well good evening everyone and welcome to this regularly scheduled meeting of the holland city council this is of course ash wednesday so we welcome everyone who is tuning in via internet or cable or is here in chambers tonight we begin this evening's meeting as we begin all of our meetings first of all with the roll to make sure we have a quorum to conduct business deboer here trethewey here peters here birch here vanda vusse here whiteman here hoekstra here klomparens here mayor dykstra here we have a quorum mayor all right thank you and then we begin tonight's meeting after our roll call with a prayer and invocation and the pledge of allegiance to our flag this evening our invocation will be led by our colleague brian birch council member from the third ward if you're in chambers we invite you to rise and join us for both of these items bow your heads with me lord open my lips and i shall declare your praise today father you bring us to the beginning of lent we pray that in this time of salvation you will fill us with the holy spirit purify our hearts and strengthen us in love may we be filled and satisfied by the word which you give us teach us to be loving not only in great and exceptional moments but above all in the ordinary events of daily life may we abstain from what we do not really need and help our brothers and sisters in distress may we bear your wounds in our bodies for through your body we are given life lord we are born of ashes and to ashes we shall return grant o lord that we may begin this season in service to you that we may be armed with weapons of self restraint may that sacrifice and selfdenial help us in the darkness that surrounds us to prepare ourselves to receive your light we ask this in your name amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you brian there are copies paper copies of this evening's agenda located in the rack in the rear of the room if you're here in chambers if you have an electronic device of some sort or you're at home you can find not only the agenda but also the background materials that council has reviewed in preparation for this evening's meeting by going to cityofhollandcom either go to the calendar page today's date or you can go to agendas and meetings and locate it there when you look at the agenda you'll note that there are a variety of items that have an asterisk next to them these are the items that are currently on our consent agenda which means that we're gonna handle them together one motion in one vote unless something changes and i'll tell you in a moment what that procedure is to get it changed but before i do that i would ask our deputy city clerk to read for us what is presently scheduled to be on our consent agenda hannah please item five to approve the minutes of the closed sessions held january seven and fourteen amended budget retreat session held january thirty one regular and special meetings held february seven and study session held february eleven two thousand and fifteen item 11a to accept and file executed oaths of office item 11b to accept a pa198 tax abatement application submitted by challenge manufacturing company at one thousand three hundred and forty seven washington avenue and to refer to staff for study and report item 11c to accept as information a letter of request submitted by roger jansen to add the name of gunnery sergeant daniel j price to the veteran's monument in centennial park item 14a1 to approve the praxair equipment procurement agreement in the total amount of one million four hundred and eighty six thousand six hundred and two for the wastewater treatment plan improvement project pending approval as to form by the city attorney and to authorize the mayor and deputy clerk to sign said agreement item 14a2 to approve a contract with burnett llc to remove residential structures located at three hundred and two and three hundred and eight east 7th street and to right of first offer with a property located at three hundred and seven east 8th street for the area of the future holland energy park item 14a3 to approve a contract with western land services for assistance in land services in an amount not to exceed two hundred and fifteen thousand and eighteen as part of the construction of the holland energy park natural gas pipeline pending approval as to form by the city attorney and to authorize the mayor and deputy clerk to sign said contract item 14a4 to approve the contract with ht engineering for engineering assistance for the building of the natural gas pipeline in the amount not to exceed seventy six thousand six hundred and ninety two and to authorize the mayor and deputy clerk to sign said contract item 14a5 to approve a three year service agreement with gp strategies in an annual amount of thirty eight thousand nine hundred and forty for the purchase of a computer based environmental health and safety training program to support the completion of a tactical action and to authorize the mayor and deputy clerk to sign said contract item 14d1 to refer claims filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration item 14d2 to approve the two thousand and fifteen salary and set hours for the board of review march two thousand and fifteen meetings and to direct the deputy clerk to publish set hearing dates item 14e31 to accept and file the january two thousand and fifteen financials as prepared by the finance department item 14e32 to declare a surplus collected bicycles from the public safety police division and to authorize staff to dispose as indicated in said report item 14e33 to adopt a resolution to approve deficit elimination plan for the revolving cash assistance fund as presented by the finance department item 14e52 to accept the recommendation of the home energy task force that the first phase has been completed and to follow the next phase residential property improvement as outlined in the adopted resolution of may fourteen two thousand and fourteen and item 14e53 to approve a revocable license agreement with francesca's collections inc for the installation of a projecting sign on francesca's storefront at five west 8th street all right thank you aren't you glad you braved the snowstorm to listen to that right there huh and under the new state law we're gonna have to ask the deputy clerk to read that all one more time for us no there is no new state law oh to see the look on her face it was fantastic all right so there's the consent agenda as it stands right now our plan is to approve all of those items with one motion in one vote we think they're relatively routine you might not think so in fact you might have braved the temperatures and snow on this night to be here for precisely one of those items and you want us to take it individually and if that's the case at this time i'd invite you to step forward to the podium let us know what item it is we'll take it off the consent agenda and we'll take it in its regular place on the agenda so if anyone would like to remove an item from the consent agenda here's your chance to do it all right seeing none any members of council under council rules can remove one or more items from the consent agenda council member hoekstra please your honor i request that we remove item 14e52 home energy retrofit audits from consent all right it is so removed anyone else seeing none what is the pleasure of council on the amended consent agenda motion to adopt moved by trethewey support supported by deboer is there any discussion on it seeing none please call the roll deboer yes trethewey yes peters yes birch yes vande vusse yes whiteman yes hoekstra yes klomparens yes mayor dykstra yes motion passes all right thank you it's one of the nights we like because we go from the consent agenda all the way down to item twelve which is communications from the audience this is the opportunity for members of the audience to address council on anything that's on their mind with the exception of things that are otherwise located on the agenda now if you want to talk with us about one of those things you can do so when we take that item up but if you're here to talk with us about anything else here's your chance to do so all we ask is that you step forward to the podium so that we can hear what you have to say and everyone at home can hear what you have to say the council rules do require you to state your name and residential address for the record and council rules also permit up to five minutes to address the members of the city council so at this time i will declare the microphone open for item twelve communications from the audience all right seeing no one we will close that and move on down to item 14e yes 14e21 the item from the street department related to the long awaited much ballyhooed somewhat delayed central avenue project and we turn to the city manager initially and i suspect we'll hear from mr brian white our director of transportation services as well in fact we might just forego well we're gonna hear from the city manager tonight thank you mr mayor well oiled machine we are all right ryan please members of council i want to thank everyone for your patience as we've walked through several conversations upstairs about options involving how much transmission main needs to go underneath central avenue and what that might translate to in terms of district heat someday or snow melt on sidewalks above ground i want to also extend our appreciation to merchants and downtown community members who have cooperated and communicated with the city on this matter and our city engineer and our transportation director is here tonight to give you more details and ask you to seek permission to notice a public hearing yeah good evening mayor dykstra and council members here tonight the item that we have in front of you is having to do with the central avenue project and specifically the snow melt aspects of that project and as we've discussed in a little more detail the prior study session what we're recommending that we do here tonight is schedule a public hearing of necessity for the central avenue snow melt improvements that would be held on wednesday march 4th and then also direct the deputy clerk to go ahead and publish the notices out to the effected property owners the map on the screen here just shows you the preliminary assessment district again this is the central avenue project itself extends from 3rd to state street we're dealing tonight with just the snow melt aspects of that project and right now we're looking at that window from 3rd to 13th street this includes transmission improvements for the snow melt which are not going to be assessed but obviously are part and parcel to the snow melt system and then the portion that will be assessed is the distribution portion the actual pex tubes and what we call spaghetti in the sidewalk area it's a highly technical term yes only civil engineers can use that one correct yes right so transmission are the large mains if you will right correct and then the distribution is the radiant heat yes okay any questions for brian tonight as you indicated brian we did have a robust discussion upstairs which follows after a robust discussion last week at our study session on this very topic so i think we're in a pretty good spot to know at least what we're hoping to accomplish tonight one thing i will say and well first of all any questions for brian my apologies all right seeing none why don't we get a motion first of all and then we can have some discussion your honor yes council member hoekstra i would move that we approve the scheduling of a public hearing for the place and time indicated march 4th at seven hundred pm and notice the properties effected on the proposed assessment role with the omission of the properties that were proposed on central avenue between 3rd street and 5th street all right if that makes sense i believe so basically from 5th to 13th is what you are proposing to be noticed out that is correct all right we understand the motion second all right very good that's council member trethewey seconded the motion made by council member hoekstra all right time for discussion anyone care to make any this evening have any this evening i will only say this and that is we are not entirely sure what ultimately we suspect we will do in this area for snow melt we may after hearing from people want to do that entire stretch of roadway we may want to pare it down some but the point of doing this process tonight is to notice out this information to any effected property owner that could possibly be effected by this project such that if we decided to pare it down in two weeks at the public hearing those persons would have been notified we couldn't really expand it without giving notice to the effected property owners so we might be over noticing tonight but we'll find out in a couple weeks and certainly the property owners who will be receiving the official notification of this proposed assessment you know we'd love to hear from them in particular about what their thoughts are on the value the benefits the costs of this proposed assessment any discussion otherwise all right ready to vote we have a motion to assess or to send out the not to assess to send out the notice of the hearing for march four for the properties on central between 5th and 13th please call the roll trethewey yes peters yes birch yes vanda vusse yes whiteman yes hoekstra yes klomparens yes deboer yes mayor dykstra yes motion passes all right thank you then we flip the page over to 14e51 some gifts this evening the city manager's office is pleased to report the following gifts human relations department received a fifty donation for the martin luther king day public services public safety fire services received a donation in the amount of two hundred and fifty from the michigan emergency management association for the multijurisdictional training symposium parks and recreation received for the degraaf nature center a donation in the amount of one hundred from steven and angeline hamburg for the new entry property improvements parks and recreation also received a five anonymous donation for the saul perez scholarship fund and park and recreation received for windmill island gardens a twelve thousand five hundred donation from hayworth it is recommended that these donations be accepted with appreciation and an expression of gratitude be forwarded to the donors what is the pleasure of council move we approve support all right moved by deboer supported by trethewey throwing us all for a loop this evening any discussion on these items otherwise all in favor please say aye aye oppose the same that passes thank you all right then the item that we removed from consent 14e52 dealing with the community energy plan and again we turn to our city manager mr cotton thank you this is once again a part of a pilot project that culminated began five years ago with the community energy plan and the appointment of seven citizen task forces our chair of the home energy retrofit task force is here tonight mr peter bogart and he's joined also by the individual representing dr energy savers who has partnered with schneider electric the energy service company that is providing the resources excuse me not the resources the legwork to accomplish the twenty five home pilot of course once one has a successful pilot the intent is to see what's next and tonight you will see that the group is ready for your authorization to proceed to construction the actual retrofits of the homes and then after that the group will be back and request your thoughts as to what to do next in the way of another pilot on bill financing perhaps or maybe going to a larger scale project so in your packet is information on the results the original plan included the possibility of saving up to fifty three of home energy which you'll see in your packet is the savings of somewhat less thirty two yet it's also a lower investment an average of fourteen thousand investment per home rather than the twenty eight thousand that the fifty three assumed so it's actually a pretty good value in relation to that so the reasons to do this are to enhance property values our assessor estimates up to five reduced peak electricity demand meet state energy efficiency targets and compete of course for the georgetown university energy prize which we hope to win we'll be one of fifty some communities competing for that over the next two years the trial program began with the audits several months ago and it was a first come first serve basis ninety two homes indicated they wanted to participate and paid one hundred application fees twenty five of which have now been cashed and the other ones are remaining on file should we go forward with further retrofits after this this is a budget that we've i won't go through the details of but we are exceeding the budget in terms of how it's spending it's costing less than we projected so we're more in the black than even what this budget suggests we would be it would suggest that we'd be at forty five thousand at the end i think we'll be closer to ninety thousand to the good when we're done with this retrofit project this is a chart that shows the various uses for the retrofit dollars and you can see where the green dots are virtually every home could have improved lighting plumbing smart thermostats and then somewhat less but hot water heaters and wall insulation and the like the bottom line is this chart out of the twenty five there were three levels of retrofits that were discussed with the homeowner and these costs were then selected good better best were the options and you can see that each one of them selected better or best the cost range depending on what the home needed and these are geographically dispersed they were also different ages of homes and also different types of construction and that was intentional so we could learn as much as we could from this experimental program so some of the retrofits range as low as five thousand with savings of five hundred yet that's a ten year payback if i do my math right to as high as twenty five thousand someone who wanted the very ultimate and a one thousand five hundred savings per year with a thirty five energy savings so that's how the table is read and then the last column is whether the financing is needed via the offers of semco and the board of public works and also city to facilitate paying down the interest rate to one hundred and ninety nine so far only six homeowners have indicated that that financing is necessary and all twenty three that have definitely committed they haven't signed yet that awaits your approval tonight but all the twenty three they had indicated an interest in committing there's two that haven't been haven't made their decisions yet have signified they want to go forward so once again bottom line the average is fourteen thousand per home the homeowner pays that the average savings is eight hundred and sixty five per home schneider electric guarantees that that's part of their contract it averages just about one third off their bill and virtually everyone who participated wants to continue to completion so tonight the action requested of council is to make a motion to authorize completion of the first twenty five homes in the pilot program as per the approved resolution establishing that this is a public purpose which was formally adopted at the may 14th two thousand and fourteen city council meeting thank you ryan any questions for staff all right then without the questions oh we do have a question council member peters please mike raised the question about my participation in this program and the vote i'm about to take and if there's any reason for any kind of recusement turn to the city attorney on that question yeah i think it would be appropriate for you to recuse yourself from voting on the project on the motion tonight so i would like to ask to recuse myself from it as well all right we have a request from our colleague from the second ward i'll make that motion anytime we can get rid of peters and i'll support it was that a motion to recuse or to unseat all right moved by whiteman supported by trethewey all in favor please say aye aye oppose the same all right jay you're excused from this particular vote but you may not go home mr mayor i think for the record we just want people to know that we actually sought out council members who might want this for the purpose of learning how it works and that way you can communicate better to your constituents who might be interested in future opportunities so this we actually approached all of you to participate it was nothing extraordinary in that respect except for the one selected jay is extraordinary so all right we do not yet have a motion but we should get one excuse me mr mayor yes councilman peters should actually step down and sorry hit the road jack okay motion please move to approve support moved by hoekstra and supported by trethewey discussion yes council member trethewey i said it upstairs and i'm gonna say it again it's extremely gratifying extremely pleasing to see the amount of participation that we've had of the initial twenty five twenty three so far and i really don't have any doubt that we're gonna have one hundred on this one and i hope this represents what's going forward throughout the rest of the city put a lot of time energy energy pardon the pun into this easy for me to say but i think it's a great step forward for holland and i hope this momentum keeps going anyone else council member klomparens please kudos just a thank you for all the people that have been involved in this over the last x number of years there's just been a lot of people who've done a lot of work kept pushing it forward and again thank you for these twenty three to twenty five bpw the state doing different things to make this work this is an awesome event and i'm hoping that we will continue and hope this really works well anyone else councilman deboer please it is exciting they were given good better or best choices and everybody picked either the better or best and twelve of them went for the very best they could do so and having so many that are already financing it themselves it's a testament to this community and how people are careful with their money and want to invest it in places that'll have long return all right i'll echo everything that's been said i'll also note that through the laborious efforts of people within this building and the bpw with the incredible assistance of now former representative hopman we got this legislation changed in michigan so that when we go to scale on this assuming the pilot works well i think we'll have a better mechanism to do so because of some legislation that would allow these items to be placed on a utility bill and financed through that means so it wasn't hard i mean it wasn't easy but as far as getting legislation passed i think there've been harder rows to hoe because i think the more we talked about it with people in lansing whether it was the governor's office who was on board early members of both sides of the aisle in lansing working with joe's help the more people heard about it the more it made sense to them whether they came at it from purely the environmental side of the ledger or whether they came at it from the cost saving and money saving side of the ledger there was a reason for everyone to buy into it and so we're looking forward to having the opportunity to leverage that new piece of legislation that we helped get passed please call the roll birch yes vande vusse yes whiteman yes hoekstra yes klomparens yes deboer yes trethewey yes mayor dykstra yes motion passes all right thank you takes us then to communications from the city manager tonight ryan we turn to you i'm sorry hold on one second please mr city manager jay you may sit down no you may return it's automatic actually you know now we're down with the item we just recused you from that one so i'm getting back in i move we welcome jay back in and it's only like seven hundred and thirty i mean imagine if this was like a one thousand meeting how punchy he'd be tonight mr city manager communications from you this evening i have two items one of which will take the document camera assistance this i'll explain in just a second the first thing is it is time again to shovel fire hydrants every day it seems we get more inches of snow so it doesn't take long to have them covered up i want to thank our transportation crews who are once again getting very used i hope getting used to getting up early and working hard and keeping the roads in good shape what you see on your screen is the announcement of the funding project the fundraising project for the holland noon rotary club which is intended to benefit the windmill island garden pathway that the city council has worked on via the strategic plan the business plan the grants holland charter township has been part of these grants and conversations and it assumes these grants assumed fifty thousand of private sources funding through the rotary club's pledge so the rotary club indeed has kicked this project off and it's to fund ten benches two nodes and a variety of other associated amenities to the island and this is the type of thing and this is how it will look like when it's done with the symbol in the bench and the actual recognition for the contributor i guess it's not gonna work that way just below the rotary symbol so so far these are ah good point i can simply do this there's the recognition of the donor so these are going quite fast and i learned today that perhaps they may have more than ten donors that will be funding the ten benches in which case that's a good problem to have we'll see if they can help us with the universal access kayak launch or something else so all of that is moving forward and i wanted to let you know about it and make sure that you're comfortable with the way this would look andy kenyan assisted with the design it would be a recycled plastic products so it would not take any maintenance thereafter thank you all right thank you ryan appreciate that communications from me this evening a few things the usual things first of all cityofhollandcom we continue to wait with bated breath for the refresh of that website and it's coming we promise we keep seeing bits and pieces of what it might look like and it will be smashingly good and hopefully easier to not just look better but it'll hopefully be easier to find information as well because we try to put as much information as we can onto the website so that you can find that information wherever whenever you are we love to have you show up at city hall the parks and recreation department love to have you show up at their facilities transportation the same way police department the same way fire stations et cetera et cetera but we know that there are times when perhaps you just can't make it into the city hall or city building during normal business hours or you're out of town or whatever it is and you can go ahead and find lots of things on the website so we invite you to do that at cityofhollandcom including contact information for all the members of council it is a ways out yet but a good thing to put on the calendar two things happening right around the same time which are neighborly events they're happening the two events are neighboring kinds of properties the first is that on saturday april eighteen is the opening of windmill island gardens for the season and it is the 50th anniversary of the very close to the actual day the 50th anniversary of the opening of the windmill and there are a bunch of events being planned including a fun run put on by our youth council holland youth advisory council there we go and some other events happening so it's 50th anniversary of having that structure and image in our community and we look forward to a good day of celebration as we begin its 50th season here then a few days later on tuesday april twenty one one hundred and thirty in the afternoon we have the groundbreaking of the new holland energy park and it will be a really great you know we've talked a lot about it i think people have seen some of the early stage progress of what's happening with you know the properties being cleared and the site being cleared and being ready for construction of this new power plant well the shovels go in the ground on the 21st of april one hundred and thirty in the afternoon it is going to be very it's gonna be a lot of fun and it's gonna be great to see this project go up and really the eastern edge of the entrance to our downtown transformed in ways that i don't think we can fully appreciate yet even though we've spent a lot of time looking at you know renderings and plans and it'll be great and dave coster is still in chambers tonight and you know dave we know you've worked lots and lots and lots and lots of hours on this project and it'll be a great thing to really see some momentum happening and i think in the next few months people will be surprised at how quickly the plant will be coming together so mark that on your calendar as well it'll be an event that i don't think people in this community will want to miss it'd be one of those kind of once in a lifetime opportunities that's it for me aside from a few appointments and let's deal with those right now first of all i would like to appoint ask you to appoint alex calder to the police community relations commission for an uncompleted term which would expire on december thirty one of this year and then also mika stillwell as a student representative on the police community relations commission for the remainder of this two hundred and one thousand four hundred and fifteen school year with that term expiring june thirty two thousand and fifteen and then a few reappointments first of all scott trager the brownfield redevelopment board for a three year term which would expire january thirty two thousand and eighteen dale winegarden to the building authority for a five year term which would expire december thirty two thousand and nineteen matt messer to the board of review for a one year term sentence term to expire january thirty one two thousand and sixteen joel dye to the board of review for another one year term january thirty one two thousand and sixteen and ann saliers to the sustainability committee for another two year term which would expire on march thirty one two thousand and seventeen and last but not least reappoint mark vanderfluke to the sustainability committee as well for another two year term which would expire march thirty one two thousand and seventeen i place those before you and hope that you would consider them favorably move we approve moved by the mayor pro tem support supported by trethewey mr calder you want to make any last minute pitches no all right all in favor please say aye aye opposed the same all right that passes thank you okay communications from members of council tonight council member trethewey please just one brief one a plea for and i'm sure everybody that's watching this is already doing it but today just brought to light again with the weather that we've been having headlights on vehicles are extremely necessary specifically on white cars but everybody with the white out conditions we've had the snow and if you think you've got automatic headlights that's fantastic but just remember your tail lights don't come on so just courtesy safety turn the headlights on it's gonna make our drives a whole lot safer you may be able to see them but they may not be able to see you so just weather like this please turn the headlights on thank you mike anyone else council communications tonight councilman deboer please shoveling out your fire hydrant is also a really good idea so that they can access the water and do what they need to do and we're really grateful for all the people that work so hard at getting up at two in the morning to make sure those roads are so nice for us to drive on and all the different people that are working so hard to make this such a wonderful community we really want to thank all the fire people all the public safety people the bpw people and everybody so thank you for making this a wonderful place to live even in the winter all right anyone else motions resolutions by members of council tonight seeing none and absent any last minute shenanigans by the city attorney requiring us to go into a closed session we have but one thing left to do and that of course is to adjourn so moved moved by trethewey and supported by the effervescent council member jay peters of holland's second ward any discussion on that or discussions on jay seeing none all in favor please say aye aye opposed the same we stand adjourned goodnight and thank you everyone