all right all right good evening everyone welcome to our regularly scheduled meeting of the whole city council we're glad you're either in the room here tonight watching on television or watching somewhere else on a mobile device of some sort let's call the roll first we will have a prayer this evening led by our colleague council member todd whiteman immediately following that's we will say the pledge of allegiance to our flag i would ask that you rise and join us in both of these items please pray with me dear lord in heaven we humble ourselves before you tonight we offer up this city one where truth in liberty or dominant diversity in this counsel strong spiritual wisdom as we contemplate what is before us leaders from making decisions that lead people away from your commands to help this body take care of business without comparable compromising godly principles may this counsels reputation be one that exemplifies righteousness give us as much concern for obeying you as in following the law may you overcome the effort of the ungodly to remove your influence mayor city not be an altar to lesser gods surround us with favor as we work together with our neighboring communities and repair any damage relationships that may exist between us protect those who whose work is to protect us and bless all the workers who serve this fine city give all hollanders  and comfortable place to stay tonight shine in dark places of the city and give hope to the fearful may we be a people who are known for gratitude and faithfulness lord let all your residents seek you and find favor and comfort i thank you tod there are copies of this evening's agenda located in the the rock in the rear of the room for those who are in council chambers tonight additionally if you have a mobile device of some sort or watching this at home you can go to the city's website which is city of holland dot com and if you go to the calendar page you'll find a copy not only of tonight's agenda but also a copy of the background materials the packet as we call it of material we've reviewed in preparation for this evening's meeting so that usually is posted by usually friday at noon of a meeting and start friday at noon before the meeting so you can look ahead as to what council will be looking at as we prepare for every week's meeting you'll note on that agenda that there are certain items that have asterisks next to them and those are items that we have currently placed on our consent agenda meaning that wherever it appears on the agenda we intend to handle it with one motion and one vote at this particular point we think these are relatively routine items and we recognize however that you may not think that relatively routine in fact you might be here to have one of these items discussed by the council so what we will do is we'll have the clerk tonight read the items on consent anyone from the audience can step forward and have an item removed from the consent agenda and any member of council can remove one or more items from consent as well so before we do all that and would you kindly read for us what is presently on consent approve the minutes of the regular meeting held aug fifteenth two thousand and twelve i am alive an aide to accept and file executed oaths of office to refer to staff or study and report to p a one ninety eight application submitted by challenge manufacturing company and herman miller and additional p a three twenty eight application submitted by challenge manufacturing company and c to accept a letter of appreciation for the american legion band summer concerts held that  park item fourteen b want to schedule a public hearing for september nineteenth to amend the master plan for the deletion of the municipal stadium and portions adjacent to smaller park i had imported see want to approve an agreement in authorization of signatures on behalf of the city for the purchase and sale of real estate between hope in western foundry property item fourteen b one jury for a claim filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration fourteen three to refer a claim filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration item fourteen d three to adopt the michigan liquor control commission resolution approved in the public continuing care retirement center classy license requested by freedom village located at one forty five columbia ave item fourteen  september nineteenth two thousand and twelve council meeting beginning at seven p m and to instruct the deputy city clerk to publish and mail the required notices i don't fourteen three point three to approve the change in investment from the fifth third money institutional government money market fund with the federal government obligations fund due to reorganizations on behalf of fifty third bank item fourteen four point three two approved terra con i'll see in the amount of thirty seven thousand two hundred seventy nine dollars and twenty street and i get i was fourteen five point three five point four to schedule public hearings on a p a one ninety eight and three twenty eight tax abatement for challenge manufacturing an a p a one ninety eight tax abatement for herman miller for wins day september nineteenth at seven p m in the council chambers and to instruct the deputy clerk to publish and mail the wreath for your notices right thank you and any items that anyone in the audience would care to have removed from concerned any members of culch if not what's the pleasure of counsel more moved by support supported by de boer is there discussion seeing none please call the thank you that then takes us down to item twelve communications from the audience this is the opportunity in a council meeting for anyone from the audience to address council on items that are not otherwise located on the agenda the rules of council are relatively straightforward we ask that you step forward to the microphone so everyone can hear what you're saying state your name and residential address for the record and then you have up to five minutes to talk with council the microphone is o good evening and welcome good evening made extra members of city council my name is matt dion i live down the street at two hundred west twelfth street and i attended last night's session for public input on the sustainable return on investment or s r o i to express my concerns to the b p w but as i was doing that i realized that i really should be expressing them to you so that is why i'm here tonight i live and work near downtown with my wife and four children and during the past year i have tried very hard to be engaged and informed about the city's energy planning process by tending community energy plan information sessions following the b p w speech twenty one programs attending community meetings with some of you council members present and even hosting a neighborhood meeting with community energy advisory group at my own home i represent myself and my family i'm not affiliated with any stakeholder group i don't have an agenda beyond that so i think that i represent a good example of what you can expect an informed citizen of holland to understand including inadvertent inaccuracy is my understanding at this point in time with the city's energy planning process first of all i commend the b p w for what appears to be a thorough analysis not only of the financial factors involved in energy planning for a city but also some of the social and environmental factors however after last night's public input session it became clear to me that the b p is not a position to make a valid comprehensive analysis of the snare as a proposes because the d p w is by nature focused on the financial aspects of energy production and in particular the b p that you cannot accurately assess intangible factors that are so important to our quality of life in the city followed by three intangibles in mind number one the s r o i does not include an assessment of the health impacts of all scenarios it is hard to put a dollar value on clean air and this is especially true for those who suffer asthma because of particulate pollution in this regard i'm very happy to see that recommended scenario g moves us away from burning coal at the young power plant which i'm not affiliated with in any way which concentrates toxic pollutants in the downtown area of the coal burning does tonight i request that you a city council conduct its own assessment of health impacts of these scenarios in particular the worst case scenarios for the highly affected neighborhoods which tend to be those that are less economically strong less politically connected and have less of a voice secondly it is not clear that the s or a y adequately assesses the value of conversion of lakefront to parklane marina entertainment district and so on the recommended scenario cheap places the new gas burning plants and i quote adjacent to the existing power plant and i believe that opening the lakefront near downtown has great value to many holland residents but again this value is hard to judge in purely financial terms finally although the proposed scenario chief follows the guard fourth recommendation in moving holland away from cold the natural gas and renewables and also provides for district heating capabilities it prefers a larger than recommended power plant over initiatives that involve residents of holland and seeking efficiencies to lower energy needs this is understandable from the standpoint it enables them to control and guarantee the outcome of scenario that together possibly setting an example to our nation on how a great city can implement a great twenty first century energy plan again this community spirit and willingness to work together for a greater purpose are hard to quantify in financial terms so in summary i call on city council to affirm what i understand to be your full responsibility and your final authority for this energy planning and decision process to involve the community in open and well publicized deliberations in decision making and to ensure that the investments we make in our energy future are made with the citizens of holland's best interest in mind thank you and i'd like to leave a copy l handed to the clerk she'll make sure it gets into the record thank you other comments done is done on time overall document about forty eight point one nine billion dollars which is up from last year with some general fund cuts the additional spending and we've addressed before as predicted would be some medicaid increases and then some contracts that were in place before the current governor and his administration took place so they were obligated to fulfill them some of the other highlights as you're aware we do have a new state troopers class that recently graduated will be on the streets soon the governor did originally ask for two we held him back to only one this year and one next year as we wanted to make sure we budgeted appropriately in addition we were able to put more money toward higher education for our fifteen public universities for the first time in about five years we actually added money to that budget in doing so we saw the recent round of tuition increases a lot lower than they had been in recent years ranging from one point nine percent increase at central michigan university to about a four percent increase in eastern michigan and everybody else was and in between those two which is a much easier bite to swallow for those of us students at public universities and for those of you with students heading to public universities in addition we're able to add a little more money to k twelve education about one hundred dollars per student through the best practices incentive which is very similar to the even krantz that cities and municipalities received such revenue showing up all five for in addition this budget is balanced the money coming in matches the money going out there are no gimmicks no by now pay later situations or scenarios final aspect of the state budget is that an income tax rollback that was originally to take place january first of next year where the state income tax was to drop from four point three five percent to four point two five percent will be bumped up to october first of this year rather than january first it's not a lot of money that you'll notice in your paycheck but it does equate to about ninety million dollars that will be out in the eighty three counties as opposed to headed to lansing hopefully taxpayers will find some worthy causes for that money  just prior to leaving in june and wrapping up the budget we did find a bill directed at aiding farmers who suffered from the the early thaw and then the late frost this year  allegheny county in perry county in varian county were hit particularly hard mostly most of our fruit farmers in fact so we passed a low interest loan program that they can benefit from when we return on tuesday i hope that we're not talking about a similar program for the drought that a lot of farmers have since faced the supreme court ruling on the affordable care act has taken up a lot of time in lansing if you've been following it originally the state senate  accept the nine point eight million dollars in federal money that was put in place to initiate state run health insurance exchanges when that bill came over to the house the money was stripped out and sent back the governor was adamant that he wanted the nine point eight million dollars from the feds to implement state run exchanges the house had a lot of questions and members of various subcommittees tried to initiate hearings this summer where a lot of questions were asked particularly department of state run exchanges the words we don't know we don't know we don't know with that being a regular and chronic response to the house subcommittee were very apprehensive about going ahead accepting the nine point eight million and putting the state run exchanges in place so the house wanted to take a little longer and studying you may have read within the past two weeks the governor was not appreciative of the pace and basically put up his hands and said at this point the state's going to go with the federally run health insurance exchange in michigan i would not take that as the final chapter in this but at this point that's where the governor's that he wanted things to move a little more quick more quickly the house had a lot more questions regarding that last month we did  pass the reform for the mission public school employee retirement system as you're aware that system is about forty five billion dollars in the hole meaning that the system is committed to pay out forty five billion more than we've taken and the changes that the state made to that puts new teachers into a hybrid system where they'll be paying more new teachers i believe as of july first of last year we pay more for their retirement for their pension and for their retirement health care current teachers will also be paying a little more but not as much as the newer teachers the hope is that we can bring down that unfunded liability however that has gone to court and i believe that law has basically been suspended until the court works its way through that i mean a recent revenue report put out by the nonpartisan house fiscal agency indicates that for july unemployment in the state  slightly the first time it had gone up versus down in a while so a little close to eight point five percent at this point obviously that's concerning we'll keep an eye on over that however the revenue report also indicated that revenues to the state are up one point six percent versus same time last year and while one point six percent may not sound like a lot up is always better than down again the highlights being the increases in sales tax revenue and in income tax revenue which means that more people are either working or more people earning money but it's a good thing because i get asked here a lot about it the business personal property tax i would not look for any movement in that until we get to pass the november sixth election with that i'll take any questions or concerns regarding the budget or legislation i will finally add the concern regarding the complexity of this november sixth ballot with all the ballot initiatives on it i cannot emphasize enough how you want to inform your constituents of the numerous ballot proposals and the implications regarding that my office will try and put out a a nonpartisan analysis of each where the benefits and drawbacks of each been passed on time in ahead of schedule as opposed to days weeks afterwards or at best sort of eleven fifty nine before i want to clarify that on time means before july first rather than before october first and it does  impressions so far of the the p twenty one issue and i would just note the following  that the community energy planning process looked at additional capacity and didn't not in large measure factor in replacements for the current james the young units or in five which at this time are scheduled to go offline in two thousand and sixteen or so that is been a relatively recent development with some of the new boiler and other sort of environmental regulations that are coming out which when you look at essentially the first time we looked at the question of additional capacity we were primarily looking at the replacement of unit three the unit put into service in the early fifty's that run snow melt and is a big old unit but not the cleanest unit as well as some additional capacity for current and future growth since then through this whole process with the additional regulations that have come out we've looked at having to most likely take units four and five off line in the right right around twenty sixteen which removes an additional forty six also it just when you look at the per megawatt cost of constructing the smaller version versus a larger version there's an economy of scale that comes into play when looking at the larger scale unit no decisions been made obviously on that point but i think it bears noting that four and five are now scheduled to go offline as well so so it's not just the unit three issue it's also four and five so there's substantial megawatts that will be going offline in the relatively near future the second thing i would note is w in some ways it's unfortunate that this discussion sort of happens a little bit in a vacuum because i think there perhaps is a misperception that it's all or nothing or that this is the only discussion that's happening i know that the board is in some fairly serious negotiations on some renewable options they're not ready yet to ink those deals or to have us confirm those deals but there is some substantial discussion happening that i last heard was was hopefully close to some degree of fruition obviously that does not yet make it into any of these tables for the simple reason that you know it's it's not a guaranteed source it's not  entered into contracts particular point so it's not as if the board of the city are simply looking at exclusively fossil fuel options to to look to our energy future but the decision before us on this particular piece is focused on the baseload issue which by necessity frankly is largely a fossil fuel selection the third thing i would say is that the kinds of resources that we're looking at whether it's b or g e or others in many ways incorporate key elements or have these the strong potential to incorporate key elements of the community energy planning process for example  the question about whether and how to do potential district heating options will be part of the planning part of the planning process for any of these scenarios so again this decision is not completely divorced from the issue of the overall energy plan in fact they were canned in hand they just have slightly different focuses one from the other so they're you know going to be lots of opportunity for further discussion i see dave koster just walked in from what i know is one of the board public comment sections council has not yet taken up the report and those things i know that we will the board certainly will take it up and i think that you know we we certainly have been talking about this for a while and as we move toward a decision there will certainly be ample opportunity for additional comment and discussion to happen both directly on this particular piece but also in relation this pieces relation to the overall community energy planning process and in fact maybe this might be an appropriate time mr city manager for you to fast forward an announcement you're going to make at the end of the meeting if that's kind of caught him off guard small ramble for a little bit while he gets ready but we're not simply working solely on this question but we're looking at also the community energy planning process overall and as ryan gets ready to talk about that i turn to  mayor as you know and many in the community remember on july eighteenth the city council adopted a resolution directing a steering committee to proceed forward with them from an taishan of strategies associated with community energy process and the original plan here on the screen that was produced by car forth as many as well as many individuals in the community in that resolution of a stressed that this plan  implementation of the strategies be with the benefit of malta to mull to multiple opportunities a multitude of voices in relation to the task forces there's a total of six task forces that the council set forth for the steering committee to operate under and they're listed here on a call to action that will be published here shortly inviting members of the community to participate in a kickoff town meeting on september seventeenth and that town meeting will take place at the park theater it will be at seven thirty p m and it's an intended that individuals interested in helping to implement these strategies for these six areas come to that meeting and participate i do want to say there's four of these strategies that need quite a bit of of of knowledge and brainstorming and and the all the action that back takes to bring back to council for your decisions they are the home energy retrofit the building energy labeling the community education and outreach and i need to put on  glasses citywide district heating those four task forces will get organized that night there will be they will break out into individual work sessions so they can put together their goals their budgets their their plans and his patient coming back to council the second meeting of october so you can hear the direction being taken by the citizens there will be a citizen leader of each one as well as an administrative liaison and you can direct a redirect based the input you receive the there's two other task forces that are already underway in different ways i want to touch on them and there will be status reports provided had to do with the power generation obviously that's well underway  public hearings have already been held as of tonight on those so there will be a status report on that and also the piece had to do with the industrial energy we call it industrial service full service utility bundle that's technical in nature and will involve a lot of industrial owners as and another technician so a status report on that i will be provided that night as well so with that i hope that the council group and the general citizenry over time you may wish to add more citizens to that steering committee are charges administrative in nature we're trying to organize a process by which the community can act on many of the i think worth noting because this has been a a long long process and mr de young mentioned a couple things i think that are worth noting or at least making notes on specifically health the health concern and the lake shore you know that the land the rap process or the rap panel pardon me had i believe two meetings one of them i think was about a year  ago and that was a larger group than this body and i want to say there were probably thirty people around the table at it each one of those meetings and they were full day meetings and they were all day and it was at that table i think councilman peters was part of that as well that we discussed how to factor those things in to the h d r and so that it may not be presented on the surface that those things are calculated in however that those are monetized in those s curves those are very much so taken into consideration and there were two full days of dialogue on those factors and other factors and i just don't want that to get lost obviously capacity and efficiency has been part and parcel of conversation from the get go but health and in the land associated with the lake shore presence has certainly been calculated and it just doesn't easily come to the surface so that may not give you peace of mind but i can tell you from those two full days of conversation those things were considered at the fullest so hopefully that helps you i will allow it sure that's fine i say with a smile if that is what one can write i understand i will make this very brief in in the tables presented last night at the public information session they listed the the major financial factors for each scenario and if for example snow melt was listed out of five hundred thousand to two million dollar cost health impacts were not in there supposedly they are not considered financially equivalent to a five hundred thousand to two million dollar range of us was my misunderstanding months i think on two occasions the information that you need to know is that the farm although operating in many ways totally successfully and positively with recreational  a series of buildings the farm buildings and also the main house for which a plan a long range vision has not yet been developed there's a number of ideas and they are used for the maple sugar  how to produce probably the best option is in the neighborhood of forty five thousand dollars the advisory committee has signified that they believe that those funds are available privately so not only would your action tonight would you possibly achieve a strategic plan but you would hopefully achieve it without any taxpayers dollars so i want to thank the if eyes or committee for their work and is this publicly where we can announce that they the parks and recreation  delete that from my remarks time as it's more formal but we are trying to model the name after the department they work with which is the parks recreation and transportation department with holland and if there ever was a person that we should remember and respect and teach our children about it would be the founder of our community and his children who served in the civil war so it's a it's a real treasure and it doesn't get any younger so i'm really thankful to see people step forward from the community and want to support this and i know it represents a lot of work and planning and everything but we can't go anywhere till we figure out how to get there so i'm really thankful for all the people that have put so much time into getting us to this point especially jodie signs spearheading so many things at this time so we really appreciate her involvement resurfacing somewhere in between call the improvement improvement there we got that that's great thank you jody we turn to you we're looking at the thirty fourth between central and pine avenue investigated this we've sent some equipment and some people down into the storm sewer pipe that runs underneath the roadway we found that at the joints we have  some separation that's allowing the backfield material around the pipe to be sucked in that obviously creates voids underground which eventually make their way up to the surface and cause the sink holes so we've looked at some alternatives but have decided that the recommended course of action is to go in seal up all of those joints fill in all of the backfill material that has gone away over time we would then be taking off the road surface completely and putting a new surface back on so this is i think really the best way for us to approach this instead of trying to do it on more of a piecemeal basis and continuing to have these problems crop up they are occurring almost everywhere there is a joint which is about every eight to ten feet or so so we're pretty pretty much convinced based on the investigation that we've done that  this is the problem and this is the recommended solution so we did open bids we had five bids the low bid was from burner excavating in the amount of ninety nine thousand six hundred eleven dollars and fifty five cents we are recommending a total project to budget including in house costs material testing and contingency at one hundred fifteen thousand dollars we did have ninety thousand dollars in the streets capital project fun for this project we also had an additional line item for undesignated drain project so we can use those funds as well to comprise the budget so we are recommending that you award the project to brown or excavating in the bit amount of ninety nine thousand six hundred eleven dollars and fifty five cents that you authorized the mayor and deputy clerk to execute the necessary documents and that you adopt a budget for the project and the questions for jodi that emotion please  are city hall vehicles two of which are public safety vehicles two being police cruisers three city hall vehicles are a result of the cost benefit analysis that was presented in the previous study session this will result in an annual cost savings of more than eight thousand dollars and the potential for more in the future and this was number six on the list of fifty four budget saving goals and then two thousand and five dodge stratus it's actually an older communion neighborhood services vehicle which will be replaced with a  two public safety smore declaration of surplus items there is a listing and your package and its lengthy this has to do with evidence that is no longer needed confiscated by the police department in the course of their duties there are some weapons on that list that is not intended for resale but rather for your declaration of surplus at which time they can then be legitimately destroyed since they will not be sold  these items will be available likely website that is listed in your package property room dot com and chief master is here if you have any questions and i have no idea if i will get what we do is we take them to area jewelers and get them looked at and see if there are real or not we have all kinds of different types of jewelry that we take there and get assessed prior to  yes thank you takes them to fourteen f or forty four point one schedule of fees and charges an amendment to our existing listing of charges ryan or chief we turn to either one of you as council members during the budget cost recovery ordinance for those who are driving while impaired matters at the stadium podium should you have questions and questions for the chief or for the city manager saying none motion of that and some current court action we decided to investigate a new begging ordinance in the city attorney's office did so looked at several different one from minneapolis one from ann arbor and one from cincinnati and they came up with what they believe is a solid forcible ordinance that doesn't infringe on anyone's right to speech and that that has been put forth in front of you on a couple different occasions and  for numerous reasons i would number one definitely want to get our current statute or ordinance off the books and replace it with this new revised version which was much more specific  the the one thing we've seen is it is somewhat of an increase in begging complaint that we've seen throughout the city so it's not a huge issue for the city of holland we don't have individuals begging all over the place that kind of thing but we have seen an increase in the  and because of that we have seen increase in violations because of that i do think we need something on the books to allow the police department have some tool to take care of these this particular situation is going to run into them so i think by taking our all one off the books as a positive i do think we need to replace it with something that gives us some kind of tool to deal with those type of incidents when we wanted to them so our recommendation would be to use a first reading or second rian or at some point  place this begging ordinance that the city has come a city attorney's office come up with into our ordinance books any questions for either the city attorney or for ch sewers around talk about rolex watches or excess cars were heard about people and i think we should not look at this lightly i would prove have preferred to have seen some kind of committee from the city put together let's say by police department social service people community members downtown merchants  service groups to really look at this what is the problem what are we really dealing with and what are some solutions to this rather than sort of out of sight out of mind mentality and when people are begging for jobs or food or whatever it is to make people feel very uncomfortable and i understand that but we still have to protect first amendment rights even though we may not like to do that in all cases we feel uncomfortable about it is this is a really huge issue and to just have it does this come down this quickly  something that i have read the sixteen pages from the court's from detroit federal i've looked at the indianapolis thing and i just think we have to really be careful about this one and i hate this to see it move too quickly and perhaps we could make it even better than what it is mr mayor clarification this is first reading right other comments and a discussion nancy well i appreciate the fact that we realize we didn't have a good ordinance that it was not worth using and we knew it wasn't going to be held up in the courts but we still have a problem so we need to know how to protect people's rights and their right to speak and ask for money and also other people's rights to not feel  aggressively approached so i really think the city attorney's office did a great job in looking for models that have been held up in the courts so that we don't try and ordinance and end up in the courts and pay for all of that to learn our lessons and they went to three different cities in order to develop this ordinance and ann arbor and cincinnati and indianapolis and all of those policies were upheld in the courts so i do think that they took reasonable steps in a judicious manner to know how we can keep the order and still protect people's rights to ask for help so it does seem reasonable and well thought out and she does look like something that the police can use in a reasonable fashion when they have a problem and they do have something their initiative when they're asked to act on the part of a citizen who's aggressively approached the dispatch like i have to though there was much discussion upstairs specifically around item number eleven was questions and i think a cheap at a great explanation for that this is not going to give the police department the wherewithal to go out for at anybody either side but it's also it is yes mr burns said we're dealing with people here other people on both sides of  those that are asking those that are being asked if a person a reasonable person feels that their personal space and their rights are being violated and we right now do not have any option to protect that is our responsibility to make sure that people on both sides of this situation are taken care of right now it's a little one sided the the fact that we have people out there that need to be asking that's an entirely different situation which will have to be talked about at some time in the future whenever the the case may be but that's two entirely different situations so  this is a to me is a definite health welfare and safety issue obviously we've had some situations in the past i think there have been a couple of examples right here among this panel that have been approached aggressively and i think nancy said it very well with those words aggressively so i don't think we're moving too fast i think they've taken the best of three ordinance languages from much larger cities than ours take in the best of the best and tried to make it as reasonable as possible thank you i think council member com parnes has some not to beat a word to death but reasonable concerns we've talked about those and i've been on record as saying i view just viewed this largely as housekeeping but i think there's a word in the chief didn't use it here that i think we have upstairs and there's an important one and it's constitutionality and i think what we have in place now actually restricts that free speech more than what we're considering tonight what we're considering tonight is actually twofold it's in my opinion it's bringing us into an acceptable position in terms of the constitution but also as we look at these bullet points in section twenty three by my estimation it seems like we're actually giving them a bit more  speech if you will to use in this community and i think the discretion shown by our our officers and other scenarios will be applied here as well and i think we'll actually see in those cases where it's not intimidation or threatening or harassment people will be able to reasonably make a request of someone within the city for some assistance and so long as they don't cross some of those lines that are defined in the rule of law i think we find ourselves in a better position in relationship to the constitution and i think we find ourselves in a community that's not necessarily stomping down on this firmly and saying none of this here we consider it a nuisance or rather we're saying as best we can tell we're maintaining a rule of law we're trying to honor the constitution of the same time and also honor that human being that you have some concerns for and you make some reasonable points but i'm inclined to support this tonight because i think it puts us in a better position with a better l any other discussion all right this took place on first reading in a place called the roll parents i will this is a really tough one for me but i will support it i hope that we're doing the right thing and appreciate the arguments that positions that the rest of council build them and i will support it but if we need to tweak it later than we should do so from ok thank you that's on first reading it will appear in our next agenda for a public hearing that takes us to fourteen a five point one some gifts the city manager's office is pleased to report the following gives our street program neighborhood liaison has received donations in the total amount of five hundred fifty four dollars in support of the two thousand and twelve national night out event that was held august sixth of this year from how unprofessional firefighters special events and ma foods hot dogs from target heinz for the condiments and mecca tower area residents in action parks recreation and transportation department received a donation of one hundred dollars from jack millard in june they'll deer for speaker fees at the nature center in addition a donation of a beach tricolor tree stakes sign that says donated by keep michigan beautiful was also donated to the parks department at a value of two hundred forty dollars it is recommended that the was the same that passes this takes us down item fifteen communications from the city manager mr city manager thank you i have two items one the school has superintendent has volunteered a to public school system of all the construction projects that will be friday this friday one o'clock the max is providing a bus line up on eleventh street superintendent davis wanted us to know that there will be dust so plan accordingly with what you wear as well as probably flat shoes work best so he's really looking forward to this and all accounts are welcome many of you have already signed up if you haven't and want to be o'clock at the draft nature center for two hours there will be a personal trainer who is donating his services and we invite you to be part of that discussion this is also on that list of things to consider during the budget process so the idea of additional revenues and collaboration will certainly be on the table and all input is welcome thank you ok thank you sorry i'm go all right we move them to item sixteen communications for me tonight first of all i would prefer that we tentatively appointments and then we'll have just a few i'll have a few remarks after that the first set of appointments goes to the windmill island strategic planning committee during a lot of strategic planning this evening apparently we have some members who would like to get this committee appointed to him there will be additional ones to follow as folks hopefully remember we have kind of two things happening on a parallel track on the one hand we're looking at the strategic vision for what windmill island gardens ought to be for the next fifty years we're coming up on its fiftieth anniversary and that is an important piece of trying to figure out what that park should be for this not just the city but the entire community the second point is that we're going to be establishing a fund raising committee to begin to raise the funds necessary to at a minimum repair the mill and also make some strategic improvements that will be recommended probably regarding access issues and some other things that will make it an enhanced place for people to enjoy tonight we're going to take a look at doing some appointments to the strategic planning committee you know ordinarily you probably would have set up a strategic planning committee then come back and do some of the capital fund raising for it but given the fact of the current status of the lower left hand picture that's on the screen you can see the severed beam at the mill we need to get this this this thing repaired so that it is able to spin and operate because i guess the old saying among the millers is a mill at rest is a millette rust so you don't want to let it sit too long or it begins to deteriorate faster than what it ordinarily would for being you know two hundred plus year old structure so with that i would ask that you approve tonight the following persons to the strategic planning committee with additional persons to be named in the future study science from discovery center mecca tower greenway organization which has a strong interest in a lot of the river aspects of the the island bill johnson our friend and well known landscape architect and also deal weingarten who is a  civic leader in town and also retired city department leader so i would ask that these folks be named to this advisory or this strategic planning advisory committee and would put that before you for your action tonight  moved by the mayor pro tem supported by truth who is there any discussion otherwise all in favor please say i oppose the same that passes in the second series of appointments tonight again not a complete committee but a good start toward getting our public art advisory committee established some months ago we passed our council resolution twelve twenty twelve point five which established a public art advisory committee comprised of a variety of persons from within the community some with specific types of background to help advise us as to the placement of art in public spaces so art located on public property and tonight i would like to recommend to you for your consideration an approval the following persons diane of and call can one of the community at large members and your package doesn't say this but diana's appointment would be for three years according to the principles of the resolution twelve point five  amy haygood who is an architect for a one year appointment bryan birch who is the city council liaison which would be for a an annual point minutes council annually reshuffles the deck a little bit and then amy valcke another community member at large for a two year appointment i would say that i am close to securing the remaining members of that committee i just need to hear back from a couple of them they gave early indication but wanted to think about it and they're still thinking about it and my email to them has not yet been returned but you know i'm not concerned about it yet so hopefully will be able to complete that committee in the coming few weeks so i place those before you for your consideration as well we prove moved by whiteman support supported by de boer any discussion all in favor please say i post the same that passes as well then just a few communications tonight of course as always we invite you to visit us at city of holland dot com the web site contains a lot of information about the city of holland in the city of holland government it contains ways to contact us about variety of issues that might be on your mind that maybe we're not thinking about so certainly reach out to us phone numbers email addresses those kinds of things we also try hard to put as much information as we can on to that website so that if you're looking for information about what's happening in the city of holland and especially the government of the city of holland hopefully you can find it there instead of having to come to this building or make a phone call and we invite you to visit in peru's that site and i'm as i mentioned earlier you can find all the packet information about our meetings as well as links to videos of our council meeting so if you happen to miss a meeting you can can look at it on line if you'd like we have a couple of things that are happening we have lots of things that are happening but obviously schools in session now today was the first day of school for the public school so i think everybody is now in session charters privates and publics and traditional public so watch the streets is all i would say there and also echoing something ryan said a moment ago and i don't think that the tour will look at the newly opened piece of the holland high school but i had the opportunity to be in it this past weekend and it is exceptionally nice it is really really very well done a very functional space very flexible space and if this is an early indication as to what the entire high school is going to look like in a couple of years i think it will be a facility and an education that will all be proud to have in our city the other thing i would note is that we have today had in town some some visitors from the netherlands there is the west michigan oh my goodness i can't think of  the global initiative in town for the yesterday today and tomorrow or should say in west michigan yesterday today and tomorrow today they spent much of the day in holland they started with a tour of gentex this morning moved on to hudsonville ice cream and yes there was sampling that happened bob a very good lunch and lunch program at the hayworth corporation they then went to energetics and johnson controls the staff to noon it's a collection of dutch business folks and investors and the goal of this initiative is to try and bring these two cousins so to speak together in ways that are hopefully going to increase trade and increase investment back and forth the former prime minister of the netherlands balkan enda is in town as of this evening he will be in the grand rapids area tomorrow working with the global initiative as they too are in the grand rapids locations and then on friday he will be receiving an honorary degree an honorary doctorate from hope college and he will be giving a lecture at four p m at graves hall at hope college in the public is invited to the lecture at four o'clock at graves hall former prime minister balkan enda is a remarkable person he is someone who presided for nearly a decade over the dutch parliament was prime minister of that for that long which let's just say that the prime minister that is currently in office has been you know office for less than two years and there are national elections happening next week in the netherlands so roughly ten year period is quite remarkable in the modern age and in the dutch governmental system a man who is very smart very savvy and also has a very  interesting message talking about the role of values as he would describe it perhaps faith and morality as we might describe it in the role of government and how those two interplay with one another so the public is invited to come to that lecture and it ought to be quite interesting that's all i have tonight are the communications from counsel mr weightman you still a bit of my thunder but i'll do an addition just on to your admonition to watch the streets for students and we'll take a tour this friday of the high school and one of the things that is complete at this point is their student parking lot and it wasn't so long ago that they came before us as a body and  asked us to consider some parking things near the high school there but for what it's worth there are still numerous projects going on in the community and today witnessed firsthand something that's given me concern and i think it's given this whole council concern for a couple of years now and that's just the traffic around our schools and i don't think you'll be able to zoom in on it but i took a photo this is actually thirtieth in van royalty facing west and it's nearly locked up dead cold with  cars i would just take your admonition one step further and say be super mindful and don't be part of this at all costs if you can find some reasonable places to park your cars for the safety of our students and also for the safety of our our police officers that actually have to go and manage that so officer strength today standing in the middle of thirtieth street going from car to car in asking force and common sense in some reasonable minds  to help with that problem today a lot of these schools have given up some of their parking for the sake of construction and so it's particularly difficult in this season where we've got warm weather and kids and parents are walking to schools  as i say annually please please please pay attention parking parking spaces and obey the authorities if you will so thanks other communication from council this evening boardwalk from heinz albert to windmill island gardens and the breakfast that was served there in the pavilion and we had people from all over that founded on the internet or found it in the paper or found it from a friend and it was a wonderful time was such a beautiful thing to walk along the water and go to the island and it's just such an amazing community resource that whole system so it's really nice to see families and all types of groups of people just enjoy the healthy walk on labor day and have fun together and we had wonderful staff people from the city and volunteers that helped produce the delicious breakfast and so it was street horns blaring it was just to great whether it was a little cool this year was great smiles on the kids faces whether they were in the trucks or whether they were outside the trucks watching it was just it was well worth all of the planning that went into it i want to thank the police department for their cooperation zeal and city and holland and all the people that came out there was i'm not mr mayor for being there and it was it was just a great time and it's great to be able to celebrate with this community is all about the work ethic that we have here and all the great companies that step forward either mon or put their trucks in there or what have you we've got something to be proud of here i understand that this is the largest nonmilitary convoy in the country so next year don't miss it go for the walk and come and have some hot dogs down at the table or the tri state for the hot doesn't stay for the hot dogs yes thanks mike and that kudos to you and the rest of the foundation who put that on it's not easy to do and and it turned out great other the same that is passed for first reading we then have a motion to go into closed session for the review of a legal opinion anything else mr city attorney would like to say about that at this time was that good enough that's good