take care of this evening we've already gone into we've called to really go into a closed session for the purpose of conducting the city managers performance review that is something that under state law is permitted to be a closed session item and we have done so journeyed out of that closed session closed our session meeting enter here to edge tend to the items that are on tonight's start on tonight's special meeting agenda and do you think i have my agenda up of course i don't there we go that then means we we have already had public comment this evening but if anyone would care to make public comment now here you may certainly do so seeing no one we will move on as well all right let us then go with item number five on the special meeting agenda which is community neighborhood services county or twenty four thousand rental inspection fee adjustments first of all this matter was tabled so we need a motion to take it off the table put it back on the floor it's moved by the mayor pro tem supported by two or three all in favor of doing so please say i oppose the same all right the matter is back on the floor i believe or an invite from my or the community neighborhood services to to the pub microphone but before we do that phil one of our colleagues i believe would like to ask our indulgence thank you mayor in keeping with past practice since i am a landlord the city of holland  believe it would could be a conflict of interest if i spoke considered or voted on this matter so i'd ask my colleagues saw me to be used from this discussion and decision all right we've heard the request from our colleague number is there a motion to that effect from this vote please say i oppose the same that passes and you are recuse thank you i think good evening mr mayor good evening i will as the mayor has indicated this item was before you previously was tabled we've had properties and get some fees in place that reflect not only the costs that we incur but try to try to provide some incentives to landlords that take care of their properties take care of their is before council we came to council initially let me just run through these slides very quickly this is just a slide of all the rental properties the red are the rental properties found in the   full time equivalent staff members working on our housing inspections program today we have used the fiscal year f y thirteen two point two members two point two staff members full time equivalent staff members so far as you can see in the progression our number of employees has decreased back in f y o three we were at about ninety percent ninety three percent compliant meaning we had spec taking place on schedule with all of our rental units and as of f y thirteen we're probably closer to sixty percent of of that number so the effort is to try to get us back to a staffing level that we can assure that we get to all of those inspections and assure that we have fees adequate to support the staffing to accomplish that you will see also on this chart that there are number you'll see over time has gradually increased you'll also see the estimated expenses that were at two hundred seventy one thousand those have decreased and that's reflective of the of the diminishing staff allocations to this but the difference is also a number that's relevant the difference between expenses and revenues so in f y o five for example the city was contributing one hundred fifty two thousand seven hundred dollars towards the operation of our rental inspection program and we were only taking in one hundred twenty eight we were i'm sorry i'm in the wrong line hundred eighteen and we were expanding two hundred seventy one so trying to get that number in balance so that the rental housing program is supporting itself is part of this this whole effort as well  initially came to council with a proposal indicated here to raise the comprehensive annual fee to one hundred fifteen dollars and that would be that would include an annual permit an initial inspection and one inspection of a property following that secondary inspection would cost in the proposal would go from one hundred to two hundred dollars and then so forth you see the numbers here following some public comment and discussion with  council we went back and looked at the numbers and looked at some alternatives one of which was suggested by the member of the public and we've we've taken a different tact and in fact this is what we are recommending to council tonight that is the comprehensive annual fee would be kept at the seventy five dollars that it currently is it would include an annual permit and the initial inspection but that first reinspection is no longer part of the union will feed instead that first three inspection comes at a fifty fifty dollars charge  this then allows all of those landlords that are able to qualify for a six year certificate and don't require a second visit or third visit or fourth visit to assure they're in compliance this keeps them at the seventy five dollars but then as we begin to need to make additional visits to a particular property it would be fifty dollars one hundred dollars one hundred fifty progressively increasing by by fifty dollars a visit we've also added this fee at the bottom here the attorney letter that is where we have consistent difficulty with a with a particular property gaining compliance we can turn to the attorney's office and and seek  it's a two unit building it would be seventy five dollars for the first unit thirty dollars for the second unit and that is consistent with what our current rates are and then for the second unit the fees would follow the the first unit in effect so each unit would charge an additional fifty dollars each time as we looked at the the total fees and that balance between between revenues and and expenditures we show in this table we show the fees in the alternate proposal would be two hundred  twenty three thousand the reinspection fees this is a soft number it's an estimate based on our past experience but we estimate that number to be one hundred fifteen thousand late fees were estimating around nine thousand  e each year there have been uncollected fees we're just carrying that number across an attorney letter fees were estimating twelve thousand and then the total comes out to three hundred fifty six thousand and that is the alternate proposal that we are recommending to you and then projected costs what we are talking about in the in the change in staffing is to get us from what is currently one point  seven full time equivalent inspectors getting that up to the two point five inspectors which is comparable to the two thousand and three number of inspectors that we had getting the clerical from what is currently point five getting that up to one point three  the administrative staff that has remained fairly consistent through through all of the proposals and then we've got overhead built into this number as well as prosecution fees and getting us a total  three hundred twenty four thousand at the moment as i said some of these numbers in here are soft but the difference between between the initial proposal and in the new proposals about  about sixteen thousand dollars or so that would give us a total of four point one full time equivalent employees working on in this program  in essence i think this is a good good idea i'm trying to look at it from the city's position from the inspectors from the owner's position from the renters position and i had a couple of questions when i looked at the sheet which was talking about the checklist one of the things that i found on the checklist was that a licensed mechanical contractor must inspect the heating system in this apparently is done with a first inspection do we ever as a city require another inspection ever on the heating so i can answer those questions for you  we require is a licensed contractor to clean inspect and make adjustments to the heating system to make sure it's functioning properly and efficiently we only require that one time every three years and that's at the owner's cost then another question i had probably the backside of that paper says important note that this list contains commonly found violations it is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all violations so my question is if i am the owner and i look at this checklist and i feel like i'm pretty much in compliance is there a concern on my part that there might be something i missed seen and therefore i would be in lieu of a violation we have that we've updated that list and we've gone through it very carefully and made sure that we've included everything that we find we also referenced that the entire code is available from our web page and any landlord who would like to investigate that should feel free a thirty two page code section we've tried our best to get it down to a simple format at one other question sorry i noticed here it's a seven foot minimum ceiling it's can you help me understand is that mean it has to be greater than seven feet to be usable like a through it still could be used as an attic but not as a living area or exactly what that means generally that is correct although there are some exceptions to that and we would we would ask any landlord that has a question about that the contact us there harken back to my days on the construction board of appeals to the housing board of appeals and we dealt with the height variance question quite often with the old housing board of appeals days and i forget there was some magic number that determine was administrative leave ok and then others needed to come to the h b a that's correct and we did revamp the inspection checklists these will go in with all the annual invoices that should go out by the end of this week and they will go in every intent to inspect letter and i have a few copies here if you want to yes please pass on down if you would call them or whiteman just in relationship to that ceiling i question i was under the impression that the state code changed your so back relative to basement ceiling height down to six eight is that indeed but yet we're holding at seven feet we're holding it seven feet outside of the basement ok because they don't as you say correct ok thank you other questions for steph  week it's a plethora of questions tonight number three we play just one observation i had and it relates to mr conference question about listing things i think we're on a slippery slope i know you're trying to help trying to be helpful but it's that gosh what did i miss and all the sudden somebody while you say that you're comfortable i think it was very well stated by one of the people that was here a couple of weeks ago saying you know basically this is a business you better know what the law is for the business and it's going to be the responsibility of the property owner of the responsibility of the business owner to know what the rules and regulations are i appreciate you trying to help but that to me is a it it does have some pretty good language in there that should give anybody who reads this the fact that the quote housing inspection checklist is provided as a guide it's not a complete list of all possible violations etc etc so you know your point is very well taken and i think that you know we can probably even strengthen that language but that's in the pamphlet thankfully and i think also at the end of the list is the reference to the website which contained the entire  end of the checklist on the inside woman to bore so we estimated how much is going to come in from this change of pace everyone getting a second inspection for free we based that number the number of properties that needed a first reinspection during a one year period and we kind of extrapolated from there so we don't quarterly to show what kind of numbers we're getting and what kind of response we have yeah let's not to be this is a very nice brochure i mean it's i think it's good for government to package things in a nice way and it seems reasonable it's just a little trifle then you give them the website and you do at the end say everything's not here but it if i were looking at this i would say the important information is on the front exactly what's going to be charged for each thing and that you've changed that and inside you have it divided by the location in the house i think it's very well organized and i think the use of color makes it feel like a reasonable policy so  i appreciate all the work that went into producing this and your patience in explaining to us this to us time and time again and i do think we are probably at a better place than when we started it sometimes messy and u rooting but i do think that the final product is well worth the journey so thanks for all your work well thank you yeah and you know i was one who had suggested we think about at least knowing the numbers and what a what this revised system looks like in terms of revenue generation so what i suggested and i think what staff did is they looked back twelve months to see how many units needed a second inspection and if they needed a second inspection then they calculated fees based on the past the previous twelve months and you're right that could well change now that there's a cost for it but those are the kinds of things frankly we would prefer to have happen anyway so it may mean less revenue but it's also going to mean less person hours out there having to do reinspection so at the end of the day i think it's either a wash or a net gain for us to have fewer second inspections you her first re inspections depending on how you phrase it any other questions for step all right we don't have the original motion is the original motion that's before us right it was removed from the table to approve alternate propose fees including the new fees that right jennifer and i believe that was a motion all right so the motion that is on the table in essence would be what we are being presented with this evening  changes from our meeting last week that we need to address with an amendment and there are no changes to that the one thing i'd like to point out is it's it's listed in the table as becoming effect of january one these are the fees we're putting in letters this week for that years ok that is the motion that is before us is there discussion among council at this time well first of all anyone in the audience care to address the i see no one is there discussion among council please yeah i've struggled with this one a bit and you guys are well aware that i believe in my heart of hearts this this is a top priority of counsel i believe it's a top priority of staff  and we've known about this trend with runnels i think since the at least the first neighborhood study that i saw back in two thousand and nine when i came on council it was revealed in that and and so we've seen this  coming and again i do believe in my heart of hearts this is something that we need to be addressing the part i've struggled with is how we're addressing it and when we look at these numbers historically going back to two thousand and three this activity has received a general fund allocation to cover program costs every year up until the years that we reduced f t e count are the only years that this thing covered its own costs without a general fund allocation and thirteen the cost to f t e ratio was eighty seven thousand six hundred sixty three dollars in the proposal the original proposal the cost f t e ratio was eighty one thousand three hundred sixty four dollars and in the alternate it's seventy nine thousand and a little bit of change and and i know you said that they're not necessarily hard numbers and so i want to concede that  ut it it to me if indeed this is a top priority for this council in this city after all we've been through trying to get back to core services in the things that we're trying to address it would seem to me that taking a program that's generally received a general historically received a general fund allocation to cover costs and flip the paradigm to where it's soley now covered by  fees i don't know that we're doing that and other space we don't charge our residents for snow plowing on the sidewalks we don't charge our residents for two balls we don't charge our residence for a number of things because they're allocated in the general fund budget and and i'm not to say i don't mean to say that those aren't great things this is one we've seen coming for five years we've seen this trend and it seems to me that i just don't have a lot of comfort level with it so i feel better about the alternative because it it helps achieve i think what we talked about in that is penalizing where a penalty is d e or covering the costs for those re inspections if you will that as a whole trying to cover costs with this i'm just not quite sure right other comments please come up with a truly awesome whiteman i can greatly appreciate where you're coming from i too struggled with this from the big at the very beginning but very quickly warmed up to it because came to the realization that this is a business everything else that you mentioned was public service i think if you look back at some of our charges to or what we used to be able to do for health inspections and so on and so forth that pretty much the scene itself i don't see this is any different than any other business if this was were going in to inspect your private home i'd have a little bit different problem i'd have a little bit different scenario  with your your explanation i'd probably go along with a little bit better but i can i can easily separate this as a business we don't technically we don't treat any other business differently than this this was the one that was segregated from everybody else now we're bringing that into line with that paradigm so i don't know if it's going to help or not but that's that's how i've justified it to meet right comes from a conference i wondering about some of these are very measurable it's either four inches or the railing is there either the faucet works or doesn't work etc there are a few things in here that are subjective for example is workplace i agree with with mike in that it is a business and it's not for residence and we really need to be consistent in this and you know what i'm ok if a landlord has to pay fifty dollars because he's missing a battery because that can be the death of their family if they don't have a smoke alarm that works so if you do that once you're probably going to check your batteries a lot more frequently and make sure that that is handled right for your rental property that's ok i do and maybe you know in setting this up we will as the mayor said make people do what they need to do right away instead of saying oh i always have one more chance it's like when you're  training your kids if they know you aren't really serious the first time you tell them there's always going to be one more time then they just keep pushing to the one more time till they know your voice reaches a certain level or whatever and then they listen not that landlords are children but we all tend to go to what at wherever the line is when you reinforce things so i think it's as nicely presented as it can be and it's reasonable and and i do think by asking to people to pay for their first inspection we just help them with the responsibility level the first time so i think it's good to try i'm sorry i'm  know return it when it comes to this stuff but right smack dab in the middle of it you're on your checklist you know and correct me if i'm wrong but battery operated solely battery operated smoke detectors are not allowed they have to be hardware they do have to be h battery backup and interconnected thank you just i don't want to get some bad information out there right off the bat so i know it was just an example but you have your background you know  i will say this this is one of those things that there are competing goals here i should say certain goals that sometimes are are lost in the midst of competing interests and i think this is the way we best resolve them the goals in the one hand are to make sure that the rental backlog gets eliminated in the way to do that is to and bring in some additional people to get the backlog caught up because both of reduced staffing also then next with increased numbers of rental units on the flip side the other interest is to make sure that the fees that are charged are reasonable and are are not out of line and unduly punitive to those who have to pay them and we had our initial proposal that accomplish our goal of making sure that we were able to get the backlog taken care of and that met with some objection by you know some of our some of the landlords in town and frankly some of the good landlords the ones who took the time to show up here and send e mails typically are the ones who are not going to have issues because if they're willing to do so and a council meeting on a wednesday night or take the time to jot an e mail chances are pretty good they have a real pride in their property so what they said to us is we understand the need fact we want in many cases we want to have you know we want to have these units in good shape and we don't like being lumped along with the folks who are causing the problem so you know why are you mixing us up with them why not force the ones who are causing the problem to bear the brunt of the additional cost which then got us to think ok let's let's take a little another look at it take a whack at it and redraft the proposal in such a way that that we see it here whereby the ones who pay the additional cost of the ones who are causing the additional work that seems to me to be a pretty good compromise to get at both taking care of the backlog while same time understanding that the fees ought to cover the the nature of the inspection and the additional fees ought to be assessed to those who are causing the additional work so i'm really pleased with the way that this has ended up resolving itself we've heard from at least a couple of landlords who didn't like the initial proposal were much more comfortable with the second one and one more thing just for the record of members of council i got an email tonight from steve gross that i did forward to all of you but wanted you to see it before we end up actually voting on this so any other final comments on this item before i call them all right we have the amended proposal that is before us the one that assesse the keeps the base fee as it was the first reinspection fee is changed in the additional fees that phil outlined for us as well please call that roll to bore yes yes peter's  midst our good colleague from the sixth ward council member david hoekstra to rock stars welcome all right that takes us then to item number six from transportation services twelfth street drainage improvements and we i forget the new title now mary one interim transportation services improvement project along twelfth street in the cambridge area  this is just a little sketch of where those improvements will be going what it's intended to do is there's a couple of photos i have here there's some ponding water issues in this that the low bid came in from ron meyer in the amount of eighteen thousand seven hundred sixty five dollars and seventy six cents so requesting approval of that been plus all the contingencies and looking at this it was brought to my attention by a constituent this has been an issue for quite some time there was a couple of little things going on there was a large elm that's already been removed i think that was a contributing factor to this  photos in here smaller drainage projects again there not before you here tonight there again smaller caliber projects but along seventh street similar situation with ponding water next to the parking lot farmer's market you can see the seventh street sidewalk there so again similar situation where we're proposing done stall some again really minor drainage improvement i'll just say that's the only transportation director i did see him this week outside in a fluorescent reflective jacket with a level in hand so he may be at an administrator now but he's still a guy getting out in the field that's that's the fun stuff anyway in the last area here is eleventh street right down the street from us we're proposing to put in during a structure there as well to take care of some storm water issues that you will recognize that spot is one that was torn up last summer and it's all part of additional diagnostic work that has come to our attention so you have a estimated time where how long that will be yeah i think both of those will probably go next week or even towards the end of this week and those should go fairly quickly the challenge there is just going to be coordinating the trades to get in there because there's concrete and asphalt work but i don't expect it to take longer than a few days all right we do have a motion on the floor any final discussion please call the roll yes peter's church yes van if i see place as planned submission to the state of michigan and we're going to be asked to take a little bit of action tonight again we welcome phil meyer the head of community neighborhood service thank you this is something that has come out of a program that state housing development authority michigan in this bill egan michigan state university have have joined together to offer technical assistance to communities on either strategic planning or physical design projects about three weeks ago we submitted a letter to of interest to the program and we were selective as one of fifteen communities that are now sort of in the running for what will finally be a selection of eight communities which will be involved in  this in looking at this we were as a staff we looked at what the possibilities were came up with a strategic planning proposal that is includes essentially the western gateway of downtown it runs from the area that could be included in this question is a little broader than this but essentially the core of it is really from pine avenue down to the waterfront it's an attempt to bring together  studies that are already going on with the civic center study the image groups piece of the civic center study we've got edgewater resources looking at some issues in that corridor and looking at issues on the on the waterfront and it's an attempt to also include private properties along that corridor and take a look at what the future opportunities are for those private properties one of the concepts that floated up in the discussion on that was the concept of a food  innovation district which could take advantage of some of the ideas for the civic center with the indoor market could take advantage of sort of heinz if you look all the way to the end of sort of that corridor and out to the waterfront but you've got but work's restaurant there as well and you've got the the kitchen collective group that have a business there now you have a large parking lot that's underutilized you have some vacant buildings in that area  so the concept is here is to take a take a larger look at that corridor and how those different pieces can come together and what the options for private supporting development might be and that could or could not include a food innovation concept but that was one of the notions that was tossed out the second what we define this as is we've got two projects that is the first and then if you sort of follow what we've called a crescent follow college park down  takes you to south shore village and village there's a need to do some design work for streetscape where the boardwalk lands in south shore village there's an opportunity for some design and if you remember back to the south  village study that was done called for applause and some improvements there so there are a variety of improvements that could be handled through their physical design piece of this whole puzzle well when we submitted we submitted both of those and they came back to us and said we like them both were a little more intrigued with the with some of the unique aspects of what we might be doing in the center court or in western gateway corridor but we like them both so what we're before you with is a proposal is a request for you to approve a resolution that would support us going after the eighth street western gateway piece of this we think it's we've we've got some pieces in play already and we think there's an opportunity to bring a number of issues together and utilize a consultant we already have on board as part of the team what we get out of this what they're asking for is a six thousand dollar contribution from the community what we get in a conversation i had even the south after noon  with the staff from amman al is roughly they didn't put it in their literature but they're estimating it's it's probably forty eight thousand dollars worth of consulting services and time on this  strategic planning process we have m l participating directly staff from m l and we have consulting services available to us so we decide what additional consultants we need for the project and we can bring those on for the physical design piece which we're not recommending at this point for that physical design piece you get a couple of m l people and then you get the michigan state university faculty and students that would do much of the actual design work  so we had a choice to make a recommendation to you is to go after the the eighth street piece of this it's the strategic plan piece and it would be a six thousand dollars contribution that we'd need to make and the recommendation is that ok thank you phil questions for staff all right then emotion please well move but your support supported by hoekstra discussion let me just say that i had a meeting this afternoon with a the guy who was with the governor's office on urban initiatives and it was my first meeting with him i had never met him before and i don't think you know that we'd ever met before and he set up the meeting and it was you know very good conversation  about this governor's interest in urban initiatives and and the real focus on looking at cities and it seems to me that we have a lot to offer in this city that can be examples for the state and i offered to him that you know this this would be a good place for this governor or any governor frankly to to think about how to consider urban initiatives in a way where you might find a good test bed and a good place to bounce ideas off of so it's also encouraging  this potential grant situation might be out there and help with something that could help improve not only our downtown but just frankly the entirety of our community so i'm pretty excited about it please call the roll peter's birch this evening and we have one item that is on the agenda listing to the matter of pertaining to the review of our city manager and our first review frankly of our city manager for this year's review as is typically the case was conducted by the mayor pro tem who arranged for a survey responses and was in charge of of lassoing us all to take care of the review this year council member peters the mayor pro tem and i delivered the review to the city manager met earlier this evening to you in closed session to talk about the matter with the city manager as an entire council and i would like to turn the floor over to the mayor pro tem to talk a bit about the review of our city manager that we were in some transition this ryan's first year got a little longer and before we got to the review nevertheless  did conduct a review we use a form survey form for members of council to fill out and to rate the performance and i will simply  make this report we conducted an evaluation of city manager ryan cotton and the ranking that we do was done on a five point scale with one being the highest ranking high performance three the midpoint average performance and five the lowest ranking needs substantial improvement there were thirty five ranking points divided across seven broad categories eight of the nine members conducted participated in the survey we had one member who because of some technical difficulty were not able responses all of those two hundred eighty measuring points ryan received a ranking of one high performance in one hundred  ninety nine of those two hundred eighty ranking points he achieved or a king of two above average performance on eighty points and a ranking of three average performance on one point there were no rankings of four low performance or five needs substantial improvement i think that is a testimony to the fact that ryan is has in fact the complete confidence of this organization of this council and we are very pleased with his performance and pleased to to have him leading our management team thank you mr mayor pro tem i think that is a very accurate summary and certainly would be open to any questions members of council may have of the mayor pro tem or comments you wish to make at this time it authorized review for the thing that the discussion that took place at the review i think was asking ryan or how do you feel about your job if you enjoy it and i think what people really enjoy their jobs a lot of good things happen and and i think one of the most things i'm pleased about is you know when you hire somebody you never really know how it's going to go i think his resume was spectacular when we when we hired him but you know once you get into the job and it was a pretty tough twelve fourteen sixteen months that he jumped into and i don't know he could have done a better job and i'm really pleased that i think he's genuinely happy with the  job he's found himself in and i think we really hired well and i think we're fortunate that we've kind of come out of some bumpy water here with the financial situation and i would expect some really great things to come in the as we went in the term of the contract and kind of agreed with each other that everybody's happy and we're committed to each other for longer than the original contract of her sport of that so i'm glad he's here can continue with such strong leadership and it is very gratifying and wonderful for this community to be served by people of that caliber and to continue to have people like that and very grateful for you brian in your continuing that strong legacy in you came in when it was a lot of difficult decisions had to be made very unpopular decisions a type of analysis of how we do everything nothing was sacred in in people in whatever position and when someone retired or left it's a policy not to replace and that is not easy way to begin any position in management but you did it  with calm and grace and you were very creative and analytical you had this way of just continuing to think things over and not get too emotionally involved in anything but still care about people to develop teams and how posts through rocky waters in a calm way that people have come to admire and i have not heard anything from anyone except for  cotton he's he's just really good guy is any i'm like yeah he really is and now he's the kind of person that he appears to be he walks his talk and and he has comes to us with experience from other states and other places we could not have had a freshman in the situation really glad to have hired someone at least at the junior class level i don't want to talk to you a senior so really glad to that you were i know ryan is as uncomfortable about hearing these things as i am when people say them about me and this is not about me it's about you so i'll keep it brief and to the point thank you very much i was on the selection team i think we had made a decision back then and there's been absolutely no group no regret to this point you show in class you shown great leadership  and i know that you're going to serve the city for a great number of years in the future and i hope that i'm able to to help out any way possible with that just keep up the good job you right well let me make just a couple of comments and i want to echo i forget who said it but i'll whichever one of you folks said it i'll echo it certainly and that is that we have been incredibly fortunately blessed in this town to have had excellent leadership so long as i've been here and long before i've been here think of soar instrumentalists years of leadership the team of soaring and greg greg stepping up when called upon to do above and beyond and did so incredibly admirably and then to have the man at the at this end of the dyess rise to the top of the candidate pool to jump into this this whole messy process of dealing with potential new employment new council new community when he was very satisfied and well loved in spring lake at this point in his career was really a remarkable thing and we're fortunate to have him i get the the great pleasure of interacting with him on a fair fairly regular basis and i cannot tell you that there has been a single moment where i have doubted his his integrity his interest for the public good and his commitment not just to the job but really to this city and this whole community so we're very fortunate to have this man at the helm of our organization as the president really of our organization and we can rest assured as a council kind of that the policy board the board of directors if you will that on a day to day basis  we've got the right guy at the helm and he has assembled and maintained a very very good team to help him in that process and together they're accomplishing very very good things you know many of us were at the candidate forum on monday state and i certainly am not one to quibble with mr birch and i think in large measure that is because of the people we have had in the chairs at the ends of the dice and between greg and ryan and that the combination team of them the rest of the senior administrative team they're the ones who run this place we're the ones who make the votes we're the ones who you know sit up here and blather on and on and on like i'm doing right now but they're the ones who want to they did they basis are the ones getting things done making the community strong by providing good public municipal services in trying to advance the good of this government and for the good of the people so we're very fortunate and one of our members i won't name him but made a statement that i wish i would have made in his sort of summary review of ryan and that is this and i quote clone him distribute clones into challenge governmental units around the state and nation and quote and again i wish i had said that because that's precisely what i wish i could have thought of because it's accurate that then leaves us with the question of what to do with his employment contract as we all know his employment contract had a base compensation of one hundred twenty thousand dollars and a performance pay piece that allowed us to award ryan up to five percent of that base in depending upon our review of him and when bob j and i sat down with ryan we said in our opinion we believe that he has earned all five percent of that performance pay in our discussions upstairs i think there was universal agreement that in fact he has done so in that discussion and it was a give and take with ryan j bob and i just about you know what he's enjoying where we think we're at how we can improve upon an already very good situation ryan indicated that he's a little frankly uncomfortable with certain provisions of his employment agreement and specifically one of them being that variable pay or the performance pay piece because he's the only general city employee who has such a provision and  you know again speaking to his great integrity ryan said you know what he doesn't like the fact that he's treated differently than other than other employees are in the city and would prefer to not be in that category and would like to amend the agreement accordingly so that then got us into a discussion about what we might do as far as amending the agreement to to meet both of our interests both the council's interest and also ryan's interest and here's what we've come up with and this is what we're proposing for your consideration approval tonight counsel and we've talked about it a bit upstairs it is this it's an amendment to his employment agreement i'll start mid way through first and it is this all city employees last year at the end of the year received a one time two percent bonus if you will after more than a few years of not receiving any wage adjustments whatsoever we were in a position where we could make a one time two percent payment that all employees got that except for one person and that one person is the city manager so i proposal is that we offer mr cotton the two percent that everyone else got last year as part of this performance evaluation then as of july one all on nonunion city employees receive a two point four percent cost of living adjustment except for one employee and that one employee was mr cotton so are further recommendation is that mr cotton now receive a two point four percent increase to his base salary on an ongoing basis that would bring his future salary and to one hundred twenty two thousand eight hundred dollars then we would like to remove the variable pay piece of the performance pay piece and instead simply have provision that says that the council in its evaluation will determine whether mr cotton warrants the same kind of wage adjustment that all other city employees have received in that year the discretion of whether or not to do so remains with the council and i will say that is at ryan's insistence he does not want anything automatically included in there no tie bar between his pay and his automatic pay increase and other city employees pain creases he wants that decision to remain with council but wants our option to be that of other members of this employment team again speaking incredibly well of his integrity he is leaving money on the table let's be let's be frank about that he would be entitled to five percent this year these two things taken together only four point four percent and he is asking us to remove that provision from his contract for future years again leaving money on the table at his insistence because he just feels so strongly about him being treated the same as other city employees given the nature of the review and the review scores and the universal agreement that we have an excellent man as our city manager and in recognition that he is voluntarily giving up or forgoing potential compensation that he may have in the  future we thought it appropriate that we extend his the terms of his contract the length of his contract for two years in the way the contract reads at the moment his contract was set to expire on june thirtieth twenty fifteen the proposal is to amend that to have an expiration date of june thirtieth of twenty seventeen and well technically that may be a benefit to him that he knows he has has an employment agreement through that date in many ways frankly it's also to our benefit because we want to lock this guy in and don't want word to get out that he's as good as he is in other cities might come ahead hunting for him so that was in essence the recommended amendments to employment agreement and the city attorney's office has drafted a first amendment to city manager employment agreement which council has received and that is what the mayor pro tem i believe would like to make in the form of a motion for counsel's consideration indeed it is and i would make that motion thank you mr mayor pro tem is their support for it work i would just say for the record that was council member peters but if we could all have supported it we all would have supported it so maybe an indication in the in the minutes that that would have been the case if it were permitted under robert's rules would be appreciated before we take a vote and decide your fate mr cotton do you have any comment that you would care to make not that you have to but we want to give you the opportunity to do so this mare members of the council i am almost speechless i appreciate your support and i can tell you it's quite an honor and a true privilege to be here  i am grateful for i'm glad it was mentioned all the leadership of years past the community has been and despite some economic challenges recent years incredibly well managed and maintained and i feel like incredibly competent the team that still here very hard working and doozie has taken vigils and i'm just so grateful just want to thank you for your support the team for their support and i want to thank my spouse for her support takes everyone working together as a team unit so look forward to more to come thank you thank you ryan gregg would you please call the r unanimous excellent thank you greg and i hope you heard our comments and relationship for your good work for this community as well thank you is there any other business we have down here before we adjourn to a study session i do have one item and it's not really a matter of business it's a matter that's been weighing on me over the past twenty eight thirty hours or so yesterday perhaps some of you read in the paper or saw on the news  reports that the leader of the latin kings in this community was sentenced in federal court and this is a person who rose the ranks through the gang from a young relatively young boy and certainly  was a major player in some of the gang activity that had been happening in this community for a good number of years and as part of the overall sting and a long time investigation the incredible cooperative effort between our department of public safety out of a county sheriff allegheny county sheriff michigan state patrol the d a s a t f the f b i prosecutor's offices in the u s attorney's office and i'm probably forgetting an agency or two we had a massive  legal arrest action happen over a year ago and they've continued to build the case since then and i will say this if you ask chief messer he will say that he cannot remember a quieter summer in the city of holland or really and throughout the greater holland community because it's more than just the city than what we experience this year and that we believe it's directly related to the actions of all these law enforcement agencies and making some major major arrests in some gang activity well yesterday this man was sentenced in federal court and sentenced to nine years in federal prison and i am certainly not going to suggest to you that there was anything improper with that action the man confessed to to his crimes and is going to pay the price for it but at the same time yesterday i was attending a meeting and as we have in so many of our youth boards  prevert so many of our boards we have youth on those boards and it really is a remarkable thing for us for this community to invite youth and for the youth to accept and really participate fully in our boards and in our commissions midway through the board meeting however i was passed a note by this this youth person on the board and she had written a note that said do i have to stay for this meeting or may i leave my dad was sentenced to nine years in prison least said to you know kind of motion to her and said no no you you know please you may certainly go and we walked out of the room together and i stopped and just talked with her a bit this in fact is the daughter of the man who was sentenced yesterday the latin king man who was sentenced yesterday and she is a remarkable student in this community a remarkable young woman and she's on our on one of our major boards and commissions serving as a youth on our board and considering what she experienced yesterday watching her father be sentenced to federal prison she still felt the obligation to show up at a meeting a meeting that in the whole scheme of things was pretty meaningless but her sense of duty and sense of obligation was such that that she thought she had to be there however her emotions got the best of her and she didn't you know really wondered if she had to be well i talked with her a bit and  you know obviously she she is shook up distraught and facing a lot of really really raw emotion and i guess i just it struck me and you know we all know this happens on a daily basis that those who are convicted of crimes and sentence for them oh a debt to society for their actions and there are consequences for actions but of course there are also collateral consequences for those actions and it is the innocent that get hurt and sometimes the innocent include family members of the people who are sentenced and convicted and sentence and i guess perhaps i might be saying something that we all know and that those in the community who perhaps are watching this or hearing about this will say well of course and we've experienced that too but i guess i just wanted to mention that because here we have  a remarkable young woman facing incredible pressures you know serving this city well at the same time watching her father be sentenced for actions that he has done that have ripple effects that extend long and hard beyond  his own life so might we just have good thoughts for this particular student for the rest of this man's family and might we hope that in prison and beyond the man who was once a leader of the latin kings gang in this community mind find rehabilitation in prison and might come out stronger and better and might this community reap the benefit of his good leadership and some years in the future and might we also reap the benefit of his daughter's good leadership in this community both now and in the future thanks for listening to to that it's been weighing on me a bit and i appreciate your indulgence for for hearing me out unless there's any other business to attend to why don't we plan on adjourning through a study session upstairs that with the end of the broadcast for the evening seeing no other action