good evening everyone welcome to this specially scheduled meeting of the holland city council this is kind of our annual time when we do our meetings a little bit differently in the month of may because of last weekend's festivities otherwise known as tulip time we begin tonight's lead and then we will immediately follow that with the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america so if you are in chambers and would like to join us in those items we invite you to do so by standing if you're at home and want to join us you can stand up to tonight i'll be reading and prayer which comes from a book from my great grandfather who was a minister in the reformed church has called prayers for all occasions and this one is for prayers for special needs that of making decisions so join me if you would a wonderful counselor we pray that amidst the many things which influence us in making decisions your pure and loving spirit may overrule all that is unworthy help us to jude to choose the good part and to be assured that that which is good shall not be taken away from us cleanse our hearts of selfishness in purity and guile grant that all questions immediately before us may be made so plain plain that we shall have no forebodings as we make our decision nor vain regrets after it is made in your name we pray amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and through the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for  all there are paper copies of the agenda for this evening's meeting located in the rack in the used to be in the rear of the room i guess it's over there perhaps in that corner of the room i'm not seeing a lot of paper there so perhaps someone's grab some already up there are some  the t v stand in the in the rear of the room while you're away for a week and everything falls apart you'll note as well if you have a an electronic device of some sort whether at home or here in chambers you can find not only a copy of the agenda for this evening's meeting but as well all of the background material council has reviewed in preparations for tonight's meeting and the easiest way to do that is to go to the city's web page city of holland dot com go to the calendar page today's date and you will find all of that material there we try to get it on to the website good few days before the meeting so you can have an opportunity to look and review the things that are on council's decision making and see what information we're basing decisions upon you will note as you look at the agenda tonight there are a variety of items listed on it that have an asterisk next to them these are items that are on what is called the consent agenda which means that after we read through what they all are unless changed we're going to handle all of those items together one motion and one vote collectively and handle them in that fashion we do this because it expedites our meeting and we think that by and large these items are somewhat routine and have been previously discussed by council before now what we will do is i will ask our deputy city clerk to read for us those particular items then i'll invite the audience here this evening if that too to have any of those items removed from the consent agenda and i'll talk about that  second before we take that vote so for the moment and i would you please read for us what is presently on the consent agenda take a deep breath and start when you're ready to approve the minutes of the regular meeting h april fifteenth budget review session help april sixteenth in study session held april twenty second two thousand and fifteen item eleven eight to accept and file of office from various boards and commissions except for study and report he an application p a one ninety eight submitted by everest expedition i'll see doing business as the warden company at one nineteen east seventeenth street item fourteen eighty two to approve a construction delegation in payment agreement with accounting for the two thousand and fifteen wastewater treatment plant improvement project item fourteen c one to approve an agreement with the can't county sheriff's department for the use of two motorcycles for the purpose of traffic enforcement and patrol during the two thousand fifteen tulip time festival item fourteen c two to approve an agreement with the city of allegan police department for the use of seat belt convincer during tulip time and national night out as part of a how public safety efforts to provide impart an educational component to attending the events item fourteen d one to refer claims filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier in city attorney for consideration i had important to to approve the renewable of various annual licenses as required by section seventeen dash seven of the ordinance and adopt a resolution for the submittal of pool billiards licenses effect of may one two thousand and fifteen through april thirtieth two thousand and sixteen item fourteen d three to adopt a resolution to approve of my license for fireside brewing company located at four thirty west seventeenth street suite twenty seven item fourteen d four to approve broadcasting corporation for your works permit application for saturday july fourth two thousand and fifteen with conditions established by the fire and police department to be enforced item fortini one point three to approve a contract with progressive for design engineering and construction management for the south shore village improvement plan and in a budget amendment in the amount of twenty eight thousand five hundred ninety five dollars within the municipal capital in improvement fund item fourteen one point four to approve the c d g in title meant funds and to adopt a resolution authorizing the mayor to sign the federal application authorize the mayor and deputy clerk to execute the c d b grant agreement and funding approval and to execute funding contracts with good samaritan ministries three sixty and the fair housing center west michigan subject to said city or to an attorney approval item fourteen need one point five to adopt a resolution amending the liquor license policy to include the business improvement district to the development just go to districts or area license sections fourteen two point one to remove the site him from the agenda and present it to the may twenty two thousand and fifteen city who regularly council meeting item fourteen need to point to to approve a joint resolution with how in church or township to accept the michigan mantra resources trust fund grant for when my island gardens non motorized bridge in regional trail project in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars item fourteen e two point three to approve the list of the two thousand and fifteen cracks ial candidates to establish a budget amount of fifty thousand and approve a purchase order agreement with scotland construction at a unit cost of a dollar and thirty seven cents per pound item fourteen two point four to approve a bid submitted by black gold transport inc in the amount of nineteen thousand two hundred eighty five for the skip million and paving project with funds to be allocated from the two thousand and fifteen resurfacing project item fourteen two point five to approve the notification plan for the proposed to remove all of the seventy one mid block street light as denoted as noted with this item to return to council at the july one two thousand and fifteen regular council meeting i had in fourteen two point six to amend the fiscal year two thousand and fifteen budget with an increase of eleven thousand eight hundred fifty dollars in the street improvement fun for the south shore condos storm sewer project i had in fourteen eat three point one to adopt a resolution appointing tim factory finance director as city assessor as recommended by city manager ryan patton fourteen east three point two two adopt a resolution authorizing the collection of winter taxes property taxes under the one hundred dollars threshold to be placed on the summer tax bills item fourteen east three point three two accept the quarterly investment report january through march two thousand and fifteen as presented item fourteen eat three point four two accept the march two thousand and fifteen monthly financial report as presented item fourteen three point five to approve of  submitted by k n r truck sales for a two thousand and sixteen tandem truck chassis in the amount of eleven one hundred twelve thousand two hundred twenty three dollars and sixty cents for the transportation services department item fourteen e three point six two approve a bid submitted by truck and trailer special teas for the purchase of a fifteen foot dump truck in the amount of eighteen thousand seven hundred forty four dollars and eighty cents for the street department i am fourteen need three point seven to approve a bid submitted by truck and trailer specialties for the purchase of a slide in saw a box with auger sand salt spreader in the amount of sixteen thousand six hundred sixty seven for the streets department item fourteen e four point one and nineteen to accept in place on prefers reading or next amendments to section eighteen dash forty nine for the increase in the parking violation for yes with the final hearing to be held on june three two thousand and fifteen regular council meeting i had imported five point three to approve a partnership agreement with good temps for services associated with the howling youth connections summer job program all right well i asked the clerk to read that for us one more time just getting that is what is right now in the consent agenda that are going to handle all together now perhaps just because it's on that agenda that we think it's relatively routine perhaps you're here tonight because of one of those items specifically you want to talk about it separately to accomplish that i would invite anybody to come to the microphone at this time and tell us which item you would like taken off the consent agenda and we will then handle it in its ordinary spots or anybody care to remove an item that was listed on the consent agenda any member of council care to remove one or more items from the consent agenda was removed from the agenda generally ok just to be clear all right so forty two point two is off anything else for members of council seeing not what is the pleasure of council on the amended consent agenda tonight motion this year as we were fortunate to have last year three young persons from the netherlands spending some time in our holland as we like to say and at this point though they're smart and moving their e the thing is it's pretty hard to get young people interested in history that's why they said maybe the best idea to do that is the us was any interest in our project at all there was there was an overwhelming response the only thing that stood out to us however is that there were not really that many young people in full responding to our project this year we want to solve that by integrating our project into high school history programs when i was young we had a history project weeks in school where you would do it that is just throw away the books well at least for three or four days and then go into the field and do research yourself an ex really explore history and see that it's more press and then maybe the word or to history itself  makes you believe what we want to do is look if we can fit it into the high school program and then let them go and ask their parents or grandparents mom dad do you know  body you know where we come from make that into a story and do not write it down on paper but really upload it to a social media platform that we are going to create because at the same time students in the netherlands are also uploading netherlands could really give them more information about your crime and that their family came from and that way it will be more like a lasting connection instead of just reading the book and then making the exam passing it and never look back will organize some sort of reunion for people who emigrated from drent in the nineteenth century or later so we're looking for people from drent in here in holland michigan where later they are only going to look in places like australia and other places in the world so and for this event we're also organizing a some sort of battle between students of hope college here in holland and and schools and with the people over there in organizing the event and drawing that will happen in two thousand and twenty last thing i would like to say is that me personally i'm looking for people who have their origins in drones so their grandparents great grandparents who came from the problems  wonderful thank you and tomorrow from four thirty to five thirty so thursday may fourteenth four thirty five thirty here in city hall there is going to be a reception held for the three of you the international relations commission and the general public is wonderful great well we hope to see you around town quite a bit and if we can be helpful in the other ways but otherwise i think many of us will see it tomorrow sadly i will actually be in washington at an event at the dutch embassy tomorrow night's rice will not be here so let the well be with the ambassador ok we have a small item tonight of the approval of the twenty sixteen city budget and before we do that we will turn to the city manager who will give us a cursory report we have had a series of of meetings public meetings in the month of april where the council dobin with certainly much greater detail than what we'll see tonight for a few period a few days to go over the budget talk through some of the issues  all right very good with that city manager ryan cut in place i thank you that was a pretty good introduction i did want to compliment council for surviving this process beginning in january and culminating in tonight i did a rough count that there must be  thirty to forty hours alone of the time that you spend in public meetings associated with this budget let alone any time you've done and studying at outside of this meeting and or getting public feedback of course it started with the the council coffee and variety of strategy setting retreats and discussions after that i also want to say that this does not come without effort on the part of the staff either the leadership team i estimate probably spent one hundred one hundred twenty hours each on their particular budgets and joint review as a budget team i did likewise perhaps maybe a little more in relation to drafting the message finance director of oddly and his team it's quite certain spent  in excess of two hundred hours preparing this annual budget a budget is intended to both control expenditures in keeping with the need to protect the public dollars and that resource it's also an instrument to plan i again try to streamline our activities for the maximum gain for the community in keeping with that there is one resolution rather than two voting actions and that resolution has been amended to signify unlike former years where the utilities were adopted separately they would be adopted in the last two paragraphs of the resolution you'll see that you'll be setting with your vote tonight with your  water sewer and electric rates as well so those are subject to the public airing as well so with that let's begin i want to want to do it this way efforts i want to briefly cover the mission statement especially for people watching the strategies that resulted from the council retreat touch on some of the action plans by no means not all there are over probably thirty pages of them and then touch on some operation and capital changes it starts with a vision statement and what's in writing holland is a vibrant world class community and a view to full lakefront environment where people work together so every community in realize dreams this is the city of holland city council vision statement it's supplemented by a working draft of a mission statement i say working draft because we've been making refinements to it and it's continuing to be subject to refinements to provide the highest quality of life possible with unity integrity and innovation the city council has seven adopted strategies and they relate to economic development is force and foremost and we view transportation is key in that effort the second relates to area cooperation we do function as a region through collaboration and the more the better it's important that all neighborhoods be strong and a strong community is the sum of its neighborhoods and it's important that all receive the services incumbent with strong neighborhoods as such the community becomes stronger and the family does as well it's intended that the budget support those elements the fifth is our public utilities we need public utilities a great deal for quality of life as well as making things work in a smooth effective fashion right stuff right place right value strategy sex or public spaces or civic minded ments need to be well maintained and functional and last needs to continue to grow in relation to continuous innovation and supports that they get their jobs done with that understanding the council established a strategic retreat priorities and there are looking at fiberoptics and fire station replacements replacements to things like regulatory reform digraph nature center in the dog park and that's in the documents that are available online for people to look at detail and the reference and all the action plans in the detail in the overall viewpoint though the overall intent of the budget is to provide the citizens of holland as i mentioned with the best possible programs and services within the city's financial means that we take that very seriously inclusive of maintaining hollin sense of place as you just visited in relation to where there's been a mission statement although we had a loss of personal property tax bill revenue due to the state legislation and small business exemptions our property tax revenues are now growing again we're glad to see that they grew five point two five percent in what you're going to see in the charts to follow total general revenue however is up three point three percent not is great because we have a collection of revenues that you see shortly that is enabled something that hasn't been possible for some years and that's to strategically look at her five minutes to our staff strength to accomplish the goals of the council the community related to  transportation project engineer a new position and some additional hours in the finance department and also in our clerk's office associated with customer service total of one point eight new full time equivalent positions the major if i had to point to the greatest change this year is that we've learned more about ways to reduce our unfunded liability associated with the closed pension group which is our nonpublic safety group we saw thirteen percent increase last year this year if we didn't take action we need to come up with three hundred fifty thousand extra dollars which represents a fifteen percent increase over last year for the nonunion defined benefit alone that's twenty two percent it's a closed group but nevertheless we still need to make the payments totaling one point seven million of unfunded liability over the next eight years so it's increasingly steep curve that we have to we have to surmount and we began to look at alternatives the most favored alternative is pension obligation bonds an opportunity to borrow on a longer basis than the eight years maybe ten maybe fifteen maybe twenty years and in that way spread out and also levelized stabilize these payments and plan accordingly around that so these are the communities and counties some of whom are close to us that have done the same thing and an instructor bogalay is signifies this is a  this appears to be an approach we should take and it's not written in the budget this way there will be subsequent budget adjustments as we explore and figure out all of the details in the next coming months not too long assuming your approval you know will cover some of the overviews this is the percent change in the state equalized value in taxable value in the last year and you can see that the taxable value is up the city equalized value is up even more so as as prop eight requires there is a i won't go through it all but there is a way that tax tax payments tax is required of community members are suppressed  fortunately neither is suppressed as much as during these years which was two thousand and ten eleven twelve where there were actual decreases so we continue to be on the upswing and a little bit more so here are some of the major funding sources for the general fund this is probably tax revenues you can see that even with this budget growth of five point five percent the tax revenue in total will be somewhat less and has been so since  than before this represents a savings to many of the property tax payers other revenue sources are flat there's been some growth in the public works dividend flattening out at this point associated of the general fund revenues by source is this is another way of looking at it the read of the property tax dollars as you can see have declined and then remained fairly  stable despite the normal growth there's been no change other than capital change to debt service three years ago there's been no change to the operating property taxes this is how the property tax dollar is distributed this is the portion maybe it's not the right portion that is the left portion but this this graph depicts that only one third of the property tax dollar is actually something that comes to the city of holland the with that these are all the general fund sources of revenue the city services are funded forty nine point in my classes on three six percent by the property tax dollar these other sources come from other areas and that is a low number and its its lowest of the twenty last twenty years in terms of expenditures the majority continue city public safety police and fire although this number is somewhat lower about a half percent than last year the second largest category is our parks and recreation terms of how these are expanded by type we call it most of it has to do with personnel whether it's direct working wages for benefits or mandatory employer costs this represents eighty percent of the dollars are spent at three point seven million which is seventy percent of general fund revenues and expenditures is what we're estimating at the end of his career is sixteen and this is not as much as auditors sometimes say some say twenty twenty to fund some capital projects this is the bottom line here is the property tax levy in the military you can see that the general operating levy remains unchanged from fiscal year fifteen one point five  and the bottom total remains unchanged fifteen point one zero five remains the same as other years given some vagaries in the way that the property tax laws work there are sometimes just moments been a little bit of growth there that we've been able to use its normal growth because of the reduction in debt and in other ways so that is the bottom line in terms of your  resolution you're asked to adopt tonight here in a few minutes and the last thing i want to say before i turn this over to dave is we adopt a five year we don't adopt we look at a five year financial plan every year and you might recall that three years ago the bottom line in terms of fun equity was showing the cuts and the declining number of these net increase or decrease their brackets around each one i think commentating with the last five the fifth year being maybe two million dollars and in the  the main thing here is we don't want to see the brackets and this represents opportunities for either capital or reductions in cost of elsewhere so with that i think matt are you able to get us back to  and of course i'll be happy to answer any questions at the end when we just see if there's any just we'll see if any questions right now for the city manager from council before we open up the public hearing in a moment or a little bit later in the questions that counsel may have for the city manager at this point before we turn the podium in microphone over to general manager koster xenon pleased to welcome the general manager of the holland board of public works dave koster to give us a similar sort of overview of the consistent story year to year we've been planning for major capital improvements that are underway and preparing for that and really this this budget represents a plan that we had put in place for years and frankly if i'm to look at the expense budget first of the changes better here represent about three point seven million expenses this pie chart shows how our expenses breakdown the vast majority of those expenses go to fuel and purchased power  different from the city our wages and benefits represent just under sixteen percent that's pretty consistent year to year in terms of a percentage and then some of the other expenses deal with maintenance of equipment and other types of operating expenses that we have in running the utility the transfer is shown there is the contribution to the city which the city manager referenced in the sources of funds for the general general fund as well and then  depreciation we're very capital intensive organization so depreciation makes up a great deal of our of our expenses so year to year if i had back up there again the big hitters associated with that change year to year have to do with again fuel and purchase power the change out of the three point seven million two point five that is due to fuel and purchase power and that is primarily due to an increase in sales units we are expecting some growth in the electric utility as well as some of the costs of the products that we're using whether it's wholesale power or fuel to provide that power we're also making some investments in the bell river facility through our relationship at michigan public power agency that actually flows through our income statement an expense so that's one of the major reasons for that change other than at wages are up four hundred thousand year over year and then our pension contribution we had anticipated the increased obligation for that but we are also liability all of our groups both the union and nonunion are closed at the b p w so we have a similar situation to what the city is dealing with on the nonunion side so the other thing that is really a change here year to year other things other than what i've mentioned are flat the only other change has to do with some opportunities that we have in the wastewater area due to a saw grant that was applied for and received so we have to show additional around four hundred fifty thousand dollars of expenses here but those are offset ninety percent by the saw grants so so those funds are there that we're utilizing are going to be put a very good use in planning for that utility as i mentioned before very robust ambitious capital plan it's been a story we've talked about quite often the power plant being the primary use of funds in our capital the hauen energy park and also in the electric transmission and due distribution area we have our metering project that's going to be an improvement to our customer base that includes a new customer portal and also just  an opportunity that that brings in terms of presenting information to them in ways that they can manage and use their utility commodities electricity and water and waste water more efficiently we also have a substation that we're putting into place here over the next year as we move away from the de young plant as our primary energy source for the community in the wastewater treatment area again the big project is all underway there to improve our biosolids handling and in our treatment process at the wastewater plant that's the big hitter in the wastewater treatment area the other things that we have in our capital budgets are really related to some of the cooperative work that we're doing with the city on the major road improvements and we're taking care of utility infrastructure at that time on central and eighth street as well as we've got work this year on shore drive so those are some of the big hitters in the in the capital area as i mentioned electric you know the new combined cycle is driving the issues there and what we're looking at is very much the same as what we had done before there are no new changes other than what had previously been approved three years ago we prepared for that new power plant by making rate adjustments for three years this is the last of those three years so that was previously approved a few years ago and is going to go into effect july one this year at around three point two percent overall there is nothing additional that is asked for you seal a graph here that shows the lines based upon last year's plan and this year's plan they lay pretty much right on top of each other after the adjustment that has been put in place again next year what we're looking at is somewhere just north of two percent and continuing with that kind of increase percentage over the next few years so a very stable situation for the electric utility and how do we look when after that is done we are very very extremely competitive really in all three of our customer classes this is shows the residential class where we are among you know all of the others that are there and for some reason i've lost the legend but note that there are a number of different utilities there lansing grand haven in addition to consumers energy and also cooperative those all make up those bark rafts and holland is the lowest and the other thing to note as well we have tried to find out rate plans for other utilities for twenty sixteen we don't know exactly what's putting place or to a great extent what you see in two thousand and fifteen for the other utilities is the same as what you're seeing in two thousand and sixteen that probably will be higher for some of those utilities matter fact we know that consumers energy has a rate case in right now pending before the public service commission in the commercial area again we are at the low end of that graph as well in finally in the industrial classification we are the lowest in that category as well so good news on the electric side even with the adjustments said have been put in place for the new power plant in the water utility we have done a lot of work to deal with a cash  declining cash situation in the face of a need to improve our infrastructure replacement on distribution we had been improved in replacing distribution interest in at about a two hundred year clip which while water main last a long time it's not going to last that long in a lot of applications and so we have increased that rate and our targeting by condition assessment the most appropriate places for that capital deployment we also have some work planned at our water plant itself and what we have built into this is previously we're looking at very high rate changes year over year to accommodate for that as well as the fact that we had issued debt in the past that principal payments were coming due in greater amounts and so to deal with that we were looking at pretty high rate changes we have adjusted that last year we had pegged this year it being four percent that's what we're saying now as well we are we are looking at keeping that just as we had last year in the plan if you look at the five year plan from last year and where we are this year those two graphs lay right on top of each other so in the water utility we're looking at an average increase of four percent in the waste water utility the big driver there again is the plan improvements and they're dealing with end of life issues for a biosolids do watering equipment and then improving the treatment process on the east side of the road to allow  for with the additional work there that will actually increase the treatment capacity of thirty five percent for biological oxygen demand and suspended solids we're also dealing with collection infrastructure but we've done that very effectively through lining projects and so what we thought was going to be needed in terms of year over year revenue increases a couple of years ago we have again modified that i'm pleased to say that the bonds that came in also for the wastewater treatment plant were well below the interest rate on those bonds that we had expected so i expect the financial picture to be a little bit better than even what we have here but what we're looking for for this year is a six just north of six percent increase which is same as we had targeted for this year last year when you put together this this presentation and again on the wastewater side this is the average residential waste water bill we are at the low end of that for comparable communities in ottawa county those are all out of county communities that are there so what does that look like from a letter it bill let's jump down to the total for the month the electric which is already had been  approved previously is an increase of two dollars and seventeen cents per month the water would be a dollar one cent per month in the wastewater dollar seventy four so the total is just under five dollars per month delta from last year with the electric being the majority of of that amount or the largest amount the largest component of that and i also be happy to answer any questions that council has at your disposal or what not but maybe you can just confirm or deny tell me sticking reserves i think when we went through our study on the budget earlier this year if my memory serves me correctly the visuals we looked at showed targeted reserves for each utility and then where we actually sit with those reserve positions correct all three positions pretty healthy compared to the reserves that you were targeting and again this is one of the reasons that we look at it on a five year basis is because you know we don't want to see erratic changes year to year we want to plan something that's a little bit more levelized but our capital expenditures do vary by year so we're looking at is putting in revenue adjustments that are going to keep ourselves healthy in terms of our reserve levels not only this year but at the end of five years without doing a lot of so that would be your targets and yes that's correct yeah you don't have that slight with you i did not i made this abbreviated based upon the fact that we had you know reviewed longer the the night before but i in and in a i'm just go make this comment i'll concede it's a bit of a blindside already shared it with ryan you know with the pre approved three point two percent knowing that the electrical utility indeed did have a relatively healthy reserve position even compared to the target you know if it's some point i would like to at least see us have a conversation about if we're going to maintain that position you know rather than just sitting on that reserve it's again above and beyond say the target with some of the larger scale energy initiatives associated with the forty year plan the energy trust things like that you know those balances above and beyond again kind of a targeted revenue targeted reserve position that accounts for the up and down like either c s addressed some of those issues or quite frankly consider a rollback that kind of pars back up with the target yeah i think you know you  is something that helped us get the bond rating that we did ok and so i think that that is very important to note that that strength of financial strength ended up with a lower yield rate in those bonds then which again is going to benefit you know our our rate base you know for the life of those bonds so that's and that's an important factor but i think beyond that one of the things that we've been discussing with the board is is changing the reserve policy which has been a proxy for all the different buckets that we might want to have you know fuel stabilization account member we don't have a the type of billing system where our rates will change every month based upon our fuel costs we have a flat rate where a lot of other utilities have that mechanism that moves in the months so part of that reserve is making sure that we've got that fuel stabilization and there's other reasons but to delineate what those are so we know where that floor is and then then i think like you said what are the other ways that we can deploy that or alleviate the billing you know to come back to you know that kind of reserve level over time is a discussion that the board wants to have as well is it safe to assume right now is in those targets that we looked at earlier this year both the binding issue and some of those smoothing issues rather rather relative to fuel even though they're not delineated i'm assuming their underlying assumptions in the target yet you presented yes they are in there the proxy that's been created as a six month operating reserve essentially but instead of creating individual buckets that have their own formula or determination for what those are there is just an overall proxy that it is stands in the place of that six month operat ok fair to say that you're constantly at least on an annual basis as we look at setting rates year adjusting up and down based on a whole variety of things how expenses came in how revenues came in the level of reserves factoring into that for sure and you've had slides like this one for each of the three major utilities for the board of public works that show that in general terms think the current plan has right levels lower than what even last year you were looking at going for correct i mean if you go back a few years we were looking at thirteen percent year over year in water and ten percent year over year and in wastewater and there have been cost control measures that have been put in place we've had some better than expected revenue in some other other areas you know that have helped that situation and so now we're in a little bit better position now the other thing about wastewater that is somewhat of a called a wild card is  we have real wastewater plant is not just used by the city hollins retail customers there are other jurisdictions that that participate in that plant and we are in discussions with those other participants namely the northside purchase participants about truing up you know some responsibility not just for the new equipment that went in there was an agreement on that but the existing equipment that's there which today is under kind of a rental situation where they would become you know responsible for more of a fifty fifty obligation associated with that and so part of the difficulty in planning in the waste water utility the next few years is that discussion that is going on right now but yes there are a number of factors that cause us to look at things show how the price is so much better with the b p debbie than other places but also the reliability too bad we don't have a chart about that because the reliability is really something to trumpet as allow well  it's something that is part of our metrics that we report on and you know yes i would love to have it here i know that if you're tuning into board meetings you know the board meetings we will be talking about that well actually also be talking about you know how people are feeling about the board we have a customer satisfaction survey we put out every year with the frost's institute at hope college what should be talking about that this monday in the you know the the levels that we got back i think is our highest year ever that i can remember which is good news and i think reliability has been identified year over year as being the number one attribute of the utility that our customers are looking for our reliability numbers on electric our outstanding matter fact this you're we look at our frequency rate of an outage and the frequency rate this year is right around point three which means that your one out of three customers may have seen an outage and the duration indexes somewhere around sixteen to eighteen right now of minutes which means that on average if you're a customer in our service territory you can expect to be out about eighteen minutes this year and if you compare that against a lot of other utilities and including our neighboring investor owned utilities you know we just have outstanding numbers as far as that goes and you know it's a credit to the staff that are planning those systems and it's a credit to the linemen and the responders that are coming out when there is an issue and dealing with it no matter what time of day night weather conditions and they did do an outstanding job i think you know most of the time when people picture a utility it's kind of like a big but a myth that never changes and doesn't really is kind of death to the public but i would say that the b p w is the exact opposite of that i mean it's never business as usual at the b p w and i think if anybody's been awake over the last five years they definitely have seen a very responsive organization and the fact that we can have a voice in developing a community energy park that is just rolling out now is just is just really exciting to be able to take all the cutting cost measures that you are doing and using that money to reinvest in producing even a better utility is just really reassuring to the people of this area and we appreciate your leadership and all of that it's not an easy job but it does definitely inspiring the other questions for dave at this moment all right so i believe mr a city attorney we're going to handle these collectively one motion and vote that's correct all right so here's what we're going to do we're going to get we all right at this time time in place for a public hearing on the proposed fiscal sixteen budget for the city of holland which includes the board of public works and you're invited to come to the podium and dress council on any aspect of it council rules invite you to step forward please state your name and residential address for the record and under council if you have a five minutes to address council when you begin speaking they'll be a little green light that appears me that you'll see from the podium when you have one minute left turns yellow and your five minutes are expired it turns red so with that open up the public hearing and invite anyone to the microphone pl write seeing no one and i will close the public hearing on this and we have a motion and which which has been supported is there any discussion counsel wishes to have on the fiscal sixteen budget you first of all i'd like to thank all the people who worked on this it's a lot of work a lot of discussion goes into creating a budget five hundred pages plus in the one thing i've learned over the last four years it takes a lot of dollars to run a city the city council has the job of setting the millage rate approving the budget it is the elected citizens and we do our best it is not an easy task is probably the most difficult task that i face on city council citizens are counting on us to be thoughtful to be fair to act as their representative and to develop a balanced budget that's fair to the city as fair to  the question of what is fair what services do we want and how are we going to pay for them can we afford to pay for them and can we continue to pay for them year after year if we continue to increase our tax revenues or tax bill year after year this begins to add up if you increase it fifty dollars a year over ten years that's an additional five hundred dollars to put in whatever it is it's real money real money that people have to work out that work hard they toil they save they do well other things are they have cannot do other things because  they're paying taxes it is my believe that the proposed budget is too high i think we consider a milage rate that's a little bit less not a lot less but i think it would be indication that we have some flexibility i would like to see us do a fourteen point nine point zero eight five milledge rate rather than one proposed it's only basically about two hundred thousand dollars unless it's point two of one mill but i think it's at least a token of what we can do and i think we can pull that money out of the  project fund and if we want to do some of those funds we can have the citizens of the world on that i think in addition to reducing the military council needs to revamp the budget process coffee with council setting goals the process is a little bit too vague i think we need to review that i think we have to have more budget discussion with the public with the council we have to a limb put from citizens and from the council in the process that we need to set the rate and work it backwards and then we need to study the sacred cows of this community take an honest look at the brutal reality of the cost a target milledge come up with a budget review it with the citizens and then vote on how it needs to grow we need more downtown housing development we need fiber optics cable we need to retain duster rove but we need more people paying into the cost of running the city we need to look at underfunded pensions perhaps look at a different pension policy we have forty five square miles in the city lot of it's not being taxed city property roads parks recreation school property church property hope college some of the grand valley things hospitals airports county parks other than profit so the burden of the cost is on business and on the residence now if we look to the north of the south we have tom ships which pay a considerable less amount of money than we do in the city why is that well it's basically because we have the privilege and we have great public service great public safety fifty percent of our budget goes to fire and police protection we have to look at that and say is that are we willing to pay that if so great if not is there some other way that we can incorporate with other townships into something else city of holland cannot be a place a city where only rich people can afford to live we need to make it affordable for everyone for senior citizens people on fixed incomes unemployed underemployed disabled people young adults who are starting out in trying to be part of the city one pir and families grandparents with grandchildren and i'm sure there are other combinations that i'm not even thinking of taxes go up prince go up which bill gets paid first which bill does not get paid ever i think we need to slow down taxes wherever we can there are many things council would love to do to make the city even better but i think we have to stretch those goals out over some additional years years be cation and somebody in the family says how about california and somebody there looks quickly on their i pad and find some great flights that leave on friday and somebody else is how about london how about going to paris to see the eiffel tower how about the leaning tower of pisa and then you sort of say you know as they keep more about going to big star lake and going fishing so i think we have to kind of ta what are we talking about how we want to do this and that's my that's my feeling and i would really like to make a motion that we reduce the millage to as i stated before forty nine point zero eight five rather than the stated one thank you for you offering that as an amendment i am offering a memoir is there is support for the amendment i said you know harkening back to previous budgets you know you touched on topics that i know i've discussed and i think others at the dice have discussed as well and  go point by point i might deviate a little bit on some of them but i do recall a couple years back when we when we did increase our milage rate you know just discussing a sunset and as i think his brother band of us see that point out we we technically can't do that because we can't bind the hands of future folks that say that these particular chairs so i guess this is close as i get it that particular sunset so i guess tonight i'm inclined to support what you're saying divorce i really feel like we've taken a while to get to this point we have really thought through how this money is going to be spent we haven't made decisions based on a plethora of finances when ryan started we had the fifty cuts that we would have to introduce in order to cut back we had quite a few retirements where we didn't replace the position and handed all those responsibilities to the remaining employees  in the department and we kept that up for quite a while after a while it's very hard to have an organization that delivers pure services with less people than you need we don't have a commodity we don't have a product that we sell like the b p w all we can work with is the money that comes in from taxes and state revenue sharing and our ownership dividend to the b p w so i really think we need to have something in our municipal capital improvement fund it's gone way too low we have to make sure that we can accommodate the future it's great to have a community with variety we shouldn't be all one direction or another but i think the synergy of a spectrum of economic level and type of family is a very healthy way to have a community so i really would support the budget where it is now i appreciate the huge process and all the hard work and difficult cutbacks that have happened even in this budget to come to where we this this perspective to the surface it's always a good thing to evaluate what we do and analyze the rationale behind what we do i rather than just doing it  i'm not going to support your suggestion for this reason and i think the word that nancy used to describe the situation a while to look at all of them and frankly i don't look at all them because there are people who i trust who do look at all of them i look at the larger picture all of those things operate synergistic y to create a community to energize a community to give this community the fuel it needs to move forward not just to create a place where people could live and raise children and work in a safe environment but also to create an environment that's excuse me attractive to economic development in a climate where everyone is competing every community is competing for investment dollars everyone wants to be the best to be on that list of ten of best whatever which we seem to have to eat every once in a while so it's important to create a culture and an environment that serves the function of supporting its its citizens as well as supporting we've been trying to do for a number of years you know making holland a place that people want to live find it easy to work in and any easier to have fun in and we've been responsible i think over the years and try to maintain some momentum in rather difficult times when resources were swimmer and we've had to if you look at the number of people that are employed in the city now that's very evident so we're at a point now where reinvestment is possible limited basis but it's possible and i would suggest that it necessary to maintain that momentum to keep us moving forward so i think we're doing it in a smart way in a way that's responsible and frankly i'd like to see us moving a little bit faster but the reality is such that we better be cautious so i am in support of the budget as expressed and i will not be supporting this amendment even though i'm appreciative of it being offered well thank you wayne i appreciate your offering your thoughts but i'm a little frustrated that it comes at this time that these are things that you've been thinking about and considering through the months that we've been working on this budget i would have appreciated hearing them a little earlier along the line rather than this for at this first meeting in may after we ha worked together and seemingly come to a consensus and now are at the at the meeting that we are bound by charter to approve a budget and to kind of blindside us all with a proposal like this i think i appreciate your thoughts but i don't think you're being fair to the process in your timing and i'll just leave it at that concerns about this very clearly and city council we had talked about possibly having to meeting on that next monday it was late and nothing happened for it so i did bring this up before were and i find it rather disturbing the fact that it was not trying to blindside this little this was the next scheduled meeting in order to bring side of saying we ought to find ways to reduce expenses and there are little time little thing here isn't working matt do you have a controller on your right can someone put the dioce a community and part of that is not just looking at other cities throughout michigan but looking at our neighbors because if you look at where the growth has happened in our community in the holland community over the past fifty years it is not within our borders thank you are two great this is from a presentation i gave over three years ago the numbers may be slightly different in some of the things but the message is certainly the same  population is not the largest in the greater holland area we're surrounded by townships and what you also note apparently you want to different presentation that over the past sixty years our population has grown but certainly not as much as those surrounding us now part of that can be explained by the fact that there was vacant land in those places more so than what we have here part of it i also think can be explained by the fact that the tax rate between our city and the surrounding townships are entirely different and in part it is because of things like the historic trust go back over the past even though you know roughly since two thousand to two thousand and eleven all the in the whole scheme of things this is not a huge dollar expenditure but the orange bars are the city of holland contribution to the trust the blue bars are literally everyone else in the public sectors contribution holiday store trust and if you add it up over those basically a decade the city of holland contributed ninety seven percent of the public funds to the trust everyone else combined even everyone else combined dwarfs the city of holland in population and tax base contributed three percent that however is only the tip of the iceberg again this particular graph is not accurate to today but it's close enough because again this this presentation which is about three years old if you look at the milage is between the city of holland holland township and park township you see great disparity now in part it's because are obligated by the constitution and by the home rule cities act to take care of our own street system where the townships are not but i will say that if we want to get down to these levels two hundred thousand dollars on the eve of a budget approval process we save more than that over the past fiscal years together by controlling costs we put surpluses into or into our rainy day fund into our were all right so so we had the budget stabilization fund thank you we have put monies by simply watching what we spend even from budget levels we have spent less than we are proven the budget over the past few years  in an amount much more than two hundred thousand dollars you want to start moving the needle on how we spend in this city and how we tax in the city this right here is where you move the needle to the left gra the blue bars public safety almost half of our general fund budget goes to public safety the city of zealand is the next highest in the area the city of zealand is next highest in the area because the city of zealand has a police force they're expensive i happen to think they're worth but they're expensive what doesn't zealand have what doesn't helen township have what doesn't park township have what doesn't lake town township have what doesn't zealand charter township have what doesn't fill more township have and that is a full time firefighting force they have in essence part paid on call people who when the fire call comes in their paged they go to the truck they go to the fire they don't have people sitting in stations we spend more on our fire fighting for holland township larger and tax base a larger population spends on its entire public safety budget so we want to move the needle on the cost of doing business in this city and i mean i'm perfectly happy to have that discussion in fact i was ready to have it a couple of years ago we did have a pretty robust discussion a couple of years ago what we heard loud and clear from the people in this city in public opinion surveys in a task force multiple task force and how we deliver public safety services in this community what we heard loud and clear was we think it is worth it to have full time firefighters and full time police officers that's where the money goes right there that's where the money goes most of our cost as ryan said in his presentation in the general city is in people because we are service business seventy five cents of the dollar spent in the public in the general fund budget are on people costs so if we want to move the needle on how much it costs in this community to do things we're and start looking at it positions we're going to look at him pretty heavily in fact what we've done because the last decade forced us to do it yes we reduce the amount of physicians in this city by some forty plus if we had done that we would be a many detroit we would have spent down our reserves to nothing in fact we had charts and graphs when i was early on council  think nancy i'm not sure if you were here but good half the council is here we look forward on current spending levels and current staffing levels because again people is where the expense is where our reserves in five years were nothing and we spent them to nothing we would have but we didn't and the way we got out it was dealing with how many people we had on the payroll so i'm all for looking at budgets and finding ways to save costs but if we're going to do this then let's do it early in the process and let's look at the areas where we really make a difference and i don't you know i guess what which of the capital projects shouldn't we do that to me seems to be responsible question think about we have had this budget before us we've had the projects listed before us and all the projects that are listed are not all the ones that were requested by staff if ryan is anything he has a meticulous trimmer and cut seat so ryan and soren before him receive many projects proposals staffing levels and greatest excess of what they would proposed to us and at this particular moment  unless someone can tell me where the two hundred comes from what we are doing and we can evaluate that i'm afraid i cannot support the idea of arbitrarily and very symbolically tweaking the tax rate without more all right we're on  i and to the mayor's many good points too we spend a lot of time whacking away at a budget and i think we've got ourselves to a point where i've been concerned a little bit about the employees and the number we've had in the the stress load that they're under and i think if you talk to our transportation people if you talk to the people who are trying to chop all the trees we need to chop down and you talk to the finance department here to go to the people who run everything we do in the city here my sense is there's they're a little stressed so i've gotten comfortable over the last year especially with a budget that's allowed us to start addressing some of those things and if there's an employee if there's any city department head listening to this discussion i would just like to assure them that i think most of us listen to those presentations that we had during this budget process and know full well the the responsibility of the wood into putting those budgets together and as the mayor said about mr cotton i wouldn't sit here and let anybody tell me he's going to spend money frivolously because it's just not going to happen and i don't think we do but there was a lot of hard work in legitimate discussions about this budget that we're putting together and we're going on right now that i have a tremendous amount of confidence in the staff that put it together and in the thought that went into it so i'm just one of our staff to know especially that we have i think a lot of pride in what they do and a lot of support behind them and what the resources we give them to to do it so i'm going to support those other governments please consider whitely yeah why did i just want to firm a lot of what you said mr mayor in terms of not just your your sly proposal but you know that the fifty one percent at least on that particular slide in the in the other forty nine percent you know those are big buckets and i think we all know that when we do that there's difficulty in that fifty one percent and you address them out of it but there's also opportunities in that fifty one percent and with him we continue to work on those because just because fifty one percent in public safety and people say yes we want that full time force it doesn't mean that we let ourselves off the hook for making sure that we're wise with whatever that is and we've always had a goal of getting that below fifty percent for a long time we have and i don't know that we need to necessarily take our eyes off of that when you had a lot of positive points in there and we've got to continue to structure ourselves and and i would agree you know there is some eleventh hour to what we're talking about here that's our job i mean for what it's worth i know we love how how much decorum we have with ourselves and how smooth the process goes sometimes this is a rarity that  that some of us are thinking on our feet in this particular moment i apologize to dave koster because generally we have a coffee and discuss such things but the timing of things didn't afford it i don't like to blindside folks  and i think you all know that about me but we can keep at it and so for what it's worth you're one hundred percent correct that guy and his team his excellent team can find two hundred three hundred thousand just in cost cutting measures and here a couple years ago we added one hundred eighty thousand dollars to our budget in the eleventh hour minute to retain some firefighters and we asked them to find that one hundred eighty thousand from somewhere else in the budget we didn't come with a prescription and i think that bill passed sixty three so again you get a lot of great points i'm going to support the budget and we're going to move ahead and we'll keep pressing on things and keep trying to find ways to make it affordable it's never going to be four percent or four mils it's never going to be six miles let's not be foolish and my gosh we can look at ways and continue to look at ways to kind of keyboards at ucas you know the we lost a decade and quite frankly our growth rate isn't all that fantastic right now in real income really hasn't done much in fifteen years i would concur with what you said especially in that six to three vote on the increased millage i believe you were one of the three and i was another absolutely so yes and the guy to your right was the o and given where we were when i joined this council we are leaps and bounds beyond where we were we are cutting substantial portions of budgets of departments of people and while we're not or beyond that point we're not out of the woods yet and ensuring that we have long sturm long term viability of the city that we can fix the roads that need to be fixed and not keep putting them off i know there's some people who are upset about central avenue but rest assured that was supposed to happen several years ago and a really thrilling actually is happening now we're not out of the woods we need to maintain kind of a very strong path that is bringing in the revenues we need to accomplish the things that cities do and that's fix roads ensure streets are clean and cleared of snow and the lights stay on although later i think we're going to talk about turning some of them off i think the budgets great thank you ryan thank you staff that's all f i think being careful with money is one of the pillars principles of this community and i think it's good to stop and think about that i don't i just don't like the possible perception that that hasn't been a foundational principle through this whole process and i know you aren't saying that way but the reason we are in a good position now is because of generations of people who have been very responsible with money at the government as well as in their own personal lives and those that's something that i don't think any one of us wants to give up as a piece of the identity of living in holland michigan we really want to be known for people that work hard are responsible with our money and our innovative in how we approach life and so it's i think we have done the best job we could with with this budget and i know every department had has not given up what we told them several years ago about keep keep honing keep redoing and just as i said the b t w is not business as usual that the same applies to the city and i think the good out of the difficult time that we went through with the list of fifty and each time there was a retirement it's in it still is one of our principles now we don't just rehired for that same position because times have changed the way we do business changes the way we communicate with people changes and we have to keep changing to facilitate that we can't depend on doing it the way it's always done before and we also want to look at the people we have and with what passions do they have and how can they best serve the city the citizens of the city how can we make this an even more progressive organization so i have i would really want the public to have that message those are bedrock principles that we will always and forever be guarding over the money that is in trusted to us to spend it is carefully and as wisely as possible are we human beings yes there are nine of us and we we come at things from all different directions and hopefully at the end of the day of a discussion of whatever it is that's on the table we have represented many of the perspectives of the people of the community and together we can come up with what's best in in governing this city and just like our city seal says in unity is our strength god be with us and that would be my hope and prayer as we approach every budget and every decision here done in the document on page forty three or forty three other communities that are comparable to the city of holland and holland as is noted there is being the tenth lowest in terms of property taxes and two of those ten that are lower actually nine that are lower have an income tax so they actually have sources that actually make them higher than us and that regard up on page seventy there's the list of fifty and the list of fifty is something everyone's familiar to and you've listed talked about but the bottom line is one million one hundred twenty five thousand dollars a year is been saved through a three year effort to reduce expenditures wherever possible consolidate collaborate and work smarter and lastly there was a list that we did not include this year but it was included last year because once again it became redundant but i think it's fifty five positions l that have no longer been are not filled have not been filled my predecessor began filling positions and trying to work differently and the bulk of those remain unfilled with the exception of one point eight on i will just say that this is my final budget to move to vote on i think it took me three maybe four years before i actually voted in favor of one i came on board at a time when i don't think the full reality of the last decade had yet fully set in not that i was pregnant or anything like that but i got the sense that we were in for a longer slog and that we need to readjust how we thought about running this organization a sustainable pattern for the future you know if i were king i suppose i would certainly change the budget in certain ways and put spending in different spots and maybe reduce it overall but yet that's not the way our system is set up by frankly by design nine of us have got together we had input from department heads filtered well directly as well as filtered through the one employee we hire and hopefully never have to do anything but hire that being the city manager and we have a budget that i think is fair plus i'm also very confident that this team this administrative team as well as one particular matters come for the council this council team even when i'm gone in six weeks we'll review with a pretty fine tooth comb many of the things that come before us and just because something's in the budget doesn't mean it's getting spent and i dare say that chances are pretty good one year from now when you're all back up here looking at next year's budget there will have been a positive influx into into the reserves or into other funds like paying down pension cost kinds of things like we've been able to for the past years because we've been very cautious with how we spend the resources even if they're already budgeted just because budget it doesn't mean it gets spent so what that my thanks to ryan my thanks to dave my thanks to the department heads for the work that you all put in to get us a monster document and for the public to be able to view that monster document i think it's pretty clear that if anything we're going to err on the side of providing too much information in the budget you can look around other jurisdictions and see substantial budgets that are substantial dollar amounts that have maybe ten pages behind them you'll find hundreds here you will see with very almost excruciating detail at times where the money is going and all the various funds and pots of money that exist for specific functions whether it's the money to run the general city whether it's money for insurance policy and kinds of those sorts of things whether it's money for health insurance and other kinds of  so it's pretty well laid out as to where the money comes from and where it all to move the goes and for that again all who played a role in as you have my sincere thanks as well as the nine of us who work well together on putting this together standing over ok well we're now off item eight and i'm moving out ahead of nine a and b a couple of unfinished items which will be unfinished in the near future as well the first is a matter of fourteen point four point three fourteen dash four point three dealing with some appeals and variances this was tabled back on the first april probably wasn't table good enough so first of all you need to remove it from the from the we're done with nine under ten so adoption of ordinances we have a request from the planning commission dealing with his own it was only gordon's text the members of section thirty nine dash three forty one to do this on what is called an emergency basis which means that it would take immediate effect as opposed to having first reading second reading in the taking effect twenty one days from the second reading approval best deals with overlay zone issues in the m forty corridor on the south end of town and we welcome the interim area is in forty located just south of i one ninety six it was annexed into the city in the late one nine hundred ninety s at that time the city went through a master plan process for this area and created a vision that since that time this area has continued to be a very heavy trucking area the truck uses down there have continued to grow and we now have an issue where the state of michigan is looking to realign some roads down there however one of the roads here like to realign is in the general area of where a is in the general area of where an existing sign is the project to realign that it requires that sign to be moved however that sign does not conform with the vision that we established back in the late one nine hundred ninety s and i believe the computer is going to show the general area that we're talking about right now one ninety six interchange within forty roughly south to just south of the rock island to have city truck stop and forty pinball area that's being shown on the screen right now this area requires extensive landscape this over those this over district requires extensive extensively and scaping on both sides of the street as well as monument signs for this relocation for this intersection relocation project to move forward the signage there is existing signage there right now there has to be moved however it does not conform with the monument signs that are required part of the overlay the planning commission reviewed the reasons for this signage this monument signage and it's their  it's their determination at this moment that monument signs probably don't fit the bill too much in this area and they would like to amend sections thirty nine forty one to remove that monument signage requirement and allow the property owners in this area to install signage that conforms with their existing zoning the existing zoning is typically see two so the signage that you get down here is similar to what you see along south washington and the city if you want to focus  thirty second street forty a street along south washington it would be that type of signage twenty foot high poll signs is yet a requirement if the zoning is i one it will be more of a you know ten foot high signs which is what is allowed in the i ones zoning down here again this is an emergency zoning ordinance the reason it's an emergency zoning ordinance is because we have to meet state funding deadlines for this intersection to go through this is a safety issue as most people in the room may know within forty and his counsel as well was well aware of not sure how much more detail you'd like me to go with the first question from council on this we can take questions or any questions for joel at this time all right seeing none this is the time of the place for a public hearing this if you're here to address this item invite you to the podium again rules of council please state your name  residential address for the record and you have a five minutes address council on the item the microphone is open seeing no and i will close the public hearing and we have a recommendation from the planning commission is there a motion to approve it and just for clarity is that under the emergency basis or media fact all right move by hoekstra emergency immediate effect basis support supported by birches their discussion anyone cares to have please i guess we had a dream and it's not going to happen right it's not happening so we need to make accommodation to support the private investment that is going to be good for us in the long run right i would only add to that that there are still portions of that during that are still political and required the green belts along both sides of m forty is something we are requiring you know when cain are trucking to their ex you know expansion several years ago required that forty foot greenbelt required several trees several bushes even though the property owner would tell us i'm not sure why truck drivers need to see trees or bushes when they're shopping for trucks he went ahead and still installed those last night city planning commission approved the site plan for pilot that also in crew that also included the forty foot wide green belt so confused here on item eleven titian's a communications usually those i bred them under ok under the consent of the not listed as consent but they were read under consent just for curiosity if anyone  to address the eleven a or b ser they would invite you to to address that if you like seeing none will move on that brings us then item twelve communications from the audience you've been a long standing and patient members of the public to be with us today if you're here to address something that doesn't show up elsewhere on the council agenda here's your chance to talk with us the rules of council again please step for the podium microphone so folks both here in chambers and at home can hear what you have to say maybe residential address for the record please and you have up to five minutes to dress council the microphone is open good evening and welcome good evening i've been a resident of the fourth ward for eighteen years i've been a resident of holland for my entire life home public schools proud two thousand and nine holland high graduate continue my education at hope college here in holland where  majored in communications with minors and business management and leadership while at home i played football and i understand the importance and meaningfulness of achievements as a team and if the people  to elect me as their representative in fourth ward i look forward to joining this team that's very accomplished and being a part of that after graduating from hope in two thousand and thirteen i begin my career with my or their corporate offices in walker michigan but at that time i made a conscious effort and decision to stay in holland and to make our own my home because it is my home it's where i'm from and that's where i was born and raised and it's where i'll be excited to begin my family with my bride to be  we're getting married next year and so as part of that bought a foreclosure on twenty ninth and invested my own money and efforts and with the help of my dad my mom my sisters my for neighbors good friends and we got it all the way down to the studs and brought it back to the new which is exciting and it's a place that i'll be able to again be in my family and looking forward to that after that after meeting lot of the neighbors in the community and i decided i need  involved and i joined the parks and rec department in june of two thousand and fourteen what i've learned from that is it's a true privilege to serve this community that's a lot of great people and i've learned a ton from that when the opportunity arose for the fourth ward seat i wanted to i felt i felt a sense of responsibility to humbly stand up and say i'd like to serve i like to have the privilege to serve the people of holland and so i'm looking forward to listening and looking forward to learning from the people about how together all of us can best serve this community thank you thank you the microphone is still a first being fourteen the one point one dealing with washington square business improvement district resolution again mr di will introduce this item as well as the next one to us good evening good evening and thank you again  before you tonight is a request from the community neighborhood services more importantly from the merchants of washington square they are requesting that city council grant them or identify them as a business improvement district to help you get your bearings washington square is located in a neighborhood more commonly known as the west court neighborhood it is bounded on the north side by eighteenth street on the south side my nineteenth street and washington avenue runs through the middle of it the city of holland began working intensely with these merchants back in the late one nine hundred ninety s part of a c d g program to help identify a vision and help them grow as district through that project through that program back in the late one nine hundred ninety s we did a story improvement program where we installed traffic circles brick cross walks benches pedestrian lighting intensive landscaping and help them with marketing and community promotions and events the district is home to several you know what i would call holland mainstays kind of businesses has been there for you know a very long time lorraine griffin owns property there since the one nine hundred seventy s it's been a home to little caesar's home to some other fast fruit so some quick food restaurants and now home to a yogurt place as well the minute mart which was a very popular mainstay went through some down time during two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven but it's been purchased by  kill who has rehab the entire building as lived up stairs and reconverted back to your typical corner stocked store in your neighborhood the district is that has new blood going through it right now there are new owners looking to open you know additional restaurants part of this investment is the idea of creating opportunities for more full service dining including food and alcoholic beverages so when they started looking out what are some of the vehicles they can have to help you know take this district to its next step its next life they looked at what a business improvement district would do for business improvement district are you know created by city councils through a resolution they're authorized by the state of michigan under public act one twenty one nine hundred sixty one and they're designed to promote economic development within a defined area of the city through these districts the city can collect revenues level special assessments and issue bonds what they really do is they take a group of informal merchants and creates a means for them to become more formal and more intentional and their actions so before council tonight is again every communication from staff but really it's a request from the merchants in this area that you grant them the opportunity to create these business improvement district sort of washington square you know neighborhood area to allow them to organize you know become more organized allow them to approach you and levy in special assessments if they dean that's something they want to do and then go through and you know open doors to them to different kinds of licensing and grants that the state may offer just for these kind of districts to give counsel some direction on where this would go if you do move forward with it after this you know after tonight's meeting if this is approved the process will be request you know nominees from this district you know apply through our typical you know application process to serve on the business improvement district board and then the city manager will come  later date with you know a list of nominees for council to you know consider in creating this board questions about this process the questions are constant virtually is there a city representative aside from perhaps yourself on any of these ports how does that work as part of the city managers recommendation one of the members of this board will be a city representative i'm not going to speak for the city manager i'm not sure if you do that but it will be a city representative the remaining of the board members will be people who live in this area specifically for this area i think we're targeting the number of seven just just due to the limited number of property owners that are here if we go higher than seven it might be hard to do you know make a quorum happen it's it's just such a wonderful way to grow the joy of neighborhood to have businesses close to your home and to have all the little neighborhood business districts as well as downtown and we certainly know how well it has worked downtown for the business owners to get together and invest in the area and so we would love to have more synergy like that with the with the business owners and we wish you all the best other questions for joe otherwise no public hearing isn't required someone is here to speak to we certainly would will welcome comment from the audience if you care to step forward on we need a motion i guess a washington square is my neighborhood commercial district and want to see that succeed at all costs and south shore also being in the third ward being a place that is just poised to become a second downtown for our city its these areas are vital to really embracing what the city can have in terms of real urban as i'm and i'm not talking about the fake new urbanism that is kind of thrown about in townships and other areas and parts of the state this is what real neighborhoods are built on neighborhoods are built and people within walking distance of people living above their places of business of owning property and having something that that that people are surrounding it can can appreciate but can also be attractive to people from outside of that area they can be something that's a destination for people close by and far away we've proven it can be done in our downtown and i am one hundred percent confident that it can happen in these areas having seen the success of my neighborhood when i lived in chicago seeing the success of some of these parts of grand rapids where i spend some of my work time i'd i like to see a lot of this happen here as well so thank you joe for bringing this to us i think it's a great opportunity for the business owners to take real ownership beyond their own business but for for the for the community in general thanks and he wanted me anyone else seeing them please call correct before council again before council tonight is their request from the merchants at the village and a recommendation from staff that you establish their area as a business improvement district as well this is similar to this question we just business approve it districts are created by resolution of city council under public act one twenty again they're created to promote economic development within a defined area and through these districts council can levy special assessments you know collect revenues issue bonds in order to address maintenance security in operation in the district but it is not required to do so i do want to make that point clear the south shore village similar to washington square is a group of organized merchants who are concerned about their area they meet when issues arise for those who have been able to travel down seventeenth street in this neighborhood you've noticed in the mirrors that have gone up over the past couple of years about nine years ago they hosted a multicultural festival for the city and their district so there they are an organized group of merchants that are always you know thinking what's next how can we better what can we do best they are also willing to work together and snow removal snow plowing snow storage if you've been down there you know it is an art oriented with lots of parking he drives so they push the snow they gather they have come together to end it and most recently to help establish a vision for a major improvement in their district that earlier this evening he selected a consultant to help them deal refine that vision and go out for beds later on this summer we're looking at a new parking lot new pedestrian connectors that it's going to connect the waterfront boardwalk to the south side of seventeenth street which goes all the way out to big red cell hopefully this time next year you'll be able to ride a bike from big red all the way down south shore through this neighborhood commercial district right on the heinz waterfront boardwalk and next thing you know you're downtown sell again this is a recommendation from my office but it is a request he did receive a petition from a significant amount of the merchants who you know would like to see this business improvement district happen just like washington square there is new faces coming to this district there is you have people who have purchased property that want to open stores that want to open businesses in this district so there is some excitement in this district as well just to be clear what you're seeing on the screen tonight that red boundary that is the proposed boundaries for the business improvement district we do include some industrial properties  it's not just commercial properties you are allowed to have industrial properties in your business improvement district so one of the large ones is the heinz parcel repco like he's been a big fan of this process through this you know through this thing west michigan for thirty three years and have never been approached to join any organization i'm wondering why i'm included and no one's ever come to my office and so word to  me i've had problems in the past sewer line was interrupted by the gas company and that still has not been paved over from two three years ago sidewalks are uneven and no one's ever approached me i get three letters and a man on the south west side of this or joel are you on so you're the c'mon and seventeen a month eighteenth street eighteenth street southwest or southwest part of that ok right there you can say i understand it's hard to see on the yeah determining the boundaries in this area working with bob buyers and the other merchants that petitioned us one thing they looked at was contiguous commercial zone properties so as your properties on commercial  that are along the central area have not reached out to you and if you don't require you know if you if you don't desire to be part of that bank then that is a recommend desa request you make the city council prior to taking action on this resolution  and i forgot to ask you before you leave if somebody was to stop by if somebody were stopped by and explained to you what was going on here would you be willing to that before we just automatically take you out of the district  think we would be prudent then to have the conversation or have direct staff to go out there and have the conversation i can see where he was definitely caught off guard with just a letter and run by the you could do a couple of things you could table it to the next meeting next week to allow that to happen you could adapt the resolution an error you could do a motion to to tonight with the recommendation to amend it to add it back in so you could do one of those two i'm not sure if there is any other options in mind you are thinking about but i think either of those would cover it well just for stuff and listing the benefits of that this type of program the cover letter that went out also summarized those benefits with contact information to reach out to us we did receive a phone call from one merchant and this area yeah just reaffirming this was about but we didn't receive any other comment see how you know from this particular property owner but that's something we can have that discussion on are you willing to have this conversation in the next week if we postpone this week  gentleman's property tonight have that same conversation and perhaps add in a later time i guess i want to be you know thoughtful of those who spent time two plus hours here not just table  be here but i don't know that we want to force them to let it end and i appreciate that i'm willing to to go that i just don't want this to be drug go for ever and ever so if we can buy suggestion formulated exactly what you're saying except address this again next week whether it's going to be in or out i think we can accomplish everybody's goal at that point and to be clear in the direction i mean the concerns that we heard was  paraphrasing you know there's never been a tax in jurisdiction that then eventually decide to tax you so there's concerns of the assessment the south both of these business improvement district and my crystal ball your first year is putting together a plan of action so if we want to exempt out a few of the properties this year as that business improvement district board puts together a plan of action since this property is on the corner since this property is on the other side of the commom it would not be out of line to say we're going to approve these boundaries with the eastern side of the beyond the boundary of the seventeenth street that's something that we could do which will allow us to keep going with you know getting nominees and getting this board created because you do have a property owner that is purchased a significant amount of the land in this area that has plans ready to build and get going that is dependent on the b id getting creative or south or village so they can go through you know the state for those development license and so i would be just a little has a tenant that we would slow that down that process for them one week is going to prevent this from happening i don't know one week well but there are people here that you know have been waiting to see if this gets approved or not that's all i'm asking is one week the gentleman is reaching out to us asking for help that's all i'm asking them just for clarification what i heard joel suggest is good carve out that eastern side tonight and if you want to add it back in you can have it back in any time and we'll have th conversation we're still addressing or giving an opportunity for that and i want to go to sort of one part of the motion that this happens not three weeks not four weeks not six weeks next week to get it off the table get it done we can go ahead and approve everything else but i want the resolution to any given or not don't by next week that's all i'm asking that you took a jew care to make that in the mike what was your intention all right put it back and you the north property line of those four pieces that make that square right there so ok good enough mr city attorney that is in then with finalizing the resolution staff can rewrite the map the way you just indicated and attach that to it that would be all right all right that is the motion property owners the front on deacon mother that we are also cutting out here do we know what their position is now we have not had conversations i have not had conversations with his properties i don't know if any of the merchants in this area have reached the merchants in the area it's not something that is being imposed upon them which is rumored to happen from time to time when it comes to governments i've heard that i'm not certain about that but  it's something that if there are costs involved are self imposed and it's an opportunity for this area flourish not just for the bottom lines of those individual businesses but also as has been indicated in unmeasured before it adds to the to the value of the neighborhood that surrounds this area and we're making some a fair amount of investment as a city in a meditation that area so we were talking about you know what makes communities move forward earlier in the evening and this is one of those things that gives indication that forward movement so i'm excited about this i think it will be a very very good thing and my congratulations to the merchants in the area for taking the initiative to  from the time we military's like oh my goodness there's water right there and there's actually stores really close and then when the boardwalk went in people can walk along a ladder and it's it is really poised  to be such a wonderful place for holland to have shopping and walk mean and connection to parks and the promenade and the willingness of hines to sell us their parking lot a while ago  to give us that potential and then take that to develop it to lead the public from the water into the water and to have a shopper's dock there hopefully eventually for people to more their boats to go shopping and restaurants coming and residential area i mean it is awesome and it will be the big story of holland as it all develops i just love and i love the name south shore village because it tells you and you want to go there really appreciate all the work that the business people have done in a million is to work together in and to make an area that's going to be a great destination for people from elsewhere as well as for the people that live right around there and i'm certainly will certainly be biking over that's awesome thank you anyone else passes all right thank you thank you all who were here for that particular item tonight we're going to move from the consent agenda dealing with the natural resources trust fund grants i would say we just wanted to make sure that this was we talked about the will island project fairly extensively over the past couple of years and we had always said along the way that we were going to be applying for and hopefully to receive certain grants from the state of michigan and this is one of those grants so the city manager is talking with will go towards a collaborative effort with township totaling an estimated two point six million that amount other than the three hundred thousand there is a conditional commitment that we  remains to be actually announced at a later point once we've got all the plans done completed that is very significant amount greater as well as the fund raising which this community has so generously contributed to more and more than what's in the resolution but the result is if it is a two point six million dollars project the city's share will be roughly two hundred forty two thousand dollars and that's from the legacy funds license policy by including the new district that you just created for both south shore in washington square in the policy now you will be adding the business improvement district so that is what the request june sixth will be the next step in our career effort to achieve the grand georgetown energy prize five million dollars and change this june sixth door to door effort is something that's recommended by those who are familiar with this type of program to bridge the gap between knowledge and action every household in the community stands to gain literally  tens perhaps hundreds of dollars in savings i should they pay attention and take a look at some of the information that's being provided on the web site and also in other sources the idea on saturday morning is to be offering up to five free opportunities for people to take advantage of energy savings and achieve up to four percent total energy savings is the goal for the entire community and go a long way towards  not not only just being a contender for this prize or one of fifty communities but being a winner with the winner and with the five million we would hope to fund the hollin energy trust and use that as a revolving loan source for more energy improvements over time the forty year community energy plan for example so tonight before you is a request to approve a budget and to also for the community to let us know if they're interested in volunteering some as much of the georgian energy prize that i'm speaking of tonight another thing that will be offered is the opportunity to be have their name entered into a drawing for a smart thermostat called a nest this smart therm is rated to save between ten and twenty percent of a person's energy use simply because it recognizes patterns it can be it can be controlled from a distance it knows and can be told how to act a very user friendly manner much more user friendly than the former programmable thermostats and i for one can testify since i have my own to its effectiveness so the idea is to with the budget that you have before you in them out of forty seven thousand dollars split between the hot on board public works and what's recommended from the savings for the home energy retrofit pilot which i can go into if you have questions but the savings there could fund purchase of these such that one out of ten of the homes that participate want to be in the drawing would indeed win one of these it would be achievable be out about your system once it's been firm that's been partnering with the city on this at a lansing called dr energy savers today they met with me and have been thinking about this for some time they participated in the kick off and provided energy audit reduction in terms of costs they have now offered up to well actually there's no maximum it depends on how many homeowners want this a free energy audit this audit is worth depending upon the degree and the size of the house and the neighborhood of three hundred dollars and that's something that they're willing to do because they have seen the success of the community plan and the interest of the community in making real changes in the way that they consume these scarce resources and also save it in their pocketbook so that is another offer we have as a tree program to go from twenty four percent tree canopy to thirty five percent tree canopy and we'd like to  see which homeowners would like trees located in their park ways and that obviously comes with a willingness to water them and take care of their surroundings and make sure they prosper we also have by virtue of  what you've approved a cost sharing program for trees in the and side yards that are visible to the community so we'll be taking information from people who want to share fifty percent of those costs and i think there's something i'm leaving out of the opportunity participate in the contest for this quarter giving people information on that about how to know their number which is a way of comparing their work their home and their use of energy compared to their neighbors in the in the united states and other show a real willingness to talk and also an opportunity to participate in this in this whole effort anyone who volunteers someone focus on that now wins the opportunity in a drawing as well and city but that's those are very good odds and it's also a recognition of appreciation not to mention all the food we intend to have for breakfast and the final for the finale the finale of course will be festive in that there is competition between the warts all of you are in competition as well as you know and we'll want to see which words volunteers contacted the most homes so when this is done and as  is here's the schedule adding i'm is his breakfast in the lobby training video here in the chambers world leader prep talk a clipboard pick up and then we began and come back in here's the entire budget forty seven thousand seven hundred fifty dollars some which is dollars and you have to mention dollars already others are the new funds i mentioned and lastly of anyone listening this is an opportunity to get to know your neighbors there's a social anyone in the audience we have a sign of sheet right here where i have twenty on the list with eighty more to go and that concludes my remarks would be happy to answer any questions any questions for mr pratt i guess where en any other communications from the city manager tonight thank you i have two one in the hall and your connections program is poised to be at least as strong as last year eighty at risk youth involved  assisting the right is employers we have a challenge grant of twenty thousand dollars i'm pleased to say report that we are halfway towards meeting that challenge in terms of donations there's another ten thousand dollars worth of donations needed and with that thought that we could top one hundred at risk youth jobs so we want that word to to be out there the community has been generous and players have even been more active in seeking this help sponsorship and mentorship that provides such that we are likely to be funded last year we were funded to two thirds by donations even with the donation i just mentioned i think will be funded twenty five percent with donations so seventy five percent by employers and that is really smart because employers get a huge return on investment the time and it doesn't need to be funded by donations that we but we do need more donations despite that in the tune of ten thousand dollars to thank the partners in the room the humber public works is here and they've been instrumental as has the school system as has walter's gardens for example has signed up for two teams of ten this summer and they're getting theirs they see the return on investment second item in the news comes out that's our electronic newsletter and that membership continues to grow it's a short pithy brief once a month if anyone has interest in being on the list let us know at that three five five one three zero zero number if anyone has suggestions on how we can make that newsletter even more helpful please let us know that too thank  ok communications from me tonight thank you for everyone who did great work to not only have a great fiesta this year i thought it was one of our better ones well organized and rather was outstanding in a nice big crowded active crowd of people having lots of fun but of course also to have time credible weather this year as well and i thought it ran very very well so also city of holland dot com place to find information about your city about council embers of council about senior staff permits tax information you name it we try to put it there hopefully you'll find it but of course if you want to come and visit us in city hall we're certainly happy to have you in the building as well that's all i've got from their communication side any member any members of council having communications tonight just yes mr just wanted to point out that this is national police week i know there was one number of officers in lansing today i believe national police week was proclaimed in one thousand nine hundred sixty two by president kennedy specifically may fifteenth is the national peace officers memorial day specifically remembering those officers lost in the line of duty i just wanted to take this opportunity first of all to remind the residents remind the citizens that are all listening to this broadcast that this is national police week and also to thank specifically the officers the peace officers that we have in the syrian city specifically county anybody that's in this law enforcement arena thank them for their duty think them for their courage and how much we appreciate what they do for us and keeping our town communities townships area safe it's a thankless job most of the time it's a very specific job that somebody has to have a lot of passion for and i would say our police department i don't know anybody on that electronics and appliance recycling event so particularly if you have some of those old appliances that have freon in them we can replace those if they are in working condition if you get a rebate for those but other items of computer equipment kitchen appliances things like that your opportunity to  recycle those and be assured that they will be recycled responsibly and no charge the only exception i think is the part except the c r t monitors young people you met earlier in this meeting from the netherlands and if you would like to get to know them a little better and your computer you can go to video dot com slash city of holland and there's a whole little conversation there a fun group to talk to and i'm really glad mike that you mentioned the police and i think it is a very difficult time to be a police officer every time you turn and the t v and it's hard to ignore national stories and national on rest and  and not feel attacked personally when you accept the badge and have their real team players and when a part of their team suffers a thing they all do so it is really an important time to appreciate those of those who keep us safe right and the other occasions motions resolutions everything ok thankfully the city it's very he's not going