well good evening everyone welcome to this regularly scheduled meeting of the holiday council we're glad that you are here this evening if you're in the chambers especially if you're watching television you might be noticing a slightly different camera angle this evening and as the broadcast goes on you'll note that it perhaps is a little bit different than normal we have had a few technical difficulties in some of the upgrading of the technology in here so our staff jumped in quickly this afternoon and  sort of a plan b for broadcasting the meeting so some ways are going back to the future and it's somewhat fitting that we do this on a night when jodi scions is up here acting as the clerk for the evening since as jodi has reminded us on occasion back when counsel first began broadcasting meetings on cable television jodi was standing behind a tripod not much different than that in the old council chambers and then she'd have to jump back and forth between giving reports and broadcasting the meeting with black and assistant city manager greg robinson and immediately following that will be the pledge of allegiance to our play you wouldn't mind rising and joining in both of these items with us let us pray heavenly father we are so thankful for our place in this moment in time for your presence in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones thank you father for this time of year for the beauty of fall in west michigan we thank you for the opportunity to participate in yesterday's election one an honor to be part of such a process that determines the direction of our governments we pray for those in our community who are suffering with health issues financial struggles broken hearts or loneliness please make us aware of them as we go through our day so that we can provide your comfort resources in encouragement please gu city council the citizens present tonight in staff as we deal with a multitude of issues facing this community help us to set priorities that most benefit your people we pray these things to you with confidence you thank you greg there are copies of this evening's agenda located in the rack and the rear of the room if you are either in chambers or watching at home or somewhere on your computer you can also find a copy of not only the agenda but also all the background material councils reviewed in preparation for tonight's meeting by going to the city of holland's website at city of holland dot com and there you can pretty easily find today's date find tonight's meeting and find all of that material you will as you review the agenda that there are certain items and tonight quite a few items that have an asterisk next to them these are what we are currently placing on our consent agenda meaning our intention regardless of where they show up on the agenda is to handle them with one motion and one vote which will happen shortly but before we do that i would ask jodi to read for us what is on the consent agenda and then once she has concluded doing that if anybody from the audience would care to remove an item from sent you can certainly do that or members of council can remove one or more items from consent well jodi if you tell us what presently is on consent i would appreciate item five would approve the minutes of the study session held on october tenth two thousand and twelve six would approve the absence of council members for through a band of us see and whiteman eleven and fourteen point three would accept a p a one ninety eight tax abatement application from code blue corp to fifty nine headquarter street for study and report and schedule a public hearing on the request for wednesday december five thousand and twelve with the clerk instructed to publish and mail the required notice fourteen b one and nineteen see what except for place on first reading of ordinances an amendment to rezone three thirty eight three forty two three forty six three fifty three fifty four and three sixty river avenue from the r t r in traditional residential neighborhood district to the d planned unit development district as recommended by the planning commission fourteen c one and one thousand what except for in place on first reading of ordinances a new article eighteen of chapter two of the ordinance code to allow the city to recover expenses associated with the investigation arrest and prosecution of persons convicted of offenses relating to the operation of vehicles well under the influence of alcohol and or drugs and persons convicted of making statements to law enforcement personnel fourteen see to you and one thousand be would except for in place on first reading of ordinances an amendment to chapter eighteen of the ordinance code to adapt to michigan's super drunk law and allow for enhanced penalties and prosecution at the local level fortini one point one would schedule a public hearing for wednesday nov twenty eighth at seven p m to obtain citizen comment on the substantial amendment of the consolidated plan and the proposed reuse of fiscal year two thousand and thirteen community development block grant in title and funds or twenty two point one would correct the resolution of up to that the over seventeen two thousand and twelve council meeting to indicate approval of both the final assessment role of p v three ten and the final deferred assessment role p v three ten a for the lincoln avenue project fourteen each two point two would accept a bit of strain electric company in the amount of forty one thousand four hundred ninety dollars and eighty four cents for the washington avenue tunnel lighting evaluation and maintenance project establish a project budget and authorized the mayor and deputy clerk to execute any necessary documents on behalf of the city fourteen two point three would award the bid for the demolition of the structures at two forty four east sixteenth street today in whole excavating in the amount of six thousand two hundred dollars and authorized the issuance of a purchase order for the work fourteen ethe three point one more toward the bid for the backup device for technology services to try vaillant group in the amount of eighteen thousand one hundred thirty one dollars and fifty nine cents with the funds to be paid from the technology services fund an declare the existing unit trends a backup device as surplus to be traded as a part of the purchase fourteen easy three point two would declare various technology services equipment and items as surplus and authorize staff to recycle and dispose of all items as deemed appropriate fourteen ethe three point three would award the bid to purchase the one nine hundred ninety seven storm sewer back your truck to the city of zealand at a price of thirty four thousand five dollars fourteen eat three point four would set the interest rate for non bonded capital improvement special assessment rolls and special assessments for the fill in the gap program at two percent of fact of november seventh tw fourteen eat three point five would accept the quarterly investment report as presented fourteen eat three point six would accept a low bid from shaking chevrolet of twenty five thousand five hundred ninety seven dollars each seventy six thousand seven hundred ninety one dollars total for the purchase of three twenty thirteen replacement chevrolet tahoe for the police division except the alternate low bid from shaheen chevrolet of twenty two thousand five hundred ninety seven dollars each forty five thousand one hundred ninety four dollars total for the purchase of two twenty eleven demo chevrolet tahoe as for the police division except the low bid from birger chevrolet for a twenty thirteen chevrolet caprice  cost of twenty seven thousand two hundred twenty four dollars for the police division except the low bid from barbara ford for a twenty thirteen for a buy for a one ton truck at a cost of twenty two thousand six hundred eighty seven dollars for the cemetery's division except the low bid from barbara ford for two thousand and thirteen three quarter ton pick ups at a cost of one thousand thousand one hundred fifty nine dollars each thirty eight thousand three hundred eighteen dollars total for the parks division of with all purchases to be funded through the centralized vehicle and equipment fund fortini four point one would approve the police agency information agreement with i text for police crash reporting software with no cost to the city fourteen eve five administrator and eliminate the pos health plan for nonunion employees fortini five point five would accept the bid submitted by standard electric in the amount of thirty one thousand three hundred dollars for the installation of l e d lighting and globes  centennial park with the b p w to fund twenty five thousand and forty dollars of the project cost and the total city budget for the project set at ten thousand dollars and to fund the project through the minas simple capital projects fund fourteen five point seven would authorize down trees and bird as an additional public representative on the community energy strategy steering committee and allow for the appointment of hope college community hospital and holland public school staff should they be interested at a later date fourteen ethe five point eight would authorize the community energy strategy steering committee to create a new task force on commercial and institutional energy efficiencies authorize staff to advertise and recruit community volunteers designate the b p w staff to be the lead on this effort authorized work on planning steps needed to implement the strategy and request a report by the second study session in january twenty third teen on key planning steps and fourteen yf i've point nine would revise the nov twenty twelve council meeting schedule by canceling the nov twenty one business meeting and rescheduling it to november twenty eighth right well there you i'm sorry you mentioned fourteen five point three i did and it was mentioned very early on because it was combined with number eleven i think that's where alison was right anybody in the audience would care to remove we're here today to present to the city of holland a resolution that corps has put together some background information is a month ago came to us presenting the facts and information about what is currently going on in the idle county with  abuse and she asked that we would take some action and so we further went on and we attended a city council study session on the study session was the one that happened two weeks ago we came there and presented the information that she presented to us we looked at it and we saw a great reason to for the city youth council to take action on this and so following that meeting we actually went and wrote the resolution and that is what we are here to present you g resolution where as the issue of domestic and sexual violence among youth is occurring at rapidly increasing rates are also proving to be detrimental to the academic emotional and physical wellbeing of teens and where as the advisory council is aware that the two thousand and eleven ottawa county youth assessment survey identifies an increase in reported dating violence behaviors among teens who are dating and where as the state of michigan as a prevention plan laid out in the executive reports of the michigan domestic and sexual violence steering committee for the years two thousand and ten through two thousand and fifteen and where as by working to prevent teen dating violence happens our community can help to prevent domestic and sexual violence later in life and i don't mastic violence free zone is pivotal for a well functioning and prosperous community and whereas the delta project of the center of women in transition is committed to maintaining the psychological and physical health and safety of youth in the greater holland area and whereas the delta project has an extensive outreach to over seven hundred seventy community prevention programs to reach a total of twenty nine thousand one hundred ninety five individuals since  november two thousand and twelve copy placed in that in the future minutes and records of this meeting thank you very much for being here reshape it very much and thank your work and the we also have a second special presentation recognition tonight it is with the american bloom program or holland and bloom program and i see we have a couple of the chair will try chairs perhaps of the event this year and a kenyan from our parks that were our size but we won a national war which was there was about forty other communities around the nation varying from sizes from five thousand on the population all the way up a few a couple hundred thousand and we were able and successful to win an environmental war which he and added up a lot of land that was pretty substantial major award for us and showed what community and the city and private and public partners can do together to help us make the that this work here is just recognizing that we not only won the major award but we were five bloom winners which means like a five star hotel it's the best you can be and so they recognize our community as that's all these are these are warts and i think you may have or may have not had enough yet look at our evaluation for thank you very much as you probably were noticing on the screens as well and in bloom committee was talking about there are a few photos from the of the judges being in town and some of the things that they saw and events that they saw as well as the awards presentation that occurred where we we won these things this group would be the first to tell you that this kind of effort does not extend to just a handful of people but it sends a very broadly into the community and includes some of our major institutional and business partners you may have seen a photo in the in the list here of the group meeting at herman miller and have the after to talk with some of the herman miller folks about how they view beauty and the environment and and for them to take substantial amount of time with this group well of both of the public and private partnership but as well as the interest that the whole community has taken in this in this project so we thank you again for it and look forward to all right it's back on the floor we are looking at a first reading of this particular amendment and perhaps as a way of introduction greg or phil might you maybe philby the best on this one to give us just a brief introduction as to what the ticket item concerns so we're all reporting the board what we're talking about in the site i'm sure i'd be happy to this is a recommendation from the planning commission as you enter it first reading some text amendments to section thirty nine one sixty six thirty nine one sixty eight that deal with permitted uses in the future it is a proposal that would allow automobile sales and service and machinery sales and service in a portion of the few south of one ninety six along m forty that is recommendation from the planning commission to allow those uses that your prior meeting there were some issues raised by some of the property owners a particular property owner on the west side of him forty this came this recommendation came to the planning commission from property owners on the east side of what i'm forty property owners that the automobile sales service and she knew sales and service as the most viable use for their properties one of which one property owner wants to make an expansion to what is currently existing not conforming use and the other property owners own actually two parcels on the east side see this as a desirable use  right thanks bill questions for bill that thank you very much for that introduction this is currently set for first reading anybody in the audience cared though it's not for a public hearing at this point and if it passes on first meeting tonight it would be set for a public hearing on our next regular scheduled meeting of ember twenty eight where there were of course would be a public hearing but anyone in the audience would care to talk on this item tonight we certainly would welcome that those comments as well ee right jody would you please on our agenda for november twenty eighth where there will be a public hearing before any ultimate approval fourteenth where council will discuss this and the public is invited to be there of course for it no decision will be made in the on the fourteenth and on the agenda for the twenty eighth for final approval on the twenty eighth thank you that takes us then to item twelve communications from the audience this is the opportunity for members of the audience to communicate with counsel about any items that are not otherwise on the agenda the rules of council relatively straightforward all we ask is you  step forward to the microphone so everyone in chambers and listening at home or on a computer can hear what you're saying state your name and residential address for the record and you may have a five minutes to address mary this item comes to you tonight really is with a recommendation to the these are franchises for serving electric service to the surrounding townships of  lake town and fillmore we are in a period where our thirty year franchise was set to expire on november two of this year and the townships those townships have submitted one year extension requests to the city for consideration this item has not been to the board public works as of yet and so city manager that city manager and i have looked at this request and our recommendation to council tonight is to refer it to the board of public works for cit aeration and action at their next meeting which would be this monday and that based upon whatever the   the fourth township that is currently a customer of the board public works holland township we entered into a thirty year franchise with holland township and it was on the ballot yesterday and the voters approved it so what what's the net effect of that action yesterday by holland township voters when a when a township approves a franchise that action makes a franchise you put it in effect for the term but it's a revokable franchise  which means then that the township can take action to revoke revoke the franchise by putting in front of the voters and having the voters decide what they're actually taking action on is making that  comparable basis to any any customer in the city to these townships for service if there's a request we have not only a right but an obligation under these franchises to extend that service and so when we do that you know these are generally assets that we're putting in our system that will take a long time to depreciate those things and recover those assets and so whether that smart grid technology that we're looking at putting in in  our various system or just changing out aged infrastructure or planning for new electrical generation assets to meet our needs going forward you know we're we're we're pleased that with township we have a long term relationship and one that the voters of that township have seen important enough to make that franchise irrevocable for the next thirty years and that puts us in a great place for being able to plan our structure and plan our posed amendment to some of our ordinances so mr city attorney we turn to you for an introduction of these items thank you mr mayor the first item that we have the night for the council's consideration is an ordinance that's been recommended place for first three d and this is all then expense recovery ordinance and let me try to explain how this interfaces currently with  persons involving who offenses the first one being the operation of vehicles vonda the influence of alcohol or drugs and secondly persons convicted of making false statements to law enforcement is listening to my thoughts and sharing his ideas with me and obvious slieve the legitimate need of the city to explore additional revenue sources not  seriously disputed the extent that persons with events numerated in the proposed ordinance are able to reimburse that local government for their criminal behavior i think  after paying the state thing ourselves seventy five dollars the state mandated alcohol assessment we have fines and costs six hundred eighty five dollars but i won lost the other item that was mentioned by jeff and on i think that the implement patient processes radical here we are going to make it very clear that in the demand that w that well when we first presented with this a few weeks ago out of study social or makes all the sense in the world they are hearing something a little differently here that i think i want to make sure i'm hearing six seven thousand dollars per year in these reclaiming these funds but because so there there's a potential budget issue here for the city trying to way when i hear the six seven eight ten thousand dollar figure i'm trying to weigh that against what i think i'm  hearing the judge couch his comments a little bit by saying he's just trying to lay out a irrational other side of the equation and maybe have some subtle concerns about it and in the other in the world of some other judges that perhaps there's some concern about this is that fair that's that concern from people who spend their lives trying to figure out what's fair and just what is the justification for us to kind garner anywhere from six or seven or up a rather modest budget situation  help me understand why this recommendation is coming here based on the concerns i'm hearing from the legal system on the other side well maybe bob will want to the deterrent effect of increasing this you know like a lot of things in police work so much is in and what we do and it's hard to adequately measure it but numbers on it however if that can be a deterrent we would obviously our ultimate goal when it comes to drunk driving force minutes not make more arrests that's not why we're doing it our ultimate goal is to try to create a fear of being arrested to prevent people from doing in the first place that's what we ultimately want to get and if this can assist with that that's fabulous and it will help reduce some of the costs that we get involved in every single one of those arrests with our shrinking budget that's something that we feel is arrest somebody for growing thriving because it requires a fair amount of procedural due diligence on our end and also hearing not just one judge but what appear to be a pretty strong pushback from the initial system that has jumping on the bandwagon of doing this procedurally and maybe recouping some of the fees and but yet you're concerned so demonstrate a pass that there's some concern in other judges apparently have shown expressed more concern where is is how i mean here we said everybody is doing it i'm not aware of anyone doing it as part of the sentencing process as opposed to the civil demand process i think what's happening here is that stock worth of punished for doing the right thing by talking to us about it first and getting our views on it  thank you judge for the work that you do in helping to rehabilitate people that come through your system and obviously your presence here your level of preparation the time that you've taken to speak with andy and vince and to talk with us tonight really shows the mercy in your chest us and that really speaks highly of you as a person and the judges that you work with and i hope that you can communicate that back to them as well that they really appreciate that you are sitting in your seat with a gavel but also with a heart to help people change their lives as well as face the repercussions of bad decisions so thank you thank you all right anyone else want to ask questions make comments i guess technically ask questions and don't motion on the floor yet when we do that right now we get a motion please move it move by divorce i might also add as someone who patiently appears in front of courts in a different role than than this one along with andy i suspect and you can concur with this please also pass along that i think many of us around here much and although we may have created a little bit of a firestorm by talking to the judges we will and we would encourage that indeed thank you all right that we have a second item which is see to the super drunk driving ordinance amendment and if you might just briefly use that one again it's for first reading tonight and if approved it would come back to our november twenty eighth meeting for a public hearing and final  well i don't know why tonight we seem to be preoccupied with the issue of alcohol but the second item that you have for you tonight is also related to this issue the state of michigan and two thousand  charged with a super drunk driving offense this offense when it was originally created by the state of michigan had a penalty attached to it that did not allow cities to i prosecute or so for drunk driving offense so what happened as a matter of course on the state law went into effect was that the police department would write a individual under a state law fence that would be handled by the out of a county prosecutor's office as the city attorney's office but not handle it and as a consequence oftentimes these cases would be reduced to  super gun driving that would allow the charging of a defendant if their blood alcohol rate level was above eight point one seven there are enhanced handle these that apply to this kind of an  they let me just summarize the report and brian white from our office is also here to respond to questions the washington avenue tunnel was put into operation in late december of two thousand and four so it's going on it's a two year the life expectancy of the lighting in the tunnel is about five years and those lights are starting to show significant signs that they have exceeded their useful life and we do have some issues that do require immediate attention in light of that and in light of some additional information that was presented to us our staff conducted an extensive review of various lighting options that might be available to us for the tunnel after this review we developed a package of bid specifications for a maintenance project that would include real p in the tunnel lighting we are recommending at this time that we maintain the existing high pressure sodium lights we believe that this is the most appropriate course of action we've looked at other types of lighting including induction and l e d we we do feel that ultimately the technology is probably going to be the best technology however we don't feel that it's there yet in terms of either  the lighting distribution or the cost effectiveness we have also put i would say a great deal of emphasis on the engineering standards for tunnel  lighting those were the standards that were used at the time the tunnel was designed in the standards that are still in existence and we believe it's an extremely important factor to consider in tune in terms of the lumens or lighting  that reaches the ground this is a requirement that all tunnel engineers and designers look at and it's the manner in which the tunnel was designed originally and we feel needs to be maintained so in light of that we did put together the program that would involve cleaning and maintaining and the existing light fixtures really emptying the total restoring a faulty circuit and then ultimately recording the light levels our goal in that would be to attempt to reduce some of the lighting that's there so that we can achieve some cost savings as well we receive for bids for the project  bid was from strain electric company a company that we are very familiar with in the amount of forty one thousand four hundred ninety dollars and eighty four cents we did have fifty thousand dollars in the streets capital projects fund  this project again because of the immediacy of some of the repairs we would intend to start this project immediately should it be approved we are hopeful for some  savings that could be realized again in our electrical costs and we're looking at potentially in the area of eight thousand dollars per year and we believe that you know this could be significant in the scope of of the lighting costs for the tunnel so our recommendation is that we proceed with a bit of strain electric company for this project and that a budget be established within the streets capital projects  a bridge solution for this or what with the thought here when i do it all right now i guess ability of l e d lights to distribute light over a wide area i think l e d s do a really good job of focus light maybe not as good a job at spreading that light among a large area and that that basically that  you know that's what i'm hearing from the professionals in the field as well i do think that that technology is going to change and get better and i would say you know the intent is that the next time we go to relapse that we would take a good hard look at l e d technology and hopefully at that point in time one the technology will be better at distributing light but then to the upfront cost will be a lot less so that's certainly on our on our radar screen i'll just give you this we put the l e d lighting in the parking deck and i think that was a great move you know the lighting requirements certainly aren't as stringent as they are with  tunnel and you know behave killer traffic back kind of at an application but i can tell you that that the the light consumption for from that parking deck is is very minimal and and when we were building that that parking deck i had the electrician come out once he hooked everything up and he told me he said you know you could probably run a couple of microwaves for the same amount electricity needed to basically light up that whole park  so you know i think that was a great application for that specific location i definitely have genuine concerns about the tunnel and particularly the traffic aspects associated with that in the lighting requirements particularly at those threshold areas under daytime conditions when you're going from a daylight situation into a dark tunnel in the lighting requirements are pretty pretty significant at that particular application so you know if that helps the in then in terms of the induction was also an option here but it seems like it was is british rule out just the cost to put that infrastructure in place and to swap that out i think is is really what steers clear of that yeah i can tell you that i really have not delved into the solar possibilities there i do know that i think there are some tunnels that try and amplify natural light in certain areas of tunnels or break up onil such that you know you've got some natural like component there with the runway and you know that extension there i'm not sure that we really have an opportunity for that and as far as an application for you know solar panels or something like that know i really i'm not familiar with any tunnels out there that have that i think that's quite a ways down the road possibly or something like that  by the board or what about birch ok is there discussion or any comments from the audience the current proposal basically is a it's a real lamping and rebalancing as needed but that's pretty much the extent of it the other the other line items on that bit are cleaning more maintenance related necessarily a good long term approach so i think we would be probably looking at refixed bring in reality and i can tell you that the construction of it tunnel is such that there's recessed housings for each of these locations where the lights are and you know with j boxes and things like that to come out at specific locations on the tunnel and so i think we're ready to really seriously take a good hard look at different technology somebody would have to dive into those weeds and make sure that nice my own sense is i like the idea of ladies and other things i just don't simply know enough about and through the new engineer and don't know enough about the questions as to the lamp that lights spread and those kinds of things to really make  informed decisions i'm left to rely a kind of on the in the work that's been done by staff and i guess i do take some degree of comfort in supporting this this recommendation for at least a couple of reasons even if perhaps you know that might prove to the first lifespan is five years i have no doubt that in the next five years we'll be in a better position with the advancement of technology in the advancement of l a dear induction technology that when we face this question again we'll have better data better answers and probably better products in the market that would allow us to make the jump then probably more cheaply second i know that staff is very cognizant and interested in looking at other kinds of lamping technologies sample the continual parklane tonight that we've talked about already and so i think that we're we're certainly looking at these things and not this missing them out of hand may be tuned in midway through the meeting and you're seeing some seemingly different camera angles and those sorts of things we're having a little technical difficulty with some of our council technology and our crack staff has on short notice put together a plan b and they're using it tonight and hopefully by next meeting we will be back up and running better than ever thanks three point six which is the vehicle maintenance fund vehicle purchases when you pull this off is there an introduction excess and the extra action taken just a few months ago dealt with the staff hours in which case that discussion was expanded and dissect pretty much was needed for this matter does not mean that it's not visited this coming mark and there was another request for a vehicle replacement i'm happy to say the recommendations here are department with their staff and then you know i think maybe bob can speak to this as well but my understanding is that we are at the point where those vehicles are pretty much on the road all the time and i you know i'm not aware that there is anything there that we would consider that to be excess you want to speak to that we have about one thousand cruisers total two of those are saying to the nine officers as well those are you strictly as  and i would also just mention that one of the trucks is going to be repurposed so we have a pretty regular procedure when we're looking at these replacements if we have another department who may be in need of a vehicle but doesn't perhaps subject it to quite as heavy a use that we will look at two three maybe two three four vehicles in combination determine which one is the worst and then move those down so i think it's the truck that's intended for the cemetery the one that's in the cemetery now is planned to go to windmill island and it's the truck that windmill island that is ultimately going to be disposed we also do this with unmarked police cars those are generally moved to to city hall for staff and administrative purposes here and then again the  oldest cars are the cars with the most mileage are the ones that are giving us the most maintenance costs are the ones that are ultimately moved out so you know that's that's a regular process that we go through for sure at budget time every year is some gifts the city manager's office is pleased to report receipt of the following gifts from the parks recreation and transportation services department donations collected at the two thousand and twelve softball tournament fundraiser for the south koreans scholarship fund  included revenues in the amount of the one thousand and eighty dollars from the teams that were registered and a contribution of five hundred dollars from buffalo wild wings also buffalo wild wings provided an in kind donation valued at two hundred dollars and gift cards distributed as awards and superior sports provided eighty dollars worth of softballs for the tournament games it is recommended that these donations be accepted with appreciation credited to the appropriate account and an expression of worked in reworked by both the committee a subcommittee of council in conjunction with the frost center and they did the cleanup work try and give us good questions as opposed to layperson's question that i haven't done the work so well peters is there any discussion to get in a project like this particularly council people because everyone has an opinion on whether the question should be what's the most important question and how they all should be working myself included could make a couple of suggestions and we all know what's correct and what's most important that coming to consensus on that can be a challenge but i think what we have before us is a very so as i said up stairs you know if i was in total control of this it would make it a word to change but i'm very satisfied with the form that it's in right now and i think that it's going to help us get  they just clarify the motion there was not a recommendation in the report so the motion is to approve the move the deny any yet i think that was the intention nancy certainly last sanjay that was your concurrent all right you thanks as the five point six forty five point six the community energy task force budget ryan ability budget they would like to use fifty eight thousand dollars of it for planning purposes to ramp up to various scale first pilot and then scale projects in future fiscal years and future conversations in march and april next year so the details are in front of you and i'd be happy to answer any questions the citizen groups can you to meet and make progress on this matter with those vacancies but a third we need to replace and the other the other vacancies as you know we're doing alternate fire service study that will be here front of you in january which will discuss those two as well that it's wise to not replace them at this time while the studies on the way however the third individual is not we will need to replace that person the main thank you many questions for ryan on those i've been communications from the mayor tonight start at the election graduations to those candidates who put themselves out there and especially to those who were successful at the end of the day  we obviously had as we see jodi sitting in tonight for and it was a very late evening for actually a very early morning for the elections officials in the area the turnout was very high i don't know the actual number in the city i don't think we have that calculate no we don't yet but the numbers in the seventy percent range are certainly being talked about we had over three thousand absentee ballots which need to be counted separately so that was a separate crew that was working up in the training room up here in city hall there were some discussions of vote but wait times in those kinds of things certain precincts seem to have slightly different issues than others in fact some of our polling locations combined precincts in one precinct would be just fine and the other ones seem to have a longer wait time it's kind of interest interesting and frustrating depending upon which line you're in i suppose  but those precincts are by and large about the same size in the doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason necessarily as to why one goes longer than the other one but you know clearly we have on presidential elections and especially perhaps the last two presidential elections substantial turnout and as with anything the more people you have in the pipeline tends to slow down things we noted that by and large some of the most heavy delays were at what we might call peak boating times the day before work lunchtime right after work and perhaps right some locations close to the close of the polls so obviously elections can always be run better and i can rest assured that the public that members of our election team as well as city management then obviously members of council if they're interested we'll be having some post election discussions in a few days you know once all the finalized work is done and once people have recovered a bit from the election to talk about what happened what we might do differently in the in the past how we like their polling locations and those sorts of things you know it's an interesting thing that we run a variety of like elections during the year and really only once every four years that we have an election potentially like the one we had yesterday so you don't want to you want to get people see the ability in the polling locations so you don't want to necessarily have different polling locations for presidential elections and what they do for other ones is then you you know cause confusion by having different locations for different elections so we try and balance all of these things and you know again binion's can vary and sometimes things don't work perhaps quite as well as we might like i would point out one issue that we're still looking into and that was in ward five precinct thirteen holland is kind of it is a melting pot of jurisdiction and this is probably best realized in right around either  precinct nine in ward four precinct thirteen in ward five holland straddles a county line as i think most everyone knows which means that we have a bulk of the city and out of a county and some of the city in alleg senators that represent city allegan and we even have two people two members of congress who represent the city and both in the allegheny county part of the city gets divided and there's one more for precinct nine actually has both  congressman and congressman upton in four nine so there are two separate ballots that happen and in addition we have at least two different school districts in the city limits and it's the school district election that caused us a bit of challenge in five thirteen this is the first time under the state law that has mandated that school actions take place during the federal elections so this is the first time the school ballots school question ballots was on the presidential ballot and in five thirteen most of the five thirteen is in the holland school district and a portion of five thirteen is in the hamilton school district what happened apparently was the poll worker did not make the distinction between those two different balance between hamilton and holland in the only difference in the ballot had to do with school questions everything else was the same on this ballot and in essence began handing out the hamilton ballots just as a matter of course to whomever came in there were two hundred fifty total such ballots of that two hundred fifty sixty one of them had been sent out  absentee ballots so that number was reduced and there were also some what you might call unused or leftover ballots that remained in the clerk's office in case people came in right before the election day number thirteen of those which meant that on election day they were about one hundred and seventy six hamilton school district ballots in ward five precincts thirteen of those hundred seventy  six four of them were spoiled during the election and were never used or were counted so somebody mark something erroneous lee it spit back out of the machine they made a a mistake and got a new ballot whatever it was there were four of them at the pol that were not used so one hundred seventy two of those ballots were actually cast successfully in ward five precinct thirteen further breaking it down of that hundred seventy two forty two of them were correctly given to persons who were in the hamilton school district which means ultimately that there were about one hundred thirty ballots erroneous lee given in five thirteen two hamilton ballots erroneous lee given in five thirteen to holland school district persons we are still waiting to hear checked on the allegan county website even during this meeting and there is no information on the allegheny county website elections page about the hamilton district questions there were two questions on hamilton's ballot one was for election of a school board there were four people vying for two seats and the other was a renewal milledge of a certain milage for the hamilton school district holland school district had only one question on the ballot it was an uncontested school board race so probably less of an issue there were waiting to hear yet what the results were in the hamilton race to see whether there is any issue with this hundred thirty vote question that happened in five thirteen so you know we've been in communication with both the ottawa county clerk as well as the allegan county clerk and this perhaps is more information than than most care to hear but just so everyone understands we work primarily our clerk's office works primarily with the ottawa count and it has to do both with logistics and also technology because allegan county apparently uses different technology than out of a county and the ability for these computer systems to communicate can be sometimes problematic so we're still trying to figure out exactly what happened we're trying to figure out what the net effect of this will be and it looks for more information come in the next few days we had one other precinct with a bit of reporting difficulty that was ward one precinct two up in holland heights and the issue there i'm not entirely sure why i should mention one of the thing with five thirteen and that was when all of the hamilton ballots were exhausted because they had given out the clerk's office made photocopies of additional ballots and those were given to correct voters in five thirteen for the hamilton district those needed to be hand counted however because they were not capable of being run through the machine and  at the close of the the the polling hour at eight o'clock p m in addition to the deputy city clerk and a paralysis the city manager ryan cotton assistant city manager greg robinson and i were on hand to witness the accounting activity happening and greg as part of his duty also as an assistant city clerk and he actually participated in some of the counting as well and there were some poll challengers there and a couple members of the media as well so the hand counting happened immediately following the close of the election for i think it was fifty one hand counted hamilton ballots getting back then to board one precinct two in holland heights and i  at five thirteen so i don't know exactly what happened at one two but there were in essence was some sort of computer issue whether it was human derived or systematic derive i don't know but ultimately as we enter a poll and scan the at the driver's license it pulls up information onto a screen and for lack of a better description somebody gets returned and it gets entered into what then becomes the poll book which automatically generated somehow that didn't happen in one two and that meant that the poll workers needed to manually recreate the poll book first thing when you walk in you fill up one of those little pieces of paper they had to take all of those collected pieces of initial registration paper and hand type in and manually recreate the poll book which didn't cause accounting problems just cause the logistics in a timing problem and that is why board one precinct two was somewhat delayed in coming in and being reported it was because of the manual recreate of the poll book so a couple issues there and you know again we'll be looking into how we can make both the experience for the voter better how we can perhaps make some of the poll sites better and we can make some of the precincts better and how we can make sure to improve the procedures that that we had some issues with this particular time but the the long in the short of it is that all the ballots were counted all the the numbers are adding up in that there can be confidence in the numbers that are given relating ok as always you can get ahold of us contact us city of holland dot com is perhaps the easiest way to do so and on a very light note if it works sort of kind of we can zoom in here a the right hand side our own brian burch looking dapper as ever so brian i want to congratulate you on that which they just award but more importantly on taking a gosh darn good picture with that other communications from council to see