Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. I'm going to go ahead and uh get this working session to order. Welcome. We'll uh start it off with the roll call, please. Commissioner Bean, present. Commissioner Hod here. Commissioner Labar here. Commissioner Light. Commissioner Macheski here. Commissioner Robbie, I'm here. Sorry. Commissioner Sanders, Commissioner Scott, I'm here. Commissioner Somerville, here. You're welcome.

Thank you. Move then to a public participation at the working session. You have one minute to provide public comment. There is a threeminut period to provide it ahead of our uh board meeting following this one. Is anyone here in person that wishes to give public comment at this time? Okay, seeing no one. Ashley, anyone online? There's no one online, chair. Great. Move then to item three, the report from the county administrator. No report. Ashley, back to you. Anything from uh director of board operations? No report tonight, chair.

Wonderful. Thanks. Uh we have two presentations tonight. And the first we're going to start on the commission on aging with Marta Larson, our commission on aging chair. Uh Marta is seated up front and um Marta that microphone has a potency that can be intermittent and so maybe you you hold it as as as close as you're you're comfortable with there. And we'll turn it over to you and uh Marta will go through a presentation and we'll we'll open up for Q&A. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Is this loud enough?

Yes. No. Loud enough? It's kind of on a short cord, so I can't get it any closer to me. So, um, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. Um, on behalf of the, um, Commission on Aging. Oh, it worked before I start when we practiced. Turn it off. So, off not advancing. Oh, now it's advancing. Okay. So, I I have four things I'd like to do. I'd like to provide a little bit of an introduction. I want to provide you with a progress report on what we were able to accomplish in 2025. We did have a bunch of reports um presentations for the Commission on Aging to the Commission on Aging and I'd like to summarize those reports for your information and that I'd like to fill you in on our goals uh for 2026 and answer any questions that you might have. So, I think you probably already know the purpose that the court is too short. It doesn't come any closer.

Sorry. on a very short wish. Yeah. Was that better? Cool.

Okay. Where was I? Okay. So, this is the comm the purpose of the commission on aging that was adopted by the county commission when the commission on aging was first um um in instituted by the county commission. These are the people that were members of the Commission on Aging in 2025. Um, and I should note that in 2025, Marie Grass was the chair. She was unable to be here tonight. So, as the 2026 chair, u I am making this presentation on behalf of the entire Commission on Aging. So, in 2025, uh, we we made a number of accomplishments. Looks like it's running off the top of the page there. We held actually held 10 meetings of the commission on aging. We meet once a month. Um we had part presentations from seven different partners. Um and the we looked at um some of the progress that was made by agencies that were funded by the ARPA funds. Um we did a lot of work on supporting the older person's millage um framework. We supplied people to the uh transportation RFP uh for the older person's millage funds that uh was so generously provided. We provided someone to be a part of the uh hiring committee for the director on aging services and we did a lot of work on the county's RFPs for um our housing and homelessness prevention nutrition services transportation services from the older person's village fund and we have supplied people to serve on the older person's millillage review committee um that was taken up by the county commission I think at your last meeting in20 25 we heard from a whole bunch of different partners that included dementia friendly services oops um Catholic Charities of Empower at Home Valley Pace Ageways the Senior Crisis Intervention Program and the Housing

Alliance. And I'm going to just give you a snapshot of each one of those as part of this presentation. And I have to say that some of them I was not even aware existed. So it was really nice to hear all that information. Uh the first thing we did was we heard a needs assessment from Ageways, our um area agency on aging and um some of the things that we set up as uh recommendation that were set up coming out of that were things like expand chore services and home safety modifications for aging adults. By the way, this survey was done in June of 2025 and they surveyed 73,930 seniors. So, it's very representative of the senior population. Uh, improve transportation access. Um, and I think you all have already made a commitment to do that. Um, enhance benefits education programs for medication discounts and free cell phones. We found that a lot of people didn't even know that these things were available to them. um develop exercise programs and social activities and provide caregiver support groups and resources. So all those things I think hopefully will be taken up during 2026. Uh one of the features of the older person's millillage fund was transportation services. Um we have a lot of transportation in the county but they're all from different agencies. you have funded through the senior millillage people's express wave and Jewish family services but the Ann Arbor area transportation authority also has a number of transportation options so um I think there's going to be some discussion uh later this year about how that might all be u organized and coordinated I keep forgetting to advance the slides I apologize um homelessness is another thing that has has been a really big um emphasis on our part. We have a lot of seniors in this uh county that want to

stay in the home that they're in but are income challenged and it's going to be really difficult for them to be able to do that. There are far more people than there are available places to live that are affordable. So, uh I thought it would be helpful to you to to hear that there are a number of different ways in which people are homeless. There's the hidden homelessness where people are couch surfing or crashing at a friend's house. there's unstable housing and then there's actually unaffordable housing. And one of the things that um we've talked about this year and in previous years as well is that the definition of affordable housing in Washington County at least does not accurately reflect what's actually affordable for older adults. So it may be affordable according to some income categories but not according to the income that's experienced by older adults. There are um a total of 1,856 subsidized and below market senior units in county and we have 14,191 cost burden um older adult households. So that pretty much tells you where we're going if we're not able to address the homeless situation anytime in the near future. This is a map of the subsidized senior housing in the county. And I think it's important to notice um particularly because I'm from one of the more rural districts in the county um that there's a serious lack of affordable and subsidized senior units in the rural areas of the county. Progress has been made. There's no question about that. But uh as a representative of the communities on the far northern edge of the county, you can see that there are none. Um I guess I just got accelerated in volume. Wow.

I don't know what that was. divine intervention or what? I don't know. But so, um, and you know, so I I think that's something that we're going to be looking at, uh, and trying to figure out what can be done. And I know Avalon is working on that. We have heard from them. Um, dementia friendly services is something that I did not know about. U, but it is a program that is serving people in the county that have dementia. Apparently according to the statistics one in nine people um who are over 65 are dealing with dementia. This is a really big thing and it can take um maybe eight to 10 years to complete a journey in dementia if you want to call it a journey. that's, you know, difficult uh circumstances. And this uh organization is providing all sorts of supportive services to people that are dealing with dementia and to their caregivers, which is really important because sometimes it's much harder on the caregiver than it is on the actual uh senior adult that's dealing with that. We did hear a presentation from Catholic Charities of a number of really important programs. One I'd like to point out is the home maintenance and safety services program, but they also have assistance with people navigating Medicare and Medicaid. Um, and they have a senior resource guide that's very comprehensive and a volunteer caregiver respit program which is really helpful to people that are caregivers. Empower at home is another organization that I was not aware of until they came and spoke to the commission on aging. they provide um cognitive behavioral therapy um based on evidence uh for people who are dealing with mental health issues that are seniors. So I think that's really helpful to have and uh they were very kind to come and tell us about all the materials that they offer and this is an online so people don't have to leave their home in order to participate here on Valley Pace. I've seen their buses around town and I had no idea what

they did. But now, now that they came and spoke to us, uh they have a all-incclusive care for the elderly. Um that includes things like primary care, prescriptions, medical, social work, case management, home care, nutritional services. They have a day center. They offer transportation and they have therapy. So, this is another resource that we now know about and um people can learn to take advantage of that. The senior crisis intervention program is another one that was very educational for me. This is a collaboration of agencies that provide services for older adults. Um they're local to county. Um if someone is in a crisis and that um is based on psychological cases or mental health, then they can step in if they're requested to help out and be of assistance to the individual. Thea Housing Alliance has a really promising program that used to be in existence in the county several years ago. The COVID um pandemic pretty much wiped it out, but it's back now. The shared housing program where um persons who are 55 or older wish to share uh their home with a younger person. And this is a sort of a um shared housing program that that offers the opportunity for the younger person to maybe provide a little bit of financial help but also some assistance and daily living activities for the senior and then companionship for the senior and then the senior also reciprocates by providing companionship. So this is a really good program. um age friendly. In u May of 2025, the county commission uh voted to join the age friendly uh community, the AAP age friendly community. Washna County, I believe, is the first county in Michigan to uh participate. And we hope this year to really ramp up

um efforts in terms of learning more about what that might uh in in entail and how we might go about providing um assistance and organization in approaching that program. So those are all the different uh topic presentations that we heard. Um our goals and this is a lot smaller than I thought and I can't really see them. So I'm going to look at my paper here if you don't mind. Um, we really would like to work closely with the new director of aging services. We've had a couple promising meetings with her al already and I think that we're going to be a good team um trying to do everything we can to make sure that she's aware of all the issues in the county that she might not encounter without us bringing it forward to her right away. So hopefully we can cut down on her ramp up time in the office. We're interested in working on our commission on aging website and bringing it up to date and making it more of a resource for older adults in the county. The annual report, which is this is part of that, you should also have a copy of the annual report in your packet. Um, we're going to try to do everything we can to help with the progress towards the goals that were expressed when the older persons of millage was uh adopted. We're going to do everything we can to develop a directory of aging services in county, building on ones that already exist and making that available to the public. Of course, as you charged us to do when you set up the Commission on Aging, we're going to advocate on behalf of County adults uh 60 years of age and older. We're going to continue trying to build partnerships and learning about programs that exist within the county. And again, as I said, we're going to work towards the age friendly community project. Um, and I personally would like to see that in embraced within the entire county, not just within county government, but with every place within the county, so that the entire county is

doing an coordinated and organized effort towards that. Okay. So, we're no longer advancing, but my next uh slide anyway is what questions do you have and what issues do you want to bring forward? and I'll be happy to try to answer any questions or talk about whatever you wish to talk about at this point. Great. And Marta, thank you for your presentation. Sorry about the uh the microphone. Glad it uh woke up for you here. We'll go to uh Commissioner Somerville, then Hajj, then Scott, then uh Sanders.

Thank you. Um thank you, Marty, for being here. Um so I'm familiar with a lot of what you shared because I was there since I served on the Commission on Aging. One thing I just wanted to highlight was um just the ways that the commission wants to improve our website to give more resources, provide more resources. And one of the um tools that you all want to be able to share are the presentations that we get from these agencies that do really good work. And so I'm flagging it for staff um to maybe flag it for our new director so we can try to do that more quickly because there's really good information that we get from folks that um like one of my favorite presentations actually was the PACE presentation because I wasn't familiar as much with how exactly that full process worked and like the window of opportunity there. So, um, really good resources that we could all um, share with our constituents or loved ones of people who are older adults in Washington County. So, thank you for the presentation and all the work that you do.

Thank you. Go to Commissioner Hodgej. Thank you, Chair. Uh, thank you, Marta, for the presentation and for your work. You've been incredibly diligent on the Commission on Aging for as long as you've been on there. I really appreciated the presentation and learning about what the goals are for next year. A lot of that aligns with what we've already talked about here with the age friendly network. Uh, and there's a dementia friendly network too that I've um spoken to some people from there before and Shannon is uh going to be connecting with them too. Um, we've seen the list of goals. I would just want to take the opportunity to let you say if there's anything in particular you would look for from us to be able to help you with getting those goals achieved or anything. What can we do to be most helpful?

I I I really can't answer that question at this time because we haven't really started to dig into the goals. I will say that the um state organizer for age friendly community is speaking at our meeting on Friday morning. So if people in the audience want to learn more about that, that's probably a good chance for them to learn more about it. And I think once we've heard from him, we'll have a better idea of where to go with that process. Okay. Look, I got to ask anyway. So, thank you.

Yeah. I mean, personally, I would envision some sort of countywide task force that would work on communicating with all I mean, there's a lot of municipalities in county and bringing everybody on board could be a job. So, it's something the county commissioners can help with because you all know the elected officials and the people within your districts pretty well, I'm sure. So, yeah. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Go to uh Commissioner Scott.

Thank you, Chair Marta. Thanks for being here. Thanks for the great presentation. Very succinct and well presented. Um I I just am not raising this as a question necessarily, but maybe just a concern I have. I'm thrilled that Catholic um charities is doing great work for people. Still think of myself as an Irish Catholic girl. Um I do however have concerns about the organization and how we're spending taxpayer dollars. I think there's a new executive director and there's been some conversation about uh anti-LGBTQ policies um coming from Catholic Charities and as a member of the board that is a part of the LGBTQ committee, I worry a lot about that. Um, and I worry a lot about the fact that Catholic Charities has been very clear about not supporting um, same-sex parent adoption or letting kids be fostered in LGBTQ families. And it rubs me wrong to think about thinking about our millillage dollars or our county tax dollars going to an organization that have very clearly been has some real concerns about discrimination against that community. So I like some asurances maybe of or some more maybe our our administration has to do that or or something. But I don't want people not to get good services. I mean, you were very clear. They're doing great work. And so, I want people to be able to get those services, but I also don't want to think about are our money going to an organization that is openly discriminatory against people who are part of my community. I think maybe a good way to address that is to build that into the RFP for funds and to ask the applicants who apply to

verify that they will not discriminate. And if we need to list those individual groups specifically, that might not be a bad idea. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I think that there's been some questions about employment, the people that have had employment um impacted by the fact that they were LGBTQ and potentially losing jobs because of that um that work for them. So, it's I think there's a way to build that into RF, but I think that there's probably a larger issue there, too. So, but thanks for that uh that recommendation.

It'll be a balancing act. I think, you know, we don't want to, as you said, we don't want to cut off services to people that can use them. And particularly the home maintenance and home repair services, I think are really helpful. Yeah. Um, and so we have to figure out how to navigate. It's a path that we have to navigate, I think. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. We'll go to uh Commissioner Sanders. Sorry, I'm a little fall for the job here.

Uh, good to see you. We haven't talked in some time now. Um, thank you for the presentation and for the information. I think I would um echo what um Commissioner Scott said, but I think I would broaden it. I I think that that we we uh the commissioner should look at having some sort of statement that addresses any and all um community service providers and nonprofits about our expectations for um diversity amongst their board and their staff. um but also making sure that everyone all of our residents have equal opportunity to access those b those uh those benefits and those services. I think we should look at um putting that language into every contract that we have um because I would be concerned as well that you know maybe we have some um elder residents that may be LGBTQI or uh you know maybe they have a different religion or than some of the service providers. Um so that's one statement. The other is I wanted to highlight for those um elder residents that are listening that the um uh Heron Valley Pace organization unless they've changed typically require you if your doctor is not already in their network they require you to relinquish that relationship in order to utilize their services. Um, and you know, I don't want to box everybody in, but I think the more mature folks that have been with a service provider for some period of time, you know, there they there's a relationship there. And I

would love to see the services that they offer um not being predicated on having to give up your primary care provider. Uh because when you you know when you're advancing, you want someone that knows you, knows your history. Um they do have excellent services. And I know that because I I have a um a mature parent. Let me say that. I don't if she's listening, I don't want her I don't want to get in trouble because I use wrong verbiage. Um, and we looked at that service at one point and we said no because you're not

we're not going to give up all of the services that she's had over the years in order to go with this one provider. So, I'm not sure if our residents know that, but that is basically um a barrier to people being able to access their wonderful services. Um, but you shouldn't have to give up who you've been dealing with. Um, and I think the only other thing that I would like to add, Martyra, because we talked about this way back before uh the commission even approved it, if you have not used the MSSI, I'm expecting you

to start trying to utilize that to reach out to some of your um uh elder residents to to meet them where they are. Well, I I personally when I was chair the last time went out and spoke to two different at two different one a senior residents and one a senior center and that's one of my goals for this year is to make myself available as the chair to speak. Um it's it's always an interesting experience and um uh yeah

I do want to say also in response to your second point that our intent with preceding presentations from partner agencies is to make people aware of the services that are available but not to endorse any one particular approach or another but just to say here is an array. Um, I know when I was dealing with my mother as she was aging, we had no idea. This is in a different county, but we had no idea of what was possible. And so what we want to do is make it possible for people to be aware of all their options. Absolutely. Yes. And I I I realize that Marta, that's you know, I can I can be the bad guy and share the additional information.

So, thank you. Thank you for your presentation. go to uh Commissioner Mashi.

Thank you, Chair Marta. Thanks for being here tonight and for the presentation. The commission is certainly engaged on a variety of topics and uh glad to see the work um that you and the commission continue to do. Uh I wanted to maybe offer a couple of suggestions for future presentations and things that you could look at. Um as we pointed out, you heard from here on Valley Pace about their services. The same funding that goes to support PACE also supports a couple of other uh uh long-term services and supports programs that I think would be beneficial for the Commission on Aging to learn more about um as they do actually impact more people than the PACE program does. Uh one and age ways could come in and talk to you about both of these programs. The first one is the my choice program uh which again also a Medicaid program just like PACE uh but actually provides supports for people to remain in their own home without having to give up their doctor and go to the PACE center. Um so and my choice is a a significantly large uh inhome program. Uh and then the second thing Ageways is in the process right now of developing their next three-year plan uh called the multi-year plan. Um, so this is where they are going through and looking at things like the needs assessment that you've looked at uh and gathering information from communities about what their needs are. So I think it would be a great opportunity for the commission to engage with Ageways about what they're doing on their multi-year plan, provide them some public comment about what services are important here in Washington County.

Uh, and and make sure that they have that input as they're deciding how to spend um their Older Americans Act and Older Michiganians Act money over the next three years. So, I'll point out those two things in in terms of additional information I think would be beneficial for the commission and the community at large to learn more about. I've written both of them down and we'll be looking into them both. I know we have on our list of potential future presentations to talk about Medicare, Medicaid and all those things and I think the my choice thing might fit quite nicely into that.

Thank you. Commissioners, other questions for uh Martya while she's here with us. Great. Uh Marta, I think you've exhausted the the questions. Uh thank you for your time and for staying uh in touch with us. And we appreciate you being here. Uh and we'll look forward to having you back again uh sometime relatively soon. And if you any any of you have any questions, you can always contact me directly. So I'm happy to communicate with whoever wants to talk. Just, you know, beware. I talk a lot. So I think my local commissioners well aware of that.

Well, thank you Marty. We'll move then to uh our second presentation here from the food policy council is Anna Taylor Mccantsz from the uh the policy council as chair. And Ann, I'm going to turn it over uh to you and uh the floor is yours. Thank you. Hi everyone.

Oh, it's Oh, wow. Perfect. All right. Hi, everyone. I am Pastor Anna Taylor McCannz. I serve this term in 2026 as the chair of the Food Policy Council and I am here alongside my wonderful vice chair. My name is Chrissy Taylor. I hold one of the human services seat and the county food policy council.

Yes. And um I just have to say I cannot take credit for Chrissy's work. She put this beautiful presentation together for you all. So we are both here today to present to you all. Um I am sitting in the faith-based organization seat. I've been on the council for about three years now, maybe four. I don't know. I've lost track of time. Um, the mission of the Washington Food Policy Council inc is to increase and preserve access to safe, local, and healthy food for all residents throughout Washington County.

And as you can see, we are set up as we report back to the board of commissioners. We have an executive committee and then within the policy council, we have different policy action teams. So we have the food access and nutrition, farmers and institutional purchasing, planning and zoning, food waste and packaging and pollinators and we will give you reports on all of those.

Yeah. And what's really cool about those policy action teams is they are made up of just community members who are really interested in the work. So they don't have to be appointed. They don't have to have as much responsibility to show up as much. Um but we are really grateful for all of the folks that helped to make this happen because we couldn't do it without them. Um, so you can see on our next slide right here who we like to have represented on the food policy council. We have um a racial equity seat. We have a faith-based organization, public health, waste management, urban agriculture, and the list goes on. Y'all can read um for yourselves, but we like to have every kind of sector of food represented. Yeah. So, not just food access and nutrition, but the growers and the producers of food as well. It's been really exciting. we have a new farmer this year on our on our team. So, that's been great.

And 2025 was a very busy year. There was obviously a lot of changes that were happening federally as well as locally and then um within the state. Um, so the food access and nutrition cat spent a lot of time talking about the the new senior millillage, how that could potentially impact the nutrition of our community members and then also looked a lot at the uh Eastern Washington Community Recreation Center and gave some suggestions to how we thought the space could best be used as far as community gardens goes um and having a teaching kitchen. um our food waste and packaging pat. They uh have worked on a resolution. There's a draft of it about what happens with food that's served at county events, how that can be given out to people that are in need. So, they spend a lot of time kind of tracking to see where the food use is going on in the county.

Yes. And I'm always grateful when I get a call from Ashley after an event that says, "We have leftover food. Where can it go so it doesn't go to waste?" I got you. I always know. we make sure that it gets out into the community in a safe way where it's been kept at the right time and temperature control. Um, okay. So, um, one of our other, uh, our policy action teams, the pollinators, Pat, they were really active this year. So, they held a couple of interactive Zoom sessions. They did a lot of work with Project Grow, but one of their major accomplishments was um, kind of mapping all of the community gardens across the county and um, they really honed in on the accessibility pieces. So, who has raised garden beds? Who has um made space for people who use uh uh wheelchairs and other mobile devices to be able to join in the work of growing their own food and being a part of the community in this way. So, we do have another slide that will kind of show you a little bit more about some of the their findings in just a moment. But also before we leave this slide, our planning and zoning pat in 2025 actually was more active than it has been in the last couple of years, which has been really awesome because through that we also got this really cool county food system ordinance database. So it is um it it's interactive. We have like a screenshot of it on here, but I feel like we should send you guys the link so you all can also look at it because it follows each municipality and um there's it's just it's really cool. We had a a member who just wanted to bless us with that um this amazing resource and it has been really really awesome for us.

Kind of building on what Anna was saying, this is what the pollinator hat was doing. So they actually went out to the gardens to look at the biodiversity to see which things were more strongly encouraging pollination. And this is another example of what's really cool about the council because like Anna and I don't talk a lot about pollinating in our day-to-day lives, but like to learn about how this is actually impacting the agriculture and the food systems of our county. And um you know they said like district 9 is just killing it when it comes to pollinating. So they said that the raised beds is a great way and it helped to then kind of when we the resolution for the community center is really encouraging the race kind of based on this data that they gathered.

Yeah. And a lot of this was particularly with like Project Bro Gardens in particular. Um so there are some districts that maybe are not represented on here because six out of the nine of them don't have Project Grow Garden or um only they're they're in six of nine places. So that means that three districts don't have them. But that does not mean that they don't have amazing community gardens. So Growing Hope has like 20 plus community gardens in some of the districts that are not represented here. So there's, you know, this data did just come from uh Project Grow. So, we're grateful to partner with that nonprofit as well. They definitely supported the work of the pollinators path this year. And then here you can see just a little snapshot of our uh food system ordinance database. I think we'll follow up with sending you all a link to it so you can kind of click through it. Is there anything you want to highlight on this slide? Just that there's I mean there's multiple tabs. It's very in-depth that goes like every tab is kind of over a different um different thing that could be impacting a food system and it really does break it down by individual municipalities. I mean a lot of work went into this to to and there's the long- winded link is up at the top but again we get into a more user friendly one.

Yeah. Yeah. And it shows different um areas from agriculture to procurement and things like that if there are policies and then there it also shows where the gaps are in our community where we need to be focusing more on um food access and a more just food system. All right. This is kind of what we have been watching throughout 2025 and what is coming up in 2026 as well.

Sure, I can. Um, so, uh, no surprise to probably any of us in this room, but food insecurity is on the rise in Washington County. Um, it's up a couple of percents. And the scary part about this is that like next year we might not actually well in a few years we're not going to be able to really tell this anymore because the federal government has um decided that they're going to stop doing the survey in the census that helps us to learn know like where there is food insecurity across the country. So, um, you know, unless we put other things in place and the state of Michigan is working on doing that right now, um, at least for, you know, residents in Michigan, we might not have accurate data, um, coming up and that's very scary because we're not going to know the impacts of some of the things about snap cuts and stuff because we're not even tracking it anymore.

We're also obviously watching climate change. I think we all know that the weather has been pretty crazy and seeing how that impacts like you know what what does food cost now and then how is that affecting our farmers that are trying to keep making sure that we keep our food local. So just keeping an eye on it so that we can make sure that um we keep that part of the conversation and all the work that we do.

Thanks for continuing to advance those slides. Um the snap changes and the timeline um this has been so much for us the people who are doing this work um day in and day out it's too much for us to even follow. So we are really grateful for the presence of um uh Andrew Piagua who works for food gatherers and he's on the food policy council. So he keeps us apprised very regularly. We get a new 15-minute presentation of what else has been going on because there is so much to keep up with. And I'll just say like from my own personal work at Fed Up. We are signing more and more of the um you know people's hours, they're having to log their work requirements and their volunteer requirements to be able to eat. Um, and food should not be a commodity, but here we are.

And we've also spent some time talking about how the SNAPD is discontinued and how we can make sure that whatever materials were developed within SNAPED can be kept alive and still be utilized. Yes, the change in the food pyramid is which is now the food funnel. Um, so kind of learning about what does, you know, the things that MA, you know, make America healthy again, that the things that they're saying, the things that they are stating and how is that actually going to affect affect policy, you know, for the older adult act, they just, you know, we just got brand new rules about, you know, what needs to go in what food and then they release this. So, it'll be interesting to see how this actually starts to affect policy, but we are, you know, we're watching it. We're keeping an eye on it.

Yes, the food funnel. That's my favorite That's my favorite term. Um here's some beautiful photos of some of our team members just doing uh different types of advocacy over the last year um here uh right at home and also in Lancing. So we're just grateful for um our team members. They're always uh there's always somebody from the food policy council in Lancing everywhere other week it seems like doing some good work. So we're grateful for them.

You can tackle this slide with me. But so some of the things that some of the advocacy work that we did this year um supporting a free lunches in Michigan um it's kind of a year-by-year thing. So we know throughout the school year at least until October, but we know it's probably going to be another fight in the next budget year to make sure that we can keep the free school lunches for kids. Bringing back the 10 cents per meal that used to go out to um student lunches to help make sure that the local produce is being purchased. We'd like to see that brought back. Um, registered dietitians, if you weren't aware, now are going to be licensed. They have previously were not licensed, and we're seeing if that opens up some of the billable work that they can do. Right now, they kind of have a very narrow scope, but what could potentially be some new things that they could build.

Yeah. Um, one of the things that's not on here, but that we are also doing this year is relaunching launching uh in its depth for the first time, but sort of relaunching our inclusive justice pad. So it is um our policy action team that is going to be thinking about uh um the inclusivity of people with disabilities and thinking about food justice from that perspective and that's something that um some new members of our team are really excited about to do this year and there's a huge a huge need for this. Anything else particular you want to? Yeah. I mean, so there's some upcoming bills that are waiting in a committee in the federal level about um you know, the Medicare demonstration projects for medically tailored meals. Um and then also they ended the thrifty food program, which I'm sorry that Andrew is not here to more thoroughly explain it, but it helps um determine kind of some of the rates for the food uh pantries. And then we also talked a lot this year about the inl services that Medicaid adopted and how it's providing um groceries and meals to folks that are Medicaid recipients.

Yeah. Uh and then one of the other things too is just monitoring um the data centers in the community and how they are going to affect the climate, how they're going to affect um just the land use around how they're going to affect the communities. And uh we actually talked at our last meeting um about the site of the Ipsellani location uh or proposed Ipsani location from U of M's new data center. And while it's not an official resolution, we uh do not see any world in which the just uh point of view would be to move it to um near West Willow and Willow Run u due to history in in that community. So um and we can talk more about that. We might even be presenting a resolution for you all to read about our why we believe that. So um yeah, thank you. Do you guys have any questions for us?

Open it up for uh commissioner questions here. Go to commissioner Hajj then light on the you know I really like the food policy council so all right quick on the draw. Thank you chair. Uh thank you for the presentation. Just wanted to also thank you for the work on food policy council. There's not another board or committee that we appoint to that has all these policy action teams. It's a very as as the board knows very robust team um that meets very frequently. You may remember that we had to make some modifications to make sure that they were receiving appropriate stipens. Thank you for that by the way. Thank you.

Thank you board for that. Uh so it's a it's a great group and I think there's been tangible policy change that has occurred because of the the efforts of the food policy council. You can see that on their website they have or the portion of our website that has their um list of policy priorities. So there's actually been some movement um in county government because of the work that you've done and we're really grateful for that. Thank you. I'm glad we have a strategy too for how to get unused or uneaten food from our events into the hands of people that could really benefit from it. So, thank you for leading on that as well. Yeah. And I'll ask you the same question that I asked Marta earlier. What could we all do to be more helpful uh in achieving this year's set of goals?

Probably could have told you ahead of time. I was gonna ask, you know, no, I we should probably have an answer for you. Um I but at the same time like I feel like you're a very uh responsive person whenever we send emails or calls and you hop on a a Zoom with us and we can ask like where is our resolution at? Has it been made? And so you know just the continued um support in that way and communication I think is something that uh really is helpful because um our team is active again. We are really active and I'm really excited about that. But that means there's a lot of emails coming your way. So thanks for staying on top of those. I will continue to read emails and respond.

And again, I think if you're hearing something and you want to know if if we know about it or if if you want some more background information because like I said, we have a breath of people with a lot of different backgrounds that are on the policy council. Like, please feel free to reach out. We'd be more than happy. Absolutely. Cool. Thank you. Move to Commissioner Light. Thank you for the presentation. Yes, ma'am.

I have a question. I'm looking at um the handout. Oh, yeah. And where it says the existing site, uh that's the location of the um community and recreation center, the east side community recreation center. Uh is that a hope for or has that been something that has been discussed to have um the site there? Because I have and we have all discussed about having housing there. So I was just wondering what the existing where it says existing site

th this came from a some website and presentation that someone did that one of our policy council members attended and so in the planning stages this graphic came from that presentation but if this is not the existing site that's great either way we would love food to be prioritized but also you know I would love housing as well that's really important so um that's really good to hear this was just something that was on one of the presenters websites. So, that's good to know.

I'm sure there's um room to to um to do a lot of things. Uh but there, you know, there have been no RFPs, no promises. We don't even have a shovel or anything in the ground, nothing built at all, which is it better happen soon. Um but uh so we can definitely discuss that because but there are uh local farms um within like three a three mile radius. Um so definitely maybe making connections there. Um so maybe you all can work together and partner um and do that. But um absolutely

I just look forward and and as soon as we can get at least one brick uh then maybe we can start talking about what may be there. But we don't have anything. There's nothing that exists. No, that's very good to know. Yeah, that's very good to know. Someone had a presentation about what it was going to be and this was in that. So, and it was I I'll see if I can find it. I'll send I'll send it to you. Yeah. And just tell them it's not accurate. There's nothing that exists there. Yeah. But it's just land without a community and a rec center. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Thank you,

Commissioners. Other questions. Commissioner Sanders. So, you mentioned uh community gardens, and I'm wondering if um there is well, I don't know if he would consider it to be he he would consider to be a community garden, but we've got TC that already has an established garden over there. So, um is it the Apple Run in that area? It's right across from uh Sycamore Meadows and Harriet. Yeah. So, I would just be care I would just be concerned about sort of usurping what he's already established. Um, uh, I don't, it wouldn't be a good look if we are not

being inclusive of someone that's already done the work, is doing the work to then just kind of come in and say, "Oh, we're going to start all over." Yeah. Uh, you know, quarter of a mile down the road. So, yeah. So hopefully um you're in communications with uh the people that are handling those two community gardens and if you're not uh maybe there's a way that we can help connect you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that would be um that would be our hope too is to like lift up the work that's already being done there. Yeah. Thank you. Go to uh Commissioner Robbie.

Thank you. Um thank you both for the presentation. That was uh wonderful. Very excited to hear about all the great work that Food Policy Council is doing. Um uh Food Policy Council is something that I was really proud to be responsible for helping to start uh back in the I think it was 2014 uh when we got it started um when I was um chair of the board and it was something that um a public health department staffer um and a community leader came forward and we're like, "Hey, this would be really cool if we did this. There's, you know, some precedents for food policy councils across the state." And so we um I'm leaning back. I should probably lean into the mic. Uh but we uh you know, we organized and we got it started. we put the framework together and it's cool to see that um not only have some of the pieces of that framework that I helped to work on uh survived but you guys have really built on a lot of that and I think um you know like commissioner Haj was saying it's really it really is one of the most active committees that we have and all the subcommittees that you have there's so much act action there's so many people that want to be involved that want to be part of it that want to be at the table and having those subcommittees that are so specialized in different areas brings people with their different passions to the conversation to help you know move the needle on these things. So I served on food policy council for four years

the year that it started through um when I left the board uh in uh in 20 um whatever year that was 16 so I guess it was two years whenever it started math uh 2014 2015 2016 three years um so and yeah just really good work that you guys are doing so thank you for that um the question that I have um is when when I first worked on getting the food policy council started. One of the things that we were uh talking a lot about with health department staff and with the folks that we seated on the food policy council at the time was around obviously um you know what the county as a county government could do to help facilitate the you know expansion of our local food network in the county. And um uh one of the things that has um been a reoccurring thought of mine is you know the county government has a lot of assets that are agricultural in nature. Um and I and I feel that they are not always utilized to the most appropriate and and highest level in terms of like fulfilling the goals of the food policy council.

So for example, Commissioner Scott and I serve on the parks commission. Commissioner Light is on ALPAC. Um and so the county has a ton of development rights that we have purchased per farmland which is great. But the county also owns like outright a ton of farmland or former farmland in uh in the county that is now parkland. Um, and so we use like parks money to buy, you know, it it's a lot of it is like we are really interested in the back 40, you know, or the land along a river or a wetland, but you know, maybe like 50% of the site was farmed up until the farmer put it on the market and it's the other 50% that we're interested in from a natural features perspective, but we buy the whole lot because that's what's on the market. And so then we have all this agricultural land that either the parks park staff will go in and uh convert to, you know, native plant native plantings. Uh or my understanding is the parks commission contracts in some cases with farmers to continue farming the land. Um but I think that likely, and I don't know the answer to this, but likely the farming that's being done on those properties is for commodity crops and not necessarily for consumable products that would help feed our community in the immediate term. Like it may be like, you know, wheat or corn that's helping to make, you know, snacks for Mondles or whatever, but not necessarily.

Yeah. Or or Yes. Or as Commissioner Beaman said, feeding feeding the feed the beef uh for or for milk too, probably. Um so it's probably a lot of feed feed crops. But anyways, my my brain started working in the sense of like again thinking back to like you know second world war times and like you know victory gardens and the idea that like we all have to come together as a community and like uh I feel like the war that's being waged by the fascists is they're all within us now like it's our own president that's waging war against the poor. Um and so uh but there's a war nonetheless happening uh in addition to the international war that he started. Uh but there's a war that's happening against poor people and um

and workingclass people in this country right now. And so my thought was we have these assets. We're farming them in some cases. In some cases we're not. In some cases, they're sort of just likeow weed fields that have plans in the future to be, you know, uh uh restored to native plant garden, you know, native plants or wet meadows or different um different restoration projects. But in the immediate term, they're like potential farm assets that the county has control over. So my brain went to like what if there was a way to like mobilize that land towards the purpose of feeding the people that are going hungry in our community as a result of the new lack of federal dollars that's coming down the road. So just a thought that I had to throw out there that maybe you can bring back to the council to consider. Maybe it's a partnership or a meeting with parks commission.

This is exciting. Can I respond to you? Is that okay? Cool. Um this is really exciting and it reminds me of um what Commissioner Sanders was speaking about. You know, one of the things TC does so well is he talks about the Underground Railroad and he has his like plants of the Underground Railroad. Um he has extensive history of black farmers in Washington County. And as you're talking about this, I'm putting on my sitting on the advisory council on reparations hat which I also sit and actually Derek is the presenter coming up at our food policy council meeting so we can see the racial equity um office framework. But um there's got to be some connection between like the dwindling amount of black farmers in our community because of not having access to land to farm. Um and maybe this is some way that can connect to some of the reparations work that the county is also supporting through the reparations council. So we should definitely talk about that more. Um thank you for that. And also you Well, I have one more thing because I do now have an ask for Commissioner Hodgej. Um we did you made me think about with the history of um the food policy council in general we lost a lot of momentum during COVID you know it was really hard we went entirely online we weren't doing face-to-face stuff last year we were coming out of it we rewrote our um policy agenda to make it kind of align with work that the policy action teams could do and bring forward and we talked a lot about and met with other food policy councils across the country. We had about three different meetings in different areas. We need a staff person like a not just like a we love our health department staff members that do some uh administrative work, but one of the things we had talked about for a while is like what how much could we actually do if we had a champion in the county that was working with you all and also working alongside all of us who are doing these different sectors. So that is uh you know something that we've been thinking about for a while.

Geez. Do you guys still have uh a budget? It's so minimal. It's like a few thousand dollars, right? It's like $4 or $5,000. Yeah. It's enough to pay people $25 to show up to a meeting, which we love. And we're Oh, so you pay you pay the counsel members from that money? Uh, no. The health department pays us from that money. We don't have any money that I'm aware of that we can use to like set up tableabling supplies, whatever. It's all goes through the health department and it's whatever you guys um increased. We are so grateful for that because it allowed the health department to be able to staff our meetings. But it's uh not

when we when we created the food policy council initially we had um allocated money in the budget for I think a halftime staff member I believe from the health department if I remember correctly and which you may still have. Maybe that's the health department staff. It's not halftime at all. It's maybe like it's like two or three hours a week of administrative work maybe. I thought it was more than that when we started it. And then and I remember we also put a budget for the food policy council. Like there was a line I thought there was a line item at the time that was if I remember correctly it was like four grand or $4,500 just for like events and stuff like that for the maybe I'm misremembering all of this but I thought that small

it was small but yeah Andy was on the board at the time.

That's good to know. We didn't know this history so thank you. You should. So Sharon Sheldon is the person the from the um she's retired now. Uh but she was the public health department staffer that came to me initially with this idea. Um, so she might be a good person to I don't know what she's up to these days, but she might be a good per person to retire, uh, to, uh, bring in to, you know, just even like rethink through like the history of how it all started and, you know, how because and then she served, I think she's she was either the staffer for or she served on the food policy council for a while after. So, she's like one of the more people that know the most about like the history and how it all got started and stuff like that. Well, you should be calling Sharon. That'll be on my to-do list for sure. I'll track her down.

And then I I do hope that you'll explore the idea with the parks department, too. I just think there's such a great opportunity there. And I always kind of whine a little bit when we use natural areas money to buy land that includes farmland

um because it's not naturally significant. And so, um and I I think that we need to like focus our dollars in on land that's naturally significant. But since we're buying it anyways, uh, and I, you know, and we have it, uh, I want to make sure that it gets utilized because like oftentimes restoring to native plantings is like incredibly time and resource intensive and it often doesn't work. And so like unfortunately once land has been destroyed by human hands for um, for farming or other practices, like it's hard to restore those natural ecosystems. And so we might as well utilize it for food if it's that's what the land is been used for for maybe decades at that point. We might as well utilize it for food especially because we have a need in our community and we need to feed people.

So yes, thank you for those wonderful ideas. Commissioners, other uh questions at this time? Go back to Commissioner Robbie. This is such a tiny thing, but I I want to talk about it because Greg Greg may remember this, but when we were doing landscaping on this building, I I pushed for us to plant a native service berry tree, and sometimes I eat the berries. It's on the corner over there. Um, so we should be doing we should be doing more edible landscape planting on County Builders. I'm just saying all kinds of great native plants that you can eat. Yeah.

Service Berry on the corner. Try it sometime this summer. It's usually in like June, July. I'll do I'm a nerd. My children and I will be over here at a meeting in June or July and we will be trying some berries. Thank you for that. Awesome. This is this has been a a unique uh working session topic here and stuff. Um uh other other uh other questions, Commissioner Somerville.

Um thank you both for being with us and uh we'll look forward to following up on some of these items and having you back uh sometime soon. All right. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Uh move now to any items for uh current or future discussion. Thank you. Um, seeing none and given the time, uh, I assume we'll start at seven. Chair, is that your thinking? Great. I'd entertain a motion to adjourn. All those in favor say I. We are adjourned.

Hi, good evening everyone. Welcome to the Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 meeting of the Washington County Board of Commissioners. Um, at this time, we'll stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Brendan. Could you call the role for us? Thank you. Commissioner Bean, present. Commissioner Haj, here. Commissioner Labar here. Commissioner Light, Commissioner Macheski here.

Commissioner Robbie, Commissioner Sanders. They tell me I'm here. Commissioner Scott, I'm here. Commissioner Somerville here.

Thank you very much, Brendan. Um, the next part of our meeting is public participation. Um, but before we get to public participation, I just want to acknowledge a special visitor we have this evening. Um, we have the Wayne County Executive Warren Evans in the room. Welcome to our meeting and I I hope you enjoy yourself. That's what every elected or government person wants to do is go to more meetings at night. So, thank you for being here. Um, uh, so we're going to open up for public participation. During public participation, you have, um, three minutes to speak to the board. A little series of lights will let you know you've got green means go, yellow means start to wrap it up. You've got 30 seconds, red means your time is up. I will stop you when your time is up to try to have a fair playing field for everybody who wants to make public comment. Um, when you come up, please introduce yourself with your name and the city or township in which you reside. Um, and that will help our clerk keep careful notes of what's happening. Welcome to the meeting. If anybody would like to give public participation, now is the time. I was like, somebody better come after that long preamble.

Hello, my name is Luke Woodworth. Um, I live in Ann Arbor and I am a special education teacher. Um, I have two jobs. I have to work a second job and I'm here to talk about the town homes brownfield plan uh the new MHDA tiff plan and I'm hoping that you will approve it as these homes that are being built. Um we have to have them be affordable. Um, I'm afraid that I'm me and my family are going to be priced out of another home. And I would love as a teacher to be able to own a home in the city I work for. And so, um, I I am pleading that this passes because uh, with that, we will be able to own a home finally here in Ann Arbor. And, um, and that would just be huge for my family. But if this doesn't pass, um, again, I feel like we're going to get priced out of another house. And so that would be just really tough and we would have to continue renting as there's no way we'd be able to afford otherwise. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jen Bharski. I'm a resident of Northville Township in Wayne County. The commissioner's feedback during the February 4th meeting was heard. Um, however, I think it's needed to clearly and publicly state that this entire material management planning process and the board's role in that process feels completely biased. For regular community members such as myself, the only way for us to publicly engage this board is through these threeinut public comments. And when we do, we were told, "We're only at step three of 13. Your comments are too early."

As a result, many of us did not attend the February 18th meeting only to learn that a representative from GFL was invited to address the commissioners. That happened at your next meeting. How is it that we were too early and they were not? On top of that, their statements were not properly interrogated or factchecked. That's not balanced. That's not transparent, and that's not fair to the people who will bear the consequences of the new or expanded landfill associated with Arbor Hills. Please do your due diligence. Seek out the full record. listen to people who will be impacted the most before any approvals or endorsements or momentum become irreversible. The conservancy initiative posted on their social media accounts following that 18th meeting that they would be happy to be included in future meetings with the commission with the commissioners. For the record, the conservancy initiative can be reached at infotheconserveny initiative.org. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Thank you.

To all those that love me, I'm here. And all those that do love me, I'm still here. Lee Tusson, city of Absilani commissioners, we are very well aware of the situation on Cross Street over in the city of Ipsilantic where the sheriff's department played a major role. When I say a major role, when uh uh when the I call them the the the SWAT, they call I I call them something else. When the SWAT came, it became Washington County's baby. And there's a lot of attention being brought to that situation. And it takes attention away from the situation that happened on Prospect just a few days later where a United States Navy veteran was murdered. He wasn't killed. He was murdered. Anytime a man is unarmed, he is murdered by who? By Washington County deputies. Now, it said that when a parent when kids have guns and they do hideous things, parents are held accountable. Now, I'm looking at it from this standpoint here. Alicia Dial's little kids had guns, didn't know how to use them. And you know what? She should be held accountable. Listen to the call. Dispatch, white van. Two black men armed. Adrenaline starts to pumping. They chase the van. It doesn't stop. Drillin goes over the head. And I'm going to tell y'all something. I'm an

old school dude. I'm 80 years old and I've been around the block with police work. You cannot tell me that that car was not rammed. It was bumped and that's what flipped it. You understand? Now, when it got flipped, y'all know what happened. Police jumps out with their guns, show me your hand. And I'm going to just put it the way I feel it. And for the cars been flipped, it's a possibility that man head might have been knock he might have been knocked out. He couldn't show no hand. But the police shot him and murdered him. Hey commissioners, y'all listen to the old man. Van, white van. Two black men gun. That's what they was focusing on. They was focused on two black men with a gun. And those bullets that killed that Navy veteran that fought for this country was meant for a black man. Alicia Dy got a lot of folks fooled, but she ain't got me fooled. I've been around too long. She got a lot of folks who even to the point that she joined a black sorority. Can't fool me. I've been around the block. Y'all do your job. make sure that Prospect area get the same courtesy that the normal street park area got. Appreciate your time and I ain't coming till something happened.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Erica Tubbins. I'm an Ipslani Township resident. Um, and I want to talk about uh the resolution to move the U ofM uh data center from where it's proposed site at South Hydro Park over to uh American Center for for Mobility. Um, I want to say that as a township resident, I think that this should not be our starting point for uh just allowing U of M to do what U of M will do. Uh ultimately, who knows what will happen? And I it is unfortunate that they have more say over what Ipssani township gets to vote on over what the county gets to vote on. That is truly unfortunate. Um but instead of just saying, "Oh, well, there's nothing we can do. So you have to go to the regions and let's see if we can perhaps move it to a different site. I think that we should try with everything that we have to not have it at all as a topline and then go from there. It should not exist in Ipsellani at all. It should not exist in this state. It is in partnership with Los Alamos National Laboratory. They will be using 90% of it. They themselves have casually admitted at their open house, which I do put in air quotes because it was not an open house. My husband is a Ipsellani district library trustee and also a veteran who was not allowed into that meeting. Um, and they have said in the press, Los Alamos has said, "Yeah, we will be using it for nuclear warfare research." Ipsilani Township trustees, the board have said in open meetings on record that it is a high value target for terrorism, the site will be. I feel like in what is

happening right now, that should alarm us greatly. So, I think that while it may seem like a better solution temporarily to appease U of M and hopefully not ruin a beautiful open park space uh and nature by saying please please U O U of M move it to this other place. I don't think that that's where we should start. I think we should start by saying this is not okay. You cannot treat the people of Ipsilani like secondass citizens, which is what they are trying to do. And the last thing I will say in my last 30 seconds is I have been volunteering every month at the Ipsellani farmers market since September to get the word out. And 99% of people when they learn about this and when they learn what it will be doing are mortified. They do not want it in Ipsellani and they do not want it in the county. So, please do not just say let's move it to ACM. Let's say let's not have it in the county. Period. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else in the room for Oh, here we go. Okay. There's a few more.

Jeremy Haley, Ipsy Township. The Ipsy City I'm Ann Arbor City Council just approved 180 unit building that has absolutely zero portable units has 1 to five bedrooms. Bottom two floors going to be parking 245 for bikes. They said, you know, they want people to live and work in Ann Arbor and went on to say that this the rise in the increase in the amount of U of M students to the Ann Arbor campus here has caused increase stress on the housing population and such. One of the council members said that there has been a 35% increase in U of M enrollment to the main campus here in the last 20 years. and said that the building where where it's at is already where U of M's expanding anyway, which I kind of find not a good answer to what's going on. That building they approved is pretty much going to be for student housing for U of M. Do they actually care about what's going on with the city and stuff? They actually need to have start having a conversation on how much enrollment is how much because U of M is now getting ready to open up the 2500 dorm new dormatory down there. So pretty soon this next fall could be up to 60,000 down here. If we want people to actually live and work here, we need to start having the conversation. How much enrollment is too much? And can I don't know any other college around the nation that's expanding like U of M and taking over the downtown areas as much as U of M is. The

other thing is the Concordia property that's coming out on the market. I say develop the half that's uh on the north side of Gettys and turn the southern half into a park. If Ann Arbor wants to increase the density of the downtown area, lessen the density outside of it. It has access to the Heron River would make a great park that would make access by building homes and stuff back there. You're going to limit that access just to a few. A park would make great sense there. And right now they do have housing there. I don't know if they're using it or when it actually shuts down. If the city or the county can make use of that housing temporarily while it's still feasible to do so and use it for housing would be a great idea. So, and actually leave the church as some kind of representative of what was on the property and not have it totally demolished as some representative of something that was once there that meant something to a lot of people. Thank you.

Thank you. Good evening, KJ Pedri, city of Ipsellani. Um, most urgently this evening, I'm here to speak to you about the data center. Um, I urge you to, uh, oppose the data center. Uh, this is not a matter of moving the war crimes a little bit to the left. Um, I take this issue highly personally. Um I am from the Tularosa basin where the Trinity explosion uh the first nuclear test in the United States uh was deployed. My family has a legacy of harm from the nuclear fallout from that test. Um and my family has a legacy of harm from involvement in working on that project. So, I urge you to consider the full impact of bringing such a morally bankrupt project home to roost in our county. Um, this is not a matter of national security. This is a matter of uh utter inhuman decimation uh of international tragedy um and of harm to Americans on American soil. Uh the the data center cannot proceed with your endorsement. Um it it is a profoundly shameful thing to even consider. Um moving on, I trust that you will fund the continuum of care and continue the projects that are currently ongoing for our community in housing and homelessness. Um I urge you to consider again how you can continue to expand our housing and homelessness efforts. Um I listened to the working session presentation on um seniors issues today and uh the attention paid to housing and homelessness is insufficient. Um our our current landscape of senior homelessness

is profound. Um and we urgently need a dedicated facility for seniors with disabilities who are homeless. We need a specialized facility that is catered to their needs. Um because we cannot keep shoving in everyone into Delonis and even if we have an east side shelter, we cannot keep shoving everyone into that too. Our need far exceeds what we are even planning to build. I'm going to again urge you to find and compensate voices of lived experience to come to you on these issues. As a continuum of care board member, I am continually trying to uplift those voices. Um, I have worked hard to develop a people with lived experience task force along with other uh members of our housing and homelessness community um that will begin reviewing some of the decisions that are going to be made. I am uplifting uh voices into task forces such as our uh new task force to examine displacement after um condemnation events like Arbor One um to the winter shelter task force. I am fighting hard to bring voices of lived experience into every space where decisions are made and they need to be compensated, respected and acknowledged. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. My name is Jada Weatherspoon. I live in Pittsville Township and I'm just here to introduce myself to you all. Many of you I know, but um some of you I don't. And so I just wanted to formally introduce myself. I'm manager for uh Comcast. So I do their government and community affairs work. And so I just wanted to say to you all like if there's anything you all need from Comcast, please reach out to me. You all will have my card, my information on there, email, um, anything you need. If a Paul falls down,

wire is down, please let me know ASAP. I will have that phone on me 24 hours, so to make sure residents are safe. Obviously, any upgrades and stuff, we'll keep you all posted. And so, just wanted to formally introduce myself. Please feel free to reach out regarding anything. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Anyone else in the room for public comment? Ashley, anyone online for public comment? Yes, chair. Um, first we have Jay Krueger. Welcome, Jay. Hello. Can you hear me? I can hear you.

Hi. Um I am also from Ipsellante Township and I would also like to speak on the U of M/L data center that is being discussed here tonight. I want to start by saying bluntly it was environmental racism that led U of M to choose to build it in Ipsellante instead of in Ann Arbor. And it is more environmental racism to choose our solution is moving it from a park into a black and brown community. The solution is that Ipsellante does not want this project at all and that is what we should be pushing for. I I would like to hear U of M say what they're doing and I would like to see it be publicly acknowledged. But I think we at least as the commissioners, the officials, the citizens need to be saying what they're doing as well. It is environmental racism and we should not be considering this project at all and we should not have our solution just be more environmental racism. This project doesn't belong in Ipsy Township. Thank you.

Thank you Ashley. Yes chair. Next we have Joanne McCullum. Hi Joanne. Go ahead. Hi. Uh yes. Good evening everyone. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I'm just here to uh look forward to the agenda and the presentations that you have and um thank you very much. Thank you chair. Next we have Coach Spoon. Coach Spoon, go ahead.

Hi, how are you guys doing? Sorry about the coach spoon, but I am Don Wtherspoon, senior, CEO of Powerpiece Enterprise. I met you guys a couple weeks ago. I just want to bring you an update and let you guys know from a being resident and business owner. Um, we quite frankly, we do not want that data center in our neighborhood. Um, I believe this is a blame act of gentrification to my community. Uh, I'm speaking candidly. we don't want it and we going to do everything in our power to just not allow it to happen. So, I would like for you guys to help me out and making sure that happens because um I'm in the process of doing a survey, but as far as the data I have right now, 95% is saying they don't want it in my community. So, I'm letting their voices be heard. And I would also like to thank you guys for allowing us to use your mobile support services initiative truck. Um the racial equity office in my organization has partnered up and we offering resource advocacy vital document assistance and um to the community in front of the beer cooler establishment at 20 South Washington um Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 400 pm to 700 p.m. Um so if you guys know anybody we trying to offer right now we've been offering 50 to 100 hot dogs a day. This is our second day we have um ramped out both days. So, if you know anybody that can offer um any type of juices, um chips or hot dogs, we agre greatly appreciate it and I love to do more work with you guys. And uh it ran over today, so I will be in in person. I just wanted to make sure I want to let y'all know that we are here and we on our way. Thank you.

Thank you. Uh next we have Trice Duckworth. Hello Trish. Welcome.

Good evening, commissioners. Um first I again want to thank um you all for uplifting what is going on in women's heron valley prison and of course everybody knows they're the mold infestation and the things that have been happening to the women. Um when we came last time um not only we're talking about Crystal Cart but we also talked about Jennifer Wallace and we learned that Jennifer Wallace died her the death certificate reads sepsis as the cause of death and it's very interesting because we have been doing an assessment and we're finding that most of the women that die there have sepsis. Um there is a young lady that thank goodness she did not die but she spoke to us about how she battled sepsis and she almost died. So there is a pattern of abuse and neglect and with that I know that you all do not have jurisdiction um over what is going on in women here in Valley Prison but I know that you all are passionate and you again um put forth a resolution to uplift. So, I'm asking us to, if you will, to dig in just a little bit further. I don't know if you all would feel comfortable, but if someone could exercise foyer powers um to obtain a list of the women that have died and what their cause of death is, this list was circulating back in 2020. And so, I do know that it can be obtained by FOYA. Um, and so just wanting to again see if we can all dig in further together. I know you all have more resources um to be able to accomplish something like that than our grassroots organization. Um so again, we just want to reach out again and ask if you all would work alongside us to bring further exposure to this and uplift so that ultimately um we can get something done. Um we can

stop the deaths and if we don't do something, women will continue to die. And it's women's history month. We want to uplift and honor those that are housed in Women's Heron Valley. um just because they're in Women's Heron Valley does not negate um their humanity and I thank you all um for honoring that. Thank you. Thank you. Um next we have Mara J. Mara, welcome.

Hello. Um my name is Mara. I am a resident of um Ipsilante uh and I am in the West Willow neighborhood. So I am close to the um area that would be uh where the data center would be if it is moved from its proposed first location to its second location. Um it would be very very nearby my residents. Um I would ask that you would oppose this data center. Um partially uh the environmental concerns are a big factor for me. Um construction like this on data centers once that is done it cannot be undone. The environment you cannot put it back to how it was or if you do it takes a long long time. Um there's also not enough information about the long-term health impacts to the residents that would be created by this data center. Um and so the environmental factors are just one part of this. Um the other aspect that I haven't heard a lot of people mention is the uh financial aspect. Uh Ipsilante and the area of Ipsellante that I am in um people are already uh scraping by. We are one of the lower income areas of county and uh people don't have extra money that would be um transferred to them uh as a cost by DTE um by a lot of other people and a lot of things that would be subsidized by this data center. Um it's not going to be the people in power. It's not going to be those companies. It's not going to be anybody but the residents that will take on those extra financial costs. uh that is not something that I personally could sustain right now. Um given the fact that um many prices in areas are going up, not just uh energy costs, but food in many other areas. Um and given that I know where my finances are at um and the fact that it would be difficult for me

to sustain, I know that there's plenty of other people in my area that could not sustain it either. Um, so aside from all the other points that people have brought up about this data center, I wanted to add that as a component um, and ask wholeheartedly that you would use your power to not just, um, put a moratorium on this data center and not just move it from one place to another, but to stop it entirely. Um, and I thank you for hearing me tonight. Thank you. Thank you. There's no one else online, chair.

Fantastic. Um, at this time, uh, we will do commissioner followup to public participation. I have already seen Commissioner Hodgeg's hand and then I see light and then I see Sanders and we'll go from there. Thank you, Chair. I'm first Commissioner Hodgej. Yes. Thank you, Comm. Sorry, Commissioner Hodge. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I was just, you know, wanted to wait to be formally recognized. I said Commissioner Hodgej first. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Sorry. Uh, okay. Just look, we're trying to have a good time. Yeah.

Uh, all right. I want to address the comments related to the data center first. I mean, this is a significant issue for everybody here. Um, and thank you to those online that commented and the number of written public comments that we've received prior to this meeting and today. It's a difficult issue to talk about. I mean, either uh location that U of M and Los Alamos are proposing or in my district and I've heard from a number of constituents pros and cons for both of the locations. There, I think is a lot of uh confusion or or conversation about the difference between talking about it as being at Willow Run or at the ACM location, the American Center for Mobility. So, people are familiar with where the American Center for Mobility is at. Uh you would have a very challenging time getting on to that property uh because of the location and how it's enclosed off from the residential properties. Uh the idea would be with asking that that area be considered is so it would be away from residents more broadly as compared to the textile location where there's no getting away from that one and it would disrupt existing natural space uh whereas the other area is already zoned industrial and is sort of enclosed away from everywhere else. There isn't a good solution for either site. I mean, that's part of the problem and that's why the board has passed multiple resolutions in the past uh opposing data centers more broadly, opposing the bills in the legislature that were signed into law that supported tax breaks for data centers, which we opposed. At every turn, the county has taken steps to make our uh concerns related to data centers known and for us to try to engage responsibly when they are trying to appear. Um, so there are a number of resolutions that you can find on the website, uh, if you go through and look at our policies. And if any of you have emailed me about the data center, you've likely received an email from me with links to those resolutions. Uh, this isn't us endorsing the resolution, if it were to pass, is not us endorsing the data center. Uh, I think the board has been very clear in trying to work with

local governments to provide them the tools to be more thoughtful and engaging so data centers don't pop up everywhere. That's why we have the one of the things that the resiliency office is working on uh and the toolkit that we directed staff to create to engage local governments around that as well as the other resolutions that I mentioned that oppose data centers more broadly uh and the the tax break bill that ended up passing anyway. Uh ultimately it because of the authority that the University of Michigan has as a state institution and the role that Los Alamos has as a arm of the federal government, there is little that any of us can do to stop it if it is going to happen. But we can speak as a board through resolution just like other communities across the county have and trying to express what we would like to see. And as I've said, we have said no to data centers more broadly. But this is this resolution is based on what we have heard from many constituents and the local governments around protection of green space and environmental space uh if it were to happen uh because the resolution does not endorse the data center happening but if it were to happen that is what the request would be. Will they listen to the request? I doubt it. Uh and that's why I encourage people to continue to engage the regions of the University of Michigan, attend their meetings which are public like ours. And I know there was a speaker that said, "You're tired of hearing about that." Yeah, I'm tired of having to say it to because I'm frustrated by this as well because people I hear from people they don't want they don't want it and I don't believe that uh it will result in a tremendous number of jobs for local residents as we keep hearing about. Uh it will result in some number of jobs and it will result in some number of temporary construction jobs. Uh but this is a challenge that I think all of us across county here at the board of commissioners but in the local governments across the county are trying to contend with. Uh it is one of these very challenging and very frustrating things that we have to contend with. I can probably talk more about it when we get to that item on the agenda, but that's what I got for now in terms of response to public comment. To the other

commenters, Mr. Tusent, if he's still here, I don't believe he is. Uh, I always enjoy your very passionate uh, comments to us and very well thoughtout comments and I appreciate that someone is highlighting the incident that occurred that resulted in the murder of a county veteran. I believe that we need to be investigating that situation just as we do about the horrors that occurred on West Cross Street, which both of those things are top of mind for the board. So, I'd say say stay tuned for that because it is something that we continue to explore. I thank you to the commenter that mentioned the need for specific strategies related to seniors that are experiencing housing and homelessness challenges. I believe that we do need to have a specific strategy to address their needs and thankfully we do have the senior millillage and funding related to that that we could use to improve the lives of the people that are experiencing those challenges. So, that's very thoughtful and helpful comment to make. So, thank you for that. uh to the person that came to speak about GFL and comments that members of the board may have made about uh the early stage at which comments are being made about the the landfill. Uh I would want to just clarify that it's never I think too early to start having conversations with us or engaging us on the issue. But what I always say about a situation like this pretty similar to the data center situation, you got to sustain the advocacy around this there. It is a a mini and a multi-step process that we will likely be talking about this for the next year. I I would say that don't burn yourself out on the advocacy or engaging us about it. You're going to have to keep doing it. It is early in the process, but keep on coming. Keep on leaving us public comments or coming and speaking to us or engaging us on it. Uh it is but it is early in the process. So do it now if you can continue to keep doing it into the future. uh but I would feel very frustrated for the people that think this is the most opportune time to engage on it and then did not engage

later uh when we are getting closer to the decision-making step. So I I'm not saying don't do it now. Do it now and do it tomorrow and do it next month and the months after that until the process is complete. And to Joanne, thank you for calling in Joanne and thank you for your service to county through the road commission. Always great to hear from you. And that's all I have for now. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Hajj. Commissioner Light,

thank you. Thank you for every to everyone who came out to have public comment. Uh I just want to uh refer back to our uh our North uh Vil Wayne County resident. Um as Commissioner Haj said, it is never too early or too late to address environmental concerns. Um I am also I know you all are tired of hearing we're waiting for the material management's plan. Um but we do have to do so but having information to be provided um continuing to dig in and to get um the knowledge and the resources. I I believe that myself and my colleagues are doing um their due diligence to receive all of the information. Um and that's why we are not uh just voting ASAP. Um but I will say what I have been saying and this is not um to side with with as whether we should expand or not expand but you have to remember that the residents of um Salem Township and Washington County have not come and made all of the reports and the concerns about the landfill. Um, and I believe that conversations and town halls need to happen amongst the residents. So, the Wayne County residents need to connect with the county residents that live in Salem. Um, and they need to discuss how they feel about one, um, your trash comes to that landfill. And so, you need to discuss where will it go? Um, will that increase your taxes? Will you have to create another landfill? Um or will you have to have your trash taken over to the Michigan A um Wayne or Canton landfill that has toxic waste and then you're just adding more? Does the county Salem

Township residents want um to relinquish that that subsidy that they get for their uh residential taxes? I don't believe so. So, conversations needs to happen amongst both. Um, I know that this is a very concerning topic. I want no one to be in an environment um that is not safe. Um, but I continue to look at reports. I continue to um I I see all of the emails. Um, and I will respond, but I will continue to say that we make choices and individuals who purchased a home near the landfill, they made the choice to move there. And I don't care what anybody told you about that there may or may not be an expansion. You cannot predict the future. So your realtor, you need to get back with them and tell them they owe you some money or to stop lying because they lied about what could or could not happen. So let's just have conversations. Let's have town halls. Let's talk to the counties. Let's talk to one another. Um, but I will continuously say we have to be considerate of the residents that live in Salem Township. Um, and remember that it was a choice to move there. So, thank you for that and thank you for speaking, but remember you are never we we always want to hear comments. We always want to hear the concerns. So, don't feel like you cannot come and address us. Um, I want to thank Mr. Mr. Tusen for coming in and providing us with the true truth because a lot of times um people do not want to address the issues or uh we the commissioners may be attacked if we express some of the truths that have occurred. So I thank him um that is 80 years of wisdom that has walked this earth and I just want to thank him for uplifting uh the concerns in Ipsellani even though that is not my district but

I live in Ipsellani. Um, and I I am just happy that someone continues to advocate advocate um for the individuals, the residents in Ipsy City, Ipsy Township um and making sure that we are safe and continuing to um uplift the concerns of the community. Um, next I want to talk about the data centers. I am so happy that the individual who expressed that there is environmental racism with these data centers. Um it is so uncomfortable and exhausting that we the board cannot just say no you can't come here or you but what we have to do is we have to learn how to manage these people. So, um I am going to encourage all residents to go to your board, your township board meetings, make them manage these companies that want to come so that they want to leave. Make them, you know, if the landfield pays, you know, residential taxes in Salem Township, guess what? They are going to need to do a whole lot of things. We fuss about DTE, make them pay some of our DTE. Make them pay some of our taxes. We have to boss up and we have to manage them so that they don't want to come and that they are just like you know what they have too many too many things that they want from us and it's not even worth it because it's not you're not going to come and destroy us and tear up our communities and we don't we got to manage them. So I'll say that um Jeremy thank you for bringing up um Concordia that is in my district. I am on it and it is a discussion that is um very much circulating uh with the board and just stay tuned as commissioner Hajj would say. Um, my last thing, not the last, but I also

want to thank uh Trisha Duckworth for continuing um to fight the fight. And we will just have to continue to try to strategize to make sure that the women that are incarcerated in that dump that they are taken care of and that we can make a change there. So, we will continue to work um as we can um alongside with you. My last comment um I was just sent a video of ICE um coming in to arrest a black man. Um this was an Aspen chase off of Washington. I don't know if this is Justin North or Caroline's district. However, I'm sick of ICE. I am just absolutely sick of them and I I don't know what we have to do and what we going but I'm just absolutely tired of it. We cannot continue to let these fools come in and disrupt our families and our county with this foolishness because they're mad because we're operating in diversity because the president has targeted us because we are one of the best counties in the United States. So, we have to figure out and come up with something. But I wanted to address this issue and this concern that just came up that I just got this video of. I want people to be aware and know that these fools are still around. They are still deporting and harming because this this man was maed um and I'm sure was you know roughed up a bit and he was working. So, I just I I don't understand how individuals who are are working and contributing to our county and not doing anything that is criminal can be picked up and harmed and

and taken away from their family and community. So, just be aware um and know that this foolishness and stupidity is still occurring. and to be safe, protect your families, protect your friends um in this community. And I just my prayer for everyone is that we can soon figure out a way to to manage this stupid president that we have because that's the issue. Um, and prayers to to to the the the country of Iran because they are going through because we have someone who is lawless and they just break the law. The president just does what he wants to do. Um, and I'm sick of it. So, I just want everyone to be aware, know that this is the ICE is still mingling around in county. Um, and it is not okay. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Um, Commissioner Sanders.

Um, okay. So, I've got a a couple of things. Um, let me see. Where do I want to start here? I I guess I'll start with the data centers. Um, I have suggested slash asked uh for the county to consider trying to put together and it it looks like as I got a communication uh from our um resiliency um office that we are going to be doing some education. Um, but I was looking to see if there was a way that we could help some of our uh smaller municipalities that are in the county that don't have the resources or the funding uh to figure out how to tighten up their zoning um and their planning commissions so that they are not such an easy target for the data centers to be able to come in and muscle their way into uh those communities uh for fear of uh you know going bankrupt because the the corporations have the money to sue them and keep them in court. So that's one thing that I would like for to see us do. Uh there are some communities that have you know recently um enacted moratoriums for periods of time so that they can review their zoning and planning. Um, but those are sort of the larger municipalities, but we've got smaller ones that have uh larger um tracks of land that may also be attractive. I I do share the concern um about the racial undertones of where some of these data centers are being placed. Um although

um I represent a very small portion of Ipsellani Township, I do still interact with and listen to uh the residents that live in um my colleagues districts and uh the Willow Run residents that I've spoken to are incredulous is probably a good term about why are you putting it here? We've we have lived in the shadows of the GM plant and the pollution and all of those things that come along with that operation before it was shuttered. And now you want to put something else here for us to have to combat. And I would like for people not to so easily dismiss the racial undertones. the fact that even though a lovely place, we have some racial issues here in this county. We've had them for a while. They haven't just dissipated. And so, we need to be listening. Um, I also want to say though that I would like to request that the leaders in those municipalities be much more transparent with their residents. I don't think I you've heard me say this before. I believe there's three sides. Your side, my side, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. And I don't think that the residents have been given all of the information that they need in order to be able to make um informed um decisions. Uh there are, you know, the truth is is that University of Michigan does not have to ask permission. They don't. and they have the funding to just keep you tied up in legal court forever.

I don't know that they want to use the um scorched earth effort, which is, you know, basically imminent domain. You got to this is where we want to build it and this is where we're going to build it. It's nothing you can do about it. Um, and I would caution about um, municipalities to say, "Well, we're going to we're going to sue them." Because then I what I want the residents and the taxpayers to do is to question who benefits from the lawsuit. Is it the lawyer or is it the entire community? because if they can't show that the entire community is going to benefit from likely a lawsuit that you're going to lose, there's only a couple of people that are being enriched and you got to start asking other questions. So there's more information that the residents should be demanding in full transparency, not just the piece of information that electives want to give them. They have the right, this is not like private information. They have a right to either foyer or request without having to foyer that they get the full story. And I don't think they're getting the full story. Um and when you conduct your public meetings in such a way that full access is not made for everyone because people have to be there in person or they may have to listen to an audio but they are not given the privilege of being able to watch a virtual uh recording of that meeting. you are disenfranchising large uh portions of your residents and there's no reason for it other than

trying to control the narrative and the votes in your community and that needs to stop. We cannot say now in this time of technology that we can't make it a virtual or hybrid meeting. I don't care what any elected person tells you. They're blowing smoke up your butt if they tell you that they cannot make that happen. And the residents need to be incredulous about it and demanding that they make it open for seniors, for people that have um mobility issues, people that are ill. They should not have to be forced to physically come into a public meeting in order to find out what's going on. So for the data centers, I I understand people's concerns. I do, but there are questions that kind of tie in sort of to the landfill. This these become zoning and planning issues that your electeds either appoint to those boards or elect to those boards. and they are the ones that either are able or or not able to come up with the restrictions necessary in order to have one area that is just industrial and nothing else in that area. So, there are more questions that I would encourage uh residents and constituents to start asking of your elected officials. Um because I don't think the whole story is being told and unless I'm missing something, we are we don't have the power to stop this. No matter how much people may like it, it's not up to the county commissioners. It's up to that municipality. So, I'm going to stop there with the data centers, but I'm now I'm going to

move on to the landfill. So, not in my district, it's in my colleagues district. I have visit that visited that landfill um twice. I've been out there three times, but I've actually visited the site twice and I see a whole lot of um additional growth going on literally across the street. And I'm confused. And I mean this with all due respect. I would not build a house that close to a landfill. Not a million-dollar house. I sure wouldn't. And there's no discussion being held about what did our neighbors in Northfield what like what was going on with their planning commission and their zoning commission that now they're asking us to handle. But I don't see anybody taking responsibility for maybe poor planning or lack of planning. And as Commissioner Light said, I've heard from two Salem Township residents. One was opposed, the other one was not. That's it. But I got about 200 emails from our our Wayne County neighbors. And it's not that we're trying to be disrespectful to them. But we answer to our constituents. Period. And our constituents are not raised in hell. But also more importantly, I am a firm believer in plan B. So before you come whining to me about something and you don't have any cheese to go with it, I need you to tell me what's the plan B. So you don't want us to expand the landfill. I don't think the landfill is just being expanded just because they

don't have anything else to do. Americans generate trash, tons of it. So, what are we supposed to do with it? Where is it supposed to go? Some of the argument that I hear is, "Oh, it's not even a US company that's running the I don't care. I don't care who's running it. Are they running it to the best of their ability? It looks as though they are trying to to correct. And I'm not defending them, but I am saying tell the whole truth. They took over a landfield that was troubled. And they have put a ridiculous amount of money into it. They are trying to be good neighbors. They have included the county in that. And they didn't have to. It wasn't anything that we were going to be able to mandate them to do. and putting in a recycle center at that location. But they did it. And so I I need for people when you come and ask me for something, I need you to have it all figured out. I really need for you to plan in advance what are my objections going to be and be prepared to meet my objections. So my first thing is what's plan B. So, if when we get to that point and we're at point three out of 13, I think if we get to that point, what's your plan? Where are we supposed to take our trash? Do you want me to bury it in my backyard? I need for people to answer that and not just provide us with information that is outdated and to some degree not accurate. So, it's not that we're not listening to you, but you're also not hearing us when

we respond to your complaints. Um the sheriff's department um I am going to say as someone that that um was formerly married to a law enforcement officer and probably knows a little bit more than some people about the culture. residents don't want to be guinea pigs for someone that's learning but has professed to know what they're doing. And so to me, I think it's interesting that the silence is deafening about the murder of the gentleman in the van. The procedures, the internal procedures that they broke. Maybe I'm wrong. I believe they're not supposed to ram vehicles. You're not supposed to shoot into a vehicle that you can't see into. I'm not sure why they didn't render aid to that gentleman as he lay dying, but it's interesting that we're not hearing a peep about what happened. Haven't been given an update in I don't know, a month. And then another situation where we have literally unhoused one, two, at least three people by almost demolishing their house over someone that was having a mental health crisis in a county where we felt mental

health was important enough that we literally voted for and funded a public safety and mental health millage and just renewed it. I'm just wondering where is where is all of the bravado that we h were hearing before these egregious issues occurred. Oh, and by the way, since we're separate from them and can't tell them what to do, but we have to pay the bill. the county pays the bill. When we have people within the county that don't get it right, they're not going to the sheriff's department. They're not going to SWAT. They're coming straight to us and they want their money. Is that fair for all of the residents to have to cover that without explanation? They You made a mistake. You need to own it. own it because any other time it's always our fault. They're innocent. It's our fault. We're being terrible. I've really had enough of that. And like I said, if the whole truth came out, we wouldn't have anybody sitting in here asking us why are we doing what we're doing. That's all I'm legally able to say about that. Um, well, I want to say it just a little bit more. So, I've said this before. The system that we use that the sheriff's department uses to notify the residents. All of a sudden, last year, it stopped working. I didn't take it. I didn't take the app off my phone. I'm not getting notices. I should not have to be sitting at this

board finding out that that ICE is in my district. Something's wrong with that. We as commissioners, we find out from our county administrator. He will send us a text that says, you know, I've I've been made aware of this situation occurring and it's he lets us all know that has not occurred since we had a change in leadership in the sheriff's department. I don't know if it's purposeful, but I've raised this several times. Still am not getting the notices. That's problematic. I think it even puts people in more harm because we're not able to advise or warn people, you shouldn't go to this area because there's a police situation going on. Take another route. It was one of the best informative um processes that we have now all of a sudden it's gone silent. And so I'm going to say again for the fourth time what has happened that we've I'm going to say that I have been dropped off of this system. So there are some positions you don't have to like me but I need you to do your job. Need you to do your job. Um, Comcast, with all due respect, I call it comrap because it's problematic. These numbers look nice and rosy, but I don't see any information about Washington County. Michigan is great, but if you're addressing this board, you should be giving us data about Washington County. And these numbers look lovely, but I'm going to tell you from the 37 years that I've lived here in Washington County, Xfinity

Comcast has continued to downsize their service. We used to have service centers that you could go in and pay your bill, talk to somebody, turn your equipment in. They got rid of that and then they came up with something else. God forbid you have to call them for anything. you need to take the day off work. That's how hard it is. If I didn't have the contact person for government relations for them, nothing would get done. And I'm a little different than some of our residents because I live on a property that has a utility easement in my backyard. So, they have and they do show up at my property. Rarely do they ring the doorbell. They just go to the fence, go inside, and do what they have to do. Now, imagine seeing some stranger in your backyard that hasn't had the decency to knock on your front door or leave a door knocker that says, "We were here to do some work, will be needing to come back." If I did not have the contact for the former government director, which and I will give him credit, he got to the point where he got tired of talking to me. So he'd send the supervisors out to my house, not the tech, but you the the level of service that we get needs greatly to be improved. And then I have a a sort of a jerk question. I'm looking at all these numbers, but I want to know what philanthropic efforts has this company offered us in Washington County, not the state of Michigan, but Washington County. What efforts? I don't know that there are any.

And if there are some, it should be added to this document. But since we have broadband here now in the county, they ought to be able to give us specific numbers that address our constituents, not the state at large. And so the philanthropic I want to know what are you doing? Are you are you offering grants to nonprofits or community agencies that are helping us as electives do the work that needs to be done? What have you attempted and what have you actually been able to do in terms of the money that you're making? Because these are millions of dollars. But trust and believe, if they've invested 2.3 billion in Michigan, they've made four times that amount off of our business. So, stop glossing it over. Give us the whole truth. I cannot stand it when companies do that. Tell the truth. Stop trying to make it seem like you're great and we should be grateful for giving you our business because there are other people that can do it. I'm done.

Thank you, Commissioner Somerville.

Thank you. Um I'm only going to respond to one of the public comments. Um uh KJ, thank you for being here. Um I'm really uh eager to work on many of the issues that you highlighted. When we approved the senior millillage framework, we specifically highlighted um using millage dollars for um both prevention and to actively stabilize currently older um 60 years and older um individuals who are homeless. And so I'm waiting to hear more about some of the ideas that our new director of aging services has. But um luckily uh we kind of built that into the framework of the millillage because we know it's more expensive to deal with the issue once somebody already becomes homeless. So we have goals to prevent the homelessness from ever occurring, but also to use some of that money to stabilize current um homeless individuals who are above the age of 60. Um and that could mean a number of things like a dedicated facility that you referenced, but it also means um making sure people don't lose their homes. And then I'm also really excited about some of the work being done to kind of pair people with homeowners who could um have roommates live in and help offset their costs and I see that being a huge benefit for seniors. Um so just wanted to say thank you for those comments and they are in line with what the board has already approved for the senior millage dollars.

Thank you Commissioner Somerville. Commissioner Robbie. Thank you, chair. Uh, thank you to everybody that uh, came to comment today. A few things I want to say. Joanne McCullum, you are great. Amazing. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being a public servant. Uh, Jada, you're great. I love you. You're awesome. And, uh, welcome to your in your role. I look forward to working with you. Comcast, very problematic corporation, but you are gonna solve all the problems, my friend. You got this. Uh, landfill. Uh, I do not support the expansion of the landfill. Um, I stand nothing to gain politically from supporting the voices of the residents in Wayne County. Um, I just don't think that expanding the landfill is a good idea. I think it's trash. It's a trash mountain in our community. Why would we want to expand it? That just makes no sense. Uh, as a Washna County resident, why we would want to support that. So, I'm opposed to it. And um furthermore, I would say I have advocated uh uh as a result of the last working session, which I also thought was inappropriate to invite a corporate actor in our community to come present at a board meeting. Um in a way that uh gave them an official spot on the agenda. Um I think in order to be fair, I think we need to give the conservancy an equal spot on the agenda to express themselves. Um, just because a bunch of people came to our meeting and spoke during public comment doesn't mean that this corporation deserves to have a dedicated spot on our agenda. They of course came during public comment as well and spoke. So what's why do we get why do they get special treatment? That doesn't make sense to me. Um, and so I think in order to be

fair, we should give opposing voices uh a spot on the agenda at a future working session. So I'm looking forward to that happening at some point. Um, data centers uh are all terrible and we shouldn't have any in Michigan. Uh, I am fully opposed to the data center in Ipsani Township. I'm opposed to the data center in Seline. I'm opposed to the data center I'm opposed to the data centers, all of them. So, we don't want them. We should ban them. Um, there's been some really good uh bills introduced in the House, including Jimmy Wilson Jr's bill um to claw back the tax incentives for the uh Ipsy Township data center. that should pass um immediately because uh why are we spending hundred million dollars on a data center with Los Alamos when we have uh so many other needs in our state including uh our school children uh our roads uh our universities, health care, um our state is in crisis. People are having trouble affording basic goods and services and yet we're spending hund00 million on computers. Why? This makes no sense. Uh it is inhumane and it is absolutely dumb and we should not be doing it. Um and I think we as county and as county commissioners, as elected officials, we should be putting our voice and our effort collectively behind being strong and firm in our opposition across the board. Um not just in our community, but in all communities across Michigan. Um this is uh not something that we need as society to survive. Data centers do not feed people. Data centers do not heal people. Data centers uh only hurt our environment. They hurt our humanity and they're unnecessary. So, we should not support them in any way, shape, or form. Um, housing for seniors. Glad somebody brought that up. Uh, we are in a housing crisis and that crisis extends to our senior citizens. I love the idea that was brought up. I can't remember which one of you mentioned it about a

dedicated facility for uh senior housing. We do have one like that in Ann Arbor. Um we need more obviously we need a lot more um housing for seniors that is affordable. So I fully support and back that proposal. Um and I thank you for bringing it forward to this board. Um that's my list of things. I will keep it brief. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Commissioner Robbie. Uh any other commissioners for followup to public participation? girl. 21 minutes. Commissioner Sanders, really quick. I was going to suggest that um some of our residents um we lump Ipsilani into this whole like place, but there is a difference between Ipsellani township and the city of Ipsellante. And so if if people are able to sort of try and differentiate the two because they both have separate elected bodies. Um and I know that you know our news stations often just says but it does make a difference when you're looking at making decisions um related to people's um quality of life and where they actually live. Not the post office mailing address. Is that okay? Thank you.

Did you would you want to respond? Okay. Okay. Um I will just add I there's nothing original I can add here um to the public comments other than saying thank you very much for coming to comment in our meeting. I know sometimes it can feel like a daunting thing to stand up in front of this body. Um and I wish it didn't feel that way, but I'm glad that you're here. Thank you. Um, liaison reports. Any liaison reports? I see none. Um, and uh, next is report from the county administrator. Thank you, chair. Good evening, everyone. Uh, just a few items this evening, beginning with the Eastern Washington, our community and rec center. That project continues. I I do want to take this opportunity to thank the board at at parks at parks and wreck and the staff for the work that they're doing to make sure the project aligns with community values. As you some of you know, we're going through the design development phase with an eye on value engineering trying to make sure that we can bring a project in that we can all be proud of in an environment where construction costs are continuing to rise. Uh, also I I it's important to note that the budget and the financial response to to that budget will need to happen after the design development phase is complete. We'll continue to have this item on the agenda until such time as we have information for this board to take action on. So again, I want to thank everyone for their work here. Uh, just a couple of other quick items. the IT director. As you know, we are uh looking for a new IT director. We have moved through the process. We've identified a candidate and we are working through the final phases of the process including backgrounds, etc. Uh I expect to have a candidate before you on

the 18th of March uh for uh your confirmation. So, please stay tuned uh for that hire. Uh the CFO search had will begin in earnest I believe in the next couple of weeks. We're doing the work up front to make sure that we have the appropriate process. Uh I will ask this board to be uh you know appropriately represented as you know this is an important hire for our organization and I think it's important that the board uh moves in and supports the process. Lastly, I'm grateful that I'm joined by Matt Magn Mcnavl for from County Parks and Recreck. He is here to provide an update on the worker.

Roads Commission. I'm sorry. Roads Commission. What did I say? Park, forgive me, roads commission. Uh, so he will give an update on the Workner Road project. while he gets things ready there. I do want to acknowledge that uh Barb Fuller, the the chair of the park board is in the audience as well. So, road commission, forgive me for Yeah. Yeah. So, thank you for being here. I think she knows what I'm referring to. Thank you. Thanks. Please take it away. Thank you. Uh

D, uh I appreciate the opportunity to be here to answer any questions that you may have. uh Matt Mcdanell from Washington County Road Commission and I have here as well Brent Schlack, our director of engineering uh who's administering the work a road project. I wanted to uh kind of go through uh some information uh that we are offering through our website. So if if we have a moment to share your screen, uh we did issue uh a project update. Um, in the spirit of transparency, all of our information for the project is on our website at wcroads.org. And then if you go to uh road work and construction and go to current projects, you'll get a host of all of our uh planned projects for 2026. There's a uh GIS map there that you can click on uh individual segments or dots. Uh but also there's tiles and if you scroll down to the bottom of the web page there you'll see in Silvin Township sorted by townships Workner Road and there is our Workner Road web page. So, it's a project page with a little information at the top. You can see our latest updates. And if you scroll down a little bit, uh on the right side, healthful links, you can see um information that we've uh shared uh via our working sessions with the board. We hosted public meetings on February 9th. That was a virtual public meeting. We hosted a in-person public meeting. City of Chelsea is so glacious to host us at the uh city chambers there on February 11th. We took all that input and information uh from citizens. Uh we had uh very good public comment where we took information back to our design team. We were had the opportunity to present the design. Um primarily it is a a road resurfacing

project. It is a millage funded project. So thank you uh to the county mill. And then the goal is really uh to restore the pavement. Um but in doing so we have to take care of some of the drainage uh that drainage uh work uh does uh impact have some environmental impacts. We work very hard with our consulting team and our team with in the engineering department to minimize those impacts to be context sensitive. Um and uh but there are uh resulting tree removals as part of the project. So the project update is there. We also have updated uh exhibits uh that show those impacts. We were able to reduce another half dozen trees less uh being removed um after our public meeting and we're publish we published that today. Uh the next uh steps are working directly with property owners to make sure they understand their impacts to property, their property frontage, and then ultimately um we'll be uh following all the of our processes as far as tree removals and then bidding the project out for uh a contractor. And I just wanted to share that update and be available for any questions that you may have. Any questions? Commissioners,

Commissioner Machi, thank you. Thanks, Sure. Thank you both for being here tonight. Appreciate it. And appreciate the opportunities that have been created for the public to comment um on this project out in Silven Township, Chelsea. Um so, Matt, you mentioned six fewer trees now as a result of the engagement from earlier in February. Um how many trees at this point larger than 18 in are actually going to be coming down?

So there are 42 trees in total uh that will be removed. Uh one 30 in um 10 uh between the size of 20 to 29 and uh nine between 18 and 20 and then the remainder which is over half of them are less than 18 inches. And initially the number was far larger than that.

It was 48. The plan was 48. So there are over 250 trees in the rightway. Uh there are there was a lot of discussion about the old uh growth trees. None of those are impacted. These are all the smaller trees on the north section uh where we're trying to reestablish the shoulder and ditches. I did I noticed that earlier today in your update that these are the the northern segment of the project at this point. Absolutely.

Um could you talk you know when you talk a little bit about you mentioned the drainage but why that is that needs to be addressed and why it's such a big issue and the role that that plays in the condition of the road.

Sure. Yeah. So ultimately uh much like a roof on your house, you you want to have gutters to take the water away from the the foundation. Um water is the number one enemy of pavement uh when it gets uh adjacent to the road, it can create cracks and then essentially that freeze thaw effects really breaks down that pavement. So we want to make sure it gets off of the pavement much like a roof is is uh at a grade so it moves away from the roof. uh the grade of the road is shaped so that the water sheds off the road into the ditches. And uh really we want to get that water away from that pavement structure. Uh so that we're investing over half million dollars in asphalt and we want to make sure that investment is uh for the for its full duration and not uh you know back to a poor condition because we didn't address that drainage properly. And what you're proposing now on the northern segment is a in terms of the shoulder is a two-foot paved and a two foot two foot gravel. Yeah, that's correct. Two foot pave, two foot gravel. There's really existing gravel shoulders out there that mother nature took back essentially. And then there's about a one foot um paved shoulder out there as well because the white line has a little asphalt beyond it.

So could you talk about the need to have those shoulders?

Yeah, the shoulders is essential. uh to making sure number one, we've got a paint line that's very visible. We've moved from a 4-inch paint line to a 6 inch paint line. A lot of uh reflectivity, especially out in the rural parts of our county in that dark um and also when it's rainy, that visibility is super important. Also, as uh technology gets better in cars, they use that for that lane assist part of the uh technology. So, pavement marking is really important. and then uh space for that edge. That edge is really um where the the pavement can start to have distress. And so having a adequate shoulder for things like crash trucks or commercial vehicles. Um even though it's a it's a lower volume road, it does have a fair amount of commercial traffic. So having shoulders is important. Okay.

Yeah. I will I will continue to advocate for fewer trees to be cut down on the project. I do appreciate um the road commission's willingness to listen and hold these sessions. Absolutely. And and react to that. Um I I applaud you for going out to the property owners as well that are going to be impacted with trees. Um one of the things I continually hear is more communication. More communication and more communication earlier in the process. Yes. Right. And so I I appreciate the effort to go one-on-one with people and explain what the impact is going to be. Um at at this point, could you talk about what stage you're in in terms of setting up the project, the actual work, and when it may occur?

Yeah, ultimately that we do have uh a threatened and endangered species. Uh the Indiana bat is one of that uh why tree removal happens so early in in the year. Has to be done prior to midappril. Uh so that tree removal is the first thing that happens. Then we're bidding the project out with these plan revisions. we're going to get the bids uh get a contractor on board and then summer construction and to that point of communication always can do a better job of communicating and communicating earlier I think is one of the lessons learned and we've developed some postcards uh that we're going to do for residents uh with a a QR code on the back to kind of guide them to our website. So that's another form of communication we're we're uh trying to get better at.

Okay. Again, thank you both for being here this evening. Absolutely. Any other questions? Any other questions or comments? Commissioner Robbie,

thank you, Chair. Appreciate you both being here. Um, obviously we've heard a lot from folks who are concerned about the trees. Appreciate that you've reduced the number of trees that you're eliminating. Um, uh, not good enough. Uh it these are important trees to the community clearly and uh trees are important to our survival as humanity. Um and so I get you guys are trying to build roads. Um you know it's got to be done in a way that makes sense for our environment too. Um, it's not I know you're probably going to be replanting some trees that that's not anything that gives me any kind of comfort. Um, because it takes a generation to grow back some of the trees, you know, that that you're going to be eliminating. Um, so, uh, it really doesn't sit well with me and it, um, bothers me that it is the millillage that's being used, honestly. like I um because we voted on it, you know, so that's it comes back to us at the end of the day. Um, and I understand that, you know, widening the shoulder is helps with a number of different things, but, um, it just seems to me like it's, you know, in our environment today, uh, where our environment and our trees are under constant assault, um, it to me doesn't feel like it's worth it, honestly, um, to to do that. Um, so I just wanted to make sure to say that it sounds like what when is when are you going to cut the trees down? What's the

after we talk with property owners? Probably in the next few weeks. Okay. Um, yeah. I mean, that's really sad. What are what is the road commission doing to um reduce the likelihood that you will face another situation like this? because this is also not the first time that there's been a mass tree removal along a road.

Yeah. So certainly we are always looking to minimize our impacts. Um but there when you're doing large capital improvement projects there are going to be impacts. For instance, when a roundabout gets constructed oftent times the footprint generally will expand and there'll there'll be impacts as well. Um and you're trying to balance that with safety. um the flow of traffic, congestion mitigation, air quality. Uh so it is a balance and I and I appreciate your comments. Are do you have any like policies or are you contemplating any policies that would help to mitigate tree removal in the future? We do have a tree removal policy. I can certainly forward that to you and share it with you.

Yeah, I I mean I'd like to look at it. I I guess like in the context of the comments that are being made uh you know it it sounds like the policy that you have doesn't adequately reflect the needs of the community perhaps and so perhaps it'd be worth revisiting for future projects um so as to avoid this type of conflict happening again. Um, I I don't know what the solution is exactly, but I think, you know, um, it certainly feels to me like prioritizing, you know, the beautiful trees that we have along our roadways, um, you know, should be central to whatever decisions are being made. Um, you know, and I I think the community clearly reflects that opinion. Yeah, I think there was there's a lot of miscommunication and misinformation when the project initially um the community was informed of the project um via uh surveyors being out there and not getting ahead of some of the uh communication uh was a little bit of the downfall for us u because at the public meeting uh if you've been up and down that road there's a lot of yellow ribbon uh along those old growth trees that were were never intended to be impacted. And there was a lot of uh fear from residents that they were all going to be cut down in all the trees in the rightway, which is absolutely not the case.

Thank you. Y Commissioner Sanders.

Um so the road commission is one of my assignments. I don't know if they, you know, if it's good for them or not, but uh I attend their uh board meetings. And I guess I want to ask um for the benefit of everyone that may be listening, you can help us in terms of understanding like because it it comes off as though the road commission is just kind of sitting around trying to devise ways to cut trees down and I don't think that that's the case. But I would like for you if you're able to address there have to be um industry standards about roads and what do you do when you have to upgrade or widen a road or improve a road that has not been attended to maybe since it was you know gravel. Uh, and so I'd just like for you to try and address that in terms of helping people understand that you're not just kind of sitting around trying to devise ways to cut down these beautiful um, you know, multiund year old trees. But there is, I would imagine, an industry standard that you are expected to go by, right? and standards have to have been upgraded over the years. So the way you may have planned a road 50 years ago is not the same way that you have to plan one now. Can you just talk about that at all? And also address the safety related to the margins on the side. So, when you've got uh a rainy situation, you know, how much um

uh additional space is necessary to try and alleviate a car going off the road into the ditch or into a tree where I don't know too many people that win when a car hits a tree. Yeah. So, can you just

No, it's a a great point you raised. Obviously, we we do uh adhere to national guidelines and the state has a number of different standards that we adhere to. And ultimately, one of the things that you're you're raising is that recovery area. If someone were to leave the road, they want a safe and reasonable area to recover back onto. They call it the clear zone. And certainly uh one of our our biggest issues from a safety standpoint where we see uh serious injury and fatality is when people leave the road, whether it be uh a bad driving decision, uh other drugs and alcohol related issues or simply the fact they're veering for a deer um and then they end up um tragically striking an object. And then ultimately uh that's where you you get into those real uh sad situations. And Brent, uh, if you want to speak.

Yeah. I'll just elaborate a little bit on the safety side of things. Uh, our county does struggle with lane departure, which is where a vehicle would leave the roadway and hit trees and or some other fixed object. Uh, over 40% of the series of fatalities within county are due to lane departure. Uh, so so it is there is a a benefit of having that additional shoulder there. Uh but one of the main reasons for our uh removing a lot of these trees are because of the drainage. Uh but we do get that added benefit of the safety, the additional safety and of course any of the large trucks that are on that edge of the pavement

and we we do look at the context of the road and it is a balance. Uh we recognize this is a lower volume roadway so we were able to reduce the shoulder uh width. um that there aren't a lot of crashes out there. So, we were able to um refine the southern section and and limit it just to resurfacing and not any shoulder work on the southern section where the old growth trees are. Um so, we are trying to minimize our impacts because

to your point, we are not looking to um cut trees. That is not not our goal whatsoever. Our goal is to have a safe and reasonably convenient road system um that doesn't have impacts to the environment and you have liability if you do not follow like the Yes. Yes. sort of industry standards related to safety, right? For the people that utilize the road. Correct.

Right. So if you were to change your plan based on public outcry that goes opposite of industry standards and someone were maimed or killed, you're facing potential legal issues. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hajj. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for coming to present. uh you know I imagine that you are here because we've received a lot of comments over the last few board meetings. Uh I also imagine you probably observed those. Yes.

Yes. Okay. So quick question because at the last board meeting we had there was a resident that brought up some concerns about interactions that she had with uh staff of the road commission. And are you aware you know what I'm referring to? Yes. That was a incident in 2018. Okay. I was just wondering if you were aware of the incident or there's anything you could share because I think you know people had questions about it after that cottage.

Certainly there was uh an incident uh after hours wasn't during work hours where um certainly that resident ran into employees. Uh there was that got certainly reported to uh road commission leadership at the time. Uh we investigated had a discussion with um the the two uh employees. one is the one only had the interaction with with the resident. Um she's no longer employed, not because of this incident, but she's not at the road commission. Um but ultimately um had a discussion and and certainly address it. And and we want to be certainly clear, the public absolutely uh needs to be able to speak their mind without uh fear of uh any repercussions. and and certainly they they've been uh open and at our board meetings as well under public comment and and uh well attended public meetings as well. So um I hope that addresses it.

That does address it. That addresses it more thoroughly than I expected you to answer. So thank you. So to your knowledge, there have not been similar incidents to that one since then. Not currently. Not that I'm aware of. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I'm just going to clarify. I I know I emailed you about this and then didn't didn't answer the email again, but I think that that resident talked to us about two separate incidents. You answered me like it was a 2018 that from the 2018, but I think that she said this just recently happened again. Yeah, I I'm like been looking around at people around the table and they're like, "Yes, that's certainly she made I I believe the comment was watch your back." And and I'm not sure that that was coming from a resident or an employee and certainly we can follow up with her employee.

Yeah. Yeah. Certainly can. I mean that it's like some followup be good just because we know what happened before and just to understand whether that happened or not and and I think it was raised earlier there's always two sides to every story. Of course. So I I want to put that out there as well. Of course, there are always two sides to every story and there are always patterns also. So, that's one of the things I'm concerned about. Sure.

Um I have some concerns um about this. I know we talked about it also. Um, and I talked before at this meeting about where we go in South Carolina is uh the Bohickey Highwayes out and the trees are on the side of the road. It's a state road. Um, and I think there's been a recognition in Charleston County about the fact that what these trees add to the area. And I think that this road is one of those roads where they're saying that trees are very much part of the character of this road. I would love to uh we got sent the tree policy. I would love for some recognition in the tree policy to understand how certain roads have certain characters and what to think about the trees there. So when you look at the tree policy in Charleston County, if there are these um grand trees that are identified a certain size to to cut those trees down has to come back to the Charleston County Council as they call it. and the county council then because they recognize like the the value and attachment people have to trees has to make a decision at that board as a as a publicly elected board that's held accountable. Um I know you're a public board. You're not elected and so people don't feel you you know that there's there's as much accountability there. So I it would be interesting just to think about how we do that. Of course, we have tree versus car issues in this county because of the rural nature of part of the county. If you go up, the further you get up north, the more those incidences go up. Um, I don't understand though, maybe elucidate this to me because my

understanding was trees on the side of a road actually help with flooding because the root structure helps the water go into the ground more quickly. The canopy over the road sometimes helps prevent prevent flooding. Like everything we've read about flooding says like plant more trees to help with flooding. Like in Atlanta when they cut down a lot of trees, you now have to plant a tree when you're developing a property or some tree thing or pay into a storm weather fund because they recognized flooding issues happened because of the decimation of trees. So I that's what I didn't understand about what you guys were saying. Maybe you could explain more to me.

Well, ultimately um on your first point, there is a statute out there called a natural beauty road. So we do have that as a separate policy. So there are natural beauty roads within Washington County uh that our board will actually recognize. And so uh that that is one issue. Uh the other issue is uh trees adjacent um may have grown up over time there right adjacent to the shoulder and we we need to make make sure we get the water away from the road. Um and oftentimes their root system are impacted by actual uh road construction as well because we're grinding up uh the underlying material and with them being in close proximity it you're you're going to have impacts and ultimately I I think uh you know there is some uh advantages uh to having vegetation but I think uh for us a way to convey the water uh is is the most important to get it off the road away from the road and oftent times uh the topography really dictates whether it is in need of removal or not. Sometimes uh where we can add a curb in this project we we added quite a bit of curb and gutter uh so the water can go along that concrete curb and gutter and not be impacting what's behind the curb and gutter. But that's where the topography is higher than the existing road. when the topography is lower than the existing road, that's where it becomes problematic for us um to get the water away from the road. Again, happy to meet on site if if you would like and we can delve into the topic.

I mean, I might because I don't want to get into too much of the trees because I mean it this road I'm telling you in South Carolina has is a model to me, I think, of what we could do. I mean, we get rain here, but they get tropical rain, and the the trees on the side of the road help pull the water off the road. Like, it does not rain here the way it rains there. Jason Machi verified this for me. Um, and when I talked to people about it there, they were like, because some of these large trees take one to 2,000 gallons a year off the road. So, I I'm struggling with that explanation.

Okay. A lot. Happy to talk further. Yeah. If you could try to mitigate even more of these trees, I think it would be helpful. Um, I have also So little understanding of why I need an eight foot gravel and ashalt shoulder. Um, it's not an eight foot. It's 4 feet of ashalt and four feet of gravel. That's what I heard you say. It's 2 feet of asphalt and two feet of gravel. And the gravel is actually already there. So, and there's a foot of asphalt. So, it's a pretty minor widening. It's four four feet.

It's again two feet of gravel is already there. It's just buried under grass and it's a foot of asphalt that's already there. So, it's we're really just widening it about a foot on each side. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You bet. Uh, Commissioner Rabbi. Well, that sort of just opened for me another line of questioning, which is if you're just widening it a foot, then why do you have to remove so many trees? Again, it's the the ditching that isn't it's not the widening. It's not the road widening. It's the ditching. You'd have to have somewhere for the water to go.

I I really like that makes me be even less understanding honestly of why you were moving this these trees. Like you know I as Commissioner Scott is saying like the trees are absorbing water. And I I get that like your goal is not to absorb the water. Your goal is to get rid of it as fast as possible. um you would put it in culverts to you know pipe it down to whatever nearest drain or creek if you could. Um but I mean the reality is like that's probably the most environmentally harmful thing to do which is move the water quickly to a drain or creek because it moves sediment and moves pollution with it. The best thing to do is for the trees and the vegetation to manage the water on site basically. Um, and so I I'm very unsympathetic, I guess, to the notion that you would clear trees for a drainage ditch. Um, that doesn't make sense to me at all. And I I really am not comfortable at all with, you know, how this proposal is moving forward. And I do think that um you need to explore how you can, you know, mitigate the the tree impact. Um maybe, I don't know. I mean, I don't know the conditions on the site exactly, but maybe you need to move where the the drainage ditch is or I don't know. I mean, that there's got to be another solution, but to me that, you know, even if it means the the road quality is is compromised a little bit more because you can't But I mean, that's how the road is now, right?

The road currently has the trees there with the drainage that it has. Yeah. So, what's what's the issue? Is it? Well, the the the issue is that a lot of in those areas you can see where the the uh the road is completely failed by the shoulder because the water isn't getting off the road.

I mean, like I guess to me it's like a trade-off of like okay then let's fix that over time. Like maybe it just costs more in repairing the road, but like I feel like that's a price that we should pay then to save the trees. So, it's it's basically a matter of like road quality, road quality versus trees. And I' I'd rather say like, yeah, repave the road. And then if if there's issues on the margins with cracking, then you know, you can fix that when it when it breaks. But it it feels wrong to me to completely decimate these trees to put a drainage ditch. That just seems like insulting to me, honestly. Anyways,

I have one more question for you. When's the last time this road was done? How old is the road? Well, the the southern section was done uh early 2000s, but it's been a long time. Um in fact, we looked back in our records and couldn't find resurfacing for the northern section. So, it's been well over 20 plus years. I asked just following the train of thought that Commissioner Robbie pointed out and you'd noted that the sides of the road were crumbling because of the rain. But if the road has not had any work done in 20 plus years and we just have a little crumbling, what's the average length of a road's life anyway before you have to come do something? So

yeah, just to clarify, we haven't done any paving work. We have done chip seal and seal coat preventive maintenance, pothole patching. Sure. Normal maintenance, but well, there's been work done, just not major resurfacing. Not major resurfacing. And and that's generally the life of a road is typically um when you you do a reconstructor, your your goal is to get to 20 years. You're making my point for me, Matt. Well, there we are. We're on the same page. We're not. You missed that. I've said the road lasted for 20 plus years with those trees. And if the length of of the road is well those trees that again the size of the trees leave the trees in place the size of the trees that were it is

the size of the trees that we're taking out are not 20 years old. They're smaller trees that have grown up on that ditch where the water is um over the last you know 5 10 years. So again um I'm trying not to be argumentative. So I I just So there's clear there's 20 trees that haven't grown up over the last Yeah. 10 years. About over 50% are under 18 in. Okay.

Yeah. So maybe maybe the under 18 in trees are the bright trees to take out and leaving the big trees there that help mitigate flooding is a better idea. Good for thought. Thank you. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. All right, that concludes my report.

Okay, that is the report of the county administrator. In in my report from the chair of the board, I'm actually going to just commissioners um direct your attention to um in single reading item B. There is a resolution to borrow against anticipated delinquent 2025 real property taxes from the county treasurer who has um her the attorney helping us with this here. And I wanted to just move the discussion of this item to now. We won't disc to let the attorneys leave. Please leave. We love you. but um to let them leave. Um so do you have any questions? Anybody on item B or or um Madam Treasur, would you like to talk to us a little bit? You're under no obligation to do so, but if you want to, we'll listen.

Thank you, chair, for allowing me to use this space to um just say hello and kind of introduce what we hear. This is nothing new. We we come before you at this time of year. I have with me our bond council, Eric McGlin from Dickerson and Wright. Also have my chief deputy treasurer here, Tyrus Walls, to answer any questions that you might have. This resolution just allows us to do what we've been doing um for many years to kind of restore our local units and then we borrow the money and then we take on the um delinquent debt tax debt. So, I'm we're here to answer any questions that you might have the bond council or myself and my chief deputy about resolution. And I want to say thank you for putting it on your agenda for a single reading. I know that's not common and you don't like to do that. So I appreciate you doing that as well just so we can get the process moving. Are we open for any questions?

Commissioner Hajj already indicated. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh thank you, Madam Treasurer, for coming to the meeting. Sir, yeah, I I like this uh document you provided for us. I think it's a good infographic and provides valuable information. What uh is the most interesting thing on here that you would really want us to focus on?

Well, the most interesting thing is this is something you have had in pieces in the past. So, um normally we would um provide to the county administrator and then through the county administrator just the investment side of this looks a little different. It's laid out a little different but and then you would pro we would get the um the page one we call page one. You would get that quarterly. So now you're going to get that monthly. You'll get both pieces. You'll get the quarterly draft which includes all of our all of our investment accounts, our banking accounts, all of our numbers. Hopefully we'll have this to you monthly. It is available online. This is the January report and then obviously we'll be a month February report will be at the next meeting. So I think all the information on here is very important because this reminds you know what we actually are handling in in the treasur's office. So, if there's any discrepancies or any questions, it's always there for you and it's available to you.

Thank you. I appreciate it. I was not expecting to see dog licenses and that's almost two grand. So, Oh, yes. We've been we've been doing dog licenses for a while and we're doing a great big dog outreach. So, just put it out there. Okay, that's it for now. Thank you. Next month I will have a series of questions related to both sides of the document. Maybe we'll see. And it is available online for you. Do we have any other questions? Commissioner Sanders. Uh, so Treasurer Sharp, we you and I had a conversation earlier, uh, of your, um, opport your offer to have us contact you if we had any questions.

Yes. And so, um, I did reach out to you and I know I what I've been voting on this for the last, I don't know, four years, but I think I didn't understand that we anticipate um a positive balance from you in our budget for the year previous. So, so when we approve our budget uh the end of the year last year, we basically anticipated that we would get a certain amount of money from your office

in order to help us cover that. Is that I think I was asking you on the call if that was a little backwards.

Like how do we know? we just like take a pen and throw it up on the wall and assume we're going to get you're going to have this amount of extra money available to to pour into our budget. What happens if it's not thick? Then are we backtracking? So this year um the county and and corporation council was involved in this and you all were were um privy to the information. Um this year the treasur's office was faced with um claims surplus claims that we had to pay back. So that is why this year it was an issue and it's never been an issue before in my understanding. So um so you put it in your budget. Correct me if I'm wrong. Um Katherine, you put it in your budget. I have nothing to do with that.

So it was put in the budget I believe 2.2 I believe. And then when when it was surplus time to declare surplus because we were paying out 78 T's um which totaled $960,000 plus dollars um I didn't have 2.2 to satisfy that.

So after um we did some redirection and we did some reallocation and things like that we were able to declare a $1.5 million towards the surplus. So that we did the first communication went out to the board regarding the no surplus for this year on uh February 7th. And then after we went back and looked at some things and decided to um actually um there was there's a couple of litigation things that are happening right now that we're just not we took that out of the allocations. We took that out of the the um calculations and then we that's how we were able to do to find the 1.5 I sent that corrective um uh email to all of the commissioners on the 24th of February. So to answer your question, I'm not part of those meetings. I I don't know what my predecessor if she had any part of those meetings that happen when you plan the budget. It would be my recommendation that there's a conversation with the treasur's office. Um I was before you all early last year with some concerns that I thought that I had as a new treasur and that was one of them. Um but I pro but the commissioners have always been informed of what was happening with those um surplus cases. So it's nothing that I think it might have just been maybe more conversation. If I was at the table I probably would have said hey it doesn't look like we will have 2.2. Um, but I wasn't there, so I don't know.

Okay. I Yeah, I I was asking about it because I was concerned with um the current administration in DC and their trickle down shenanigans uh to us that affect our budget

and you know, kind of wondering out loud, are we putting this expected surplus from your um area? Are we being conservative? are we, you know, just pie in the sky wishing that because nothing has happened in the past is gonna continue to be okay. Um, so not asking you to comment on that. I'm just making those comments out loud that um I don't like budgeting for something I I don't have in my hand. And so to me, that's a little worrisome. And I I guess I'll have to be a little bit more diligent about it when we um go to look at our next budget. and and ask some more pointed questions about, you know, well, how are we sure that we're I mean, $2 million isn't necessarily going to make or break us, but it can add up if there are other issues or other areas of concern that we have that are affecting our budget and our ability to provide the services. So, I I appreciate the time that you gave me

uh when I followed up with you and um and the 1.5 is what at that time um I felt comfortable in in declaring for the surplus. We are we're open to revisiting that back. We just want to I just wasn't comfortable with that right now because of the litigations that's happening. So, it's not to say that, you know, hey, this is it. But, as of right now, that's what I felt I was um safe safe to do. Thank you. Katherine, did you want to add something in there?

I can put um a couple pieces of context around that, too. Um I was trying to pull up if it's a budget policy or not, so I'm still pulling that document up, but um where it's budgeted is in our budget for capital reserves of the amount that's being transferred in. Historically, we have exceeded that $2.2 million number. Okay. I'm glad you agree. um because that was my recollection too. And so this is I think the first time in at least a very long time that there hasn't been that surplus delinquent tax. And so how we move now I think is a thing we're still figuring out as well. But we can continue those conversations as we go with the budget.

Yes. Any other questions on this item on this item? Commissioner Hajj. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, it's not Well, it's it's to Madam Treasurer. Your lapel pin looks like ours, but maybe a little bit bigger. Is that is that special? Like, where do you get that one at? Because I'm a big deal. Oh. Oh, okay. So, you have your own. You have your own telephoto. Others wanted to know as well. I'm the only one that ask questions like this. So, yeah.

I I asked too, but that's why I said on this item, but that's okay. I've been around the county 36 years, so that's why mine is bigger. Do your time. Any other questions on this item? Okay, get them all out now because I'm going to say let the attorneys go home. Okay. What? You have a question for the treasurer on this item? on the treasure item. I thought you were talking about like on the specific thing that we were talking about about the treasure

on item B that I'm bringing up the discussion now. I understand. All right. All right. Discussion. I have a question. You do. Oh, he does have a question. Sorry. I do have a question. I do have a question. Okay. Yes. Uh I I'm going to ask my question that's it's probably not even attorney related. We probably don't necessarily need the attorney, but uh it's just more of an observation, I guess, of um I'm noting how much we've invested in municipal bonds. Um is that how does that compared to years past? Is are we investing more in municipal bonds, less? I'll be happy to answer that question to you. I'll give you that information at a later date. Yeah.

All right, that's fine. Yeah, I'm just I'm noticing that we're investing in some of our local communities here, which is kind of cool. Mhm. Um, and we're putting uh our investment dollars back into our public schools and our local communities. Um, which is great and I feel like we should do more of that. Um, I'd rather I'd rather invest in that type of stuff than some of the other ways to earn interest. Yes, definitely. Um, that's uh the other things I have are not attorney related probably, but uh your logo is awesome. You've done a great job. Oh, thank you.

Uh, and I appreciate a good logo because there are departments and offices that have logos that I do not approve of. Uh, because I'm just saying because I do not approve of them because they are not consistent in branding with our our actual county logo. And yours is consistent in branding. You you have your treasurer piece in there. You have your five Ps, which I heard about the other day on MLK day. Uh, and uh, uh, so it you've done a great job of incorporating, you've made it your own and you've, uh, kept the core county seal as the center of it. So, I appreciate it. It looks really good.

But I just want to give a shout out to my executive assistant, um, Jaier Massie, who put that together for me. I don't know if she's still here. She's still here, but she put that together for me. Oh, so we have the star of the show in the house. That's great. She made it happen. Um, well, the last thing I'll say is thank you for your service to the community. We appreciate you. Thanks for being a diligent steward of our tax dollars and for being here today to present. Thank you. I appreciate your team. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions on this item, friends? Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay. Um guys, we're going to move on to um special order of business. Um this is a public hearing to receive comment on the proposed transformational brownfield plan. I'm going to open the public hearing. Is there anyone here who would like to give comment on the proposed transformational brownfield plan for 350 South Pick? I see none and the hearing is closed. Great. Uh there are no appointments on this agenda. Would somebody like to move the consent agenda? That is moved by Labar, supported by Hajj. All those in favor?

I. Any opposed? Great. Um resolutions. First reading. Commissioner Labar. First reading. A resolution to approve compensation adjustments for non-UN employees from county admin. That is moved by Labar supported by Hajj. Any discussion? Uh all those in favor please say I. I. Any opposed? Item passes. Uh final reading. I feel like there's a there's a lot of final reading. Let's do final and single separate. Final reading. Commissioner Labar.

Chair. Under final reading. A, a resolution adopting the county brownfields, excuse me, the town homes brownfield plan. B, a resolution on the transformational brownfield plan for 350 South Fifth. C, a resolution authorizing the strategic traffic enforcement grant from the sheriff's office. D, a resolution authorizing the secondary road patrol and traffic accident program grant, the sheriff's office. E, a resolution creating uh, one FTE within the youth assessment and resource center. F, a resolution approving the uh agreement with POAM. G, a resolution approving the tenative agreement with TPO AM clerical. Uh, and that's it for uh support.

Okay, that was moved by Labar, supported by Hajj. Anybody like to pull anything for separate consideration? Commissioner Beman, I would like to pull C, D, and F. C, D, and F. Anybody else? Commissioner Sanders, I don't re I guess I guess I'm gonna have to pull A and B. I just had questions. Do you you want to ask question? You can ask questions and part of the general thing, but pulling them for a separate means we'll vote on them individually. Um you want to vote on those individually? I'm happy to do it.

Yes.

Okay. A and B. You said A. Well, that leaves B and G. Let's go to the items pulled separately. Let's start with A. A resolution adopting the town homes brownfield plan. Questions, comments, and considerations. Commissioner Sanders. So, um, it says projected capture approximately 470,000. I'm going to ask that someone explain that to me like I'm five. So over this 30 years that we're offering or well not we but they're being offered sort of a tax abatement I guess you call it. Um I'm just wondering out loud how much would have been received if we didn't offer this. Does that is that make sense?

Right. I was looking for Nathan, but he is not here. So Tony, he's on Zoom. Okay. Yeah. All right. Phone a friend. He is not on Zoom. Tony, we actually

Oh, hi. Uh, can you say your question again? Yes. So, um, okay. So, we're off. There's a tax incentive that's being offered, right? If we weren't offering that, how much would our residents actually be capturing? So, I 30-year period or per year? And Nathan is going to hop on here to capture this, but this is tax increment financing. So, it's taking they're doing the development project and increasing the value. So, there's kind of it's at whatever level it's at currently. So this 478,000 is what the county receives for that improvement for the whole 30 years

over the life of that 30 years. It's the the increased taxable value from doing this development project that that portion. So you retain kind of what the taxable current taxable value is. So you say all right we're in year zero whatever the taxable value is currently that's the lock the project is going to improve taxable value over the life of the

30 years so that increase that increment uh is what is captured from and then after the 30 years you're at this new improved taxable value that once the tiff is completed then the county is able to capture tax revenues from that. Can I the the easiest way I feel like to try to explain it's how you um capture the increased property tax revenue that happens after a project is built um so that instead of the new tax going to the general budget right away it's temporarily redirected to pay for the infrastructure subsidies that helped make the development happen tax increment financing. So that's where you're getting that.

So are we So essentially are we saying if if we didn't do this they wouldn't do the development or

it would be harder possibly for them to do the development. So they get some because they're developing a brownfield they get money to try to help redevelop that brownfield. So it's an incentive to develop into a brownfield. Okay. So, okay. I guess I just was wondering out loud in terms of if I'm a taxpayer and I'm asking you to explain like what am I getting out of this? How does it really benefit me? I may not be living in that. I'm I'm just I'm playing devil's advocate. So if I'm

I'm Yeah, Nathan has joined the Zoom so should be able to answer this more hot spot. Nathan is there. Hi there. Can you all hear me? Can hear you. Okay, thanks. Sorry. Um yeah, well I was I was hearing a little bit of what was just said. Just a little bit. So, I was asking Nathan, if I'm a if I'm a taxpayer, why do I care and what's the benefit to me that we give this break? And then why is it 30 years? Are we We're talking about the town homes.

Yes, that's the first one. So, stay on the line because we're talking about being

Yeah. Okay. Um I think that it would be helpful to maybe frame it in a little bit different way. Um, if you look at the act and what the intent of Act 381, the Brownfield Act, uh, is, it's to level the playing field for a particular site. Um, and I know that we're talking about with the Town Homes example, a little bit different spin on the Brownfield Act because it's a housing, right? You're you're you're directly supporting uh, affordable housing in that case. So I I don't I don't think it's easy to simply draw a line between an individual taxpayer except to the extent that you know when we look at housing it's a societal challenge when we look at brownfield sites that are contaminated it's a legacy societal problem. So to the extent that any individual might feel responsible for trying to help out uh whether it's redeveloping a challenge site or help in in providing affordable housing, you know, that would be one way to look at it. Um I don't know if that's really helpful.

Commissioner Sanders, uh Sarah Lorenz is also here and can answer some of your questions as well. Good evening. Good evening. Um, so the homes that we are building are being built on vacant land that pays very low property taxes when and we're building two homes on each parcel and especially in Ann Arbor, we have quite high tax rates. It would vary if we built in other areas of the county. Uh but the homes will be paying significantly more taxes than the vacant land is currently producing.

So that's the increment that they're referring to is the incremental change from a low rate of taxation on vacant land to now two new homes. Um, so this agreement um is made to allow some of those taxes, those new higher taxes being paid to come back to us as the affordable housing developer over 30 years. And the Brownfield Act allows that for up to 30 years. Sometimes it can be less, the agreement may be less. Um, and I just wanted to clarify that none of our homes are being built on a brownfield. So, the Brownfield Act was originally written to allow redevelopment of contaminated properties, but in 2023, that act was amended to allow that process to be used to uh redirect those taxes to support workforce housing. So, um, that's been a misunderstanding sometimes that we're building on contaminated land and that is not true. These are infill properties that are vacant in neighborhoods. Um, and so what we'll be doing as the affordable housing developer is we have um potentially if this is approved, we'll have this agreement that we will be receiving um taxes from the city and from the county u over 30 years. And that will allow us to get a loan on that revenue stream because that's income for us. We have a legal agreement with the city and the county uh that is going to provide us income over 30 years. And then we can get a loan on that income

to do what? to pay for some of the construction costs so that we can sell these homes at affordable rates to our critical employees and other eligible buyers. So, these homes are costing roughly $350,000 to build. And so, we are going to be able to sell them at affordable prices from 125 to 225 to $325,000. So, all the homes will are uh being sold at a loss. And the only reason that we are able to sell these at affordable rates is because of this tax increment financing um agreement. This is our source of subsidy to allow us to sell homes for less than it costs to build them. Do we get any follow-up information? So, say you're successful in doing this, getting this approved. Do we get any follow-up information that helps us understand who was actually able to move into those homes?

So, this this is asking a we have we have one person right here who's hoping to move into one of these homes and we have some of them reserved if if this vote is successfully passed. We do have some of the homes reserved already. Some of them are not reserved. So, we'll be holding a lottery. So when you say reserve, meaning you already have people that have applied and been qualified and Yes. And how many of them are you holding for people that are not already?

Uh we have about a third of them that we're holding right now for others and we have a pretty significant weight list. So there's a great demand as you can imagine. Okay. So, I would be interested in seeing that information respectfully to the gentleman that spoke to us during public comment. I I just want to make sure that, you know, we're as open to people having an opportunity.

Yes, we would like to expand this opportunity significantly. Um, and in terms of the public benefit, you you asked about why why should taxpayers allow these taxes to be redirected? Um, I have children who need special education services and this right here is a special education teacher who has to work two jobs uh in order to afford to even rent in the city that he serves. So, it's very much in my interest personally to have uh these public servants be able to afford to live in in our city and in in our county. I was just looking at the real estate listings today. Again, in the entire county, there's virtually nothing that you can buy under 20050 $300,000 right now. In this entire county,

and that's not most likely in Ann Arbor either. No offense to my Ann Arbor colleagues, right? Definitely difficult in Ann Arbor, but it is countywide the the scarcity. Okay. Uh, thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner Sanders, any more questions? No. Um, I Nathan, are you still there? Yes. Did he thumbs up? Commissioner Scott. Yes.

Hi. Hi. Um, I just was hoping you might further that a little bit of that discussion about how things come to us at the Brownfield Authority that then come to the board. Can you just can you Sure. for the for the people at the table.

Absolutely. Well, right. Just a reminder, we're we're a county authority. We're a regional authority and we have uh most of the local units in the entire county that have passed resolutions to essentially join us. And all that means is we are sort of uh offloading a lot of the administrative and the tax capture and reimbursement uh burden and providing that service for these different sites that we pass brownfield plans on. And so the decision always goes to that local unit first to take action. So we you will never see a plan that's never been approved locally first by a city or a township.

So if we have something in Ipsellani, it goes through Ipsani city council and then comes to us almost like we're a fiduciary. Sure. Okay. Okay. Um, I've got Commissioner Labar and then, um, Robbie.

Thanks, Sher. Uh, Commissioner Sanders, you had raised a question I thought I would try and, uh, answer as I conceive of it. Um, I think if I'm a taxpayer in Washington County, I'm making a trade giving up a portion or all of the growth for a time certain, in this case 30 years, but I'm getting the collective benefit of more housing stock in the community that is going to be developed quickly and sold at a at a rational price where we're not having some national chain come in uh, buy it up and and and sort of sell it for as much as they can possibly get it. the model then that the the the trust will use also allows for some wealth generation over time from the folks who are living there. Um and so that tradeoff is uh you know what what you're doing with that tax capture that money is subsidizing the development because unfortunately uh as as you well know uh we are building in a globalized world with material costs, construction costs and so forth um that are far outpacing our ability as a society to to to keep that down. Um, and so it's a basic trade and the upshot of this is I think this will bring housing uh to our community and specifically to the city of Ann Arbor um that is more affordable that allows for some wealth generation and I think most importantly in this case has a long-term partner that is here for essentially you know generations uh in terms of what Sarah and her group are doing. Um so that is the sort of the tradeoff and I'm I'm personally going to uh vote for this. I hope others will too. Um it's certainly been duly adjudicated at the municipal level by the city of Ann Arbor. But to your to your question, you know, this is sort of like um on the on Pittsfield Township in the past, we've done a corridor uh authority improvement

project uh where we're using that TIFF mechanism and there's a there's a trade-off at at at hand. So, I hope that's at least useful perspective uh from from one commissioner uh and and why I'll be supporting it. Thanks, chair. Another project people may remember that came to us too that was a tiff uh was Dorsy Estates. Dorsey, um I've got Commissioner Robbie and then Light.

Uh thank you, Chair. I just want to say a few things uh since we're talking about brownfield philosophy, which I love. I love brownfield philosophy. Let's talk about it. I know way too much about brownfields. Um I do want to disagree with uh the characterization that was made about our role in the Brownfields process as uh sort of like a fiduciary like uh proforma. It's long been sort of described that we just are the rubber stamp for these types of things. And I absolutely want to push back against that and say we are not a rubber stamp. We get to decide. We get to vote yes or vote no on these types of things. And just because a local community wants it doesn't mean that it's the right thing for the county to do. So we uh have the ability here to be discerning and to say yay or nay. Uh and I reject the notion that we are uh just uh performative in our votes here. So um I want to thank Commissioner Sanders for her line of questions. I think it uh it it it is important that we ask these questions about brownfields and all the questions that you're asking are in line with the questions that I ask about every brownfield and the reason frankly why I vote against a lot of brownfield projects because I think when you look at the amount of money that is being given to developers to subsidize their profits um it is obscene and it is disgusting and it is not something that we should be engaging in on a routine basis unless there is a public benefit at the end of it And so as somebody who has a high threshold for brownfield projects, who has been known to vote against a number of brownfield projects in the past, um the way I'm looking at this one is in a few ways. One, uh the agency that's requesting the brownfield is not for profit, um which is rare in these types of deals. two, the amount of money, uh, half a million dollars over 30 years is actually not that much compared to a lot of the brownfield projects that we see. Um, and two, the

and three, the way that I'm seeing it is the investment that we're making here, the half million dollars that were this because I think it's important that we see these brownfields and the money that we lose not as like um, some people will argue that like, well, we wouldn't see that money if we didn't give them the incentive. I also reject that notion that the but for argument never really hold held water for me because we we are a community that is where developers are desirous of opportunities to develop and handing them a bunch of money doesn't necessarily mean that they are are or aren't going to develop. So I I reject the butt for argument generally. Um however in this case uh I I do think that uh and so my point there being when we look at the dollars that we lose out from we should be looking at it as we're investing it's like we're investing our budget dollars in something right and so when we had the proposal for the development on Pontiac Trail that I voted against that was one where I asked the developer how much money they were going to make and it just so happens that it was the same amount of the brownfield that we were approving. So, our public tax dollars were going to their private profits. Um, so I voted against it. Um, for me, this one, the half million dollars that were that we are going to be allocating in foregone tax revenue is going to support housing that is affordable for people in our community. And so as a fiduciary of county tax dollars, I feel that it is a wise investment for over 30 years, half a million dollars to be spent on supporting the cause of, you know, building affordable housing for a nonprofit that's not profiting. The 30 years is important to me because my understanding and the Nathan voice from on high can correct me if I'm wrong, but the 30 years allows the county to be basically uh a vested u uh sort of like partner in the process to be able to check to make sure that the residents that are getting the housing are uh

truly qualifying for the affordability standards. and we get to basically participate in that for the 30 years of the brownfield that we're participating in. Um, beyond that, we've received assurances from the from Sarah and the organization that she represents that there will be 99-year leases, ground leases with extend extended leases beyond that uh for these to ensure affordability with covenants. These were the questions I was asking last time. So, in my opinion, uh again, I have a very strong standards. I've been known to vote against brownfields in the past, but this brownfield to me meets the the uh criteria that uh I think uh is um sort of like uh there to achieve a public good. That public good is housing people and uh uh housing people that are in need of housing, that are in need of affordable housing. And so I'm willing to vote yes on this because you've answered all my questions satisfactorily and um with the high standard that I place on these types of projects, I do think that it is a wise investment of public money to help support this project.

Commissioner Light. Well, thank you for stepping in everybody for our phone to friend Nathan and for you jumping right in. Um these are just just want to know questions. is not opposing anything that's going on. I do know when um there is a tiff plan in place, is there a certain percentage of the homes that are going to be affordable? So, let's say is it like 15% or 10 houses have to be um at a certain affordable rate? And if so, are those the houses that have already been reserved?

Um it's not just the houses that have been reserved. Um we're planning that all 100% of the homes will be affordable. Okay. Um the MISTA requirement for this um there are specific guidelines that we have to follow for MISTA um for this to be approved. Um they will review this agreement. Um if it's approved um it has to be under 120% of the area median income. Um, but if we get the kind of loan that we're looking for, we could possibly achieve um an average of 60% AMI instead of 120%. Okay?

And I'm personally very uh committed to providing as many homes as we can at 125,000 and 225,000. 225 or around 200 is our most in demand um price point. Um, but that 125,000 is just not there anywhere in I don't know, a couple counties. And that is there are people who have full-time jobs that our community relies on who could get a mortgage for $125,000. There just aren't any homes for them to buy. Thank you.

Um, and I did want to mention one other thing. I didn't have an opportunity um last time with some of your comments about Black History Month. I wanted to point out that um this community land trust model that we're using is based on um although there are many similar models around the world that have existed much longer. Um this model that we're using um began in Georgia um in the 1960s with um the New Communities Inc. development um that was provided for sharecroers who'd been thrown off their land. And so um there is a documentary about New Communities, Inc. Um if you have not seen that, I would highly recommend it. It's very moving. the struggles that they went through. Their land was then foreclosed upon um due to unfair practices by the federal government and they were eventually given a um a settlement and they were able to buy different land. It's it's really wonderful piece. Um I've got Robbie and Sanders. Oh, okay. You had your hand there from Sanders then. Um okay. So, I you I think you kind of addressed this, but I'm going to ask it more directly. So, how do how do you as the agency um ensure that there's equal access for people to um apply

to apply for the lottery for the homes? Um and is there has there been any thought put into equitable access? So, everybody's dancing around it. I'm just going to say, you know, um, cultural, religious, economic diversity. How how are we making sure that that is something that's going to occur? Um, and I guess I want to ask you an off-the- cuff kind of question. Are there any housing partners that you work with that don't support this?

Even though the city has a Are there any colleagues in your arena that don't think this is a good idea? Um, not to ever asked. Not to my knowledge. Um, you know, we are, uh, working to establish connections. We're part of a national network called the grounding solutions network. We're part of a state network called the Michigan Coalition of Essential of Community Land Trusts. Um and then we've been staying in touch uh and reaching out to Avalon Housing, the Housing Commission, uh Habitat for Humanity of Herin Valley,

um the Washington Housing Alliance. Um so we've had meetings with all of those organizations and and many other stakeholders. We've had um I think hundreds of stakeholder meetings. Um, so we're attempting to become part of the housing network in the in the region.

Do you do any outreach to the community that helps them kind of be prepared in advance of being able to apply? So when when I say that, I mean, are you are do you even have the capacity to do any sort of outreach that would let residents know, listen, we're going to be building this uh community. Um there are there are places that you can go like through Misha Mista or or um MSU extension to um see if you are able to qualify for a mortgage and and get your ducks in a row before the application comes up.

Yeah. H like Habitat. But but also you know MSU extension I think they're still doing it. I don't know since the orange people leader I mean the sorry um in Washington um you know they typically if you go through the class and you pass it you've got anywhere between 7500 and $10,000 given to you to help you purchase a home. Yes. So we do have limited capacity right now. I'm the only employee. Um, so I'm mainly focused on actually getting uh getting the property and getting the homes built.

Um, we definitely would like to expand. We foresee this being a lean operation in the future. Um, but we would like to expand and offer more of those services. Um, we our our main outreach has been through listings, the home listings on Zillow and all the real estate platforms. that has driven a tremendous amount of traffic to our website and then um people are instructed um to put their name on our buyer weight list and to fill out the survey so we know who they are and what they need and then they're they're given steps and one of the steps is that they should get preapproved for a mortgage ahead of time to know what they need to do to be ready to be fully approved. Okay? and we ask them to complete um a home buyer education course.

So, it could be that Michigan State Extension, but there's also an excellent one that's online and free from HUD and they get a home buyer education certificate when they're finished with that. So, that um really helps explain the steps to uh buying a home. Thank you,

Commissioner Robbie. Thank you. Uh the last thing I forgot I wanted to say uh well two things actually. One was I just um I want to thank my colleagues at the end of the table here for asking the questions that they're asking because it's like the these are really important questions to be asking when we're spending public money. Um and I I I do hope that we can continue to engage in these types of conversations for future brownfields as well. That would bring nothing but joy and delight. Uh, and so I do appreciate all the questions that you guys are asking. Um, and then I wanted to just say again, one of the locations where the um, town homes are going to be built is in my neighborhood, right? And like literally I can walk through my backyard and I'm there. Uh, and so I am very excited for when you guys build your homes and I'm very excited to welcome new neighbors.

You're going to love your new neighbors. I'm I already love them. I don't even know who they are. Maybe you'll be one of my new neighbors and it'll be great. Be right next to Ruse Roast, right next to Frasier. There's all kinds of cool stuff there. I'm super excited about it.

Let me tell you all one more thing that may come up when you're talking with constituents or among yourselves. There's tax abatements or pilots, payment in lie of taxes, and then there is this tax increment financing. And they're different tools. And we specifically chose this tool for a couple of reasons. With a payment in lie of taxes or a tax abatement that zeros out the taxes for a while, to keep the home somewhat affordable, you would have to zero out the taxes forever because it wouldn't be just 30 years. you would have to remove those taxes forever. Um, and I think that neighbors would object to that. You know, neighbors who are there and might make less money than the new homeowner would say, "Why does that person not have to pay taxes when I'm paying taxes and I can barely afford to pay those?" With tax increment financing, our homeowners are paying the full tax rate. After those taxes are paid, they come to the municipality and then for that agreed upon amount of time, they come back to us. We're using those to pay for part of the construction cost and lower the original sales price of the home. And then because of the ground lease and deed restrictions, every time we resell that home, it's at a lower price. So it's at a permanently lower price, but the homeowners are paying taxes forever. So I feel it's much superior. Okay, I think we are ready to vote on this item.

Yes. Okay. Um Brendan, could you call the role, please? Yes, Commissioner Beaman. Yes, Commissioner Hodgej. Yes, Commissioner Labar. Yes, Commissioner Light. She's giving me proxy to say yes. And I think she was communicating with the chair. She She told me yes, too. Commissioner Machi, yes. Commissioner Robbie, Commissioner Sanders, yes. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, I have Annie's proxy since that's a thing we can do now. Apparently I think it's really a thing we can do. Yeah. Andy, do I have your proxy? We don't do proxy voting.

You just let a proxy. You just let her I know, but we can just verify it. Don't Robert Crystal is a Yes. here. You can use my mic. Okay. Do I have Annie's proxy? Thought we were doing something new. Can I just clarify? We are we are voting on 2 A. A. Yes. Okay. That's what I was going to say. All right. That item passes. Um questions, comments, concerns on item B. Okay, we'll vote on item B. Commissioner Hodgej, yes.

Commissioner Labar, yes. Commissioner Light. Commissioner Light. Yes. Commissioner Macheski. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Commissioner Scott. Yep. Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Commissioner Bean. Yes. Motion carries. Great. Um item C, resolution authorizing strategic traffic enforcement grant. uh comments, questions, concerns. Commissioner Beman.

Thank you, Chair. I don't know if there's anyone who's on from the sheriff's office that can just speak to the fact that this is uh 163,000 plus dollar decrease and the opportunity to either make up these funds or what the plan is for the shortfall. Go ahead. Uh, yes, chair. We have Sergeant Arts on the line. Go ahead, Sergeant. Hello, Commissioners. Hi.

So, the grant itself, um, it from what we understand is there was a reduction in the amount of money given to, um, basically statewide for all of the, uh, grants. uh the funding just wasn't there from the feds and so there was a significant reduction in the amount of money that they were giving out to the counties for the grant. I think Commissioner Beman's question was how you were going to make up for that or how were operations changing because of the shortfall. Yes.

Okay, I understand. Uh so the um the grant is basically based upon uh volunteers for people to uh to work that overtime. And so there's only a limited number of hours that are available for each agency within that grant to work certain amount of overtime. So if they reach that amount of overtime within the year, they basically can't sign up for any more overtime. So we wouldn't go over budget because we only allow so many hours to the bill. Can I ask a clarifying question on that? So, this grant was only for overtime hours.

That's correct. So, I should not ostensively see a 163,594 increase in overtime expenses correlate with this for the coming year. Correct. The only amount of money that we would use for overtime is the 284,000 in change uh that we would get reimbursed by the state. And is that tracked? Yes. Great. Commissioner Sanders and then light.

No, not Commissioner Commissioner Sanders. So, strategic traffic enforcement, help me understand that. Uh, I read that it looks like fancy verbiage for possibly targeting certain areas and not other areas. So, can you help me understand what what what um what data are you using? what areas typically this is not a a new grant is it? It's a renewal. So in the past where have you utilized this overtime ability and also just for clarification the average person coming in new to the sheriff's department isn't eligible for this overtime because seniority trumps. Correct. So, anyone in the sheriff's office can sign up for the overtime. Um, it just depends on the number of hours that we have allocated for each enforcement period. So, we have different enforcement periods throughout the year um focusing on uh drunk driving, seat belt enforcement, speed measurement, um distracted driving. Those are the different um enforcement periods that we have and they're scattered throughout the year. So deputies have the opportunity to sign up for that overtime when we put the email out advising them when the enforcement period is. Um and then if we get to the allocated number of hours, we would cut it off at that point.

Um okay. So I don't know if you really answered my question. What data are you using to identify the areas where this overtime would occur? So I'm asking you to look at your numbers. Are are would we be looking at more increased numbers and break one? So the overtime is split amongst the different. Can you hear me? I'm sorry. I was having some computer issues. Can you hear me now?

Let's keep moving. Come back from our recess. We are in the middle of questions about the uh strategic traffic enforcement grant. I don't know if we still have our sheriff. We do. And so I think we are in the middle of commissioner Sanders. So I'm going to hand the floor back to you to ask these questions um further. Thank you.

Thank you. So, um, one of the questions that had not been answered was, "What data are you using to strategically say you need enforcement here and you need enforcement there?" Um, when will you provide us with the data that shows us what areas you were targeting? And I think I specifically said as the mic was going out, I want to make sure that that um areas of our county that tend to have more police enforcement, and I'm not saying whether they need it or not, but they get more police enforcement than others are not being targeted uh with this grant money. And so you didn't answer the question the first time I asked it, so I'm asking it again. Okay. So, the uh strategic enforcement is actually split up amongst uh several agencies within the county. So, is the sheriff's office and our police department, Chelsea, Milin, Northfield Township, Pittsfield Township, Seline, Ipsellani. Um they all participate in this strategic enforcement uh grant. So, it's all of those agencies along with the sheriff's office and we would do the enforcement in our contracted areas. So, Superior Township, Ipsellani Township, um Scio Township, those are like the larger contracted areas that we have, which is typically where we would focus those enforcement. So tell me how Pittsville Township I mean so are you saying that this money you are you I'm trying to understand how that works. So Pittsfield has its own police agency

correct? So are you saying that you reimburse them for some of their overtime when you're doing these targeted So the county sheriff's office collects all the information. So we basically allocate so many hours to Pittsfield Township with this grant. Um same for each individual agency. They get allocated so many hours for the enforcement for each strategic enforcement period. So if deputies are for their policing so they will do it for their areas. We will do it for our specific areas.

I don't know if you know how confusing that sounds. Um so each individual agency within that participates in this grant which there are several of them we basically collect all the information give it back to the state and we reimburse those agencies with the money we get from the state. So like we are kind of like the ones who get the funding we pay back the agencies once the funding comes in from the state.

Okay. So then, okay. So essentially, you're telling me that we have another way to check whether or not you're actually doing what you say in a timely fashion. So I'm I'm assuming that those reimbursements are not like 3 4 months waiting for them to get that money since you get it right away. You reimburse right away. Correct.

I don't have the financial information as far as when we pay that out. That I don't know. I just collect the data and then I send it over to our finance department to pay those different agencies. Okay. Well, we can't um can't tell you what to do, but I just want to put it on the record that I'm I'm not expecting that there's going to be any sort of delays since you get that money and you're sitting on it. I'm expecting that you're going to disperse it in a timely fashion. My other question for you is when you say everyone is eligible to sign up for this overtime, does that include officers that are under discipline or facing discipline and may be smart enough to sign up for this knowing that they're going to be suspended. Anyone that's not working currently or is under investigation is typically off an administrative leave, which means they wouldn't be able to sign up for the overtime.

But you didn't say they couldn't. They they can't if they're on administrative leave. If they're under investigation for administrative and on administrative leave, they cannot work the overtime.

Yeah. Okay. So, I'm going to turn this over to I respectfully I first of all, thank you for for being available, but it you didn't quite answer my question, but I'm going to turn this over for anybody else that might have um additional questions. Um, but I I am going to put it on the record and say that I'm concerned uh that this money may be used in some sort of shell game related to the deficits that the department faces. I'm not expecting you to respond to that. I'm just putting it out there so if it comes back later can say, "Well, told you I had worries about it. Thank you for your time." Any other questions on item C, strategic traffic enforcement? Okay, we'll vote on that one. Commissioner Lear, yes. Commissioner Light

voting. We're voting. I'm distracting her. I'm sorry. What time? Um I'm gonna say is this the final? Um I think just because I don't have a 100% clarity, I'm going to have to go no for today. Commissioner Machi, yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders, no. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Bean, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Motion carries.

Okay. Thanks, Brendan. Uh, next item uh for separate consideration is the resolution authorizing the secondary road patrol and traffic accident program grant from the sheriff's office. um questions, comments, and concerns on this item. I'm going to go right back to Bean. Commissioner Bean,

thank you, Chair. Uh again, my question is around the fact that uh this grant is a shortfall of over $100,000 from fiscal year 25. This is noted that it's to pay for two deputies assigned full-time and that there will be a loss to be covered by the general fund. Um, so just, you know, kind of wondering how that's going to work seeing as we had some issues in terms of funding our deputies prior. Um it was specifically related to overtime which was the prior uh resolution but um there is already a discrepancy between the what the grant provides 326,000 and the activities 378,000 of these deputies. Um so again just wondering how we're going to be covering that loss. It does say general fund budget, but planning future so that we're not in the same space we were prior.

My understanding is that the sheriff's office general bud budget does cover the uh $51,000 that's not covered by the grant. Um the grant only allows for that specific amount for the two deputies. Um again, I believe grants are being cut. Um, so that's the only amount that we could get from the state for those two days. Go ahead, Peter. Go ahead.

I just wanted to follow up to ensure that we're still, you know, looking toward that balanced budget. How are we anticipating this to be covered by the general fund? Do we know that there is this much allocated for this? if this is a trend and we're going to continue to see these grants decrease and what's what's the forecast for these items?

My understanding is there is allocation in the budget for this um as it's planned uh year-over-year to cover that portion of the deputies expenses. Commissioner Beman, anything else?

I guess I'm just still unclear as, you know, it was it was forecasted to a larger amount. It's now a smaller amount. Were we anticipating this reduction? That's where I'm I'm unclear. I guess I can't speak to the full financials of the sheriff's office. Um, I can only speak to what I know that it's going to come out of a general fund for the sheriff's office. Okay. Commissioner Machioski.

Thank you, Chair. Uh kind of following up on this this particular line of questioning, this item and the previous item combined have about $275,000 less revenue than in fiscal year 25 and there has been mention of general fund potentially covering that discrepancy. But my concern is that how how does this work with the contracted patrolling contracts? the petroleum contracts that we have in place and what is there is there going to be an impact on the ability to serve those contracts. Um is it going to result in because we're trying to do this work is this going to result in more overtime being charged to the contracted communities because we don't have the deputies to even meet what we're contracted to do. So I I have a lot of concerns around uh how these funds are being allocated and used because for me at this point it things appear to be really muddy in terms of what is going where and what is covering what and even if there's enough money to cover it. Um, so I would there's probably not even a question in this, but I I would say I'm I'm concerned about that and concerned about the impact on the contracts um for patrolling services and would like us to work through at least maybe for me personally getting a better understanding of how things work together. Um, because I would expect that in fiscal year 27 we're probably going to be looking at another reduction. uh and how are we actually covering what we're contracted to do? How do all these things work together? So, I guess maybe it's more of a comment to our fiscal team that I personally just need a little bit better understanding how these things work to make myself a little bit more comfortable with them.

Thank you, chair. Thank you. Um any other questions, comments, or concerns?

I'll share mine. They echo Commissioner Beaman and Machi. I'm doing the work that in our very early formed uh police services steering committee and um there's lots of questions about contract policing. I guess my concern is where we ended up at the end of last year with the budget and now we have like I appreciate the difficult position you're in, Sergeant. Uh I I will just say my wish that that there was somebody who was going to be able to speak more to the budget at this quest at this meeting would be helpful. Not that I'm trying to um do any type of operationalizing. Again, I am thinking about budget oversight only and we ended up last year in a how many million dollar hole? Four $4 million hole. Um, and now I feel like I'm sliding in that direction again. And I don't understand where we're making up the money. I used before the furniture analogy in my house, like this really cool chair I want for my living room, but my living room is full. And if I want the chair, I got to move something out. So, if you were in a budget position and there's shortfalls happening or things happening you wanted, you have to figure out where you're offsetting these things. It's just a matter of how you have to run a department. You can't just say we had a shortfall, make it up because it is a whole county that we're running here. And this is not the only department that has issues in front of them. So, I am going to need a lot more information on how we are making this money up. And I'm just going to say I'm eagerly awaiting a quarter one budget report to understand where we are in some of these places. Um uh so I will be interested to know if we're on target and if any of the work that has been done that was asked for in

the last budget resolution is being done. Uh I we are on a slippery slope. Okay. Um let's vote on this unless Oh, Commissioner Light, sorry. Is it uh possible that I can make a motion to table item B until we get the information that we need for this item? I don't want to rush into voting for something that we have not been provided um the information that we need. Um the sheriff's has office has been driving us in a hole already and I just don't want to go and vote right away. um on a item that's just going to add to um the depletion and the reliance on our our general fund. I just don't think that it's appropriate that we vote for something um that we don't have all of the information um and that that's not okay. So, I would like for us to be able to table this item. So, I would like to make a motion to table

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you make the whole motion, can I ask a clarifying question before we even go there? Is there a time is does this grant need to be approved at this meeting to get the money in? Yeah. No, we're on final reading. Yeah. Is there a time frame? Pardon me. Not not there's not one that I'm aware of. We we we will need to re research this a little bit deeper. I'm seeing head nods from the team. I don't know that there's a time there's it's that's not time sensitive. Go ahead, Andrew.

Uh thank you, chair. We're already inside of the grant period. It's from October one of 2025 through the end of 2026. So I uh I wouldn't want to say no deadline. Um but we can look into that and get back to you. Yeah, I I wouldn't see any problem with two years.

Okay. Go ahead, Commissioner Light. Yes. Yes, I would like to make a motion uh to table um item D, a resolution authorizing the secondary road patrol and traffic accident program grant from the sheriff's office uh to table that for two weeks and projecting that we have the sheriff's office to provide us uh the answers and information that has been um questioned by all of the commissioners. Okay. Um, so that's adjourned to a time certain to the next meeting. Yes. All right. I have a support. Um, I think I have to do I have to do a roll call for that.

Yes. Okay. We'll do a roll call for adjourning that to a time certain. Commissioner Light. Yes. Commissioner Macheski. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Commissioner Scott, yep. Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Commissioner Bean, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Labar, yes. Motion carries.

Thank you. Um, next item pulled for separate consideration is the resolution approving the agreement with POAM. Questions, comments, and concerns. Commissioner Beman.

Thank you, Chair. This question is actually for corp counsel um given where we are with litigation. This feels very close to that. So I just want to make sure that the scope will not put us in a precarious situation. The POA item should not impact the ongoing litigation in any way. Okay. I just wanted to be clear as it felt very close. So, thank you.

Okay. Any other questions, comments, or concerns? Commissioner Sanders. Um, okay. So, we're just approving the ability to move forward with an already contractual wage reopener. That's not giving us dollar amounts though, right? That's just to allow conversations to proceed.

No, their their collective bargaining agreement expired and we are obligated to bargain um a new collective baring agreement. So we have committed to terms through a tenative agreement and once this body approves it's already been ratified by PIM and so once this body approves we will then move forward with drafting the actual collective bargaining agreement. So, we don't currently know like what that amount looks I'm asking this because we have these um budget issues with the department. I don't I don't want the um the deputies to think that this is about them. It's not about them, but it is about fiscal responsibility. So, I'm not trying to change their contract language or anything. I'm just trying to get closer to like what does that look like and wondering out loud does that how would how does the sheriff's department administration expect to be able to handle this additional

but we we do know how much it's going to cost finance was at the table Katherine are you able to assist with any of the numbers We we she she can pull up the number. We know how much it's going to cost and it's a budgeted item. We we were anticipating this piece coming forward to you all. Okay. Budgeted already that it was it was part of our our the budget framework that that you all move forward. Okay. Yeah. There. All right. Since you everybody's squeamish about sharing the amount. Okay.

No, I I'm looking for it. We We'll get it to you as soon as we we we want to be transparent. We just we don't have it in front of us. Okay. I mean, I I think our residents need to know that just the expected total cost of these changes. That's what we're looking for. If we can't get it tonight, we'll get it out to you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um, let's vote on the PAM. Commissioner Macheski, yes. Commissioner Robbie, yes. Commissioner Sanders,

yes, because I do honor the deputies. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Bean, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Lear, Commissioner Light, yes for our deputies. Motion carries.

Okay, great. The only two things that we have left to to ask any questions about in first reading are A or sorry, final reading are um E and G. Does anybody have any questions? Commissioner Labar. Thank you, chair. Um, I'll try and be brief, but I just want to say, um, you know, in the last two months, uh, in this country, we've we've captured a a a democratically elected leader in another country. We we've recently started a war. Uh, we've killed several citizens with ICE. We've uh, unfortunately lost several other human beings in ICE. We've had a litany of issues at the federal level that I think um traumatize all of us. And so I just want to say every now and then at the county we get a break in the clouds, we get a ray of sunshine and we see a small stackable win that I hope sort of sustains us here. And the youth assessment and resource center is one of those moments where um we have seven years of effort that we put into this across multiple departments with multiple elected officials with the county proper with the courts. You've got folks like Lisa Gent and Trish Cortez and CH you've got Jerry Clayton when he was sheriff now Alicia Dy when she is Ellie Savat his office. Holly Havlin over at WISD. You've got Linda Edwards Brown. That's a name uh Greg and Yousef might remember. Um Judge Conlin, Kevin Mitchell, and Lisa Greco over at Children's Services. Uh Perisone Palmquist over at uh uh uh at SAC. Uh Renee over at uh MDHHS. Even uh now Delia Simpson uh and Jason Smith from Michigan Youth Justice. Um, I'm reading those names and I'm saying this and I'm

making a little bit of a deal because I need this to sustain me in an instance. This is something that we will uh put together that we're now hiring the first employee for uh that will affect young people throughout the totality of their lives once they interact with county government. And it is 10:19 at night. Uh we've had extensive discussions tonight. Um, but for the eight of you and for everybody in this room, uh, take this win. This is good progress. This is slow and steady. Uh, but it it should be celebrated unto itself. And so I'll be voting for it. Thank you for hearing me out and I appreciate uh all the support on this.

Any other comments or questions or concerns about ENG? Okay, let's vote on Oh, Commissioner Sanders, did I cut you off? No, I was gonna I was going to say this is this is great. I hope though that it it permeates in other areas that affect our youth and um take into consideration the needs of families uh when they have youth that need more assistance. And for some reason or another, our county Some of our county eleants have not been interested in providing that support.

Okay, great. Let's vote. Commissioner Robbie, Commissioner Sanders, yes. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Commissioner Bean, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Labar, yes. Yes. Commissioner Light. Oh, wait. Yes. Commissioner Macheski. Yes. Motions carry. It didn't have anything to do with this.

Okay. We have the single reading um items. I didn't know if Commissioner Haj had anything to say before that. I I had a thing to say at the I was going to wait for him to start reading them and I was going to second them and I was going to pull one for separate consideration. We can just not move it. All right. Well, I'll make some comments now. Um, since I think you recognize me technically. So, the there's been a lot of conversation about the data center. Are you speaking to a resolution? I was going to I'm going to get there if you let me cook for a second.

Well, how about we do it your way because right now you're just speaking extemporaneously and we should be speaking. We've been doing a lot of Okay. Yes. All right. Would somebody like to move the single reading? Mr. Labar.

Sure. Uh, under single reading, a resolution authorizing the county admin to sign the 2024 Homeland Security Grant and, uh, then B, a resolution to borrow against anticipated delinquent 2025 real property taxes. C, a resolution authorizing the signature of the administrator of the marijuana operation and oversight grant. Uh, then D, the resolution recommending the U ofM Willow Run question. E, a resolution amending the 2026 uh board calendar. And then F, the resolution authorizing the temporary appropriation to maintain continuum of care services. Support. Wait, you want to move those approval of claims, S? Oh, and forgive me. Approval of claims. I still support it.

Okay. Would anybody like to pull anything for stuff for consideration? Commissioner Hodgej. Thank you. I want to pull item D as in dog. Commissioner Beaman, I would like to pull item A as an apple. Commissioner Light. Okay. All right. Let's start with a questions here, comments. Commissioner Light. So, what the with Homeland Security? Like I anything

What's going on with this? And I I mean this may be something reoccurring but anything with homeland security I am not okay because they are okay I'm not I just want to know what can we break this down a little more because I I've read it but I I have the fabulous Ben Pette here tonight and he will tell you it is a reoccurring grant. It is all local and it and and it's fantastic. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.

Thank you, Commissioner. Um, so while it is the Homeland Security Grant Program, uh, the projects contained within this program are generally for public safety response, they're not entirely devoted to law enforcement, although there are earmarks within the grant that are devoted specifically to law enforcement. Uh so for example um really just a breakdown of the grant itself. We have $13,200 that's going to the hazmat response team for hydrogen cyanide detectors um within their existing sensory equipment. Um the technical rescue team is slated to receive 68,000. That's 25,000 of dedicated operational and technical training and then 43,000 to replace uh technical rest supplies.

Thank you. Um, we have $16,295 to the underwater search and recovery team that is law enforcement. Uh, that goes specifically to personal protective equipment for those staff that were engaged in those responses. Uh, specifically communications lines, airlines, and a replacement helmet that's out of date at this point. Uh, we have a 100,000 that's going to my division specifically in emergency services. That's for a radio communications upgrade, giving us an additional radio communications console in the EOC that so that we can better facilitate mutual aid responses throughout the county when crisis or critical events occur. And then we have an available funding earmark of $67,919 of which 62,000 does need to go to the protection of uh crowded places or soft targets. So, that really is a law enforcement kind of earmark. And then $2,500 and change that we're going to use uh to support additional cyber election security. Uh we have slated projects that are piggybacking on funding allocated in the 2023 Homeland Security Grant going towards county IT uh that we've slated for network penetration testing. So that's really where that funding is going in a nutshell, even though it does all f fall under Homeland Security grant as administered by the Department of Homeland Security and the

Okay, thank you for that breakdown. I'm just triggered by anything that says Homeland Security, especially with what happened today. So I apologize. I am so sorry. It was not meant geared towards um you all protecting us and keeping us safe. But I just I am very triggered by anything that is home in security. And I guess if we got to take their little funky funds to be safe, we going to just accept them. I certainly under apprec appreciate the concerns and uh the question. It was a great question. Don't don't be triggered by Ben. He's only doing what's right. And I know I know. And I just want to point out he's very responsive about some concerns we had in the first iteration of this and I want to thank him for that. Appreciate Bean.

Thank you, Chair. Uh, mine is more of a hypothetical, so apologies if you can't answer, but is there a fear given, you know, that list that you gave us was was wonderful of how these dollars will be used. Is there a fear that these could be clawed back with what we're seeing at the federal level given the current stance of Washington County Sheriff?

So, I don't have much fear about funding being clawed back at this point. That's why there's been such a delay over the last 14 months with bringing anything related to the federal grants uh to the table with Homeland Security and other things within their emergency management purview just because there's been so much question mark as to where those programs are going currently and moving in the future. It's only until we get to a point that we're comfortable moving this forward that we're bringing it to your attention. Um there is supposedly a 2025 Homeland Security grant that will be coming down the pike um as they have for 24 years now, but there's still a lot of questions over what the performance period of that grant will look like, whether it's the traditional three years that we have to operate within, whether that's only limited to 12 months, at which point we wouldn't even be able to bring that grant to the table here. So, yeah, there's a lot of questions that we really have to take into consideration with this, but I'm pretty confident moving this one forward. Um, the only stipulation is that we have to get all the activity completed by May 31 of next year, which I'm very confident with the projects that we have moving forward that we'll be able to meet those deadlines.

Okay. Any other questions, comments, or concerns? Great. Let's vote on that. Thank you all. Thank you. Yes. Commissioner Sanders. Are you picking on me first? Yes. Commissioner Scott? Yes. Commissioner Somerville? Yes. Commissioner Bean? Yes. Commissioner Hodgej? Yes. Commissioner Labar? Yes. Commissioner Light? Yes. Commissioner Macheski? Yes. Commissioner Robbie? Yes. Motion carries.

Okay. Fantastic. The next item that was pulled for separate consideration is item B. Nope, sorry. We did we discussed item B. Nobody can discuss that anymore. Is D. D. Commissioner Hodgej.

Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. I pulled item D for separate consideration. I because of the significant feedback that we received from members of the public and conversations amongst the board. Uh I think that we can do additional work on this to make the resolution something that uh is more reflective of our goals and what we're attempting to represent and potentially two separate resolutions uh given some of the the challenges related to uh both some of the state bills and there's an additional bill that was introduced today in the legislature that may be of interest to members of the board um that is separate from this particular issue. I would also add that if we were going to try to do some sort of resolution that was encompassing a potential financial issues related to the University of Michigan, it would make a third of our board uh in a position where they'd have to abstain because that is the employer for a third of the board including myself. Uh whereas the original resolution would not do that. So that would have made it more complicated for everybody able to vote too. Uh, I am going to make a motion that we postpone this to the March 18th meeting and so we could do some additional work on it.

Okay. Um, um, let's vote on that. Yes. Not you yet. Commissioner Scott. Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Commissioner Bean. Yes. Commissioner Hajj. Yes. Commissioner Labar. Yes. Commissioner Le. Yes. Commissioner Machi. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Yes. Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Motion carries. Okay. Great. Any other discussion on any of the items not moved for separate consideration? Uh, Commissioner Labar.

Just want to thank everybody for the action on item F. Really appreciate it and I'm glad we can do this to keep that system afloat. Yeah, thank you. Um, I agree. We heard some interesting things about what was happening with that when we were at the NAGO conference and I think it helped inform how we got that resolution written. Also, just note the resolution amending the 2026 board of commissioners annual calendar of meetings. We will not be having a meeting on Wednesday, April 1st. We will be having one meeting in the month of April. Yep. It's it's there in your packet. One meeting in the month of April. Um, all right. Let's vote on those remaining items. Is that an April Fool's joke, though?

No, it's not an April Fool's joke. It's real. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner uh Bean, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Labar, yes. Commissioner Light, yes. Commissioner Majeski, yes. Commissioner Robbie, yes. Commissioner Sanders, yes. Commissioner Scott. Yes. Motions carry. Okay. Yeah. Um, any items for current and future discussion? Commissioner Hajj and then Labar.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to take a moment to uh mention that several of us went to the recent Niko conference and there were I've got some props as usual. You know, there's a you got to put the camera on me for the props to show up. Thank you.

All right. So, uh, there was a little bit of information that I received about the county role and long-term care, uh, which is something that we're working to do more with with senior millage. I thought that was useful. I'm going to go through these props that I have before I go ahead and just say the part I want to say. Also, of course, I had to pick up one of these about the county's role in public health. Our public health officer is still there staying strong to the end of the meeting. Thank you as always for being here. And, uh, this one about data centers and a use of AI in county government. One thing that was common between all that I participated in about these three topics is that our staff is very wellversed in all of these issues. There wasn't a ton of new information that I learned from participating and some of the things that I I went to. I did learn some things, but what I did learn is that our team is incredibly well-versed in the topics that we spend a lot of time discussing and and voting on. Um, so I want to express my gratitude for the fantastic staff that we have in administration and across our county. uh because I can say with confidence that we are getting the best information to make the best decisions that we can and where there are many other counties across the country that are trying to learn more about many of these topics, we have that information. I think there's a lot that others could learn from the great work that's being done in Washington County. So, thank you to the to the team for that. Uh, one small anecdote that I would add about the public health one went to uh, one of the the meetings where they vote where we vote on priorities for the NATO legislative team to do federal advocacy around. And as always, there are a few people that want to promote antivax and other non-science-based information. And the people that attempted to do that were soundly defeated uh, and embarrassed. It was a sight to see, a site to enjoy. I took some pictures and video. It was good. It was good. It was a good victory for public health and for science and for people that believe in reason and justice. And with that, I'll stop.

Thank you, Commissioner Labar. Uh, in my haste to thank folks, I forgot to thank maybe the two most important folks, Terrence Williams and the REO. Uh, and of course, Derek Jackson for their work on the Yark. And just want to give them both a special thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Robbie. I was going to motion to adjurnn unless there's this meeting has been Does somebody else want to talk? I I won't actually make the motion if somebody else wants to talk. No, I didn't. I made the motion. God damn it. All those in favor?