city council little bit unusual situation the night there's a international delegation in town that the mayor is off bringing greetings to but he will be back shortly but he did ask me to get the meeting started so in order to be sure that we can conduct this meeting with the with the two items and we will do so again tonight one is an opening prayer which this evening will be led by council member at large to bore and followed by the pledge of allegiance i would ask that we all now rise and happens on the news tonight it that's right you you know that you have planned that happens that everything is under your control and your love even though we don't often understand pray lord that you will give us wisdom in this evening's proceedings that we will make decisions that honor you they're the best for this community in the long term pray that you will help us to be loving and kind and gentle time to serve you i pray that we will feel your presence in this room in your name we pray and those of you who are in chambers there are agendas that are available in the rack in the back of the room if you wish to follow along if you're watching somewhere else the agenda is posted online and you can find it from the city's website if you have one of those agendas you will notice there are a number of items that are marked with an asterisk indicating that those items are on the consent agenda those items are considered to be routine and they have been reviewed by this council at earlier study sessions and will be enacted with a single motion and a single vote if  however there is something that is marked with an asterisk that you specifically team to address and would like to be heard by counsel you have the opportunity to review  ask that an item be removed but in order to facilitate that we first need to hear what is the consent agenda so i would ask the clerk to give us a summary of that thank you mayor pro tem number five to approve the minutes of the special meeting and study session held august thirteenth and regular meeting held august twentieth two thousand and fourteen items fourteen b one and one nine hundred eighty two except emplaced on first reading zoning and ordinance text amendments to create section thirty nine dash three forty three residential rental restriction overlay district amend section thirty nine dash two definition of family section thirty nine dash two eight four off street parking in the r t r traditional residential neighborhood district section fourteen dash for twenty seven point one and fourteen dash for twenty seven point two regarding a crime free lease for all rental properties and excessive calls with final consideration and adopted an adoption at the september seventeenth two thousand and fourteen council meeting and fourteen d one to refer claims filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration item fourteen d two to approve the fireworks permit application submitted by hope college for homecoming weekend saturday october eighteenth two thousand and fourteen on behalf of night magic subject to compliance with the conditions as established by the public safety police and fire divisions item fourteen d three to appoint excuse me to approve a second hand junk business buried treasure resale located at seven fifty nine east eighth street to operate in the city item for one point one fortini one point two and fourteen easy one point three to adopt resolution scheduling public hearings of necessity for annual downtown parking operations and maintenance principle shopping district and the downtown snow melt assessments for wednesday september seventeenth two thousand and fourteen council meeting and to instruct the deputy clerk to publish and mail the required notices item fourteen easy one point four to schedule a public hearing to obtain citizen comment on the fiscal year fourteen consolidated engle performance and evaluation report for wednesday september seventeenth two thousand and fourteen counsel me item he excuse me item fortini two point one two approve dave cole decorators incorporated for the two thousand and fourteen traffic signal post and pedestrian light pole preparation and painting project in the amount of seventeen thousand nine hundred fifty five dollars with funds allocated for the municipal capital improvements fund and downtown development authority buildings and ground maintenance fun item fourteen easy to point to to approve wrea construction company incorporated for the two thousand and fourteen st resurfacing project in the amount of four hundred twenty nine thousand dollars one hundred twenty three and eighty one cents with the funds allocated from the street improvement reserve fund and the elegant county road tax fund subject to approval as to farm by the city attorney i don't fourteen ether report one and fourteen ether report t renovate the police facility customer service area to bid specifications in the amount of forty seven thousand five hundred dollars subject to approval as to form by the city attorney's office item fourteen eef i point to to adopt a resolution of intent to create a satellite smart zone local development finance authority and to schedule a public hearing for october first two thousand and fourteen to consider the establishment of the authority and the designation of the district item fourteen e file i point three to schedule a public hearing on the requested tax abatement for our oil usa inc six ninety four east fortieth street for wednesday september seventeenth two thousand and fourteen at seven pm in the city hall council chambers and to instruct the deputy clerk to publish and mail the required notices gender in the intention is to handle all of those items collectively with one motion and one vote unless anyone from the audience members of council care to remove an item first i'll turn to the audience and invite anyone who would care to remove an item to please step forward to the microphone at the podium and identify which item you would like removed i give you little foreshadowing the rental rule ones i think are going to be removed by council if they're not removed from the audience so if someone wants to remove them why don't we just handle it from up here any of the other items care to be to amend section thirty nine days two definition of family and then subsequently item one thousand to again section thirty one two definitions ok so that is the other item from the consent agenda and i'll turn back to the audience one more time just to make sure that no one from the audience cares to remove any other items so far the only thing that's been removed is one of the items in the planning commission fourteen be one of the the specific  proposed amendment dealing with the six to four change the other items at this point are remaining on the consent agenda for first reading and you would care to take anything else off all right  regarding property at three seventy nine central avenue and i will turn to the city manager for a brief introduction of this and he may turn over to additional staff that ryan we look at you at this moment i thank you mayor members of the city council this pertains to three seventy nine central avenue which is owned by ruth lou and eighty the question is whether and whether the nuisance has been abated that was declared by the city council pursuant to section pertains to the remaining community and in compliance with the city codes so at that time on august twenty seventh was the deadline august twenty seventh has passed so tonight is the opportunity for the city council to hold a hearing to ensure there is due process and should you decide to do so there before instruct the community of neighborhood services to receive it actions debate the conditions and charge the cost of  the property owners right thank you brian are there any questions for staff at this time seeing none we will have a public hearing of this particular item i will declare the public hearing open if you care to address council on this item please step the microphone council rules say that you should give your name and residential address for the record and you have a five minutes to address council the public hearing is open right seeing no one we will close the public hearing and we have a recommendation  dykstra yes we have a nando's of zero nine zero ok thank you we then move on to item ten which is adoption of ordinances we have two separate ordinance adoptions this evening the first relates to sections of our sign ordinance which are found at thirty nine dash three forty six and three forty seven for that we will turn to fill my or for an introduction of these items before we hold a public hearing on this matter felt good evening  you what you have before you is a recommendation from me from the planning commission to section thirty one three forty six and three forty seven dear dealing with murals earlier this summer and issue arose with the community and neighborhood services received a complaint from a neighbor of the escape ministries property on thirty second street concerned about the mural that was being painted on the side of the building  this is a photograph of that mural pretty much as it stood at the time of the complaint when we went out to investigate that we took a look at it there was some comments made by the person complaining concerns about the style of the of the painting as we looked at it the style of the painting wasn't an issue for us this is it's not considered graffiti under our ordinance graffiti is if if it's permitted allowed to exist or painted by the owner it's not considered graffiti and we don't pursue it in any way through our defeat the ordinance this however was determined to be a sign because of the name escape that is central to this piece of the of the artwork was determined reassign and also determined to be in excess of the sort of what it is that's allowed under our sign ordinance we asked escape to stop work on the on this graphic they do have intentions of expanding the graphic in much of the the west facade of the building the side that's shown on this photograph and in their intent is to include a variety of depictions of some of the challenges that the youth that they're serving go through in life and in their aspirations for improving their lives some of that  would include or is intended to include some representation of some of the things that are going on inside the building as i said the name escape because it's a building owned by a skate ministries and serves that program that's considered a sign under our current ordinance if they were to include illustrations of things that are going on in the building specifically the specific example they gave was they bus program and they'd like to represent that in some way with a boxing ring or some some representation of that on the exterior already to our sign ordinance those are all signs so it takes it out of a mural category and puts it into a sign category  our mural ordinance essentially allows anyone to to paint the side of their building or a mural on the side of their building and as long as it doesn't have the name of the business or the name  of the operation that's going on in the building a representation of that as long as it doesn't contain that kind of graphic or information it's permitted under as a mural and there's no further review there no limitations to that when it's determined to have some some advertising or some promotional information or is conveying the contents of what's happening in that building that falls into the sign category so long story short we met with skate ministries  had some conversation there and asked them to stop work on that until we could come up with maybe some ordinance amendments that the planning commission on ultimately city council would be comfortable with that might provide some additional flexibility in the painting of murals this isn't just a focus on escape ministries that was what brought the issue to our attention and there were also this is a little bit out of proportion here the illustration on the right is maybe a little better on the side of a commercial building on thirteenth and river there is an idea of a mural located on the side of that building as you can see in the in the illustration on the right it will take up a good portion of the side of the building you might notice in this sign below city is the the bike store that i was this building and then when you begin to look closer at the  illustration you'll notice this is a bike chain there's a wheel here there's some some hopes and you know various elements of bicycles integrated into this under our current ordinance those would be considered that would change that from a mural to a sign in terms of the definition so with that example and a couple of previous examples that had been encountered in the downtown area we took this issue to the planning commission and through a couple of different discussions with the planning commission came up with a proposal that's before you that was supported by the planning commission and that is to modify the design the definition of of miral keep keep the existing definition of miracle of a type one mural so if there is no advertising no promotional effort in that it's a type one mural create a new definition of a type two mural  and that would be ultimately i would be limited by a maximum of twenty percent of the wall area could have the sort of representation that's that's indicated in in these various components or in the in the  escape example could have a name and could have some additional elements to get up to that twenty percent of the wall area so it provides some additional flexibility to to begin to create some of those expressions that ultimately create of a facade that very much we think can very much enhanced the space it's set up next to there's a lot of steps in the process in terms of how you get to the conclusion that you can can do a mural there are so difference between the c three downtown business district where they have a design review board this would be the determination of which category it falls into would be done by the design review board in the downtown elsewhere it would be up to our department to make that determination  and then if it falls within it as a sign if it's over the twenty percent it's a sign then it would go through the sign record sign review requirements as as other signs do if it's a type one mural have a nice day there's no further review if it's a type two mural then it's limited by that twenty percent there's some additional language in there about integrating the kinds of elements that this particular example show integrating those kinds of concepts throughout the thank you phil other questions for phil council member to three please feel i just something just popped up as a question looking at the two different examples that you have here when you're considering the square footage in one of your examples you have a non penetrated wall and in your other example example you have windows or penetrations of of sort in your figures in your calculations are you looking at a plane or are you looking at the usable surface we look at as a plane and the other questions for staff right as this is an amendment to the ordinances before we can act it or take an action on its own we did a public hearing this is the time in the place for it serve here to address this item and invite you to step forward to the microphone state your name residential seeing no one we will close the public hearing and we have this recommendation brought to us by the planning commission is there a motion who will prove moved by hoekstra support supported by truth who is there any discussion on it more ok very good we are second ordinance men but this evening and that is related to the international fire code and its adoption for the intro that i believe we have our fire marshal with us this evening and are you going to give us an intro or is ryan go handle a force and if he gets in trouble will call upon you i think this is a rare opportunity and one that should not be missed welcome thank you the international fire code recurrently use now as the two thousand and six edition just like the city and ops a newer building code when it when it comes out we'd like to adopt the new fire code if i have a thick book there that talks about the significant changes a lot of the changes talk about  definitions changing the definition of something to make it more easily understood sometimes codes when you're looking at them can be open for interpretation this kind of helps cut out some some verbiage there so that way it can be easily more easily understood and now if it also adds some safety features to new buildings construction new buil right excellent questions for the tenant right this too requires a public hearing if you were to address council on this item we devise you to persuade in the public hearing the microphone is open and seeing no one we will close the public hearing and we have the recommendation to adopt the new version of the international fire code is there motion some move by truly support supported by de boer is there discussion only know this that it is a frustration of mine though not certainly due to your department in that in order for us to find a you if you want to find out what exactly is in this new version of the fire code you either have to buy the book which is not entirely cheap you can go to the fire department and peruse the book or i don't know of the public library has it but they may eventually the point is that it's not available freely online if you look at our ordinances it will simply reference the international fire code you have to find a copy of it i understand why that is the case because the folks who put the code together want to make money off the deal to a minimum to cover their expenses but nonetheless it is a bit frustrating for those trying to find the information we have the same issue in the building birch yes we are dykstra yes motion passes eight or excuse me nine zero ok thank you that takes us the item twelve communications from the audience this is the opportunity for members of the audience to address council on matters that do not otherwise appear on the seedings agenda so if you're here to talk with us about something that doesn't show up on the agenda here's your opportunity to do so as with all of the matters in which councils address the council rules ask that you step to the microphone state your name and residential address for the record and you have a five minutes to address council i would invite anyone to step forward at this time welcomes leaving bill circle eleven thirty three myrtle cord just for clarification i know there's not a public hearing tonight on the run towards provisions but as are going to be an opportunity for public comment and he's at that time for the for the two that have been removed from consent yes the really thank you thank you anyone else pyrites we will then move on to the next matter which is the partial matter dealing with the partial matter removed from consent from the planning commission fourteen the one the two items that were removed are the amendments section thirty nine dash two definition of family and then also the proposed amendment to fourteen dash four point two seven point two regarding the crime free lease provision and again we invite the director of community neighborhood services phil meyer to talk with us about these items as by way of introduction that evening and felt good evening thank you again what you have before you are two parts you have you've moved on first reading you've moved on to other parts there were four four pieces of ordinance amendments that came to council from the planning commission they actually were initiated by the neighborhood improvement committee they've been all four of the components of this have been from the neighborhood improvement committee to council to the neighborhood improvement committee to the planning commission and then ultimately back to city council as a recommendation from the planning commission the two that are the subject of the discussion at this point one is the definition of family and that is section thirty nine dash two of the city zoning  ordinance that would make a change from what the part of the definition currently reads up to six unrelated persons living together as a single housekeeping group in a dwelling unit using common cooking facilities that that falls under the definition of family the proposal that has come to you from the planning commission the recommendation from the planning commission is to change it from six unrelated to four unrelated  is it's a simple change is that in terms of the ordinance itself but as the council has had a number of discussions on this there are a variety of issues imbedded in this i probably should say that there are a number of objectives and in the context of all of these proposed the minister before you there there is concern about the changing character of of our neighborhoods and the increasing number of rentals within the neighborhood  there is concern in in some areas in terms of density of of students and others this isn't just focused on students but that the focus of a lot of the discussion lately has been on students  concerned about the density of of those neighborhoods where they are typically very small lots and having six individuals with six cars has been a concern  the character of the neighborhood but the number of vehicles in the neighborhood the congestion that has occurred on some streets and when you combine that with other facilities that are nearby a variety of those issues are impacting the the character of the neighborhoods and in some some areas impacting the desirability of neighborhoods for single family homes and as single family residential neighborhoods  this six to four is is one of those elements that is is proposed here time coming to you from the planning commission the second one that was pulled off the consent agenda you know phil what we hold off ok let's handle these two  independently for a whole host of reasons that will vote on them separately as well so at the moment the only one that we are looking at is the one dealing with thirty nine dash two definition of family or in the  four provision initially as as a way of getting our process going why don't we get in motion on the floor reprove move by to board support supported by birch all right i'm going to certainly open the microphone up for comment i guess i would like to make a preliminary comment which is slightly out of our typical order but and i'm not saying that this is the direction that we will go tonight let alone alternately but for those who have who were either watched or were here for my comments at the planning commission session i suggested that  i would like to see a gradual implementation of the six to four over a period of time in this evening upstairs in a pre concert meeting i elaborated on that slightly and in short form i'll talk about a more after  public comment but for the benefit of those who were not present upstairs the idea would be some period of time twelve years fifteen years ten years something along those lines whereby any current property that is currently an active rental  with an active and valid rental certificate or permit would be then have a sunrise provisions so to speak or be grandfathered in for that period of time ten twelve fifteen whatever the number is a new property that goes to to obtain a rental permit from today's date forward would be then walked in at the four immediately the idea being that there were some investment backed expectations that were put into place by those currently  who have purchased properties for and have rentals actively going on them that would not be the case and in a future property purchased after the ordinance were to be changed so again i can talk more about that later on and not to say that that's the way council will go nor even that that's the way the motion will go tonight but for the benefit of those who were not upstairs that was an idea that i had and raised there with that i would invite anyone from the audience  to the kind of microphone address council on this matter and i think everyone understands first of all the general rules of council secondly that tonight's matter is only first reading so if something is approved tonight it then goes back onto the agenda two weeks from now when there is a public hearing before anything else is adopted so any action council takes tonight on this particular item by no means has any sort of immediate legal effect or changes anything whatsoever with that the microphone is opened and i would invite anyone from the audience to address council on the definition of family issue say there's traffic problems or party problems or so forth have you i guess i would like someone to answer how does going from sixty four solve any of them how does going from six people in a house to four people stop people from party stop people from having fun stop people from moving around i guess i've been asking for two years how to solve anything and nobody's giving me an answer i mean there hasn't been through this whole process there hasn't been a lot of fact finding i mean no one's come forward with reports or anything to prove this or to say how this solves anything so i mean what you're doing here affects a lot of people in a big way and you're doing it without facts second of all some of the effects that you're going to have by this is totally opposite of what you're trying to correct the three in four bedroom homes are going to become very attractive because the rents will go up they will go up one hundred two hundred fifty dollars a month which makes a four bedroom and three bedroom home very attractive if you want to see houses get snatched up at rentals go ahead and approve this because that's what will happen when we talk about the mayor made the comment earlier in the story says and he didn't want to more moratorium this again because he had heart committee has gone the neighborhood improvement committee has gone through this i think council has even addressed this before and every time and i guess i'd like maybe a correction but i don't think the neighborhood improvement committee suggested this i think they rescinded and decided not to do this that six was a number so the fact that we keep hearing that the neighborhood improvement to me suggests that this i i went to those meetings i didn't see it just that when there was the rehab homes they definitely wanted to do this but once they found out  unconstitutional they rescinded the rotunda one so i mean how many committees have to say don't change it and it still keeps coming up and doesn't council want to take that in consideration that so many people s much time studying this and came back with a result of don't change it you know what about traffic reports we say traffic is a problem worse in reports so what's the evidence if you're going to make big changes like this and we have yet to see any of those things change and one more thing when it comes to the sunset you know there's a lot of us who invested a lot of money just recently fifteen years isn't a big deal to me i mean my loans  there was some great comments made on the effect that this is going to have that i just think council really needs to think about what evidence has been put in front of you to support you thank you and how bad that is i feel like a group in the city how it is being discriminated against they are talked about like they are lepers renters are good people the coaches the kids teams with the workers at keep this factory going and every time i hear somebody in this group same neighborhoods are going downhill because we have a high number renters in there that rolls my stomach a little bit and about the six to four issue i commend you for granting the possibility of grandfathering that and i think the i don't own any real units that have a sixty four but i've seen them and walk through them and i think they look great they're energy efficient houses people landlords are tearing old houses down and building them by the time they buy a lot tear holes down to build a house they're getting close to two hundred fifty thousand dollars a holes and that does not pay with four kids and i think they're really increasing the value of the stock of the city by holland's housing by doing this and they're paying employees to fire to six thousand dollars a year in taxes and if the city actually made a rule that would cut it down to four people for hols they could easily sell to hope which is exempt from the rules and could put six to eight people in a house in the city would lose the fired six thousand dollars a year in tax that they have so i think we really have to look at these houses and look at them in the act as an asset an improvement to our communities i do rent to for hope college kids and they are all great kids and i think majority of hope college kids are getting a bad rap here because if you get to know them most of my responsible kids are going to be our future lawyers and doctors and i have had a very positive experience experience deal than most of them both of my kids live off campus not in holland here in the first thing they do is buddy up with the neighbors because the neighbors come in snow blow their driveway and my kids make brownies for them and that's the type of relationship we should be looking to expand on this positive relationship with the whole college kids  and you know i think when we're talking about you know lowering the number rentals the school college kids are just going to be spread all further and i think i think i think we should take a good look at this and i know what you guys are doing is trying to a one central on the north side we run a property management company manage but a few units in town i also own one of the units that would be affected by this with partners and i guess i again think you're addressing the wrong problem the problem is how to solve maybe the traffic issue of there is one which we don't know or the parking problem which there might be one according to some neighbors cars there's too many cars and some peoples grass areas and that kind of stuff that can be settled differently than just limiting the number of people to four but my my main point as a property manager is a if you do this we counted and i don't know everybody who has us but we count about forty or fifty kids right now that would have to find other rental places in it for people per house that would give ten would make you have to have ten more rentals in the whole college area to house those kids so investors are now going to look at the single families where grand a lot of people don't want to live in there because there are college kids there they want to live by college kids those units that nobody else wants by an investor might buy and the rent to college kids grad only for him but they won't be as many cars but they'll be more rentals that's forty more know forty ten more houses that would have to be turned around or these kids are going to go where the other thing is as it was once before the tax base we've invested quite a bit of money in these houses and we're paying five six thousand dollars worth of taxes because it's not and actually the kids won't college before that if you do this kids or go college are going to pay more because there's going to be less rentals a bearable the bill to make properties go up in value i just i think there's other ways to handle making holland a better place we wish that we could see some numbers if there are college problems with police departments and we want to see numbers we have not had any calls in our units and if there are some like the one that was talk about earlier with a yard that's grown out of i mean that's not a rental that's a single family home oh take care of it with the ordinance that we have already thank you sixteen and probably the area that's probably the most affected i feel like with all this commotion i live right in the middle of it on twelfth street levitra seventy two thank you get to seven seven hundred twelve street so  this to what some of the comments i've heard there are traffic problems to the point where i can't get my driveway i've had to leave my work vehicle at other houses because they can't get into my driveway because of the close parking and some that doesn't have to do anything with a copa vents it's with the neighbors and all the cars that has there been a problem before i lived there for twenty years and this is been escalating issue and terms of the cops i have documents i call the cops i have not called the cops i've talked to them personally  i've talked to hope college public safety can't do anything i've talked with dean frost office i've actually had nickel hamburg from the police department have to come to the kids that live next door to me to address the issues because there's six kids living in the house and each one takes a turn the cops talking to them when they come so nobody gets a citation or a ticket so there are issues out there if you like them to be better documented i'm happy to do that for you so it kind of is difficult when i hear things that well that doesn't exist we've never heard of it it does exist but it's her document i'm not home all of ours of all days to do with most of that most of this in terms of density there is a much more density than there was i bought a house on a small quiet street and there is not quiet anymore and it's not because of the people that are the residents that live there full time it is because of the renters or their whole college kids or whether they're not a lot of them because of the density of the houses it's a big issue and my house next door to me has been issue before it was a pleasant little house which is now a large house with four bedrooms in the basement and two bedrooms upstairs and no backyard so it's constant kids in the driveway and kids in the street and even just this but i've had to call the cops even just in august i've had to talk to my neighbors three times already so it's just not you know maybe it's more localized where we are but you know we're still part of this so i'll be taken in consideration that sixty four is you know wonderful thing and it's not the first people had to and welcome and children to forty five each fourteenth the parking is the biggest problem the kids walk around at night you get all your noise after the kids are parked on the street the park and the sidewalk when you do they won't do nothing about it we had one house and fourteenth last year they percolate ways on the sidewalk the officer would not do a thing about it when you with the kid running up and down the sidewalk when and i want to this speak out first of all about the students and it's true we've got a lot of good kids at home eighty five percent of the kids are good eighty five percent of the time it's the other time that's a problem and when we lay in bed and hear the two to fifteen to thirty closing of the bars and awoken up because there's large mass numbers of kids coming the more students we have the larger numbers there's a critical mass a person is not going to go up by themselves student is not going to go up by themselves and create problems but if there's four of them there's less likelihood of that kind of critical mass than there as with six i think the number is important i live next to a house with a rooming house with ten bedrooms it's a monster it was done because of errors in the weaknesses in those zoning code and then the zoning code is not enforced parking there were thirteen cars or the sefton in the in the parking lot which exceeds a fifty percent of the concrete to support and that was poured this year the fencing has not been resolved there been letters sent there was a deadline on the landlord today and absolutely nothing has happened because of it  we've heard do people complain about the economics of the change from six to four but nobody speaking of the economic set up that has affected us homeowners that is our property values have gone down because of these monstrosities being built in our neighborhood there's no sympathy of there and of course these landlords are not likely to be particularly sympathetic to other people who are losing money and that happens when every year in business that there is a chance of your economics changing talk to the people who own the chrysler dealership for forty years or talk to a retiree from the city of detroit their economics have changed dramatically these people are making a lot of money think about it ten rooms at three hundred bucks a students that's three thousand dollars a month thirty six thousand dollars a year and if you change the recommendation the still be making almost thirty thousand dollars i would make a small the change that i see the need to allow some people to have time to adapt to the changing economics a changing thing that the sun rises a mayor has called it but i would all out that extension only to people who have valid occupancy permits at this time for those landlords who do not are renting now without valid occupancy permits should not be granted any grace and there should be as a vista and that would immediately reduce the number of people in the house next to me and the house next door or concert with eighty six kids living on our block i'd sure like to see that number  from farms to subdivisions college expands as more students there's more demand on property that's all change and most of us aren't really interested in change i sympathise with that gentleman but i also know that in planning for the future my wife and i purchased properties that were in rough condition and i'm conforming to zoning illegal apartments in the basement more people in them today or excuse me before than there are today put tens of thousands of dollars in investment in those properties to bring up to code to make them look nice replacement windows replacement doors sweetly went through the house and invested a lot of money that type of investment isn't a five year isn't a ten year investment that investment was for retirement or retirement and that we'd hoped to draw from that income i'm not an outside investor i'm not from far away i live in holland i spend the money in holland i work for holland ok this will have an immediate impact two gentlemen may say that somebody important thirty six grand a year i am not getting rich on these rentals when you look at the mortgage costs the rebbe rehabilitation cost in the things that took to get us into the condition it need to be to be an appropriate investment their turn isn't what you think it be and i'll be more than glad to share my ten forty if anybody doesn't believe that so i appreciate councils due diligence  taxes it's brought up we don't have the homestead exemption we pay a lot of taxes this will drastically impact us and i go back to what a gentleman said a little bit earlier the city itself has admitted they don't know how many six residents homes they have do we really know these homes are the sole problem are some of the four people homes i know some poor people homes that are problem i know a lot of six people homes that aren't two of which are my wife's so it would be nice to be able to solve this problem with the facts known not supposition we can certainly trying to extrapolate what we know in a say yes well six is going to fo going to cure this i don't believe that's the case it's not going to cure the parking issue between hope college and the football field it's not going to cure the parking problem around voss field house it is going to exist and for people have just as many people visit their houses six people do you will still have the parking problem the city has many tools at its hands to address these issues currently and it appears that they're not being utilized we have  if people are being rowdy they're not doing what they're supposed to do deal with them so i hope you take into consideration the fact that you will have real people not just investors people that live in this community that invested in this community a lot of money into it to rehabilitate homes yes it's run but it has value and the reason it's there is because there's a market for not because we're forcing people to where there is a market for it and there will be more runnels that come about if you go from good evening and welcome good evening my name is lois to live it to eat six east twelfth street and you have been hearing each one of the speakers tonight speak out of a sense of investment you've been hearing the very strong feelings from people who are justifiably very financially invested in rental properties and i empathize with the act and  i of course am somewhat invested because of my home on twelfth street which is somewhat impacted by this but actually the fact that i myself could put in a lot of renters would make it so that i could i could benefit by it and so in some ways it's kind of it for me at least but what i realize is i was sitting here thinking about this is there's so i go down our street i see my next door neighbor a single man this enabled who we've had to call nine one one for a couple times who had a hard time getting the influence to come down the street so this tells you something but there is a problem here i go down the street and there are retired people there are single women there are single families the homes as they are are the affordable housing and howland and so when we talk about do we have enough housing and how well we have some wonderful affording affordable housing right where it's at and the people in those houses are somewhat fragile populations and they worry at night about what if there is going to be a safe you know safe sidewalk to walk around so i would say that  financially you can look at the financial investment but you can also look at the personal investment and the years and years of upkeep in care that the homeowners themselves have poured into the in the properties and especially into the town because if all of the home owners leave and all and almost sudden the town is left holding the bag there will be it there will be nobody to to pour the neighborhood into these neighborhoods that we have been trying to preserve all along so i guess i'm just speaking on behalf of not just me not my personal investment but of the more fragile populations that are in the homes right now and who are dependent upon those neighborhoods being stable and safe in the future thanks  neighborhood has challenges it's not just the whole college neighborhood area i think the historical district has a challenge of restoration and cost and materials eccentric parkas issues of resort use the holland hospital neighborhood as parking traffic emergency vehicle issues schools have safety students i know there's issues there apartments have density issues just parking student issues growth and really it wherever you live there there's going to be issues and i think we need to think of broadening of our whole city so the focus really is on the sixth and fourth issue and i think it really comes down to really in my mind four things one in two thousand and twelve the city council supported six renters six unrelated renters after roughly eight years moratorium and study with neighbors which include hope college in the city in the abers secondly there really is no empirical evidence to show that six to them says not working and therefore would in fact so many of these issues number three in essence a green light was given for investment with the blessing of the city of holland and this co over for real properties are real businesses with real people with spending real money and they are hoping to make a profit for their risk just as j c ice hoping to make a profit or hayworth or any business that's down town there are downsides downsize with keeping six renters but i'm sure there's upsides and i think that it's reasonable to maintain address the parking issue which has been first and foremost i think part of the biggest argument we can take care that very quickly we can make sure that there's parking only on one side of the street that would be probably detrimental to your investment also but i just i travel down to all street like i said i'm very intimate with that area i grew up in that area grandparents so i'm very very familiar with that i travel down t street between like unfair banks saturday you get one car through there and that's it so i'd like to make a recommendation that the forwarded to the the traffic committee to see what we can do about parking on one side specifically between lincoln for banks twelfth thirteenth fourteenth and we should probably leave it be looking because what that's going to do is it's going to move the traffic of the parking further into the city probably should be looking at the lincoln to columbia also in extending that to fifteenth street let's see what that looks like fantastic i'm i'm happy for you that's what we're all about here but there's also responsibilities that come along as a businessman and that means taking care of the people that live within your the confines of the four walls of the investment that you have as i said to a couple of gentlemen after last week's meeting i applaud you for being here you care if every landlord was like you we would not be having this discussion i guarantee that unfortunately not everybody is and i would hope that if you're trying to protect your investment that there would be a little peer pressure being put on some of the non compliant people we've had a little bit of that going on up in the abbey in strafford way to put some great success and i guess i would challenge you to protect your investment by having a chat with some of the people that are really the problem and it's not just college we fully recognize that it's not just the college throughout the rest of the city there are issues that have happened from rental homes rental people aren't bad don't nobody has ever said that they're not a segregated population there are bad apples single family there are bad apples you know rental we understand that but i think you could probably make a a great stride in your investment in saving your investment seven years now in the last three or four we've gotten together as a group in some snowy january or february and said what what are our priorities what do we need to do to make sure we do well and it's brought in neighborhoods  about neighborhoods preserving neighborhoods not saying too many renters are bad we don't like renters but you talk about empirical evidence i'll tell you that if you get more than sixty or seventy percent rentals in a neighborhood there's all kinds of evidence to suggest that that's not a healthy balance it's about a healthy balance and what the downturn i think in the economy and the foreclosures business being what it is i think a lot of people jumped in and bought some houses at some very good rates where they could make the numbers work so when the neighborhood improvement and we set up a neighborhood improvement committee with a lot of diverse individuals with landlords and people from this in the planning commission to really think through what can we do to make sure highland very unique community very successful community does the best it can do to make sure we maintain neighborhoods because we are it's just  an assembly of very different diverse neighborhoods that work pretty well no doubt when we told them to be bold the neighborhood improvement committee help us make sure we do something because you know when we look at the our street program and all the years we were doing twenty for twenty years the same things the same things is it working are we gaining traction are we saving neighborhoods are we preserving neighborhoods our neighborhoods some more challenge another certainly in the central city are there more homes being invested i we attracting the kind of people who have choice in the central cities and i think you know when i think those groups that you know  don't know what we are so let's do some things differently so we asked for some recommendations and we told them to be bold they came back with four pretty i think level headed recommendations some are easier to look at and think about than other the two that i would like to discuss happen to be pulled off today so it just so happens that one of these when you talk about going from six to four makes it very hard throughout the entire city for someone to buy a rental property and make the numbers work and maybe maybe dissuade some people from doing that maybe this maybe have some people who want to have to add to the balance of maybe too many rentals in some parts of our neighborhood maybe going from six to four will dissuade some investors from turning those into rental properties i think that makes some sense and i guess awk talk about evidence there's volumes on the internet about neighborhood stability what happens when they get out of balance volumes that what where i think we rub into this thing is that just so happens that this really unique neighborhood we call the whole neighborhood in whole college bring a whole different rob to this discussion we have and that's why everybody in this room is here because it's affecting you more than i think the rest of the city or what we're trying to do i think i've heard the mayor say and it's it's very appropriate  these ordinances we pass cut with a chainsaw and not a scalpel and it's very true it's very true for this particular group i'm inclined to to agree with going from six to four i also think it's very say or to the people in the room to say you know what you made investment in good faith under certain rules i think we have to be very clear about what that looks like and i don't know what recommendation or how that comes out but i would be very supportive of making sure we can be as understanding of the position you've done it because you know you are good lammers there are a lot of good landlords out there but you know what there's a lot of bad news and i think that's part of what we're trying to address your as well so i do support that but i also think for those people who live in those neighborhoods you talk about randi you mentioned there's no evidence there's no evidence there's no evidence i was born on one street i when i worked at whole college i live street i i live i've been in the i've been in all these neighborhoods sometimes you know neat you can just look at it and see that the fabric isn't quite right i'm not saying you're not a bad l'amour but i do think and everybody's position we tend to gloss over from our own positions sometimes i think you know i don't know one thing i do know for sure i don't think we're doing it in the city the college i don't think we're doing it in a good enough job of jumping on these problem houses or these landlords when problems do arise i have heard myself from many peoples and i call the police they really don't do it or they come up they show up and they say take forty five minutes to to leave to bed the party well when all those kids are dispersing they're throwing their beer cans out all the homes as they go there i've left it i've seen it i know it how do you get your hands around that how to get an ordinance to cover that we talked about three having three cracks we're going to talk about in a minute here the types of things we said well three offenses and you start to get in big trouble i mean there's a zero tolerance policy maybe there's a whole nother way we need to coordinate with  college and our public and their public safety and our police department and how do we handle this when these kids park on the street and just give a warning and drive away and i don't know i should know i don't know the answer those questions but i think it for the if we're going to help the landlords in a way i think we have to help the residents who've been living there for thirty years paying taxes and live in enjoying the the residence is that they have been seeing a bit of a diminished lifestyle because of this encroachments it's a very very real thing so i think we owe something to them in this equation to say you know what we need to do it in a very structured way get together and think about a zero tolerance policy or something that in a much faster way when johnny throws a party he doesn't end up in dean frost office he ends up in the clink and it's done and if it happens again we go to dean frost and they throw him out of the college and let these kids see and get a reputation for knowing that it's not cool to throw parties anymore they're not just going to show up and kind of laugh it off they're serious we all that to this this whole neighborhood these great people who lived there for a long time to make sure that they get that kind of respect as well so i see all sides but i think for the good of the city i do support this going from six to four not necessarily for the reasons that are in this room but for the greater good of what we're i think a hump church to do is think about the city as a whole and how you tack it from not a chainsaw try trying to get as close to a scalpel as you can but make as much sense as you can for everyone so there's that the house was when i was in school and regardless of how many roommates you tell me i could have and i would dare say that we can move the number from six to four in the party is still going to happen it's going to happen at the same houses more than likely and what we may do inadvertently is create a few more party houses right now at least by what i see in a quit truly a search there's three properties between fair banks and lincoln fifteen to thirty the three i think are foreclosed probably pretty quickly acquired and if we shift to from the house that has six in that one we maybe move in the bag or maybe they just split the baby and now we have two party houses i don't know but i don't suspect that this does anything to really take the party out of the play you know out of the equation that the two am bar closure i don't know how to get at that one but i would just say i think those folks are going to walk home regardless they're there they're going to be there that's going to be their behavior in again to jay's point maybe it's a zero tolerance policy with some of the tools that we already have and i said this last week in the study session i am but the eyes with the problems and i think they're they're valid and legitimate i still believe this is a chainsaw not a scalpel parking for football practices we got an email this week about cars parked on the street for for football practices this will not change that they're going to park on the street in the mike's point that's the issue we did that recently up by how in high school parking on this side of the street only for some of those drop offs we know how to use those tools we know how to implement those tools we know how to enforce those too i would suggest if that's the problem we use that tool so this is where i'm conflicted this is why i wanted to hold off because this is the type of conversation that i think we have to have and to wayne's point two years ago on the heels of the ad hoc group coming together and moratorium we were there and we were deploying tools and we're going to consider one of those tools tonight as a consent agenda item with the overlay district i think that's a tool that these neighbors can utilize if indeed they want to go that route i think they're going to have that opportunity but this one in my opinion does not move the needle it does not address the specific problems that the neighbors are bringing to us have spent hours talking about this and planning commission the neighborhood improvement committee even the our history committee when we had that and here with this council and i spend lots of time talking with people and thinking about this so this is not exactly something that just came up and i'm kind of putting together my thoughts but i have written my thoughts so i could be  it got me thinking it got and i keep circling back to a very important question what is a city for ever since cities first emerged thousands of years ago they've been places where people could gather create marketplaces and flourish at the core of the civic internet interaction is the working middle class family those people who work locally owned businesses locally it's been their dollars locally they stay in the community and majority of these families own their own property they maintain that property and in doing so build the neighborhoods that build and maintain our cities they are the glue of our city's families were the foundation of the great ancient cities of europe the middle east evergreens carried the institution of the family oriented city across the atlantic to america and the american city into the one nine hundred fifty s that is our urban assam past warner observed the basic custom of a city was a commitment to familial ism that changed in the sixty's and seventy's middle class families started leaving our cities our neighbor has deteriorated in their place came an abundance of rental housing with lots of temporary residents who didn't share the same values as the families they replaced holland wasn't as impacted in those changes as maybe places like new york or chicago or detroit's or other large cities but this cycle repeated itself what happened during the great recession which wasn't too long ago hundreds of families left holland for better pastures and we were hit very hard in those years in the wake of that crisis came even more rental housing properties could be purchased for a song and to as many as six people in the city they could be demolished and replaced with what is essentially private dormitories which made a business environment that is nearly ideal for landlords and property managers it's this enc ents that makes single family owner occupied homes an affordable and how in holland because once a family goes rental especially six residence it becomes what i have heard described as a cash cow that's from both sides it means that properties unlikely to really ever go back to being a single family home heating as it did the price to acquire that home by a family would be near impossible and that my friends is not an affordable housing policy by trying to cram as many people as possible into higher density space property managers inadvertently push up prices for the existing housing stock a family friendly homes such policies have already been practiced for decades in the united kingdom making even the most provincial cities increasingly an affordable the middle class family has been pushed to the margins this development raises important question are cities without families sustainable i see this is just ticks i read all of it all the time because i'm a nerd and i read the stuff people want to live in cities they are the creative class the most sought after demographic of our time they are single professionals well heeled childless couples empty nesters and college students all of them occupy much of the urban space once filled by families and increasingly cities are devolving into playgrounds for the rich traps for the poor and way stations for the ambitious young in a route to eventually less congested places places to start families as someone who lives in this central neighborhood who owns a home in the central neighborhood affordable middle class family oriented owner occupied housing is a priority for me and it should be a priority for the city we created account the commission on this you and i sit on it it seems to be a priority i don't believe holland is sustainable going after transition creative's families are the glue of a city they abandon us when our policies encourage property as a line item on a balance sheet instead of those that keep streets safe and uncluttered allow schools to thrive and make living spaces affordable it is families who should be the most sou after demographic and we should be targeting them our goal must be to create an attractive designation for people to start families bring families and see families grow i believe having a strong rental policy is very important and by changing our definition of a family from six unrelated individuals to four will not eliminate rentals it will merely remove the incentive to lock down properties as rental cash cows and making them an of more affordable and attainable for working class middle class families a dearth of on a put on affordable places which pushes out families reinforces public policies that are incompatible with children and with fewer middle class families that means less political pressure pressure on this council to reform education or support for tougher law enforcement the values of an owner occupied family is different  from a house with renters if we want our urban spaces to thrive if we want to nurture the next generation of urbanites and keep more of their younger adults to come back and start families of their own in our city need a more family oriented rental policy and i think this does that families are the glue of our city they have sustained cities for millennia and given the urban experience all  anyone else but me i didn't write anything out so i'll go a little bit more from notes a couple of comments and i've said a lot on this and i won't belabor this evening i suspect they'll be future opportunities to do so but a couple of points that i heard this evening that perhaps have been raised before but nonetheless i think they're worth calm thing on first is this idea that there simply is no evidence that either a there's a problem or that b this is the the magic beans that will solve that problem i guess i'll respectfully disagree with the idea that there is simply no evidence that you can discount the evidence you can disagree with the evidence but there's lots of events second nobody is suggesting that by going from six to four all the sudden this place turns into pleasantville or that somehow we become the happiest place on earth you know that every time we take up an ordinance one of the common objections that always comes up is the by doing this that will not be the magic thing that solves every known problem related to the issue it's trying to address of course that's the case we all understand that going from six to four doesn't immediately a race every single problem that exists in every single one of our neighborhoods but nonetheless when you look around not just immediately around us but there's a slide i believe that we did some surveying of jurisdictions  some will be at five many will be at four some will be at three township i believe is it five i'm sorry there are three the city of zealand for example is at three grand rapids is that for kalamazoo story park township i believe is three hundred could be four i don't recall college towns even east lansing three an arbor is at four or six depending upon the specific specificity of the zone what you won't find i suppose there's a community out there but i haven't found it yet i've looked at a fair number of them but you won't find anybody at six as the old saying goes one of these things is not like the other and i daresay that if all these numbers were six and we were three there be some clamoring to adhere to what the other communities are doing so i think that argument works in reverse as well second  we do have conflicting reports and recommendations that come to us it's the nature of the beast they're advisory committees to us ultimately the nine people up here decide what to do the neighborhood improvement committee at one point took a vote approving something another point took a vote denying the four to six change it was outlined in the staff memo on day june twenty twenty fourteen where it specifically said that there was a motion to reject the sixty four policy altogether and that motion passed seven to four so i don't think there's any sort of basis to suggest that somehow we're operating under the impression or giving the impression that all of our advisors committees have suggested this is a hunky dory policy due to adopt but in addition to the neighborhood improvement committee of the planning commission six to our most recent and advisory recommendation six to six go to six to four so the end of the day there advisory they're helpful we appreciate the study that happens by people who serve on those committees but it's up to the nine of us to to make those calls one thing that keeps coming back and i do i do think the college certainly has a role to play in this matter but i do hear occasionally i heard it again tonight that if the college buys a house they can do whatever they want to on the property that just simply is not the case if the property is it is zoned educational yes the college has control over it but if any property that currently is own r t r and is purchased by the college it hears to the same zoning requirements as if owned by a private investor so th the ownership issue really has nothing to do with the amount of persons permitted it is simply a matter of the zoning and who changes the zoning in a particular piece of property planning commission recommends this council approves so  that question would be coming right back to the same people tonight who are struggling with this particular matter one of sort of final little tidbit i do respectfully disagree with the comments that somehow we the city council ratified or approved or reaffirmed the six number my recollection my interpretation which of course can be challenged is that we didn't address it and there was no specific reaffirmation of six we looked at other matters and we left that the number of unrelated persons we left that number alone at that particular time now as i have said and i said already tonight i do think that there is that there ought to be some consideration significant consideration given to those persons who invested under the current policy with the long term expectation of of repayment and i have nothing against people earning money for heaven sakes i have nothing against people earning money and property for most of  us the purchase of a piece of property most of us call our home is the single largest investment we ever make and there's no problem in my mind with that but at the end of the day if you look at a zoning map the areas we're talking about are not zone c one they are not zon c two they're not zone c three they're zoned r t r and true traditional residential neighborhoods and that's the kind of emphasis we want to place in these particular neighborhoods now i think there's a way to soften the blow for those who are or are already who already do have valid rental certificates and are currently operating under a valid permit i've outlined a potential way to do it i think that will give that further gloss but one interesting thing that i think you know frankly we don't know what happens we don't know what happens with rental rates if we go from six to four on the one hand we heard tonight in this room in the public comment section that this will decimate  the balance sheet of people who have invested and you know that could be true i suppose on the other hand we also heard that rental rates are going to go up are going to go up by a hundred two hundred fifty dollars let's just do some quick math if currently a room with pick and a hope neighborhood or room goes for let's say four hundred dollars which is roughly accurate i teach a class at hope i know a thing or two about upper classman college students i talk with them often on many topics including this one four hundred is not an unreasonable number that a student will pay for room six times four hundred gets you twenty four dollars a month if we go from six to four and if as was suggested rates go up one hundred fifty dollars that reduces the monthly take by two hundred dollars from twenty four hundred to twenty two hundred dollars now do i know that that's what's going to happen no i don't but i gather from what people said tonight no one really knows what's going to happen  so i do think that there is a way to have an abundance of caution to allow a time of transition allow for a time for the existing scenario to remain in effect so that people can recoup at least some if not most if not all of their investment and then we move forward in a way that is much more consistent with almost every other jurisdiction whether in michigan or outside of michigan the challenges are or has the challenges of dealing with this particular matter now as a matter of procedure we do have a motion before us to approve this for first reading which will automatically put it on our agenda and excuse me as approved at our meeting in two weeks for public hearing and ultimate approval  you know i suggested a potential scenario upstairs in the city man i city attorney suggested to us if we wanted to go down that path he probably would recommend that we not approve this or table this tonight on first reading so that we can take a new and put forward a new modified proposal for future first reading but as we all know under our rules of council let alone robert's rules i'm powerless at this point to make any sort of motion whatsoever except to call for the role so i will look up and down the diocese here to see if there is any sort of effort counsel richard through he is waiting for it is being made to table this particular more so it is on the table and is in the is that to our next i the ruling from the chair is that that table in motion passes and will be tabled to our next meeting i think the expectation is that we will have potential new language from the city attorney's office as to affect some sort of transition period along the lines of which we have discussed that your intention like and engineers are ok on to the other matter that was then removed from the consent agenda of the fourteen dash board point two seven point two regarding the crime free lease provision for all rental properties we'll turn back to you for an introduction of how this particular matter yes this set of ordinance amendments are in our housing code  or activity on the property that is impacting neighbors creates problems for neighbors intimidating kinds of activities as well as criminal sorts of activities the intent of this  and this was really brought to our attention back in that the the town the county that has been referred to back two years ago this is brought to us from the police from some of their recommendations and they're working with the neighborhoods they see it as a tool that's helpful both for the city you know in addressing those kinds of activities and as well as a tool for the landlords as they try to deal with tenants that are problem tenants it allows a quicker resolution of some of those issues so that that adenomas one of the pieces that's being recommended the second part of this is an excessive  excessive calls and all general currently there is an excessive police call section to the ordinance that provides for additional fees being charged when when calls exceed the three calls at a particular property and that's when there are actual citations for activities at those properties this proposal is to expand that citywide and also to expand  in terms of the types of violations that are included it would include public safety calls but it also would include local ordinance violations excessive calls regarding tenant five times that a property for a particular issue and either the police of the code enforcement officer went out to and to check on the call and they they couldn't find any violation just because we received a call that doesn't count as a as a problem for that property but when it's a site of all offense then there are some some limitations indicated in here for public safety visits it would be three public safety visits within a twelve month ordinance and in excess of three violations for the state of michigan tenant laws all of those when it's in excess of those numbers then you begin to be received fees for the visits on those that exceed that number it's presumed and i think in the original documented it describes that those fees can be passed on to to the tenants of the property  there's also a provision when it's a but nation of those when it exceeds for some combination of those the sorts of calls this is really targeted at getting at those problem properties where where there are excessive calls from a variety of different perspectives  whether it's kind of landlord issues that come up time and again or police or code foresman calls so it gives us another mechanism to to pursue those kinds of of problems for a couple years tween you and cindy can you tell me how many times we have sent a bill or a fine to a landlord because they have exceeded the kinds of numbers that we've were indicating here i mean roughly may i mean i hope if that's not even rough we've had one property where we've received in excess of of that number of three calls and ultimately they were able as a result of all of that they we say because what you're saying is you get three whacks on the fourth whack you're in trouble and these have to be not just the cops showed up and separated a few people or get it smoothed things over and said you know it's when there's a site of all offense so we're talking about at least three sometimes after the after the third time and after the fourth time is when things get serious i'm just warning where those numbers  the numbers three and four yeah we looked at violation list of properties in the area and looked at how many violations some of our landlords had at a property over a twelve month period that we did have the landlord did a lot of money for those excess number of calls the fourth one two hundred dollars the fifth one was four hundred dollars and the situation where you just saw that the effect of the landlord you see a situation where we have the reverse effect if you've got a pretty good renter but you've got a bad landlord and people really like it but they've called and  caused the violation for example if the tenet continually put rubbish in the yard in the landlord just let it continue and continue to continue he could pass that cost i should have just one more point if you look at section half under this as well that the the department does have the ability to suspend in your basic housing permit if these problems continue and are not today or to be like i think it's a good tool to get rid of bad lane words i'd i'm confused if there's three police calls in the fourth please call with what would that do to the well i would it would put the landlord on notice of the the fourth call would have a fee and we haven't established a fee schedule for this revision as in don't want to worry about is if there's if there's a situation and sometimes it's better to have the police there this during our discussions we talked about that extensively we don't want to prevent or deter anyone from calling nine one one when there is a domestic situation and they would not be included in the four crime calls we're talking about crime calls with parties underage drinking drugs those kind of crime calls not they use the term zero policy earlier i think that's not this is done as zero policy situation but in real life there's an awful lot of flex going on and i just wonder if this is  that this sort of a as i said of the planning commission on a different topic numbers are simply arbitrary you know what makes what makes sixteen the right age to drive i don't know because somebody picked the same thing with eighteen to get drafted and twenty one to drink you know represented on that for a second but you know i think there's nothing magic about three but we're familiar with kind of a three x approach plus when we add in not just police calls but also third floor  property violation calls i think there's an opportunity for the problem properties to surface much more readily and much more often than if we just are talking about police calls and again i think this is a tool as much for the neighborhood no answer as much for the landlords as what it is for the neighborhood because it gives the landlord additional tools if they want to get rid of certain tenants that are problematic additional leverage to be able to do so in ways that they can't now so there's meat in the game to be able to have something to work with to retaliate or not retaliate answer bad choice of words to have some sort of stance when they're otherwise powerless so it's it works both ways  of the ordinance the excessive heat portion applies to owner occupied as well as rental property rights any other comments cut question the city managers office is pleased to report the following gifts parks and recreation digraph nature center exhibits various dollars seventy seven dollars parks and recreation windmill island gardens cash donations of twenty four dollars and ten cents parks and recreation holland in bloom board of public works five hundred dollars parks and recreation department sal scholarship fund oni's donations collected at the two thousand and fourteen boardwalk breakfast held on september first two thousand and fourteen there are revenues of two hundred seventy two dollars and thirty eight cents expensive to twenty one cents in addition there were donations collected through the wrecked departments daily cash receipts kaito care of elizabeth duff one hundred dollars anonymous three dollars rachel worthington one dollar jacqueline garcia five dollars is recommend these donations be accepted with appreciation and expression of gratitude be forwarded to the donate donors what's pleasure coun cotton thank you i three items the first is some individuals may have noticed that the voice mail is down in city hall they may not have known exactly why their phone wasn't being picked up if someone wasn't right there at their bed that is why the voicemail is not answering so if anyone has tried to reach us for the last two days our team has been scrambling and are having special parts shipped it should be installed tomorrow and the clerk's office the mayor's office the manager's office will be the fortune of the first three offices that receive this reinstallation and others will follow so i just wanted you to know that if we put on our website tomorrow should for some reason the parts not show up but otherwise that's the case and we apologize an inconvenience and we look forward to the new telephone replacement as part of our long term plan if i could just interrupt you for one second i was told our technology department as well that there is a better than even chance that when this new when these new parts are put into service vacuum tubes or something like that it's just that there's a very good chance that the existing voice mails on the system will be wiped out so i know for example i've got my eye light on my phone in the office i can't access it and there's a chance that when the system comes back up that message is going to be gone and so if you're calling city hall if you left a message over the past few days and it hasn't been returned there is at least a chance that that message will never have been received so we apologize again but technology is great when it works and thankfully it works most of the time that's a way of introducing the fact that tim is doing s u d here in his city clerk's office functions tonight and i i don't know if anyone else noticed but you know tim is from minnesota and did you hear just a touch of kerosene keeler in his skiff report was very musical yeah sure a great job tim thank you and last thing is i'm sure i can speak on behalf of everyone in this room and wishing public service announcement that please feel free to get ahold of a city of holland dot com you could call us but we just learned that that may not work so well inside of city hall for the moment city hall that comes where you can find all sorts of information about your city about this community  we try to put a smile on their possible including contact information agendas all sorts of things about how we conduct business and the kinds of things we're going to be talking about we're trying to put as much for example we're working on the the myriad of discussions and thoughts that we've had over the past decade plus over what to at the civic center little by little are being put onto the website many of them are quite thick printed documents from a decade ago and not an electronic format we're getting to them so we can get them up there as we for example talk about that particular topic which of course is one of great interest for many in this community thank you for your kind birthday greetings and i do have one matter of appointment or more technically a resignation this evening unfortunately i have received the resignation request of from the h r see she was very excited to serve on the h r c but after digging in a bit  which i think speaks well to the h r c after digging in a bit she realized how much work they do all the commitment that is required and at this point in her professional career i didn't think she could do the job justice so  know you know kudos and props to her if she couldn't do a good job in her mind she didn't want to give half effort and not released serve the h r see in the way that it should so she asked to resign from it and i place that before you regretfully robinson one of the items that we had on the agenda tonight i did not pull off which is probably a surprise to them but i did notice at the exurban expense that we have to have to paint the downtown coles so i still remember the second thing we had a very very success well attended beautiful weather thank you heaven for not raining on us truck  parade this past monday we had sixty two trucks made a lot of noise two thousand hot dogs went in about an hour and a half a new record there was a lot of people downtown i appreciate the enthusiasm i appreciate the crowds i had pre shared all our sponsors and specifically all the fantastic companies that we have in this community they were very well showcased the trucks were spit sh and it was just it was fantastic and it's just i don't know that you can tell i never get excited about anything but this gets my blood going just a little bit to be able to hear all the horns and specifically when we get them in the civic center and  everybody's parked and you get that five seconds of every horn blasting away they heard us dealing so it was just fantastic it went off without a hitch and looking very forward to  next year and i want to thank the city's help in putting that together pay no attention to the north noise ordinance violations and take of the day right yeah yeah mike the idea of hot dogs at ten in the morning didn't really work at all for   let's deal with them individually the matter dealing with the six to four first reading the modification of well actually it was tabled nevermind ixnay that the only one that we have left to handle is the crime free lease for rental properties which is point one and two seven point two are both part of the same ordinance i thank you it's frustrating and both very nice thank you your motion placed so many supported by white men all in favor please say i host the same that passes thank you anything else for the good of the be the the real person we ought to be celebrating tonight is our colleague from the second ward who as of last friday evening is a happily married man and did so in smashing fashion  surprising the assembled throng for the right to witness the nuptials so congratulations jay we are happy for you and we wish you many many long years of incredible happy thank you very much better thanks for being the