone through if that's the way you go Um, with, um, endeavor, um, you've got the zoning ordinance issue. Um, so that's, that's also an issue that you have to kind of think about. Um, I don't know if you have any, uh,

I'm really concerned about the inefficient design. I didn't know about this. We've shot ourselves in the foot before we even got started and here we are, all this work has been done and we've got this terrible design that's just killing us. So is there anything we can do about it?

Are you talking about the requirement for the wrapper that's on the street so that you can build right up to the sidewalk?

Yeah, the setback issue.

The setback issues.

And the liner building. Yeah, the liner building, that wrapper. To have units on one side.

You could always reduce the number of parking spaces and have kind of a different design of parking that allows for more room for the housing and double load the hallways. I think Endeavor kind of tried to address that problem by building the deck, again smaller size, and then putting the housing on either side of it.

Would it really mean losing 200 parking spaces?

It could. Yeah, I mean in this case it does. And if you're, even if you're, you know, just kind of off the cuff, if you redesign, if you double load that hallway and you're probably, you're going to lose probably about the same amount if not more.

Mitch and then Laura.

To Commissioner Shaw's point, we did kind of write ourselves into this problem by not fully understanding what the implications for the RFP were that we let out. We didn't look at setbacks. We didn't look at what a liner building could look like. And we recognize, okay, parking is a need, housing is a need, but the weights that we assigned on the scorecard, is literally what got us to this point because rather than, okay, we can build a parking deck and we can build housing right next to it, we're having them combined in a way that isn't efficient at either purpose.

Laura.

I have a couple bigger picture questions beyond design. So, first of all, in terms of the number of parking spaces, How have we identified what is the number? Is it 500? Is it 300? Is it 150? Is it 750? What is, but how do we know that the demand and the supply are matching the number? Has there been any analysis or study of what we need in parking?

That might be a Nicole question. I can tell you that for the purposes of the RFP, we simply took the most recent design of course which was the DDA's fishback design and use that as kind of a template but I don't know if that design had some analysis that helped drive that number.

I mean, I understand from the public the feeling that we need more parking and the vibe that we need more parking, but I'm not sure if that's been quantified and if we really understand what we need.

Hello, Nicole Vaness, parking director. So I actually, at the time that the DDA's moving downtown to forward plan included this deck, sat on the committee and worked with the consultants as the design was being created. At the time, all of the numbers based on how we got to the 500 plus space was based on proposed developments in that area. So there was no, I mean, and we know this because we know that we're not at capacity at Hardy and we're not at capacity at Old Town. The reality is, you know, the proximity and how far people want to walk from parking, they want it to be close and convenient. So all of the models to get to this number were based on future developments, looking at how many housing units, how many retail, using the varying mix of what those spaces would look like and so that's how it was modeled. But we do know that we have capacity in other locations and we've talked about that through our transportation demand management and how we relocate spaces. But currently a lot of the developments that were projected to come up to this 500, some of them are online, have been built, they're open and some are still proposed.

Okay. So I think the answer is we don't really have a strong quantifiable understanding of how many parking spots we need. We have 2,800 now. We have underutilized parking decks and some of this is based on a future view of what the needs on that West End might be due to new development. Is that fair?

That is correct. And the thing too with any parking, and we've talked about it with all sorts of projects, Lower Boardman, Rotary Square, is that parking is constantly evolving and changing. You've got businesses moving in, moving out. So the thing is, is that we're really trying to maximize what we do have. But again, to answer your specific question, it was based on projections of developments proposed in the area at the time that the building was being designed.

Okay, and then I had two other questions. One is under the list of options, the one option I didn't see is we could just sell the land, right? I mean, we have a $7.6 million investment. We could put it for sale sign and recoup our investment. So I think that's important to add to the options. I'm having my own math problem. And my math problem is that we have a $7.6 million investment that was made by city taxpayers. And I don't see a strong ROI coming out of any of these proposals for that investment. We identified some public benefits that were prioritized in the strategic plan and prioritized by this commission in terms of more parking. We don't have a strong quantifiable understanding of how much parking we need. And then workforce housing. BUT I WOULD NEED TO HAVE A MUCH BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW DO WE QUANTIFY THOSE PUBLIC BENEFITS TO A $7.6 MILLION INVESTMENT. SO FROM THE ENDEAVOR RFP, I SEE WE'RE GETTING $1 MILLION IF THE PARKING DECK IS DEVELOPER OWNED. AND THEN THERE WERE TWO TBDs. So for me, the TBD is like that really matters. What is the TBD on the land purchase? I would need to understand that. And then for Shore North, we're not getting anything. And so for me, that's my math problem. And I think it's our fiduciary responsibility to the public to be able to quantify these public benefits to help understand the return on our investment.

Did you say you had one more question? No, that's it. Okay. Because Commissioner Anderson knew in advance she was not going to be able to be here tonight, she did send some comments to the city manager. So we're going to let him read that into the record right now. All right.

Yes. So this is the, these are the comments from Commissioner Anderson. It seems that the proposals received may be focusing on quantity rather than quality of life in this key downtown location. We hear from current T.C. residents, especially those who live here year-round, decrying the impact of density, packing more and more people, homes, businesses, vehicles, visitors, and events into our eight square miles of land. We become less friendly and caring with each other and with our guests. In terms of our goals for this city-owned property, my viewpoint is shifting as I see the evolution of West Front and other State Street properties. My objectives now include lower rise, more human scale development and a willingness to sacrifice density of development, yes and accept less than maximum tax revenues in favor of elements that enhance quality of life in the center of our community. Both of these proposals are designed to maximize the use of space Pack as many dwellings and parking spaces as possible onto the properties involved. We risk expanding a commercial canyon of 60 foot tall buildings flush with the hard surfaces of sidewalks, driveways, and streets. West Front Street is well on its way to canyon status and now State Street and Pine Street are following the same path. This may be happening because it is what our master plan and zoning code are written to encourage all in pursuit of Vibrant downtown, yet truly vibrant city centers are not simply concrete canyons. They include small public plazas, casual gathering places, public art, pocket parks, the human scale spaces that make everyone, residents and visitors alike want to linger there. On top of parking, I am open to requiring new private developments to accommodate their own parking needs, preferably below grade. A public-private partnership along the lines of Endeavor's developer-owned city-operated option also deserves careful consideration, but only if a fair market value assigned to city-owned property. Regarding subsidized housing in the commercial core, I believe our tax subsidies can go further, and we will find greater support from the community with small-scale developments that are located on lower-cost land and thoughtfully designed to integrate with existing properties. As examples, I would point out recent 4 to 12 unit projects from homestretch nonprofit developer. A critical part of this approach is an adequate service level of public transit. Perhaps this could be a priority for the DDA stated goal to invest in community infrastructure. Finally, I believe we need to revisit the building design review process for new construction within downtown's commercial development zones and even outside the downtown proper. My observation is that design concessions have been made like synthetic stucco siding for the majority of the facade for the new hotel on West Front. And we need to better integrate new construction with existing historic buildings visually. This also follows through on our strategic plan pillar of neighborhood preservation. Rather than proceeding with a quantity driven plan for this rare downtown property, let's take a deep breath and think about what kind of project would truly enhance the quality of life for everyone let's revisit the planning and zoning that have steered us in this direction and refocus on the best that traverse city can be not merely the most it can be and again those were comments from commissioner anderson they're not mine i'm reading her statement

One thing I just wanted to say as we went into all of this and it's kind of come up here now is I really appreciate everybody bringing in these bids on the RFP. This started as a reserved public comment, and I said that at the time in interviews. This was not something vetted by staff. This wasn't something that was run through the city commission's priorities. It became a priority by the commission, so that is on us. That is our choice, and that was our decision to move forward on it. But what we are seeing now is perhaps a bit of a lack of better term buyer's remorse from some of my commissioners is what I'm hearing of we created I can't help but think of the episode and this might be very niche for a lot of people of the Simpsons where they bring everybody in the neighborhood in to design the new car and it is a flop because everybody has every single wish list thing they've ever wanted and it's got fins and huge and then it has 18 cup holders and it can barely drive and I'm not saying that's all what we have with the design here, but I feel like we are now critiquing our own, what we put in. We asked for this to be affordable. You can't make affordable happen without density. You can't get into making these numbers work without brownfields or other, or pilots, which we just had a conversation about pilots last week.

Electrification policies?

Well, electrification policies, but I'm going to say that the pilot conversation we just had last week was very different than the one we had when these RFPs were being discussed initially of One commissioner said they don't want to vote for another pilot. Other commissioners have said, we're spending too much money. We had the public come out and saying small scale density was not even wanted with the attainable housing. We have painted ourselves into a corner with this one, I feel like. the parking we want, the affordable housing, and we don't like how it looks. And we want this and we want that, but it's not exactly what we want. And so I say this because I think this is a conversation that has evolved, maybe not in the way our normal ones do. A lot of our stuff usually comes from staff initially. We did hand this over to staff, but with our own directives. And so I just wanted to reframe the discussion that way. When we get other projects brought to us, when we had the conversation we had last week, that went through months and months and months of process before it even got brought forward to us. And so I say this to say that I appreciate what everybody put forward here, the thought that went into this, the investigation into the different funding options, how to make the space work, how you could do what you could do with the design options we were putting before us. I join in some of the sentiment here though that this is what we wanted here and originally that wasn't, you know, we were talking about potentially putting in parking there for a couple of years while we decided what we wanted to do in this space. And so I say this to remind everyone again that I appreciate the effort that was put in. This is us leading people down a path, but I don't think this is the path we meant to go down is what I'm starting to hear. Whether we do anything with this or not, it's not from lack of effort from the very sincere groups that have been engaging with us on this and Rob's guidance of us through this, but I think this comes back to us and I even can point to the conversation of evolution over the last couple months in this body itself and its expressed desires shifting that has me concerned for what we ask for next. When I was first elected we had a peer that kept coming back, a peer proposal and myself and another colleague that used to be on this board called it the zombie peer, just kept coming back and coming back but nobody, there wasn't the right bathrooms, there wasn't the right funding and I don't want this to become a zombie project that we keep dragging out if we as a group cannot come up with a consensus of fine tuning what's before us right now or It's kind of going to Rob's proposals or saying let's just walk away for right now. So I just wanted to frame it in that way of we have some options before us. I think we have to be very careful about how critical we get and where we want to keep moving the marks because we've already created this problem ourselves. We have to be very thoughtful about where we go next. Go ahead, Heather.

I am still very much interested in continuing the discussion with Shore North. I think their proposal asks a great deal of the city, and we need a much clearer return on investment. But it also offers us something that we shouldn't undervalue, and that is substantially more housing and parking on the West End site, making a neighborhood, combined with transferring the long-term ownership and maintenance risk of another parking deck, Given what we already know about the cost of the Hardy and the Old Town decks, I think that that alternative deserves our... attention and consideration before we just walk away from it. I think we really need to take a look at how much parking we really need and maybe bringing the design up to a more realistic standard for the kind of housing we're looking for. I feel like this was a terrible mistake. But I'm not convinced that selling the property to basically improve the parking reserve system to help pay for the the two decks that we have now is is any more than just a drop in the bucket um and meanwhile we're giving up this huge the only coordinated site we have in the city for parking, for leverage over what actually gets built there, and for possibly one of the few downtown sites that can intentionally secure full-time, year-round housing rather than short-term rentals and second homes. So I'm interested in keeping, if Shore North is interested, I mean, maybe they feel like, oh my gosh, this thing is a monster, I'm still interested. And I will say, Endeavor people, so many of you, aren't you all sitting in the front row? Yeah, I just feel I'm not interested in lot O at all, and that just reduces everything way down. I'm really concerned about your 25-year non-cancellable bondable lease. I'm afraid that the city would end up providing revenue, a revenue guarantee that would make financing really difficult. So that's why I'm going with Shore North on this.

Go ahead, Laura. Well, I appreciate the mayor's comments on kind of fudging around on this one and going back and forth. I think it's really important that we ask questions, though. I mean, we are at a point where we issued two RFPs. Personally, I was hoping that we would get more and that one of these RFPs would just kind of bring us to an aha moment. That didn't happen. But for me, I think one of the questions I have that's really important for this group to understand is, what is the total net financial impact? And we have to be able to ask that. And if it's not a good deal for the city, then we have to walk away regardless. And that total net impact for the city has to include the market value of the property. And I'm not saying that we have to get $7.6 million, but it has to be included in that net analysis of what we're looking at. So market value of the property, what are the other city subsidies that are being requested to make this pencil out for the developers? Is it another TIF? Is it pilot programs? And what are those costs to the city because there are costs associated with that? For me, this is all preliminary. I appreciated our city manager's comments that we're taking it slow and that we're bringing this forward so that we can ask these questions. But that's a really critical question for me is a detailed financial analysis Where do we end up? What is the bottom line for the city? And I don't see that in here, versus our other options, versus maintaining service parking short term while refining down the road options, versus selling the property at market value. I agree, Heather, we lose control then, but we've got to look at those options. And I just, I don't think that we have that information yet.

And to clarify, I didn't mean to imply that we shouldn't have questions or continue the conversation. My concern really in that point was more I don't want us to get into overengineering and overengineering versus having these broader questions, more the specific answers like the numbers. still considering that we take a step back and look at that in the longer term and not feel like we have to make the decision necessarily right now. Maybe we do. Maybe we don't want to lose this opportunity, but not trying to then get into, well, what if we do the walls like this instead and come back with the drawing? And Lance and then Mitch.

And I know we had the pilot topic point was moved to a different meeting. And so I do think it's important maybe, you know, to Mayor Pro Tem's statement that, you know, we look at that because I do agree, like, what does it look like financially from us, our standpoint. And when we were originally thinking about this, months ago i don't think we were quite thinking about that but i think a lot of us are in a different phase now of comfort on the commission where we want to look at those things and what those long-term policies look like so i would like to see the pilot uh I don't know when we deferred it to or just removed it and put it somewhere else. And I think parking will probably come to us too here in the next month. So I think there's some opportunities to kind of look at both of those things as well. Just my thoughts. I am of the slow approach. This was brought to us in public comment. I'm super appreciative of both the designs, or rather all three of the designs. I didn't realize automated parking systems could even be a thing in Northern Michigan. So that's very intriguing. And I think they're great designs, but I am of the slow walk, let's learn more about the parking need, let's learn more about the pilots, and also let's learn more about what that quantifiable public benefit is, because as fiduciary, I do feel like we're pretty responsible and we are about to analyze the budget as well in a pretty deep way on the ad hoc. And so I wanna make sure that things align, right? That's just my personal opinion.

That's great, thanks Lance. Mitch? Yes.

I agree with Commissioner Shaw that of the two proposals, I think Shore North hits more of the boxes in terms of like number of parking spaces right off the bat. But I feel like we owe the people at Endeavor and by extension Homestretch a bit of an apology since in the RFP process, yes, we did say that housing could be awarded points. We did not specifically say, and I was insistent on it, that it had to be on the exact same site. I was envisioning that in the creative process Creativity of a proposal, somebody could say secure development rights for 120 State Street immediately adjacent or a purchase offer on the Record Eagle property stuff in the immediate surrounding area that could be redeveloped and as part of increasing parking in the general area, if you redevelop adjacent property that includes housing, I see that as something that should score properly and win. lot O is certainly within walking distance of this property though I understand why staff decided that it didn't quite meet the standard because it isn't directly adjacent it isn't on the same block but we did not have clear language for how far away the parking could be to score in our rubric and that made it difficult for Uh, for the proposals or some people drafting proposals, and it makes it also harder for us to then evaluate. Uh, and I think Mayor Simpson's analogy is a very apt scenario that we tried to throw everything at this. And without thinking about how all the pieces would actually fit together and what we were fundamentally trying to achieve with this specific parcel.

Thank you, Mitch. And really quickly, Ben, I know I looked over to you and then I forgot to go to you. When are we bringing the pilot discussion back? It's in October, right?

It's in the next few weeks. It's within the next month or so, yeah.

Go ahead, Ken.

I think it's important to acknowledge that to build anything that isn't market rate requires a pilot. And we are debating right now about whether or not we are comfortable with continuing to approve those. I had reservations about Endeavor's proposal because of the removal of the wrapper building. And we have a requirement of that. We would need to waive that requirement in zoning. Is that correct, Mitch? Yes. um do we want to make other people follow rules that we don't follow ourselves so i'm constantly cognizant of that i thought that there was a lot of room for negotiation because i i've i know some people might feel differently but the need to get seven million dollars out of this deal isn't as important for me because i we're going to collect tax dollars on this in the future and we will collect more than seven million dollars in tax dollars over time so it's not as important for me to get money right now um especially considering the financing concerns i thought that the shore north room or their proposal had a lot of room for negotiation when they started talking about the the square footage and how much they would charge for the police substation and the differences in the agreements and leasing i thought that that was room for negotiation i thought that the public restroom with with shore north's was room for negotiation they talked about the water the sewer main upgrade going up the alley and there was potential room for negotiation in there they hadn't included that in their rfp but it would become a need um the coordination of the underground infrastructures in that same alley is something that is a long-term forecasted dda plan it is a it is part of their infrastructure forward plan i don't know if um i almost wish we knew the future of that I'm comfortable sitting on this for a little while, but I don't know if these companies can do that, these RFP respondents. These agreements for parking, that were submitted with some of these RFPs. I don't know if they're still standing. I don't know if members of teams are still a part of those teams. The private sector moves fast and the public sector moves slow. So I don't know where they're all at right now. And it would be helpful to know that. But I'm comfortable sitting on this right now until we know the future of TIF 97. There's one thing I wanted to say. we didn't really address whether like i think it's important for us as a commission to decide if we want to have any ownership or partnership in this parking deck i don't want to own a parking deck or maintain one i yeah i'm really ready to let the private sector take that on and see what they do with their rates and then maybe we're able to raise our parking deck rates to to meet the you know the private sector If they're doing better, maybe we need to do better. That will help us influence our rates. But I can tell you one thing. I am not interested in owning another parking deck.

How do we keep the process moving? Because I agree, I appreciated our city manager's cover memo in explaining it's good for us to move slow. But slow doesn't mean stop. And meanwhile, we have these parcels sitting there not collecting tax revenue. and not collecting any parking revenue. And so there is, I'd like to understand what the next steps are to keep the process moving. The piece for me, just to clarify, it's not the $7.6 million in its entirety. overall financial analysis, which includes, as Commissioner Funk pointed out, the property tax revenue that would be generated. It's understanding what is the net impact for the city. I don't think we can make any evaluation, Shore North or in Denver, until we understand that number. For me, that's where my math problem is. I wasn't given that answer.

And Laura, where I was going to bring the conversation is to, we've had a couple people mention the pilots. It was brought up that we are going to have that discussion that we had to move because we didn't have a meeting that already went until almost 11 o'clock without that on the agenda. So my checking in with the commission was going to be, we've had this initial presentation. Anybody who's looked at the packet, there was a lot more in the slide presentation than we were able to study, to look at and dive over before. This presentation, or sorry, we were not able to look over that in all of its detail before. We now have it. So we have this. We've had some conversation. We've had some questions. I'm sure more will bubble up. We haven't had the pilot conversation yet that that has been expressed. So are we looking at a consensus of we're not saying no to anything, we're not saying we're not going to go on this, but we'd like to have that pilot conversation, have a little time to digest this a little bit more, and then bring it back in the next six weeks or so, since within a month we're going to be having the pilot conversation, we would then have that. conversation underneath us as well, as we still consider this whole, everything that's been proposed. Is that a consensus we can all agree on, or does somebody have other ideas?

Is that long enough?

Well, I mean, that would at least be able to bring it back to us and say, at the pilot conversation, we might even say, you know what, looking at these numbers, this is horrifying. We don't want to even talk about it. We have the right to do that, but I'm saying that, minimally, to say that we're not just saying no and putting the brakes on everything. We're going to have that pilot conversation first.

I agree with that. I don't think we're in a position to say no or yes. Right.

And yes, both projects do have pilots as part of how they get financed. So if we are going to be having a broader conversation, and that could come down with a different rubric for how we approve pilots, then I wouldn't want us to start moving forward with something until we know even more, have more clarity for the rules that we're going to be playing with in a couple months.

I don't think that's even fair for the developers. I was just going to say. If we're going to be playing by a different set of rules in two or three months. Yeah. So I'm, yes.

I'm missing head nods for waiting. Okay. For that conversation. Yeah. Okay.

So waiting to have the conversation until after the- Pilot conversation. Pilot conversation, okay.

And I would say just though to put a little bit out there about process. While we do have the pilot conversation, I purposely said if we get the pilot presentation and we're scared, that's one thing. We did put this out before we started raising these questions. If we are moving down this road, as we have that pilot conversation, We need to bear in mind that we put this out there and ask for it. So us suddenly cranking down on some rules that weren't made apparent before, I think we have to be very careful when we balance that conversation going forward because that does predate some of the more recent conversations. The financial health of the city is always our second priority after the health of the citizens. But I think we have to bear that in mind as we proceed with our conversations as well.

And a brownfield TIF also needs to be borne in mind. This is a perfect example of when you need a brownfield TIF.

I know it's contaminated. Brownfield is the tool for the site work.

That would require an affirmative vote.

That would be a vote next year.

And a great project.

So that's another factor is that if Brownfield is at play and that's what we're talking about, that's the ballot for next year. 2027 is the next ballot. All right. Is that clear? Go ahead, Rob. Sorry.

So it sounds like you're going to get kind of your own answer on pilot. You'll have a better idea of your pilot direction. The return on investment for the city, I think that – is I envision that that would be something, if you were to decide to go ahead and negotiate with somebody, that's something that you'd kind of arrive at at the end. Once you've kind of negotiated a deal, once you figure out, okay, this is how the deal's gonna lay out, then you'd know, okay, this is how we're gonna finance the deck, or this is how they're gonna finance the deck, and then you'd come out with kind of a pro forma for the city at the end of that process. And the other thing that you mentioned, Commissioner Ness, is the parking need. And I think, you know, certainly you could do another study and, you know, come up with a parking need. I do parking studies, but I'm suggesting that you don't do that. I think it's just from a, I mean, just, you know, knowing the west side of town, I think it's certainly fair to say that parking you know if you build 350 plus spaces on the west side of town with all the development that's happened there you're probably going to be, there's going to be a need for it. I mean, it's kind of a chicken and the egg thing. A lot of this development is kind of banking on the parking coming. And a lot of it has been built, as Nicole pointed out. So I guess I would say you could certainly study deeper the parking need, maybe revisit that formula that Nicole mentioned. So I suppose that is something that we could do.

In terms of the ROI though, and Rob mentioned if the commission gave direction to negotiate that we work through, there's a whole lot that gets vetted out and formulated. But we would obviously want some direction from the commission on what that might look like. So certainly that would require some more conversation. But that's why I said typically with negotiating development agreements, defined at a time as the commission's used to when you see agreements. There's just a whole lot of analysis that goes into it. So I just wanted to point that out as well.

And I would point out and go back to our original conversations when we started down this road is some of the conversation that this commission agreed on at the time at least and of course everything comes down to final decisions was affordable housing and parking have a value for us. And as Rob pointed out in this presentation, neither one of those are big ROI leaders, right? And so that is when we have this conversation about pilots and that's a conversation we have with pilots in general. Inherently, to supply the need of affordable housing, you are giving up something as a community as far as tax revenue. And as far as any kind of project that might move here, this is another thing that we laid out when we had that conversation. So it doesn't mean we can't change our mind. It doesn't mean that we don't negotiate. But I want to reframe us. We didn't go into this saying we want $7 million return on investment and a great project. We had some very, very specific things for public good in mind when we had it. So all of that will come out in the wash over the next couple of months. And I say a couple months because we're a month away probably from the pilot conversation. And we will continue to have this conversation, but it's been a couple of months already. So just to keep all of these things in mind as we move forward and have these conversations. Go ahead, Heather.

And I would add that it's not just affordable housing we're looking at. We're looking at adding permanent. residents downtown and they support year-round businesses and they strengthen our downtown as a neighborhood rather than just simply a destination so excellent point not just affordable housing it's creating a downtown that's a neighborhood and part of our city absolutely which is part of our strategic plan right right

So with that great segue, thank you, Rob, we're going to move now into our last item for the study session, which is our strategic action plan and objective and key results.

Yes. Colleen Poveglio, our Director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives is going to take this away. So I will turn it over to Colleen.

I am just teeing up the website really quick. Okay, thanks for your patience on that. This is so tall. It's not made for me. Okay, good evening, Colleen Pavelio, Director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives. We are at our September update of the Strategic Action Plan and the OKR Work Plan, a total of six months into the plan. So since the June update, the big lift, was that we have a fully integrated digital performance management platform. So that provides enhanced tools for tracking progress, measurable outcomes, reporting on implementation and then the public-facing dashboard has also been launched which you'll see here. I'll show you a little demo of that. later on in this presentation um you also in your packet received a planned summary report so that's just an example of the type of report that this software can develop for you should you like that kind of report for your quarterly updates with our quarterly update we did um I did have to do kind of an administrative review of the plan. I did explain kind of in detail how we built the plan in the software, but as you, I'm sure you're all aware because you know the plan as much as me, I'm sure, that there's a lot of duplicity within the plan. So there's several items, for example, like the Cass State Washington water main project, that's in several different pillars and under several different objectives within the plan. And in some cases it even said it a little differently. So that was all cleaned up. I may be like really nerding out here and getting into the weeds but it also offers you the opportunity to clone that item so when we push that to the employee to do an update they only have to do it once so I thought that was kind of cool. But another area where we cleaned up was the way that the key results were set up, they really kind of, we had over 700 key results within the plan as we know it's very ambitious. But for example, if there was like an ordinance update, it would be, a key result would be explore ordinance update. draft then another key result would be draft amendments another key result would be schedule a public hearing so i cleaned all of that up to be one key result i think that's a lot easier for one the employee team to update two for all of you to see full progress on that item and also for the public to easily go in the dashboard and not have to click around to be like where are they in that progress so that helped a lot So what I will show you, I think what we'll do is I will quickly, a couple items that we did accomplish since June, I would say, kind of the milestone since June was this, this public-facing dashboard. Very excited to kind of launch that. For infrastructure and mobility, we completed the Cass Street crosswalk and the beautiful Kids Creek 11th Street culvert. If you have not seen it, it's lovely. Yes, thumbs up on that one and thank you to our partners, Watershed, for that. We are kicking off a public engagement process for the Boardman Cass State Washington Water Main project to incorporate mobility initiatives into that. So the public engagement plan is being developed now and we plan to kick that off in the fall. under parks and placemaking you all adopted the Parks and Recreation five-year master plan we are we completed design for the slab town pickleball courts and we are in the process of designing the Eastside placemaking district the improvements for that through the $100,000 grant and then we also launched the President's Council Council Under housing and childcare, we have advanced some initial work in the ADU amendments or, you know, looking at exploring amendments to the ordinance as well as the childcare ordinance. We have began to draft some amendments for that. And then also we looked at additional areas where we could find funding to support childcare. So I know that there potentially is funding with CDBG funding. So we're looking at partnerships there. And then also since we've last met, we launched the Hickory Hills Day Camp. Under environmental sustainability, we are at sustainable or substantial, substantial completion of the solar and battery initiative that's at the wastewater treatment plant. And then since then, you have approved a contract to begin some design work or some consultant work to kind of get into the weeds per se for the lakeshore stabilization project. And then also we've continued regional and economic collaboration, just meeting with our partners just like Benjamin said earlier tonight, talking with beta, just looking for opportunities where we can collaborate with our partners to be more efficient. So with that said, I do want to show you the dashboard that I do have up on the screen here. It is through a program called Invisio. We do have a link on our website and that's under strategic plans. So it's kind of the big green bar. What you see here is kind of an overview of the plan and then in text, but then we have an overview of our progress so we are six months into the plan we have completed 6% 15% progress and we're on track with 33% 42% is upcoming so those are those midterm and long-term items that were tailored in or kind of defined within the work plan and then status pending is 20% so status pending the 20% are near term items that do not have an update and a lot of that is either it just simply hasn't started or due to kind of our staffing transitions that we've had in the last six months frankly are behind so at 13% I will say because of the way that I reorganize the plan that probably we would have had more progress if You know, like if we would have checked off, oh, we explored the ordinance, 100%. You know, we launched the President's Council, 100%. But now, because I've created these checklists in between there, some of those items may only be at 20%. They're on track, but it kind of changed that progress. So I don't want to scare you, but again, we're only six months into a three to five year plan. So I think we're doing pretty good.

And an ambitious one at that.

Yes, yes. So as you scroll down again, this is kind of just a graph to give you overall status of the plan. We have all of our six pillars here. There's a little kind of you know snapshot into the progress under each pillar so for example pillar one proactively manage urban design this is the latest update this was also provided as in that report that we provided to you you can see some objectives here Kind of those were overall objectives, here's your objective for complete streets, then you go in and you see your key results. So the key results is really where we're making our updates. So for example, formalized complete streets advisory committee. Initially, that was a key result. So that could have been 100 but now it is at 38 percent. So it is on track but you'll see that I built it to create checklist. So, you know, we did institutionalize it, we completed, we appointed the committee and had our first meeting. There was a development of rubric but then there's all these items that were different key results but really kind of go under the full scope of accomplishing what I thought was the end goal. So again, we're 38% there. We do intend to actually this week talk about some kind of funding frameworks with the committee. So I think that we'll hopefully be able to check off a couple more of these moving forward really soon. so in in each one of these items you can see an update like this not all of them have checklist I kind of applied checklist where it would be applicable it was really more easy to do for like projects you know you you define funding you award or you know you do a design rfp you award the contract and so on and so on so again a checklist have been created for as many as i could and i i think again this will be a lot easier for staff to go into because now they can kind of just click away um so you can click on each one of these and then the upcoming they don't have updates because those were defined as midterm and long term if that makes sense and you can really work your way through the entire plan, clicking on all the key results throughout each one of the pillars. So it's a great way for measurable outcomes and to show the public that we're working on these items and down to our accomplishment, maybe when we see a challenge, challenges like for example under Rotary Square, we have all of the accomplishments that we're working in partnership with the dda on that project but the challenge is that we have that flood we had some river erosion there so we may have to kind of work with them to go to the drawing board to do additional design due to that so we're getting really detailed in it but i think that's what we promised the community that we would do next steps would be that we will come here in december i know that in june we talked about short-term rentals we wanted to get a legal review just to make sure that the recommendation from planning commission kind of still held for you to consider and they believe that it does i know that the riparian buffer ordinance is under legal review right now so there are several items that you will see in the near future and then at the december meeting i know we want to talk about a few leadership items maybe talking about which will be really fun. The city commission mission, that's in the OKR work plan and potentially updating that kind of based on these goals and objectives and goals that you have outlined. So with that said, are there questions?

Love, love, love seeing things in a colorful graphic way. That helps me digest. Love that the public can go and see some of these things bulleted out and more of the details. So this is just super, super exciting to see after all of this time. But I will now open to questions. I just really love a good color chart.

I don't have any questions. I think it's great. As a professional planner, the transparency, the ease of how you look at it and use it, it'll be a great tool not just for us and for staff, but for the public as well.

And I'm sure staff really appreciates how you've cleaned up the checklists. I hope so, yes.

I promise them I will try to make it as easy as possible. That was a lot of work on the front end, but I think this will be a lot. We've been working off a spreadsheet up to this, so this is, I hope you realize. Yeah, of course.

Just echoing the sentiment, I've been following along online with this. I pulled up this site and I love it. I like that it's like a checklist. My brain works in a checklist format. Yeah, good. We can just get something done. We can get the next thing done. We can get the next thing done. I love that. This is what I would say transparency in government should look like.

Yes, very much. Well said.

Thank you, Colleen. I just want to say she really already said it, but I want to give Colleen tremendous appreciation, recognition, and her expanded role as Director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives. And when we had about 1,500 residents participate in this plan, I think we made a commitment, and we should, that we're going to follow through with it. We're going to be transparent, we're going to report on progress. And that should only hopefully build trust within the community. And I appreciate Colleen's role with that as well as the wider employee team who are embracing this process. And it's a new way and a better way for us to allocate our strategic investment resources. So thank you very much.

Thank you. And Amy, I did have a question which I forgot. So you talked about at the end of your presentation, recalibration. So is that like following the ad hoc budget recommendations, I mean what?

um because the plan is so ambitious and um we do have 20 of the near term that hasn't started my thought process was in the winter maybe your march update we would talk about recalibration so at that time to kind of look at what of the near-term items we know that we likely may not be able to accomplish in near term and then talk about prioritizing that if you want to move them in midterm and then making some recommendations for midterm which really would be around the corner where your priority stands with that. And I think some of that will flesh itself out with budgeting, CIP process, what kind of funding we have for kind of those programmatic items and then just timing for the policy items, yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Great. Okay. Thank you so much. This is the plan to check adjust, right?

Yes. Yes. Absolutely.

I did look it up because I was like, what is that order again?

So thank you, Colleen, for that.

Thanks so much.

I'll let you clear out here since the next part is the podium.

Oh, right.

So we are now at the end of our study session. So we now have public comment. It can be general. It can be about anything talked about today. And Sarah, please.

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.

Fred Bember, 1223 Randall Street, city resident. i'm going to do something unusual tonight i'm going to commend some members of the city commission and staff i commend commissioner anderson for her comments on the west end parking they were eloquent they were spot on with a number of important ideas i commend commissioner ness for her questions and her concerns that were important and things that should be carefully considered before you proceed further with any notion of the West End parking. Mayor Shamro, I commend you for your initial comments at the end of the discussion of the proposals where you indicated that, gee, maybe we tried to do too much and we've come up with something that we just have to back away from. I commend you for that thought. And City Manager Marentette, I commend you for your introductory materials to that discussion tonight where you were indicating and maybe even encouraging the commission to recognize maybe you want to take a lot of time with this. I think you should take a lot of time with it. It's very important. I will decry the advice you received from your paid consultant that you don't need to look at parking demand. What real experience that the city has tells us is that when people vote with their dollars, they don't support parking decks. Neither of the two parking decks right now is sustainable economically if you make a reasonable allocation of labor costs. They're not. I also decry the hopes expressed by other members of the commission seeking to enable a great grand scheme here at multi-million dollar cost. If you want to engage in such massive social engineering at multi-million dollar cost, which is not a drop in the bucket, put it to a public vote and see if the public really supports that. Some of the ideas that are related to what was proposed here tonight just, I think, will not fly with city residents. And I'm sorry that the Endeavor boys left, because what I want to say next is don't get sucked into the notion that you somehow owe it to them to make their bid process work. They were submitting bids. They're in business. They're big boys. They don't always get what they want, and they're used to that. You don't have to make it possible for them. Your primary responsibility is to city residents and city voters and taxpayers.

Thank you, Fred.

Maxwell Wolf, I live at 858 Center Street. I just came down here to talk about some FOIA requests that I made recently. And can you hear me okay? Now we can, much better. Well, I recently submitted a FOIA request asking for some specific things out of the, excuse me, out of TCPD Officer Christopher Zinski's personnel file. And what was returned to me was things that were neutral or positive, and what was denied was things that may make her look bad. So I appealed that to the city manager, and the city manager said, oh, there's no public interest in this. So I came down here to say to your face, Mr. Marentette, please give me a break. You have this officer out here working with the most vulnerable people in our community. She's playing like a social worker. And I know and you know what she did to me, okay? I know you've seen these videos, the body cam videos. And it's not fair to me, it's not fair to the public. The public deserves to know what is going on with her, that she's trained, that she's trained for working with people who have mental health issues, that she's trained for working with people, the LGBT community, et cetera. And it's really upsetting for you to deny that and to say there's no public interest in that. There's absolutely, she is, you're putting her out there as a public face of this resilience program. And what she did to me, she came to my home and threatened to accuse me of a crime if I didn't stop posting some negative comments about a business on Facebook. Now, how many jails do we need to build for people posting negative comments about a business on Facebook? That's half the stuff you see on Facebook or Google reviews or whatever. Now, so it's extremely upsetting. I really wish you would take a look at this and try to find out what is going on with our police department, why you've been ignoring this. She logged records in my name that have crimes on them that I never committed. There was no charges. There was no convictions or anything like that. But those records are still there. It's an extrajudicial, punitive records that this city is holding against me. to squash my speech. This whole thing was about my speech. My ability to speak to this body, to this government, on Facebook, is really upsetting. That's it, thank you.

Thank you. Any further public comment for the evening? Last chance, yep.

John Stimson with Homestretch Nonprofit Housing. I don't envy the position that you guys are in. The proposal from Fishbeck was what you asked us to look at and provide a proposal based on that. So that's what we ran with. Outside of that though, my take, and this is coming from You know, being in the industry and seeing what's happening to a lot of different areas, not only in Michigan but around the country, we talk about, you know, and read about anything that has to do with housing. And the TIF is a good structure. It works. It saved downtown, right? You guys spent money on TIF, approved that to keep it a vibrant community. Well, it's worked and you've saved it. And it's promoted growth. There's a lot of growth But it hinged on Residential values rising without the rising of values tips don't work And one thing about affordable housing is they don't rely on values going up an affordable housing development is void of value you strip everything away and You put a pilot on it, you have no tax base, you don't have anything that you can tax. And it's a good mechanism, but it fails when you're trying to say what's our return? What's our monetary tax return? Another aspect about downtown is the short-term rentals have run rampant. There were no regulations. railroaded through town as many as they could and then having no parking requirement per dwelling unit in your zoning said hey i can build as many as i want i can i can park people but not cars but banks are getting savvy to that and they're saying no we do need you to provide some parking or we won't lend to you now mishta on lot o said we don't like the fact that you don't have parking, but because there is some within proximity, we'll go ahead and approve their application. We just can't award you the points. And the points were an issue for the RFP. That's a whole different story. But I'm trying to get my head wrapped around your position, our position, and what's happened to downtown. And the aspects that I just talked about, And I think you're in a pickle because you have an obligation to provide services at a reasonable cost but people can't live in this area so you're going to be stuck by trying to get employees to fill those positions.

Thank you, John.

You bet.

Thank you, John.

Thank you.

Any other public comment for this evening? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the Commission. Any final thoughts from the Commission? I just was going to give a quick shout for the city manager and the League of Women Voters tomorrow at the city opera house. The League of Women Voters is putting on a Informational session about all of the items that are on the ballot, not candidates, not a candidate debate, but anything that's on the ballot. Proposals. Proposals, thank you. My brain slipped for a second while I was talking. So proposals that are on the ballot for non-partisan, non-biased information session, as they are very good at doing with the Leave Women Voters. So if anybody's interested, they can check that out tomorrow, I believe at 6.

6.30 at the Opera House.

Thank you.

I forgot to jot the time down. So 6.30 at the Opera House tomorrow for a League of Women Voters hosted discussion. With that, we'll just adjourn then. So thank you all, and have a great night.