Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Candy, can you hear me?

Could you talk as well just to make sure we can hear you, Candy? Hey Ashley, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thanks, Candy.

Following this one, our full board meeting at 7:00. So again, here you have one minute. We just need you to state your name and the municipality within which you reside. Is anyone here to provide in-person public comment at this time? Okay, seeing none, I would check with uh Tabitha if there's anybody via Zoom. No one online. Chair, I am shocked. We'll move then to uh the report for from the uh county administrator. Uh just want to say uh administrator Dill is joining us remotely and uh he may have a question or two at times and I will let you know if he raises his hand.

And you are not administrator D. You are I am not administrator D. I am uh Brady Peek, director of operations. Wonderful. Thank you, Brady. Move now to a report from the director of board oper. Oh, I'm sorry, Brady. Administrator Dill had his hand up. We'll administrator Dill. Yes, sir. Good evening, everyone. I just wanted to say that you all look great here from the great state of Florida. And Brady is uh looking good. Let me just say that. he is. Uh I'm really pleased to see uh all of you from the virtual universe. Have a good meeting.

Thank you. Thank you, Administrator Dill. That's a a pleasant note to start our night off, right? So, we we appreciate that. And I'll uh go then to uh our director of uh board operations for any update. Thank you, chair. Uh really quickly, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone uh all the commissioners uh who came out to our inaugural State of the County event on Monday. Uh we had over 300 members of our community um at the event and I just want to say thank you to all of our community members who came and to all of you who made the event so special. Thank you.

I think we will have an opportunity at the full board meeting to talk a little bit more about that, but I will take this opportunity to say one to you Ashley and to the team that helped you. Uh what a wonderful job you did pulling off an unprecedented logistical event. It met both the mood and the and and the need of the night. Uh and you really should know you did an excellent job. And I also want to thank our chair, Katie Scott, for delivering that speech. Uh speaking in front of people is always hard. Speaking in front of people with a script moving at your feet in real time on a one-off event is extra difficult. So Katie, uh, on our behalf, thank you for the job you did and what you said there. So, all right, let's move then to our first item. We are fortunate to have here with us Shamar Heron, our executive director over at Michigan Works. Mr. Herren, I would uh invite you up, sir, and we're eager to hear what you have to say and would afford you a chance to get through your remarks and then perhaps follow up with questions if that's all right.

Absolutely. and it's an honor and pleasure to be here. Uh hopefully with your allowance of me being up here, I can invite my two colleagues up as well. So we have our deputy director, Misty Schultters, as well as uh our service center manager here in Washington County, Mr. Johnny Eps. As the comments come in at the end, I promise we did not coordinate our looks. Uh we are not twinning today. I was working from home with no power and I grabbed the closest thing I could get. Um, but Johnny's been wearing this all day, so this is his outfit.

And and Shamar, forgive me, we're pleased to have them. They're welcome to to sit, too. So, I don't want him to feel uncomfortable. And so, uh, we do have a slide deck that we we're going to move briskly through, but, uh, once again, it's an honor and a pleasure, not only as a resident of Washington County, but really a steward of, uh, taxpayers dollars that allow us to afford and do the work of workforce development here in this county. And I'll mention the other counties momentarily that we represent. So again, Shamar Herren here representing Michigan Works Southeast. Uh and it is a PL pleasure to be here at this working session. Um before I get going, I also want to make sure I thank uh Commissioner Beaman, Commissioner Sanders, and Commissioner Light as they serve as your representative on our consortium board. And so the primary roles that they uh are responsible for is administering funds. aka being our fiscal agent. So every dollar that comes into our organization that body not only approves the receipt of but ensures that we are being effective with those dollars both by approving our budget on a quarterly basis but at the end of the year any ratifications modifications that need to happen they ensure they're in alignment with what was produced over that quarter. they approve or excuse me over that program year they approve all contracts. So we have roughly 55 contracts across the work that we do uh in our five counties and they ensure that those contracts are both in compliance and in order. And lastly, probably the most important role is uh being the employer of record, which means Michigan Works Southeast, we do not have a third party that handles our

HR services. We handle them internally and that body, the consortium board uh and the commissioners that I mentioned earlier are responsible along with their colleagues from the four other counties we represent for ensuring that we have uh more than livable wages. we have benefits that can help sustain families and that we are making sure our people are being taken care of whether it's by facility or by additional services that we can provide as an organization. So really quickly who we are. I mentioned five counties. We represent Hillsdale, Jackson, Lenway, Livingston, and of course Washington County. Each year we try to make our way to these board meetings and make sure that you all know sort of what we're up to. Johnny's going to tell you a little bit about what's happening here locally. Misty's going to speak from a business perspective, the businesses that we're working with, and I'm just here for my dashing good looks. Uh, and so right around $865,000 or excuse me, $865,000 people is the population that we're working with across the five counties. About half of that is the labor force. We won't get into it right now, but I encourage you over time, if not to reach out to me, uh, do your own research on why labor force is a better proxy than unemployment. We hear about unemployment, but participation in the labor force is equal, if not far more important to help describe where we're at uh just across our economy. Uh about 12% of that population uh is below the poverty line. On average, about 35% of that population as well as uh within the Alice range. Uh and one of the stats that I think is really important is the

fact that over 37% of the people within our region travel uh about 30 minutes to go to work and 15% travel 60 minutes or more. I love to give that stat because it's a clear uh indicator of people are going to go to where the work is. We have our imaginary lines that we use. Some of them are very real. Some of them, you know, we use in our own way. But people are going to go to where they can do the best for their by by their families in terms of work. So, uh, I'll take a step back so that, uh, Johnny can talk about the Washington American Job Center.

Good evening. Thanks for having us here today. Um, Johnny Eps, the service center manager for Washington American Job Center with Michigan Works Southeast. Um on the slide you can see since July 1 of 2025 we have had over 7,000 visitors to our American Job Center. We also have filled over 700 jobs and we have served 164 unique employers and during that time we have enrolled 561 uh participants into our programs. Also too, uh it's not a time that we expect individuals to come to us. Since Shamar has been the deputy director and now director of Michigan Works Southeast, he has allowed us to go out to provide our services out to the community. And here is a a few places and sites that myself and the team go out to. You can see Avalon Housing. We're out there at all five sites. Peace neighborhood hub in Ipsellani, Ipsy district library, Ritaker Library, Ips Township Library. We also works and partner with friends indeed with their circles program. And we also go to the county um detention center to work with those youth when they come out to help them with employment or training opportunities. Also, um here are some numbers that uh we've been doing right now with our food assistance program. We have over 65 um individuals that's in that program. Um in the PATH program, these individuals are referred to us by DHHS. Right now we have 30 of those individuals. For the adult program and dislocated workers, we have 162. And of right now with the youth and our WIA program, we have 75 youth. And that number probably will

increase since summer works is about to start soon also. Um, here's some great news I would like to share. Here is one of our adult career advisors, Her Fluker. We partner with LEO and the Department of Labor. We're uh working in the proud program. As you know, this program, we provide training for individuals that's in the federal federal correctional facilities, the Milin Prison. This is a nationwide program and we only had we're the only program that has the only individual to go through all three steps, go out, get training for a CDL and has a job opportunity with priority trucking. So this is a nationwide program.

Yes. this in the whole country in the nation. We're the only Michigan Works, the only agency to have this person complete all three programs, come out, pay for the training, and now he has employment opportunity. So, I just wanted to highlight that for you all. Um, some event highlights. Last week, we had a job fair, career expo in our service center. We had 87 individuals come to our center for the job fair. We had 16 employers. We also use uh virtual headsets. With these virtual headsets, we allowed individuals, they say they wanted to do, since we talk about CDL, truck driving or pipe fitting or something. With these headsets, we allowed them to see what it would be like working in certain fields. So, we had that. Also, we also had over 20 U demand interviews that they did right there on site. and we partnered with the A2 wide chamber for that event. Um, here's a local U success story. This is Tiffany. As you know, I'm not going to read it all, but she was facing a lot of barriers, worked with us. We helped train her. Then she was able to get a job and increased her wages, you know, that she did by working with us at Michigan Works. Uh, here's some little labor market information. Uh the top three unique employer postings in Washington County. Number one is the University of Michigan. That's the entire U of M system. Second is Trinity Health. And the third one is the University of Michigan and Arbor. That is just for the U of M and Ann Arbor um employment opportunities. And also we have the top three posted occupations. As you see, we got registered nurses, number one,

retail salespersons, and retail workers super uh supervisors. And the median wage for these posted wages uh posted positions was over $26.

Uh good evening. Um so, Ashar said, I'm Misty Shelters. I'm the deputy director. For the last year, I've had the privilege of acting as our interim business services manager, which allows us to work with the team that directly delivers services to our employer customer. So, on this slide, you can see in 2025, we were able to provide um quite a bit of funding directly to employers to help either with their incumbent training, new hire training, or apprenticeship training to help with that pipeline. Um, and in 2025, because of this training, we were able to train 334 employees in Washington County to help them upskill and remain competitive in the job market. This right here is a success story for a business, uh, Metallark Builders. They do a lot of design work. There's a couple pictures there that show some of the expansive design work that they do. um little bit of a dream of mine perhaps someday, but uh they participated in our incumbent worker training program, which means they applied for a grant to upskill individuals that were on their team. And the training that they selected was called Boost. And what that did is it helped their sales staff have confidence in up meeting with potential clients to sell their product. And after going through that training, you can see some of the statistics that they gave us. They were able to grow from 600,000 to 1.4 million, increased um their gross profit margins by 1% from just that one training grant. And so for us, that is certainly a success to be able to help those individuals be more confident in their employment. Uh this right here is an example of our on the job training program. And so we partner with Michigan Medicine and this particular course is their pharmacy tech program. So they have a 320 hour on the job training. The individual is employed and put through a comprehensive robust

training program so that they can onboard successfully, get that pharmacy tech certification and then continue to grow within the University of Michigan. Um so for this uh we like to highlight that OJT is a really great opportunity because that results in employment from day one and they get their training following that employment offer. Uh just a couple organizational highlights things that we are preparing for in Washington County and across our fivecount region. I'm sure all of you have heard about work requirements uh not only for our SNAP recipients but also for our Medicaid individuals. Those will be kicking off. SNAP is already in place, but we will be expecting to see an increase in individuals for the Medicaid work requirement starting January 1st. Uh unemployment currently right now, individuals that are receiving unemployment must certify weekly with at least one job search activity that can be employ or applying for jobs, interviewing, um coming to our workshops at our service center. That is increasing as of July 1st to three per week. So that means we're going to have to also increase our offerings to help our unemployment customers meet that requirement to continue with their benefits. Uh we also are preparing for workforce PEL and that's where our community colleges will be able to help individuals instead of just looking for that associates or bachelor's degree with a PEL, they're actually going to be able to receive appl for short-term stackable credential trades type training. So, we're excited to see that come to be. Uh, another area of our focus is AI literacy. We really want to help our businesses understand how that can help them as well as our career seekers. And then also we internally are working on how can that AI help us and make improvements to our uh website. And then I did include a QR code as well

as a link for our 2024 2025 annual report. Uh it includes some workforce program outcomes, our fiscal year 25 information, and of course we love to share those success stories and partnership highlights. Thank you. Yes.

All right. And so lastly uh I want to talk about collaboration uh and not in the traditional form that you all may be used to uh where we talk sort of topically about where uh we can uh implement best practices or some type of jargon. No, I'm looking for this body specifically to be helping us. Right? We are here as a resource to the county, but we are looking for the county to be a resource to us. And how can you do that? You all work with businesses, I assume, daily. Is that true? Maybe. Okay. Maybe not. I don't know. That's why I'm asking. Okay. Uh maybe you're working with people who are looking for career opportunities. Thank you. And so what I don't need you to do is think. I want you to know we are a resource. You saw Washington all counties portion. We have four other counties where we're efficient as well. And so as you are hearing people talk about uh and we're seeing a 25% increase in the number of people coming through our doors. Our community is being devastated right now with unemployment and undermployment. And that's going to directly impact all of us. And so again, the collaboration comes when you all say, "No, Shamar, Misty, and Johnny were up here and they told us they even dropped some names. They know I don't like jargon, but you now just heard about dislocated workers. So someone got laid off, someone got fired, someone lost their job for other reasons. They are now a dislocated worker. someone who hasn't worked in a while, but they're trying to get back into employment. That's considered an adult worker. So, I want to give you some background to why

we use those terms so that you know collaboratively, we don't want you, we need you to be sending people our way so that we can go back to the state and the feds and say, "Hey, this is why we need more dollars. We need more dollars in general, but we know we're going to see more people. We know you all are going to help us, and that allows us to go and have larger acts to be able to do more and have greater impact. You're at these community events. Uh, please help individuals understand Michigan Works is here. Michigan Works Southeast and our other 15 agencies across the state. We are here to help. We are here to assist. people don't have to go on that journey by themselves. So with that, I'll make sure you know you have our contact information in this slide deck. Both Misty, Johnny, and myself. Johnny is your go-to person for Washington County. Uh he has a counterpart in the other four counties. But when you think of Michigan Work Southeast, think of Johnny for Washington County. Uh he's doing an excellent job. has the largest staff in the largest county with the largest population, the most employers. So, we want to continue to keep the ball rolling. So, again, as executive director, I'm proud of the work that we do as a team. Um, and we just want you all to make sure you know you can be a part of helping us help your constituents. Other than that, we'll take any questions.

Jamar, thank you. Uh, Miss Johnny, thank you as well. Go to uh Commissioner Haj for the first question. Thank you, chair. Thank you for the presentation. I always appreciate engagement with it, right? Uh think of Johnny for County. It almost rhymes. I like it. Uh a question about people to refer to you. So, what if you have someone that is already employed but is looking for other employment? Is that an appropriate person to send your way? Yes. Okay. Look, I love an easy answer.

I love a easy question. It is. So we there's two kind there let's say there's three there are people who are unemployed there are people who are undermployed and there are individuals who are looking to move up in their career journey we serve all three I will be referring many people to you awesome okay I'mma hold you to that now you better tell them Justin I'll tell him yeah tell him Justin or commissioner Hajj excuse me yeah know either one's my name yeah Johnny for Johnny, think of Johnny for watching. Okay, Johnny better not run for office. That would look good on

that would be a problem if you're working at Michigan Works. This This is rich dialogue. Yeah, I'm gonna go to Commissioner Scott. Thank you, Chair. Thanks, everyone. Absolutely. Okay. Um, how do you feel like your funding federal, state, local and how the change is shaping what shape your priority.

So we are facing just like many human service agencies uh we're staring down reduced funding with increased uh need and individuals coming through our doors. Luckily, we've been able to maintain, but when you talk about SNAP and Medicaid work requirements, we can see anywhere from a couple hundred to tens of thousands of people coming through our doors. And as it stands now, it's only in the governor's budget to fund that. We're not seeing across the entire legislature that it is indeed going to be funded. Um, and so we need to prepare ourselves. We've been advocating as a system for additional funds under three specific areas. The SNAP and Medicaid going pro talent fund some of you may know was reduced by 42% and then a lot of apprenticeships. We need to make sure that apprenticeships uh because most people think of the skill trades there's thousands of apprenticible uh career opportunities out there. So we are we've seen a minor reduction um over the last two years or flat funding. We have not seen increases even though I mentioned that 25% increase in individuals we're seeing.

Well thank you because but I love that you thought about like when we're seeing this like here are the areas we need to prioritize. Absolutely. I mean just speaks to how strategic and professional you are that you're thinking about those things ahead of time. So, I appreciate that very much. Um, I I am really have like two other questions, but I'm going to just give you one. How about I I'm happy to answer both questions as long as the body is okay with the time. Um, okay. How about what are the top two to three barriers your clients face right now? Like transportation, child care, digital literacy, like Yes. And so,

yeah, Johnny for Um I would say transportation is a a big need that we face a barrier that our participants face. And um the second barrier I will say just to deal with literally like you talk about we have older generations that's been working for a while and they get laid off and lose their job and everything now is on a computer

digital. So trying to put a resume online or apply for a job online. If you've been at somewhere 20 years plus and you didn't have to look at your resume, now you got to recreate that resume. Now you got to go online and do another resume. Now you got to apply your resume to an application. That's a big need and it can be intimidating for individuals. But luckily, you know, the team and I, we will sit down and assist those individuals and sometimes it's a lot of handholding, but we're there to support the community and, you know, doing great customer service, the word gets out and they will come back.

So, for our for our uh things we can help out with. So, I would say, you know, digital literacy and transportation is a big barrier we're facing right now. If I can just add one one additional barrier that we absolutely see a lot of and unfortunately, Misty, forgive me. Are you willing to bump just a little closer? So, uh, housing, we we really we don't have the funding to be able to directly assist individuals that come in that are having housing crisis. We help them try to find employment so they can get income coming in and and get themselves um stationary, but housing is certainly a barrier that a lot of our customers face.

Wow. Okay. Thank you. I I'll ask my final one. Is that okay, Chair? Okay. Um my then this is sort of to the equity issues we're thinking about at the county like where are you seeing disparities and access for people to get to you.

Yeah. So I I think again we try to create a safety net where anyone can uh utilize our services. where we try to reduce inequities is what Johnny spoke of in terms of getting us out into the community. With transportation being an issue, with digital literacy being an issue, with housing being an issue, we have to meet people where they're at. And so for us, there's all sorts of inequities that we see. Some are imposed by systems, some are imposed by legacy. But what we try to do is stay asset frame and say here's the places that we can go and reduce the inequities. But when you talk about just foundationally, I'd speak to education. That's where we're seeing individuals uh the variety of education or the lack thereof is creating uh rippling effects in terms of how individuals are able to access, what positions they're able to access. Uh I can't I don't want to misquote but if you don't have a college degree uh the statistics show your uh ability to go and make a living wage is tremendously reduced. Now this is coming from the employment agency who understands and respects the skill trades but it's a very small window. People say just go get an apprenticeship right that's not how it works. there's uh an application process and they normally only have a small few uh seats available. So if you know someone in the trades and in the unions, they'll tell you it's not a plethora of positions. And so what education have you went received? Whether it's the credentials Misty was speaking about or some sort of two or fouryear formal education that is

going to allow you to open the doors for more opportunities and higher wages and employment. Uh I'm going to give you my kids phone number. Yeah. Who hasn't decided what the ROI is yet on a college education? I have some data. I I can send it along. I know we have visual young people these days. Yeah. if they can just look at the same sheet of paper the economists are put in front of us uh the ROI tell them don't them to think about the next four years they need to think about the next 40 years that's exactly so yes you need to scare him into believing that thank you well I don't want to scare him I want him to so he knows

uh that you're going to do better off I mean just the data is clear as day and I don't I I'm not here to you know disparage anyone who hasn't received a two or four year degree. Me neither, but the data shows you're going to make over a million dollars more in your career if you have a college degree. Well, um that is all the questions I have and commentary on ROIs of college degree. I just want to also thank you because I think you guys do phenomenal work and you know the work you're doing so well. It was those questions you knew right where to go with the data and talk about them. So, I appreciate you very much. We appreciate you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Open up for any other questions. Commissioner Sanders, I think I know some of you. Can you just share with us um the age range for the youth that you service? And to Oh, 14 and up. Excuse me. 16 to 24. 16 to 24 program we just applied. Okay. So over 18, you're still considering to be eligible for the youth program? Yes. Okay. And how do you typically get the get the participants that are under 18? How do they actually come to you?

Well, we have youth career advisors and we go out to the local schools. We go to where the youth are at and many uh places in the community to talk about our services. And also when you help one or two youth, the best way to spread great things they're doing is by word of mouth. So those youth will come in at first they're hesitant. Oh, my mom made me come or my dad made me come or my counselor or something. But when they sit down and we work with them to help them achieve certain goals, whether it be employment or training, and how that can change their lives being so young, they're going to spread that out to their friends and to their networks, too. Additionally, if I may, uh we of those 55 contracts that Shamar mentioned earlier, two of them in county are with uh neutral zone and work skills who both uh work with those inschool youth. And so that's another way that we can tap into that population and help serve them.

Okay. Thank you. I I'd be remiss without mentioning I want to thank Commissioner Sanders who is the vice chair of the consortium board. So she is in a leadership role and her word carries uh a lot of weight amongst her counterparts and so we appreciate your leadership on the consortium board commissioner appreciate the work you do. Thank you. Any other questions at this point? Uh commissioners.

Great. Um, Shmar, I would indicate the lack of questions speaks to our contented nature here and the support for the work that you and your team are doing. We really appreciate your availability. And thank you also for the additional information so that we can both send folks your way, but also better articulate why you need more resources to to keep up this good work. So, thank you so much. I figure if you all were uh giving us a couple dollars, you'd have far more questions for us. So you all have a wonderful evening and thank you so much. Thank you.

Great. Well, we will move uh now to our second discussion item. We have our annual report from the road commission. Matt McDonald is here with us, but uh Mr. Director, I'm going to turn it over to you uh and and hope you will also uh recognize a few of your appointed board members uh on our behalf. Absolutely. Thank you, chair. Um, again, Matt Maxel from the Washington County Road Commission. I'm the managing director. Um, with me tonight is our chair, board chair, Barbara Poler, and also our director of operation, Adam Lee, and Brent Schlack, our director of engineering. So, we're here tonight to kind of discuss, um, uh, uh, what we've done with the millillage funds for the roads and non-motorized millillage. Uh it's part of our memorandum of understanding with the commission and um certainly we have a presentation we're going to pull up here and we'll just roll through it. We also have some handouts going to be distributed. They're just maps and tables of the projects completed in 2025 and 2026. They're also listed in the presentation. So with that, we'll go ahead and get started. There we are. Introductions kind of go talk about what we did and accomplish last year, what we're planning to do this year, and then of course take any questions that anyone may have. Uh introduce the gang here. There's our our uh glam shots. And then uh just rolling into our 2025 projects. So, as you can see, um this is a just a map with a little color splashed on it. Um a lot of area to cover. Um but we are um this is a four-year plan. So, one of the things that Brent will talk about is is the

money raised in the community goes back into that community over the course of the four years. So, they may not have a project every year, but over the course of those four years, they will get uh a project. And it's really a mix of fixes. And we'll Brent will talk speak a little bit about that asset management. So we have both for you a map for those that like the map and the visual and then also we have a a list there where we list it by county district, by township, uh the road segment and then the type of work that is done. So uh and also obviously very important is pictures uh of the good work that got accomplished. Uh starting on the far left we have Sevenmile Road uh between Airheart and Dix Road in Northfield Township. I believe that was a resurfacing project um which are a lot of these are um and you can see the sign there on in that gets posted uh within the project limits. Um, it's that Washington County uh uh sign that really helps voters recognize their money uh went into that that resurfacing project. Also, we have uh Gettys Road uh the roundabout there in Superior at Superior Road in Superior Township and then Parker Road in Scio Township between Marshall Road and uh Shield. So, with that, I'll go ahead and turn it over to Brent Schlack and talk about the 2026 projects.

Hi, good evening. Uh, thanks again for having us out uh to talk about our plan. Uh, I'll just kind of jump right into it. So, uh, our plan, we, as Matt mentioned earlier, the goal of our plan is to put money back into what is raised in each community. Uh so and then we're accountable by that because we develop the plan ahead of time. We share that with the townships uh and we review that to have their acceptance of it and uh then we execute that plan. Uh so we have a variety of treatments uh as Matt brought up uh seal coat uh mill and resurface a pulverize uh then we have some unpaved uh roads that we're looking to uh complete within our plan. Uh so how we accomplish this and I know one of the questions is how do you choose what road you're going to uh do work on. So we use asset management plans uh within the road commission. We rate all of our paved road systems on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the best, one being the worst. Uh then we break that down a little bit further into a good, fair, and poor. Uh as you look at the plan, you you'll see a lot of seal coat mill and overlay. So those we can extend our dollars further by looking at those fair and good roads and uh doing a seal code or a mill and overlay. And you can see also on the plan where there's very few like pulverizations that's almost like a reconstruct or even in 2025 plan we have a pave a gravel road uh that you know there's only one of those because that's a very expensive fix. Uh so a lot of residents will say,"Well, why are you paving or doing work on this road when this other road looks very terrible?" And it's because uh we're trying to spread that that funding further. And so that's why you'll see uh that mix of fixes on the plan, only a few of those

poor roads getting uh repaired over that four years. Uh so again uh we focus on primary roads uh within uh the the system and using that asset management practice. It's the right fix at the right time in the right place and that's where I was talking about trying to spread that that money uh further. Uh our goal is to extend the service life of the road and uh using those asset management practices. Uh so uh this is uh what's distributed by that half a mill. Uh so uh it's about $5 million that comes to the road commission. Uh then it's spread uh off the top is the the uh county parks and wreck. Uh that $2 million and then uh the cities within Washington County get about $4 million. Uh our plan for 25 was just over $5 million. Uh because we do also put uh our Michigan transportation funds into these projects. Uh for 2026, we're looking about $5.5 million that will go into those projects. Uh so here's the map. You have that in front of you. It's kind of hard to see here. Uh again, it's a mix of fixes throughout uh all the county. And then uh of course our list uh for uh for 2026. Uh we do have uh projects that do kind of move sometimes within the years depending on the scope. Uh but our we will accomplish that within those four years. Uh so with that I don't know Matt if you wanna

yeah I would just uh point to the website as well. We have uh all of our uh information on our website regarding projects um special page dedicated to the millillage as well. Um so that there is that accountability and uh with that we'll take any questions that you may have.

Great. Thank you. uh open it up for uh questions. I guess I I have just one general one to start. Um how is it looking for this summer in terms of sort of the damage from winter? Uh juxtaposed to a normal or average year. Um I'm not a engineer and would look to your advice.

Sure. Uh winter started with a fury uh this winter and then it it kind of rolled into something that was a little more manageable and normal uh from assault usage and overtime uh started uh like get concerned from a budget standpoint. Uh because any money that we spend for winter maintenance that's really for uh safe and reasonable travel, but it's not investing into the life of our assets. So those strong winters sometimes uh spend a lot of money that um could otherwise be uh put into the roads. Um but the spring is is that time it's that time of year where we're seeing a lot of thawing uh that freeze thaw effect uh was pretty short this this winter and spring season. So, um, things are holding together nicely and we've got a robust, uh, construction season ahead of us to to to do the good work to bring things back from fair to good or from poor to good,

but not nothing that was exponentially bad or off the No, we did not see anything um that would cause us concern. More of an average winner. uh open it up for uh other commissioners who might have questions.

Okay. Uh Commissioner Robbie. Uh thank you, Chair. Um often at these meetings, I I have asked and you guys are not equipped to answer, which is fine. Uh but I have asked in the past about what our local cities are doing with the money and I know that that's a requirement that we attempted to put in place. What is the update on that? Are are they reporting back on how they're spending the money?

So uh for us our role uh we entered into a memorandum of understanding with with the county. uh each individual city as my understanding was requested that memorandum of understanding as well. I don't know what the status of those are but as part of that memorandum of understanding is coming back and reporting um how how the funds were used uh for the road commission. We also assist with uh reimbursement requests. So we do um submit those requests to the the county on behalf of the city. So we do see that portion um and there's a lot of good projects uh and work being done. Um but ultimately the reporting responsibility is that of that municipality, the city.

Um Brady, Ashley, anybody any updates from you guys on that? We have agreements with many. I don't want to give you a number off the top of my head and we can definitely get those reports back and u publish I'd say the next meeting for you. Um okay. Are there any ones that we don't have? Yes, there are a few cities that we do not have agreements with. There's only a few cities in Washington County. So where there's seven cities, I believe. I don't know off the top of my head exactly which ones we do and we do not. So, not going to call anyone out here.

Okay. Maybe at our next meeting we can get a presentation on the projects that they're doing. We can get a presentation on the data that we have that they submitted to us. Submitted. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Go to Commissioner Sanders and Scott. I'm embarrassed because I think I might need to know this already, but what happens if they don't have an agreement with this? How do Yeah. 2025 and 26 that that agreement between the the county and the city? I I don't have any comment on that.

Okay. Commissioner Sanders, if I may, I believe we codified this by either ordinance or resolution back in 2024. Um, and I don't know there within that there's any sort of punitive description. I I think the implication is that they're going to do that because it's it's incumbent on good government and so forth. But, uh, we'll try and dig up whatever that legal answer is, even if it isn't any useful one. Go to, uh, Commissioner Scott. I think that Commissioner Machi is answering my question.

Yeah.

Um, the question was, listen, it's the elephant in the room. Workner Road. um on 2025 there's I can see two different sections of workner for seal coat and seal coat and one of them is in silven and then that silven shows up again in 2026 for pulverize and resurface. So, I guess I was wondering how often like is it different parts of the road because it's just a road in Silvin. Maybe there's different parts on that road and maybe that's the easy answer. But if that's not the easy answer, how often do we see like we're going to seal a coat and then the next year we're going to pulverize and and resurface or pulverize. And

so the the lists are to to show um that it shows up in multiple townships. So it might show twice. Yeah. Yeah. So that we want to give credit to each of those townships because that's where the money's coming from. Yeah. And then map our primary uh when when it's happening, what the scope of work work is and the section. So north of 52 was 2025. South of 52 that's this year. And that's going to be a paving project, not a seal code. Okay. I can see it. I can actually see it on the map. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no problem. Commissioner Masheski.

Thanks. I think there was some confusion because in 25 and 26 in both years it listed Silvin Township, but actually north of 52 there is a small piece of it that is in Silvin Township. Yeah. And the part that we've been hearing about this year is part that's south of 52 which is all in Silvin Township. Ah, so it's the little geography that occurs there. Um, thank you. I do have a question about the life of some of this work. Sure. Um, so when you go in and you do a a seal coat, for instance, how how much longer how many more years are you extending the life before you have to do something more significant to the road?

You know, it can be anywhere between um three and five years. Uh the chair's question about winter and how severe that is oftent times is is a great question because it really for those prevented maintenance type fixes that are shorter duration. The impact of a severe winter or deep freeze and a quick thaw can really have an impact on the life of the prevented maintenance. for for paving work that top layer asphalt to grinding that off and resurfacing that that's more like um 5 to 10 years fix and then if you add on to that seal coating it on the regular basis that can extend it another three to five years uh really depending on the the volume of traffic the severity of winter so there's are there are quite a few variables

and then you've got chip seal yes we we use seal coat and chip seal interchangeably. Yeah, seal coat is uh usually a two-step process where we do the chips and then do the fog seal uh as a second step and when we combine that phrase to say seal coke. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you, chair. Back to uh Commissioner Scott. Sorry. Um so I I have a question a question that will probably come with a request. So, can you remind me what time the road commission meets? Yes. So, 1:00

um first and third Tuesday of the month. Okay. Um so, one of the things I'll tell you I've noticed as as chair of the board is I can't find a second commissioner to to serve on the board because I think the time is very difficult for them to make it. I'm not asking you to change the time for that, but I am going to note that I think because of the difficulty I have with getting a commissioner to serve on the board, that also makes it difficult for public to come to your board. It's in the middle of the day. And nothing makes people more passionate than talking about roads. Like it or love it, it's the truth.

Yeah. I would love to see a roads commission that has a meeting at an evening time with an open public comment much like we do at county commission to let people feel like they're being heard and not managed. Um, and so if there is a way you can work in some public input meetings where people get to stand in front of you and say what they think, I think that would be helpful. Um, people will come to us and probably people will come to us tonight to talk about issues and I have a very limited scope of what I can and cannot do. However, you have more of that power and I think because you are a public entity, it would be helpful for you to have more meetings at times where people could stand in front of you and talk like they do here. So, I'm asking you to think about how you might integrate that into your plan and how you interface with the public. That's it.

Thank you for the comment. Great. Open it up for any other uh commissioner comments at this point. Um we appreciate your uh being with us tonight and uh your report. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

So we will move on uh item six which is items for current future discussion. Any items for current or future discussion at this time? Okay. um we find ourselves in a position where we are on or slightly ahead of schedule and that can be alarming. So, chair, would you like us uh I'm assuming just to be ready to go right at 7:00 sharp? Let's be ready to go right at 7 o'clock and hopefully be efficient. Great. I'd entertain a motion to adjurnn support. All those in favor say I. We are journ

73. Hi, good evening everyone. Um, I'm going to call this meeting of April 15th, tax day, uh, board of commissioners to order. Brendan, could you please call the role? Commissioner Bean, present. Commissioner Hodgej here. Commissioner Labar here. Commissioner Light. Commissioner Macheski here. Commissioner Robbie here. Commissioner Sanders. Commissioner Scott here. Commissioner Somerville.

Okay, great. Um before we move to public participation, I'm going to ask Commissioner Hodgej um we just have a resolution that somebody is here to receive from the for a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 55th anniversary 55th of literacy. So Commissioner Hajj. Thank you Madam Chair. Uh, this is going to be a test of my literacy to read this resolution. So, let's go ahead and have everybody that's here to receive it coming up here. You're here to get it. I think I'll be Oh, I I skipped the pledge of allegiance. You skipped the pledge. Okay, let's I'm so sorry.

You're such an advocate for literacy. You were just ready to go. I did not mean to skip the pledge. Um, let's stand and do that right now instead. So, sorry. Sorry. 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. Okay, now that I've remembered actual pledge of allegiance, we did the roll call. I skipped pledge at the very front. Um Justin, sorry. Back to you.

Back to me. As I said, we're going to test my literacy by reading this resolution. All right. It's a resolution recognizing and celebrating the 55th anniversary of Washna Literacy and the inaugural Emerald Awards. Whereas Washna Literacy was founded in 1971 by a dedicated group of volunteers with a simple yet profound mission to help adults in our community learn to read. And whereas this mission is powered by a dedicated network of active volunteer tutors who contribute tens of thousands of hours of service annually to ensure their neighbors can thrive. And whereas for 55 years, Washington literacy has served as a cornerstone of our community, providing free essential literacy support to adults building the skills necessary to realize their full potential. And whereas Literacy is the sole provider of free individualized tutoring for adults in reading, writing, math, and digital skills, serving as a vital bridge to equity and opportunity. And whereas over the course of its 55 year history, now literacy has helped more than 20,000 adults build foundational literacy skills, empowering them to become more productive employees, more engaged parents, better health care consumers, and more active members of our community. And whereas estimate estimates indicate that 31,000 adults in our county currently experience low literacy impacting their ability to navigate health care, secure employment, and participate fully in the digital world. And whereas low literacy is recognized as a root cause of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, food insecurity, poor health outcomes, and reduced civic participation. And Literacy's programs directly address these inequities by building skills that lift individuals and strengthen families. And whereas Literacy currently serves nearly 1,000 adult learners each year, and more than 90% of adults enrolled in its personal tutoring program reach one or more of their self-identified learning goals. And

whereas Washington literacy's vital work is made possible by a volunteer force of more than 400 trained tutors whose generosity of time and spirit reflects the very best of our community's commitment to one another. And whereas in celebration of its 55th Emerald anniversary, Literacy has established the Emerald Awards to recognize the leaders, advocates, and trailblazers who exemplify resilience, growth, and commitment to lifelong learning in our community. And whereas the inaugural Emerald Awards ceremony held on April 16th, just tomorrow, shines a spotlight on the collective impact of those dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers and fostering a more inclusive county. Now, therefore, it be it resolved that the county board of commissioners hereby recognizes and commends literacy on its 55th anniversary and celebrates the inaugural Emerald Award honores for their extraordinary contributions to our community strength and brilliance. Be it further resolved that the board encourages all residents to recognize literacy as a fundamental human right and to support the efforts of literacy and ensuring every neighbor has the power to reach their goals. Thank you so much for being here. I know we have a lot of people in the audience that are strong advocates for expanding literacy programming here in the community. I saw Kathy earlier. Kathy is still there. Kathy uh gave public comment here recently too about the importance of expanding uh literacy programming in Washington County. So, I want to congratulate you on the 55 years here. Very, very incredible work.

My name is David Martino and I'm the executive director of Washington Literacy. I'm joined here with Jacqueline Jackson, one of our board members, and I just want to thank the commissioners for recognizing our time here. I think I'm I'm a relatively new executive director um of Washington Literacy. It it's an absolutely wonderful organization doing amazing work. And I I I would be remiss if I didn't say that it's because we're in April, which is um National Volunteer Month. Um that it's driven by volunteers. It's neighbors helping neighbors to gain the kinds of skills that will help them be successful in our county, for our economy, for our civic life. Um, and really appreciate you acknowledging and recognizing the work. We appreciate all of the support we get from the community and look forward to seeing you at the awards tomorrow night. Thank you so much.

All right. Here you go.

All right.

Yeah. I'm gonna keep it and bring it here tomorrow. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Um, at this time we'll have public participation. Um, if you are here to give public comment, you can come to the podium. You have three minutes to speak. We'll need your name and your state or or I'm sorry, your name or your city or township in which you reside. Um, there will be lights on the podium that indicate how long you have. Green means you're good to go. Yellow means start wrapping it up. Red means I will interrupt you and tell you your time is up in an attempt to try to be fair to everybody. Uh commissioners cannot respond until the end when we'll do response to public comment as a whole. Um so welcome to public comment. Would anybody like to address the board? Don't be a feared My name is Sheila Palowski and I live on North Territorial Road in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We have an assault on our big trees right now in county. We have the road commission cutting them down. DTE Energy, Consumers Energy, the Ann Arbor sidewalk project, new development, wiping out an entire ecosystem on Packard Street for a million-doll condo development. We might even have a data center coming into Ipsellani. One thing that is really disturbing and killing our trees is the herbicide spray. And the herbicide spray is not only killing the trees, it kills everything. And I mean everything. I just learned that Consumers Power

Energy has hired Thunder Bay Tree Service to spray herbicide on people's personal property near Chelsea under their power lines. They already came through with the brush hog and the chainsaws, but now they want to follow up with spraying five or six different herbicides, which they have listed in a letter to residents. The herbicides are a combination of Garland 3, Milestone, Escort XP, Garland number four, Ultra, Stalker, and maybe Basil Oil. I have brought copies of this letter and copies of the safety data sheets with me today, and I've also emailed them to each of you. I know it's quite a lot of information to read, but let me highlight some of the most disturbing information on the safety data sheets. causes cancer, causes birth defects, kills aquatic life, lingers in soil for long periods, contaminates groundwater, banned in California, kills all kinds of trees, oaks, maples, dogwoods, pines, cottonwood, sumac, willow, cherries, blackwood, or I'm sorry, blackberry, and many more. And do you remember in 2019 when the county road commission wanted to spray herbicides on North Territorial and the public outcry that came with it? But you commissioners, you guys helped us. You spoke up to the road commission and you said people don't want this. And even our local townships spoke up and said our people don't want this. So, I'm gonna ask you if you guys can help us and tell Consumers Energy and tell

Thunder Bay Tree Service that they're not allowed to spray this poison in county. And I also want to know, has the Road Commission stopped spraying herbicides? How do we know since they have no oversight? Sheila, that's time. Sorry. Thank you so much for listening and I support no ice. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Kathy Squires and I'm here again about the continuing widespread removal of mature trees in county. These are not just trees. They are part of our storm water system, our cooling system, and our community identity. We are asking for two things. If possible, if still possible, we're asking the board to place an immediate pause on tree removals along rural roads and throughout county specifically specifically until independent reviews of necessity and alternatives are completed and put into place. We are asking you to require the county road commission to adopt a formal tree preservation policy with actionable public input before any further removals. Preserving trees, planting trees are both vital public interests. Trees reduce flooding and runoff, something we're having terrible problems with now. Trees enhance public health. They reduce heat and they improve our air quality. Trees are an integral part of climate commitments. Commitments you've made. Let's follow through. Trees help define county identity as well as rural character. Trees are public infrastructure that are too often not budgeted to be replaced and cannot quickly be rebuilt once destroyed. Have you seen the destruction along Chelsea Dexter Road the last time the road commission was let loose? In your role as ruling bodies, we are

asking that you put into action moratoriums if possible, but at least more oversight to prevent the same type of blight from the road commission continuing willy-nilly with their destructive activities. We're asking please be more proactively proactive in these ecological issues before more of our tree canopy is lost. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Lauren Sergeant. I live in Ann Arbor and I want to commend the county for standing up to ICE and I hope that you will bear the legal challenges as a badge of honor. It means that the policy has some effect because you are acting to protect this community from an assault. I also hope that you will listen to the two previous speakers about protecting our trees. We are in a climate emergency which we all have experienced last night in the middle of the night and are continuing to experience today. And one of our best protections is our tree canopy. And tree planting, which sounds nice, doesn't do that at all. Trees, the preeminent tree scientist, her name is Beverly Law. And she's demonstrated that planting new trees, if they live, which is a big if, do not sequester carbon or manage water for the first 20 years of their lives. And we're in a climate emergency right now. And I really urge you to be creative and as forceful and strong as you have been in standing up to ICE to stand up for our trees in the same way. It is community self-defense. It's for all of us. And also remember some of the corporate entities like consumers that have been mentioned here, DTE and also even AT&T which provides cell phone service to ICE and sign the corporate money out of politics ballot initiative before May 13th if you haven't signed it since Thanksgiving. Thank you.

Good evening everyone. Um it's nice to see you all again. Uh I have been here before supporting literacy. Um and the reason is because it is so important to our children and the quality of life in Washington County. But I'm not here tonight around to talk about literacy. But another I'm here to talk about the east side community and rec center which also it impacts our children and the quality of life inn county. Um it will make such a huge diff difference. I'm here. I'm one person and I'm speaking for myself, but I also represent all the folks out in the greater MacArthur Boulevard area who signed petitions, who went to community meetings, who sat on the uh planning committee with me because we wanted a community and rec center. We needed activities and recreation on the east side. We needed some place for our kids to go and get support. When we talk recreation, I mean the community and recreation center will drive economic development on the east side of our county which really really needs that structural investment. But for me, I think about the kids. We and the committee and the people out getting petitions talked about transformation, about saving lives, that creating opportunity, having kids somewhere to go, somewhere

to do, and a support and mentorship, uh support for mental health if they needed it. And so I want to encourage you to make sure that the community and recre center moves ahead and moves as fast as as is reasonable because every time I think about the weight, I think of another child that we might be losing. You know, we talk about CVI, community violence intervention. There's a black rose wall in Ipsy. And those kids who have been neglected, who have nothing to do, we can those are lives lost. And that community and rec center is not just a building. It is a future for our children and for the east side of the county. And I urge you to keep it moving, keep supporting it. Let's make it happen. Thank you. Kathy, before you leave, we know who you are, but we know who you are, but can you just state your name?

I apologize. I'm Kathy Wyatt and I live in Pittsfield Township. I forgot. That's right. We knew who you were, but thank you.

Hello everyone. I'm Leslie Panzika Galapa and I live in Dexter. Do you need my address? No. Okay, good. Thank you.

All right. The human species is the only species that is not aligned with nature. Every other species lives in a sustainable way. If the grid goes down and we have a blackout, every other species would make it except humans. A few exceptions like the Amish. With humans gone, nature will be restored. We need to learn from nature. And by the way, this is a quote from my son Adam, a brilliant young man who lives in London and won't come back to the US because when he comes back, he can smell all the lawn sprays and he can't breathe. It's not like that in in Europe, guys. It's not like that in Europe at all. We are the only species cutting our beautiful trees and ancient oaks for progress, spraying poison on our lawns and trees and food. Koko the hand signing gorilla would say, "Man, stupid. These poisons are affecting our honeybees and pollinators and our beautiful monarchs and the monarchs are 90% gone, which is a crime. These poisons are affecting humans on a large scale, affecting their health. One example, myself being a professional gardener and now have neuropathy in my legs and feet from the Roundup and lawn sprays that my clients used. The chemicals say in the small print that they can cause neuropathy in your hands and feet. You guys can look it up. We need to stop the madness and wake up. We need to have reverence for our earth and our trees. They house our animals. And when the bees are gone, we will have no food. Einstein quotes, "When the bees are gone, we have only four more years." Think about that. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, go ahead. You're first. Hi, Norman Weber, Chelsea Silvin Township. I'm here to talk about either finding some way to hold county road commission accountable or dissolving them all together. I will admit that my first dealings with the road commission was this year as I live on Workner Road. Dealing with the road commission this past winter has been frustrating at best. We, the residents of Workner Road, have found that there's a cloak of secrecy when it comes to the road commission's plans. Had someone not opened their mouth, we no doubt would have no idea what their plans were, and we would not have been informed of anything they planned on doing to the road we live in, nor how they were going to change it to such a large extent. It was only through us speaking, protesting petitions, and getting the word out that the Royal Commission even bothered to deviate from their plans. I believe that had we not spoken out strongly and loudly that they would not have changed their plans at all. And I believe that secrecy is still in place. Through all the reasons they gave us to change this road, we debunked almost all of them and they still have not come up with a reason why they are changing this road to such a large extent. We can only guess that they want to route large trucks through our property through our road. They cited drainage, but those of us who live out there know that's not an issue. They also gave residents one chance to ask questions about their plans. When a member of the road commission

actually came out to talk to us, those of us who were losing trees, they sent someone who knew nothing about what was going on. This guy actually held the map wrong and pointed to the wrong end of the road. He knew nothing. He even admitted, "I'm only here to ask whether you want the wood or not." They cut one of my trees, which was curiously far from where their plans were. No idea why it needed to go, but they determined it needed to go. It appeared that they had made they made they do not want to make their true intentions for this road uh known to us. How is it we have an agency that deals with the public, our property, and the beauty and value of our land, but is in no way responsible for actually listening to the people that they impact. At one meeting, a member of the road commission stated that concerning the road they're the work they're going to be doing on Bush Road that they didn't expect push back because a lot of the houses were so far off the road and they didn't think people would care.

Norman, I'm sorry that's time. Sorry.

My name is Joanne Weber. I'm his mom. I live in Svin Township. Another thing I would like to point out on this road commission was that this road right now is a two-lane road and they want to extend it almost like a three-lane road, really wider lanes. I stay home and I see these cars speed down this little road and it concerns me if they make this road wider there is going to be more speeders and it's a safe road. The accidents that have occurred on this road were all animals, no cars. And we want to keep it two lanes with the extensions on either side. And they want to put in curbs. They want to put in ditches. And there's so much of that land along this road that farm. And people farm these. They've got hay, they've got corn. And we found pictures. We took pictures. Uh I think it was in March when it rained. There was no runoff. The uh creek was functioning great. There was just nothing to say that this needed to have curves and dishes um ditches. So, I am concerned too that I don't want this road widened. I know it needs to be resurfaced. my in-laws lived um moved in in the 1940s and that road was already in. Not in that 76 years has that county road

commissioner been out there to check that road until they did the project on M52 and then they were concerned with the wash out and that makes me angry. I don't want my road widened. It's a country road. Thank you.

Thank you. She's all right with me. Mhm. She she she she paid her dues.

I'm here tonight to bring you guys an additive. We all have confirmed that ice is cold. I want to let you guys understand also ice is not the only one that's cold. Washington County Sheriff Lisa Dy is cold. One person came to the Supreme Court and they asked for prayer to be taken out of school and it was granted. So, I come to the commissioners tonight to ask you all to make sure that Alicia Dia become open and transparent to all of Washington County residents and not just a selected group. I know our minds have not forgotten about Cross Street and we certainly hadn't forgot about Prospect where from from my perspective Cross Street was an act of terror. Prospect Street was just a coldblooded murder by Washington County Sheriff deputies who killed an innocent unarmed man. And incidentally, they got their own man. They got a white man, but they supposed to been getting a black man. We asked Alicia D to come to address us. She addressed the cross street neighborhood on the request of

two council people. They requested and it was granted. So one of our council people, they also asked her to come to the black community and she says, "What does those folks want?" I'm asking you guys to correct this thing because it's out of hand already. We had a funeral where a little a little 13-year-old boy was drowned. If Atlanta police department was there, Washington County Sheriff was there and the fire department was there. But the only department that showed condolence was the Atlanta Police Department. The police department and the the director's department was there. Now, I want to show y'all something that shows leadership. That shows leadership. Where was Alicia Dier and her folks? Head in the sand as usual.

Can you just tell us your name for the record? Oh, he isn't here. If you don't know me by now, you'll never know me. First name's Lee. Last name's Tusen. Thank you, Lee. And I'll be back.

We hope so. Good evening. My name is Jen Bharski. I am a resident of Northville Township and as of March 25th, I am a property owner and taxpayer in Salem Township, Washington County. During her response to public comment on the March 4th meeting, uh, Commissioner Sanders requested that before community members come whining that we present a plan B. I first want to reiterate the conservancy initiative would love to present an alternative perspective if given a defined slot on this board's agenda with an opportunity for conversation rather than these one-directional public statements. For today, I will say that the plan B starts with county committing to the goals outlined in Michigan's material management planning program, which emphasizes recycling, composting, and waste reduction over landfilling. And while landfilling cannot be eliminated, the trash collected can be cited at existing locations since at current collection rates, the state currently has over 20 years worth of existing capacity available. And that number would increase as the amount of recyclables diverted from landfills also increases. And I know what many of your responses are going to be to my statement. But you chose to live there. It's the easiest rebuttal since it puts all the onus entirely on individuals while diminishing the need to interrogate any data-driven arguments. But for today, I'll play. So, some of the reasons why I chose to buy my house in or near a landfill. One, we were able to find a a 3acre property in our price range while it was still close to vibrant downtown communities, including Ann Arbors. Two, access to Northville's top tier school district, a school district that portions of Salem Township also are within. Three, being less than a mile from Mayberry State Park, a park that took something unsavory, a

tuberculosis sanatorium, and turned it into a resource that can be used by everybody in the community. And four, probably most importantly, was the people. In addition to living near doctors, engineers, and business owners, I also live next door to teachers, public servants, and leaders of nonprofits doing real good in our community. And I personally love that fireworks don't just happen on the 4th of July, but also during Dwali and Lunar New Year, which is just a reminder to me of all the diverse cultures around me. And so, yes, I did buy a house near a landfill. We felt that our home was a reasonable distance from the landfill. and for the most part it has been. However, the proposed expansion would put that landfill closer to people who are previously outside of this arbitrary no live zone that this board seems to think they can create for other municipalities. So, I would ask how big should that boundary between the landfill be? Should we assume that in 30 years the landfill will be allowed to expand all the way to seven mile? What about 8 mile? Can it go south of five mile? Thanks for your time.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Chuck Kefir. I'm a 50-year resident of Ann Arbor. I'm here as a member of the Mirror Leadership Team. I'm also here with a large number of uh allies from across the county despite, I might add, the devastation of last night's storm. And it's been really most remarkable to me over the course of the last 24 hours uh to have been witnessed to so many neighbors helping so many neighbors in the middle of the night last night in the pouring rain and thunderstorms all day long. And and we come to you this evening with the same humane and animating spirit with one critical issue with one critical message. Do not cave. do not capitulate and do not surrender to the assault on our civil rights reflected in the recently filed federal lawsuit against Washington County. When we came before you in January to advocate for passage of the ICE out of Washington resolution, we did so with the deepest of concerns for the vulnerability and safety of thousands of our f fellow residents. Over the past many weeks since, those concerns have been painfully borne out in the increasing frequency of illegal ICE apprehensions on our streets, in our parking lots, outside our schools, in our public spaces. Just two days ago, a young man was surrounded by ICE vehicles not more than three blocks from this building, brutally apprehended by masked thugs with arms,

and disappeared into the black hole of DHS detention. As such, it should be abundantly clear that the protections provided by the policies and practices adopted by this board, our sheriff, and our county prosecutor's office have been absolutely essential for the safety and well-being of our local neighbors and co-workers and friends. And it's in that context that we come before you this evening once again with one clear demand. Stand strong in fighting back against this act of federal intimidation that directly threatens not just our community's most vulnerable families but us all. We are here with a large number of of of of companions to to assert that almost every public entity that has chosen to vigorously defend itself against the unconstitutional bullying of the federal government has won. All who have fought back have not all have won, but if you do not fight, you cannot win. And two, you were right in passing this resolution last January. Our sheriff's policies are right. The county prosecutor's policies are right. And our county is currently holding the moral high ground. It would be tragic to surrender that now. Capitulation or compromise must not be an option. We're counting on you to stay the course, to fight the good fight, to be unyielding in your local and your legal efforts. this time

for the sake of liberty and justice for us all. Thank you.

Thank you. Hi, my name is Moralia Rosas and I'm from I live in IPS Atlanta and um I'm here to speak um also on um or supporting the anti-ICE actions and anything that needs to be done to ensure that our um immigrants are safe. Um I am speaking from experience given that my father was detained last month and uh you guys were kind enough to sign a sign a letter in support of him. Um, Miguel Ross Reese is my father. And um, given that you guys signed that, I know that this is something that is important to you all. And I hope that you continue to show that it is important to you by continuing to take action and staying strong as people have said against um, ICE and any of these people that um, are taking such inhumane actions. And um like I said, given that my dad is currently experiencing this, I also want to say that it's not just about the um like a lot of people sometimes think that when an immigrant is taken, it's not our problem anymore. Uh but there are families left behind that are suffering there. um they are suffering in those detention centers and it's important not to forget about them just because they are not here uh currently and their absence is felt and um I want you guys to keep that in mind uh because this is only going to escalate if we continue to not fight back. So, we need to fight back and I urge you all to continue to take action, stay strong uh against um ICE as our fellow community

members have said tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Michael Rosas Martinez and I am a resident of Ipsellani, Michigan. I'm a brother of Merilia and I'm also here to speak on behalf and support of your guys' fight against ICE. As uh Merlia eloquently explained, our father got detained and is currently detained um around a month ago. And I'd just like to speak as as she said, you know, it's important to not forget about all these people that have been taken because they cannot speak for themselves. And having this happen to us, I can speak from a firsthand experience as to the inhumane conditions that these innocent people are being treated to. These people are being kidnapped, taken on their way to work. Our father was just on his way to work like any other day. He was going to do his job and then he got detained by three. He got surrounded by three vans. One cut him off, one on the side and one behind. Surrounded, boxed in, and then got taken in as if he was a murderer. And these people, these innocent people are being taken in and treated sometimes even worse than prisons. They have chains on their feet. They're put they don't turn uh lights off until 12 a.m. and then they make force them to wake up at 5:00 a.m. give them the smallest portions of food. There's no uh no regard for their mental or physical health. They have rags for shoes. There there's this these are worse. These are inhuman conditions. These innocent people are being treated harshly. And I think it's important that you guys continue to fight this because what is happening, what is going on in our current government is not constitutional and it's not right. It's it's important to remember on the human level, obviously the legal level, but just we have to remember as humans that it's it's not right and we need to support our community and our fellow people who are here to just work and live their lives and are being treated as if they're not even human, as if they're scum. So I implore you to please continue fighting and to remember all the people that all the other families not just us but every family that is

going through this because there's too many too many one no family should go through what our family has gone through and I want to support these families so that this doesn't happen anymore. Thank you for so much for your time.

Hi everybody. Laura Sanders from Dexter Township. I don't have any planned comments tonight because I'm here to represent Romero Martinez, who's my spouse, who is out with his immigrant community. Most of the men, many of the men in our immigrant community are out taking the trees off of people's houses and out of their uh driveways and their um yards. and he wanted to come tonight to express and represent to some degree his community and say to you, thank you for being brave and passing this ICE free zone resolution as it's being called. He wants you to stand tough and strong and don't flinch and hang in there. And we are so we know you're going to. We are grateful. I am grateful to live in Washington County and I am grateful for this board that has stood in such solidarity unanimously on behalf of our immigrant community. And you just heard from these two young people whose parent is suffering in this these sickening detention centers. So hang tough, stay strong, and just thank you.

Hello everyone. My name is Rich Staller Schul. I'm a 28-year resident of Ann Arbor and County, and I'm here to thank the board of commissioners for your support for immigrant rights and urge you to continue to stay strong. Um, this is not just a legal issue, this lawsuit by the Trump administration. This is a human issue. Um, in the short time since we've been under the reign of Trump 2.0, 47 human beings have been killed by ICE. One every three days. This is outrageous. This is unacceptable. Contrary to the lies that we're being told from Washington, these are not dangerous criminals. These are hardworking people doing exactly what any of us would do, trying to put food on the table of our families, make sure that people are safe and protected from dangerous circumstances that they're fleeing from. So that's the reality that we're up against. Uh there is of course a legal dimension to this. The Trump administration has been using lawfare, legal bullying, um, quite aggressively. They have been involved in 600 lawsuits already and lost 70% of them even with Trump appointed judges, I should say. Um, and uh, so there is certainly a possibility to hang on to what still exists of the rule of law and constitutional protections. uh we need to preserve that for all of us, for our immigrant friends and neighbors, for everyone in this county and in this country. Uh so once again, I would like to thank the commissioners and uh encourage you to do the right thing. Someday we will be asked, what did you do when ICE was launching their wave of terror and when

a lawless administration was recklessly violating people's rights, arming and terrorizing the population? Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Jane Doe. I'm longtime resident of Ipsani and I hear I'm also thank you for all that you continue to do.

Thank you. Okay, I'm going to try that again. Um, my name is Jane Doe. I'm a longtime resident of Ipsellani and I'm here to express my gratitude and piggyback on all the other uh messages of thanks for what you all have done as a collective to help uh many friends of mine and the county community as a whole. Um, and I'm also here to bring messages from those in the community who don't feel like they can come and do that themselves. Um, but they say, I mean, I was near a phone call where someone was talking the other day to their mom in Central America and they were explaining what had happened. the news had just come out and we were talking about it and they were telling their family back home, I know I couldn't live the same way I do in Washington County and other counties around Michigan and look at what is happening

to the people who are protecting our community. So it is not lost on the people in the community. They a lot of people do know what's going on and really appreciate that. And a couple people had said to me, can you go and please, you know, convey that message of gratitude and thanks because we don't feel like, you know, it's safe to even necessarily drive from Ipsy Day and Arbor and do that, but people want to make sure that you know that you are making an impact in ways that they they see and hope that you continue to do that as a collective and all the ways that you have done and hopefully continue to do in the midst of everything that is happening to you as a collected and other leaders in Washington County. So, thank you very much on behalf of the people that I know. Um I've lost many friends over the years. Um I've lost three friends in the last week or two weeks um to the kidnappings that are going on daily and I know it is in regards to what is going on as a collective for Washington County. It's not lost on anybody. We know that there's the connection. So, thank you for all the brave work that you do and please continue to fight for all the human rights that we need. Thank you. Thank you. Jeremy Haley, Ipsy Township. It was nice to see you all Monday evening out of this kind of setting and the Morris Lawrence building community college. Spent quite a few hours in that building with Johnny and with other people in the music class playing guitar and performing. It's been awesome. Uh but it was nice to be able to see all come out and hopefully be able to do more events at WCC there. It's a great place. Uh, it's been said that some of

you work for U of M and being on the county board of commissioners, eventually you're going to have to take some votes that's involved U of M. Now, I ask you, it's been said that also that you would abstain because you have a conflict or financial gain or whatnot. I'd say you don't unless you say working for them is your financial gain because you are employed by them. That's not true. could have to be another type of financial gain. So be nice if you could actually vote because you know as I told you once I went to WCC talked to President Wetworth there presented evidence for the school was overpaying on the unofficial spend it or lose it policy. He took actions with the dean at that time to pull my grant. And so I lost my job, was fired at WCC. And if that succumbs to you, it happens, I tell the public. But at least I was able to hold my head high, have my honor integrity, and be able to put my head on my pillow and be able to sleep that night knowing that I did the right thing. Uh the transformational brownfields, those that's just a figure of speech that is basically a lie. They're basically plain clean property main within fancy name to capture taxes to help the developer build more affordable homes. I kind of akin it to you can take a pig and put makeup on it, but it's still a pig with makeup pretty much. It's a lie. And when you're selling it and you have Nathan who's sitting out there coming up here defending it, it's I think it's an

embarrassment to him and the Brownfield Authority having them it them involved in such action because it's a lie. Those are clean properties. Nothing's wrong with them. No chemical. It's just plain for tax capture purposes. Most or any people when they hear transformational brownfield, they think some kind of chemical spill and it had to be cleaned up and something, it's a lie. Please stop it and not do any more transformational brown fields. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Kevin Beller and I'm a resident of this county. um also an employee of this organization. I reside in uh Chelsea, Michigan. Um first I wanted to acknowledge the work that went into the county's bsentennial event. That was pretty cool. I watched it. Um I hope it gets blasted to the rest of the employees in the county because I don't know if enough people heard about it. Um judging by my co-workers. Um I thoroughly enjoyed the video on the past stewards and inhabitants of this land we now call home. This type of history lesson is right up my alley and lines up with my job more than you would think. I agree with Mr. Dill. This board is the engine that drives this organization. Thank you to all for the work that you guys do and leading us into and leading us leading our community. You are helping us all cruise through very tough times right now and wanted to acknowledge that your efforts and great leadership are noticed and I thank you guys. What really brings me here is the work from home policy that is on tonight's agenda. I wanted to assuming it is that it's still there. Um I wanted to encourage at this board to ask a few more clarifying questions and consider some of these thoughts. Is this policy equitable to all employees? Life must be nice when you can stay bundled up at home and not commute to work on those snowy mornings while a lot of us hit the slick roads hoping to follow a snow plow carving a path to work. Life must be extra nice these days when you can reduce your commuting days to two or three, especially at $4 a gallon. Must be extra nice when you're able to commute to work in a county provided vehicle for your two to three days in the office. A large portion of the employees in this organization don't have the benefit of being able to of being home to let a contractor in your house so that they can fix your furnace. While some of those that do get to work from home get to work from home while doing that. A large portion of employees in this organization don't have the advantage of working from home and keeping an eye on their kids who are also home because of a snow day. These employees are forced to take PTO if they need to be home for those reasons just like everybody used to before co. These times have changed and we need to acknowledge that life is different now. We need to think differently on these policies. We acknowledge those frontline

workers, those who needed to be at work and in person back then during those co years. Why not now? I'm not trying to advocate for just myself and my co-workers. Trust me, I love my job. I love my office in the woods and the natural air stewardship supervisor in the county parks. I don't I want to work there because I don't work in an office. I'm talking about other employees of county, too. Your sheriff's out patrolling the roads. Your mental health and public workers making house calls. Your drain inspectors and technicians who are probably still out there right now cleaning off up after last night's storms. Maybe this organization gives those workers a few more hours of PTO to help them out on those tough days. Maybe you can throw those those bone those workers a bone with a fuel stipen to help them with long commutes. Maybe we could just even acknowledge these folks in some other form. A tip of the hat, a thank you goes a long way. I appreciate your time. Good night.

Thank you.

Anyone else in the room for public comments? Okay, Tabitha, anybody online for public comment? Yes, chair. We've got a few people online. All right. First up, we have Rhonda McIll. Rhonda, you said Tabitha. Yeah. Okay. All right. Uh Rhonda, go ahead. Hello everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you.

Wonderful. So, good evening chair and commissioners. I'm representing a group of Eastern Washington County residents who come before you today representing the voices of many residents across Eastern Washington County who have been patient, engaged, and hopeful regarding the long promised Eastern Washington County Community and Recreation Center. I love the signs of enthusiasm for keeping ice out of our community, but we have other issues that warrant the same level of of enthusiasm and more. Equity is still a stretch for so many of us. Um, more than a lot of us even realize and unfortunately I would be there in person. However, many of us are dealing with the impacts of last night's storms. So, please forgive um the group of us um in the eastern western county area that can't be there with you all physically tonight. So, for more than three years, our community has heard the commitments um about the project for the recreation center and the commitments that generated excitement, trust, and expectations. The residents have showed up. We've supported the vision. Um, we believed in the promise of a space that would serve our families, youth, and seniors for a broader community. And yet today, we're still waiting. There has been no visible progress on the construction. The costs have obviously risen. The timelines remain unclear, and the confidence of the very residents who have supported this effort are beginning to erode. So, let me be clear. This is not simply about a building. This is about equity, investment, and followthrough on the eastern Washington County side of uh eastern Washington side of the county. It's about ensuring our residents receive the same level of attention, urgency, and delivery as other parts of the county. The people want this center. The people need this center. And we were

told that funding was in place. So today, we are asking respectfully but a firmly for accountability and transparency. So, we are asking for clear updated timelines for this project, honesty and communication about delays or challenges, regular public progress and updates, reassurances that this progress is moving forward, not just in words, but also in action. Our residents deserve more than promises. They deserve progress. And at this point, the perception in this community is that this project risks becoming just another plan that never materializes. That perception must be addressed, not with more discussion, but with viable, measurable movement. County has an obligation to its residents to deliver on what was promised. We are asking that you reaffirm the commitment today and demonstrate through action that Eastern Washington County remains a priority and not an ask of um additional expense of our residents. We always are asked to flip the bill. Yes,

I'm sorry. That's fine. Oh, I'm almost done. Just two seconds. Um, but we just we just appreciate that you all are um you know looking at different funding and we just ask for you to just take into consideration in consideration your responsibility to this community and we thank you. Thank you. Just a reminder, three minutes please. I hate interrupting you and and saying that so please try your best to keep to those three minutes. Tabitha, anyone else online for public comment? Yes, chair. Next, we have Ricky Jefferson. Ricky Jefferson, welcome.

Hey, good evening, chair, and good evening, commissioners, administrator. So yeah, I just want to reaffirm my commitment that my community is looking forward to more work to be done at the site for the Eastern County Rec Community Center and all the funding that uh can be used there uh through whether it's the rec recreation department or the county commissioners or bonds. other type of funings is also available uh that I know of. I'm just hoping that uh this maintains uh currently as it is uh and as it has been for since 2011 a priority uh to build this facility as quick as possible. It started out as a $10 million project then. Now it's moved up to 49 million. I think something needs to be done before it moves up to 80 million. Uh, one of the things that um has always been u priority of mine is to make sure that I keep the promise of equity within the the county. And I know that this board has also sided with that as a group uh since 22 uh when we since 2018. So just continue to do what you're doing as far as helping these other issues. I mean that those those people have spoken well about their concerns and they definitely need to be dealt with. But our children are suffering with reading and and Michigan children are suffering with reading and and suffering with violence and and going to be incarcerated. Those type of things uh can be diverted by having the summer camps available and uh all type of fitness classes and things like that for youth and for our seniors and adults. We just need a place to go to. I've watched the disinvestment of those type of venues in the eastern

county ever since the 70s. You know, there's no longer a boy club. There's no longer uh organized uh events for for people to go to as as a child. So, we need to have some type of uh income gap filler that will help our children understand those type of things. And you could have courses like that at this building. So, thank you for what you put on your agenda today and what's coming forward. We're looking forward to moving this along as poss as fast as possible. And as said earlier, we'd like to have some type of briefings from our commissioners in this in this portion of the county. But thanks again, commissioners, for all that you do and uh keep up the good work, bud.

Thank you, Tabitha. No one else online, chair. Okay. Any other public comments? County from my gun. Yeah, there you go.

I lived in Washington County for 58 years and I want to talk to you a bit about the Arbor South uh project. It might have a a title on this play. It's called How do you buy a third of a billion dollar tax break? Because that's really what is going on here. The owners of the property for uh Arbor South own about 20 acres of property. Uh 19 of those have only been used for offices and parking for the offices since they were farmland. No dirty factories, no pollution, nothing that's a blight on that property. But a few years ago, they went and bought the gas station on the corner of State and Eisenhower for $4.7 million. Now, why would you buy a 3/4 of an acre property at least three times uh its market value and maybe it has pollution on it? Well, they didn't buy it in spite of the pollution. They bought it because of the pollution so that they could be here tonight and using that to try to get a $300 and some million dollar tax break. That's how we get here. And there is a lot of question about whether there's any pollution on that property anymore. There was a leak from an underground storage tank 23 years ago and no other polluting events since then. The site was monitored by environmental engineers from 2003 to 2009 doing in the ground testing. And finally, the pollution levels went were consistent except for one measure to allow even residential use. And since it wasn't going to be used for residential use, uh they stopped any further work and the property was used uh for the gas station which operated until about 6 months ago when the developers shut it

down. It was working. It would been in business. The buildings were replaced 10 years ago as were the underground storage tanks. So is there still pollution there? Well, you might think that somebody would be happy to find their property isn't polluted. No. If it isn't polluted, they won't have a reason, one of the main reasons for getting a brownfield treatment. Now, we can guess about what's there, but no testing has been done since 2009. Now, there's a fairly simple solution to this. um the uh Eagle brand of Eagle who um oversees the Brownfield program. They have a program that they will provide a free phase 2 assessment, which means going into the ground doing testing to figure out whether there's actually any pollution there. Free. All they want is they want the county and the developer to both ask for it. Now, I would think that the developers would like to know whether their property is polluted or not. Well, no, they don't really because they're banking on it being polluted, but that doesn't seem to be the way this should proceed. And I suggest that one of the things that is done before you approve this brownfield is find out whether it's really brown. And all you have to do, I'll give you the staff member's name at Eagle, call them up and say you'd like to get that assessment. Now, I would assume that the developers, Mr. Hman, would want to participate that. Doesn't he want to know what's on that property before this project goes through and there's this huge tax break? I don't know. I'm not sure he would do, but I would think you would say, folks, we don't want to vote on this until we know whether there's actually a pollution problem in that property, which you're using to get to Brownfield. So, I urge you to do that. uh vote no or postpone a second reading until there's

agreement to go get that assessment for nothing. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other public comment? Okay. Oh, I see one more. Okay,

I'll be quick. Hi, my name is Sarah. I'm here representing Lodai Township to spread awareness about a proposed development of 100 acres of land that will clear cut 3,500 trees, 450 landmark trees, and 52 trees that are habitat for endangered bats. The project, in addition to clear cutting the 3,500 trees, will destroy wetlands and dump the equivalent of three tanker truckloads of sewage into the Rouse Drain, Selen River, River Raisin, and ultimately Lake Erie. The developer who has a onestar rating with the Better Business Bureau has a track record of environmental violations, flood water management violations, and OSHA violations. The development proposes 107 million homes, houses that there is no need for and do not provide any community benefits. Loi is afraid of being sued. Eagle is afraid of being sued. I ask the commission, please do what you can and let your constituents know what we can do to help protect our communities. Please reach out to livableloai.org if you care to get involved. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, at this time in the evening, I'll move to Commissioner followup. I've already seen Commissioner Labar and Commissioner Hajj, and I'll continue watching to see if anybody else would like to respond. Commissioner Labar.

Thanks, Chair. I'll be uh brief. I just want to thank the folks who came out uh tonight to encourage us to stay strong on the ice issue. Um, regardless, you know, uh, we're in a unique moment. We've got a president that shares interesting images on the internet of doctors and so forth this week. And, um, we don't know where tomorrow will take us, but what I genuinely and sincerely mean is this. as somebody who was born in Ann Arbor, who grew up here, who was raised here, who chose to live here, and who's proud to raise his kids here with his wife. Part of that is because it's a community with people like you who have our back at a point of moral clarity, and we will let the legality and the legal questions play out. But the one thing I draw assurance from and that I think the other eight commissioners do and I think everybody in this organization is at least it's a clarifying time between what is right and what is wrong and knowing that you have our back when we stand for what is right against what is wrong is really powerful just as a human being that has to consider these things in more just this role or that but rather the totality of my life. So you having my back and our back really means a lot and I thank you for it. Thanks, Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Labar. I know that image of the doctor looks an awful lot like the doctors I work with at the hospital every day. New style. The new style. It's cutting edge. Um, Commissioner Hodgej.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to everyone that came out to give public comment. I anticipated we were going to have a wide range of public comments and we did. I not going to respond to every topic because I think some of my colleagues will respond uh particularly the for the ones that are in their district like the tree situation. Uh but I am glad to continue to hear about the ongoing challenges related to the trees and I am there was a a mention of exploring a tree preservation policy. I'd be interested in in seeing what our authority is around that because I think there's some utility in considering it. Uh thank you to everyone that is here to support the board and our as was said our ongoing uh battle against ICE. I I think you can see the commitment among the entirety of the board around that. That's why we continue to find ourselves in these situations with the federal government. I I think it's it's helpful for us to hear that there's support within the community, but I think it's also helpful for others to see that there is this kind of support because generally most of the emails or public comments we get are things that we're doing wrong that people don't like. So from time to time it is nice to hear that you know you do like something that we're doing. So thank you for that. Yeah. All right. Well, yeah. Wait the signs. Great. Uh and then only other one I'll respond to right now is about the um East Side Community Recreation Center. We have two resolutions on the agenda today. One of them, someone asked that we reaffirm our commitment to it. We literally have a resolution that says reaffirming our commitment to it. Uh so stay tuned for that. And I think we could get an additional update uh about Yeah, I'm getting a nod. So there will be an update. So stay tuned in this meeting to learn more about that. And then you might have missed the big one on here about bonding for $18 million to ensure that we have the funding for the project to succeed. So, I don't think it's often that people call in and ask for a thing and then it happens to be on the agenda in the same meeting, but we're going to be voting on $18 million and reaffirming our commitment. So, I think the we'll see how it goes, but I

am confident that the board continues to be very engaged and wants to ensure that this project is a is a success. It takes many Okay, great. Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll take it. Thank you.

I kind of I like this uh applause thing while we're talking. I It's pretty it's nice. Okay. Uh it's a it's about it's a it's a huge project and it is not often that we bond for a project and that's what we're going to be doing here. And I if that doesn't demonstrate our commitment to making sure it's a success, I'm not quite sure what else could because that's a large sum of money that we're going to use our AAA bond rating for uh assuming the vote passes, which I'm confident it will. But thank you for your interest in the project and uh and seeing that the eastern part of the county thrives and has access to resources that are going to change lives. Uh, I know the board is committed to that as well and I will stop there. Thank you. Thank you. Any other commissioners with response? Commissioner Robbie Beaman Light.

Go ahead, Robbie Beam Light.

Thank you, Chair. Uh, I want to thank everyone for coming out tonight. This was a really good turnout uh of folks. Um, and the words that you shared with this board, I think, were very powerful. um especially on the issue of you know what's going on with uh you know our ICE resolution and the federal lawsuit that's uh come down on this uh county. Um our community is strong because of things like this. When we came together and passed this resolution as a board, we knew that we were standing in an area that could lead us to this situation. But I think it was the right thing to do from the beginning. And I want to say that um there are people that have reached out to me from across the state, other elected officials, local elected officials that have said, "I want to look at your policy and I want to do what county did in in my hometown." Uh and I think that we have become an example for the rest of the state, for the rest of the region in terms of good policies that can be drafted uh that can be bold that aren't um taking half measures um like some other areas municipalities have done. Taking half measures that don't go all the way to actually protecting our immigrant communities like county did. We took that bold step here. We went all the way and we importantly worked with all of you, the community, to draft this resolution. This was a work of collaboration, not a work of any one person that got into a room and decided to concoct a resolution by themselves. This was a collaborative process that engaged the community in finally what we came up with and what we passed here at this board. And uh to be honest with you, this lawsuit for me is a badge of honor. Uh, it is not something that I'm shying away from. The Trump administration is a fascist

organization. ICE is a fascist institution. And when we when we see things like this, like this lawsuit, to me, it is affirmation that what we did here in Washington County was effective, what was right, uh, and was on the right side of history. Um, they have me quoted in their in their uh in their documents in their lawsuit as saying something to the effect of when we uh uh when the Nazis come to our community, we have to stand up and face them. Uh, and it says that I allegedly said that. I I did say that. Um, so no allegation necessary. I did say that and I still believe that. Uh, and that we should as a community stand up to face the Nazis when they come here. and and the ICE ICE is a Nazi fascist organization that is working for a Nazi fascist government at the federal level. I'm sure this will all show up in the lawsuit as well be but to be honest with you if if I'm going to get in trouble for saying the truth, it's worth getting in trouble for. If I'm going to be taken to court because we're standing up for our immigrant community, it's worth getting taken to court for. I think what we're doing here is absolutely right. We have to stay the course. I think my colleagues are all on the same page. Uh we have to stay the course because what we did was absolutely on the right side of history and I'm so glad I think it was Chuck that said it. When we look back when I'm 50, 60, 70 years old and I look back on this time in my life, I'm going to hopefully by then we will have passed this dark period in our country and we will be in better times. Uh hopefully by the grace of all of us working together to make that happen. We will be in better times and we'll be able to look back at this moment and think to ourselves, what did we do? And the people in this room can say we came, we showed up, we fought, we pushed back. The people on this board can say we

stood together and passed this resolution. I can say that I was part of that and that is something that I'm proud of. It's something that I can tell my kid proudly uh when he's I don't can't do the math on how old he would be then, but he'll be an adult and I will be able to tell him proudly that his father stood on the right side of history against this fascist regime and for the immigrant community, for the people of our community. This is about humanity. It's about standing up for what's right. And when we look at uh the children of Miguel and I'm so proud that we were all able to get a letter together, I called Tabitha. Tabitha got that letter drafted up, sent to all of us. We signed it. Every single commissioner signed it uh to support Miguel and his family uh you know in these difficult times. When I see those uh kids standing at our podium talking about what their father uh is going through in this difficult time just trying to go to work. We all, you know, I I went to work this morning and to think I'm thinking about work. I'm thinking about the job ahead of me. I'm thinking about the people that I'm showing up to help. I can't imagine being stopped, being pulled over, being cornered, and being detained never to see my kid again. That's the in the sheer inhumanity of that. Regardless, the the law in this case, put the law aside. Just think of the sheer inhumanity of what is happening to this family. And so when we are standing I I wish I wish that county could do more than pass the resolution that we passed. We passed the best resolution in the state. It's maybe the best resolution in the Midwest, but we passed a really good resolution. I wish we could do more. I wish we could pass an even stronger resolution that protected even more people in our in our county. Washna County should be from every one of its four corners an absolutely safe zone where immigrants feel that they can be at home, that they can go to work and and do the good work of

our community. When Laura said that uh our immigrant uh neighbors are out clearing trees right now from the storm, I mean, that hit me pretty hard because it's like we got devastated by this tornado last night. And uh and it came through our community. And who's stepping up to help, you know, clear the rubble, clear the damage? It's the same people that ICE is trying to lock up. I mean, that's messed up. They're showing up for our community. They're helping our neighbors. People's cars got smashed. Their roofs got damaged. They're out there uh chainsawing those trees chipping them up, fixing our community up. And we're going to lock them up. So, this is where we stand together. This is where we where we turn and face the Nazis that are coming in our community that are taking our neighbors away. And you all showing up here today and saying we're we stand with you as the board of commissioners. We are your community. We stand with you. That's powerful. So, thank you all for being here today. We appreciate your support and we stand with you as much as you stand with us.

Thank you, Commissioner Robbie. I now have Bean Light Sanders. Mr. Bean, thank you, Chair. Thank you, everyone, um, for coming out this evening. Your support is welcomed, needed. Um, I think of a quote by an author who's fallen out of favor. Uh, but the quote still resonates with me, which is that dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right.

That's that's where we are. It's going to continue into that space. And so we mean it when we say thank you for being here and thank you for supporting us in these decisions. Um thank you for coming out and speaking about the trees and the bees. My last name is Bean and I love the bees obviously. Um, so I I I do truly appreciate that and also echo uh Commissioner Hajj on a tree resolution would be very excited to bring something like that forward. Um, in terms of of a piece that's impacting locally, uh, the Loai Township development, I've actually been following this since 2020 when there was some action required of of the board uh, to contest some pieces through EGO for this development. Uh, it's gone through many evolutions since that time. Same land, different people, different houses, things they want to put um on this land. And truly the townships are the governing body that that selects what will be in this space and the law is set up that way as they are closest to you, they are closest to the residents, they're closest to the land. Um, and so they will make that decision going forward. Unfortunately, there are some giants across this county that are impacting townships and trying to industrialize or take away our farmland and and our forestry. So, I would encourage all of you to connect with your local leaders as well as us at the county level. Um, and we will do our job to be good stewards and good partners um with with the townships. But I my role is never to try to absurb um the powers

within the townships and and the leadership there. So I just wanted to be clear. I do support the trees and the bees. Um but I also support our our local units of government and the processes that that they need to work through. But thank you again. Truly appreciate your support tonight.

Thank you, Commissioner. I now have light standers and then Machioski Commissioner Light. I would like to thank everyone who came to support um and make sure that um you express that you stand with us, behind us, next to us, in front of us and it is greatly appreciated. Um and I just want to say that um I'm still never scared. So, you know, I don't want you all to be either. So, we'll move through this and we'll get through what we've um been doing and we'll just continue to move forward and make sure that we stand tall. Um we were discussing uh the Eastern um Recre and Community Center and we hear bonding. Brady, could you just please explain that a snippet of the bonding process because I think some of our residents don't understand that that's not a bad thing. It's it's kind it's a good thing and we want this project to go through. But just if you could please

I'm actually going to look to our uh CFO Tina um on that one. So bonding is borrowing or uh in this case would be capital um construction bonds. What would you like to know commissioner? Like okay can I just piggyback on that? So yes it is borrowing but for those constituents that have reached out to me even though it's not my district they want to know are they paying more? What does that look like? So, we're borrowing, but how do we pay that money back? And does that affect their property taxes? That's what they're concerned about.

Fair question. So, we have a presentation in a little while um that we will get into the timeline for the borrowing, but usually with borrowing, there is interest payments um and there has to be an identified funding source to pay off the debt service. Um so, that could come from a different thing. Sometimes it comes from a very specific millillage. For instance, when we um did the metro dispatch expansion, the public health uh I mean the mental health public safety um uh millillage paid a part of that construction project for that expansion. There we're still in in uh early conversations internally with collaboration between administration finance and parks on the sustained structural funding to cover the bond payment. And we're not sure the length of the debt service yet either. That is still in discussion as well.

That's it. Okay. Thanks, Commissioner Le. Commissioner Sanders. Um related to the the East Side Community um rec center. Um, I have been in absolute terror about it again, even though it's not my district, but I um spent um probably a couple of decades uh serving landlord tenants um in that community and seeing um the needs of the community as well as having um people that were close to me. actually be responsible for the public safety in that community. And I am 10 toes down. Um, Megan has been a very good sport with me. Um, but I have dragged her everywhere. Um, and I continue to put pressure on the parks and recrecks, our um, administrative staff to make sure that that is not a lost opportunity and that we keep our promise to that community. They are untrusting of us because of the history of not being consistent, equitable, and following through on promises. And so I am glad to see that we are making progress. I want to remind um especially the east side residents that um we are getting updates on that center at every board meeting. It is it is a part of our agenda and that is because we want to make sure that you know what is going on. You are always welcome to reach out and ask us any questions. I believe I don't want to steal Megan's thunder, but I think she's

going to talk about um the ability to go on to Parks and Rex website and get um updated information. Um, but the last sort of exciting thing that I'd like to say about that is that this is the first opportunity for our resiliency office to actually be able to execute the county's plan for sustainability in that building. So, I don't want to say it's going to be a state-of-the-art, but it's going to be dog on close. And I think that that is something for us to be proud of because the east side has been neglected for far too long and they deserve the best that we offer to all other areas of this county and they pay the same tax dollars that everybody else pays. And so I hope that this is maybe actually the start of us trying to look at how do we repurpose dollars that we have primarily put into public safety with them taking up somewhere close to 70% of our general budget. That's a huge amount of money. And I think we should start to look at how do we over time look at putting that money upfront from birth forward instead of after people get to the point where by circumstance for the most part they are forced to do things like break the law that they shouldn't have to do because we haven't put in appropriate amounts of resources. to support those families and more importantly the children. So, I'm going to tell you right now, it's important

enough to me that unless my constituents in District 4 tell me to sit down, I'm going to keep causing hell about it until every brick is built. They deserve it. They earn it. And enough of the delay, delay, delay. So, I just wanted to say that and let people know that they can reach us. They can reach us. We do answer. We have staff that do answer. So, if you have questions, please ask us. Um related to um the orange people leader. Um, I am one of the people that did not really I I it caused me a bit of heartburn when we had certain people with the bullhorns saying what we were not going to tolerate from ICE. And the reason that I had concern about that is that I felt that it was going to make us a target. What I asked in exchange for that is that we attempt to reach out to all of our key community stakeholders and let them know what the stance of the board was without inviting additional attention. If that makes sense. I don't know if it would have been effective, but it would have been a way for us to let the communities know we stand with you and we are standing up for you, but you don't always want the enemy to know what you're doing. So, that's an aside. It's it's done. Um, I don't want to say I'm taking it as a badge of honor that little Os is now being targeted by big bully them,

but whatever. So, start passing the hat. We might need bail money. Don't forget us if they come and get us, okay? But it is it is the decent and humane thing to do. Um, I actually had a lawn service individual who went to Home Depot with a family member and they took his uncle and they did not hear from his uncle for 60 days. They sent him back to his country of origin. I guess that's a good thing. They didn't ship him somewhere else that he didn't know. But none of us would be able to handle what that's like to get in your car and think that you're just running out to do an errand and never come back home. And the trauma of a child, going to school, and saying goodbye to their parent, thinking that they're going to see them at the end of the day, and they don't get to see them at the end of the day. and they're either too young or too powerless to understand what to do, how to fix it, and who takes care of those children. If we have not remembered what it looked like to have children in detention centers wrapped in foil as a blanket, my god, what is that?

And I want to be able to tuck my grandson in. But if I have to sit in jail, at least until you guys can bail us out, I will do that. And so I do thank you for coming out to let us know that you support us in that way and helping us make sure that Washington continues to be um that place where people feel like they are going to be safe and that they have electeds um that have the bravery and are not cowardice and don't say, "Well, it's not me, So, I don't care. So, I just wanted to share that with you. I'm sorry. You all know I don't normally cry unless I'm ready to fight, but I'm ready to fight. So, thank you very much for coming.

Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Machi.

Thank you, Chair. Um, I as well want to thank everybody and I went out tonight and appreciate the support. Um, I want to comment about the the Webers came in to talk about Workner Road. Um, I appreciate the fact that they took the time to come down here in person or it probably took them at least 45 minutes to get here from where they live in Silvin Township uh to come down and make their comment. Um and uh I go back to our working session, the meeting before uh this meeting and chair Scott um you pointed out when the road commission made their presentation about the need for more public engagement and more information. Uh and you know the Webers noted that um tonight about the work the road project uh and they're they're right. They the advocacy that was given by not only the people who live on Work the Road but other folks in in the Chelsea community and outside the Chelsea community um I think got the road commission's attention. Um I will give the road commission a little bit of credit. they they did open up for public comment um at various times in this process uh when they um I don't think we're planning to and that's a testament to the people who raised their voices about this project. Um and so I thank the Webers for being a key part of that that process as well and affecting change. uh when when you look at what's happening, they've gone and they've actually cut the trees down now, uh the ones that they said they were going to cut in the revised version of the plan. Um and so the the project is moving forward. Um but it is certainly a much scaled back

and different project u because of the the people who live there and um their engagement and advocacy on the issue. Um, so I again I commend the Webers for coming down tonight uh and uh and being here in person to make that comment. Um, and I will join in uh the chair's remarks earlier and uh so many remarks I've heard from people not just about the working road project but other projects. It's really important for the road commission to engage early on these projects to understand um what the community is thinking about the roads that they live on and travel every day. And um I think we we need to keep talking about that. We need to look at the tree policy. I know the chair is interested in looking at the tree policy. others have mentioned that tonight and taking those steps. So, um again, I thank the Webers for taking the time to come down. It was not easy for them to do.

Yeah. Uh and hopefully we can we can move forward on future projects, whether it's Bush Road or other projects that might happen with some more earlier engagement uh uh interaction with the community on things that are happening. elves. Uh, chair, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Rabbi.

I realized I didn't talk about trees and I just want to quickly talk about trees as well. Um, well, this is this is like a very personal issue to me and it's relevant to somebody in the audience today, but just want to tell you guys a quick story. Uh, Janine, my preschool teacher, is here. Uh, and when I was in preschool, we went and put our names on a bunch of trees that were slated to get cut down for a road that was going to be um put through next to the VA hospital. And uh when they came to clear cut the trees, they saw all of our name tags um on the trees and they ended up rerouting the road. Um and so that was Janine. Janine's in the audience. Give Janine a round of applause. There's like old newspaper articles of us like posing with the trees and stuff like that. So, we need to protect our trees in Washnach County and I think Lauren talked about it. It's not, you know, when we go and we cut down a bunch of trees and we replace them with a little tiny scrawny little trees. It's not the same thing. They don't sequester as much carbon, a lot of them die. Uh, and so oftentimes you'll see these big like development projects, they'll say, "Yeah, we're going to cut down 600 trees, but we're going to place it replace them with 12,000 trees." And that is meaningless because it is a lot of those trees will die. Um and they will not do the same good that the old uh you know trees that have been on these sites for a long time will do. And so um you know I just want to say on the idea of doing an ordinance. I don't know of any counties that have ever done a tree ordinance, but I do know that townships and communities, cities and townships can do tree ordinances. In fact, I remember when I was in the legislature uh lame duck 2018, there was a lobby firm that was going around shipping uh shopping a bill that would have superseded townships from being

able to regulate trees because Canton Township um had recently fined a developer, this was back in 2018, for going into the site and just cutting down a bunch of trees to make way for their development. And the township just sent them a bill. They were like, "Oh, you cut all these trees down. Cool. now you got to pay $300,000 because you cut all these trees down. And that was the Can Township Ordinance. You're not allowed to just go and cut trees down. And they did. And so they sent him a bill here. Now you got to pay this. And then they hired a lobby firm. They figured it was cheaper to hire a lobby firm, buy some legislators, get a bill passed than it was to pay the $300,000. They I don't think they got the bill passed if I remember correctly. So I'm pretty sure it's still allowed, you know, townships are still allowed to do this. So, at the very minimum, we could provide a model ordinance for our townships and cities um to do this kind of thing uh to make it illegal to, you know, just chop down trees uh willy-nilly like that. And, uh I think we should definitely do that. And then, of course, there's the authority that we have, uh, you know, over our own, you know, grounds and, uh, facilities. There's the, you know, relationship that we have with the road commission. I think the herbicide issue is also a very important one. the fact that there's herbicide being sprayed near people's homes. Um, these herbicides are carcinogenic. I have worked with these herbicides before professionally. They are carcinogenic. There's more and more research coming out about the carcinogenic nature of things like Roundup and these other, you know, herbicides that that were being talked about. And so, this is going to have a health impact on our community. Uh, and, you know, we need to stop doing this kind of stuff. There are other ways of treating brush uh you know with like the lawn mower arms um because if you're trying to create um you know visibility on the side of the road or whatever there are ways to deal with that. Um when it comes to things like the worker road I'm so sad to hear that the trees have already been cut down because that

was needless completely needless to cut those trees down. Commissioner Scott and I were questioning the road commission last meeting and it was evident from what they said. This isn't even about a road widening. This is just about a drainage ditch. They wanted to clear them out of the way for a drainage ditch. And like that is insulting because the trees would have, you know, sequestered water as well. And so now you've removed the trees that are, you know, gonna able to help soak up some of the water with the goal of just draining the water off site as quickly as possible, putting it in the storm drain, putting it in the creek, putting it in the river, putting it in the lake, and just getting the water out, causing, you know, uh, erosion, causing sedimentation issues, causing uh, all kinds of damage to our environment. And and then we wonder why we have flooding events like what we're having in Northern Michigan. We wonder why we're having, you know, accelerated climate change. Well, this is the result of our decisions and, oh, it's just one tree here, one tree there. It's one uh row of trees. It's one road. It's not a big deal. Accept it here, accept it there. It's death by a million cuts and we have to stop it. Um, and so I'm I'm all in for doing a tree ordinance. Whatever we can do, we should explore. And we need to the road commission needs to get their act together and stop doing what they're doing. It's not acceptable. They need to stop it. So, thank you for your advocacy for those that have come out to advocate for the trees. We need those voices now more than ever.

Thank you, Commissioner Robbie. Um the only there's only one commissioner hasn't commented who's not in the room, so I'm going to assume I'm okay to go on with um my response. Um first of all, thank you to everybody for coming out. One of the first things that I noticed was that there was a real solidarity between people coming to talk about the trees and people coming to to support immigrants who were both holding each other's signs and working together. Like that is that's the community that I love and that's why I've chosen to make a life here in county. Tonight somebody asked me like why do you live there? and like this this is this is why I live here because of this type of solidarity. Um I am exc I'm not going to say too much about East Side Rec Center other than I think that everybody will enjoy the presentation that we have tonight. um the discussion about bonding that we will have and the fact that um again as Commissioner Sanders noted, we have every week at our board meetings an update from the county administrator. Um and this came up in a a meeting with the leadership team where I said, "Let's make this as a standing item on our agenda to make sure the community stays involved." I hear people saying clearly we need to do more. So, I'm happy this was a good first start. And I think that what we're going to hear tonight is exciting. The um the incredible bravery um that that happened tonight from Miguel's children. I can't even imagine what it took to stand up in this public meeting and say what they did. All of you are brave for being here, but imagine that. I see you all nodding and then I'm going to cry. And so a few

times tonight I felt like I was going to cry because I the care and support for everybody being here to take care of their community is really sort of um incredible what I have to say about that and the lawsuit. Um there's a quote I don't know how many of you are familiar with Primol Levy. Anybody? I see some more nods. uh Primo Levy was an Italian Jew who was incarcerated in Awitz and he has a lot of writing about that time and one of the things he says is he says monsters exist but they're too few in number to be dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions. And what I see in this room are the people who are asking questions and who are acting. When the lawsuit came up, um I first I was like, "Oh god, here we go." And then I did have that moment of pride where I thought, "We are all in the history books for people who are standing up against this and who are not sitting back." Um trees I think are connected to this. Um, I think that I've been thinking about this tree ordinance and what we can do. I think we might be limited on what we can do as a countywide, but there are townships. I think we can help guide them. I'm interested in continuing to work on creating a policy. I think it will be helpful to work with the road commission and hopefully they'll work with us on creating something. And I think also getting the water resources uh commissioner involved and our environmental sustainability um is important too because um this is definitely something we need to do. I

think we can um require tree plans and that we can think about um how we think about insight plans at the county and the road commission is a part of the county. So thinking about how we can create those. I have looked before there's a little bit different system of governance but I have cited the Charleston County tree ordinance plan and I think that we can use that as a starting point. I will also as I'm talking about people's quotes I think about a quote from Winston Churchill also where he said fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees to make pulp for those bloody newspapers and calling it civilization. That's how I feel about thinking about cutting down trees to make the road more wide for people to go down. It's this that's not civilization. That that is to for for a drain to widen it for some reason. That is not civilization. And so be assured that I think you've heard from everybody here on this board that we are interested in making sure we take care of those things as well. Everybody stay safe tonight. Is are there more storms coming? I've seen I've Yes. Okay. All right. So, so if you're here and you came out, um nobody's offended if you leave and want to go home before weather hits, but if you want to stay with us, we love that you're here. So, thank you. Um I'll move on with liaison reports. Any commissioners with liaison reports? Commissioner Labar.

Thanks, Chair. Uh briefly, continuing of care's got his next meeting coming up uh next week. Um, unfortunately there was a meeting with HUD and Southeast Michigan local housing agencies. Um the upshot of that, this took place the last week in March, is that uh at the HUD staff level, they made clear that HUD is not planning to uh sort of willfully abide by the most recent uh legislation in Congress as it addressed the uh reduction in what we could spend on permanent support of housing. Um I don't know to what degree they understand that would violate the constitution and so forth, but I think it is worth noting at this table that if HUD is going to sloww walk what Congress has now put back in place, which isn't enough for the problem anyway. Um you know, this remains a a big problem and one that is not going to go away. And it should be noted in his 27 budget presentation. Um the president is at least consistent in sort of a war on homeless uh and zeroed out the COC program funding transitioning it all to transitional funding.

Uh so we have uh like many other issues uh I think a long-term challenge on our hands and one that uh I I think unfortunately we're going to have to continue to deal with. So that's that's my liaison report from COC. Thank you. An important liaison report. Thanks, Commissioner. Any other liaison reports? Commissioner Machias.

Thanks, Chair. Um, board of public works met this morning and uh there was a report on the first county cleanup today that happened in Pittsfield Township. Uh what was it about uh 10 days ago? Uh there were 450 participants at that clean first cleanup day. Um which is a little bit higher than they've been experiencing. So, um the next cleanup day is June 27th in Northfield Township. Uh and as a reminder, you have to pre-register for these. Um so, if you're interested in participating in that, you can go online county's website and pre-register for that. Uh on the materials management planning committee, there is a uh public hearing on April 28th in the evening. I don't remember the exact time. also available on the website. Uh and uh the materials management planning committee will be reviewing the goals um that have uh in draft form and tenative form have been laid out um uh at that public hearing. So that process continues to uh move forward as well. Thank you.

Thank you. The pictures of all the tires from the cleanup day always thrill me. Any other liaison reports? Okay. Um, we'll move on to a report from the county administrator. We do have administrator D on Zoom. Um, and then I think that our director of operations, Brady Peek, will be doing some updating as well, but I'm just going to move it to Brady to introduce this section of the meeting. Uh, thank you, Chair. I will turn it over to administrator Dill for uh, we'll take it a little out of order. Uh, we'll start with number two. Yes. Okay. Good evening, chair, commissioners. Can you hear me?

You can. Uh, just a couple of things real quick. I wanted to start with the East Side Rec Center. Uh, as some of you know, I I don't want to get out in front of the two presentations that you'll hear this evening, but we are looking at internal sources to potentially service the debt. Obviously, all of those recommendations would come back to this body. Uh but wanted you all to know and perhaps when you're out uh in community, let our community partners know that we are looking for ways to service the debt with our current funding funding framework. To the county response team from last night, thank you. Brady probably will say more about this. Uh Brady woke me from my slumber at at uh 4 around 4:15 this morning. And uh I just want to say to the county commissioners, the team internally, they jumped in and started responding to the weather immediately. So kudos to all of you. And then lastly, to those that served on our hiring committee, uh we have our new uh director of information technology in the room. I can't see him, but hopefully he is there. I just want to thank you all for your work. I think he produced a quality candidate and I look forward to him starting his tenure on Monday the 20th. So, thanks to you all. I'm going to sign off now. I'm late for an event. Uh, but just want to say again, thank you to all of you for the work that you do for our residents.

Thank you. I I see our new information technology director. I said, "Come on up. Come on up and talk to us." This is this is Richard Wilson, our new information technology director. and he fits right in because he is a snappy presser.

Well, thank you. Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Administrator Dill, for the the warm introduction. Um, thank you, commissioners, for allowing me to speak before you and meet you, some of you, um, before this evening started. Um, I'm excited about the opportunity to join. Um, I come from a long history of government IT life. Um, I come from Wayne County, um, which is, you know, right across the way from Washington. Um I'll have to make sure not to get the initials wrong um between the two WC's. Um but I was with Wayne County for 25 years. Um so I'm very experienced with um government technology which is a lot different um than the private sector. Um so I I look to get to know and each and every one of you um a lot clo more more closely as time goes by along with other department heads and get to understand the needs and the cadence by which operates and how the IT department um can be of service to the important work that you do and hearing all the speeches and the the things that took place in this meeting. You do a lot of important work and technology needs to be leveraged to allow you to do what you were called to do um as public servants. So um that is my introduction and I thank you again for this opportunity.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Okay, we will move on to uh number one on the agenda uh which is uh an update on the Eastern Washington Community and Recreation Center. And for that we have director Megan Bilio and Chief Deputy Director Greg Hullenberger from Parks and Recreation to get that report. Thank you. Hi guys.

Hello. Happy to be here today. Uh and really excited to be able to share some slides with you all. Um Brady, thank you for introducing Greg, but I did want to also definitely have a height differential. Right. Well, Greg Hoenberger, who is our new new chief deputy uh director with Washington County Parks, started uh September of last year. So, we've been working uh very collaboratively on this project. Um I really appreciated all of the comments in the response to public comment regarding um the East Washington Community Recreation Center project. you all have really been very supportive obviously both by helping us secure funding for the project but then also throughout this process asking for updates repeating those updates sharing updates with the community um so again we do do the um regular updates through the administrator um and then also have a website on the county parks and recreation um commission page that we will be updating uh after this meeting so what you're seeing here these renderings we want to make sure we share it with you all first and then get it online. So, this update will be shared widely. Uh, and again, at the end of this presentation with Greg and I, um, I really want to make sure Tina is going to be sharing some information about the bonding. Tina and Katherine have been really helpful as well as county administration team. There's, this is a team effort project. Uh, it's really taking all hands on this. So, I can't thank everybody, but I really do appreciate uh, team and Katherine's work tonight. So, um, do I have to hit a button? Oh, there we go. Okay. All right. So, I just wanted to, uh, frame us into the some of the milestones that we've accomplished already. I did share this a couple months ago, I think, when we talked, we've done a few more items, but want to let you know, um, even though there is not work happening on the site, there's a lot of work happening behind the scenes. Um, so community outreach and needs assessment is something that's been done. many people spoke to the fact

that they've attended a lot of meetings, shared their feedback, their dreams, their desires on what they'd like to see in this facility. Um so, so again, community outreach and needs assessment. Then last year we we had um let RFPs for both architectural engineering services and construction services for this project. Those are huge projects. Um so again went through a very public process. I know a couple commissioners sat in through that process um and heard us interview a number of different design teams and the construction teams that all were very interested in this project. So we have those secured and went into this year um you know just with our heads down and ready to go. Uh we've been doing up updated schematic designs. So you all remember and I think the last presentation we had in September um in Ipsani Township just near the site. We um looked at the revi the refined schematic design that Grow design put together. Um once Grow passed that along to Newman Smith who was our architect of record for this project, they had to do some refinement. Um so really like looking at knowing all of the details with the site. They made modifications. Um and you'll be seeing those here in just a second. Then we did some site plan and analysis. So doing traffic studies, looking at what is actually happening on site conditions, looking at storm water drainage. So understanding what we need to design for the site. Again, these are all the boring details that we're going through, but it's important because it informs the decision as we move forward. And then mechanical, electrical, and plumbing system evaluation. I can't think of a less fun topic to talk about with you all, but it's really exciting because as as Commissioner Sanders pointed out, this is one of the first times we're going to be creating and putting to use our resilient plan. Um, new construction building. I know we've done some work on the courthouse, but this is new construction from ground up. And so, uh, we have selected geothermal system, which is the lowest energy use system and the lowest carbon emission system that is possible for

construction. So, uh, only building here in the county system that will have a geothermal system, and we're really excited. It's going to do heat and cool the entire building, including the pool. Um, and then additionally, value engineering for budget alignment. The initial budget after the schematic design was much higher than what we're going to be talking about today. So, we had to go through, do some refinement, and do some modification from what you're going to see here in a second. So, uh, first floor floor plan. So, this is the exciting part. Um, so what you're looking at is a first floor. I don't know if there's a laser pointer on this. Pro I would probably blast Commissioner Scott in the eye with it.

Uh oh. Okay, here we go. So, this is the entrance. I just want to orient you here and then I'll stop trying to point here. But this is the entrance into the facility. Um, so as you come into the facility, you're entering into the lobby. If you take a right, you're going into the community center space. If you go straight, you're going into the fitness floor. and and the gym. And then to the left, it's the pool and the child watch area. So, um just again, the yellow area is all the community center space. The peach that you see is the staffing area um for staff that will be working at the facility. Um the green area that's just kind of I'll go back to the laser pointer. Uh this is the kitchen. Uh just off of the community center space. Um looking here into this orange space. a 5,000 square foot fitness area. So that's both cardio and strength equipment. Uh a full-size gym right here in the purple. And then if you were interested in going right to the pool, you can enter into the locker rooms here. So we have uh gendered men and women locker rooms and then also a family locker room here. Takes you into the pool area which is very much focused on, you know, being able to support the community. We've got a lot of young kids that are going to be here, lots of families. Is that helpful to you?

That is helpful. But if you could zoom in. Thank you. I know it shares. We're going to zoom into some photos as well, but if you Tabitha, if you wouldn't mind zooming into the pool. So, upper leftand corner. There you go. So, um you saw the pool for a second. So, the pool has both. Um if you you can leave it right there. This is a zero depth entry pool. So basically, if you're on the deck, you come out with your kids, you walk in gradually into the pool. So this is an an opportunity to really explore and get comfortable with water. It also provides uh very uh humble egress into the pool. This is not we're not utilizing a lift system where if you can't get into the pool yourself, you can walk in um into the pool here. Um and then this is the aerobics studio, kind of aerobics area or we have a basketball hoop or if you wanted to do volleyball in the area. And then over to the left hand side, you see these four lanes. That's for lap swimming. Um, and then what you see overlaid on there is something we're considering uh integrating into the pool. It's called a ninja cross system. Um, if you've ever watched American Ninja Warrior, it's basically a ninja type apparatus that's suspended from the ceiling and comes down and you can do a lot of different play elements. So, it really attracts the older kids. Um, and so we're doing our due diligence and ting to explore if we feel like that's a good fit in the facility like this. You could zoom out a little bit and go south to Good job. Um, you see you see the viewing area off uh off of the hallway that allows you to look into the pool. So, we might have families that that drop off for a birthday party or something and they're able to look into the pool. This wet classroom is multi-function for us. It can it can function as both a um birthday party space but also as a space for teaching lifeguarding classes or any type of

water skills for our our staff and for others. Um and then south of that is the child watch area. So this is not a fully licensed child care, but this is an opportunity for folks to be able to drop off their kids and then participate in things at the facility. And directly to the right of that is the in the pink is the teen area or inner space. So it's going to function as a little bit of a intergenerational space. Um during the mornings where we don't anticipate having a lot of young kids or teenagers there. We'll probably have a lot of older adults that'll be able to kind of sit. It's a lobby space just to hang out, relax, talk with each other. And then we anticipate in the afternoon it will flip. Um I'm gonna switch slides. So, I guess just uh let's see. Okay, perfect. If you want to zoom into the orange, Tabitha, you can try to zoom into the orange.

Okay, that's perfect. That viewer. I'm sorry, guys. Oh, that's okay. Oh, there's a second floor. I promise.

Perfect. Perfect. So, you see the pink space there? Uh, again, I know you can see it a little bit closer on your screens. This pink space here is the stairway up to the second floor or there's an elevator. There's a a bathroom right in the hall. These are our two fitness studios. Um, both pretty decent sized to be able to accommodate any type of fitness class we're going to need. and then the associated storage. So your weights, all the things you might need for the class you're going to take are in this area. And then um you also have an opportunity to just do the elevator walking track. That walking track goes around both the gym and the fitness floor. So I'm going to zoom in our next couple of slides. Um we'll show you a little bit more detail. Uh these are these are renderings still, so they're not 100% but we're going in through the design refinement now and so these will get much more detailed. Um, so this is looking at the site from a bird's eye view. So you can see maybe a little bit zoomed in. It's okay. We'll just leave it. Um, coming into the I did want you to unzoom. There we go. Um, coming in off of Clark Road is the primary entrance. Uh, just to orient you, this is Dawn and this is East Clark Road. So you're coming in off of uh off of Clark into the facility. You can go left or right. This is the primary entrance and you're going to see some renderings that kind of walk you through the building and you get a better sense of what it looks like. So, this is the entrance here. This little stub out, that's where you're going into to get into the building. Over to the left is a playground space and then an outdoor pavilion area and then a future uh we're kind of creating a future opportunity for an outdoor uh spray pad as well. right now uh not currently in the budget to build it at the time of construction, but something that we want I'm we're still working pretty hard to try to either secure some grant funds or maybe to secure some donations to build this at the same time. Okay, so this is what the facility will

look like if you're going to walk up to it or after you parked your car and you're walking up to the facility. We're utilizing a glazed brick uh approach to bring some color and dimension to the building. Um, again, this is still just a rendering. We put the people in there for scale just so you can see a little bit of like how we anticipate people utilizing the facility. So, if you're to orient you a bit, what you're looking at over here is the community center wing and then over to the the left hand side is the pool area. This is coming in off of Clark Road. So this is the boulevard entrance coming in and you can see the entrance over here again. Community center wing on this side, pool over here. This would be the elevated walking track with some windows you could see. This is walking into the facility to the lobby desk. So really it serves as a central point for folks to be able to talk to someone as soon as they come in. they're coming in, they can say, "I'm here for either a class, so maybe something in the community center." Our staff can be able to orient them down this hall, help them get to the place they need to be, or scan their badge, and allow them to go into the facility for um membership related activities, fitness studio, etc. This is a view of one of the the community center space that is adjacent to the kitchen. So again, we're still we're just now working with the kitchen designer. At our last meeting last week, we had a a kitchen consultant come in. We anticipate that we'll be seeing um some of those designs more uh more rec. But this is the rollup door that would allow you to kind of isolate that kitchen space during certain events or roll it up if you wanted to be able to serve from that space. Um this rendering shows this setup as more of a a gala or maybe a party or something like that. And it looks like it's utilizing both

rooms in full totality. So, a little over 2,000 square feet on that side. Um, obviously you can see on the side we've got, you know, TVs. This will be wired to be able to function separately or together as it's opened up. Um, this takes you out of the community center space and into the gym. So, uh, this orientation is if you're at the far end of the building looking towards, if you look could look through that wall, you're looking into the fitness space on the other side of this wall. So, uh, again, it's just a rendering. You can see right now it's set up for fullcourt basketball, but we'll have an opportunity to to do um two different court basketball games at the same time. So, we'll have hoops on either or on either side. I'm sorry, two on either side. This is again on the other side of that wall. Uh it looks a little bit scant in terms of items in there, but they really just wanted you to understand kind of what you'd see if you're going into that space. Uh one of the things I want to draw your attention to is you could see a bit of this um artwork that's kind of superimposed on some of these walls. We are looking to try to work with a local artist to try to do some mural work in the in the facility. Um, we've got a number of really talented artists in the Epsilani area and so we'll start working on that uh later on this year to get a handle on what kind of space that would be and then go through that commissioning process. Um, go back one. You can see from this fitness studio or fitness area that you can see the walk elevated walking track right above. You can see, you know, there's uh images of folks using that walking track above. And then this image is if you had walked up the stairs and you're either going to continue on and to the left to go into the fitness rooms or you can go right onto the elevated walking track that goes around both that fitness studio or the gym. And then this is going back downstairs and into the pool. It's hard to show all the different images in here, but again

what you're looking at kind of square on is that zero depth entry. So there's going to be some play elements there for the younger kids. Um, so it really does target younger toddlers to probably tween age in this space. Um, and then you can see kind of looking further on that ninja cross gym that we talked about that's currently shown hanging from the ceiling right there. So, um, those are the the end of the renderings there, but I wanted to make sure one of the things that comes up often is we do have another recreation center in Washington County. We've got Marylu Murray Recreation Center. Um, so it's always helpful to kind of see how we compare and contrast in square footage. Um, we wouldn't rebuild Mary Loomer exactly as it is. And I think you can tell from this, this facility really highlights some of some of the things that we're missing in in Marylu. Um, Marylu is a bit smaller. It's 51,000 square feet. The East Community Recreation Center is just over 65,000 square feet. Um, the gymnasium is a little bit smaller. It's just one gym. Um, but we make up for it in a lot of different areas. We've got a larger strength and cardio room that is all together in one. If you've ever worked out at Marylu, it's separated into a couple different rooms, which isn't necessarily ideal for user and how how people work out these days. Uh, the pool is significantly larger and again geared towards families and youth. Um, we have a larger locker space that is broke down into those gendered locker spaces again and then also family locker rooms. And then the community center is really where you start to see the notable difference. We're over 5,000 square feet for the community center space and that totals into six different rooms. Uh can break out into total six different rooms. We have just under 600,000 square feet for kitchen space. Uh child watches over a thousand and then we have that teen intergen lobby space that's about 800 square feet. So one of the conversations that we've had or comments that were coming up is

the project schedule. Again, I know this is kind of small scale for you all to see, but um it starts here 2026 in May. So, in that um orange block in the upper leftand corner, that's where we're doing design development. Then we're looking at uh I I have another slide that kind of covers this, but we're looking to try to be as aggressive as possible and and looking at phasing this project in a couple different bid documents. So, this is being able to do uh an early civil and structural bid package. Um we can be able to get get this out so we can start site work and foundations foundation work and then looking at later on this summer trying to get all our fencing up, getting to do some site preparation and get ready for the foundation work and then really starting in earnest in September. Um then you can see in December at the same time we're doing foundation work, we're getting all the rest of the building trades bid out so we can start construction of the building interior and you know building the exterior because foundation work and any type of earth work in the winter is not ideal. So we're trying to make sure we expedite that early as early as possible but starting in December and then going through 2027 construction for the building with the goal of opening January 2028. So, it's an aggressive timeline. Uh, it might not feel like it because I know it's a long time coming, but it is extremely aggressive for a 65,000 foot building. Um, the critical next steps we need to do, as we're going to talk about here, is closing that funding gap, getting started on permit review with all of our our plans that are coming together. Our operating budget development has begun. We're looking on refining that now. Um, that's more on our end in terms of the parks and recreation department. What will that be for us to operate this facility? What's the anticipated revenue coming in? And what do we anticipate subsidizing the facility? And then I already alluded to it, but a multi- package construction bidding process and phased construction

so we can make sure we take advantage of timeline and start to whittle down some of the the funding that has come through grant uh related projects. So our next slide talks about the fact that we have secured a lot of funding for this project already. We're close to $32 million and you can see all the different options and kind of where we've secured funding. Um $15 million grant um is our our first one we'd start whittling down. Um the rest of them you can see different um commitments and where they've come from. And really our current financial picture and what leads me to to have Tina speak is we have funding secured. We have a project estimate of $49 million to build this building. Initially, it was at $58 million. We've done some significant value engineering and modification to get it down to that 49 million. And we're recommending bonding for the $18 million remaining to fund the rest of the project and get us started for construction. So, Tina.

All right. Thank you. Good evening, commissioners. Um, so we started the bonding conversations, borrowing conversations back in December. So I'll just walk you through of what we have done to date and then I will tie the things where we are today into your agenda and then the rest of the timeline and then go into the um top priority res resolution. So we've had conversations about determining and finalizing the borrowing amount. Um right now um it's up to $18 million. Um we're working internally for the funding source identification that's currently in progress. We have engaged bond council um Eric Mclofflin from Dickinson Wright and the financial adviser Steven Burke from Municipal Financial Consultants Incorporated. We've received debt service uh schedule scenarios actually just uh yesterday afternoon. So we will start to review them internally. We have standing meetings um between parks and wreck administration and finance to work out the internal details and um as you've received in the past with regard to reports regularly um under the report of the administrator. They're planned into the future as well to align with the borrowing timeline. So, as Commissioner Hajj re um indicated, um there is a special order of business um tonight for a resolution of public intent of the Eastern Washington Community Recreation Center borrowing up to $18 million. Um so, assuming the board authorizes that tonight, um publication will occur on April 23rd. The plan is to have a single read or a um the first reading for bond borrowing June 3. Um request rating on the bonds um from the rating agencies will occur on June 3rd. The referendum period expires if the um intent to

borrow resolution is adopted tonight on June 7th. Um second reading for a bond borrowing um uh authorizing resolution uh would be 71. if needed. There has been chatter potentially a single rating would do. Um there would be a rating agency's call in about June 15th. Due diligence call with bond council financial consultant in the county on June 22nd. The rated agencies would provide the ratings. Hopefully we'd get confirmed AAA. My hope would be for June 29th. um circulate preliminary official statement and uh published notice for sale July 9th, a competitive sale for general obligation long-term bonds on July 17th. the final official statement and closing letter draft would be available July 17th and then the final um close out July 22nd with the hopes that the bond uh closing and delivery would be in the bank on August 6th for the project to start the fall construction. Um, and then I'll just close tonight with um on uh under resolutions under single reading item B, there is a resolution reaffirming the Eastern Washington Community Recreation Center project as a top priority to start construction by the end of the year and support identification of funding sources for bond repayment in an amount up to 18 million and authorizing the chair of the board of commissioners and the county administrator to expeditiously identify additional funding to possibly reduce borrowing and report operations and I will entertain any questions that you may have.

Any questions here? Commissioner Summergl, is that your hand? Okay, great. Yeah, I'm going to comment on the full item if that's okay. Um, thanks uh Megan and Tina. Um, I'm really excited about the teen center um space being provided. I'm also excited about the future option for some of the outside resources. Um, also excited about the zero depth entry pool. Um, love that the con the comparison that you provided really show with our residents the difference between something that was built quite a while ago versus a new facility that we're building on the east side. And I think it really I hope demonstrates the um commitment to equity and making sure that an area that has a huge gap in services is getting something that's not just like the same as something else but more. And so I think that's really important and it kind of speaks to what um Commissioner Sanders said earlier. Um I also appreciate the very clear um transparent timeline. Um we get questions often and I think the east side commissioners we all kind of work together to clarify any misinformation in the community or concerns because we do know that there's a mistrust. um even as a commissioner who represents that side of the community, I have mistrust in this process because it has taken so long and government moves slow and I'm part of government. Um I think it's really good that Tina laid out um a very detailed timeline. Um, and just the um the comment that you made about providing um some artwork inside with local artists. I'll just namerop a constituent of mine who uh is pretty famous for murals, Gary Horton. Um, some of his work is even in Ann Arbor, but it's throughout Ipsy and it's really great. Um, and he actually lives very close to where the community in rec center is going to be. Um, and yeah,

just generally, um, I think it's good for the community to have a better clear understanding because there has been a lot of whiplash. Um, not just with this iteration of the board, but prior boards. And I think for all of the work that has happened over really like the seed was planted over 20 years ago, um, the presentation is helpful. Um, I do want to just also add, um, I think it's been pretty clear to at least my constituents and some of my colleagues that when I ran for this seat, this center was my top priority and continues to be my top priority. Um, there was a comment that I didn't comment on public comment. And if I would like to say if that is a new expectation that commissioners all respond to every public comment, we should, you know, I just understand that that's an expectation. Um, the chair made a comment to I think make a point that I didn't follow up and uh I didn't know that that was a an expectation of us. I actually really appreciated what Commissioner Sanders said and I share a lot of her opinions. Um, we get up often. I get up often and I don't really feel like I need to explain myself. I think my constituents know that this is my top priority. Thank you,

Commissioner Somerville. I want to apologize. That is not at all what I meant. I just wanted to make sure that you didn't I was trying to make sure you didn't want to comment. I'm sure that's why you did it. Thanks. So, I'm apologizing publicly at not didn't mean to cast any espersions at all. So, sorry. Um, Commissioner Ravi, button malfunction. Uh, thank you. Uh question about bonding um revenue sources. What is the when is the jail bond payment done? 28 if I remember correctly.

I think it's 20 I think it's 27. Commissioner 27. Okay. So once that is once the jail bond is paid off that theoretically frees up what? six $800,000 $800,000 in the budget. So, is that I assume is the revenue source that you're looking at? It is a possibility on the list. Okay. You're hesitant. You don't like that idea. We're like, finally, WE'RE GOING TO BE FREED OF THIS DEBT. I'm only hesitant because administrator D is remote today and we haven't talked about publicly releasing what the sources are at this point.

Sorry. Okay. I didn't mean to spill any beans. Uh I will let you continue to be secretive about that. Um no, no, no. I'm just joking. Um okay. Well, I mean either way, I think there's some great opportunities here. I guess my other question was about the length of the bond that you were considering and has any of that detail been worked out or are you still kind of so no we did did receive the debt service payment scenarios for 20 25 and 30 years 30 years would be the maximum and typically um borrowing 18 million for 30 years might be cost prohibitive right

yeah because right the the rates are usually higher for the longer periods of time the interest rates correct. Um, yeah. Is it like in the four and a half% range for 30 years or? Okay, we don't have to go. You're going to give us a more detailed presentation later. It's okay. I'm just I get excited about this kind of stuff. You are spot on, sir.

All right. Uh, sweet. Uh, yeah. So I think just yeah seeing those cost breakouts at some point obviously will be interesting. Um for me switching back to the parks my parks friends um you know I well actually first a question in terms of the exterior design has that changed since you showed it to the parks commission in March? So I missed the April meeting. Not since March. Not since the March meeting. Okay. it just looked a little different. But maybe it was because it was like um representationally different uh just with like the people walking and stuff like that versus the other representation.

There was minor modification to the square footage. So we had value engineered out certain spaces and then after conversation internally and with county administration we moved some spaces back in. So that may look a little different as well but general design was the same. Correct.

Okay. And then uh I I guess I just want to like state just to put it out in the universe uh because I did bring this up at the parks commission meeting too, but I have always been interested in seeing this site be better than Mary Lou in every category in terms of square footage. Uh and I know that thank you for putting that chart up there. I have, you know, I've asked for that, you know, at just about every meeting and you've provided it, of course. Um the the gym is something that is like still bothers me that it's smaller than Marylu Murray and I don't know if Maryl Murray just has an extraordinarily large gym uh or or what but and I know that it would cost you know millions of dollars to add square footage. I I understand that and I know we had a long discussion about this. Um, similarly, I feel similarly with the community community center side of it. Um, and I don't know if any changes were made on that in terms of because it still seems like it's split up between that hallway. So, it's like not combinable into one big space still. Is that right?

That's still true.

Yeah. Which is hard. I think those are just hard things that I just want to state. I I don't want to slow the process down. I don't want to make it go any longer, but I think those are unfortunate components of this that I hope that we can at least, you know, consider one more time addressing. And in the context of that, all of it comes down to money obviously. And so, um, I know I, you know, we we've tried to value engineer, like you said, the whole project to bring the cost down. And there's, you know, certain, um, factors that are hard for us to control, like, you know, a lunatic president bombing another country and causing the every cost of everything to go up. um that's not something that we had anticipated, you know, and so now the cost of everything is increasing and uh who knows what it's going to be when we start building. It could be even more. Um but I guess as I have encouraged in the past, I'm very supportive of the bond proposal and I will be supporting it. Um this is something that I've advocated for since we start, you know, since I got back to the board in 23 to bond. um and that there are these other tools that we can bring to bear to make this project work. And I guess I would just say like I don't want us to go too crazy, but I do think, you know, if we can bond for $18 million, maybe we can push that a little bit to make sure that we have enough cushion, wiggle room to maybe add a little bit more space to some of these amenities. Um so I just want to put it out there. I don't know how my colleagues feel, but I kind of feel like we should at least explore that since we're looking into bonding.

Thank you. Thank you, chair. Hey, thanks friends for the presentation. I'll be quick on this one. And forgive me if I missed it in the schematics. And so one of the things I think is of interest to many of us is the ability to be able to provide some of our county services in there like services through community mental health. Uh so private spaces. Do we feel like there would be sufficient space to be able to have one-on-one or or smaller group um options like that? So, uh, right now we have a two kind of therapy room spaces that could be used for physical therapy or potentially um in the future maybe we work with someone um at maybe University of Michigan Health System or Trinity Health to rent out those spaces. Those are two kind of private office spaces that could could be utilized in the future uh for something like that. We probably will have some space within the administration area. And then additionally, that's one of the reasons why we liked the model in the community center space on the um I guess right hand side of that drawing that broke up those spaces into smaller 600 square ft spaces so we could do kind of some smaller concentrated programming efforts.

Okay, that's what I wanted to hear. Thank you.

Thank you, Commissioner Commissioner Sanders. So, thank you for the presentation and, you know, allowing me to be a constant pain in the butt. Um, couple of things that I wanted to say. Um, I've already sent an email about this, but I want to make sure that the parks and reccks meetings are again repopulated on my calendar and Commissioner Light would like hers repulate repopulated as well. uh those are public meetings and I want to be I want to know when they're happening and I want to be able to join them. Um in any subcommittee meetings um the other thing is that I would love to make sure that we are using the REO office the way that it was intended to be used. meaning I would like to see some collaboration between Parks and Rex and the equity office to make sure that the staffing and the programming and all things related to the East Side Community Rec Center um are based in equity. That is the whole point of this building in the first place. And so we want to make sure that um you know hiring and and the programming are tailored around the community that are going to be utilizing it. um as well. Um I too want to say that in all of those original um community meetings, I was pushing for 10,000 square feet for community nonprofits and agencies and then they took it down to five and now I don't see it in there at all. And so at the risk of irritating some of the residents on the east side and they will let me know, trust me. I would rather see us cut down that sort of eating community space because it defeats the purpose for us to make this

investment um in such a deep east side of our county and not have space where those nonprofits and community organizations that are serving those residents have a place like a a co-working space so that it is a one-stop shop for many of those community members and we're not asking them to still have to have logistics or transportation to get somewhere else. So I I I don't know what that looks like. Um uh Commissioner Robbie and I don't always agree on everything, but some things are core. Um and that is one of them along with you know the way that we insisted that we not have third parties running that facility that that facility be the same as all the others ask me employees benefits and things like that. So um I I do want to say thank you for the work so far. I have had the opportunity to kind of sit in on some of your your interviews when you were selecting, you know, like your construction uh team and everything. So, I am more than just talking about it. I am invested in it. Um, and I'm just excited. I'm thrilled uh for the community um that will have a beautiful new space to live and grow. And I'm not giving up. I've actually found someone that can help us laser the bricks that we can then um sell to the community to help us start to create our, you know, like a foundation that will help make sure that families that cannot afford the fees. The fees are

still paid, but they'll be paid from something like an endowment. So, I'm telling you now, I have my eyes on that curved walkway. for brick paved with families that are, you know, attached to the the chain experience, being able to purchase a brick, have it lasered with their family name, and have it become part of that walkway. So, you can talk about me later. Thank you both.

Thank you for your comments. If I could just follow up quickly, um I might want to talk with you a little bit more about some of your ideas on that space. um in terms of meeting with the racial equity office, we do meet monthly. Uh this is primary topic one and probably two and three um every time we talk. So I appreciate that and it's definitely um shifting towards hiring programming. That is the next necessary next step for us. Um so I I appreciate you making that comment. Just want to let you know that we're already doing that. Okay. I have next Labar Beaman Machi Light next year. Yep.

Um, I can be totally flexible on the details uh and on the comparison with Marylu. Uh, I do think Maryl's gym is pretty enormous and I I don't know that it's always fully utilized or not, but um I do want this to be uh you know used, appreciated, valued uh and and to be a you know a driver of uh of community support. My real plea and my only plea in all this is actually um and maybe this is aimed at Tina as well. um whatever details need to be considered out. I I would get us far enough down the track on the bonding question and the financing question that we can't then go backwards. Um I think to some degree the the support on this board is such that we got to make use of it in a way where we can't walk any of that back. And so I am as a as a non-Eside commissioner saying um I've voted to send these resources to this facility uh numerous times over numerous years. It's the right thing to do. It's something I'll continue doing. But I I would just ask us to please go far enough that we can't claw that back. Um and as Commissioner Robbie said, uh you know that that's not always for the um you know, for a a mistake on our end. you know, you it it it's a global market. Uh it's a you know, a real world we're dealing with. So, I would say uh full speed ahead as fast as we can go. Um and uh you know, I think other commissioners from the outside the east side will be there to continue supporting this project. Thanks.

Thank you, Commissioner Lear, Commissioner Beman.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for the wonderful presentation at kind of some split split questions here. Um do want to commend you on the speed. I know it feels slow. Government is slow. My family is in construction. Construction is slow. It looks beautiful once things start going up, but it actually takes a really long time to get the ground graded and the foundation dug and all of those things. It's not We don't want slap dash. We want measured. Um but yes, we do still want to meet our goals and our our timelines and our deadlines. Um my question for parks is uh I happen to utilize Seline Rec Center and so there are some spaces that I saw there that were you know I'm I'm just going to call the one space a basketball court. I know you had a different name for it. Is the vision to be able to utilize that in different ways? So, for example, in Seline, we have the Easter Bunny breakfast and it's on the basketball court and we set up tables and the Easter Bunny comes in and the kids do that and there's a egg hunt on the lawn, that sort of thing. Are there spaces that right now we're sort of looking at that map and thinking, "Oh, that's basketball, but it's really something that could be transitional." definitely has the opportunity to be used in a lot of different ways. Not just basketball, pickle ball, volleyball, all sorts of court sport can be there. Um, yes, if we need a really big space, we could certainly utilize that for some type of an event like that. But we also have the beauty of having that community center space that can be utilized for events like that where uh Selene Rec Center doesn't have that ability to accommodate something along those lines.

All right, my next one's for you, Tina. Um, I know why the timeline that you were talking about looks like the timeline you were talking about in terms of the bond. Do you want to speak to sort of just like the implications, the timeline we have to have with the public in terms of the bonding? Like you walked through it, but not really the specifics of why we have to do things on this state and state. We're not dragging our feet basically. We're abiding by Yeah, it's it's about four uh four months from the time of public notice of intent which is today assuming that it is adopted um to get the funds in the bank. Um and it's that's pretty aggressive time time frame and there is things going on parallel all the time in this schedule. Does that help?

Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commissioner Bean. Commissioner Machi,

thank you chair. Thanks for the presentation. The visuals are quite stunning to see, right? Um fact, if I did my math right, the county is going to be in for more than $28 million total on a $49 million project, right? So any less anybody think that we are not invested in this, we are invested in this, right? We want to see this happen. Um three decades ago, I was part of the committee that built the Leavonia Recreation Center. Uh and that process very interest learned a lot through that process and uh one of the things that we we focused a lot on was what was actually going to be within the four walls of that facility, right?

Um and I I look at this and you had the comparison with Mary Lou, right? I don't view it as a comparison with another facility. I view it as I would like to see something that reflects what the community wants, what the community needs, rather than comparing it, making it quote better than something else. Um, so along those lines, could you could you and you I certainly have some thoughts I'm going to share in a minute, but how did you assess the need in determining what the community wants in this facility in terms of space utilization? is multi-pronged and multi-year uh process. So, we do a community needs assessment survey uh as a part of our master planning efforts with the county. Um so, some of that data is gleaned from that. Uh as a part of that process, we also do individual meetings with different members of the public. So, we're kind of constantly pulling data from different people. Um we talk to many folks. We identify kind of where we have some of those gaps and missing information through that process. Then there were a number of public meetings. Uh a lot of the stuff is prior to me um but kind of still continues and is obviously visible in the design. So there was a real concentrated effort in a group in Superior Township that was meeting regularly um talking about needs, talking about the community desires and programming efforts. Those are reflected in some of the space and square footage uh details that you're seeing. Um and then again just kind of another couple of meetings that we've had where we've shot workshopped this data. Uh the most recent one being in September where we shared the schematic design and received feedback on that.

Reassuring knowing that that's a process that you went through in in community engagement. I I happen to be a member at the wellness center in Dexter built a different way different financing five healthy towns operated in a different way. Right. But many of the same components that you're talking about here and I think what we've what we've seen at the Dexter facility which has been open for over 12 years about 12 years now um is that the gym the gym didn't get used

right and nobody 12 years ago envisioned what it's going to be used for in 2026 which is pickle ball right and those people are allowed when they play pickle ball so just be prepared for that um who knows what it's going to be used for 12 years from now Right. But uh the Commissioner Beimma pointed out the different uses for gymnasium space. Uh I think and in looking some of the components you put in there, I would be remiss if I just didn't mention that I think the Dexter facility is fantastic, right? But if you could tweak a few things there, they don't have any room for there's not enough room for fitness classes. You've got two rooms in this facility, which is the same as what Dexter has right now. They are constantly used, overflowing, not big enough, not enough capacity. Um, and there's no room for any kind of movement or stretching or and there's nowhere in the Dexter Center you can do that w with any kind of space for yourself. So, those are two two important components, right? Um, the third thing, the freeway area in Dexter, not big enough, right? those those guys are always and ladies are always packed in there. Um so just that that kind of those utilization things and knowing that over time these evolve, right? What what space is going to be used for 10 years from now is probably a little different than what it will be in in a year. But um those are just some things I've observed in Dexter because I I would feel bad if I didn't point those things out, right? Um, but otherwise, kudos to you for this planning process and and what you've come up with in terms of a a design. It's going to be a fantastic facility. One last question.

Sure. Ongoing operations. We talked about $49 million to build it. Could you touch again on how the ongoing costs are going to be addressed?

So, one of the things I mentioned in the next steps are refining that operating budget. So now one of the things we needed was really kind of understanding what the building was going to look like because that helps us program out and understand what kind of staffing do we need to support the programming that's going to be at the facility. Uh we're very close to that now. So that's part of the the full conversation. Um we are looking at subsidizing the facility in the tune of 1.5 to2 million on an annual basis. Um and that is after we receive revenue coming in. So we're trying to figure out what does that look like for the parks budget. Um and then we are we just signed a contract with Plant Moran. They're going to help us do some forecasting um to look at possible revenue coming into the facility. How long will that revenue take? Um and then also would like to look a little bit additionally at the scholarship capabilities. And so I know we've talked uh individually something I didn't share today is our efforts to try to create a friends of county parks which will help us do some of that fundraising efforts to help offset costs for folks that need to have an additional subsidy that doesn't just come from the parks fund. Is that

um I I have Commissioner Light and then Sanders again. Brady, do you have something you want to add in there? Yes. Uh the board has set aside I think it's around $500,000 for operating uh and so that's coming from the county general fund. Just want to make that point as well. Thank you chair. Thanks Commissioner Light.

Thank you for the presentation. I have been on eggshells um because I am a instant gratification kind of person and so I know that this timeline uh is what it needs to be but um it looks like turtle time to me but it's okay. Um I I just would hope that we can grand open grand open uh before January 1st 28th because we may not all be sitting here and I and I want to have the experience.

Well, I'm just saying some people may not want to some people may want to run. Some people may not get reelected. So, and I mean that could be me included. So I just want to make sure that I am able to to bask in the opening um of this new facility while I still sit in this seat. So just saying but that's my instant gratification in need you know. Um kitchen you all know that is something that is very important. Um is this an industrial kitchen? I think the terminology is commercial kitchen.

Commercial industrial kitchen. Yep. So, uh, definitely has a capability. Uh, one of the things we didn't really talk about was serving in, uh, resiliency hub conditions. So, it will be in a big enough space and adjacent to all the space in the community center space that if we needed to do, um, massive food warming up, we can do that. Um, we will know a little bit more detail once our kitchen consultant is able to pull together the documents based on the feedback we've given them on programmatic needs. Also be able to teach classes. So it's going to be accessible both to the kind of home cook but then also have a larger capability to cook larger and caterers.

Absolutely. Yes. So I look forward to that conversation. Um then I wanted to also touch on and I and I don't know if uh Commissioner Sander she kind of brought it up but the community um our community partners so our um nonprofit organizations

where are they going to go because they have to have space and that's something that um from day one when I started um to u participate in these conversations that that was something that was going to be implemented and so that is something that still needs to be there because our community uh and in those uh meetings and everything that we gathered when getting information that was something that um was a need um and a want of the community and so we need to make sure that we can figure it out um we're we're going big so we might as well I mean hey we just have to buy for more but we need to make sure that that's a priority um and that we can have the services available um because it is just going to be a walk across the street um for the individuals. As long as we have that income based housing and we have um the neighborhoods and the homes that we have surrounding um it is going to be a need for those services to be there and it would be um it it would be wonderful uh if we could have that available. And so that's something that we're going to have to revisit because it has to be there. Um so we need to just make room and put that um on a an align item to be discussed to do some re to do some revising. So, that's going to be a ask that um we we put that um back into the rendering of everything because it's something that was really wanted and desired um along with the you know the community center space and so we want to make sure the things that were promised um and that were desired from the community because it's for them for us um that that it's there um and I know we compare um I don't someone one of the commission itioner said we don't need to really compare the Mary Lou to um this facility because it's it's different um just because of the the folks that it will service um and so we just need to make sure that it is the perfect fit uh

for the residents that will utilize it. Um and so I think um we can look at the Mary Lou like um as far as like what what is the current operating um cost and then we can look at that and say you know how can we um you know how can we budget for our operating costs by by the way what is the do you know the current operating cost for the Maryl the current operating cost I know the subsidies right around a million dollars in terms of Yeah. Yeah. Right around two. Operating operating budget is being a little over two. It's like 2.1. Yeah.

And we subsidize a million. So, do we do we foresee that being um the same or are we going to be able to cut cost just because of um just like the the environmental like we may have more solar, we may have you know just different things. Can we kind of foresee that the operating cost may be a little less or do you think it's going to probably just weigh out about the more? Okay,

it it'll probably more it'll even out, but I think staffing wise we're going to have different staffing needs. Um, so I I think we're already looking at the the building's larger means more staff. Uh, the type of things in a pool requires more lifeguards, right? Because you just can't see the entire thing. Very just a we do compare it just because it helps us figure out plans. So just like you said, Um, can I comment on the community partnership? Yes. So, and again, maybe not the time to do this, but that's one of the reasons why we have the larger

size adjacent to the kitchen and then the smaller size on the other other side. Um, uh, as Commissioner Sanders pointed out, she took me around, uh, on a couple of different visits and we learned a lot from the partners that we talked to. So one of the things was not necessarily having dedicated space that this person owns on a regular basis, but having available space. So we would it would become part of the programming effort. So it's around 6,000 square feet. Maybe we need to look at making a few smaller spaces. I think Haj's point u maybe we can look at maybe refining a little bit on how that that looks. Um but still provide that's the intent. I like that. might have certain days where this service is available, you know, it's available that day and that room is available for those different resources.

So, we are thinking of that in mind. Thank you. Thank you. And then um lastly, um Annie name dropped um a great artist and I must do the same. Um a local artist uh Yen Aaro um has done a lot in our community. Um our children, they school together. They've been buddies since uh they've been four years old. And so, um, the artwork and the education behind the artwork is amazing. So, just wanted to put that out there. But, thank you all. I appreciate it. Um, and I appreciate the feedback um, and the willingness to to hear us sometimes, you know, because I can be that way. So, thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Commissioner Lake. Commissioner Sanders. Um, I just wanted to um kind of answer and respond to Commissioner Machineski. We um part of the gathering of information about what the community wanted. Um, the Wimberly Pastorial family from Christian Love Fellowship allowed us to hold all of our meetings there and in their space and former superior um, township clerk Finley, Dr. Finley um, was coordinating for I think about a year. about a year. She coordinated these community conversations and we probably had at least 25 folks showing up at each one of those meetings as we sort of sorted through what we wanted. Right? So, I just wanted to give you just a little bit more context of how we were inviting the community and to come and tell us what they wanted. And then the most recent one was very well attended. Not only did they do one in the evening that probably had I don't know at least 50 folks if not

about 70

showing up. Uh they then came back the next day and were there during the day so folks couldn't come the night before. So they were very accommodating and trying to make sure that um as many people as were interested were able to come. Um and then one more thing about the community space. I didn't see that. I didn't see that extra side space. Um, but I'm thinking out loud and I'm not committing anybody, but you know, an example might be Washington literacy being able to have a place to help people, you know, um, learn how to read and write better. Um, we absolutely envisioned having higher education partnership in that space, whether or not it was WCC or, you know, the other um, higher ed institutions in Washington County, so that we can try and help that community be prepared, especially the youth, right, before it's too late. meaning, you know, you're in high school and we didn't give you any attention during elementary or to be able to help supplement what the public school system is already doing. So, that was part of sort of the vision of that one-stop shop that if you're already there for a program and mom is working late and there's tutoring there and maybe you get a snack or something, you know, it's all in one and you're not being shuffled around all of these different people's, you know, homes and places. So, I just wanted to add some context to that. Thank you.

Any other comments or questions? for Megan and Greg. Um, are we are Were you going to talk to us more about the bond or we're good? Okay. Any other questions about the bonding? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Uh, thank you. And next we have uh Tina and Katherine uh to deliver the preliminary 2025 year end update. And uh congratulations to Tina. This will be her last preliminary year- end update.

Oh, I hate that. Okay. Thank you. You're you're on. Great. We're We're getting me to be able to share my screen.

Okay. Be there one second. You did it right. Okay, great. Um, I know it's late, so I'm going to be high level, but I'm happy to go into any more detail that you all want. So, I'm here tonight prelim year end update. We are close to finalizing the audit, so it should be pretty accurate. If there's any other changes, we'll update you. But it's pretty good numbers. Audit is wrapping up as we go, as we speak. So, um, general fund status. So, um, really good news to talk about in general for the general fund. Um, we are projecting about a $6.9 million surplus, almost $7 million. Um, we had planned $4.2 million in the budget. So, really, the surplus above that plan is really 2.8 8 million um dollars that the general fund fund balance is projected to be 72 million which is 44.5% of the final 2025 budget. Um just a reminder in the 26 through 29 budget you already have allocated $4 million of that. So just as we're I know I'd like to bring the bad news. I'm sorry but we are still well above the 29%. So, um, good news for non-structural needs as we move through the fiscal year. Um, so, uh, projections comparison, this is one of the largest shifts we've seen. Um, the net projected picture for the general fund switched or shifted by $3.5 million. So, both revenues and

expenditures improved over the third quarter, meaning revenues are higher, expenditures are lower. um that plan contribution to fund balance changed because in Q3 um the tech the budget adjustments we increased the plan contribution to fund balance and that was just for the um some of the property tax uh property tax increases that were unallocated last year we wanted to save them for whatever might be needed in 26 so um so with that variance whenever there's you know a large variance I like to talk about what happened on the expenditure side expenditure came in $2.4 million um less than Q3. Uh the only item that came in worse that was significant is this um prosecuting attorney state grant. So a couple years ago, we brought a board of commission uh an action to the board of creating some positions for this prosecutor state grant in anticipation of it being um created. It took forever for the state to send applications. it wasn't in time for us to acrue revenue. So, we had to transfer general fund money temporarily. Those applications are now out in the prosecutor's office. They are due by the end of May. So, this money will be returned as to the general fund as soon as that process is all the way through. So, it's a temporary allocation. Um, it's just one we tried our best to tell the auditors like, "Hey, we have it." And they're like, "You don't have a contract, so you can't count it yet." But we now know it's coming. We have it in process. So, uh that will be temporary on the uh expenditures that came down. Um the smallest item is the unspent board allocation. So, throughout the year, we always assume your priority allocations are fully spent. The largest portion of this is the $400,000 that was structural housing. You had a board action item earlier this year that allocated that to the COC. So, that has

now been used in 2026. It just shows up as a surplus in 2025. Um yeah, the uh sheriff expenditure. So when we were in Q3, given all of the um conversations we were having, we tried to take a very conservative approach to sheriff expenditures. We wanted to make sure whatever we came in at at the end of the year was not worse than what we were talking about at Q3. Um this is better than I expected us to be with that level of conservation. So I have a little bit more later on the efforts that their office took, but they did end the year with a it would have been a small surplus. There was another IT contract that put them in a small shortfall. Um but overall a lot of efforts were made to contain expenditures on the sheriff's side and so that came in better. And then the appropriations, we always are conservative with our support to the grants, but we tr them up at the end of the year. So that came in better by $1.5 million. Most of that is really child care fund reimbursements being higher than anticipated. Um and we keep we're trying to um weather that storm of as the changes are happening at the state level, not the storm, but we're trying to weather through all that. So, good news on that front, but also likely non-structural dollars. Um revenues, interest earnings came in an extra million dollars above the adjusted revenues that we projected for interest. So, we were apparently overly conservative on that front. Um, but again, we like to I like to be overly conservative with those because then it becomes a source for non-structural items that we need. Uh, sheriff revenues came in about $300,000 above Q3. Again, um, and this is outside of contract policing. That's lower down. Contract policing also came in 124,000. And again, that had to do with us being very conservative with that Q3 report. Um, and then all the other general fund

departments, um, like each one had just like a slight bit of an increase over it and it nets out to 237,000, but none were significantly different for to call out the individual departments. Um, on the only ones that came in shorter, uh, state revenues, that is state liquor tax and personal property tax reimbursement came in a little bit less than projected. So, it's one that we're going to pay a lot of attention to in 2026 to get those budgeted at the right level. And then property taxes came in just a small bit under budget, 385,000. But overall, um, really good news from Q3 to Q4. That's how you take away anything. It came in better than we were expecting. Um, on general fund expenditures, I'm going to run through this relatively quick, but nothing unexpected here. public safety and justice outside of contract policing continues to be our largest expenditure. Contract policing is next. Um all of these are really proportional to what we've been seeing throughout the um year. So again, nothing alarming on that front. Um it looks really tiny every time I put this one up on the big screen. Um for your information, this is every department where they ended for total general fund expenditures. Um, it includes the appropriations so you can see how everything um played out on that front. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. If you have any questions, I can also fill them out. But um for the expenditure surpluses, um we uh as I said um the biggest expenditure surplus we had was the plan contribution to fund balance of almost $4.3 million at the end of the year. This is just meant to fund future needs within the organization. Um the surplus appropriations total about 1.9. Again, this variance came in about one and a

half million higher, but the total surplus in that field was 1.9. Uh general fund personal services, this is all departments outside of the sheriff and courts came in with about a $1.1 million surplus. This is above the attrition um estimate. So, I have an attrition update later. Um board priority allocations we've already talked about. Uh district court had a surplus largely in personal services of 182,000. Um shortfalls. Um admin had a 390 or almost $393,000 shortfall. This has to do with a lot of the different um board directed spending that's not quite budgeted um but is an improvement over Q3. A small improvement. So it did come down um compared to projections. Animal control has been a shortfall the whole year. It's the same amount that we were expecting. Um and then banking fees, um which is the amount we charge to accept we pay to accept credit cards was um extremely high at about five almost $500,000. Um but overall $3.4 million surplus is great news for the county general fund. Um, and then, oh, sorry, I didn't say this, but on the last slide when we were here, all last year, we're talking about all the different variances of the sheriff's office. It's not on there because I don't talk about departments that have small variances, but I did want to highlight all of the efforts that were made to um that they made to bring them within budget. So, um there's a significant amount of fleet savings. They are working on making sure their fleet costs are reasonable. We're continuing to calculate um those and capture the changes that they'll be making. Um then they moved um some expenses to the unallocated millage fund. This is what they've done. Um they did this in 2024 also to um use those unspent millage funds from previous years for eligible expenses. Um so that helped keep the current year budget um in alignment. They had some delayed

filling of vacancies. So that was about 174,000. And then JL Food Medical, we increased the budget. Um, but it did come in below budget, which is good news, but we're still waiting on final bids to know where we're at long term structurally with that. And then, um, they had some increased revenue, uh, reimbursement revenue. So, we spent a lot of time focusing on dispatch and contract policing, but all of their other smaller revenues came in, um, above budget, above 306,000. Okay. Um this is the same slide you all have seen almost the entire year of the um we called it reduced contributions to fund balance. It's really the uses of fund balance. Um this is all of the money that went out. Almost all of this has been fully spent outside of the bridge loans um and a couple of other smalling out smaller allocations. So um that'll be updated when I come back with 2026 numbers but most of that has been spent at this point. Attrition. Um, so we budgeted 3.6 million. We ended the year with $3.7 million of projected attrition. Um, so a small surplus of $130,000, a variance of 104%. So it was a hard lift when you look at the individual departments, but overall the methodology balanced out. That's kind of the message from this slide. Um, the different service area groups are projected there. Um but this is where it's a little bit easier to see the budget versus actuals. So again, most departments um more than exceeded the attrition uh expectation or the attrition budget that was happening. So for revenues again projecting 161.7 million of general fund revenue. Uh these are all that we the same that we've been seeing. General general operating mill is by far the largest

revenue source um for the general fund. Uh for short we had a small shortfall of $246,000. It's a very small shortfall. Um those general fund interest earnings, we increased it by a million dollars the budget and we still came in $1.8 million above that budgeted target. So interest continues to be really helpful. uh sheriff revenues, this is outside of contract policing, came in $1.2 million above budget, which does help offset that shortfall that comes from contract policing. And again, that's largely the um unfilled positions that they are working on filling to um fulfill those contracts. Um clerk ROD revenue in 2024, they came in below budget. We've been really nervous. 2025, it swung back. They came in above budget. We're going to keep watching it and see how it plays out. It's a little hard to predict at this point. Um, and then trial court ended with a much smaller shortfall than we had anticipated in the beginning of the year of only 100,000. Those state revenues I talked about earlier with the liquor tax, personal property tax reimbursement came in um at a shortfall of 276,000 um and the property taxes we talked about and then sheriff contract leasing was about 2.8 million. This was better than we projected in Q3, but is still a shortfall. That's the end of the general fund. Um, non-general funds also good news. Uh, no one ended short. So, that's going to be my short summary of it. We have more questions, but um, everyone either ended up neutral, meaning revenues and expenditures tied out, or they had a surplus of revenues exceeding total expenditures. Uh we had one administrative authority budget adjustment in Q4. So for IT and facilities this was just um adjusting small amounts for some operational needs. Uh the transfers in was of um

infrastructure planning dollars and then for facilities it was just adjusting their budget for interest earnings so that they could offset the increased cleaning services contract amount. So it was just using revenue that was already being raised to cover those operations. So, um, next steps. Um, one of the things I want to highlight here, this is a lot of what we've been looking at. I did change it to ongoing state revenue, just with the things I'm seeing, marijuana revenue, but also watching that personal property tax, the state liquor tax, making sure we have a really good handle on what's happening with the state revenue because that's your other flexible revenue outside of property taxes. Um, and then federal changes. In the quarterly presentations, I had a bunch of slides about the changes that were happening. Um, nothing that we knew about impacted 2025. So, they're out, but they'll be back when we're talking 2026. We don't have any updates for them, but we will keep them back in front of you all. And then just what's up coming um Q1 updates, uh, end of May or June. Q2 will be in August, Q3 in November, and then I'll be back for year end March or April of 2027. And then for the budget, just to start putting that out there, we are beginning to implement our priority based budgeting software. Um, we are working through that plan. So, I'll have more later. And then we've also launched a capital improvement planning process. All of this is to really prep us for a really strong development um the following year's um budget. So, I know I went through that really fast, but if there's any question,

thank you, Katherine. Um, when it's the only time you're going to hear me love to say a conservative estimate, it's when you've made a conservative estimate, we've made more money. So, uh, and I also want to just have a public thanks, um, for the cost savings that have been attempted and relatively succeeded at the sheriff's office. Um, I I just want to have a note of thanks to that. Any questions for Katherine? Commissioner Sanders? I think I had three things. I was also going to say um that it was it was nice to see that there are that there have been some costsaving efforts um in the sheriff's department. Uh I had a question about banking fees and I'm just putting it out there. I'm not expecting you to answer. I just wanted it to be on the record. I would love to see whether or not there's not um a way for us to squeeze that to be even less than what our um annual costs are. Sometimes those aren't things that we typically look at. Um but I think we should if we're asking everybody to tighten up the belt, it should be across the board. Um

animal control. Greg is not here, so this really would be a a question for him related to municipalities and where are we on our original request to make them accountable. Um, everybody should be paying their fair share. I am an animal lover. However, if you cannot afford them, you should not have them. And it shouldn't be other people's responsibility to pay for any living being that you have made a commitment to bring um or to care for. And so I'm putting it on the record that I want to know what the update is and what municipalities are still not honoring their payments to us. Um and then lastly, you had child care fund on there. Help me understand what is that. Um, so that is, oh gosh. Um, it's the program that runs juvenile detention, juvenile court. It's state reimbursement for a lot of the really cool programs. Um, the state recently changed the reimbursement rate for some of them to be up to 85% instead of I can't remember the previous number.

Um, so it's significantly increasing revenues, but and that's part of um when we're talking about the youth assessment center and helping achieve that. It's all related. Um, we just haven't counted on a significant appropriation decrease there because we're anticipating programming needing to grow and I don't want to cut the budget and then we're trying to find money in the future. So, so I'm not can't tell you to change that, but the title is misleading to me. Yeah, it's I read that and I'm like, oh, we got daycare fund. Yes. So maybe we could find another term that that is more

um easier to understand exactly what it is. And then this is just a comment and a request for later for GMO. I would love to talk about whether or not the county participates in tri share which is daycare assistance. So you can talk later. I'm just putting it out there so I don't forget.

I just want to say one thing. Oh gosh, I got loud about the banking fees. got a little too close. Um we are one of the few local or like local governments that don't charge people if they want to pay their like their cost by um credit card. So we don't pass any of that cost along which then means that more people use our internet payment options which are more accessible. It increases our cost. So it's kind of a but I don't know about the ways to cut them down. So that part I don't know. So I get that but there are a gazillion banks out there. Yes, I will find out.

Uh that would love to have our business. And so whether or not we actually move it or just make the bank think we're going to move it, cut the cost, we will look into it. Thank you. I like a gazillion. Um also stay tuned. We have a working session coming up about animal control where maybe some of those questions will be answered. We'll see. Um, any other questions for Katherine? Holy moly. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you.

Um, next item. Oh, sorry, Brady. Brady.

Uh, so thank you, Tina and Katherine. Um, and real quick before we move on, just want to recognize um the numerous people that were out last night responding to the tornado and the straight line wind. Uh, and it gave me a lot of pride to see these public servants out there uh, from the get-go when we had the tornado warning starting at about 1:30 in the morning uh, through sunrise and throughout the entire day today, working uh, to get things up and running, open roads so people could get to work today. Um, so if I miss a group, I apologize in advance, but there's a lot of them. start with our emergency manager, Ben Panette. Uh it starts with planning, making sure that we have the plans in place to respond to these emergencies and his entire team. Uh then our metro dispatchers, they fielded over 300 calls um this morning uh related to storm damage. So special thank you to them. I think that equates to uh many calls per minute coming in. Uh getting the resources, police, fire, public works out to those locations uh and triaging them. Um the corrections officers in our jail, the uh center, the staff at the youth center, making sure that those in our custody and care were protected during those storms. um deputies, police officers, firefighters, uh the road commission, uh all the local officials that were there ready to respond as well. Um water resources, parks and rec field staff, they're all out there as well. I'm sure I miss many groups, but thank you to all of them. And again, it gives me immense pride to see the teamwork, collaboration uh that comes together from the public

servants and also the public that was out there um in the aftermath at 2 2:30 in the morning trying to see what they could do to help. So, thank you to all of those folks. Um it was great to see everyone come together. Um so, thank you and that will on behalf of administrator Dill, that will conclude the administrator's report. I think that Commissioner Sanders has something to ask or add about that item.

Uh ask and add. So I I I I would like to say thank you for acknowledging all of them, Brady. Um in the almost four decades I've lived in this county, I have never once had to take shelter. And I did this this morning. Um and you know, waking up a grandchild to go downstairs in the basement. um and trying to watch from my phone to see all of these crazy lights and wind that were blowing outside. So, I am very appreciative of all of those people. Um I'm going to say the emergency responders that um were out there risking their lives really to make sure that we were safe. Also, I just want to say that the warning that I got didn't I I need to f I just need somebody to tell me what happened to the emergency notices that we used to get from the sheriff's department because the notice that I got was from some other weather alert.

And so, I don't know about all of you, but I would have liked to have gotten, you know, a text from our own emergency system like we used to get before. So, I'm still planning that out there. The last thing I wanted to do, and I'm sure I'm gonna re read this, but if there are any uh county residents who are customers of Xfinity or what I like to call compreh Um, I want to hear from them because in case you all hadn't noticed, there's no access to ABC. Oh, yeah.

So, in an emergency like this and you don't have access to credible um media outlets, that's a problem. And they're not talking about it. This is two weeks now, no access. I shouldn't have to go to Direct TV to get access. to our local stations.

So, I'm putting it out there. If you're if you have Expinity and you're expend experiencing the same thing, I want to hear from you because I want Expinity to explain what the problem is and how long is this going to go on because it terrifies me that this might be a test run or something more nefarious. Thank you very much for letting me come.

Thank you. Thank you, Brady. Um, next item on the agenda is a report from the chair of the board. I have very little to say other than uh offering more thanks to people to staff for the incredible work at the state of the county for the coordination and response, pardon me, during recent storms. Um, Ben Pinette has been fabulous and also already he's engaged in a process assessment of what happened and where some sirens didn't go off and where they did and where some emergency operation, some emergency notices didn't go out. So, I appreciate that he didn't just get through the storm, he started thinking about how to make the next response even better. Um, that's a tremendous amount of professionalism that he shows and it doesn't go unnoticed. Um, I also just want to take a quick moment to highlight something I've been spending some time on that I'm really excited about and it's the idea of potentially forming what I just I'm going to say we're going to do is a woman's commission. I've had some initial conversations at the state level and I've been encouraged about the work that's happening there particularly uh around issues like menopause which is something that resonates with many people in my age group and is not talked about nearly enough. And so I also want to call out that I think Commissioner Sanders has been involved in these conversations um and Tabitha Reynolds. And so their engagement on this has been noted and thanks and I'd really like to continue building on this work. I'm I'm putting I'm doing a spot thing because I didn't alert her ahead of time, but I'd really like to uh work with Commissioner Sanders in a partnership and making this happen. If she's interested, you can think about it and tell me no or yes later. Um, and of course anybody else who is interested in being a part of that conversation is welcome to. I think there's a real opportunity to do something meaningful here and I'm looking forward to continuing the

discussion. Um, we're going to move through the special order of businesses and then maybe take um a a wee break to use bathrooms. Um, so let's just get through the special order of business. Um the first uh item on the special order of business is a resolution to set a public hearing on the 202627 urban county annual action plan. Somebody like so moved in support. Okay. Moved by Labar, supported by Robbie. Uh that's a roll call vote. Uh Brendan. Commissioner Bean. Yes. Commissioner Hodgej. Yep. Commissioner Labar. Yes.

Commissioner Light. Yes. Commissioner Monteski. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Yes. Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Commissioner Scott. Yes. Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Motion carries. Thank you. Next is a resolution of intent for the Eastern County. Eastern County Recreation and Community Center. Uh borrowing up to $18 million. Uh with Okay. Moved by Robbie, supported by Sanders. Uh another roll call. Commissioner Haj, yes. Commissioner Labar, yes. Commissioner Light, yes. Commissioner Machesk, yes. Commissioner Robbie, Commissioner Sanders, absolutely. Commissioner Scott,

yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Bean, yes. Motion carries.

Great. Um, next item is a public hearing on the Arbor South Brownfield Redevelopment Plan. I'm going to call the hearing open at this time. If anybody is here to comment on this uh item, now is the time in the agenda. You have three minutes to address the board. Um there is no commissioner response to um public hearing comments. So, anyone here to make comments in this public hearing? We'll get the timer going. Yeah. Yep, you got it. There it is. Thank you.

My name is Dave Dvardi. I'm a lifelong Ann Arbor resident, former Ann Arbor City Council member, and currently a member of the board of trustees of the community college, Washington Community College. I'm here to speak against the proposed brownfield tiff um that will capture according to its own plan over $320 million from county taxpayers to benefit a private for-profit developer. I signi I have problems with a lot of these tips because it takes money away from things like for example a general obligation bond issue like you're considering for a wonderful proposal the eastern county recreation community center or the millions of dollars of operation costs. Um, as a member of the community college board of trustees, I work to keep our in district tuition rates low, currently at $99 a credit. That benefits all the residents in the county, including those from the most economically distressed uh parts of the county. And I feel like we need to do things to benefit everybody in the county, not just people in uh part of the county. We're in addition, we're maintaining and upgrading our campus infrastructure. That's going to cost millions of dollars, just as an example, over $30 million to upgrade and uh renovate our student center in the next two or three years. The proposed uh brownfield tiff captures hundreds of millions of dollars, taking it away uh from voter approved millages that benefit residents from throughout the county. In addition to the $22 million referred here, that would come from the county general operating funds, 3.6 million from county

parks, 5 million from county public safety and mental health, 2.5 million from county seniors, 2.5 million from county roads. It also captures Ann Arbor city millages, including $5 million from the proposal, the affordable housing mill that I worked so hard to pass that benefits lowincome residents looking for housing throughout the county, $5 million from climate action, $10 million from uh city street repairs, 10 million from employee benefits, almost 12 million from refuge collection, almost 8 million park acquisition and maintenance. All of this is proposed to be captured by this development. This is a reverse Robin Hood proposal. Taking tax money that would benefit the most economically distressed parts of the county to benefit a forprofit development in the wealthiest part of the county in State Road in the city of Ann Arbor. I would argue that this the developer is going to say, "Oh, these taxes would never happen if this development didn't happen." I would argue with things that are happening.

That's time. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. More later.

Anyone else for comments in the public hearing?

Thank you, Chair Scott and Commission. I admire your stamina. you know, it's late. I'm Ken Garber. I live in Ann Arbor. Um, I actually like the Arbor South project, but like Mr. Devardi, I don't like the tax capture that's involved here. This is the largest brownfield plan by far in the county's history. Um, and it's also the most contrived. Environmental costs are less than 1% of the total eligible costs here. Um the rest is non- environmental, over half of that for the three large parking decks. Um the uh the level of tax capture for a private development at 56% of total project costs is unprecedented um in our county's history, I believe. Um and it far exceeds the 20% allowed under the city's brownfield policy. Um also the city by approving this plan um allowed uh interest which again went against the city's policy uh 135 million in interest uh that makes the ratio of interest to hard cost over 33% uh which raised concerns at the MEEDC um and uh as of February MEEDC approval of this project hadn't happened which also was required under the city's brownfield policy Um so um the city violated its own policy in three different ways. The public subsidy percentage, the inclusion of interest, and the lack of MEDC support at least at that time. Um now, are there public benefits that justify the public cost? There's an argument to be made for that. Um but and there are a thousand new housing units including 200 affordable housing, but the 800 market rate units don't need a public subsidy. What bothers me mostly are the 2600 parking

spaces in a transit corridor zoning district. Uh the developer argues that it's only 6 spaces per housing unit, but that's over only arriving at that by alloc overallocating for the office portion with 1500 parking spaces, which is about three times actual peak usage. Um so we're reimbursing those parking decks. Um, in short, this is a vastly overs subsidized, vastly overparked, mostly market rate project on a site with little if any contamination. Um, as Mr. Weer mentioned earlier, um I um know that there's a general concern that voting no could lead the city to actually leave um the county authority and form its own authority and then you lose the admin and the LBRF and all that. But that should not be part of the calculus here. You need to ask the question um are the costs of eligible activities reasonable and necessary and is the amount of capture taxable value reasonable? I don't think they are.

Thank you.

We're going to We're going to reset it. It will reset there. There you go. Thanks. Uh, thanks for um your time. My name is Brian Kung. Um, I was born in an Arbor. I was raised in Seline. Um, and now I live in Ipsy. So, I've been a lifelong county resident. Um, I don't know too much uh behind the scenes of the numbers and things like that. But having grown up in this area, driving by uh this corridor um you know since I was uh I was a young child, it hasn't it's always been a parking lot and just to me it just doesn't make sense to keep it as a parking lot. Um and I it would be nice to see uh some sort of um uh more usefulness for this property. Um you know uh I like the the proposed plans. Um, it seems like there's a good mix of different residential and retail use. I like the walkable areas. I like that they there's potential to also plant a lot more trees, which is really important to a lot of people in Ann Arbor. Um, and uh yeah, I just uh just would like to see it being used a little bit um uh more. Uh right now at night, you know, it's sitting empty. On weekends, it's empty. Um it would be great to see more life and uh um more maybe more tax revenue also for this area too. Thank you for your time.

Thank you

Jeremy Haley Ipsy Township. This project's not right. It takes capturing tax money that's meant for the people. It's kind of socialism, you know, giving money to the rich, taking money from the poor, giving it to the rich. They don't need it. I bet you somewhere in their contract, you'll find that uh if they don't get this brownfield go, the financial people back out that they can't get the financing, get this, they don't get the money from the people, which kind of sucks. It shouldn't be that way. And if it is true that they bought the property on the corner to obtain a round field because it is a contaminated piece of property, that's just dirty and they should be called out for it. And it's not a good thing to do if you're a big developer to buy a little piece of property, attach to another, go everything else on it dirty and it should be in inspected completely and find out how much and what part of it is. uh clean or not. And if majority end winds up being claimed, maybe a lawsuit should be filed against a developer for coming against the brownfield development, wasting all people's time and money against it because you got to start and make a lesson out of somebody or people are going to keep doing the same crap over and over and over. And you guys should really take and just hold off and vote. No. Or at least table the issue until a full inspection of property and the data can be released and everyone can look at it and go from there and see if they're telling the truth what is clean, what's not. If not, it's to waste people's money in the tax capture like the transformational brown fields is not needed. Is one in Manchester what transformational issue there are $400

some thousand houses. The average medium income is 87,000 in Manchester. It takes $125,000 to buyund 400 over a $400,000 home. The same thing in Ipsy. They're building $400,000 homes where the average income is 60ome thousand, you know, and same thing with this and there's going to be market rate. It's going to be for students and maybe some other professionals, but it's not the right project and table it until you can get the right data. Thank you.

Thank you. Tom Weiner again. Um, I just wanted to follow up a little bit of what I said earlier about uh the fact that um Eagle would pay for a full sight uh assessment on that property if only the developer and the county say do it. uh alternative is that uh Lara it's uh Bureau of Fire Services is in charge of underground storage tank enforcement. Um when they learned recently when I was talking to them that when these tanks were removed 10 years ago and soil taken, no testing was done. It it was supposed to be testing and the first thing he said is they owe us an assessment report and they're going to send out inspector to start looking at this and it may be inspe the site assessment was done but the paperwork wasn't turned in but he said if there isn't that we are going to require the owner to do an assessment and that's going to be on their nickel a lot more than a nickel. So I think the the the developer ought to take this offer to get a freebie on behalf of the county and them the um there are these numbers thrown around about the ratio of the um tiff to the private investment. It suddenly has been talked about there's $588 million of private investment. That's not in the plan. The plan that you have before you is the same as it's always been, $46 million. And if you put the uh the tip money against this, it's 92%. The the the capture is 92% of the amount

of the private investment that's in the document. Another thing about numbers, I don't understand why the memo that you got talked about um it only talked about the county operating 22 million is what's going to be captured. And as as Dave was indicating, no, it's 38.5 million because it comes out of every fund. That's how much it's costing the county. This project is way out of line. You've got, and it's already been mentioned, even if you believe there's $2 million to take care of those tanks, which may not be any, and if you believe there's a million dollars to be spent in taking out this obsolete parking structure, that's $3 million. That's the tiff will be 100 times the things that have to be fixed. That is just crazy. this project. If they can't make a project work on their property, 20 acres of basically flat, unspoiled property, then maybe they need to find somebody else will buy it from them and do a project that will pay for itself and not expect taxpayers to pay for it. Thank you.

Anybody else for comments on the public hearing? Okay, the public hearing is closed. Thank you very much. Um, and at this point I think we'll take a 15minute recess. So try not to be back here. It maybe we'll say 18 minute recess. So we'll 17 minute recess. Come back at 11. At 11. Thank you.

I'm I'm banging the gavl like it might be a a call to the commissioners to try us call to call us back to order. Yay. Yeah, you are. You're good. Now we've got quorum. Okay. Um, so would anybody like to move the appointments? Commissioner Labar is not in here. Commissioner Machi, who would like to second? No. Okay. Moved by Machiasi. Uh, seconded by Bean. Any discussion? All right. Brendan,

Commissioner Lear, yes or appointments. Commissioner Light, it's very cute. Commissioner Macheski, yes. Commissioner Robbie, yes. Commissioner Sanders, I think I know. Yes. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Bean. Yes. Commissioner Hajj. Motion carries. Okay, great. Did I miss you? Sorry. Uh, no. He said here, so he's just Okay.

Um, it was cute. It was cute with Andy when he came in and said here. Um, would anybody like to move the consent agenda? All right. Moved by labor labour. Moved by Labar or as my phone says, Labari and seconded by Sanders. That's a voice vote. Any discussion? Great. A voice vote. All those in favor? Any opposed? Great. Uh, first reading resolutions. Who would like to move those? Commissioner Lavar.

Thanks, Chair. First resolutions. Resolution adopting the Ever South redevelopment plan. A resolution authorizing the board of public works to renew the Western Recycling Authority operating and maintenance assessment. Is there a support?

All right. Moved by Labar, seconded by Bean. Um I I feel like we can probably just do these one by one. There's two. And so I'm going to ask people who are here to talk about Arbor South to come talk to us about Arbor South before we move into commissioner comments and questions. I have Nathan Vote Voy Voy. I always say your last name incorrectly. Vote. Vote. I had it right the first time. Yeah. Okay. All right. Vote for president. Uh, welcome to our meeting. Thank you. Thank you for presenting to us.

Sure, happy to do it. Um, I'm just going to run through some of the plan specifics. Um, and we've got Joe Giant here with the city of Ann Arbor, the economic development director. He's got his presentation and then we have Jennifer Hall to touch on the affordable housing aspects of the development and the developments team here is here to answer questions as well. So, great. The whole team, I love it. Thank you. Oh. doing just at the top of the wall.

Great. Um, we've been through this before. I always say we the county formed an a regional authority in 99 and invited everybody to join the city of Ann Arbor. Uh, I joined in 2002 when Strathmore presented a big lower town redevelopment back in the day and they've been with us ever since. Um, they are our biggest partner, our most important partner. Uh most of our re our revenue comes from Ann Arbor projects. This is of course the biggest project that we've seen anywhere as mentioned. Um and our partnership is unique. U most cities like Ann Arbor form their own authorities and we've been able to maintain the partnership over the years. Um and we value that. We would be a shell of our program uh without Ann Arbor. So I just wanted to point that out. And maybe people don't are not aware that most of our projects are Ann Arbor projects. The process for a regional authority is a little bit different than a city authority. A city has their own authority. It just goes to the the authority, the Brownfield authority, appointed body, and then to city council and it's done. Here we've got city council concurring resolution brownfield authority appointed by you all by the bo and then of course you are the governing governing body with the authority to actually adopt the plan. Um this is an important point with the brownfield act. We we usually think of contaminated sites as being that's what brownfields are. Well this act specifically has really two different purposes. Yes, the traditional cleanup approaches, the need to clean up sites and use those uh eligible activities that address cleaning up groundwater, soil, due care, etc. But then there's an economic development path which is really in this plan has been pointed out is what we're talking about. It's mostly infrastructure, it's site preparation, it can be parking decks. The act originally had to be only supported

public parking decks. The act was changed about 10 years ago during my tenure. Now it could be private or public. So it's more flexible, but the purpose is really economic development. And in this case, the environmental is really a small concern. The larger purpose of this plan is infrastructure support, building this neighborhood up and the supporting hard uh scape work that's required to do that. Rarely do we have plans that are balanced where we happen to have the same amount of environmental and non-environmental. Uh it's kind of can be out of whack at times. I know you all understand TIFF, but I just want to reiterate again uh there's a base value established at the time of brown plan brownfield plan approval. Whatever taxes are being paid on the property continue to be paid to the taxing jurisdictions. Only the incremental increase as a result of the redevelopment and the improvements of the property. The taxes generated on that new taxable value is what's used to finance eligible activities and reimburse costs. Eligibility which has come up tonight and we've uh looked at at this obviously more closely than most plans. You've got various paths. In this case, we have a facility on the corner of the gas station and we have another property uh to the northeast side uh deemed functionally obsolete by uh a class 4 assessor. That's an attachment in the plan. Uh we asked for for eagle confirmation of the facility status because of the questions raised about the date of the previous investigations, how old they are. It's a facility. It's a it's a on or off thing. It's a black and white thing. There's no uh grades of facility status. It's not a gray area. It's either it either is or not. That's all the statute requires. And it's not

that hard to find some constituent on a lot of older urban sites that exceed the criteria and you've got a facility adjacent and contiguous. The act recognizes that often you're trying to assemble land. In this case, we are uh and so parcels adjacent to other qualifying parcels can be put into the plan to make a larger project. In terms of the activities, as I said, the environmental piece is small relative to the rest of the uh activities. Um I tried to really break out here the different costs. It's a little bit complicated because the city has 25 million that they'd like to reserve for a public sewer trunk line expansion in State Street. That is part of this 300 or so million, but there is quite a bit of interest. You can see the interest on the smaller principal amount of 40 million is higher because you got 30 years to pay things off, but you're paying off the parking decks first. Meanwhile, the other costs are acrewing interest and that's why the interest is so much higher. It's confusing, but you run a tiff table, you try to project these costs, you project interest, and you come up with numbers that that we've come up with in this plan. Um, there's some other soft costs in there. And then, of course, the county admin, LBRF, uh, is higher, highest we've ever seen because of the length of time and the and the overall taxable value. And then we uh, the state fund we pay into a state brownfield fund that they use for other grants and that's about 12 million there. So that's kind of the breakdown of the costs. Um in terms of developer developer reimburseable in the plan projected in the tiff table about 300 million. Um the other costs are in addition to that. That 300 million also might include the

city's 25 million and the total eligible activities are 345 million because we just don't know over 30 years where the taxable value will be. I we do know from other Ann Arbor plans that they almost always pay off more quickly than we project. So this just allows a little bit of cushion over a long period of time for some additional eligible activities to be covered. This would give more room for the city to take advantage of the tax capture as well, room for their 25 million. Um, and that's why you have 345 million shown, but this this plan projected is 300 million. But just to be clear, the what you're looking at today for this plan is a maximum of 345 developer. Our LBRF and admin is separate from that. So there's always a maximum in a plan and they would have to come back and amend the plan if it's going to go higher than that number. So that's the number I think you should pay attention to. And then in terms of uh securing state school tax capture, I I think you all remember this. The brownfield plant here only secures local millillage capture. We have to submit a work plan, what's called an act 31 work plan to the MEEDC um to secure school capture. At this stage, uh, usually the developer, the city, we have had conversations with the MEEDC to get a feeling where where you at with this project. Um, we always put in the plan though, uh, to protect local millages. We say, hey, if the MEDC doesn't cover something, doesn't approve something, we are only going to cover proportionally what we would have covered. So, the risk is on the developer to get that approval. We want the approval because we're counting on the the school millages, right, to pay off these costs. But I want to make that clear. Local millages are protected. The MEDC

will have to review the plan. It doesn't happen before this step. This step is first. A work plan, a draft work plan is being reviewed now. It will go to the MEDC formal approval. And then the reimbursement agreement is something you all usually don't see. It's uh the authority reviews it, corp council uh reviews it, and of course, we work with the city. This one's going to be a little bit more complicated. We've got the the city potentially being a third party where the the trunk line uh sewer expansion 25 million. Uh the affordable units is not going to be part of the reimbursement agreement. We are not we don't have oversight. This is the housing commission. So, I just wanted to make that point. Um the authorities not doesn't have any oversight role. Um and then the agreement always protects the county admin LBRF that if for some reason uh taxable values don't go if we have another recession or another 2008 sort of situation in the end if we hit the 30 years we are the countyy's protected as well. We're going to be collecting the admin and the LVRF and that's always written into the agreement. There's some other pieces to the reimbursement agreement that we just don't know yet um that will be in there and those are going to tend to be nuanced things, but that always comes after brownfield plan and work plan approval. That's all I had for you tonight. Um, we can I can answer questions or we can turn it over to Joe and then Jennifer so you can get the full the full picture of what uh what we're talking about tonight.

I feel like getting the full picture might be best um because that might answer some other questions that come up. So, okay. Yeah. Thanks, Joe. Hello. Hi.

Good evening. Good night, commissioners. My name is Joe Giants. I'm the director of economic development for the city of Ann Arbor. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. Um, as Mr. Vote mentioned, for the last 24 years, we've been partners with the county on brownfield plans. We place a tremendous amount of value and trust in their expertise and making sure that the projects align with state statute. Um over the past 18 months we've worked very closely with Nathan almost on a daily basis with our development partners with the housing commission and with members of your brownfield authority um to create a plan that we could take to our own city council and feel confident that it was fully compliant with state statute and just working with Nathan on this and other projects. He is an absolute all-star champion. We would not be what we are without him. So, I just want to give kudos to a really, really great county employee. So, thank you, Nathan. Um, we support approval of this plan because this project meaningfully addresses numerous city priorities, most notably our regional housing shortage and is a project that but for the use of tiff would not happen. Um, this project is located on the south state corridor just north of 94 um in what is today probably the most automobile oriented part of the city. So even before adoption of our comprehensive plan, there was pretty broad consensus that we needed to rethink development along corridors like this and other ones kind of like Washington Stadium, Plymouth Road. Right now these are almost entirely low density autooriented developments, but at the same time they represent some of the cities and really the county's best opportunities to add muchneeded housing at a relatively high density in close proximity to transit, jobs, and services. And we talk about housing, but it is more than just about building big apartments along busy roads. Um, it's creating new hubs of activity and new neighborhoods organized around walkable

blocks.

It's transforming a place where proximity doesn't matter at all to actual places where it is the most important thing. And building up these corridors is so much more efficient from a fiscal standpoint, an environmental standpoint, and an economic standpoint. Like think about this is a thousand units. Think about how many miles of roads, miles of sidewalks, pipes. The land would get eaten up if this was built like a normal suburban development would be. So, in 2021, city council created the transit corridor 1 or TC-1 zoning district to support this type of redevelopment along these corridors. Um, this is a map of future land use from the comp plan. Um, the TC1 corridors are outlined in black. South State Washington when you're heading towards Ipsy um up along Plymouth Road and then um Stadium and uh where it runs into Jackson. Um so creating a zoning district is one thing, but actually having someone put real money into a financable market informed project is something else entirely. Um, the fact that this district was established five years ago, we have yet to see a major project break ground should make clear that there's a lot more to this than just having the right zoning. So, that's why we're excited about this project. It's what TC1 looks like in practice. 200 units of permanently affordable housing, 800 market rate units, ground flooror shopping, restaurants, a hotel, parking, and open space at an investment by the developer of more than $580 million paid upfront. It's being undertaken by a local partner who knows the market as well as anyone and a regional partner who has successfully pulled off this type of project before. We feel very confident in our development partners. So this is what the site looks like today. This is what it would look like at full bullet buildout from from the other

other direction. And then here's a site plan. You can see how it um state is to the left for me. Um you can see how it stitches together the street grid. um creates a central access where a lot of the activity would happen, retail, and it contains one, two, three parking decks that provide convenient access, but they're not overwhelming the landscape. They're they're, you know, well shielded behind the other other activities. Um we believe that it will generate a critical mass of activity and population that will transform the area and spur the further development of tax generating use generating uses on the land around it. Now, at a certain point, we have to reconcile the fact that going from an area with essentially zero on-site infrastructure to what is essentially six blocks of of mature downtown requires public investment. Most down most development projects benefit from years, decades of investment in the area around them in public infrastructure. You're doing a project downtown that probably includes parking as well. Here, that infrastructure just doesn't exist yet. It is a big project. It is a lot of money. But I can say certainly that this project has been as vetted as any project that we have ever undertaken. And that certainly includes preparation of this brownfield plan. So we support the use of tiff because this project clearly advances our policy goals and cannot be constructed under normal market conditions as analyzed and verified by the city's municipal financial advisory firm. And again, the only public funds involved in this are new taxes generated by the project, which wouldn't exist but for the project. Now, this probably won't be the last TC1 to request TIFF, but um the projects of this scale with this level of infrastructure need are rare in Ann Arbor. We expect requests of this magnitude to be few and far between. It is a big bold project, but

it is hard to imagine the vision of TC1 aligning more with a concrete project proposal that supports our policy goals. So again, we ask for your affirmative vote tonight on the Brownfield plan. And with respect to one of those goals, the provision of affordable housing, I'd like to turn it over to Jennifer Hall. Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Scott and rest of the commissioners. I'm Jennifer Hall. I'm the director of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission. So, you might be wondering why I am here. Uh, for the city of Ann Arbor to use Brownfield TIP requires the developer in a residential project to include 15% affordable housing. Uh, and so that's how I ended up getting involved um at the request of the city administrator. So, why does that make sense? Uh our mission is to increase the supply of affordable housing. Our target is 60% AMI or less which is the AMI area median income. That is the target of our brownfield tiff affordable housing for the city. Uh we do try to serve households at a lower income whenever it's possible. Um, and when we do new construction, our goal is always to do it with uh very sustainable to meet the city's uh sustainability goals as well as to increase the amount of accessible units that are available. And you only have two choices. You either do new construction or you do acquisition and renovation. And why why does that matter? Um, there's pros and cons for new construction. The positive about doing new construction is we are actually adding housing to the marketplace. Uh there's a a dir of housing on all income levels. So if we take and acquire property that's market rate, uh we are taking it off the tax role and we're u making it um affordable but we're not adding any housing. So new construction has that benefit and we can build what we need. we can make it accessible where we can ensure that there aren't environmental hazards um as part of a acquisition project that often happens. And um some of the cons, it usually is more expensive per unit, but it depends on what you're comparing it to. Uh for example, when we acquired Lur Terrace for $4 million, we are now

looking at a $30 million renovation. Uh, so you have to count all the different costs if you're trying to compare and it does take longer for that construction to happen. There's only three types of developers. You have your private for-profit, your private nonprofit, and you have public entities. When we develop housing, we have almost every project we've done, we have all three types. Uh, we have our own private nonprofit. That's our development arm, and we always partner with a uh another developer to uh do the development. And the more complicated it is, it's uh usually been a a for-profit developer. For-profit developers actually are the largest developers of affordable housing in the United States right now. They are not housing authorities and they are not housing authorities plus nonprofits. It does not exceed the amount by the for-profit sector. No matter who is developing it, we have to follow all these processes. We have to find the property which is extremely challenging for uh an entity like the housing commission to compete with the private sector. Um we have to secure the capital stack. We always have to have uh some kind of public support. You cannot do affordable housing at these income targets without public support and it can be in a variety of ways. So why this project? What is the benefit for affordable housing for for this particular development? Um I mentioned uh acquiring land. This development, the land is acquired. The the developer we're partnering with, they've already secured the land and we're relying on their deep uh expertise in doing a large complicated project as well as um I don't know if the public understands how much risk is taken on by developers and they're taking on all the guarantees. are taking on uh securing the financing and because they are a large experienced developer they can secure better

financing than the housing commission can better better interest rates etc. Um there's going to they are required to do about 150 that's 15%. However um it just makes more economies of scale to be able to do another story added to that. So we're actually going to do um our goal is at least 200. The current design is 209. So the developer is paying for what they have to provide the 15%. Um and then we'll be providing with the developer a combination of us and the developer for the extra units beyond what they're required to do. And the reason that we're developing it this way, the developer in other sites, they could include 15% mixed in to the market rate. Um but the benefit of working with the housing commission is that we will actually own and manage permanently the affordable housing unit. So we will have a permanent deed restriction. So no matter what happens in the future, no matter what happens with the rest of the site, uh the housing commission will be the management entity and we'll have the underlying ownership of the land that that property is on. Um, and I think I've talked enough to this uh board about low-inccome housing tax credits, so I won't go into detail, but it does require us to have a partnership uh with a uh equity investor. Um, and the other good thing is that we're always trying to screen people in because we are the government. Uh, so we are serving people of last resort that have a hard time staying housed in other locations. And when there's any cash flow, rather than it going back to your investor in a private setting, it actually gets reinvested back uh to the housing commission and our properties. I mentioned the sustainability. We're planning on doing geothermal, solar, all electric building. Um we're going to exceed the uh accessible requirements. Um the per unit cost is going to be less than um some of our other sites because

there's economies of scale with using the same contractor, architect, engineer, etc. uh with the rest of the site. The developer will be putting in both cash um and providing uh both the parking and bus passes and um they will be if they were to own and manage it then they would be deriving uh profits from the project but instead that's going into the project and it's going uh back to the housing commission. And then the city for their extra portion has um will be putting in no more than uh $18 million uh which is less than that portion of the development budget is less than the extra proportion of units that we'll be adding. And I think that is the end and you want the team to come up for questions.

Yeah, let's have the team come up for questions. questions friends and allbody else. No, that's it for presentations, but the Oh. Oh, sorry. Do you want to add something more? I do. Thank you. Great. Don't have a presentation though. I'm shooting from the hip here a little bit, but thank you.

Uh uh good evening, commissioners. My name is Luke Bonner. I represent the development team. I'm with the Bonner Advisory Group. Uh we're located at 1054 South Main Street. Uh and I am a Pittsfield Township resident. Um I'm here with uh Jeff Hoffman and Andy Andre from Oxford Companies. And then the rest of our consulting team is also here. Tom Gritter with Gritter Real Estate Services um who's also located in the same office as me and Beth Mastering who's our environmental consultant um on this project. So, first I want to say thank you and express our gratitude for allowing us to be here this evening and having this project um under your consideration. Uh this is literally years in the making um years in the visionary process that Oxford um had undertaken before anything actually became public and hit the public docket um for review and approval. I want to echo Joe Giant's comments about Nathan and his leadership from a brownfield perspective. So just so you know, Nathan is uh one of the most recognized experts in brown fruit development across the entire state. Um he's a leader in this field. um in Joe Giant. Um when he started with the city, uh we were working originally with Derek Delicort and Derek basically threw Joe right into the fire in the first day. And and Joe has been an incredible talent in understanding the nuances of a deal um almost immediately and helping facilitate um getting us to this point. And then obviously with Jennifer Hall and her sophistication in putting this deal together and her leadership from the affordable housing side. So we truly uh thank everybody that's been involved. Um, I'm also a professor at the University of Michigan. I teach at the Toddman School. My class that I teach is public private partnerships and real estate development. And I can tell you this is a textbook public private partnership deal um that uh our students research and present case studies on a regular basis. Uh we have the housing commission with the affordable component. We have the city with the finance component and the county with the finance component and the developer

delivering the private investment side of this. all to hit uh the priorities of the city uh housing and affordability and highdensity mixeduse developments in their TC-1 zoning districts which we are proud to be a part of that just to put in some framing context for deals like this. Um I'm also the municipal adviser to the city of Sterling Heights uh which is the fourth largest city in the state about 70 miles from here. Uh the city has the same team of adviserss um uh PFM and Miller Canfield um that are evaluating the redevelopment of Lakeside Shopping Center. So that's a $570 million development project and the city is committing $270 million in tax government financing to that project. Um over $und00 million of which will be committed to debt service between the developer and the city itself. So projects of this magnitude um do often uh need support. The bigger the project, the bigger the public infrastructure requirement is uh and that kind of commitment from uh the local community is is um typical in a lot of cases across the country. But I want to go back uh to Oxford uh the local developer um who is proposing to do this project. Oxford's been around since 1998. They've grown to over 100 employees. Uh they're local. So, when you're doing a a project of this size, when you're local, it definitely means more. It means more to the people that uh that work at Oxford, that live in the community, that work in the community, and spend money here. So, as the community benefits, so does Oxford. And if Oxford benefits, I think so does the community. And so, we're uh incredibly happy um also to partner with Crawford Hoy um who has the mixeduse development experience of scale for a project of this size. uh that brings uh much needed uh expertise to the overall development team and also their expertise in putting these kind of u partnerships together. So uh we're thankful for the opportunity to be here and to be heard tonight and for your

consideration for the brownfield plan you have before you and our team is available for questions. Thank you.

Okay, now questions or comments. Commissioner Sanders. Um couple questions. So, um, the parking spots seem to just really stick out to me. I guess I my questions are related to, um, so you're going to have these massive number of parking spots. Are the people utilizing those spots going to have to turn around and pay for them? Because the parking spots are included in sort of this tax relief or whatever you want to call it. Um

Luke, did you want to talk to the finance park? I can just talk to the parking residential people supposed to be paying for those parking spots in addition. So the amount of parking spaces is based upon the office uses and all the uh residences, the new retail and everything. So you like certain uses generate a certain number of like like a like a parking capacity that you want to make sure that your garages are sized appropriately for the uses. I think that the development team would probably be better positioned to talk about the how the garages would be operated because the city is not going to be a owner operator of the garages. I'm going turn it over to Luke real quick.

I guess let me try and make it planer. I want to know does this look like a double dipping the parking? So first of all from the u parking perspective in terms of the utilization of the spaces um I think there's a ratio somewhere in the packet for the residential portion this is one of the lowest parking ratios from residential perspective at 66. So that's specifically for the residential side. Um the parking also has to accommodate um retail shoppers. So, visitors to the area, um people that are staying at the hotel, um and just other, you know, other people coming into the site. Um there's also office users, uh that have a commitment to parking that's on their office lease. So, the office users will also have um parking related to this. So, any cost um that is passed on to somebody parking in the spaces is all going to the long-term operating maintenance of those spaces. Um, so these parking structures, you know, one of the reasons why there's a request for a partnership on parking decks is because they don't actually make any money. That's why public entities are typically the ones that are building these and owning these and operating these long term. Um, there are cases over time once those parking structures and their debt has been paid off, then they're sold to a private entity. That private entity never has to, in those cases, has to actually build it. They're buying an asset and managing it after that. So any charges related to parking in this case are all related to the operation and maintenance of the decks and not actually to make a profit on the project. If that helps answer your question.

You might have opened up another can of worms for me because what you just said was that at some point those parking structures could be sold to a separate entity.

I'm saying from a a public perspective. So that's typically why um municipalities are building parking structures because number one they are so expensive. They're expensive to operate, maintain over time, and there's a lot of capital improvements that are required for them over time. There are cases where once all of the debt is paid off on a municipal side that municipalities do sell parking debt structures sometimes to a private entity because they shift all of that burden of long-term operating expenses to a private entity only so the public doesn't have to pay for those anymore. That's the point that I was trying to. Okay, so now I'm about to get kind of intrusive because unfortunately I have my little handy computer here and so I was just being nosy um about the Oxford companies. So sometime back they completed a $100 million Ann Arbor real estate deal. It looks like this article was back in April of 2019 before COVID hit. It says it's updated actually. Right. So, I'm wondering out loud um what kind of financial difficulty was or is Oxford in and how will this project help? because when I pull up your sort of your bio, um, you've got a tremendous amount of corporate office space that had to be or had to be struggling or severely affected by COVID and the one or two years that we were kind of still working from home. So, I'm being intrusive.

Intrude intrude away. Um, I'm interested in that. And I also want to just cut to the chase and ask, what is your profit margin looking like? So, if we say yes to this, what are you walking away with? Are you privately held? So, there's a lot there. I'll I'll have a lot.

It's okay. I'll start with the big picture. Oxford has the largest portfolio of office space in town. Uh, we oversee about two and a half million square feet. were about 85% leased. There are buildings in that portfolio you mentioned that haven't done great. We recently sold two that were vacant. We actually did just fine. The market is not been ideal since co but yet we've managed quite well. I mean we have buildings that are full. We have buildings that are relatively high occupancy. We have some buildings that are struggling, but overall we're fine. This isn't entirely about Oxford, though. Oxford is not a single source of capital for this. We have other partners.

We've contributed the land. That's our contribution. We have other partners that are covering other parts of it. We are still there still the next phase is to raise money from debt and equity and bring it all together. So, we are the one of the leads. Buffford Wayne is our partner and our neighbors next door CI who owns the 789 building. They're our partners. So this began because if you work that market now for 25 years, you probably all are quite aware at what it's like on State Street at 5:00, right? Packed. That was my next point. We'll get to that, but go ahead.

Crazy. And so, you know, looking at that, we've we've always known that there's got to be a better way to do things over there. And then I got a tour about say it was 2017 in 777. And but they were on the eighth floor. Space was gutted. They were trying to lease it. And I I walked to the window and I'm looking out at the parking lot. It's very different seeing the forest from the trees. you look down at 10 acres

of asphalt. And I I said to the asset manager, we didn't own it at the time, and I said to the guy, "What do you plan on doing with the parking lot?" He just looked at me like, "Where you put the cars, right? Like, what's wrong with you?" But I I felt very strongly that something could be done with it. We had to get cars off the road at the time. And this is before everyone was talking about 2030 plan. We knew that it was just bad down there when it came to traffic. So, I really like the idea of getting cars off the road. I drive an electric car. I'm all about dealing with the pollution. Okay. I'm actually one of the people that was poking Missy over at OSI about getting people to get rid of their gas powered lawn equipment. Okay. So, I'm a believer in getting cars off the road. That is what's driven this. That's why I am the one who said to everybody else, "We got to do something, who's with me." And it took us two years to find a developer that had the same core values, the same culture. We were talking to guys in Chicago who were like, "Yeah, we'll build a tower here. It'll be great." I was like, "But you're disconnected from the community. Build it all by itself." I wanted something that was like this, like Arbor South. And that's after a couple years, we found Crawford Home. Same idea, mixed use. Build the density, not crazy density, but the kind of density that people still feel like a walkable community. It feels good. And so that's where this all roots from. Uh as as far as you asked me about the financials of it, I I honestly can't get into that in much detail right now. I I didn't bring those guys with me, all our underwriters.

I can talk. You want to talk about numbers? Please let him talk.

Yeah, I I can talk about that because um the annual internal rate of return is part of the metric that this project is evaluated on. So, one of the tricky parts about having a public private partnership and why they can be challenging sometimes specifically for a developer is because you do have to share a lot of your financial information to the public entities who are looking at this and deciding whether or not we want to actually provide some kind of incentive to it. So, the MEEDC, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation Corporation will also be reviewing this or actually reviewing it right now. Um, they have a threshold of an 8% internal rate of return. So the purpose of that is as you probably can all imagine also is like you don't want to give public subsidy that is overly enriching a private developer. So that return threshold is established by the MEDC which is typically adopted also by the local municipalities. So um PFM who's the city financial adviser has refu reviewed this information. So has Joe uh and Derek and Nathan. So the internal rate of return for this project is actually 7 41% which is just a little bit underneath the threshold that MEEDC reviews these under.

Um, and there's a huge model of financial information we have to submit to to everyone to review. I suspect that it's a timing issue, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Why are we being asked to make a decision before it has been completely reviewed by all of the entities? So, it has been completely reviewed by all of the local entities.

It's okay. MEEDC we have also been talking to this through this entire process. So we have been communicating with them regularly for the last 18 months. We've had regular check-in meetings with them. Um their process is just they want all of the locals to approve everything first and then they'll take it to the Michigan Strategic Fund Board for approval after that. So they've had um the same iterations of the plan uh the Brownfield plan and the tiff tables that uh Nathan and Joe have had. It's just they just don't take action on it. you know, they'll give us feedback on it. You know, we're looking for this, we're looking for this, and then once we get to this point, that's when they'll package everything up and take it for approval. So, um, honestly, I think we're now looking at probably the June 23rd Michigan Strategic Fund Board meeting for MEEDC. Granted, that everything continues to go well here.

Okay. I I think I got three more questions, chair, and then I should be done. Okay. Um, one is, uh, there was some discussion about the number of affordable housing units and the housing commission actually needing to purchase 50. I I want to understand why they have to purchase any if there is a set amount that's supposed to be available and the purchase of those 50 still just gets us at that amount, right? They can take us it's not like extra.

It is extra. So they have to provide 15% of their total units which is roughly 150 and they're building in phases um but their projection is um roughly a thousand units. So that makes 150ish going to be what they have to provide and that would be like a fourstory building based on the footprint that we're going to be at. And I was like, well, let's talk about adding more if we're going to spend all this money to bring all this infrastructure in to the site and we've and the land is owned and we're doing this partnership and we'll be able to own the whole property that we're developing. I wanted to add more. So, that was my request was to add more than they're required. So, we're not um quote buying it from them. we're one of the um funding sources because we're adding more than is required by the development project and so that's our contribution. They're not required to pay for it. Uh so that's our side to pay for it. Um and to answer a previous question about parking because I know we've had this conversation, the affordable housing, you can't charge for parking and so it has to be provided uh by the development uh with low-income housing tax credits. has to be included in the rent to just for that portion.

Okay. So, I've seen I've you know had a conversation with Oxford a year maybe two years ago. I can't remember. I saw their plan. You kind of zipped through this one and I was going to ask you to go back and show us the real life uh graphic that you showed with it built. not not just the like transition,

but the real life one because I want to look at the roads that are around there and what they're looking like after it's developed. But I also wanted to know when you talk about affordable housing, what in this development makes it friendly for families? bec and that that my question was triggered by something in the presentation that talked about the schools and sort of them, you know, them giving up some of the taxes that would normally be captured. Okay. Um, so I want to know, you know, like is this

familyfriendly or is it for, you know, young adults, people that don't have families? Not that I don't care about them, but my personal thing is all about families and children. So, are they welcome here? Is it set up? Playgrounds. What do we What do we have?

So, I'm going talk about the traffic issue first and then school capture and then probably Jen or maybe Luke or Jeff could talk about the um makeup of the units. Yeah, it's a it's a big project in an area that already handles half of our inbound commuters every day. half of our 72,000 people that come into Ann Arbor to work every day go through this corridor. There's there's a lot of traffic um that was known by our, you know, traffic engineers at the city and you know it's it's a big site and they had them do the the typical traffic study and they're looking at doing a signal potentially if warranted where that kind of that main center drive intersects with state. Um, more broadly though, like I mentioned, this is this big TC1 area where we do expect to see a lot of new development and we want to see high density development. We want to, you know, connect our bike network, connect our pedestrian network, make it easier for people to get around with the bus. We worked really closely with triple ATA to integrate uh enhanced bus stops with this because we hope that people will, you know, take advantage of that. Um, but more broadly, we are doing an areawide transportation study to make sure that it's not just this project and this project and these improvements to make sure that it's all kind of conceived in a coordinated manner. People will still drive. People will still drive, but we hope that like by giving them opportunities to walk and shop locally and ride the bus, some people will opt to do that. So from the city standpoint, we are looking at this in as as in a in a systemic fashion and developer has been pretty helpful in making sure that like they're and trying to be flexible enough in their design that they can accommodate whatever that final version of State Street looks like, but I can tell you right now it has bike lanes on it. I mean, wouldn't be caught dead riding a bike on that road right now. I mean, is it is definitely in need of um some some softer upgrades. Um, so that's that's Does that address your traffic question? I

I'm actually terrified. So I'm thinking of, you know, from my own district standpoint. Pittsville's on the other side of I94. Uh, you've got all of these hotels that are going up. We've got Costco, which is my favorite place to be in the world. Um, and I'm just trying to think like what's it going to be like when this is built and I'm trying to leave Costco and get on I94 or god forbid go of what's left of Brierwood. This is it's already a bottleneck. If you're taking State Street going towards the U of M stadiums, it gets ugly up in there near the produce station. Yeah, it we

I just feel like I might be cussing you guys in a while. Well, I'll point out that Costco and is south of 94, so hopefully you wouldn't have to deal with this part when you when you go there. Um, I know that's just an example. Higher density development generates less vehicular trips than lower density development. Brierwood has an absolutely enormous parking lot. I hope it thickens up, but like that's because you have to drive to Brierwood. These shops are hopefully all accessible from all of the units that that are above them. I know this is kind of one isolated development, but the as these areas grow, we I mean the city has a has a goal to like reduce vehicle miles traveled by 50%. We do that by adding adding density, making it easier to walk and easier to bike. And that that comes with developments like this, not developments that are sprawling. Those are the ones that typically will generate more car traffic. So, I understand your concern, but this this is in in our estimation like a a step in a big step in the right direction in that respect. Um,

okay. So, yeah, school school capture. Um, all I can say is is right now the taxes that are currently being generated by the site continue to flow through to the districts. And like any tiff district, it's only the new taxes generated by the development that are that are that are captured. So, it's not being taken away from it. But with school capture, it's kind of a different story here. I I'm I'm going to mess up the details. So, our brownfield guru is going to come back up and kind explain the nuance of that. Well, the the legislature replenishes any brownfield captured school taxes back into the school aid fund every year. So, we do the calc we report in August, they do they do the calcs and they replenish whatever was captured.

Okay. Um per student. So, they still give each student still gets funds. Okay. I I mean I'm asking that because if if you um I I feel like there's not a good argument if there's not if this is not going to be a familyfriendly sort of thing because if I'm a parent in Ann Arbor public schools or any other public school me too like what's in it for me but what do I get out of let's talk about that we're already struggling with we don't we don't have a settled contract with the Ann Arbor public school system yet like not your fault but okay

mom was a school teacher I hear you uh Will you please put that uh that graphic back up there? And and you've got cursor control, right? Most times. So, oh, I can scroll. I I don't I want to I want to put a cursor on something. How can we put a cursor? Can you put a cursor just right there? All right. See where the Can you see that cursor up there? The laser pointer. Yes. Yeah. Oh, laser pointer. desk. Okay, that's kind of Let's see. How do I use it? I don't want to break something. Anybody know? Yeah, it's this guy right here.

Don't blind me, Helman. I Oh, you're in the sh get us all in trouble. Oh, wait. There. There it is. You asked white arrow. This one. I see it. Okay. Okay. All right. Oh, here we go. Okay. All right. Can you zoom out a little bit, please? All right. This Whoa, that zoomed out a lot. It's okay. Go up a little bit. Just a little bit there. Keep going. All right. This It's late. I'm getting slap happy. All right. So, this up here

is a 1.7 acre park, dedicated park around it. And this is by design. We can we'll shut off all access creating almost a 5 acre gathering space. We're learning from the guys at Crawford Point what they do. They have farmers markets. They have events where they bring in and they'll do a the local charitable concert. That's just the beginning of when you want to talk about familyfriendly. The things we do to bring together community, bringing people together. The units, we're not talking students here. We can't stop a grad student if they want to live there, but this is this is targeting people that are living and working in that area. people can now walk to work because there's not a heck of a lot of housing choices in that area.

It's actually very little. But there is a whole neighborhood as you know just to the east Georgetown neighborhood. Got friends over there that are actually very excited about this because they can simply bike or walk with their families over the bridge and and enjoy. See all that candy striping on there? All those stripes that's all ground floor retail.

Okay. You're talking restaurants, services. We're talking about getting cars off the road, not having to clog up downtown or get on the freeway and go to another city because it's going to be all right there for you people. One of the anchor tenants that we're pretty far along with, I cannot mention the name right now, but we're talking about 30,000 foot entertainment area and I've been to it in uh the Columbus one. Probably shouldn't say Columbus here, in the Dublin, Ohio one. and and it's full of kids. Full of kids. That's the kind of stuff we're trying to do. We We will never ever replace our downtown. I love our downtown. I grew up here. Downtown is super important. But there's no reason we can't create other venues for people to go and enjoy. And that's a big part of how this whole ground floor area is very family oriented.

Okay, last question. Okay. Um, please. Um I'm sorry, council member. Go ahead, Jennifer. Um I want to talk about the affordable and what our target audience is. And it is uh one, two, and we want to do three bedrooms as well. The majority of our, if we look at our voucher tenants, the majority are twobedroom and onebedroom,

but we want to accommodate some of those larger families. And we are required to have a play area due to our funding on our site. And we have like a square almost with a access in the middle. So there's like a courtyard and so it'll be in the courtyard. But the good thing about this project that I like is we're gonna we're going to be one of the condos in the larger project. So all of our folks have access to anything else that anybody else who lives there have access to. Okay. Thank you. Um, I think my only other question is, is there is there any such thing as community benefits attached to this? Community benefit.

That's community benefits. Oh, community benefits. I When you say community benefits, we I mean I I don't know that we there's not like a specific community benefit resolution. I would argue that there are a lot of community benefits attached to that. I'm not sure.

Okay. So, not talking about the obvious like you're going to you you'll make more retail space available so therefore people can shop and generate money and um people will live in the apartments and they'll spend money in some of the adjacent areas. But I'm I'm specifically saying is the Ann Arbor community getting anything more than that? Have they asked for it? So, we've been, you know, working with our city council for this project on a while and one of one of the earlier meetings um it came up that the you the project was was was a project, but they said, you know, it's it's it's it's nice. There's there are things to like, but I wish that it was stronger on sustainability. I wish that it was stronger on moving together toward vision zero, which is our transportation safety plan. and that that's kind of reignited a whole additional round of just negotiations on things that could be added into the project. A lot of on those two fronts. Um but like it spurred us to work more closely with the bus system to add an enhanced bus stop. Um the development is is all electric which moves us towards our climate goals. Um, we had our transportation people take a really close look at like how it interacted with the rest of our transportation network. And so they added additional bike lanes and pathways through and around it and connected it more to the surrounding area. Um, so I mean there there are just these enhanced elements that are not required at all through zoning that came about just through our community, our leaders saying it's it's good, but if we're going to participate, we want more. And that was um again above.

So it's a yes and no. Well, I I just think the way that we the way that we title it is different really. But I I absolutely would argue there's a lot of community benefits to it. I'm just saying that that they're largely centered around sustainability and transportation safety in addition to the housing benefits that we had kind of touched on a number of times. Okay. I'm I'm Paul enough time. Thank you. Okay. I have Commissioner Labar and then Commissioner Robbie. Thank you, Commissioner Sanders. Thanks, Chair. Uh Jennifer, I got some questions for you. I'm gonna try and go quickly just because of the late hour.

Um what is the impact of 200 plus affordable units of housing that will be owned and permanently operated by the Anna Hus Commission? How much of your stock right now does that represent? So we have 626 apartments right now. So 200 would be 25ish% more. We do have 330 um about to be developed. So if we added that in, it's probably a 20% increase in our housing stock. So pretty significant.

So you serve countywide even though you're the Ann Arbor Housing Commission based on the agreements with HUD and the various programs you run. One of the questions that comes up with this project and that I think uh Commissioner Sanders mentioned is the benefit as it applies to certain segments. Is it a fair statement that there's a uniform benefit to our housing market with the inclusion of the thousand units in in total stock in the area and the 200 units which represents a a 25% increase to our our current stock in in your uh commission's portfolio?

I think so. I mean, I I do affordable housing, but I absolutely believe that all income levels, all types of housing are needed in our marketplace because anything that's built uh has a trickle on effect to what's happening in the rest of the marketplace. So, I think both are market rate and affordable are needed. Yes. Let's assume the tiff here is cutting a succulent and fat hog for the developers. Let's just say that out out up front. A succulent and fat. What is our mechanism to get private developers to include affordable housing in general development, particularly in a place like this with its new zoning?

Well, there's two methods. One is Brownfield TIFF, um, which is what this is. Uh, the second is through zoning, but the city has made a tremendous effort to upzone. And so the zoning trigger happens when you uh want higher density or different setbacks or something that you're requesting from the city that would trigger affordable housing uh in in that development. So that doesn't get triggered as much anymore. Um and so brownfield tiff is one and then zoning. Other than that um it would be just a developer. We have a couple developers we're working with that are um for-profit affordable housing developers and so they have had to go out and find the land and put the financing together, get through entitlement and zoning processes or somebody like us or Avalon, those are the types of developments.

So zoning or the market. Yep.

Okay. Um when we look at this, I think here is the the real math that I look at. There's no escaping that this is the largest aggregate amount of any tiff that we've done in in Washington County. And there's no escaping its applicability falls into really two categories. One is the environmental and one is the the broader economic uh transformation of the site. Um, we rely on the state to verify, if I'm understanding this correctly, that what the property owner has said has gone on the site did in fact go on it. And we would depend on the the state essentially to to allow us to have that designation which I think Nathan maybe this is for you

but there is a an an attachment in the presentation

that speaks to uh the designation from Eagle of the site. I think it's the following document on March 17th confirming that the site is a facility. Can you talk just a little bit about that? Well, right. Just usually we require with an application the phase 2 or BEA that established the site as a facility at at some point. Usually that's what we accept and that's been sufficient. Questions were raised with this project. We wanted to take the extra step. I contacted my people at Eagle and I just said, "Can you can you give us something?" They said, "Sure, fill out this form." and uh them sort of reviewing the the phase two that we had gotten and they have their own records from the the gas station and they were able to provide the email confirmation.

Okay, great. Um at the end of the day, it's taking roughly $38.5 million that theoretically would go to our county's uh levies, right? uh roughly 22 million to our general fund and the remaining to the millillage funds that were mentioned earlier by one of the folks at public comment. That that is a significant amount of money. That's a significant amount of money that would in theory be used for important urgent human service needs. There's no doubt about that. There's no getting around that. Here's the thing though to consider. There's no cut in what we're collecting. There's simply the capture on the growth over 30 years. So without the development in the real world with market forces, with a globalized economy, with the cost of labor and construction and sighting, if that were to magically occur purely through the through the free market developing it, yes, you're looking at a difference of $ 38.5 million between what we would capture and what we what we then uh will. But folks, if the market were going to solve this issue, it would have solved it on this site and it would have solved it in this community broadly. At the end of the day, we are looking at on a per housing unit basis, roughly the use of less than $18 of county revenues split over both general fund and special revenue funds. $18 per day of county revenue that is instead going essentially to maintain one unit of affordable housing. So the question I'm asking myself in all of this is at the end of the day, if you said, Andy, would you take 18 bucks of revenue that the county could be using for all the other stuff you got to do

and dedicate it towards the maintenance of an affordable housing unit where one or two, sometimes even three human beings can live, you know, the totality of their lives, right, over 30 years for $18 a day. Folks, I wouldn't say this is a perfect project. I wouldn't say you shouldn't approach it without diligence and some level of, you know, trepidation anytime you're dealing with for-profit entities. That's healthy. That's good. That's right. But when you do this math, there's a compelling case that this is worth doing because it addresses a common community need terms of total housing stock and it's a huge shot in the arm to the Ann Arbor Housing Commissions, the largest in the county, to their overall stock. If we are serious about this this housing issue, we can't depend on HUD. HUD is not our friend. For 50 years since Ronald Wilson Reagan, they've been saying in one way or another, when a Republican comes in, we're not your friend. Then a Democrat comes in, they try and bolster it back a little bit. Then another Republican comes in, cuts it back down even lower. Right? So Clinton bumped it after Bush. Obama after Bush, Biden after Trump. Guess where we're at? even lower than than we than we were. We can't depend on HUD. I wish we could, but they're not going to cover the construction costs, the operation costs. They're not going to do the zoning. They're not going to do all the stuff. And if we depend on purely publiclyowned affordable housing, tell me in American history with its rich tapestry of racism where that is ever the easiest to site. It's always the hardest. This is not a perfect plan, but this is a plan worth taking, worth putting to use, and I'm going to vote for it. I hope all of you will as well. Thank you, Chair.

Well, Commissioner Labar, he was cooking. Thank you, Commissioner Robbie. Thank you, Chair. Uh, okay. So, getting back to some of the questions that Commissioner Sanders was asking, uh, what I heard is that the developer can charge for parking. Correct. Correct. Correct. Yes.

So, the developer can charge for parking. So, the public is paying for the parking decks and the developer can charge for parking. Can the developer What I also heard was the developer could ultimately sell the parking decks if the developer wants to sell the parking decks later. To be clear, commissioner, on the idea of charging, you have to get a certain amount to cover your maintenance costs and maintain a profit structure as we I mean, but my point is there's nothing in this brownfield plan that says what you can charge. We're not touching anything about what you can charge. So, you could the market is what's going to

Yeah. But you could charge, you know, what the maintenance value is or you could charge more than the maintenance value, right? I mean, there's nothing stopping you from doing that, right? It's our hope that we can at least cover maintenance costs. When you can look at what the market rate is, there's not currently a lot you see being charged in that market. You see people charging downtown. Sure. But I'm asking if you could charge more than that. There's anything stopping you from charging more than what's enough to cover your maintenance costs. No one will use it. They can't overcharge. Where would they Where would they go? I could I can go and charge $1,000 a month and then no one's going to park there. Yeah. So where would they park?

I don't know. But they're not going to park there. they're going to find another way. That's market driven. That's market forces. That's how that works. So, the goal is not to to centers. Well, but my point is that you can make a profit off it, right? The public's paying for your parking decks and you can charge for the parking and you can sell the parking decks later, right? Is there anything preventing any of that from happening? Is there anything preventing us from selling the parking structures? That would be a really bad idea. I I don't care how good or bad of an idea it is. I'm asking if it's possible. You can always sell an asset. Um Yeah. So that's what I would ask. Yeah. So just so we are using

Sorry about that fat fingers. Um uh so we are using the tax increment financing to finance the parking structures. So it is ultimately um our debt um that we have to pay for for those parking decks and we're using the TIFF revenue to do that. So um so we have an obligation to pay that debt. We will own those decks during that time period. Um to Jeff's point, you only charge for parking based on what the market. So you don't want to scare anybody away. You need people to use the parking structures. Um so you're really trying to cover the cost of maintenance more than anything else. Um and that's all in align with market, right? And since this is basically a project unto itself, there really aren't any other options to park. So, you really want to drive everyone to actually be there.

Sure. I mean, you kind of have a captive audience. You're kind of a monopoly on parking. I don't think people are going to really park anywhere else. Well, to a certain extent, but we also want to make sure that all of the restaurants and the retailers there um are are full, right? And that they are successful. So, that's all kind of integrated into the whole the whole plan. It all works together. you you have a market rate apartments. If they're trying to compete with all the other market rate apartments in town, if we go ahead and say, "Oh, and by the way, surprise, we're going to charge you 100 bucks a month for parking." They're not going to run to our apartments. They're going to go somewhere else. So, it's there a marketwide competition. We have to provide the best quality. We have to provide amenities that excite people. We have to provide a fair price.

Yeah. I mean, the the market's done a stellar job of regulating itself so far, I'd say. Um I'm being sarcastic of course. Uh let's talk about your profit margin 7.4. How do you calculate that and what is it calculated on exactly? So the internal rate of return. Yeah. The 7.4%. So that's basically um debt on I'd appreciate it if the chair stopped whispering and making comments about my questions that my

Well, but you you you were you were making comments about my questions earlier and I don't appreciate that. So it's it's all based on it's all based on debt and equity. You know how much debt total debt on the project there is and how much equity is actually being placed as part of the uh part of the project. And that return essentially acts as like an interest rate. So an annual rate on the uh on the equity return. So that's for the 7.4%. So it's the total total investment on the project. It's a percentage of that total invest

the debt and equity structure on the project. Correct. initial investment cash flow over a period of years end and it's the IRRa calculates basically a effectively an average of those cash flows over time on the initial equity investment. So does that initial equity investment count what the brown So what is the total equity investment on an annual basis look like the sorry the equity investments a one time okay so that's your 500 that's your $500 million at the beginning

the $500 million in theoretically all goes well you see cash flow after we've paid all our expenses after we've paid all the debt there should be something left over to repay the investor ers for their investment for their risk and and then the calculation of that series of cash flows is your IRRa. Does that include the capital investment that the public is making through the brownfield? No, it does not include the brownfield contributions.

So the the debt is part of the debt structure of the overall um financials because the we are incurring debt based on the tiff revenue to borrow to build those parking decks. He's asking if there's a return on the actual brownfield tiff. We don't see a return on the brownfield tiff.

There isn't necessarily return on the brownfield tiff. Uh we have interest that uh we are capturing on the brownfield tiff to pay for those decks. And so um so we'll be paying interest on that debt. That tiff revenue helps basically pay off that debt of that parking structure. That's all combined into the overall financials. And do you calculate your IRRa then on on that annual basis? So it's 7.4% annually, right? Of So you you would take the total amount that you've invested and then divide it over how many years. Uh it's a 30-year performer is what we give the MEEDC. Uh it's a little more complicated. It's a little more complicated that in terms of

you have to do on a on an annual basis. Pretty detailed spreadsheet. couldn't just say it's like but but in terms of what um how this is vetted by like PFM and by the MEEDC it's all a 30-year term performer that's submitted. Okay. I'm I mean the the math that I did comes out at about $63 million. Is that wrong over the course of the 30 years? I I'd have to go back and look into the actual uh numbers. Okay. Maybe for our next meeting that would be a good number for me to see. I mean, uh, that, you know, despite the fact that you're saying that there's these limitations in place, right, that this, you know, the 8% is meant to be so we're not like enriching anybody, right?

I mean, 7.4% somebody's still making money.

Um, it may not be Jeff, but maybe there's a broader consortium of people that are making money here. Um, and it's it's public money ultimately that's being used to make private profits. And I think that's fundamentally where I have an issue with this and how it's structured and the size of it. Um I guess this is like a broader question, but um for Nathan um on the school aid piece, what so could you uh share with me the MCL that is involved in creating a hold harmless for the schools through the brownfield? Do you have that or can you share it with me? don't have it off the top of my head, but I can get it for you.

I guess I'm wondering, do you know if that is uh related to all school millage or just the state the state school millage? It would just be the 18 mills operating and then I'm not sure about the SAT. U let me because the state takes three mills of the six mills of SAT. So I can find out about the other three, but I I can get that for you next time. I think I asked the question of my brownfield authorities around the state and I got a bunch of information so I can get that to you. Okay. Because I know there's also an operating mill, there's a syncing fund, a debt service that are all part of the public.

Okay. So debt service we can't capture because that's a debt service millage. What about the operating mill? Uh uh if it's a um sink uh the syncing fund is considered a local millillage. Yeah. So that's capturable and the local operating there's a local operating and a state. Right. So we're just talking about uh the 24 mills the 18 operating six mills of SCT when I talk about that's what the state approves. All the other stuff is is local or not capturable if it's debt. But the lo the local millages are capturable for schools, not the state mill.

Correct. So set the 24 aside. Um anything that's called a syncing fund, that is considered a local millillage and it is capturable.

Okay. So in terms of this, there's a thousand units in this development and uh according to the conversation that you just had about that Commissioner Sanders was asking about, there are going to be a ton of kids in this development. Um, I didn't see any playground infrastructure or anything like that, but there's apparently an acre of parkland. Um, which I don't know if is that enough? That's another question. Uh, or a thousand units, but I guess are are these are these families that are going to have kids are they are they sending their kids to Ann Arbor public schools in school district?

Okay. It's in the school district is what Joe said. So I'm assuming that they would be, but the development that they're living in then isn't paying towards the teachers, the buildings, the school district, right? They're not actually contributing to the the school district for the kids that are being sent to those schools, right? Um if you're talking about the sinking fund and other millages that are not debt millages that schools, that's what I'm talking about that, right? Those are not u replenished. My understanding is the 24 mills state operating school operating and those are replenished.

So the kids are going to the schools but they're not being there's no money coming in to for those kids to go to school. They're using the service but not paying for it. If we're talking about yeah the scing fund that the two whatever mills and so then who pays for those who pays for those kids to go to school? State comes back, right? So the school aid fund is the per capita. So if that kid is counted in the Anna public schools, the the state will be paying for that kid. Whatever the per capita amount is for that school district, but it's only the if but the operating the operating the syncing fund and all those different funds that are local are not being paid for by this development.

So operating a state not local. So the 18 mills of operating there's a separate state tax as well. Right. So that you you have your 18 mills operating which is what you get exempted for if you're homestead right and then the six mills of SCT though when I speak of the legislature replenishing those are what I'm speaking the operating and the SCT. Yes. Okay. Anything else that's speaking to a syncing fund or those are not What about like the special voted millages like the ones we did for the the um uh technology the technology as long as they're not as long as they're not debt millages that are paying off a bond that a school issued to pay for technology upgrades as long as it's not debt

those would be considered local and they're and they're not replenished. So, and are the are the folks that are going to be living in this new development, are they going to be driving at all on the roads? I would assume so. Okay. Well, because so they're but they're not paying the millage for the roads, right? I mean, are are they the the tiff is being captured by the developers, so they're the money is then not going in to pay for the road. So, I'm wondering if they're driving on the roads, uh, who's offsetting the cost of of the they're using of the infrastructure I guess offset by the larger system, the larger.

So, the rest of us are then paying to make sure that the infrastructure is in place for the folks that are living at this facility, right? Sure. Yeah. Okay. What about uh buses? Do you think they're going to ride buses at all? I think the city hopes so.

Yeah. I hope they do. Libraries, would they probably use the library, too? Yeah. Parks, sidewalks, probably. Yeah, I I think I've made my point. Um, so let's talk about the affordable housing. I don't need Jen Jennifer to come up. Um she did a great job of presenting how much of this brownfield tax capture is actually going to pay for affordable housing.

I think I would uh any vertical construction of the building is not eligible. So I would say that the infrastructure the roads around it the utilities connecting to the building uh anything included in the brownfield plan that's related to infrastructure would be supporting the affordable housing. Yeah. among the other houses, but none of the actual housing is being built by the brownfield tax capture. This would not be eligible, right? The the vertical

and in fact, what I heard Jennifer say is that the developer is required to provide 150 units of housing and that the housing commission is buying up to just over 200 units. So the developer is not between what the developer is required to do and where the units are now. The developer is not really paying for anything above what they're required to do for affordable housing. Right.

So actually I'd like to I was going to answer your first question about um like infrastructure related to affordable housing if I can just touch on that really quickly. So, um, just like in a ratio perspective, there's about $7 million of total infrastructure out of all of the site infrastructure that's going to support the affordable housing. Mh.

And then as Jennifer mentioned, uh, we have to provide parking. So, there's about 200, it's a 1:1 ratio on the affordable for units per parking. So, it's about 200 parking spaces. um in the parking spaces and the structures are costing about 40,000 per space. But that's about $8 million worth of the parking that is being allocated to the affordable housing and then the $7 million of infrastructure. So about $15 million of that that's all going to support uh the housing component of it. But I want to ask Joe on the um developer contribution side because there was a lot of uh discussion about how this was going to be um to meet policy. Um, and I know there's a lot of costs that have been involved related to this. There's a formula that was created that actually contributes to the overall contribution, the affordable from the developer side.

Oh, yeah. They're required to put in this 2% of the overall development cost. Overall development cost plus $50,000, which I think is something like was it is it $8 million, Jennifer? That is the contribution. If for some reason they're they're not able to do the project, they have to make a contribution of $18.9 million. So there's there's something that is baked into our brownfield policy that they have to do. Then there's foregone profits that they're also doing. And then if for some reason something goes sideways, they have to make a much larger contribution to make sure that like in any event the housing gets built.

Okay. But there's basically the grand total from the brownfield for infrastructure, not for actually building the housing is $15 million. Okay. So $15 million we're getting for infrastructure for affordable housing. There's maybe $2 million of environmental cleanup and then there's $184 million around these parking decks of the 300 and some million. Is that Did I get those numbers right? $184 million if you count the debt and the construction. I just did the math from your slide. Yeah. Sorry. Uh you're talking about just the decks. The decks. Yeah.

Right. I think it's 132 in principal. Yep. like and then you add the interest. Yeah. So we're the interest 184 is what I So yeah so that's like 61% of the total right just parking decks

and and do we feel that parking decks are well let me ask you this based on the uh Joe mentioned the 50% reduction in driving and car traffic that we're hoping for in the city. So, do we feel like parking decks are uh a relevant piece of infrastructure to be doubling down on right now or I mean with the 50% reduction in driving is this something that we feel is important? I mean, you want people to bike more. You said you want to build bike lanes, you want to build buses.

I mean, I I will be first I will be the first one to tell you that like spending that amount of money on parking does not feel great. It doesn't it doesn't like it doesn't feel like it is directly like moving us in a direction. But we know that people drive. We know that this isn't something where you just rip the band-aid off. It's something where the way that people change their behavior is develop density over time. Make it less and less and less necessary to drive. But you can't go from zero to 100. It's an important step in the process. Like right now we have a lot of downtown public parking decks. I talk to developers every day who want to develop in and arbor downtown. Some of them even want to include parking within their projects. there's parking available. They don't have to. Some of them choose not to. It's something that exists, something that the city has invested in. It's something that like creates the conditions for us to be able to have an environment where you don't need to drive for all of your errands. But Ann Arbor is, you know, 125,000 people live here. It's not a city where you can easily get around without owning a car. I hope we get there. I hope we get closer to it, but right now we're we're we're not there. We're working towards that. We are transitioning towards that. We know that this is part of the equation right now. So $184 million for parking.

We are looking at the it's a $580 million investment. This is a part of it that is required. That's a significant part of the investment. I mean that's expensive.

That's a lot of money that the public is putting in to build parking decks. I mean that's this is not about the affordable housing to me. Like this none of the brownfield that we're voting on is affordable housing. We are voting on a You are asking us to subsidize a parking deck. Essentially, this is essentially subsidizing a parking deck for a private developer. That's what we're being asked to do. We have housing needs in this community. We have hunger. We have this health issue, right? The federal government is cutting people off health care and people are not going to be able to afford to have health care anymore. And we're being asked to spend $184 million on a parking deck on a series of parking decks for a private development. I mean, this this is like the visceral reaction that I have to this of how wrong this is, not just for our community, but for the people that we are serving. It is disgusting to me that this was even presented to us. totally honest with you, this is the kind of private profit-driven BS that I do not ever want to see before this board ever again. And I know that I'm going to see more of it because unfortunately this is and and with all due respect to my colleague across the table, this whole idea of trickle down housing uh is is problematic. And what we are being asked to do today is to say that a private developer, a group of private developers is essentially going to receive more support in one fell swoop than we have given to most just about all housing uh as a county board of commissioners uh in in a long time. Right? If you wanted to build affordable housing with 300 and some million dollars, I mean really if you do the math on this, I did the math earlier. You had 200 units of affordable housing.

We're spending 300 and some million dollars on that. That's like $1.7 million per unit of affordable housing. What if we just collected these taxes and I would say let's allocate the money. Let's allocate our $35 million portion just to affordable housing. And you said but four earlier. This wouldn't happen but four. I always hear the but for but for my thing is and and my colleague across the table said this too. My thing is look if the private sector wants to build housing there build housing there. Be my guest. Please do. That sounds great. but for the public to have to subsidize this because not only as I was saying earlier, not only are we saying we don't have to pay the taxes, but then at the end of the day, you're also creating new users in the system for all the different services that we need to provide, which means the rest of us taxpayers out there who are already struggling to make ends meet have to now pick up the tab for people. And it's not their fault, by the way, not the people that are living in this development's fault, frankly. It's the developer's fault. And it's our fault for approving this that now suddenly we've created the situation where the rest of the taxpayers are having to subsidize these individuals for the services that they're going to be using. And that is like viscerally wrong. And all this like public infrastructure stuff. I know Nathan I've said to you like I usually support public infrastructure. I'm getting to the point where I'm finding it a little problematic too. I mean, the city just uh, you know, basically required I put a sump pump in and I had to connect that sump pump to the city storm drain. Cost me $15,000 just to connect. I don't even have a big house, tiny house. $15,000 just to connect to the storm drain. I don't I don't get, you know, subsidies from the state tax. Most taxpayers, most people in the city don't get subsidies from the county, the city, but somehow $300 million. Here we go. Build your infrastructure, build your

development, have your, you know, parking decks. Uh I think this is like this is ridiculous to me that we are putting this forward this amount of money. Uh, and I just I totally totally disagree with the intent and the spirit of of this coming before us. Um, this this has taken Brownfield to a whole new disgusting level. It is revolting to me that this would come before us. Uh and frankly um you know I think of all the things that we could do with this money and again you say but for and I have instead of but for I have four butts for you. One butt is but we lose 300 plus million but they are using the civic institutions and the rest of us are paying for it but the developer is going to make money off of the taxpayers dying. But we already have a downtown that we care about. The whole reason that they built the DDA, they made the DDA was because there was competition from the south side of town from Brierwood. So now you're creating a situation where there's another entity that's competing with downtown, right? I'm all about having some, you know, distributed uh areas for commerce across our community. That's fine. But you're, you literally, somebody said earlier, we're creating another downtown. I don't want to create another downtown. We have downtown and and we have a DDA to protect downtown. So, what are we doing here? Like, realistically, this isn't about affordable housing. None of this is going to affordable housing. It's going to a parking deck. We are being asked to vote on a proposal to build parking decks using public money. I think it's ridiculous. I'm planning to vote no and I hope my colleagues join me.

Are you good, Commissioner Avi? Okay, Commissioner Labar, the people in this community that need a place to live cannot live in rhetoric and they cannot live in perfect absolute theoretical solutions that aren't on hand. And my frustration here tonight is that once again the adults in the room are being asked to vote for the imperfect and the progress juxtaposed to the perfect. And so what does that make us look like if we're going to vote for this? I I think the words were repulsive and gross and others. Folks, I am not going to tell you that trickle down housing is is is working. But what I am going to tell you is that the nine of us ran and asked thousands of human beings to put us in these roles for these discussions and decisions at this time in a world where they can't wait for perfect to come along. So if this plan, which is actionable and real, which is something we can tangibly move forward tonight and in two weeks, if that doesn't meet anyone's standard, I accept that. And if there's ever a time where I say it's not part of my job to get yelled at and told I'm wrong, point that out to me because it is. No one has to agree with me on all these things and you certainly don't have to be nice to me. But none of us get to avoid reality. We've got to make these decisions about governing in the reality we live in. This is the proposal on hand. These are the tools that are on offer to municipalities and

counties. If we wait for perfect, we we will get nothing. And again, I'd say there's not a dime of tax revenue that is cut. It's a it's it's it's a a a sl it's it's it's the growth over 30 years. At the end of it, you have the acred impact of 200 people or 400 people living there year after year after year after year and then after 30 years it's all taxable. That isn't perfect. You don't have to like that. But to pretend that that we are putting in 300 million for this from the county, that's just not the case, folks. And I'm I'll get off my high horse here, but here's the thing. There's no avoiding this decision. I'm not going to defend that it's perfect, but it is absolutely a tangible and good step in the right direction. I hope you'll support it.

Commissioner Hodgej. Thank you, Chair. I I appreciate the spirited debate between commissioners Robbie and Labar. It's given I think all of us a lot to think about. Uh especially with this given this big first reading here. Uh I don't know how much more substantive debate would be useful at the hour. Uh especially when we're going to likely debate this more at the next meeting. So I want to call the question support. Okay. Moved by Haj supported by Bman to call the question. Can we take a vote on calling the question? That's a roll call. Brendan,

Commissioner Light. Commissioner Machi. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Yes. Commissioner Scott. Yes. Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Commissioner Bean. Yes. Commissioner Hodgej. Yep. Commissioner Labar. Yes. Motion carries. Great. Okay. And now we will consider the question. Um I do you do you want a roll call vote on this? Shannon's nodding. Yes.

All right. Let's just I know it's the first reading, but let's just Um, Commissioner Macheski, yes. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders, no. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Beman, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Labar, yes. Commissioner Light. Motion carries. Great.

Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda is um we are still in first reading is resolution authorizing the board of public works. Any questions, comments or concerns on this item? I see none. All those in favor, please say I opposed. Fantastic. We're going to move on to the final and single readings. Would anybody like to move those? So moved. I'll go ahead and read them. land claims. Egg claims. Don't forget about the claims. And oh no, never never forget about the claims. Uh all right. Well, I want to move for final reading.

Resolution adopting a work from home policy from human resources. That's a resolution approving the creation of the municipal civil infraction ordinance for violations of the Michigan cons construction code from building inspection. C. A resolution to approve all formula grants received by the Office of Community Economic Development with the fiscal year starting during the 2025 calendar year from the Office of Community Economic Development. And single reading A, a resolution approving the 2026 county equalization report from equalization. B, a resolution reaffirming the Eastern Washington Community Recreation Center as a top priority. C, a resolution recognizing the and celebrating the 55th anniversary of literacy. D. A resolution declaring International Compost Awareness Week. E, a resolution acknowledging and honoring Earth Day. F, a resolution proclaiming May 5th, 2026 is missing and murdered indigenous people's day. G, a resolution expressing support for the road home documentary. H, a resolution celebrating the Michigan men's basketball team for winning the NCAA National Championship. I a supplemental resolution recognizing April 28th 26 as workers memorial day in Washington County and approval of claims.

Is there a second? Okay. So those are moved by Hajj supported by Labar. Uh anybody want to pull something for separate consideration? Commissioner Robbie like to pull item A. Item A in the first final reading. In the final reading. Okay. Anybody else want to pull anything else separate? Sanders qu So I'm sorry my papers are out of order. Mine works. Uh Commissioner Robbie, which one did you pull? Reading A, the work from home. Oh, yeah. That's the one I wanted.

Okay. Anything else to pull? All right. Let's talk about item A then. The item pulled first. Any questions, comments, and concerns on this item? Commissioner Robbie?

Yeah. So, the con concern that I have is uh with what the uh I believe it was Kevin Butler uh was here speaking during public comment and the issue that he brought up, I think it is a valid one. Um have we contemplated at all in our policy any consideration for the fact that some staff do have to come in every day and some staff may not. um and that creates uh disproportionate burdens for different staff members. Have we considered anything around that? I'm going to hand that to um our HRD director.

Yes, thank you commissioner. Yes, it was considered when we dropped the the policy. The policy doesn't change the act the current practice that we have and that is uh this flexibility is based on the roles nature. So we understand that there are roles that cannot be performed from home again because of the nature of the role. So unfortunately those positions they don't have this privilege of of flexibility. This is more intended for those who have the ability not not the people I mean the positions that have the ability to be performed from I mean remotely but that is the main difference.

Okay. I I guess um I'm not trying to I I love you. You're great. And I'm not trying to like put you on the spot, but something that you said did really um raise another question for me is you were used the word privilege, which to me implies that we're that we are I mean, yeah, what you were trying to say, I think, is that some people have the ability to work from home, some people don't. But you did frame it in the context of privilege and I think that is an important thing whether you intended it or not because it is true that some people have a privilege that others don't then on our staff right which to me means that there needs to be some

um reparation of that uh that disparity between staff members and I don't know what that looks like but I feel like that needs to be discussed and I guess The the followup to that is what like has this policy been bargained for with the unions? Like I think I asked you this last time, right? And I think you said you discussed it with them, but has it been bargained for? Like did you engage in a collective bargaining process to to achieve this policy?

Okay, great questions, Commissioner. The first one is I intentionally use the word uh privilege, okay? because we want to differentiate this from a right. So we the the employees are not entitled to this flexibility. It is a privilege that it will be based first on the nature of the role. Second on the operations. Operations are paramount. So if at any time the operations are being impacted because of this flexibility, this flexibility could be paused. in terms of uh bargaining with this with the union. This is not subject or bargaining because it is not part of the CBAs but we did uh discuss this with them. Uh we uh involve them in the decision and we ask or we looked for their agreement and their um yeah basically their agreement on on this language.

I guess even though it doesn't have to be bargained I feel like it probably should be. I mean, it's such a complicated issue that does pit like different staff against each other that I do feel like it should probably be something that gets approval from Yeah. And it was it was discussed in in in several meetings. We considered their feedback and even we adopted language that they proposed to this to this policy. So it was discussed with it wasn't wasn't voted on by their membership probably but it was voted on like did was it voted on? It was not voted. So it was presented presented and it was open for feedback and we considered that feedback in this draft.

Okay. I just I guess I just don't know if I'm ready to vote for this yet given that I do think it needs more work. Okay. That was a really good point that was brought up and I think that needs to be addressed. So, Commissioner Hodgej.

Thank you, Chair. I if I may, I'd want to hear more from Commissioner Robbie about specific concerns you might have about it because I did hear from some employees about concerns and then we shared that with administrator Dill and then he had stated, he's not here, but he had stated that he had had engaged labor leaders around this uh and that there was some comfortability about where it was at. But if there are specific concerns, I'd want to hear about it because if we feel like it's not ready to go and I also don't feel like it's timesensitive, it's not time sensitive, correct?

It is not um until it is not approved, we will continue using the the past practice and the guidelines that that were developed during the pandemic. And basically those are the same as this policy. It is up to three days a week for those roles that can be operated remotely. Okay. So, kind of what I'm trying to get at is if there you have specific concerns or others have specific concerns, I wouldn't be opposed to adjourning it to a time certain and the time certain being the next meeting if if that is necessary. Um, but I I want to hear what the concerns are. I'm open to that, Commissioner Robbie.

Thank you, Chair. I'm open to that if that's what the pleasure of the board is. I I do think that it needs more work. I think that what Kevin brought forward is a legitimate problem that there is we're creating a differential system where some staff have to be at work all the time and some staff have the privilege of working from home. And so we're not it's just a differential treatment of staff and we need to consider how we are um how we are you know making that gap uh like because he talked about gas for example the cost of gas has gone up and so like some staff are going to have to drive every day to work and some staff only have to drive three days a week to work. So how do we how do we fix that? Would you be able to and anybody else too articulate in the meantime like what specific concerns are so there's going to be more work done on in the next couple of weeks or before the next meeting that so that could get done.

Can I just um I'm going to stop cross table talk and go back to uh Commissioner Sanders.

Uh so I I feel like there might need to be some additional discussion about this. I've been in communication with some of the actual union members and it appears as though their leadership did not share with them in advance that we were even going to be talking about this that it was going to be on the agenda. Um, and I find that strange cuz they tell on us for everything else. But also, if I'm if I'm if I remember anything about my union days, I think this is a management purview sort of issue. It's not something that requires um agreement from labor. They labor can't tell us how to run the county. They may be considered partners, but we don't have to go and ask them for everything. But having said all that, I am concerned because the information that I received seems to indicate that there was an attempt, a willful attempt to pit employees against each other. um and to share information that may or may not have been accurate about other employees complaining because somebody was able to work remotely and they weren't able to work remotely. What I want to say though is that

coh unearthed a whole bunch of stale and traditional and sometimes mostly out of most times outofdate um work practices. Mhm.

Um, and working from home may be applicable to certain positions and they may be able to work completely from home. If we can't justify why a particular unit or employee should have to come in and be butts and seat and we have the ability to monitor and see what their work production is, why are we trying to make them come in to work? And I'm going to narrow it down a little bit more. If the nature of their job is more dangerous in the sense that they may be in situations where they are dealing with people that are um attacking them or have been have attacked them or that they're working crazy hours or asked to come in after hours in the dark and we don't have adequate security to make sure that they're safe. I'd have a problem with being told that I have to come in just because my neighbor is irritated because they do something that requires them to be butt and seat.

Correct? So, I just think that we need to be more clear about why why are we trying to paint a broad brush when a broad brush is not applicable to certain um areas. And I'll give you an example. So we weren't able to hire sufficiently social workers and nurses, licensed, highly educated professionals. And so we made an attempt to to adjust to that. Right.

Right. And it was legitimate because they are licensed. They do have to have a higher level of education. And so someone that is not in that class really doesn't have a good argument for why especially if we can't fill those positions and they they were putting the county in a precarious spot not being able to care for people that needed help or or other mental health types of support. So, right,

I I would prefer to have further discussion about this because I want to make sure that the employees were made aware whether or not the union can tell us what to do. I just think it's decent in an order to be as communicative as possible and it sounds like that was not occurring and there was some blame going around. Mhm. Um, but sometimes when employees, you know, figure out that they can ask questions outside of what they're being spoonfed, they find out what they're being spoonfed is garbage, right? I think there needs to be further discussion. Commissioner Hodgej,

thank you. Given the discussion and the significance of the policy in the late hour and the need for further discussion, uh, I want to move that we adjourn this to the May 6 meeting. All right. I heard a motion by Hajj and a support by a number of people. I'll take Sanders. Uh any discussion on that motion? Okay. Uh let's roll call that. Commissioner. Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Commissioner Scott. Yep. Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Commissioner Beaman, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Labar,

yes. Commissioner Light, yes. Commissioner Macheski, yes. Motion carries.

Great. Um, nothing else was pulled for separate consideration, but is there any discussion on any of the other items here? Okay, I don't see any. We can call a roll. What the heck? Oh, we should I'm getting I forgot. Before we do that, we just get the equalization report. We could

I think that because they stayed to this late hour to present to us, we should give the staff the respect because they're here at 1. No. Oh my god, I'm hallucinating the clock. I thought it was 1:30. 12:52. So maybe we can hear from you about the equalization report. We're sorry we're so late. Thank you for saying. Don't forget to turn your mic on though.

Yeah, I realize it's very late, so I'll keep this brief. Um, purpose of county equalization is to ensure that property is equally and uniformly assessed by classification. All of these

and these are agricultural, commercial, industrial, residential, and personal property. Our staff worked year round to conduct appraisal and sales ratio studies to gauge the market and to provide a targeted range of value for each township and city to arrive at the uh legally required 50% of market value threshold. This year all but one government unit has met that level assessment and I will explain that in the next few slides. So our 2026 county equalized value recommendations are for total county equalization total total county equalized value 35 bill47 million79,780 that represents a 6.61% 61% increase in assessed or equalized value. Our next slide is uh the comparison of the current year to the previous 10 years of activity or and um finally I want to get to the um to the um to the factor that we have to um apply this year. As I mentioned my introduction um one unit uh exceeded the 50% threshold. So, the city of Dexter overestimated their commercial real classification. Um, the assessor used um a range of values that were calculated independently. They were not provided by our office. But we do have a tool to fix that and that's equalization, county equalization. So, it's our job. It's it's your it's your um statutory

obligation to bring that back in line. So to do that uh we will need or we have applied uh in the numbers that I just provided to you a factor of 0.97379 to the commercial real class and um so the that factor is baked into the county equalized values that I shared in slides three and four. Um now this will have minimal impact on the taxable value piece because there is a gap uh for that class uh a considerable gap between equalized and taxable value. So um so more most of the commercial properties in this unit um will not have any impact on the tax burden. So a small set of the total properties in this class of the 129 24 will see a slight decrease. The takeaway for you is that the correction will bring the classification back to where it should be ensuring uniformity, equity, and no more than 50% of market value in accordance with constitution, the constitution and statute. So I'll move along here to our taxable value numbers that uh we prepared. So as you can tell not sure why we the header is cut off but you can tell for 2026 we have in advorum value a 5.99% increase to county uh projected tenative county taxable value. And this here, this slide u in southeast Michigan, we share these numbers amongst the various counties. As you can tell, in terms of equalized value, which is what we are, um presenting here in the equalization report, we are kind of

middle of the pack taxable value uh toward the top or the top um pardon me. So, this is just uh another representation of increases by jurisdiction. um for each of the 27 units of government plus the IFT totals. Next up by school district, community college, intermediate school district, intermediate schools and finally villages by village authorities and libraries. And finally, in order to calculate the taxable value um um taxable uh pardon, I'm working with little sleep. Uh w with the estimated tax dollars, we need to calculate the headle. So for this year, we've calculated the headle millage reduction fraction to be.9956. that would reduce our millage rate from 4.3351 to 4.3160. This next slide here is just um um just a a representation of where we where our gap is between assessed and taxable values. As you can see, it's increased slightly from the previous year. And finally, this is the calculation of the tenative levy. Again, the top part is is not there, but as you can see, for the um 2026 year, we start with a 25 billion figure. We add to that the equivalent special acts uh um value of 90 million and we reduce that by the disabled veterans exemptions. As you can tell, that number's increased from the previous year because we have significantly more people that are applying for that. About 285 additional

parcels have applied for that exemption. And then the last thing that we're taking taking away from that number is the DDA equivalent. Again, that number is dropped because the thio DDA was dissolved. Well, that leaves 25,271, pardon, 25 billion 27113740. And when you when that's applied to the uh millage rate that's been reduced by Headley, that equates to about 6.29% increase in terms of estimated tax dollars. So that was a very short presentation and I'm ready for any questions if you might have.

You did lovely. Thank you. Questions, Commissioner Machi? It's more of a comment. I uh I it did inquire about the city of Dexter's situation. I appreciate the time that you and Andrew spent uh with me to answer and kind of go through that in more detail. Uh so I I I appreciate that very much. Just wanted to know that kind of did a little bit deeper dive on it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for staying so late and presenting that to us. I actually look forward to the equalization report. So thank you very much. Any other comments or questions for our team? Okay. Items for Thank you so much. Items for current and future discussion. Oh, what do I have to do? I haven't voted yet.

Vote. Geez. All right. Let's vote on the whole package. Commissioner Sanders, yes. Commissioner Scott, yes. Commissioner Somerville, yes. Commissioner Bean, yes. Commissioner Hodgej, yes. Commissioner Lear, yes. Commissioner Light. Commissioner Macheski. Yes. Commissioner Robbie. Yes. Motions carry. Items for current and future discussion. Commissioner Light and then Hajj.

Um I would like to just uh make a comment um a correction of a comment of comments that I made um at our past board meeting. Um, on March 18th, 2026, during the county board of commissioners meeting under items of current and future discussion, I made remarks regarding suicide prevention and the importance of connecting individuals with available support services. After reviewing my comments, I want to clarify and correct certain statements to ensure my intent is accurately understood. In my remarks, I used language suggesting that certain individuals supported or assisted um the suicide of a beloved member of our community. Um that wording was not intended to imply that any indiv individual encouraged, participated in, or was responsible for wrongdoing. My intent was to express concern about how discussions of suicide are framed and to emphasize that the importance of responding with care intervention and connecting in connections to resources. Uh I also stated that elected officials are mandated reporters. elected officials and individuals working in certain public offices are not mandated reporters um under the Michigan law uh in the same way as licensed professionals such as social workers, medical providers, or law enforcement. Um but regardless, I strongly encourage anyone who becomes aware of a person expressing intent to harm themselves or others to report that information um and help connect that individual to appropriate support. Um lastly, my core message remains the same. Um suicide is a serious public health issue and it should never be normalized or presented

in a way that this diminishes um its impact. Uh as a community, we must ensure that individuals know help is available and that we are not alone. I remain committed to the efforts that promote awareness, intervention, and access to services for all residents. Thank you, Commissioner Light. Uh, Commissioner Hatch.

Thank you, Chair. I will be as quick as possible here since we're at 102. I want to take a moment to thank all of the staff and, uh, the members of the community that attended. Well, I want to thank the staff for the work that went into making the state of the county event occur. Uh, and we talked briefly about this earlier, but it's a very significant event for us to be able to have had that when we've never had that in county before. Uh, I think the event went exceptionally well. Um, and I want to give a special shout out to Ashley for the work that she did in making that happen because it was a significant lift and a a lot of time um spent on making it such a success. And I think particularly with it being the first one that we've had, it was a tremendous success. And I think it sets the tone for us to do that annually going forward and for it to be continued a tremendous success. I want to thank the uh hundreds of community members that attended the state of the county and I you know the room was packed and the food was eaten food was good. Um but thank you for the people that care about county and wanted to learn more about the work that we're doing here. Uh I also wanted to say that a long meeting and I believe tensions were running high in this meeting um for a wide variety of reasons. There were some challenging topics on the on the agenda for us to discuss and I'm glad we got through it in the ways that we did. Uh and I would just want to say that I hope we can keep our focus on the fact that we are all on the same team here even if it doesn't always feel that way. And we'll do it again in a few weeks here. Um, and we'll do it even better because we continue finding ways to continue to work better together. And I mean, and I know this was a tough night. Uh, tough night for a lot of reasons, but we got through it. Tensions are running high across the country and that, you know, we feel it here, too. Um, heavy topics for us to hear in public comment and heavy topics to discuss at the board table, but I'm grateful for everyone's cander and ability to engage in challenging conversations here. And with that, I will be done.

Thank you, Commissioner Hodgej. Commissioner Bean. Thank you, Chair. I'll try to keep my remarks brief. Um, I just wanted to recognize that unfortunately we lost Supervisor Jan Godc of Loai Township. Um, I would like to bring forward a resolution recognizing her service to Loai Township and the residents. Um, but just deeply saddened she was a a good partner and a very strong advocate for her community. Thank you, Commissioner Bean. Any other items for current and future discussion? I see none. Is there a motion to uh Yeah, the moved by Hajj supported by Lavar. All those in favor? Thanks everyone. Have a good night.