good evening glad that you are here this evening to join us this third week of june in the beautiful city we call holland michigan it is been breathtaking the last few days hasn't it and we are grateful to be able to enjoy beauty like this on a daily basis so i wondered if tim you would call the roll for us please wouldn't mind standing with us if you'd like for those which this community stands and we are grateful for those who came before us to establish a community that would withstand all the different things that happen in this world we pray lord that you will help us in this evening to talk with each other to make decisions to think about things in the way you would have us do that we thank you father that you are unchangeable that you love us that you are willing to walk with us that you care for us and that you hold us in your hand day day by we pray lord that you will help us to trust that and feel that even when it's hard you will help those in our community who are struggling today to know your love and your tenderness for that we pray father that you will give us the grace that we need in order to do what you've asked us to do that we will honor you in this place and in this community we ask this in your name a 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 we will then go to the consent agenda and this is a list of items that we are clerk to imbibe we will read for us in a long line and at the end of that we would plan on addressing those as a group and voting on whether to accept those or not but perhaps you came here tonight because you wanted to talk about one of those items on the consent of genda so at the end of the list of that tim reads i will ask you to come forward to the podium give us your name and address and whatever item you would like to handle as it appears in the agenda at that time taken off the consent agenda and then we would address it when we got to that point in the agenda so tim would you please give us the consent to gentle yes madam mayor i don't for a to excuse the absence of council members birch len and whiteman item for b to approve the minutes of the may thirty first study session june seventh regular meeting and study session and special meetings held june fourteenth two thousand and seventeen item four see to accept and file executed oaths of office from various boards and commissions i do twelve eighty one to approve a contract with infosys and inc for outsourcing customer bil printing and mailing at the estimated cost of approximately forty six thousand dollars annually plus the pass through of all actual postage charges item twelve eight t approve a change order to tetra texas programming costs contract for additional wonder where programming school for the water reclamation facility skater upgrades for a not to exceed cost of eighteen thousand dollars item twelve eighty three to approve an addendum to tetra tex wonder where programming contract to provide base programming services for the water treatment plant for a not to exceed cost of seventy five thousand dollars item twelve a four to approve an agreement with wolverine power supply cooperative to administer the apprenticeship training for the holland b p w line crew program which includes for one year terms per student and a fee of four thousand dollars per term pending approval as to form by the city attorney item twelve a five to approve a delay in implementing the portion of the rate schedule and terms that would require the transfer of rate b customers who would incur higher bills under rated m to january first two thousand and eighteen item twelve a six to approve a three year contract with nutri grow environmental solutions for the hollowing and land application of liquid biosolids in the amount of one million one hundred twenty thousand eight hundred dollars item twelve a seven to approve the electric water and wastewater rate books with the recommended two thousand and seventeen updates item twelve d one to refer a claim filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration item twelve d two to adopt a resolution recognizing culture works as a nonprofit organization operating in the city pending final approval by the city attorney item twelve e one point one two approve the two thousand and seventeen sidewalk repair project to smitty's concrete in the amount of fifty five thousand eight hundred twenty five dollars and the budget with funds allocated from the fiscal eighteen missile capital improvement fund subject to approval as to form of the city attorney item twelve a four point one to approve the fiscal year two thousand and seventeen eighteen insurance program in agreement with alternative service concepts for third party administration services as well as gallagher bassett for claims administration subject to a city attorney approval item twelve a four point two to approve the fiscal year two thousand and seventeen year end budget amendments and to authorize the finance director to make the necessary transfers and amendments item twelve six point three two adopt a resolution to establish the municipal employees retirement system health care savings program for police officers hired after february first two thousand and seventeen and thank you tim now perhaps one of those items you came here to talk about and if that's the case please come to the podium give us your name and address and tell us which item you would like us to take out of the consent agenda or supported by byrd can we have a roll call please te public comment if there is anything that anyone came here to say and would like counsel to hear it you are welcome to come up to the podium and again give us your name and address and you may speak for five minutes little lights go on in the fr green means go yellow means you have one minute and red means your five minutes are up anyone like to approach the podium seeing none will close the public comment and then we move on to a report from my special committee do we have those people here before council to take action on here involving two litigation matters one is make sure we get these in order from the agenda but one is the settlement proposed settlement with federal insurance company a federal insurance company issued a specialty environmental protection policy to the city covering the hauen board of public works property  time period of the policy was from two mid two thousand and nine to mid two thousand and twelve the policy does two things one is it provides coverage for damages that the city might become liable for for  pollution pollution events and secondly it provides for defense coverage in the event the city is sued over a alleged pollution event and the defense costs are covered regardless of whether there is merit to the claim or not well the city was sued by the sierra club over the operation the james de young power plant the litigation went on for some time very substantial amounts were incurred for attorney fees the attorney fees and costs incurred total of eight hundred sixty one thousand dollars and some change alternately there was a settlement in the case of the b p w paid one hundred fifty thousand dollars for and that settlement was paid not because of b p w thought it had liability but just looking at this it was going to cost a whole lot more than that to finish defending the litigation and sometimes that's the best thing that was approved believe us two years ago it was a two thousand and fifteen settlement well the federal insurance refused to defend the case refused to participate in the settlement of the case and so we filed suit in federal district court and the federal district court earlier this year entered a judgment for the city of one million fifty four thousand dollars and some change clothes a bunch of penalty interest against federal as well federal appeal that there are a number of issues outstanding on this the appeal we had a mediation hearing that's a court sponsored mediation effort where the court has a mediator appointed that tries to broker a resolution between the parties and frankly when we started the case off the federal it offered to settle for ten thousand dollars they started out offering four hundred thousand in the mediation and we ended up settling at a a dollar amount and i say settling a proposed settlement amount of dying hundred thousand dollars so nine hundred thousand out of the million dollars why accept less than the amount that's owed we're pretty confident with the appeal options that we would prevail in the judge's decision is right but you'd have to expect that from us i think but seriously we are very confident of that but we recommend that resolution because it resolves the case without further cost  city you don't recover any more of the costs going forward to prevail the funds to be paid now rather than a year from now and while up to the time a judgment earlier this year in march we had penalty interest at twelve percent running appeals disagreed with local judge and send it back for a trial and so the matter was presented to the allen board of public works board of directors at its last regular meeting and they voted to recommend the  settlement and of course you have the final say on proving that settlement so our office recommends that you you approve the settlement authorize the mayor and clerk to and deputy clerk to sign the release and settlement documents to go forward insurance carrier the accident fund has been paying out benefits for that claim there's no deductible on that claim but they're paying out benefits and was typical of of worker's comp situation the way i would describe it in a n attorney i don't practice in that area so i'm sort of using my layman's type of view of that is that if it's a long term injury to to the employee once the situation is sort of stabilized in that you know that it's going to be ongoing thing that the workers can't focus then the insurers prefer to settle by making a lump sum payment to the employee and the ploy resigns their employment position with the employer in this case the city the workers kept juster is as worked out a proposed settlement in the amount of two hundred six thousand dollars which would be called the redemption of the worker's comp i mentioned there be no cost out of pocket from the city to to make that settlement payment that comes from the insurance carrier in maybe i should just qualify that in it does get affected or has been affected in our rates previous they so this city has had some cost but not to all six will not be paid by the city and but the insurance carrier requires that the city consent to that and i believe i understand  that will free up though hiring someone to fill that position at the fire department an added benefit for the city and so our recommendation would be for the and we've reviewed the background and cost in the medical issues and based on that it is our recommendation that the know just real quick obviously nobody wants any of our employees to become injured but let's be thankful that we have a system that killa says the people who have been injured on the job so that they can move ahead with yes bird yes yes peters yes here to more yes motion passes six zero thank you sir moving into management and ministry to services th the city managers office is pleased to report the following gift parks and recreation to the saule per as a scholarship fund anonymous donation through the rec department office of twenty dollars the community human relations and the holland youth connections program year five mayor mayor excuse me maybe marry a overweight twenty five dollars maxfield sixty dollars ellen like two hundred dollars sharon mcmanus one hundred dollars susan and patrick sigler twenty five dollars edmond and an anderson five hundred dollars for the parks and recreation digraph nature center laura bauer and the bauer family fifty dollars in my sincere produce for any mispronounce names support supported by buried those in favor say aye right opposed same sign i v c that carries another wonderful list of generous people in this community thank you byrd all those in favor say aye right post same sign we would change that up then to the mayor appointments to the city board and commission i would have one person just fine there right now nick linsky is going to be on the historic district commission for his first term that term will expire in june two thousand and twenty so it's recommended city council approved the appointment of nick roland ski to the historic district commission you have a motion to that effect support supported by hoekstra those in favor say aye opposed same sign that carries thank you and then we have communications from council members do you have something like yes  tendered his resignation effective mediately michael has been on the board since twenty fifteen years leaving for personal reasons and we will miss him very much on that on that commission which i happen to serve and i us this evening who is here to tell us about a wonderful effort that the students have done in helping the community we had quite a few donations that related to that in the gifts that  awareness in our community so on behalf of the come special events committee we'd like to recognize dr james you were all from holland hospital be behavior how lame or die from pathways michigan christy from the mental being nice program sandy's face go from community mental health and jeem rosner from holland hospital behavioral health the youth were able to raise two thousand eight hundred eighteen dollars after their expenses and they will be donated to the west michigan mental health foundation be nice if they wish to also give a special thanks to our city council our city manager brian cotton and the staff for their support of this important event to bring awareness for many donations which i believe were already read off and again thank you very much for your continued support of such a wonderful youth program in our community thank you esther thank you so much for your efforts and leading all those students to be aware of those that are hurting around that thank you mister so now we come to communications from the esther works on the holland youth connections program to for at promise you we are pleased to announce that the challenge grant of ten thousand dollars was matched by a total of eight hundred thousand dollars and this today came the final match that put has over the top anonymous donor so you will not see that name but we are very grateful to that kind of support for this effort that of course makes a huge difference  to our youth and into our community the second thing is sixteen street is going to be closed this weekend and there's a press release on it which is handy here somewhere if you take a second i'll pull it out but if you're traveling on saturday people watching sixteenth street will be closed to traffic between college and lincoln avenues on saturday and columbia will be closed between fifteenth and seven at this time i'd like to read to you a letter and one is one that reflects what was in the news today so it's somewhat anti climactic but dear mayor deborra members of the city council this letter is written to signify my intent to resign and enjoy a partial early retirement effective june thirty two thousand and seventeen and this is in accordance with the terms of a consulting agreement that we have reached that i believe will be on your agenda since i intend to continue provide consulting services to the city this resignation is in lieu of the customary forty five day notice period in the city managers employment agreement from two thousand and twelve this resignation and partial retirement decision comes after much reflection with karen and i was about as we decided how we wanted to spend our time given karen's recent retirement and our out of state family i will continue to teach at the collegiate level and make myself available for city manager services on a consultant basis to the city of holland as per this agreement and also to other communities  disbelieved in order to facilitate the continued success of holland as a community i will do all that i can to ensure that there is a smooth transition to new leadership in reflecting  last five years i very much appreciated the thoughtfulness caring hard work and insightfulness of the entire holland leadership team and some of these you don't realize that's our department directors and we meet every two weeks and they've been a true resource to all of our efforts and hopefully to your decision making and their work is built upon the work of hundreds of dedicated staff whose efforts are many times untold but i'm here to say that none of these things could happen without them in fact hollin service level is pretty much the benchmark by which other communities measure themselves and i think we owe that to the staff dedication and i think you know that through various survey mechanisms but it deserves repetition so i in particular am most happy with the progress the city's team has been able to make on a number of things one is stabilizing our finances the last five years growing our services where you've been strategically replacing positions as as we can you say council's been very helpful in that in our budgeting and making the capital repairs  eliminating the deferred investment that was a casualty of the deep recession so for many years those efforts had to to remain last but now with the help of counsel in the community and the staff some of these are back to where they should be primarily the twenty year streets plan the civic center place renovations are underway fire station renovation sinking fund now exists and has a balanced and can correct me i think it's rough going to roughly  eight hundred thousand dollars so that's a huge step forward when you decide to pull that trigger the boughs pull mechanical systems were replaced which was a big ticket number that the energy performance contract enabled and kids are swimming there as we speak probably there's been energy performance implementation in all of our buildings that will pay for it over time as well as new investment in fish and seas and smart building systems here in the last two days you can see that brian and his crew brian is still here are making a lot of headway there and that that's great and he and his crew are going to fix that bridge that has as a little bit of a tilt to it for the last couple years so i'm also optimistic that the annual reductions in juvenile crime since the police division arrests in two thousand and thirteen and the holland youth connections program was started in two thousand and thirteen i'm hopeful  those can continue to grow and that the their efforts in other words and so the rest will continue to drop even further with the continued mentoring and investment from area employers and donors in our at promise you and we just heard about it many of the donors for that program this program i'll just embellish for just a second is is funded one hundred percent by donations and by employers it is not doesn't benefit from any special grants no state or federal it is simply a home ground prompt program that makes a difference in these ways so last summer saw another decline in juvenile arrests total of fifty seven messer who work together with us on focus groups in trying to figure out what how we can address youth problems in the in the community human relations creditor as your fellow who is moving it forward and of course all the businesses the mentors and the donors who helped make it possible year after year so lastly i want to thank you for being such a hard very hard working group of dedicated elected officials and you and your spouses know how hard you work who sincerely care about holland and its future so i want to say that i am here till june thirtieth as you know and i will be on call after that for a year chief messer and map and dike and we'll be sharing the acting city manager duties however starting tonight tomorrow so i can focus on tying up loose ends and and then until the interim manager begins on july first two i believe you will appoint shortly here tonight in conclusion on i would like to ask you that you you know animists lee approve the consulting agreement that is before you for all the we are very grateful for the level of sacrifice and dedication that you have shown over the last five years in michigan you came at a time when we are in real trouble financially we knew we were headed into that and you were given the and feel like task of cutting back and reducing and when people retired to not replace them to hand out the duties to everybody outs to continue to squeeze to the budget to be able to read i'd just the city's financial position you did that with a smile and grace and managed to get us back a great financial footing we're so grateful for that you have a huge community energy plan a forty year community energy plan that we began its  was massive most people would look at it inches kind of feel sick and not know where to start not ryan he took a page one to page whatever day in and day out here on saturdays going door to door to help people with high school students explaining how you could do things with your outlets and even if you didn't have a lot of money there was ways there were ways to be fiscally responsible and good with stewardship of energy and students felt very empowered as leaders to be messengers of good to people door to door and you were part of that you were willing to take god redoing every single building with the city and do those energy performance evaluations and investment so that we could walk our talk about energy in holland and we are really grateful for how you navigated that massive contract with schneider electric and as you  mentioned holland use connections program i'm sure is a national model for a community to take responsibility for helping it's youth and not to just say oh you need to be good too bad about what happened possibly even in your family and just hope you make it but instead to say you know we're part of helping you become a leader in this city we want to empower you with a job and a check at the end of your honest work have that feeling of being a citizen a part of this community a potential leader in this community and we as as a community and as businesses are willing to step up and hire you and we have mentors who will walk beside you and we're going to give you a group feeling so it's almost like a family as we launch you into adulthood and i hope you find a place here long term to be a part of highland those are those are amazing things to be done and a completely nonprofit way and then of course the civic  center project that hadn't happened for decades could never quite get it together never quite get it off the ground and we went through a bit of controversy about it but steady and calm and with grace ryan helped us through all of that and we've hired edgewater resources and here we are today with and surround it and some of the walls of the coming down this week i think so it is hard  it's not easy to accept your resignation but we really want to communicate the gratitude that we feel for the example that you have said as a professional  with a kind and generous presence throughout the community demeanor that encourages all of us to be better civic citizens in an age where it's hard to find th and we are very grateful for all that you have done for us right so i guess i have to ask for any motion to the resolution and to accept his resignation with first of all thank you right you've done a lot in my eyes and a couple of times i've seen your side and a couple times i've seen you your extatic and your demeanor didn't change very much from either or your consistency has been impeccable i remember the first time i was like he's crazy we were in our meeting and you just landed on the  and that consistency of that graduate from where we were before to where we are now  there's a story that we all know about the rabbit in the hair i'm sorry the rabbit then the turtle and the turtle was consistent all the way to the finish line and you have set the bar pretty high and because of your consistency i really believe as i stated before that we live in a community that is second to no would challenge anyone to find a community the size of holland and to see how they stack up against us in michigan and arbors a pretty nice location but they're well above what we have here and we are neck and neck with them and a lot of things and again i contribute that to your consistency the turnover has been high like mayor de boer said there are some decisions that needed to be made and that's hard for anybody but the consistency that you brought to the table and that you brought to the city of holland has helped us move in a direction to where we are today so again thank you for your consistency you took the time to in a sense mentor at risk kids and then you take the time to speak with people who are very influential in the community that's that's a broad broad spectrum that shows a love for the community a low for holland and its people not based on anything else but them being individuals so again thank you for that and as i said before you know you're the first city manager this is all new to me so you're the very first city manager that i really know of and have been in relationship city council and city manager so that bar's been set really high for me and also for the next city manager as we do our search so again as a city councilman of holland i want to say thank you but on a personal level i want to s i will support the resolution all the resolutions that ryan has asked us to support somewhere else we appreciate your taking time to appreciate ryan and his work in this community for the last five years thank you