and welcome to this regularly scheduled meeting of the whole city council may one budget night approval night hearing night and also the first eighty degree day since september so we'll see how the evening goes  a prayer which i will lead this evening and then thereafter will immediately move into the pledge of allegiance to our flag i would invite everyone in chambers to join us for both of these items we gather tonight in this room we are cognisant of all of the blessings that you have provided to us warmth the budding trees the flowers bursting forth from the ground thankful for this community and those who make it what it is those in private industry those who are retired those who are young those who are at home in those who work in our public service areas we pray for the council this evening and for our senior staff w here to present information to us all we pray for the members of our community who are with us this evening to learn and to comment on what is before us we pray for wisdom and for guidance even though we gather here as  counsel and as a city organization many of us have our minds and part of our hearts in other places and we think especially tonight the wolf family our former retired city manager going through tremendous grief at the untimely and unexpected and tragic death of their son chad we pray for soarin for sue and for all of the wolf family near and far comforting to guide them all this we under god indivisible with liberty and all we have hard copy your paper copies of tonight's agenda located in the rack in the rear of the room for those of you who are in chambers for those watching at home or via the internet somewhere or frankly for those in chambers who have an electronic device we can also provide for you a copy of not only the not only the agenda but also all the background materials that council has reviewed in preparation for this evening's meeting that can be found at city of holland dot com you go to the calendar page today's date and there you go if you're in chambers and need access via the password look to your neighbors and i'm sure someone can can get that for you you'll note that there are a variety of items on this agenda that have an asterix next to them these are what we can we call our consent agenda our intention is to handle them all together one motion one vote regardless where it shows up on the agenda because we think that it's relatively routine and that it's been discussed by council previously now obviously just because we think it might be relatively routine may not mean that you think it's relatively routine and in fact you might be here specifically for one of those items tonight so what we will do is we will ask our deputy city clerk to read for us the items that are presently scheduled to be on the consent agenda and after that happens i will invite anybody from the audience to come up and remove one of those items and i will take it then it's ordinary course and of course members of council can also take care of removing one or more items from the consent agenda as well so and if you would read for us what is presently scheduled to be on consent we would appreciate the minutes of the regular session held april seventeenth two thousand and thirteen item eleven eight to accept and file executed of office item fourteen c one to approve the metro act permit with great lakes comment for five years into authorize a city manager to execute document item fourteen the one to refer claims filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration item fourteen d two to approve the recommendation of various city annual city licenses per section seventeen deaths seven of the ordinance as presented in reviewed by city departments in adopt associated resolutions for the submittal of pool billiards license item fourteen one point one to approve execute funding contracts with good samaritan ministries and fair housing center of west michigan subject to city attorney approval item fortini two point two to approve the state of michigan contract with regards to federal funding for the south washington area new improvement project in the amount of one million ninety three thousand five hundred dollars and to adopt an authorizing resolution that the mayor and deputy city clerk execute the contract item fortini two point three to approve the point four to reject bids opened on march twenty eighth for the wind island gardens bridge and accept the alternate bid from river construction in the amount to fifty five thousand three hundred forty dollars and to amend the municipal capital projects fund for the funding of the project as a temporary allocation until friends funds are available through private donations and other allocations subject to approval as to form by the city attorney item fourteen point one two accept the finance department quarterly investment report as presented item fourteen three point two two approved bid for a seventy two huge toro at a total cost of six thousand and twenty nine dollars the fillmore equipment bid for two john deere and moore's at a total cost of sixteen thousand one hundred thirty four dollars and the three replaced term mowers be declared a surplus and disposed as directed by the city's purchasing scene coordinator item fourteen e five point two to approve read classifications of the digraph nature center part time be technical assistant to technical assistant three engineering part time be from technical assistant one to technical assistant two for the and for the division of public safety for your division establish a part paid firefighter station duty pay at ten dollars per hour and reclassify from nonexempt to exempt for the municipal planner to assistant treasure i'm fourteen eve five point three and i get him fourteen a five point four to schedule public hearings for tax abatement applications for profile tool inc located at nineteen zero six russell court and power manufacturing at eight hundred eighty six russell court to the june five two thousand and thirteen council meeting i had imported a five point five to accept the proposal of edgewater resources at a not to exceed cost of ten thousand dollars for site development proposals for the western machine tool works an eighth street redevelopment project to be funded from the fiscal year two thousand and thirteen municipal capital improvement funds and the fiscal year two thousand and fourteen planning plans and that the mayor and deputy clerk be authorized to execute the agreement subject to approval as to for by the city attorney item fortini five point six to approve a short time consulting relationship proposal for fifteen thousand dollars with seven thousand five hundred dollars city car share for the community energy plan sustainability strategies as indicated in the city managers report and item fourteen eve five point seven to cancel the study session scheduled for may eighth due to the festivities scheduled for tulip time and maintain the regular meeting for the fifteenth and study session on the twenty second of may all right thank you hannah would anybody in the audience care to remove an item from the consent agenda members of council care to remove items tonight and the first is under eight a a public what public act one ninety eight tax abatement for technical income eight sixty one east fortieth street and why do we have a staff report first of all greg knew that excuse me a quick  summary this project is for land and building improvements any amount of eight hundred thousand dollars and also machinery and equipment in the amount of one million four hundred ninety six thousand dollars the expansion will include about eight thousand seven hundred  fifty square feet and they are intending to create six new jobs as a result of this project and retain one hundred twenty as well so the staff recommendation after review is that you approve the resolution for industrial facilities tax exemption certificate for this project for twelve years from the state tax commission approval date right thank you greg rel in terms of the approval process or the application process relatively routine i mean follows ordinary policies in that kind of the direct ok and questions for staff seeing on this is the time and place for public hearing on this item if you are here to address council on this matter we invite you to step forward to the microphone  have a new little bit of device a little bit of technology here in chambers ordinarily well the rule is you have up to five minutes to address council as long as we've been in this room the way we've done it is basically a member of council or i have sort of kept a stopwatch and as the time would come close to the the end i would say something like yes but there are seconds left we've installed now a series of lights and in a moment you'll see a green light turn on at that the put you'll it from the podium when there is a minute left it will turn yellow and when the five minutes of expired it will turn red so hopefully that will be less disruptive to people making comments to the council and all we ask under council rules that  robinson next summarized the application very well so i would just save an ass that you would approve the application from technical and if you have any questions i'd be more than happy to answer the questions thank you does anyone have any questions for the applicant or the applicant representative seeing none thank you again for coming tonight we appreciate it very much thank you masco when you might make a decision on this mayor probably in the next thirty seconds to a minute thank you somewhere in that general vicinity two minutes on the outside i suspect anyone else from the audience care to prayer that's tremendous thank you longstanding tradition for this council and the city so we have this little item on the agenda that comes up every first meeting in the month of may  sort of with the tulips comes the budget presentation and in his sort of soft more season on budget presenting we invite our city manager first of all to give a presentation on the overall city and focusing especially into the general city part of the of the budget proposed proposed budget and then we will also invite the general manager of the board of public works dave koster to come up and present the b p w part of the the the budget presentation to us as proposed will then hold a public hearing in there after we will have some motions and take some votes so ryan we turn to you for the budget presentation please thank you mr mayor members of the city council i want to say first that this six hundred plus page document is available at the library in our clerk's office in our office it's on line and you  formats this document and all of the numbers associated with it did not get produced alone it took a team this team actually started working on this nearly a year ago because there were what we call the list of fifty cost efficiencies that we needed to work through three hundred ninety six thousand dollars of which is realized in some form or fashion through this document but this this budget was not possible without the leadership of tim vogl is finance director and especially his staff michelle price and dan and in our office think that minute deserve special mention for their hard dedicated sometimes not glorious work i also want to thank our budget team which is our department directors who true to form do not act in any kind of groupthink way which in that respect makes our decisions that much stronger and we offer them to you in that context this is not the first time that you have considered these numbers it was april eighth april ninth and you also reviewed them on april twenty fourth and there's been a number of other conversations since that time so tonight we will cover it in briefly relatively briefly but we hope in a way that some formative and we'll cover the following things our revenues our expenditures how this affects the average taxpayer the debt and our capacity for capital what our capital investment will be what the funding will be for outside agencies this year and the holland historic trust is an area that deserves additional conversation given the need for some additional funding there and our overall fiscal health contained in the document is movement on the city council's ten goals these are goals you set at your starting with the coffee with the community and being with the retreat in february and some of the key goals that are furthered in this budget and i'll mention in my remarks our waterfront redevelopment park and recreation strategic planning improving communications and the community energy strategies and that's a goal several fiscal years and also several several city agencies the board of public works is very active in that and we've had good success recently working on some coordination with some co specifically you'll hear  a budget is both a document to control expenditures and also an opportunity to plan in recent years the council the ministration have had to focus more on the control and very little on the planning this year there is some opportunity to plan and we have some additional expenditures associated with a summer youth program as i mentioned the park and recreation study community access television funds and communications some improvements to our police cruisers and as well as improvements to our snow plow with a wing plow in addition some planning for waterfront redevelopment and the home energy retrofit portion of the community energy strategies so with that being the general remarks i will begin with a little more detail the entire city council city of holland budget is two hundred fifteen million dollars in way of sources that of course includes the board of public works which we'll hear more about in detail shortly in terms of applications or use of those funding also two hundred fifteen million and you can see that the bulk of both the revenue is from utilities and expenditures is associated with utility production looking more specifically at the city budget which is a series of funds but the largest of which is the general fund and that's the fund that is supported by tax dollars there is a total of twenty million three hundred twenty two thousand dollars in revenues fifty percent of that is composed of property taxes and use the pointer here a smaller number in decreasing number is composed of intergovernmental revenues although i will say the property tax revenue is up to one point four percent this year you'll see more on that and then it and also there is for the first time in many years a little bit of a indicates the revenue sources by the trend and you can see the principal thing i want to show is that the property taxes have basically been going down in recent years since fiscal year ten and as i mentioned a one point four percent increase just a little bit more from that revenue stream this year the other revenue streams have tried to fill the gap but not entirely  we are somewhat below historical expenditures starker revenues i wanted to show you how we compared our neighbors i think that it's important that we do this from time to time on all kinds of  is experiencing one point four percent increase in the taxable value and this compares favorably to what is happening in our neighboring townships that's for residential for commercial sunni's a larger than one point four percent it nets out t one point four percent commercial is also up and that also compares favorably turn neighbors so we are glad that we're turning the corner here and all of our efforts plus the state national con helping oftentimes people talk about industrial silly tax exemptions and how that relates the entire amount of taxation and revenue stream you can see these the green and yellow at the top of the bars represent the i have tea tax abatement roll and it's getting ever smaller year after year however something i want to point out is this personal property tax which is the red it seems to be getting larger as the regular tax roll generally has been shrinking otherwise as i mentioned it's holding its own now that's very important because personal property is due to be phased out and though we were spared this year next year the five year plan assumes one hundred fifty thousand dollars of less revenue and after that i think it'll be an increasing number year after year although some of the details are still being worked out the general fund expenditures is slightly less about three thousand less than the revenues so there's a small surplus of three thousand dollars that's shown at twenty million three hundred eighteen thousand and the bulk of the expenditures are for public safety police and fire firefighters in t's that his has ranged between forty some percent and maybe fifty two percent over time our public safety service study recognizes that there's a need to collaborate and and work for cost efficiencies and keep that number from growing and maybe look for reducing it over time without reducing services through utilizing up our personnel and a variety of new ways one of which you just approved and i pay classification for part paid deals with higher paid who may want to do station duty the details of which need to be worked out everything else is a pretty much as what we've seen over the years this gives you the detail of the taxation per year and you can see that we did last year need a bump in addition to the part of the two million dollars of changes last year was to recognize that we need to point seven no increase in taxes and that's shown here and actually was a tad bit more than that but that's being maintained flat going forward i want to point this out it may be hard to read on the screen but i'll just point to it the city is at an all time low in terms of the city's annual operating milage compared to the city's general fund operating budget actually in the last twenty years we're at right at all time low forty seven point just over forty seven percent and that is lower than any other year shown here this is how the average tax bill is impacted by the changes over the last several years even with a when the economy reduced tax with value declined and tax bills declined as well for the average residential with the change in tax rate last year it went up just a bit and with the tax will add value increasing it went up just a bit but we're still perhaps eight percent less at the lowest point at least ten percent less for the average taxpayer this pertains to the city of milledge the this is how the actual tax bill compared per sample of nine taxpayers and you can see that depending on property value it varies but there is even with this increase in tax of value of one point four percent there are some properties experiencing still a decline in their tax e value and in the number less than that one point four percent this is a new chart this year since you looked at it actually couple weeks ago i wanted to put together something that showed the city's overall  health which will be easy to track year to year and i want to take a second to explain it what's not shown here suggested in your pre cancer meeting and will be added in the final document is the general fund balance as you know in your budget message the general fund balance is recommended a auditors to be maintained at fifteen percent there is information on list serv among the managers in just the last three days and it ranges from five percent to even one hundred percent in some cases other cities but most are in the ten to twenty to twenty five percent range anyway the city's policy is fifteen percent it's not shown here but i can tell you that we are have met and exceeded that by just a bit will be a just under three point five million estimated general fund balance year and that's approximately seventeen percent but these are some other funds that involve a barometer as to the city's fiscal health  the budget stabilization fund is a rainy day fund if you will it also helps deal with tax appeals that take defense and sometimes we have to recover for the if they succeed certain  tax refunds never last that was one point eight million to guard against unknown unforseen incidences associate with that at its highest point two thousand and three in recent years not shown here but up till to reinvest in our capital infrastructure and parks and are a variety of non street infrastructure and that was added one point four million at its highest in terms of transfers and had to drop eleven drop substantially in twelve and even more in thirteen barely barely maintaining our properties we're able to put a little bit more money into it this year and still maintain a balanced budget five hundred sixty five thousand over five years we need to grow that at least back to nine hundred thousand a year in order to hold our own it's still in the year with a very small finale it's we've never had to make transfers into the streets to maintain those projects there is funding through the motor vehicle taxes received from the state and also a one mil milledge rate however in recent years scheduled reconstruction so we put a little bit of money into that this year just to stem that tide and build that a little bit hundred thousand new this year is the legacy funds and that's due to the collaborative effort to  provide hope college the use of the full use of the stadium as well as the city and holland public but in a way that the ownership transferred and built some funds which are calling the legacy funds only for major assets that will provide long lasting improvements to the community and this recommends a transfer in that's the one last piece of property where the old roundabout used to be should that sell that would be a transfer him so you can get a sense that we're not where we need to be either in budget stabilization the capital provide funds streets and we're holding on to this for a very very special purposes that only the council by policy will decide and so we're making progress but we're not not where we need to be yet i want to talk about debt first second and major capital projects because we'll be talking more about that however with reducing tax will value we had to pay the debt as you just saw so that the taxable tax rate associative of debt did increase last fiscal year by i mention that point seven mills by that amount and this is what we estimated it would have to go this year and next year in the year after well the good news is with the small increase in the taxable value we've reached the high point already and been able to decline a little bit in terms of milledge associated with debt repayment and that means ten wagnerian our department head directors are here so i hope although i can't see them they're behind the screen i hope that they'll correct anything i might say that could use some clarification but it's my understanding that the difference from what we were and what we are going to was able to go towards the capital improvements that i just showed you in the last  e this just is a chart it's hard to read but eighty seven million is how much that red bar represented in terms of the debt capability that you have by law now i want to focus a little bit on more detailed  i'll run through these a little quicker because it's relevant if you have questions but otherwise not so much this happens to be the holon historical trust outside agency and fifty eight thousand five hundred is recommended it was one hundred sevent thousand last year and two hundred thirty five thousand year before as you know there is a possibility of additional different revenue stream for the trust and need to bridge to get to that and that bridge is thirty one thousand dollars so i hope that during the council discussion that that will be discussed and we've talked about several different possibilities for where that thirty one thousand might come from i think you have to support the you know my feelings about the subject to make that change probably the best place would be the budget stabilization fund we've talked about a number of different ones and i understand that that that has some merit as to how to make that one your bridge possible will capital projects summary that's at five hundred sixty five thousand dollars transfer i showed earlier this is some of the key things we hope to do in parks dispense with reading it there unless you'd like me to but it's all in your budget message cultural activities i mentioned the museum and the dish and funding needed for operations there's been no change in the need to fund capital those assets that are owned by the city and so you can see that there's eight thousand dollars worth of capital planned for that there's one windmill is not shown here because we're in a fundraising mode for that and the actual costs are being determined and it's expected that the city council will discuss that as as we learn more about those costs and revenues police budget has additional customer service and also if some  improvements to the sidewalks no amount of planning a neighborhood improvements i want to point out that there's this line item seventy five thousand dollars for redevelopment planning that's where the waterfront redevelopment planning funds will come from not all of that but that's one of the council's highest goals and also in energy upgrades to city facilities the city continues to make great strides where hundreds of thousand dollars of less than expenditures on energy mark and greg headed that up and  we expect more and also are community energy strategies and that's a little bit of a placeholder for home energy retrofit our building labeling and also grant matches that we might need facilities the city hall parking lot is getting some very much needed work drainage improvements and civic center maintenance we hope we don't need to spend all that and hopefully we'll figure out some other way and renovation project so we can reduce that but every year it does take some significant significant maintenance that concludes my presentation for the overview i'll be happy to answer any questions and i think we have individuals in the audience groups one more thing there i mentioned the summer youth program that is a brand new objective that comes about given the need the pressing need to find ways to connect with fourteen to seventeen year olds in holland be it mentoring be it employment be it  or and a combination of all the above so in your study session you previously looked at a sheet that indicates how we could come up with a trial program involving six youth and employ them for a period of twelve hours a week in partnering with some of our youth service agencies in a way that would make some public improvements possible that we don't have him work for now it all be hand work so and greg and robinson and us meeting with focus groups and just talking about ways that we can make some of these connections and that's also part of what i hope that you will talk about tonight thank you the funding for that is ten thousand dollars i hope to do some fund raising as well you are thank you ryan first of all i know you're working your way up david anybody have any questions at this particular moment for ryan will be time for more questions you know the department heads at the b p w to especially frieda velzen and her finance team in putting together a very comprehensive budget this year and rate proposal and i also want to specially think two members of the board tim hemingway and phil miller who served on our budget subcommittee and worked with staff in reviewing the details of this budget plan and five year plan for all three reliable utility service provision and you know i i'm looking at tonight for the first time the results of our customer survey and our budget and our five year plan  informed by a number of different things our strategic plan at the board of public works feedback from our board of directors in terms of directives that they have delivered to us as a staff you know our five year plans in each of our utility areas and our customer feedback is obviously not the least of those things it's a very important factor in you know how we plan going forward and what our customers have identified  over and over and it comes through very clearly again this year is that reliability those utility services is paramount and so when you look at our plan for this year again it's focused on continuing improvements in that  area and what we saw starting you know really looking back a couple of years ago the rate at which we were funding and completing infrastructure replacements and water and waste water especially in our collection and distribution systems was not sustainable over the long run we have developed a five year plan that we believe puts it on a more sustainable level of replacement gets it to although it's one hundred year cycle for water it still is better than a two hundred year cycle and better than a lot of communities are doing in terms of addressing an aging infrastructure we have very reliable services today we want to stay ahead of that state have any problems that would would happen and i want to highlight a couple of things that we've observed over the last couple weeks in that regard and that is you know we had tremendous rains here in all of the western michigan area and you know i think the foresight of the board the administrative committee at the wastewater plant and this  to invest six million dollars in a head works improvement in our wastewater plant allowed a situation where we were receiving thirty six million gallons per day equivalent in a plant that is designed for twelve and it was all staying in the plant and  so i mean you know a couple years ago before we had done that had works upgrade we didn't have that kind of success in those rain events in we do and certainly it is disruptive to the treatment process but when you look at comparative to other  communities i think that our investments were well served during this this last event and that that's just one area of which we're looking at improvements for and again just to remind those that are at home the board of public works does provide three utility services that we have specific revenue and expense lines for they are electric water and waste water we do offer broadband services as well those are encompassed within the electric utilities profit loss area again that is the enterprise that is you know is servicing our main needs but we are extending the opportunity to other customers to utilize that asset as well and so there are revenues that show up and i highlight those in our in our electric area that are for broadband services it's also important reserves and you'll see our net income projections for each of the utilities and there are net income that's projected for water waste water electric and that net income goes right back into capital infrastructure replacement over the long run again we do operate three utility enterprises but combined the budget for the board public works is highlighted here in this pipe chart overall we have about a quarter of a percent increase in our expense budget year over year predominantly that expense budget is used to serve the purchases of fuel for electric production and purchase power in lieu of operating our existing or our our generation that we own we do buy power from the wholesale market and that is that is within that that number as well you know wages and benefits are pretty stable slightly decreasing as a percentage  depreciation expenses up as we've completed a couple of significant projects i mentioned the head works already but we also have recently completed another reliability project on our water system the inner connection to the wyoming system which will allow overall the overall overall is about two point two three percent thank you thank you ron so the overall the overall expense budget is just under one hundred three million among all three utility enterprises again that's about a quarter percent increase now specifically tara looking at the particular enterprise's first focusing on water you know last year again this was a five year plan and we continue to look at things on a five year planning basis we had projected in order to have the cash flow necessary to increase our infrastructure replacement on our water collection systems our water distribution system at a rate of about one percent per year we would need to increase the revenues in that utility by about thirteen percent per year over the next five years the good news is that as a result of some debt refinancing and as a result of some increased revenues from some sales this past summer during a dry year our cash flow situation is a little healthier at this point and so what we're looking at again this year we are  targeting rate adjustments to achieve about a thirteen percent increase in revenues but the next years after that do we do look better at this point as we look at that going forward again it's a multi year plan to address the aging infrastructure and one assumption that we have in this is that sales other than weather abnormal weather conditions of a dry or wet year sales are expected to be relatively flat in our retail chemicals that our water plant and we have implemented improvement measures there to mitigate that expression in our chemical feed there's been some projects there to be able to blend chemicals in order to achieve better  cost effectiveness than buying the pre blended chemical and we've also done some consolidation in our management area there by combining our operations and maintenance supervisor into one position and i also mentioned the  again the big so in water in our revenue projection for next year is around eight point seven million dollars our operating expenses are projected at about six point five and when you look at interest expense  interest income on our reserves that we have our total non operating income expense does result in a net income then for our water utility projected at about one point six million dollars and again that is going to build cash flow and reserves for continuing the investment in that distribution infrastructure primarily the graphic i want to show that's the constraining  picture on the water utility revenues is this minimum cash reserve level it shows that without rate adjustments over the next few years that were targeted on a couple slides earlier our red line would be the result of the  given our current capital plan over the next five years and our revenues that would be the situation our cash reserves would be necessary level of minimum reserves the green represents our current rate plan  as of this time finally for this year in terms of cash flow out of the water utility on capital expenditures looking at total of about two point six million dollars a great deal that is in water main replacement and pump station and reservoirs addressing those in our distribution system and again in summary for the water utility over the next five years we have a capital expenditure plan of just under fifteen million dollars again that represents about a one percent per year water main replacement and that amount is about ten point four million and that is the reason for the rate adjustments is to generate the cash flow and to maintain signal sufficient reserves to be able to accomplish that how does that look for the average water customer you know what we're looking at here is that this is a rate comparison if you look at the last several years the board of public works water rate compares very favorably among an average residential customer with a five eighth's meter and a five eighth's inch meter and using  ten units of water on a month and it would still project to be at the bottom of the county communities now what's asterisk there is that under twenty fourteen we're not sure what adjustments are being made in the other count communities so we know that at twenty thirteen this current year we are at the bottom we expect that other communities are facing the same pressures and we'll be at the bottom of that group as well you know going forward so over a very cost  effective water service yet even with this plan to increase revenues for the capital replacement in the waste water utility you know some of the key drivers there i talked about the head works project already in the recent rain event that we had we also have a significant effort going on and collection system we have projects identified in terms of replacement or  system and again for the way swati till the summer to the water we were not addressing it at a sufficient rate and so we've increased that over the next five years we're looking at targeting a rate of about one point seven percent of the system per year we also are addressing our lift stations for those that don't know how wastewater collection systems work it works by gravity for a certain distance and then you have to then take and pump that further down the way intel it gets back to our wastewater treatment plant those lift stations also need work and some of the things that we're addressing there from reliability standpoint is actually a backup power and not all of our list stations are served by our power sources and even if they are it's important for some of the really significant lift stations to have redundant power supplies so we have generators going in and some areas and some redundant feeds in other areas as part of an overall lift station improvement plan that we are in the second year of implementation of some of those projects as well and finally at the wastewater treatment plant the next important process there really there's two things that we're looking about that if we're going to land apply that we can't do that in the winter we do that during the growing season and and so we have storage on site that storage is not nearly enough capacity based upon standards that are out there for similar sized plants and we had a very long winter this year and so we were able to make it tell the spraying but it was close sludge storage so we're looking at improving our d watering processes right now we use filter presses for that and those presses are aging they are at end of life and we are looking at better technology to in crews to increase the amount of the watering and also make them more reliable and able to run y round so we do have in the budget the commencement of some engineering work and over the next three years we're looking at implementing biosolids improvement at our wastewater treatment plant we also are  looking at over the long term what would we do if we had to expand the treatment capacity of the plant and i talked about hydraulically being able to take more water in due to the head works modifications but that doesn't necessarily change the ability to treat  certain pollutants that is hydraulic measure not it not a biological treatment measure and so you know we are looking at how do we do some improvements without doing a major expansion of our wastewater plant as we do have a growing demand on those services from both customer base and some residential growth not a lot mostly having to do with the increase industrial loads due to food processing in our area we do have increased loadings to the plant and again the board of public works wastewater plant is services our retail area but we also have a contract a wholesale contract with the northern service area which comprises park how in town ship in zealand township so you know we are planning improvement projects to handle all of those things now obviously the retail rates that we're doing will address our portion the retail portion of the plant which is a seventy percent capacity of that plant and also our collection system including our list stations so for waste water what we had been looking at last year again to make sure that we had adequate cash flows for this infrastructure replacement was a plan of about ten percent per year over the next five years i would say that due to some of the work that we've done in terms of some improvements on cost but also in looking at targeting net income at maybe a little bit lower level than what we had first identified we can still meet our minimum cash obligations with a little bit less of a rate impact for the subsequent year so recommending overall about a ten percent increase in retail revenues in support of these adjustments but the picture going forward looks a little bit better in the waste water utility you know the picture in terms of expense and revenues for waste water yields about six hundred ninety thousand dollars in net income and that is projected to grow you know over the next five years with the adjustments that were shown on the previous page again the controlling factor here is the minimum cash reserve without adjustments we get very close to the minimum cash requirement and it's on a downward trajectory overall you see a bump in there that is due to the influx of some bond proceeds we are planning on bonding that biosolids project and that would be a combined effort with the townships as well to fund that but without those rate adjustments we're on a downward trend in the waste water utility so the green line would represent with the adjustments and we'd be at a stable or slightly increasing cash position even with the infrastructure replacement  finally just for the in the waste water utility for this year we're looking at about three point two million of cash outlay for our capital expenditures we have about one point eight or so our one point seven and sewer main replacement four thousand lift stations other things that we're doing we talked about some of the engineering work at the waste war plan in preparation for the biosolids and looking at short term expansion opportunities overall for the next five years we have about twenty little over twenty million plan and capital expenditures replacement or aligning a sewer main work over the next five years about eight point five million of that and so that's what the revenue plan is really set to address is to address the reliability of the collection and treatment system for waste water again how does that stack up in terms of our cost effective these charts here again show out of county communities and even in two thousand and thirteen which we don't have updated information from two thousand and twelve even so really going back to two thousand and twelve we were near the bottom of that of that  you can see that we're still near the bottom of the cost for comparable out of county communities in the electric utility again we have a lot of work going on the electric utilities spent a lot of time over the past few years talking about energy and what are we going to do next and ryan talked about the community energy plan you know part of that has to do with how we produce electricity you know how are we going to do that cleanly efficiently and we have activities going on already and we have plans for more coming up this next year we have already started to implement additional renewables into our portfolio and i'll talk a little bit more about some specific rate offerings dealing with that in the packet but we also have made a decision  and brought to this to the board and to the council a series of recommendations dealing with our next baseload generation resource and we have decided we're moving towards implementation of a natural gas combined cycle unit  we have about one hundred ninety two million dollars associated with that capital alone we are projecting cash flow for this year that capital project around sixty sixty one million dollars so we have started that work this plan that we have for revenue adjustments is to in support of the development of that new resource the transition away young as our baseload resource it also is addressing investing in controls and our other coal assets some may not know that we actually have through contract michigan public power agency investments and other coal assets and they are investing in emission controls so overall when you look at the investment in this efficient technology their initial renewables and the investment in controls to address  emissions at the other facilities we have we are moving right in line with our plans under our power for the twenty first century and sustainable return on investment houses and it is right in line with the community energy plan goals  also to address energy use are increasing our energy optimization investments among all three customer classes by about three hundred twenty one thousand dollars this year which is over our projection for thirteen about five hundred thousand over our actual experience in two thousand and twelve and so those will go into a series of programs available to businesses and residential customers to increase efficiency  we will have certain private projects that will be doing as well and you know we'll be looking at new creative ways and we have staff in house that's one additional f t e that we have this year a decision that was made to bring the administration of our energy optimization program in house from a contracted service so that we could walk hand in hand with our customers better and so we are starting that process and it is going to take a more creative look you know as we do sort of use up some of the low hanging fruit on energy efficiency and so we are increasing our focus there and doing more in house in creative ways and we also are evaluating district energy we're spending one hundred thousand dollars on a plan that's going to be due at the end of june and while we don't have any specific capital items in the budget we are going to let the results of that study  inform what kind of investments are prudent as we look at the development of that potential new enterprise and as i mentioned before broadband is a revenue stream and an expense line in the electric utility right now we have about nine hundred thousand dollars in revenues we are planning to grow that and next year we've targeted a ten percent increase in revenues and that is customer growth that we're targeting we believe that there are areas that we're passing by now with limited capital risk that we should be able to increase our subscription rate and you know we will be using this this year to have a very robust conversation about long range plans for the community on broadband specifically for electric utility this is the picture we're targeting a net income of just under eleven million dollars for the electric utility and again the electric utility we have the investments that we talked also are just finishing from our liability standpoint the greenlee substation on the north side to help alleviate circuit loading we are continuing with smart grid investments we have some advance metering decisions to make we've got a fifty five hundred thousand dollars placeholder in capital for that we also have begun the work over the last couple years at doing automatic circuit switching and troubled areas and we're looking at continuing that work  and so we do have some smart grid investments that we're making for the electric system as part of this plan as well you know i've gone through a lot of this information already so i'm not going to spend a great deal of time on it just that the metrics that we would use to analyze financial performance look very healthy in the electric utility with a modest rate adjustment you know we're looking at on average over the next five years two point eight percent the first three years of that slightly higher the last two a little bit lower you know we're looking at about three point four percent i believe it is the year in just over  three point two percent the next couple years i believe that's the number or close to that overall now that depends you know where that goes it depends on the customer class you know overall the capital expenditures that we're looking here total about two hundred forty two million electric and so i do want to talk specifically before i move on to the rates analysis is that we're offering for the first time this year an elective option for energy that customers that would like to increase the mix of their power to come from renewables can can do that by electing blocks or percentage of their or their power to come from that at a rate of an adder of one and a half cents per kilowatt hour so a typical six hundred kilowatt hour customer for nine dollars a month could elect to get one hundred percent of their power from renewable energy and as i mentioned we have more than the states mandate are projected to have more than the states mandate so you know we'll be able to use that for this selective program how do we stack up on electric i think we stack up very favorably what's shown here is that two thousand and thirteen we have a very significant margin against  whether it's investor owned utilities other residential other municipal utilities or electric co ops we have a sizable margin after the rate change in two thousand and fourteen and again without making the rate adjustments for the others we still are at the bottom of that and a sizable margin below the other providers the same holds true for commercial and for residue or for industrial as well just to draw a little bit comparison here with consumers energy the investor on utility that's available to our other township customers in our service territory  see that we have a blue is ours c e is the other we have a summer and winter rate advantage and for six hundred kilowatt our customer looking at our adjustment and then looking at what consumers energy is proposing at the public service commission today they're looking at eleven percent increase in their rates we had about a twenty percent advantage before with both companies making adjustments will have about a twenty eight percent advantage for that six hundred kilowatt hour customer if you're a higher user that rate percentage of that rate advantage is even higher and so we think that we have a very good plan here to really transform what we're doing on electric make a very make improvements and efficiency and make improvements in our fuel mix and do that in a very cost effective manner so if you look at the impact now to  the electric user one thing to point out the about this year that's unique in electric is that we are proposing three years of rate adjustments and what that's going to do is it's going to give customers some certainty of what's happening that's also going to give us some certainty in terms of cash flow and revenues and when we're going out to the bond market and we can tell the rating agencies that we have pre planned for this and we have established rate structures for the next three years in anticipation of this project that establishes a tone and establishes an understanding about how the board and council are supportive of generating the revenue that's necessary to repay the bonds which makes the rating agencies very happy which makes the investors very happy which means lower rates which ultimately makes our customers very happy in the long run so what we have in front of you here is a series of adjustments for electric the average customer would see about a two dollar a nine cent per month change between thirteen and fourteen  and fifteen that would be another two dollars and fourteen cents in two thousand and sixteen to be another two dollars and seven hundred cents for a total of six dollars and forty cents over the three years in the water utility we're looking at about two dollars and seventy two cents for the average residential customer and the waste water utility again we're looking at two dollars and nine cents so for this year cumulatively we're looking at six dollars and ninety cents adjustment if somebody is using all three of our utility services which is an increase of about twenty three cents per day all three services can still be obtained through the b p w for less than four dollars per day and so that is the budget presentation and happy to answer any questions right thank you dave questions for dave in particular at this point or for dave or ryan all right well let's then move to the public hearing on the budget whether it's the d p w budget the general city budget whatever it is this is the time in the place the date everything for the annual budget hearing on our proposed fiscal fourteen budget which then also includes tax rate discussions and utility rate setting so for that i will say that the public hearing is open and if anybody would like to comment on any of these items related to the budget whether it be city or b p w now's the time to do so all right you will group mr reynolds i see you on as you promised last year but i also thank you all for putting the thirty one thousand dollar additional option on the agenda for this evening if you have any questions i can try to answer them and if i can answer them i will then all right thank you thank you very much anyone else care to address council tonight all right i will then close the public hearing on the budget and let's see since it's a fairly significant resolution mr city attorney anything you'd want to tell us as to what the resolution is exactly for i believe it's the approval of the budget of the general city of blue approval of the b p w budget setting of the tax rate and setting of the utility rates yes and an amendment that the council should have in its package tonight is that this resolution as amended would approve the raid adjustments that dave caster had addressed to the council the reason why we have included that is that the b p w budget is predicated on the adoption of those rate increases so it only made sense to have that before the council for consideration at the same time the budget has proved very good mr steady and miss mary i think  you know by virtue of your previous conversation but that the thirty one thousand solution is not in that resolution at this time correct we will in the that in a moment i believe i don't really understand what the resolution covers and what it does not cover could we get a motion please for discussion motion to adopt budget as presented all right including all the ratings tax rate and all sorts of correct all right that is the motion made by council member truth is there support for it supported by the mayor pro t discussion he would care to discuss this matter and who would like to go first now i want to extend my appreciation to ryan and the staff for all the diligent work to dave and his crew for all the diligent work on this budget time is always interesting the last few years have been very stressful i think is going to put it easily not that we're sitting back on our laurels not that we're flush but we had a chance to breathe and dream again which is something that we've not had the pleasure of doing for a very long time i think ryan said it very well a couple of weeks ago it was his predecessors and previous counsels that put us in the position that we were to be a solvent through the tough times and we will continue along those have a stick and to be solvent as possible into the future and i think this budget does that very well it's the same tax rate as last year there's a little bit of flexibility in there but there's also an awful lot of places where we have not been able to grow and sustain and bring some of those fund balances back up we have to do that to be able to sustain the  to be able to sustain ourselves as we did through the tough times i mean this is this is the time to rebuild i think it's had everything that we need we're not reducing any services any further than what we had to there should and as i said before we're starting to rebuild some of the funds that were taken down just a little bit to give us that much of that that more cushion not anything extravagant we're not saying well now's the time to build the taj mahal as in everything because we're a little bit flush that's not it at all we're doing it very responsibly in a sustainable manner and it's just nice to be able to dream to dream and breathe again thank you very much because they had more knowledge but sometimes when you're cutting my own bring it closer please ok also i think sometimes when you're cutting a million dollars out of a budget you know you've got to make some major changes and sometimes th it was a smaller amount that we had a look at and sometimes like a paper cut those those little ones really hurt because the they mean a little bit more to you so some i think last year we knew what we had to do this year is like ok what do we do this is something that i know we haven't looked at lightly and when you're asking people to pay taxes it's a difficult decision and it's something that you know we we could have a lot less and i think what we really are trying to do is have a tight belt as on the skinniest budget that we possibly can and yet maintain some realistic goals and look for the future you know there are some things coming around the mountain that we want to think about the civic center involve school and some other projects and hope with the city will have confidence in the city council that we are responsible for what we're tempted to do and i totally support this great comments please anyone favorably and positively about one of our budget so i would just echo a lot of what my two colleagues have said at this point and having like wayne looked at this with a critical eye often and i think we all do that trying to find ways to stay lean and and i think ryan and the team as a whole have brought us something very reasonable  makes sense it as mike said it doesn't get us ready to build any taj mahal but rather it platforms us to to look at some of those future projects with the knowledge that we've got a little capital to start with emphasis on a little still it's not like we're backfilling these funds and getting back to quite frankly the position was never really flush or an opulent position it was prudent and so who knows maybe within a few minutes all of the saying yes to one of these things for the first time and i'm excited about that and i think this is excellent and well presented what weeks ago in the middle of it i'm convinced that holland is one of the best run cities in the state of michigan it has nothing to do with nine people in this council it has everything to do with the city staff and mean we've not had a time where we've been blessed with so too much money or our coffers being full we have had to be lean and figure things out we've had to be resourceful and  staff has been outstanding to do that so i commend staff again for another year of figuring it out and setting this city on the right pace for the future is  todd had mentioned we're still not out of the woods there are good signs but i'm feeling very confident about the budget this year i think nettie tweeted earlier that the tone of this year is significantly different yes for reading what's going on on the internets appear as well as what's going on in in the session and we're not out of the woods yet but there is this is there's a different tone this budget is a replacement an upgraded sound and chambers part of our ongoing technology upgrades in this room my mike last thing actually has to do with the distribution system microphones are new already so other comments anyone else a woman divorce and just like everybody else has said we have weathered a lot of adversity and it's been hard one year after another and i'm sure every family that's represented will agree to what the times have been like and how are we going to do services as usual when we don't have money as usual and i as brian has said been amazed at how hard and how well the staff has worked in producing and coming up with ideas you know when we built the police station it really was an egg reasonable to build a police station in a swamp i mean the land is pretty good she there and you really don't think a big strong police station would make it there but they figured out how to make it stable by going down eighty three eighty six feet to bedrock and it won't be going anywhere no matter what kind of what we have i think in this area but i think it's that is a really in example of the kind of principles that on which this city is built that we are not cavalier with our finances and in and are understanding of people and our realisation that we need to come together to solve problems when we face them nobody turns around and says i don't care it's not my responsibility you figure it out i am entitled to whatever this is a kind of community that comes together to solve problems and that's exciting for me just the meeting that we had before this we were talking about getting the bridge reinforced in order to bring the crane in to start to fix the windmill and we thought that was going to be way way over what we budgeted for that reinforcement but our creative staff in conversation with the companies that isn't there is there some other way that we could solve this and oh yeah there were these huge steel beams that a company had that we could use instead and therefore we would have a permanent way to support that bridge and it would actually be barely over budget and twelve thousand dollars cheaper than the temporary ugly first solution with thought we were going for and that was just another example to me of how  staff doesn't just say it has to be done the way it's always been done and it's going to have to cost more and to bad and i never did that before so why should i have to do it now and it's not my problem that all of this is rearranged but instead to the person that i have met they they say no we want to do the best we want the best for how this city is run it's not easy it's not comfortable and it may not be part of my original skill set but i'm going to work together to figure out how to do this and how to do it better not just do it but do it better and so many things have been revamped over this short of amount of time into a leaner cleaner better organization with top flight people and i think one example of that is also when the government or when the governor has come up with these economic vitality ideas so many of the things on the list are things we've been doing  which is exciting and it's too bad they have to use staff time in order to prove that we're doing what we so we can get the money we're supposed to get in the first place back from the state with revenue sharing but whatever we still have been working at it in doing it i hope though that the bottom line to all of this joy and fulfillment of the budget this year doesn't make the public think ok they're out of the woods now they can handle all the capital improvement projects cars and all the streets and it's just going to be rosy because it isn't our capital projects we don't have much money in that fund and we have big things that we know need fixing and therefore we are turning to the community to ask for public private partnerships in order to make this community work at the level of quality that we all want because that is the bedrock of this community that we will do our best to present the best type of organization to the world so when we come with the windmill island project and ask about fixing the windmill we are not blowing smoke  we really need help and we also have to address the civic center and buy a school and then roll to farm and there's a whole list of projects that we as a community need to be responsible for and we need to keep thinking about new ways to do things and better ways to do things but underneath it all we know that we can solve these problems when we come together and all take our part the responsibility in making a better future for future generations because those that have come before us gave us so much so much we have to be grateful for such bedrock values and the the we need to honor that and honor them in a way that will also make those who come after us realize that we made the decisions that have built a better  led by our city manager does coming up with a budget proposal after last year i i think i was braced i think we all probably were for another session of you know how are we going to make it through another year what if we don't have to train him what are we going to have to do without it after the first i think the first evening of budget presentation it was like maybe we actually can the see the light at the end of the tunnel and there was just a different sense this year that times were not as dire and we were beginning to get back and into that mode where we could as mike says dream obit but we don't think we ever stop dreaming but realizing that there are things proactively that we can do their lives and lives of lives or lines of them or lines of items in this budget some have huge number numbers attached to them some have a relatively small number attached to them one thing i just want to briefly highlight that ryan mentioned was the holland youth connection summer work program where we're proposing to partner with the scape ministries  to provide some work experience for young adults in this city i see that as a very positive proactive kind of look to the future  exercises we talk of a lot about the difficulty we have with the gang activity in this town and our police department does a very good job and we're grateful for it for sort of the end result of that where we have to arrest and incarcerate people but as a saying goes maybe rather than pulling people out of the river all the time someone should go upstream and see what who's throwing them in i think this is  an opportunity to sort of become a bit more holistic about addressing that problem and situation so i'm grateful for that  i think it will be an opportunity for us to if we can sort of affect a life journey and the young person to tip it toward the positive that's a that's a good human investment it's been said that it's probably cheaper to put a person through a year college than put them in a year of incarceration in a juvenile hall or a jail or a prison so we could recognize an economic sense of doing something but there's a good human value in this kind of exercise too so as a trial thing we not sure how it's going to work out but as most things that we try  we'll see how it goes but i think there's great potential here to to make it impact on those folks who are going to follow us and we're such an important part of this community so thanks for the staff for all your hard work  i'm not really a big lover of numbers so i sort of fly a little higher with this budget stuff but i'm feeling good about this budget i feel good about how it affects but i agree with all comments that have been made about the budget up to this point and a great deal of appreciation for everybody who has  brought it to to this point i would however like to offer an amendment and i'll just get the amendment out there and we can talk about it more with the reasoning behind it or later but i would like to amend the budget to reflect an additional thirty one thousand dollar allocation to the holland historical trust and without getting too messy here but i would also like challenge the trust to go to our neighboring communities that have an interest in the trusts to see if they can ask them to dig a bit deeper as well and if they are successful that we would be credited back for any additional revenue that comes in from from those neighboring jurisdictions  that's needed off to be an actual amendment but no i think that the motion is the additional expenditure allocation to the trust of the thirty one thousand dollars subject to the trust seeking additional contributions from the neighboring township communities which would reduce the thirty one thousand dollars expenditure i would recommend that i think we can handle this through the city manager's office that that be just formalized by a letter to the trust so that there's complete understanding of that motion by the council tonight and i would further include that that thirty one thousand dollars  positively that the efforts of the holland historical trust up until several years ago the support that they received from the city  in the neighborhood of two hundred to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year and unfortunately as a result of our budget difficulties we needed to cut that again at the same time we did that we challenge the trust to go to our neighboring communities and to seek additional funding from them and they've done that they have gotten a substantial contribution from charter township and we would be remiss if we didn't express our and while we we appreciate those contributions as well quite honestly we wish that they could do a little better and we're going to ask that the trust go back and  they have been sort of the our collective memory they have been the keepers of our heritage and they have done it well and as they are now in the process of seeking substantial is backed up by a substantial match of other private funds that have been pledged and we would like to see that full private matching fund be available to them so  to jeffrey and to mary esther thank you for your efforts and to the rest of the trust board we appreciate what you've done and we would like to partner with you in  stable funding in your future as well additional comments they believe brightman want to go next yeah i would i would certainly applaud that effort  far as those conversations in the surrounding area in garnering support and don't discount that one bit my lack of support for for this particular amendment will be much as i discussed last week and that is on the expenditure side of things and we just you know we just heard a number of comments about the city as the as a whole and what we've been through over the past few years and how we've leaned up operations as best as possible to match up with the revenue projections that we had in place with that as we've talked about often being a very human capital intensive business that's usually where our costs lie and as i pointed out last week my struggle with this particular situation is the thirty one thousand dollars as i look at the expenditure side of things is largely associated with an f t e level that comes right back up to the beginning of crisis mode and those costs are roughly at thirty five thousand dollars total and human capital costs above the two thousand and eleven mark and so this city as a whole as an operation has not rushed back in to back filling with full time equivalents that's not been our practice that's not been the plan and that's not what's been brought from our administrator over here to the left and what i struggle with the most couple things we have charges for services that remain flat during the at least the years we have in front of us and on our sheet and we have human capital costs that don't par up with what we've asked of the rest of the departments within this city and so for what it's worth that was my desire to express a desire last week to consider this is a one off so we could do  that but if it's the pleasure of this council to have this and then meant folded in and taken on as a whole i understand that but i do believe this is against the grain of what every department has done in the previous years to continue the operation of making sure that we're right sized and lean financially other comments just a quick comment on the historical thing i certainly support it and i would like to hope that park in lake town and how i want to hometown chief would be feel as though they are a part of the historical family  great move forward to build some bridges and some commonalities and i hope that everybody will pitch in  chinks thank you trying to help us understand how this roughly two hundred thousand or so on our budget is badly needed at the trust and is there anything you do from that and i think what you heard that day from me and i think from others in the room was this is nothing better nothing no ill will against a trust there's just some things in our charter that we have to fund and that's where the that's where the rubber meets the road and the questions that were asked at least in my conversation where who are your who where are the people coming from who are visiting the trusts and what are the support we getting from the townships and those kinds of questions and you know here we sit here in three months later skift is gone from fifteen thousand to fifty thousand we've got a first time gift of ten thousand from park township in a rather modest but a gift from lake town township for the first time and i think in the works is a millage or some kind of broad way to support the millage in a truly regional fashion for the truly regional asset that it is there's also as bob said mentioned a two hundred fifty thousand dollars private investment on the table that if we can secure the funds you need including this extra one extra thirty one thousand you're asking us for tonight that will pretty much  secure that gift as well i think to me voting no on this would send the wrong signals to some people that i think need our help right now  i would want to send a message to the townships that you know they'll never this township city relationships is a very prickly thing but i think largely in the last year or two or three and i think largely from some of the work that our mayor has done in putting an emphasis on thinking regionally and getting some new folks in the room and talking about how do we do that conversations made easier by the fact that not only is our budget been strained everybody's budgets and been straight so i think we're starting to bear some fruit here with the discussions we've been having with other local units of government and thinking in terms of how do we more effectively and equitably fund certain things that should be looked at that  i just well like well i'm not opposed to going back to the townships i don't want to stipulate that we need to do that i think that they've made a pretty good step forward i certainly wouldn't want to suggest to the donors that have been courting t document two hundred fifty thousand dollars on the table wouldn't want to jeopardize that and let them feel like they're not they're jumping into some partnership here that isn't shaky legs with the with them a hopefully will support them in the form of a millage and i would want to send that message to the leadership of the trust because you've done exactly what we asked you to do and frankly you did it you came out far better had than i thought you  so surely from you know in two thousand and ten we were the city of holland's contribution was almost half your budget forty five percent and the projection here that in two thousand and fourteen our contribution would be somewhere around the area of eight or nine percent that's the direction we're headed in and i wouldn't want to jeopardize in any way shape or form by suggesting any kind of no vote here for the so i will support this and i do want to commend you for what you've done i think you've done a great for us nancy please you know thank you for all your hard work i mean it seemed pretty impossible half in your contribution from the city and that's like why i get up in the morning that's that was pretty hard and all of the different things that have been mentioned and but the way you went out and found private funding a quarter of a million dollars of it a quarter of a million dollars of that funding what areas give that kind of money to support history and and teaching about the past to better our future that is amazing and then to talk to all the different municipalities and has been said  to be way more fruitful than any effort up to this part ep up to this point and as far as your staffing goes i think you know we realize many of us realize the value of history and how important it is to preserve it and how much we can learn from it but not everybody does and a lot of people say oh history that's that kind of dusty thing that some people get into in a basement somewhere and it's really nothing that affects me what do i do with the museum and if we don't tell those stories if we don't sell that you need to hear the stories nobody's going to learn it and our history will be preserved in a box but not in the lives of people and so it is critical for you to have the staff to be able to produce the exhibits to do the marketing and the programming that will give people reasons to come to the museum and therefore they will learn the value of our history if we do not make that connection we might as well just all keep it in bob's storage or something this is a way bigger goal and a way bigger purpose so  and like has been said you know we set up an amount it didn't quite make it but it's not we can't walk away from it we can't be justice without mercy we have to be reasonable and i really think it's most important for you guys to get on to your plan of a funding system that's going to take us into the future rather than running around backwards to try and redo undo you only get so many hearings with people in particular positions and i wouldn't want you to burn your persuasive capital by continuing to knock on the door about thirty one thousand dollars when we are looking at a plan that will be way better for everyone in the region for the preservation of all of this so i really indorse what you have done and i think it's more than reasonable for us to support you in this little tiny stopgap measure had been listening to all of this and while i i believe one hundred percent in the mission in the goals in the purpose of the hon historic mission same way i have feel strong about other communities that have museums in them or historic museums museums that were at one time funded by city budgets maybe this is just my experience and background with arts and culture institutions i just do not see a future of public funding rightly city funding of arts and culture institutions we've had this debate for four years and at least for mean again and the funding models of cultures additions are changing and that's the reality of the situation we're in today and i know there are assets that we owe more than they're ours and they're interested but there are models to make this transition and i liked where we were going and i think we should continue to proceed i again i'm  my background in culture in arts is very focused on programming and money follows programming and ambitious programming while marketed and communicated results in strong institutions  it is a model that's proven time and again and that's what i wish for the holidays story trust is a strong institutions that's built on strong programming and strong marketing activities looking forward and unfortunately not on  the city coming in at the last minute and funding the institution so i'm not in favor of the amendment tonight anyone else ok very briefly not tell you what i'll just let my vote speak for me we are voting on the amendment please call the roll on the amendment dykstra yes motion passes seven yes and two no ok the the original budget motion has been amended any final comments on the budget as amended post budget and basically the that the back row group there especially as it pertains to the general city oh and this guy on the right hand side here this robinson fellow had a thing or two to do about it and his paralysis as well  putting together a document like this obviously is time consuming in and of itself but the things that go into the actual document are the real guts of the matter and you know technically that the sat staff begins this process at truly after the first of the year in reality they are always working with massaging working with you know adjusting the budget as the year goes on thinking about what comes next you know that the new normal we are now in certainly different from the old normal so i know firsthand spending a bit more time here that you know that the staff from department heads on down are constantly thinking about budgetary implications of things that they do and that is usually reflected over the past at least five years where we've seen at the end of the year the numbers as they finally come in are actually better than the numbers that were budgeted so if you look at for the past at least five years what the that the budgeted expenditures were going to be they are released when you add in the revenues we are actually in a better position once all the numbers come in versus what we thought we would be during the budgeting process so that only happens because people are minding their p's and q s during the course of the year and not just saying hey it's may first they passed that great we have to think about it till january so kudos to the staff kudos to you ryan for for a very good document for us one brief word on the sort of the the changing new normal for that we now face certainly we are out of crisis mode this was a whole lot simpler this year in some ways than what we have experienced the past couple of years i would say that in part it's made easier because of the fact we have had some slight growth in the tax base and some growth in the electric sales and growth in things that impact our revenues but equally  and i would argue more importantly is that this budget was easier because the organization that we now have we went through the tough waters of the past couple of years and works to get the organization to the size that it is now if we had an  organization the size of it we had two or three years ago with these revenues we would be we would be facing sort of that deficit situations as well so it happens on both sides not just because the revenues are increasing but it is also because we have to use the awful vernacular we've right sized to this organization and to that also credit goes to our staff because they are the ones who really drive the implementation of those kinds of decisions before the approval of this budget but certainly we see the benefits of investing in the very expensive physical capital of these utilities and we saw it as we think about the waste treatment plant and some of the effects that didn't happen with this storm that would have happened absent the head works investment and for me the most important slides and numbers that i look at as it pertains to the b p w especially are the numbers of what are we paying visa v what others in the area are paying because you know as i've probably said at nauseum for those who have heard me speak on this topic before you know we can all price compare a gallon of milk somewhere and we can all see what do you know a chevy cost versus a ford or what a chevy costs at this dealer versus that but in most instances what we know is in the utility world the bill we get is the bill we get and it's always too big so we have no concept of what others are paying because we don't get the opportunity to pry shop and these slides demonstrate not only that we that we have very very good service and very reliable service but at the price we pay for that service is substantially lower well certainly lower ends in many cases substantially lower than what other other customers pay their utilities so for that you know you deserve appreciation and thanks for it and those are my comments on this budget year a very different kind of experience this year but certainly a much more welcome one than we've had in the past couple of years with that we have the budget resolution as amended and i would ask you to call the roll please birds yes the end of yes might mean yes least probably three fiscal years that we've had unanimously passed budget so thank you all very much all right we're moving right along here tonight through all the way down to item ten on the agenda which is the adoption of an ordinance related to apple avenue sixty one from our one family residential to the p r d planned residential development district this comes to us from the planning commission and i believe our head of community neighborhood services maybe we'll be getting a new computer over at the station as well thank you what we have before you tonight is the second reading on a recommendation coming from the planning commission to rezone property  t sixty one apple avenue from our one residential one family residential to the p r the planned residential development zone this is a recommendation that is coming to you at the requests coming to you from the planning commission at the request of senior care properties that is rangers incorporated as they look to make additional investment into the senior housing stock in the city and all p r d planned residential development so it's the rezoning of that piece this would then allow them to to provide additional development again you can see the the one parcel i'll stay with this one would allow them to to provide a new eighty five unit time to get care living facility and a forty four unit assisted living facility along with eight additional single family attached units on the property the new development would occur right within this this area here with the addition of building out some of the the attached units that were part of a previously approved plan that did not move forward this plan also includes the the extension of i do read parkway  through all the way over to apple avenue so that the develop one fully development when fully completed will occupy this area and this area also has a property here that is developed and their apple darn property is down in this location as well this is a recommendation it comes unanimously from the planning commission and it is pursuant to a development plan that has been all right any questions for phil or i guess you could ask greg or me as well or brian as we all sit in the planning commission as well so i called them for three fill when we had talked about this is a week or so back there were some concerns about the drainage in things like that those are being addressed prior to any construction being done yes they are the plan has been approved conceptually there are still some some details to work out on that plan but yes our city engineer has reviewed the plans is working with the applicant to make sure those are all addressed before construction begins if we as as we said before we have some water issues especially the crick closer to twenty fourth street and we just don't want to add to that problem with all the high concentration blacktop that we have in that area now correct yes property the planning commission reviewed this there were not concerns for traffic there have been and have not been concerns for traffic from the existing development that is there none that i'm aware of have have been expressed  so that's part of the the staff review the city engineer reviews plans for traffic movements and and volume as well you know the question is  know this project's all being the development aspects of this are all covered by the development cost the continuation i don't i don't read parkway it will be a public street but those improvements are being borne out by this by this development and and any additional changes along the frontage here will be covered by this development thank you for the both of you for bringing up points that i asked about earlier some of us are concerned about traffic traffic on twenty fourth street was tired of me saying forty fourth street traffic on twenty fourth street has already gotten very bad you're going to be redoing twenty four st this year let's take a look at the apple twenty four st intersection with more traffic i think it's a good time to get water is an issue one of the developments you did i don't know what ten fifteen years you've already done the curb and gutter about half way down on the east side and my question that i had earlier was are you going to charge us or you know half way to twenty fourth street because of all the development  a big properties here and you know it's that road really isn't used much now except as a racetrack you can point that out to the chief later this is a big change from the neighborhood we moved into twenty years ago we had we had woods we had corn fields we had deer we had pheasants and right now i think we've got fifteen traditional single family homes if you draw a straight line north you get to the township for you to house how many to the south but your area not many not many to the east where this little past outpost of single family residences and there aren't and frankly the everything's growing around us that takes away from  that just take a look at that i'm i'm not saying absolutely no although one of my neighbors just texted me to say tell him no but take a look at that what's left of the traditional single family residences and there we do have water issues hastings in twenty four st the water was over the curbs during this last rain we had a current running down twenty four spring ok we've had all kinds of building going on around us and it takes away from the residential area just think about that moment all right thanks sorry thank you anyone  else why don't we have a lesson or diligent send a reporter would like to address council we have only two members left of the public in chambers a representative rangers and we invite you to try to give us some info on the development and i'm sure th maybe a question or two as well so thank you tom higgins i represent rangers incorporated and their affiliates nine fifty taylor in grand haven michigan just briefly to address some of the issues that have been raised in that drainage issue we are working on that we do provide one hundred year water retention on site it's designed for that it was designed originally when we did the rest of the area in the most recent rain event we were out there and took pictures of the retained huge area and it was nowhere near the capacity of that which it shouldn't be because it's designed with the remaining area of the impervious surface that's going to be installed at the time so we retain all of our water there is a drain that goes through there that we've agreed in the resolution that we will clean up that drain and make sure that it works we've already discussed with the neighboring condominium association that is having some spillage over into that drain from their own retaining age area and we have agreed that we will work with them when we do our own construction to be able to help them out with improving their drainage so i think the drainage problem is pretty well under control and we certainly don't want a problem with that for our own benefit that needs to be a benefit to our  development wetland area that will be something that would be nice for the development in terms of traffic the currently approved site plan is for condominiums single family units virtually no one in our system living units drives we have a certain amount of staff that comes in there we offset our staff hours in order to avoid the peak driving hours we do that on purpose both for our own staff and to ease the traffic in in neighborhoods it just makes it easier on everyone so that those are things we do the staff for the the higher staffing area will have twenty five total staff but they will be in three shifts so that the impact of staffing on the area will not be that you norma's the eighty five  unit or cagr get unit again we have most of our developments have many of the goods and services that people require right within the unit so we find that people move in there when they originally move in they have cars they sit in the parking lot we also have buses that we provide to take people around for their shopping to doctor's appointments things like that we find that they end up leaving their cars in the parking lot and we don't have the problem and eventually people get rid of their cars because they find out they don't need them anymore so yes we need some parking but we tend not to u the full amount of parking that some of these areas would normally have terms of improvements the question was asked about that we are working together with other people in the area we're going to install our own improvements for instance sidewalk the road way and those types of things with our own money we're also going to work together with the neighbors in order to give them the benefit of the volume of what we're doing so that the neighbors can put in their sidewalks in their areas at a reduced price for them which will benefit everyone and we'll be able to perhaps complete some of the sidewalks in the area we're here to answer any questions you might have that i haven't already answered we think it's going to be a good development we have demand in the about water retention other water retention ponds and this is such a small front that's hard for me to read it but other pension pots and if so how many there is one one retention pond in the south west corner of the of the site and that there are drainage areas that travel from the remainder of the area that does flow into that and that again is  designed for a one hundred year rain event and as i say when we went out there last week it was and that that contains all of the water from our site none of the water from our site flows  into the drainage course that is to the south of our property there it's a controlled flow out of that retain age area so all of the water from our area will flow into that it's been tested and it is designed to hold one hundred year rain event just regular because that's the retaining that's already there correct ok when we when we built the other portions of our development we sized it to be able to accommodate the existing kind of many m structures and when he tested that to the impervious area that we were going to put in it was still sufficient to take care of all of the  drainage i am just punching up i think you can probably see no a map of the area from google or whomever which i think demonstrates what you're talking about with the existing retention ponds correct right in this sort of area and i don't have any way to a point on it unfortunately and you go south and west of that that is where the routine age area is currently built and that is a as i say it's designed to be one hundred year rain event right other questions for the applicant please i don't want to harp on the the traffic situation i have and i have been consistent with the high density in the first word this is the first word even though it's on  the other side of the highway we seem to have a concentration on my end of town or our end of town which is not the traffic concerns should not be limited to only your residence my hope would be that your residents will have visitors that they're not there and forgotten absolutely so that is got to be part of your traffic consideration right now you don't have a through street most of the traffic is off hastings rock to the east there is going to be some more traffic on apple avenue we have a school there right now what its fate is going to be we don't know but there will be a school there there is a school to the north of you twenty fourth is very heavily trafficked very heavily travel applicant at this particular point but we're kind of relapsing into planning commissions be all right thank you very much for coming on anyone else care to address counsel on this matter otherwise i will close the public hearing ok any final questions that you may have before we take a motion or receive a motion all right a motion would be appropriate at this point at this moment please  stress supported by white men ok discussion pl couple comments i can appreciate the interest and the concern about additional traffic and so forth i'm looking at this google map here too and looking at how this proposed facility is going to be situated relative to the surrounding neighborhood it is more on the southern section tied more to the church and the existing facilities and so forth and seems to me to be a bit more removed from some of the other residential properties so in terms of you know sort of that kind of imposing impact on  me seems to be a bit less of a concern i haven't sat at that facility all day long to really study the traffic but knowing some folks who live in that facility visiting up from time to time my impression is that again not to imply that all people don't go faster go anywhere but i think that the type of traffic movement is different from a facility like this or are being proposed than might be some of the other multifamily to wally's or structures that we have in other parts of the  first ward or other parts of the city so it's always a concern because when you have a large higher density project like this you have to pay attention to what the ramifications are going to be but given the nature of what this is and who is going to be living there and sort of the life movement proclivities of those residents i'm less it's less of a concern for me with this kind of a project that would be a for you know multi fourplex kind of development yourself or something like that so and for the record this project is right on the border of the sixth ward as well so i have some skin in this game as well when place yeah just a couple quick things here i know that apple avenue area pretty well taught at apple avenue school for several years and that school was really designed to become much larger and the bypass came in and that changed the full make up of that whole area and prior to that time where the k seven building when i was a kid we pick strawberries there so that whole area has changed dramatically over a lot of years and but i appreciate scott bringing it up and i think we need to always look at issues of water and sidewalks and curbs and traffic there are always out there so i really do appreciate bring you know but it looks like it's a reasonable project and i'm hoping the traffic will be reasonable in that area as well i hope that the water's going to work out city engineers looked at this developer has had an engineer look at this it's a bunch of discussion about this the planning commission and discussed the fact that a lot of their water from their property will be held on site and slowly go out as the as the levels allow for major events alternately the only way to the development of one sort or another eventually would come to this property creating more impervious surface one way or the other and the only way to not have that sort of situation occur is to not permit development there but that obviously is something that we can't do absent buying the property so i am comfortable that  that through engineering people have put in place appropriate water control technologies such that you know absent a thousand year five hundred year flood which you know frankly i don't care what's in it would be that will be the only area that has water issues if something like that happens again to be sure so you know i think that you know people are passionate about their neighborhoods as well they should be and you know ultimately something like this is what is is going to be headed for that particular part of the city i think that apple door has been a good neighbor further up on hastings and other facility is always well maintained it is an attractive facility and as as they discussed their plans to us in the planning commission it's sort of has an incremental feel to it you start almost at one end of the street and work your way toward the other and i think that that is something that is an attractive feature for those of our residents new or old who in no pun intended new or old residence to get to the city who want to find a place where they can move to and spend the later years in life in a safe and attractive community so with that please  address council on matters not otherwise appearing on the agenda scott you're the guy who's left basically let's you've got something all right we'll move on that all right takes us then  to number four was while we're really ripping through the rest of this agenda here gifts fantastic all the way down to fourteen the five point one some gifts please the city managers office is pleased to report guests parks recreation and transportation received donations totally one hundred twenty five dollars for the repairs of the windmill island does one from peter ensue given seize donation in memory of george leven c and edward lee donations totalling six thousand dollars has been received in support of the two thousand and thirteen how and in bloom from hope college and the how and area convention and visitors bureau it from five hundred dollars donation to the bow school for youth admissions has also been received from an anonymous donor community human relations department international relations commission received donations totaling eight hundred fifty dollars and one hundred fifty dollars are in kind donations from robert dinoire chevrolet hope college international multicultural education global concepts enterprise and the in kind donations from j p's and de boer bakery donations have been received in support of events organized holland area youth council as follows the mixer event for the teen homeless and this awareness in the amount of three hundred eighty three dollars and the run of the mill fundraiser when my island repairs gratitude be forwarded to the donors that's it i'm kidding that's a joke you know in all seriousness what is the pleasure of counsel move we accept with appreciation then to item number fifteen communications from the city manager two items i want to thank sue harder and a paralysis for instigating that's wrong word for initiating a table at the fiesta so this saturday from ten to four we will be staffing that table and all council human relations commission and international mission members are invited to stop by assess but i think we'll probably have it handled so no problems if you have other plans we look forward to enjoying ourselves as well at that fun event the next thing relates to our recruitment  we had a deadline of monday and we received forty five applications for the human relations commission position and we began the process of winning that down with the committee of the human relations commission and we have received thirty applications for the international relations commission so we think that we have some good candidates and we're working with the international issues commission on that as well and we'll keep you posted right excellent questions for the city manager good communications for me this evening a few items but first we'll start off with the ordinary one which is please go to city of holland dot com to find information about your city about ways to get in communication with city staff with city council telephone numbers e mail addresses all sorts of things can be found on the city's website also we have facebook pages well a bunch of them actually for various  segments of the city whether it's downtown or city of holland and a twitter feed so for those of you tweeters out there at city of holland is the the handle you want to look for all right some specific things  first i had the privilege today of being a participant one of the participants of a conference and that put on by the governing magazine organization and they're based in california they picked i think it was three or four states in the us to do kind of a  statewide state of the state sort of conference and one of the things was a panel of michigan mayors sort of the state of the state we followed governor snyder then a state of the state from the view of michigan's cities and i joined a mere hartwell from grand rapids tem was also in attendance and he can attest that in fact the conversation was indeed quite lively it was a great opportunity and you walk away from those kinds of things again more firm than ever in the fact that this is a pretty special place that we have here the west side is a special place altogether michigan's a special place but we in holland are very fortunate and for nine of us to sit here we've been bequeath quite an amazing gift and i'm reminded that our first and foremost job is to  take care of that if not screw it up and handed hopefully to the next group of persons who sit at these chairs in at least as good if not a better position than it is when we received it we have some of this this is you know in addition to budget time this is a very busy time of the year and in the city of holland obviously we start this weekend now we've already had some gas coming in to town in fact there was a group from taiwan here yesterday an official delegation from taiwan started in chicago spent an afternoon here in holland and then were on their way for three days to detroit i will tell you i bumped into them downtown doing something else and what it kudos to ana paralysis for being one of the guides for this group in town nathan box also dressed in full dutch regalia including wooden shoes which aren't any comfort any more comfortable outside of philip time than what they are during tulip time but anyway a wonderful group of people very i think they walked away my impression was very impressed with our community and the reception they received here if only for an afternoon so we've already started to see tourists in town which is a wonderful thing and the flowers are just absolutely spectacular position even this afternoon versus this morning what a difference incredible this saturday's fiestas ryan mentioned happens at the civic center you know plenty of food excellent food there you get the carnival right next door fiesta in the civic center i've had the privilege of meeting with this year's court for a fiesta king and queen and it is an incredibly impressive bunch of students from the area black river west west ottawa and also holland high school person's  so on balance the entirety of this group i think is the strongest collection of court contestants they've had in the years that i've been hanging out with them and talking with them so really impressive bunch and i invite obviously all of council but all of the city to enjoy  fiesta which is a great celebration of a substantial part of our communities heritage then we get to tulip time into windmill island gardens and i want to show you something if it pops  that's showing up on the monitors here but i think it is showing up on the on the hopefully will be on the screens going to folks at home in any event this is of course the city's web page and i want to show you how simple it is to find the the ability to donate to this wonderful project we have going on the windmill and gardens project front and center a surprise if our control room guys might be able to working ok it's on the monitors out there but not in here that's kind of bizarre let's try this again here i don't know it's going to work for and how all you do is you get the first item on the left hand side of the home page blowing it up here and you'll see something that says donate to windmill island to the windmill island gardens future fund here if you click push on the here it will take you directly to the community foundation page and i'm not sure that any of this is showing up on television but will will make sure that we repeat this announcement in the event that it is not and you can donate online you can donate by check either to city hall or the community foundation and donations have been rolling in and we're appreciative for all of those that come in and then finally it's still up time time and we will not be meeting again until after the festival so this is our annual opportunity to encourage all to enjoy the festival be exceptionally welcoming to those who come and visit us to put our but best foot forward and all that sort of thing this year we have i think just a great energy about what is happening with the festival everything from kenny rogers selling out of the t shirt contest which has been a smashing hit too i think great excitement for the wednesday may eighth to look time luncheon formally called the governor's luncheon i've heard they've sold close to nine hundred tickets for that event which is just an exceptionally wonderful number i think they're at least at capacity if not over capacity in some ways so it'll be great you know we typically get you know a lot of the state or local business leaders and community leaders we get a lot of visiting dignitaries from across the state i believe the attorney general obviously the governor will be here even learnt the speaker of the house and some other state legislators will be here as well so we should have a nice turnout for that and we're hoping for good weather and maybe who knows depending upon how everything shakes out maybe we'll even have mr nugent show up i don't know course everyone heard the little news about ted nugent's quarrels with the pure michigan campaign and we got sucked into that and i would just only say that certainly we love our hunting or fishing here in the great state of michigan but we also love our festivals are community festivals until time is certainly emblematic of that bringing in visitors from almost every state and many many countries from around the world and if you were to show up i think you'd have a good time and know we'd have a good time we would be honored to have him so with that that is my report for this meeting is there communication from counsel tonight your worship whether mister just to share a thought that came to be as i was driving around today a bit and kind of to amplify some of the comments the mayor has made with tulip time just around the corner and that huge influx of visitors that will have among us many of them will not be privy if had the experience with some of our traffic unique traffic patterns and maybe a paying attention to at times tulips rather than the traffic just occurs to me  that next upcoming week perhaps an extra measure of patience in the hospitality extended from us to our visitors would go a long way in making your life good for everybody a couple of extra minutes spent getting from here to there on our part in the greater scheme of things really isn't that big a deal so i would just urge that in the next week fine reminder other communications from council nancy place i don't like to say thank you to the hundreds of volunteers and their families who sacrifice throughout this whole time to enjoy the party and to entertain all the company that's coming coming and to show up on time for all the different things that they're committed to it we could not have this festival were it not for all those hundreds of people that continue to be involved year after year and it's such an amazing gift that we've been given  to have a festival like this and to celebrate the two up in our heritage and so i really appreciate all the work that has gone into it from so many different people in so many different families and thank you for your dedication