well good evening everyone welcome to tonight's regularly scheduled meeting of the house or council feels like we were just here last week because of course we were just here last week so good to have you with us whether you're in chambers tonight watching at home or at some point watching on a mobile device of some sort we began our meeting already upstairs we called the roll determined we had a quorum and went into a closed session to review a couple of legal opinions so those items on the agenda have been taken care of however those are the only things we've done on the agenda tonight so that then takes us to item two which is our opening prayer and item three which is the pledge of allegiance tonight our prayer will be led by our colleague david hookes nope i'm sorry i can't even read our colleague nancy devor who will lead us in prayer and immediately thereafter we will have the pledge of allegiance to the flag if you would be so kind as to join us in these items would appreciate you are the light of the world we pray that in this season of the year we will take time to care for those around us to realize that seasons with lots of celebration and social activities interaction with all different groups and family can have a lot of stress for people but there are expectations that add to what we are already doing with her father that you will give us understanding hearts and kindness that comes from you may we be filled with your lot in this season may reflect your glory in the way that we handle situations and the people around us and may in the evening we make decisions that honor you thank you for being so faithful thank you for honoring the courage of those who came here many years ago to begin a colony and to work to honor you in that as well we thank you for thank you nancy there are copies of this evening's agenda located in the rack in the rear of the room if you are using a computer or i pad or other sort of device we do have wireless wireless signal in the chambers that usually works and you're invited to log on to that signal if you don't quite know what the password is i'm sure if you ask around someone can certainly give that information to you if you go to the city's website at city of holland dot com you will not only find out tonight's agenda but you also find the background that cereal for all of the things we've looked at in preparation for this evening's meeting you can simply go to the calendar page go to today's date and you'll find information about tonight's meeting that information is typically put on the web site days in advance if not the weekend before  so you know we certainly want the public to know what it is we've looked at in preparation for these meetings and you're invited to do likewise you'll note on the agenda that there are a variety of items that have an asterisk next to them and these are what are on our consent agenda we think that they are relatively routine that they've been perhaps discussed before but we don't think they're worthy of taking time to handle them individually rather our intention is to handle them with one motion one vote will do in a moment kind of a list of what is currently on the consent agenda and perhaps you might think that it's not quite as routine as we do and you at that point may come forward to the podium ask to remove an item from that consent agenda and will happily take it in its order at that point or members of council of course can remove one or more items from items from the consent agenda but before we do that little process and if you might go through tonight's consent agenda as it stands right now i find item eleven to accept infile executed oath of office item fourteen the one to refer claims filed against the city to the city's insurance carrier and city attorney for consideration item fourteen d two to adapt the liquor control commission resolution approving the wine inciter license for our brewing company located at seventy six east eighth street i am fourteen d three to adopt a liquor control commission resolution approving the addition of an entertainment permit for freedom village located at at one forty five columbia avenue i had him fourteen each three point one to declare a surplus see a t v equipment and authorize personnel to dispose of accordingly item fourteen each three point two to adopt a resolution approving the two thousand and thirteen schedule of fees and charges and fourteen the three point three to authorize staff to request bids for phase three of the city council chambers technology upgrades thank you very much would anyone in the audience care to remove an item from that consent genda and a member of council care to remove one or more items from consent seeing none what is the pleasure of council move supported by de boer is there discussion on the consent agenda i guess technically the consent agenda items is there discussion on that seeing none please call the role peters birds yes about white man yes extra yes burns yes yes yes mayor dykstra yes it's all right thank you that takes us then to item eight special order of the day which today we have a public hearing on a tax abatement for code blue corp to fifty nine head core st and i believe greg you will introduce this one for us please sure code blue there are an industry leader in communication systems and actually i think probably  most of you around the table are familiar with some of the emergency phones the blue light emergency phones that you'll see some over perhaps in the hope college campus and other locations and you'll see i'm not only in a city holland but in many other places in the midwest and i think throughout the country they're experiencing rapid growth we're looking to hire sixteen new employees they need additional space so they're looking at two fifty nine head corps and investing both in improvements to a building that's there that's been  for a while and also adding machine equipment so the total investment is a little over one point one million and we are recommending that you approve a resolution approving the industrial facilities tax exemption certificate for this project for twelve years from the state tax commission approval date all right thank you greg are there questions for staff on this report right seeing none this is the time and place for a public hearing on this item if you are here to address counsel on this item we ask you stand at the microphone at the podium state your name and residential address for the record and counsel rules permit up to five minutes to address counsel on an item so i will declare the public hearing open and the public is invited to comment on this  good evening and welcome thank you thank you thank you mr meir in the council thanks for the opportunity i'm can get in sync president of code blue and i just want to introduce myself let you know that i'm ok i will for questions code blue is a company so in terms of leadership in the coming company marketing sales were expanding we believe quite rapidly we think we're at the beginning of a of a very good growth spurt and also expanding into international markets we've purchased a used building are planning on moving into that within the next couple of months and i just thank you for the opportunity here to be part of the city in the the opportunities that we have here the work that you do so thank you very much great thank you very much for having a few brochures passed down through the greater and also with if you will that basically tells some of our list of clients we've got very nice presents we're on probably over four thousand sites in north america with over seventy five thousand telephones at this point breakfast with that with you about a month or two ago and learned a lot about me knew about the code blue products on hopes campus but learned a lot about what the company is doing where it hopes to go and some of the emerging technology so it's a pretty exciting time in that industry and we're thrilled that you're here in holland microphone is still open public hearing is still up all right i will close the public hearing and a motion would be appreciated motion group support moved by whiteman supported by  there any discussion like this one little anecdotal thing my wife and i had to take a trip down to texas earlier this month for a wedding and we pulled into a rest area in missouri and i saw one of the blue boxes and i got out of the corner of my and said my wife all in michigan right here in big nice big sticker on the bottom there so it's going to nice to see that and congratulations anyone else  great product what a great idea thank you anyone else nancy please with the demise of the public phone booth there's really no way to contact anybody if you don't have a cell phone if it's taken away from you or whatever and so any way that we can ensure security wherever it is is that's really important it's nice for holland to stand for that communication communications from the audience this is the point of the meeting when anyone from the audience may address council on any topic that doesn't show up at some point on the agenda so if you're here to address council on some item of interest we'd love to hear from you and again the simple rules are please step forward to the microphone so people listening at home or at least outside of the room can hear you and you have up to five minutes to address council the microphone is open good evening and welcome leaving wyoming this night i want to take the opportunity to represent my community immigration's immigrants from this planet community  y to drive because of our legal status we need to drive to work work to or schools hospitals sure  grand rapids and he's sober the ip is going to get him will he promise to do what he can do to became without resolution so i ask you to start working with him and helpless in this thank you thank you for being here tonight i will confess that i'm probably not as up to speed on that issue as perhaps i should be i'm going to  remember going to pass a couple of cards down and our assistant city manager will give you a couple of my business cards and if we could follow up together so i could learn a little bit more about what the efforts are and i would appreciate that so thank you very much  the microphone is still open that we have with the suspended driver's license for immigrants unfortunately we are here for it not because we i mean we want to be here because we need it we need to be you know where we come from it's not a very nice place to be here property is nothing compared to a property in dos they throw countries in south america it's very sad and it hurts  and i'm sorry i've seen family and i've seen them close enough and hurt that they have to suffer this way i mean to you maybe my just be a piece of paper but to us it's our whole entire life our world we have children in we need to provide for them we try our best like you would try for your kids to give them the best that you maybe take advantage of the system but fortunately you know if somebody kind of screws up in the beginning messes things up for everybody else who really wants to be here and who really needs to be here because like i said living in those countries and unfortunately their government assume do anything to help them out in that we're here because are we really trust and we have a lot of that this government of the united states can do something for us in maybe we broke rules but we didn't do it with the in touch intention of taking anything away from anybody we only wanted to give our kids the best that we could because we may not have we may not had that chance otherwise so please i am asking you to work with whoever you need to work with to give us the opportunity to at least give us our driver's license because we need to we need to go to work you know our children get s children need to eat in who we are and that moving back to our twitter country what are we going to do i mean it's just so scary to think that we have to go back there in what whatever we have to think about what we got  give our children to eat tonight probably in here at least you know that you have me we have ends meet at the end of the night because he will have you not because you have a license to go to work  you don't have to miss work because i got pulled over and i'm really scared to drive so please i'm asking you for all the kids that are here that have parents that are illegal to please work with us to get our driver's license back thank you thank you thanks for being here tonight still an opportunity to talk extend to you the magnitude of this problem that we are having as illegal immigrants me myself i was a legal one i'm no longer a legal i was blessed but not everyone that that comes from other countries has that opportunity or has that blessing to half opportunities to become legal you know i was i became legalized  pants applied for amnesty and that was a long long time ago and that is that right now i'm a u s citizen thank god and i but i put myself in those shoes that you know i remember when i used to live in my country my parents can provide for us i had to garbage pick to eat i used to go and pick food from the trash and that's something that here no matter how poor you are you don't have to do because there's always a church willing to help there's always friends that have enough to spare am from mexico i was born in mexico in mexico you don't even want to turn the television on anymore because you hear from many killings every night and they hit closer to home every time it happened to us my brother in law was he was deported i guess you call it punishment you know one before you get your papers or whatever in order he was the pointed and he was really badly hurt over there and he didn't make it back now i have a nice summer nephew that don't have all that that they are american citizens they were born here one of the most one in chicago one in holland and they no longer have a dad and you know there's just so much that you guys can do you guys have power something that we don't have we have a boy's father boyce is nothing compared to what you guys have i ask please not only for my niece and my nephew but for all those little children that have half the blessing of being born here or that have parents that are legal to take that fear away from them my kids offered my kids suffered you know intensely when their uncle passed away in mexico and they knew they weren't going to see him anymore and that's something that doesn't need to happen meaning our pledge of allegiance i is one nation under god and seriously there's a time for without that i myself sometimes doubt that we are one nation under god because it doesn't say one country under god it's a formation and we're all nation and like it's please just consider it a ring we don't want to leave in here anymore we don't want our parents our sisters our brothers cousins our friends to live with fear we just want permission to drive that's all we're asking for we're not asking for money we're not asking for you to you know to feed us you know we're only asking for permission to drive so we can provide for our families and you know have that opportunity to go look for a job or do whatever we have to do and do things legally rather than illegally because that's what it's called here can really ask you to help us i'm not really good talking to the public but it's really hard i have a little baby myself he's my everything affects iraq and i'm all i ask all i am asking for is police have was in consideration and do something for us as many i've heard many many comments saying that immigrants are bad immigrants are here to steal work from americans we don't pay our taxes w just back people and we should get sent back to our country but it's not true if we're here we're here because we need it where you here we pay our taxes we do jobs that some people here in america won't do i am asking please like an aside talk talk to talk to whoever you need to talk and please give us driver license thank you thank you mike from the store lived here in holland for fifteen years beloved friends members of my church cross for chapel lock up get a clue see how that about three years ago they moved back to mexico out of fear that  in particular be arrested and deported because he didn't have a driver's license what these people are talking about is very real please listen to thank you thank you anyone else all right well thank you for for being here tonight and i look forward to communicating with you and if you'd  like information about how to reach members of the council through telephone or email that information is on the website but we can also get you back if there are city calendars as silly as this sounds at the moment if there sit there are silly city calendars in the rack in the rear of the room there's also contact information for all of us up here as well on those so thank you ok that takes us then to i don't fourteen a one which is the report from the board of public works regarding baseload generation we welcome david koster the general manager of the w to introduce this item for us david yeah we council set of recommendations from the board dealing with electric generation and so with that night i do have a power point presentation that i'm going to walk through here try to set some context around these recommendations this has been a process that's been going on for quite some time trying to wrestle with what are we going to do next to meet future demands for electricity and as well as you know how are we going to incorporate our resources better into the community long term you know we already do a number of things including snow melting in the city and there's a lot of work going on right now to look at other ways that we can use energy efficiently and for that what i'd like to do is start off with a little bit of a look at the big picture and remind the council that you know this has been a topic energy has been a topic that we've been discussing for a long time and over the past year spent a lot a lot of time wrestling with the  results of a very significant plan that was developed with a lot of input from people in the community our community energy plan and just to kind of show the fact that this is a big picture here that we're that we're going to be talking about one element of it but it's an element that fits in a larger context of an energy story for this community an energy plan that is looking at trying to deliver high quality efficiency server efficient energy services to the community and it has a number of elements including efficient generation efficient uses of energy some key community values that lead into our energy story and a discussion about metrics and how we track our progress going forward tonight we're really talking about one piece of that puzzle but it is the combined set of strategies that this council and the board have worked with over this past year we have task forces underway to look at a number of elements associated with the strategy incorporated within our community plan and tonight we're talking about one piece of the puzzle we're talking about the efficient generation piece and it's a piece that we've studied in some great detail through a process that we've called our power for the twenty first century energy sorry power for the twenty first century process what i'd like to do is set the context before i get into some of the recommendations as just as a summary video play for the council  a little bit of a video that describes the process that we went through in evaluating the options and some summary that shows you know what's coming out of that analysis as is a topic that we studied for some time so this isn't new for you but for those that are watching at home and maybe are just listening in for the first time i think this video does a nice job of setting some context so if if you'll permit me here i'm going to go ahead and run this short video call and has always been a community that works hard and for more than one hundred years the holland board of public works has supplied the power to keep our town growing as our community grows such as our need for power by two thousand and sixteen the increased demand power for our homes and businesses will exceed our baseload generating capacity over the past several years we have considered a number of ways to meet our communities need for more base load power it's a complex question last year we hired h d r a global independent consulting firm to help us conduct an exhaustive sustainable return on investment study it looked at affordability and reliability but also at the social economic environmental and health impacts of a variety of option p p w belongs to the community our process included people from all across our city to make sure their voices were heard their input helped keep us on track for integrating our new power generation with holland's community energy plan we looked at a lot of options everything from state of the art solid fuel generation during knoebels to purchasing primarily from the grid one of the most promising solutions comes from combined cycle natural gas technologies natural gas is plentiful affordable and cleaner than other alternatives with local generation the h p p w can expand the services that make downtown great things like the snow melt system that keep streets clear john winter and district heating that could heat hundreds of homes and businesses claiming affordable power is essential to the success of holland's innovative community energy plan and we are well on our way there's work left to be dead but we're excited about the direction we're headed as we move forward you can count on the holland board of public is exciting and it's a process this power for the twenty first century energy analysis and effort that we went through was a very robust effort it involved a lot of input from the community it involved a lot of educational series of topics spent time bringing in speakers to talk about the various aspects of power generation we worked hard to make sure that when we studied the generation options we did that in the context of looking at that relative to the strategies incorporated within our community energy plan and in the end i think now that we have the results of that study we have some recommendations that are going to lead us in a  very efficient cleaner energy future for how and and so let me let me walk through what some of the high level results are from our sustainable return on investment again just reminding everybody that when we did this analysis it was very unique we looked traditionally when you look at power generation options you might look at just the financial return on investment you know how much is one option going to cost versus another and this analysis looked at all the extra maladies as well that would be impacted from our decisions you know when you look at emissions and the impacts to the environment those things were considered when you look at economic activity that could be driven from some of these solutions that was considered when you look at things like water front utilization and alternative uses for that those issues were considered we really looked at a myriad of different and in addition to the financial impacts we looked at what is the potential for district heating and what kind of value does that bring and so all these things were wrapped into an analysis and from that analysis some very high level outcomes emerged and if you look at this chart the scenarios that are depicted as a b and g are scenarios that are primarily driven by the the based intermediate resource is a natural gas combined cycle generation resource there are various sizes involved in here but really all of them all a b and g have roughly about one hundred one hundred fifteen megawatts of natural gas within the portfolio hundred eight hundred one hundred fourteen roughly in the same amount of natural gas just different configurations so that is one thing that shows that if you look at the three bars there represents the financial and sustainable and total return on investment and those three options emerge as the highest of course you can't look at analysis over twenty five years and know exactly what the outcome is going to be and all potential sensitivities natural gas pricing could change there could be other factors that have a range of possible values to that so we this analysis also looked at it from a probabilistic standpoint so what's the range of potential outcomes that could happen and just as the other graph showed the three scenarios that emerge as the best options from a sustainable return on investment are the three scenarios again that have the natural gas  as the prime generation resource and that's across a range of potential natural gas prices and a range of other possible drivers for the particular inputs to the analysis the  furthest to the right is what is called scenario g which has a hundred fourteen megawatt natural gas combined cycle as its as its base resource scenarios a and b have a smaller natural gas combined cycle but also have a thirty combined heat and power unit so again all three of scenarios have roughly the same amount of natural gas generation within their portfolio and finally when you look at the level ice cost of electricity again those three options and specifically scenario g had the lowest level ice cost of electricity over the twenty five years scenarios and be slightly higher than that so again if you look at it in terms of an absolute  predicted sustainable return on investment if you look at the range of all puts you look at a level ice cost of electricity those three scenarios emerges the as the highest performing they're also scenarios that can be incorporated into the strategies of the community energy plan such as allowing for district heating allowing for additional snow melt you know they have the ability to provide some of those other integration opportunities that the community energy plan identifies as are important strategies for us going forward so staff from this analysis and through our dialogue with key groups in the community with others that we've heard from from the community  led to a capstone event on october twenty nine where we first reviewed our staff recommendations we used a radar response system with a panel of constituents from the community that we that we assembled to help with this process called our wrap panel and the results that we got were that that panel felt that this process that we had employed over the last year was a very comprehensive process that was appropriate in terms of how it approached it and how it sought input it also we used to rate a response system to gauge the general reaction to the particular recommendations that staff was making and on the comprehensive set of recommendations that i'm about to walk through here there was significant agreement with those being appropriate recommendations to move our community forward so what are these recommendations there's five that i'm going to walk through the first one is as it relates to our baseload resource a baseload resource is one that you might anticipate to be running most of the time it's the one that handles kind of that that base demand that's out there that demand that is not a peaking or weather dependent demand but one that is more consistent on a year round basis and what is being recommended by staff and also by our board our board did deal with these recommendations and what that means a combined cycle means that we're taking a jet engine essentially a combustion turban which is like a jet engine we're going to burn natural gas in it to make electricity and then capture the waste heat off from that to make steam and run that steam through a steam turbine it's a very efficient process talking about thermal efficiencies that instead of a conventional power plant might be thirty five to forty percent you're talking about getting up above fifty percent thermal efficiency on these type of  generation resources two on one means that we'd use to combine two combustion turbines and generate waste heat from those two to run the one steam turbine there's some redundancy within that which is also important if you're going to be looking at using this resource for district heating or for snow melting purposes as well why are we recommending this there is an economy of scale associated with this resource the cost per kilowatt to build one of these is substantially less than what it is for the smaller generation resource you see the comparative difference there under the economy of scale it's also less expensive to operate there is about a seven and a half percent efficiency gain in this type of configuration and this resource size versus the smaller option which means less fuel being burned per kilowatt hour and less emissions per kilowatt hour are taking place as well there's additional heat available for for district heating a stacked water heater essentially in the back end of this and capture even more heat than what you're doing when you make steam for the steam turbine further increasing the thermal efficiency of this unit and this size has about twenty eight million b to use of heat available versus the smaller one which would only have nine million b to use of heat available of two hundred degree water so high temperature water heat available dish will snow melting capability you're looking at for this size unit about two hundred one thousand million b to use per hour that's about that would be able to increase our existing snow melt service territory by four to five fold right now we producing or the system is designed for a peak usage of about forty million b t u s per hour so there's a significant additional amount that's there in this unit available there's electrical capacity additions that th provides an additional thirty six megawatts of base load capacity which would be offset by the eventual retirement or repurpose ing of the young units has been some discussion we'll get to a recommendation as relates to the de young plant but in any case it's life as a base load resource is very limited ok it may have some peaking capacity value and we'll talk about that a little bit but in any regard you talk about repurposing that in a very short time frame and this would help be able to offset some of that loss of that base load purpose and there's also some opportunity in the short run for some  partnerships or at least a cooperative relationship with other municipal zz who have a similar need for this type of power you know whether it's you know selling it and terms of a structured contract with an entity for a long period time or on an opportunistic basis we know that there is a demand for this type of power out there among other missed michigan municipal zx and we think that this provides an opportunity to work with them as well as we grow in to this resource and finally there's a significant financial financing advantage right now if you look at the cost of borrowing for bonding just as it is for the mortgage interest rates and other interest rates are at historic lows far's that that consideration and that means that taking advantage of the economy of scale and the low finance your rates is going to put us in an advantage position going into the future versus other new generation that will have to be eventually built by others and what their borrowing cost might mean to their cost of providing electricity this is going to put us in a competitive advantage in the long run so those are the reasons for the recommendation as a relates to baseload staff is also making a recommendation the board following suit with staff recommendation is recommending that as far as the location of this new resource that we would our suggestion is that we would build this resource at a site other than the existing de young plant and there's a lot of reasons for that when we built the de young plant we did it because we were going to be burning coal there and we brought some coal in by rail but also being on the lake provides an opportunity for vessel transportation of coal and we do that now exclusively that's how we bring coal in that lake also provides a lot of water for cooling there are regulations that are going to impact our ability to continue to do that and are basically going to say that you can't do that you're going to have to build a cooling tower which means a lot less water is needed from a make from a from a source for me water source and so that once through cooling that we do today is really not an option for the new unit we won't need the lake for vessel transportation of the fuel so for reasons the lake is not imperative that it be on the lake front that property used to be centrally swat material or swamp swamp land and it was filled but when you construct a large plant on there you have to do that with pilings and a lot of them and so the construct ability that site might not be as great as other locations that say it can't be done because obviously we build a power plant there once and and you can do it but we think there could be other sites that maybe are better from that standpoint and also that are better in terms of their proximity both to the fuel source natural gas fuel source as well as closer to district heating and snow melting opportunities in any regard you need to be able to preserve access to high voltage transmission and to roads to be able to maintain the resource and have delivery of large equipment and things like that we believe that there are other sites that will fit that purpose and  and do a better job than the dion site in terms of the long run of being the site for our next generation resource this isn't just about base load generation again we're talking about that upper left quadrant of the the house that was depicted earlier representing our community energy plan and it's strategies on efficient generation and we're looking at supplementing this resource with additional renewables the hound d p w is all already ahead of the requirements under public act two ninety five to meet its renewable portfolio obligations but we've heard from customers we've heard from customers through this process and also through our customer satisfaction surveys every year that there is an increased interest in having more renewables as part of the portfolio and part of what they part of what makes up the power supply that they are they are using so for some time staff has been working on the board has been working on trying to find a renewable resource to supplement what we already have we studied to wind developments one in the upper peninsula one near just south of town here and in the end those didn't prove to be feasible but what we did find are two very good contracts for wind in areas where wind is very strong and the power pricing is very good and we brought to the board we brought to city council earlier this year a recommendation that we move forward on those contracts and they were adopted those are those recommendations were adopted and we are finalizing a contract for a wind out of the resource in indiana i just got a project status contract we think that's a very good supplement to our power supply and certainly in line with the strategies within the community energy plan and so we are recommending that we file we finish that up we're also recommending that we work with another entity called exelon for finalizing a contract out of what's called their b b one b when development this would be a twenty twenty year agreement it is contingent upon  the continuation of production tax credits and so you know we're watching that very closely over the next month here to make sure that it's set to expire by the end of this year so we're watching that very closely to see if that continues but we're working on contract language with that entity and we have a memorandum of understanding in place with exelon to try to finalize that as far as it relates to the james the young plant staff recommendation and this has been maybe somewhat the most confusing recommendation and we spent a considerable time i think at the last last week of the study session but to walk through that again this is a recommendation really in the negative and so it's hard to kind of get your hands around that but i'm a try to explain what this really means what we're saying here is that we're recommending that no immediate capital investments in emission control technology to meet upcoming regulations take place the analysis that we did in the sustainable return on investment work showed that there would be about a twenty eight million dollar investment for needed for units four and five to comply with as well as control for nitrogen oxides and the analysis in the sustainable return on investment houses rather it showed that the result of that was about the same ended up being the bout the same cost of  electricity as if you didn't make those and rather retired those units in two thousand and sixteen from that standpoint then when you analyze that you say well if there's another regulation that might come between now and the next twenty five years your a that cost you know now are changing and so the less risk approach would be to not make those investments at this time because there's not a compelling financial reason and the sustainability was  sustainable return on investment was worse in the scenarios where those investments were made what that says then is that these regulations that are coming out and for unit over five are already in place have a certain timeframe on those and there will be a time where we will have to move off from coal and cease cease operating with coal now that doesn't mean that the units have to necessarily shut down in the next slide i'm going to talk about  is where there is a value to the council or to the city into the into the community to our rate payers associated with keeping those assets around even if they serve a peaking purpose so what we are recommending is that we monitor the regulations and technology improvements in the twenty million that we had today was based upon the technology that's out there today you know could things change that we don't expect yeah i don't think in the next three years it's very likely but you know we're going to monitor those things are also going to monitor the timing of these regulations because that will impact you know when we have to cease operating with coal but we are recommending that at this point we preserve the market capacity value by utilizing natural gas capability for those units and you might ask the question well don't we have more than we need a peaking we have a lot of peaking out at our forty eight street site yes we have a lot of peaking power we do and for our own needs here i would say that that's that's true that we have a good amount of peaking for our own needs there are reason that staff in the board are recommending that these be preserved for their capacity values because the world we live in today is one where there is a wholesale market that is ready to provide a revenue source either for energy or for for capacity these units that we have are already bought and they're paid for it's not like we have to risk another investment to maine to to build these units for that purpose and since they are bought and paid for you then look at what's going to be the cost to maintain them and to operate them for serving this capacity purpose and what is going to be the potential revenue that you might see from that and the next slide depicts that what's represented here is the total length of each of these bars represents the capacity value that is this projected to come from the amount of capacity that would be at the dion plant and you can see that that is significant the blue portion of that bar represents our anticipated cost necessary to staff and to maintain the plant as a peaking unit and an annual basis you're looking at about a million one hundred million to kind of cost to staff and maintain that plant in all years for the next twenty five years that is the amount of revenue that's expected outpaces into spaded cost to maintain it in today's dollars what staff is saying is we know that there is a community discussion with respect to other uses for that site that is probably as has has gone on for some time and may continue for the future into the future at some point where there is a value that comes forward that exceeds the kind of net benefit that you see represented within this graph that's a time to start considering well let's maybe take the entire plant down but right now there is a value that is anticipated and a net benefit over the cost of maintaining that plant that is projected to be there at this time so what staff is saying in the board is saying let's preserve the asset even as a gas peaker and tell the value that we get from that doesn't either exceed what it cost to maintain it or isn't greater than some other value that that property may give to the community so the next steps that we would have really that we would engage the services of an owners engineer and what's an owner's engineer it's basically an extension of staff it's an extension of our you know we are small entity we don't have the staff to really take on the of managing and contracting with an architect engineering firm and a contractor to do this job an owners engineer is important to have and to represent the interests of the owner and going through those process of contracting and then and then administer in the contract with a joint venture of an architect engineer and an a construction firm that owners engineer would also help us with the process of the engineering which would support the air permit and air permit application would have to go in and that would have to be obtained a permit to install would have to be obtained from the department of arm of quality before we could commence construction we would they'll start to begin the major equipment procurement process we want to optimize around that hundred fourteen megawatts because several of the manufacturers that are out there have various iterations of machines and so we'd want to start the major equipment procurement process and we'd want to develop the execution plan on how we're going to put out the request for qualifications and proposals from these design and build services a big big step though  critical path step is the selection of a site because you can't start an air permitting process until you select the site so that's probably the first thing in the critical path we have some gas pipeline work and also a big part of building this much natural gas generations means also partnering with a attain the services of a gas management firm to help you with a hedge plan and it procurement strategy for natural gas revive the stability in operating costs  to minimize your risk going for so what staff and the board have have done is is to adopt these recommendations is there's been a resolution that's been adopted by the board in support of staff recommendations a similar resolution has been prepared for council and century the elements of it are depicted here that talk about committing to building the the two by one natural gas combined cycle monitoring regulations for the existing dione plant and at a later date the appropriate investing in those controls versus operating those units as speakers or potential retirement talks about engaging the services owners engineer initiating site selection initiating gas pipeline beginning the work of acquiring easements in support of the gas pipeline and other supporting infrastructure needed and procuring the fuel management services continuing to evaluate existing emergency renewable technologies is another thing i think this important to point out is that even though we have the wind options that are here one option that staff believes may be very good option for our community going forward and certainly has been identified within some of the scenarios of the community energy plan and we're within our technologies and finally that we did stablished a budget of about one hundred twenty five thousand dollars to cover some of the things that would be non contract maybe less than service purchase order kind of level but certainly contracts are going to come and summary of the recommendations that are for it before you tonight all right thank you david and any questions for dave or other comments from members of the board or staff i suspect they'll be some that come up  a seven and it's seven and a half percent efficient more efficient than the smaller one that was the relative the thermal efficiency of that unit overall is greater than fifty fifty five percent ok sixty percent sixty five when you start looking at taking some of the other energy uses and putting those to use so the fifty five ish percent is just pure electricity driven efficiency that's correct or efficiency gained through the electric electric tricity generating process right thank you for any other questions for staff dave in particular all right let us know that i have the sinking feeling that the decent folks in the audience who care to address counsel in this item tonight so at this point why don't we do that i don't think we need a motion on the floor to have that kind of discussion and then we can get a motion and have our discussion as well so if someone from the audience would don come on down would care to talk with counsel here is the chance to do so on this again residential address for the record and council rules apply so five minutes or so would be appreciated good evening and welcome do mr mayor members of the city council my name is dan treason burg i live it twenty nine east sixth street i'm a leader of highlands city energy advisory committee as service vice chairman of your sustainability committee one of two community representatives appointed by you to your c e p steering committee and now is spokesperson as well for your c e p t task force on home energy retrofits so tonight i have two seemingly conflicting things that i want to say to you one it's good as this generation proposal before you is in my opinion it's not the best that could have been offered but you have plenty of other people who may comment on the reasons for that i would like simply to state that but also to say that because this proposal comes in the context of the c e p t i support your yes vote on this motion the key here is your commitment to the basic message of the c e p t namely making community investments in energy efficiency efficient efficiency in generating energy as the mayor's follow up question focused on and efficiency in our use of energy a yes vote tonight on the generation proposal starts us on a road to a two hundred million dollar thereabouts c e p t investment in energy efficiency and the generation and and that's a good thing but also it thereby amounts to adding perhaps twenty percent to every user's energy rates in order to pay the mortgage on the new construction the question then is this when the time comes  also support similar c e p investments in energy efficiency at the user's end our homes our schools our churches our offices our stores our factories and even our city facilities so that higher energy rates don't have to translate into higher energy bills here's an important number from the guy fourth study your citizens in two thousand and ten spent one hundred thirty five million dollars buying energy i have a you may have seen before if you use the saul over town and making various presentations in the city energy plan it translates one hundred thirty five million dollars into numbers that i understand it's an average of about fourteen thousand dollars a year for a family of four buying energy in holland and it seems like a very large number but if you think about it roughly half of that is in direct bills that you pay your gas bill your electric bill and when you tank up your car to gas station but another half of it comes from indirect energy bills we pay when we pay our property tax that supports the heat and light in this building and the library and the schools and the gas for the police cars and the fire trucks in the school busses etc it accounts for the ties are paid of our church to heat and light those buildings it reflects the added cost the cost of energy in the stores when we purchase things in the stores when we work in our factories so energy efficiency at the users and it's also important you know that that's why although tonight's proposal is from one c e p t task force and efficient generation you have also created four other c e p t task forces to address user and efficiency task forces on home energy retrofits commercial energy retrofits building labeling district heating if a yes vote on tonight's recommended investments in generating energy efficiently foretells a similar receptivity to future recommendations about investments in user and energy efficient efficiency then by all means i urge you to do two things tonight one vote yes and to put your vote in context by joining hundreds and hundreds of your fellow citizens and adopting the simple vision statement and this poster i share the vision of hol thriving community that generates energy cleanly distributes it reliably and affordably and uses it efficiently this particular poster has one hundred signatures on it we have several other posters with similar amounts of signatures and i invite you to sign it yourselves with a pen of your choice thank you thank you holland i'm a member of many groups but tonight i'm speaking for myself as a citizen who loves holland for its natural beauty its lake michigan beaches and its small town appeal as a place where people can have a voice in public policy and be a part of the decision process i have been involved in the b p w and city meetings on the energy decision process for holland's future energy plan and have followed the many changes as the energy plan evolved i have concerns about the final energy plan recommended by helen b p w for your vote tonight i support the inclusion of wind energy in the b p w plan and i encourage city council and d p w to had more renewable energy such as solar and more wind to our energy mix renewable energy like wind creates clean local jobs the local company energetics makes windmill blades and there are several there are federal grants to research battery storage in holland renewable energy is a win on all fronts environmental health and economic howland could be a leader in clean renewable energy if we take this opportunity now the plan to build a one hundred fourteen  gas plant seems to be based on uncertain estimates of future need i would suggest a smaller gas plant to meet our need commercial and industrial energy efficiency and conservation can reduce future energy needs the plan to sell access electricity to the grid does not seem to meet the conditions of the b p w charter to be a nonprofit community electricity provider well gas may be cleaner than coal there are polluting emissions of methane which contributes to climate change the fracking process involves harmful chemicals which pollute air and water power plant emissions are the major source of contaminants in lake michigan and cause harm to water quality wildlife and health council needs to include in your energy decision the costs of water and air pollution including loss to the fishing industry water cleanup costs and health care expenses from air pollution related lung and heart disease i oppose the option to keep using james d young power plants units three four and five without upgraded pollution controls to burn gas or even coal if proposed pollution rules are weekend there should be a date certain set to stop using all units at the james d young point the city spent our money on the guard for its study which recommended option b under reduction in greenhouse gases we held many meetings in which citizens said we don't want to use coal due to pollution and health concerns pollan citizens want and deserve clean air and water and a healthy environment for all who live and work in the holland area how and count and should be a leader in clean renewable energy please consider these concerns in your decision which will affect all of us far into the future and i go don's comment that we could have a better plan with more renewable and perhaps we need to consider that we have time yet to consider thank you carol you have spoken in support of c e p option b before correct yes just want to confirm thank you thank you square foot mean completely off the grid and passive solar energy and solar cells technology is here it's now it's not not in the future it works a little bit more expensive in the first initial price of the house but over the life of a house which is basically indefinite if you keep water and insects and gas explosions away from them they should last and definitely these houses we're building now for the generations of our great great great grandkids to live in we need the state  change building codes to bring this up to energy standards that we know are available for reasonable cost and in the future equip them with solar cells i'd like to have this journal be put in the record not a second thing i want to point out is that in our democracy we have a little flaw when it comes to some decisions like this are resource and energy decisions i made by energy companies politicians when scientists should be making these decisions rosa was the first president to realize this problem one hundred trying to get resource division decisions into a scientific community that's the origin of our national force we see that kind of battle going on in michigan over the past forty years fifty years we have the subject to pressures of the community to do things a certain way and i would caution you to listen to the scientists and what scientists are telling us is that we have a carbon monoxide carbon dioxide problem in the atmosphere if we burn all the fossil fuels that we currently have in our resource bank we know are there they're saying we can't do it it's not it's not going to be feasible ok the life on the planet may not be threatened if we do that of the course the next two or three hundred years and so we need to start seriously now thinking about stopping  oxygen carbon dioxide into the atmosphere using up oxygen and we're destroying force we're polluting the oceans with a plane to produce large print percentage of russian exist and this me concerned i'll be gone before probably becomes a big issue for people what does it do to our health we know that people can live a higher elevations with less oxygen they do in denver and  but if you go high enough you die oxygen is important source of our ira life and so listen to the scientists there telling us fossil fuels all that we have right now we can't burn it my question is why are we looking for more in a way that we don't know if it's going to pollute the great lakes or our water supply so i'd caution you in a rush to fracking national get natural gas so where is this leave us science tell us at some point we're going to stop burning fossil fuels it will it's a finite resource we'll lose it it's gone the question is what would be do it as the human race what destroys us already the pollution is killing some folks by destroying their health so with these threats  out as hunters and gatherers and for thirty forty fifty thousand years depending on how you want to we became their cultural people started changing the environment could live in bigger communities and cities and so called civilization started  for you know ten thousand years we were farmers it was the primary source of wealth in the community only about two hundred years ago we started burning coals in the grand scheme of human existence we are guinea pigs folks how long can we keep doing this can we carry can be continue to burn this fossil fuel for the x thousand years as a civilization as a planet where does it put us that we have an opportunity right now to make one little step saying l how we're going to make that step for the future when you make this decision think about your great great great grand kids who have to live in this community and live on this planet sooner or later we don thank you thank you susan harley i am of the michigan policy director for clean water action i live in east lansing michigan but i'm here tonight representing our four thousand plus holland resident members first off i would like to thank you for delaying this decision and we really appreciate the opportunity last week to hear the thoughtful discussion not granted that go quietly into the evening but i think a lot of great questions came out  again would like to applaud you for moving forward with wind generation as part of this portfolio is well as what can be assumed as a decision to not to move forward with a new coal plant those are good decisions but we do have more questions more things that we believe that you all should consider before making this decision and last week council member white man came up to me and asked if not now th when and i'd like to take this time to answer that question first off this decision must be made after the community energy plan task force implementation teams have done their job  is only a fraction of the cost of a new generation and it's essential that holland capture all of the low hanging energy efficiency fruit first before making any electric generation decisions that will give you an accurate picture of how in the real energy demands the us are i did look at a decrease demand scenario however that did not include to maximize investments in energy efficiency the commercial energy task force was not even in place at that time when they made that recommendation second of all renewable energies have not been maximized in th scenario just to be clear clean water actually never did support scenario b as the ultimate option we've always been pushing for more renewables more energy efficiency to be included in what the city makes their energy choices around for instance solar panels are a good thing to look at now i hope you also have an op ed by one of our members who has solar panels on her home and she has zero electricity bills for most of the year i think how many residents want a piece of that and they'd like to see those options that are right now not being given to them i've also heard many times the baseload is needed for holland yet the nation's top energy regulator has said that base load is a thing of the past well we will see now is distributed renewables especially with energy storage back up the batteries that are made right here in holland that's how we'll be getting our energy in the future another thing that you should wait on before making this decision is to get a picture of what gas prices will be post fracking regulation the e p a is right now acting on those regulations in only four years ago we saw natural gas at a cost of thirteen dollars yet the as are aware i report only looked at a top cost of nine dollars so when to make this decision not tonight not now but one thing that you should decide on now is to commit to moving away from coal we've been waiting for this decision we're now hearing that the border public works once a value a clean air act requirements moving forward but how lenders are very strongly supportive of being good stewards of god's creation and i don't think that means a waiting to see what requirements will be put on you by the federal government i mean acting to protect our health today leslie i would like to see you sadly commit to the goals that are in capsulated in the community energy plan and that includes a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases one thing that has been overlooked in all of these discussions is the transportation sector i did provide to you a document talking about policies that you can put in place to grow an infrastructure for electric vehicles one piece of the community energy plan again that has not been talked about in this forum but no matter what i know that we can work together moving forward to solidify a clean energy future for holland and i think you for your work on that meeting and i read it and so i don and i did pay them for a little quick notes and let me read them to you first we would be foolish not to take advantage of the president  natural gas price secondly we would be equally foolish to do away with the coal fired plant the reasoning power generating plants all over the country are now turning to gas within i a short time who knows five years gas will probably cost more per kilowatt hour than coal we must keep it as our alternative when the solar a high cost intermittent power source for the foreseeable future our baseload need can only be assured through fossil fuel or nuclear powered generating plants so many other things have been said here tonight idealistically and they all sound great and how bad the the sort and the rest of the particulate in the atmosphere are but those  read we talk about the global warming the heating go back to think about six years seven hundred to four thousand one hundred we were in the medieval warm period when the people came over from norway sweden and began farming in greenland and they did that for quite a while and within a ten year period the climate change so significantly that they all went back the ice which had receded came back down and we entered into a little ice age from about fourteen hundred to around one thousand nine hundred or so and now we've begun to go the other way but the heat during that warm medieval warm period was actually greater on average around the earth than the warmth of the earth is now so i am i'm always just a little leery when i hear that we are in such a terrible predicament now because of a global warming anyway i don't want to babble on i said what i intended to say the four points don't go away with a cold you're going to need it gas is nice it's like santa claus came down the chimney and all of a sudden he gave us this this great gift of low price gas but you got to go up the chimney also and then one of these days we'll pay for it if we can't resort to coal thank you thank you ok we will close steve would you you know if there was a shifting in the seat or if it was a movement toward the microphone the other reason for coming tonight thanks west street resident here in the city of holland a week ago i was at a conference at duke university on earth keeping in the church and i could talk about that but i thought i'd rather ask a question and tell a short story how many you have children i know some of you do i've had the privilege of having an in class actually at hope college and perhaps some grandchildren i have three daughters a car and sophia and like you parents i hope i try to love them as best i can think about their future what kind of future will that be well let me tell you a quick story when i was i don't know thirteen or fourteen i asked one of my grandparents so what were you doing during the civil rights era and i heard from them their various involvements and they were proud of the things they had done to contribute to justice for folks who often were treated unjustly i'm not going to cite statistics i simply want you whoever you vote to think about that question of legacy and what you will be able to tell your children and perhaps your grandchildren about the future of this fair city that we all know how to take those few true generations which aren't abstractions but real people in your lives seriously as you think about how much energy future thank you thank you welcome thank you and my name is monica helicity fifteen birch drive i not quite sure what to say at this point i feel like were so far into this yet there's still so far to go b t w paints a really great picture about the process and the plant and why it's right in the economy of scale i just i just can't wholeheartedly buy into that vision for holland i don't think it's right for us right  now i think we've lost sight of the community energy plan and i disagree with don i don't think that this plan really embodies the c e p t we don't have a commitment to reduce greenhouse gases we don't we've got more gas than we need you know and that plant itself is getting older and older by the minute i mean the things that we can do now with with clean energy  they're just growing every day and so while i'm well it's been frustrating this process has taken so long i think it's also good because so many changes have happened and i think we are in a different place now and changes are still coming and we've got task forces out there on efficiency and commercial and institutional that can really make a difference and argy efficiency as baseload is becoming a reality and you know i keep hearing things like if we don't build this plant we don't have the snow melt in the district heating and i just you know we will we will have it i've been sitting on the district heating task force and there's a number of ways that could work a number there's there's people who just have excess heat that are going to go into the system they could work in any number of locations and i just keep thinking about you know the one hundred eighty two million that we want to spend on a plant that could very soon become outdated before we need all that excess at the study session i mentioned all the clean energy goals by some of our biggest industrial users hayworth herman miller johnson controls and even neighboring cities that we may be looking to supply energy to you know grand rapids is going hundred percent renewable by two thousand and twenty you know we're  g talking about providing for zealand but they're looking at buying into b b they want wind you know i just question what we're going to do with all this excess gas and i keep going back to september i'm sorry august twenty seventh b p w study session where a natural gas management company the energy authority came in to speak about the natural gas and how it would work for holland and you know it brought up some very interesting things diane hayworth was very concerned about demand and would so many utilities transition to natural gas and you know she said what's going to happen with all this demand and they admitted that there could be a shortage not of natural gas but of pipeline space and that could really drive the rates up in fill miller asked some questions about price volatility and you know they flat out admitted they said we can't predict the price of natural gas beyond five  years and he said you know with unheard of new demand he said it sounds like it's going to make an already volatile fuel even more volatile b t w would have to commit to capacity for five years at a time  happen been updated and that like you just clarifying that we would be buying in storing this gas on the pipelines to sell to third parties and that's what's really not in our charter that's not what we're supposed to do and this plan is leading us down the wrong path for holland in the long run i feel  welcome i i was going to speak tonight but i was compelled and i make it very brief i'm jian o'connell i'm from sierra club michigan chapter and also a west michigan resident and i too want to thank you for the delay in the  but i do think it needs more of a delay we're not there yet guys and gals we need more time on this where and i also want to thank you for the looking in buying into wind energy and you saw how expensive it was it's very inexpensive and we're making this big investment i'm afraid in what we call a dinosaur once we get it built and we're a few years down the road and gas prices go sky high i had mentioned that last week i left you my statement last week because i kind of breezed through it real quickly to get through it in five minutes but i do want to make a point on what dave koster said he said he wants to talk about a competitive advantage and a cut penna to have it vanity is energy efficiency i speeded through last week to tell you that in your own two thousand and eleven energy optimization plan the cost to conserve energy is a very low one cent per kilowatt hour as compared to the net building a new natural gas plant is six point six cents a kilowatt so i mean energy efficiency is baseload energy and so leaving it we are leaving it out of the package here and that's what it's going down two separate tracks you've got basically you're not factoring energy efficiency to the max and you're going ahead with a large natural gas plant hoping that grand haven or someone else will buy it and in three years down the road rights maybe real high it will be a dinosaur i'm thinking of the holland board of public works that the city of holland i want this to be a good decision that will be talked about everywhere and i don't think you're there yet you're on your way i basically patch you on the back for the things you're doing but it's not the right decision and you should be tabling it and combining we just started ryan cut it was working on the energy retrofit we haven't even got into that yet but yet you're overbuilding the gas plant so i will i will stop at that but i did have one conversation with one city council member it does seem so harmless now in terms of we lock out in the weather it's it's what we're not wearing mi in coats i won't say what member i was talking to but what the temps were having but at the same time we're looking at large land masses of ice that are melting and that's for ever it's not coming back and we've got to do however small it is one hundred fourteen megawatts if it was much smaller we combine it with energy efficiency you know well feel guilty about it later and we've got to think about our children so anyway i  hope you really don't overcommit because in the charter is another issue you're supposed to be providing energy for the city of holland and not overbuilding because of its economy of scale and you're going to yeah i can buy a probably a real inexpensive s u v right now but do i want to do that i don't think cell we're going to get a bigger car for it but and that's not the economy of scale we're looking for  and you know we need to hit energy efficiency first so i'm sorry for scolding a bit but i've been coming here since two thousand and eight as is my fifth year i want to i want to see this thing succeed and i think you guys have the capability to do it so thank you  a question ok i have heard from other folks saying that perhaps we have not really considered truly the art of the possible with what energy conference conservation could mean to a lesser sized plant how would you well first of all  the larger the plant that we're talking about is a tremendous advancement in energy efficiency so look at that first of all we're talking about going from thirty five percent efficient type of traditional  base resourcing going over fifty percent to fifty five percent you're right there is a twenty percent increase in energy efficiency ok then there's the other uses that push that number up well over sixty percent when you start talking about the use for district heating or snow melt and things like that so i don't think we can lose sight of that we tried to factor in our best estimates on what energy efficiency might do reminding everybody that eighty two percent of our demand is commercial industrial a lot of the task force is in the fin the focus of the community energy plan and great extent is on building a fission seas which are going to affect thermal use of natural gas and furnace is in boilers in those in those areas we have a tremendous program right now on energy optimization that's working with businesses in our community to try to help them be more energy efficient that businesses are already doing that we factored in what the electric power research institute identified as the realistic achievable percentage of energy savings due to energy  was over eight percent over the next i think it was sold twenty thirty it was a report that was done and i think two thousand and ten it looked at two thousand and eleven through twenty thirty and it looked at about eight percent cumi could probably talk tonight if if she were asked to do that i'll put her on the spot but you know she's out there working with businesses and we're going to have to get continually more creative trying to find ways for them to say because lighting ballasts i've already been done and now you're into variable frequency drives and doing other things but it's going to have to get more creative i mean a lot of things have already been done ok i'm not saying there aren't opportunities out there i think there will continue to be opportunities but i think we've taken a realistic look at it and i think even with that is that going to is going to change the number dramatically you know if it's twelve percent versus eight percent cumulative lee you're talking about four percent eight megawatts on a two hundred megawatt load that's not changing a hundred fourteen to one a seventy eight megawatt plant and anything that we don't use here and that is available for either other municipalities or for the grid before but when it fell on my ears was about eleven thirty i was very tired and i think a lot of people were too so i think a be able to articulate myself a little bit of this time the guard force report called for about seventy three seventy four megawatts your recommendation to us is one hundred fourteen one example currently we've got forty million bt use that's being provided to snow melt today capacity melt what we're doing today the seventy four megawatt version would be one seventy two which is about a three fold increase or more going to one hundred fourteen it's it gets up to two hundred nineteen which is maybe another factor of even the seventy four going from forty to one hundred seventy two is three times the capacity for snow melt i'm just wondering in the next ten years for the snow melt argument wouldn't the seventy four megawatt be just fine to get us more three times of snow melt we have right now just for snow melt talking right now it's hard to say what the priority areas for snow melt deployment are but i do want to provide some clarification the gaar fourth plan had four different scenarios that were looked at and if you're talking about scenario b it actually recommended about seventy megawatts of combined cycle but another thirty megawatts of combined heat and power which is another gas unit ok it also recommended converting one of our units at de young to biomass in the amount of twenty megawatts it also recommended adding a bio digester technology and solar and wind so if you look at the cumin of amount of capacity that scenario b is adding it far exceeds what we're talking about in staffs recommendations here but to address the snow melt specifically you know i can't say i know that snow melt is in great demand you know everybody loved to have it i can't say exactly what that what that be to you level is going to be but i think you know whatever we do here if you're going to size a cooling tower and you're going to decide it's not easy to integrate a cooling system ok i mean yes there's maybe more heat available in the future but if you have to duplicate a cooling system integration or heating system integration it's not that easy to do that if you can build it large enough right now for that eventual need and it makes sense electrically as well and it makes sense from a sustainability standpoint that's going to be the most efficient in terms of your growth you know meeting the growth you know over time to more questions elaborating on what i heard here tonight i think their common themes and i think it just be helpful to you to get your hundred twenty five hundreds that is about the study analyze it at one hundred forty seven million ok now that was building it at the de young plant if you do an apples to apples comparison with a off site you're talking about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty five million versus one hundred eighty two that's why there's you know that economy of scale it's not half or half the size it's only you know maybe what twenty percent  but some smaller percentage savings for you know for about forty percent less or ourselves so there's some real funny there's some real numbers there yeah that was the first bullet point under under that reasons was the you know roughly fifteen  hundred actually let me back up to that if you don't mind this will clarify it for everybody ok one more question about the james steel plant what i'm hearing you say and what that sharkey put that chart back up there with the bar graphs the capacity that what that appears to be telling me and i want to make sure i'm right is that in year just by taking the james de young plan had been taking the the oldest one off  line but considering converting the other two not necessarily using them but investing in them so that if we did want to run gas we could but even if we just let them sit there and did that investment considering the cost of that investment even above and beyond they just sit there because we have that capacity the b p w city b p w would generate roughly three million dollars in income just to have that excess capacity that other communities would we know will buy there is that market or how much are we are we really hoping they're ok this is based upon the company that we use for forward price forecasting regional market throughout the midwest for wholesale energy is starting to do capacity auctions this year ok the forward price forecasting that vent techs the firm that we use as part of the sustainable return on investment  identified that for our region the estimated capacity value and the size of our units that we have would generate that kind of that kind of revenue ok that that those are estimates and that's why i'm saying at this time they appear to have value at some point a future because we don't have to invest new capital unit over five unifor already can burn natural gas as a main fuel there's no risk there other than the cost of continuing to staff and  maintain it but that's a very short term investments that are being made not a huge investment to keep that going if that doesn't materialize to be the case as i mention our recommendation would be then at that time well we don't continue to fund a losing situation and if there's another use for the site in the long run that would capture more than the value that's embedded within the red section of that bar millions of dollars for that and the uses of pekin plant during the hottest days of the summer i will point out though that what goes on outside the walls of that building is completely public related there's a public parking lot there's a drinking fountain outside so everything except the inside the walls is dedicated to public use is on that site and i know that this is not the night to figure out that in relation to james the young but that's  but please well i don't have a lot to say other than that this has been a long process i consider this is a historic night for a number of reasons i won't list them all but one i would say is that don and i are in agreement which at times during this process i think we would both admit that wasn't always the case but you know you made a comment about the car fourth strategy and making community investments in energy efficiency and that's a theme that i picked up on it seem to be consistent in what he shared with us and that i'm excited about among other things and i will out myself and talked about melting ice bergs and whatnot but i think i'm going to leave that particular debate to mr bouvier and you and what might be there but i think this is a very reasonable solution one that's been thorough in its vetting it considers all the aspects that were put before us i think it was jay and i that sat on the original wra panels and discussed this is stain of will return on investment all the things that would get factored into that and i think this has completely and entirely done that it's factored in those things from a number of voices in this community it's not just strictly a financial decision  it does have financial implications that not let's not fool ourselves as this particular slide in front of a show so i'm excited i think this is a smart path some suggest it's not perfect i can agree with that any time you have uncertainties in business decisions such as this a policy decision such as this there is no perfect and what i see here is is a wise decision  on baseload and it's a decision that leaves us the agility to consider renewables and other generating options in the future and as we approach it i think we'll do that just in the context of the way that we've done this and that is in the federal process and we'll make those decisions in the context of the energy plan that was presented to us so others p have been meeting after meeting plus many of the people from the city council after a year plus wrote a really crucial crucial point and once we make this decision speakers h d r reports other inputs and they've come to us with a recommendation and that was their goal and now the ball isn't in essence the core of the city council and perhaps city council has been in my opinion little remiss in not giving them more direction talk about the elephant often being the room of people holding their cards close to their chest perhaps too tightly in all honesty i did not know or do not know at this point until tonight where members of the sconce will really stand this is the kind of decision that should not be made without solid discussion thought time process a quick vote to get it done cannot be in the best interest of the city in addition we're still waiting on some information we're still waiting for feedback from the citizens survey which which i think is important  i did have listed down here a report on the hot water possibilities district heating but that's not going to take place until after this decision is made as it was found in our notes earlier today it's a huge decision it's one that we want to get right it's probably going to be one of the largest expenditures that some of us in our lifetime are are going to vote on and i do not want this to be a decision made under pressure without a clear understanding as to the unintended consequences that have not necessarily been seen or talked about were investigated and i think i would like to have some time to reflect the opinion of others today on city council what that i may be things that have not seen before tonight i think council needs to take time for some critical thinking and some questioning time so that we can act in the best interest of this community and i don't know if you have but i've made some bad decisions in my life and i've made them probably because i acted too quickly and when we do that we pay the consequences for that and we learn by making mistakes and we become more wise next time not to make those same mistakes again i think council and board of public works are looking perhaps through the same l but we're perhaps getting a different picture through them i would like to know where b p w wants to build this plant apparently james the young spot is not where they want to build it i'm surprised that they have taken that off the table i certainly don't want to find out that i'm going to a big power plant in my backyard because it's some kind of a secret i think that has to be out there and if they're negotiating it with somebody that's great but i think before we need to we need to know where that's going to be built and you know james the young plant what is the value of this property i've heard everything this is from a swamp to it's worth one hundred million dollars well what is it i think we need to have some kind of evaluation of what that is that property really worth if the city did sell it at some point you know what are we going use that money for would it be for the civic center the support of other city projects etc what would it be i don't want to make a quick decision on this i think my family is probably spent more time picking the color of what we're going to paint our kitchen wall than we are spending on this tonight let's let's give us some time to consider what we're doing here you know by going to a smaller unit we might be able to save forty five million  dollars if you do some research on it general electric right now has on their planning boards or you fission plants than the one that we're looking at they're talking about sixty one percent efficiency guaranteed we don't know what the  future is going to hold as far as efficiency we could go with a smaller unit in ten years perhaps if we needed to we could buy another unit that would be more efficient maybe we could really again look at bio  mass i've always like the biomass thing i think it makes a lot of sense as a renewable thing so there's just a myriad of questions that we that i would really like to you know ponder and have us ponder through city council making a clearer list of things that we're we're still kind of ambiguous about it in come back to say within a month or something like that and and really have time to have this by how dave's coming on some of the other  and move ahead on those but not make a final decision so time time some time later you worship but to me it goes like a point of decision i can't remember exactly if it was three or four years ago but every call vividly the venue it was at the hayworth saturday and i recall two people quite distinctly two who were in attendance at that meeting that was called to discuss our needs for holland and we were talking about the probability of building a coal fired plant while young gentleman if to study things carefully and to weigh options and what the consequences of decisions were and brother predator was there i recall and spoke about making that short term by thinking long term and not only are you a fine educator you're consistent so something about the message i think  we're facing a decision right now and whatever we decide i'm sure is not going to please everybody no one is going to get exactly what they want out of this  decision if that happened it would be an historic occasion but i think it's important from three years ago or four years ago whatever it is to this point right now to to think about what has happened and i jotted a few things down  since that time we've achieved the establishment of a sustainability committee we have a community energy plan we're not looking at gas fired energy production as opposed to coal fired this a lot of stuff that i can remember in this town we've had a number of strategic groups formed dealing with subjects that are part of the community energy plan  and basically we have a vision for a better future in this house he made the point and i don alluded to the point that perhaps we haven't been it is official in document thing a commitment to that plan but we have it and it's obviously obvious that it's being looked at and considered in the implemented it's interesting to me to note that in conversations i were having about community and neighborhoods as recently as five o'clock five thirty these themes are occurring about efficiency and energy labeling they're becoming part of our conversation  we're moving toward a better community we have definitely of this is a very large commitment financially it ties into a power source or a energy source that for a fair amount of time but it's hard for me to imagine any fuel source that we could strictly predict what the cost that those are technologies that aren't necessarily ready right now so they're obviously not considered as part of the mix but ten years from now fifteen twenty years from now we might be having a totally different conversation so from my point of view this is not the ultimate decision that i would like to be making it's not my perfect choice i made a good decision personally about a year ago that there was no way that i would consider coal as an option for power generation for the future to me it didn't she was just a sustainable didn't seem wise from my perspective was just not something i would ever support i personally am glad to see where we are right now in terms of this fuel source rather us not burning anything except two of bulbs or something but  realistically speaking out against part of our future in the near term but i'm very hopeful that angle had to see that we're moving in a positive direction we haven't reached end point yet but i think we have a clearer view of what that future is going to look like and i think this is a good step in going in that direction thank you david anyone else care sometimes i don't understand all the words but i have had to look them up one of them is because baseload and it's used a lot and i went to the wikipedia is to really just understand what is baseload what baseball is but on baseload it's the minimal amount of power that a utility or distribution company must make available to its customers or the amount of power required to meet minimum demands based on a reasonable expectations of customer requirements they have ten see the very hour to hour i actually learned that and saw the charts i think two days after i got into this position to know stan it figured  blanket of stars but sadly blinking on and off embarrassingly low on juice that is a city that does not have an effective base load that is a city that can't meet the demands whatever they end up being if we have a battery plant that comes on line finally and requires a significant amount of energy we need to be able to provide that base load and i enjoy as some of the people in the audience have said they enjoy paying far less than some of the people in other townships or other parts where power is provided by other commercial providers and i agree i enjoy paying less to and when i think of my children's future i actually imagine a city of opportunity in one  where i or they and their children don't have to spend a significant amount of their paychecks just to keep the lights on or even that they are paying but the lights are blinking on and off again the blink of blinking stars to go in a different direction the future of this could potentially be as david mentioned other sources again thirty forty fifty years down the line is that a centralized power supply we don't know yet or isn't a distributed supply where everyone has a small hydrogen generator in their basement and that just powers everything that would be amazing clean but we're really far into this and we've had lots of meetings on this it's almost two years we've talked about this this one subject and while i enjoy talking about it i think it's time to start making decisions right or wrong we need to start moving forward and really looking at the needs of this community and looking forward beyond whatever it is happening right now the goals of this process really looked at meeting exceeding baseload needs for the future producing fewer toxic emissions from our current supply and cutting the greenhouse gas emissions preferably in half and from what i see is that this plan satisfies those criteria and i really want to  the community even though we don't always see eye to eye there again they agree with dave there's a lot of discussion discussion on this and it was great and it was productive and it ended up with something that we have today it helped inform this entire process to help inform myself and many of the other who sit before you today i think there's more to go i think conservation is key to a lot of this and we've spoken with a b p w that energy conservation not just in homes but using smart grid technology there but more importantly in our industrial commercial spaces there's a lot of opportunity there for conservation but we still are going to have energy needs consistent energy needs and cheap energy needs and i think what we are setting into motion potentially tonight is going to satisfy that for future and we're going to have a bright not blinking future ahead for holland nancy your next place  getting my mike on i really appreciate all the hard work that many people have put into this process i mean the phrase once upon a time comes to me for describing the length of this process and how much we have gone through and all different layers of involving community and reshaping how a new committee says the sustainability committee getting people through that and through them getting the guard force study bringing in peter and all the people that showed up for those meetings and all the reps sessions that we had is just an been an amazing study in the democratic process in giving people chances to express themselves and to think and learn and grapple with things and and as it has been said nothing's going to be perfect we have no guarantees in this life so we do the best we can with the information that we have in those in the b p w have full time jobs studying this and they've spent their careers their education their much much of their leisure involved in energy and its production and its future and how to do it and how to stay how to face the challenges that we have today i trust the level of expertise and education and heart that these people have put into making this decision they don't do it in a cavalier manner they aren't making this kind of recommendation to us because it felt good this morning they want to do the very best for this community they've given their lives in a profession to serve us for energy in our future and i trust that so i may often have to ask them for the coloring book version of whatever we are talking about in the vocabulary of the b p w and they have been very good at explaining things to me at the level that i can understand and i think i'm ok with understanding what we need to do and and why and we are not making a for every decision we're making we're building this plant now but we know this is not for ever we know maybe even more than the people in one nine hundred forty who built a plant thinking ok we're doing coal that's it we get that from the earthly burn it we've got electricity we're sect and they don't realize what was going to happen how many things are going to change how many things are going to get controversy what was going to happen in the atmosphere how many groups were going to be forming and and conversing and demonstrating and getting all wound up they had no idea what other forms of energy were going to be proposed but we do so we know we're not making a forever decision here we're doing the best we can with the information that we have with a reasonable risk for the future and we will be constantly rethinking what we're doing we will not sit in a walnut office with our arms folded saying we did that now get out there bulldozer now we'll be constantly working out how can we do it better when wind power is is storable will be to run right over there when we can do bio mass better wonderful any kind of form of energy that's going to be reliable and economical and reasonable that's why we have a public utility we can make decisions that are the best for our citizens because we're not trying to make a profit we're trying to serve the people in the best way possible and i'm so thankful for our forefathers in setting up this power  industry for us to serve our people and i think they'd be proud of what we're doing here today it's not easy but boy have we involved people have we cared about each other in the process have we were respected each other have we handled this in a civil manner here we have and that's good that's good for all of us and whether we agree on whatever decision we make here today we're going to leave here as fellow citizens we still care about each other we still want the very best for our community and we're going to stay involved and we're going to keep our voice involved in this process to do the best for our future so i really feel good about this whole process and i think we have serve the community well in it and i'm excited to vote for this recommendation i did and a lot of excusing a lot of good things have been said tonight and a lot of of asians have been made i won't repeat those things but i will simply point out for those who are counseling delay this decision that that delay also comes a cost if we vote yes on this tonight and move forward and everything goes just the way we want it to go we will not be seeing new generation in this community until sometime at least in two thousand and sixteen and if we push the decision out that only the lays the decision longer and means that we have to rely on existing coal units and james dion for longer or for purchasing power off the grid from other plants that aren't as efficient as the one that we're proposing to build so that's the cost of the lay and that's not a cost that i'm willing to take to anyone else your input i don't always agree with you but i appreciate the input don also you've been a mentor  have had a few discussions haven't seen eye to eye but i think we appreciate each other's opinions and as far as your statement i can get on board with a lot of it i think we're saying the same thing maybe in a little bit different way but i think in in the heart of hearts what we're doing tonight or what we may be voting on tonight is doing exactly what your statement i there was a number of things that were stated i'm not going to refute every one of them and doesn't make any sense at this point it's going to be a difference of opinion but there was one thing that was said that i took t heart and that was the legacy that we want to leave our children the legacy that i won't leave my children or bring them back to holland i stated earlier i had to take a trip down to texas because i've got two daughters living down there biggest reason they can find jobs  military brought them down there but they stay down if i could make holland a more sustainable place a cleaner place a place that offers affordable jobs they'd be back here in a heartbeat that's my goal that's been my goal throughout this whole process we have had hours and hours and hours of meetings lots of discussion good bad understanding compassion whatever you want to call it i think the process has been very rewarding i've been i've been extremely proud to be part of it david dan you've done a yeoman's job and your predecessors also and which started this and this this has not been just a couple year program it's been in the making for a very very very long time this is just the culmination of all that time she mentioned very briefly about the gas like a passage well i'm worried about the transmission line capacity the more stuff we have to buy off the grid the more lines are going to get jammed up the more possibilities we're not going to get the power i don't know if people remember the rolling brownouts that we had a few years ago michigan because of its peninsula state to a certain extent got isolated from that luckily to make sure again to bring my daughters back home my granddaughters someday maybe i'll get a grandson in there but my granddaughters for the time  have a place that can come back to that will have the reliable power ryan may have gone a little bit of extreme with his blinking city but  i hope that never happens here and the more that we have the control of the generation the control of the capacity of the power here the more viable this town is going to be and the surrounding although this plan may not be everybody's liking and in business sometimes that's a decision you get to make you get someone or you get some losers and if nobody agrees it's probably the best plan that's out there  but i think this is probably one of the most viable opportunities that we have if i was dreaming i probably still be out there with coal we talk about reducing carbon footprint if we went to the fluid as bad as anybody ever thought is zero landfill potentials there don't there anything in landfills make energy out of  possibility exist reducing the carbon footprint is part of the sustainability in the clean that we need when you add up and i believe there was something talked about transportation snow melt is a great reduce or for the transportation industry because you don't have the snowplows going out and having to clear the streets you're harnessing energy that's already being produced a car for study talked about that and i hope that we can capitalize on that because a lot of industrial around here that  that we can grab onto from that but if we're looking to reduce our carbon footprint at this point with the technology that we have i don't know how much better we can do it with a reliable source so i will be supporting this one hundred percent and i will be supporting this because i want to bring my daughters granddaughters back home mike they have a couple questions for you just to make sure some things are clear in my head i know in the video that you showed a while ago there was some graphs that spun around on a few different things what is the to adopt this proposal this recommendation to essentially decommissioned three and at best take turn four and five into peaking units and replace them with the one fourteen what does it do to our carbon  emissions if you look at a comparable you know to that to the d young plan on coal you know this is going to be more than a fifty percent decrease in the carbon emission nitric oxide emission the graphic that you saw there was a comparison of the circulating fluid as bed unit which is a newer technology with us if you compare the de young plant with with this new resource you're looking at again greater than ninety percent type of reduction and the  take ninety nine plus percent there's virtually zero sulfur in natural gas so you're going to take that number you know almost two hundred percent reduction and any particular matter that comes out of the natural gas plant right now you know there's no you know again there's no sulfur emissions so even as you look at fine particularly matter you're you have significant reduction there and there's no of course large part to get matter you know any sort of soot you know from natural gas production so no heavy metals you know there's a lot of things that are significantly reduced by going to a natural gas fueled generating resource you know as as we couple of flint two three months ago now first sort of talked about this idea of repurchasing that the current the young site for a peaking plants for awhile  frankly took me a bit by surprise but the more i thought about it in essence aren't we really saying at that point if we adopt this recommendation that in essence we're setting in motion the demise of both the james the young plant and ultimately we're setting in motion the demise of the lakefront in holland as being the source of power generation you're really establishing that you're putting a date certain i mean the situation that we're looking at with the circulating food as bed unit would put another resource on the waterfront for and at the de young planter for another a long time so now you're talking about some it's not exactly defined if you're talking you're bright you're talking about some sort of you know short village weren't yet built in holland so i mean the time moves quickly as we think about development and you know this puts in motion i think a goal that lots of people have had which is to take power generation away from the waterfront  you know regardless of what people thought about the burning of coal the thought was boy why couldn't we have better uses more recreational or commercial uses for you know retail type commercial uses for the waterfront we're not going to do it as long as there's a big power plant sitting there but this begins the process of saying those days are numbered one one i want to do a little thought experiment that you know we've heard a lot about wind and of the sites we've looked at the best site we had was sort of the site right from a from a feasibility standpoint it was better than the eastern ok so and as i understand it had a factor of about three a wind factor of about three yeah you know again you get range three you are well again i think the way you want to look at that is the capacity factor was around thirty percent thirty one percent capacity factor so if interesting it's always dangerous when i'm doing math i think of the old chevy chase thing i was under the impression there would be no math here tonight but  check my math i guess this is my point here let's just focus on let's that say everyone in the room got together and said we want three four and five gone ok it's a ballpark around sixty megawatts worth of generation ballpark  if we so we say we just need to replace that sixty megawatts we want to do it with wind the best site that we've found through our investigation and your long studies on these on these sites has about a thirty percent capacity factor which turbans to replace sixty megawatts at one hundred percent capacity but we're only at thirty percent capacity so i'm thinking we'd need closer to ninety turbans to replace that sixty megawatts that's correct to megawatt turbans right now not installed just purchased are about five million a pop yeah dan shaking his head i think that's right so so to just replace three four and five at the best site we found we're pushing half a billion dollars yes and that's no new capacity no additional waste usage for things like  me just quickly and i have three slides i want to show so ryan if you could flip over to my three slides i would just say this on the on the on the the lay question any decision we make we talk and we can talk about for a long long period of time but ultimately when the decision happens it's a quick decision it's the way it works is in lansing today where the committee voted on eliminating personal property tax and sending it to the to the floor of the house that tax has been in place for well since the eight hundred seventy s and they did it in the span of fifteen minutes they voted on it so any decision talk about it for a long time but nonetheless when the sitting happens it happens quickly and we've gone through two general managers  p w general matters and to city managers in this decision so so i think we've we've taken time out to be sure i would just say this as as i look at this proposal this recommendation from the board  i want to look at what we where we are where we were headed and then where we're now hoping or thinking about heading currently of our locally generated base load because remember we still have capacity and ownership interest and other power plants throughout michigan we have you know roughly right now this left bar is roughly about sixty two and a half total megawatts of locally generated power at the young base load power addition getting rid of unit three keeping four and five in some form of operating capacity that would have added about sixty six and a half new megawatts for a total you know would have create one hundred top twenty nine total megawatts but sixty six and a half new ones because three went to zero instead of eleven and a half so that's where we were at not that long ago and it was out of that and i appreciate it dave's comments about dave brotherhood comments about the first meetings we had at the hayworth and boy that brought back memories as well and what a different path we were headed down at that particular point and out of that came you're right the demand side discussions i also remember meetings at the doubletree as well when black and veatch is proposals  first put out but we talked about we need to look at demand side management out of that came a year long plus discussion in the community energy plan and then we also said we need to look at the strategic return on investment to look at lifecycle cost and other cost we can factor in so here's where we were we were a couple of years ago here's where we were headed a couple of years ago and now this is what you're proposing in essence getting rid of three four and five altogether not doing the c f b but going with one hundred  fourteen new megawatts of natural gas and so what that means is we're actually looking at fewer new megawatts than what we were two or three years ago so our base case number has changed you know we've had a lot of discussion about the c e p t and i think of all the studies that i've been a part of in my time in in city government that one has both had the most discussion the most participation and i would say the probably some of the most by and most excitement around it people have picked up on different aspects of it and you know it's a pretty comprehensive report so it's not surprising that people have found different aspects of it really touch different parts of their lives so i wanted to look at what we're talking about here and jay this perhaps gets to something that you raised in your conversations with dave earlier it is i pulled this this figure five point ten of scenario b the one that everybody said they like you know we had a person upon person come up here and tell us a scenario b was the way to go scenario b was the way to go as we were talking about the community energy plan last year and so i pulled out what the c e p t scenario b looked like and tried to line up a little bit about with what we're talking about here in the recommendation from the board of public works and the c e p t looked at beginning in two thousand and sixteen one hundred megawatts of new natural gas fire generation now configured slightly differently but you know it in many ways accomplishes many of the same goals as to what we're looking at with one hundred fourteen megawatts and megawatts of natural gas in this recommendation so this to me seems entirely consistent and i have recollections when we had the kickoff meeting for the tasks task forces at the park theater when peter was last here that he as i recall i tell you i won't quote what he said he seemed to suggest that the one fourteen is in essence within an appropriate stone's throw of the one hundred but i don't think we don't think we recorded i don't think you wrote it down so probably shouldn't take that one of the bank but then we also look at the  the b b wind farm on the east side of the state so both of these recommendations in my mind fit very well into the framework set up by the c e p t set up with broad community participation in broad buy in and suggestion that this ought to be the direction we go now there are other things to do in this and and again this decision tonight in this discussion tonight is not the be all end all but it is part of the discussion and it's the part that we're focused on at this moment which is not to say the others aren't important or aren't happening they're just not the decision before us right now and for these reasons it seems to me that this is a pretty good it's a very good option for us and i am you know my hope in all of this that was one of the options as we look at the strategic return on investment that we would find one of them that it was heads and tails better than the other ones and i think we have found that one final thing and it has to do with this question of putting all of our eggs in one basket that's going to happen anyway whether we build this or not that is going to happen if we decide you know what we're going to get out of base load generating capacity as these things wear out we're going to shut down three now shut down four and five in a couple of years and we're going to buy off the grid the market is moving toward natural gas for the very same reasons we're moving toward natural gas so one way or another if there is a tremendous spike in the price of natural gas we will not be insulated from it we will be smack dab in the middle of it except that if we're not in the generating game that means all we're left to do is pay what the generator demands we have no ability to hedge or our ability to do that now i personally think that's a lousy direction for this country to go and i've said that before i think we ought to have a multifaceted approach to baseload generation i think we ought to have a baseload mix of gas i think you have a base load a mix of coal and biomass i think we have a base load mix of nuclear but guess what nobody is asking my opinion on that and those questions get settled in washington and in lesser extent lancing and those policy people are saying we don't want to have anything to do with coal anymore and the consequence of that is that now natural gas is the next best option and if everybody marches in that direction  guess what there are going to be changes to the market but there are going to be changes to the market that we're going to have to face regardless of whether we do this project a smaller project or no project whatsoever the final thing is this we have as as i mentioned earlier and  as many in the room know we have generating capacity outside of the young and outside of things that are within the contiguous just of that the jurisdiction of the city of holland we have an ownership piece in the campbell plant up in west olive report sheldon and we have an ownership slice in the d t e plant at bell river just like our units eventually wear out and no longer become cost effective to run those plants will at some point where out or become no longer cost effective to run so we will need to find ways to replace that base load at some point in the future and who knows what the technology will be like at that point who knows what renewables will do be doing who knows what the energy policy of the country will be doing at that point but this is not the final say that we will ever have on how we generate baseload capacity for this utility and in this community but for right now after years of diligence and hard work and lots of participation this is a pretty yes birch yes mayor dykstra yes motion passes eight yes one no all right thank you and thank you to be p w staff thank you to lots of you in this audience who not only have endured this meeting but have endured meetings many times longer many times more often than this one tonight and have been in lots of conversations on the outside of those meetings so thank you  go to fourteen one point one from community neighborhood services a request to do a neighborhood improvement committee and a variety of committee reshuffling phil we welcome you to the podium for a brief introduction of this item please thank you we have you know me we have two resolutions before council tonight both resolutions come following a lot of  discussion within our department discussion with several of the city's committees this is a proposal recommendation to create a new neighborhood improvement committee it is a committee that will combine the responsibilities of three existing committees and bring a focus and i think a lot of collaboration and coordination on neighborhood and housing issues within the  city this is proposing to take the neighborhood advisory committee the responsibilities of the neighborhood advisory committee which has been in existence now for just a couple of years take the responsibilities of the community development committee which has been in existence probably since the one nine hundred eighty s or thereabouts and take the responsibilities of the our street committee which has been in existence since the early one nine and bring those responsibilities together in a new committee that would be nine to fifteen members plus two youth advisory members bring those responsibilities together and have one committee focusing on the breath of neighborhood and housing issues we've provided this and had some discussion with counsel and study sessions identifying that the various responsibilities that would be included in that i can review some of that if you'd like but i can work right through this and it's not a website we've reviewed it it's out there for review all right and there are two two parts  to the resolutions before council the first is establishing the neighborhood improvement committee and the second is to thank the existing three committees thank those members for their their long  efforts on behalf of the city and to terminate those committees as of december eighteenth ok we can do that all in one fell swoop correct mr mayor i guess i have one question of phil on i'm not clear we've had some discussion about the youth representatives on the committee those being proposed as x if issue you have the there was a revision provided to council this afternoon and that it gives you fifteen nine to fifteen committee members as voting members and then two additional youth members that would be non voting members thank you all right thank you any questions for staff on this one then a motion would be appreciated  to be on there won't feel bad about not being on there and there's going to be other committees they can be on this is a consolidation because if you create anything else then please call the roll and i mean yes when i'm all messed up he won nope five a five point one there we go there's a one in there somewhere some get some please the city manager's office is pleased to report the following gift parks recreation and transportation department received a donation in the amount of two hundred dollars received from college town be an inch in support of repairs to the windmill does one it is recommended that the sub donation and generosity be accepted with appreciation and an expression of gratitude be forwarded to the donor manager ryan mr mayor no special report tonight all right sixteen communications from the mayor in addition to the usual announcements that we try to push as much information as possible to the city's website city hall and dot com including ways to contact us we encourage communication from people who are interested in issues and also encourage you to explore the website we continually try to make it better and we have some success in it and hopefully it's better today than what it was last week and hopefully we can say the same thing next week as well i mentioned earlier that i was in lansing today and was set to testify before a house committee looking at the bills to repeal personal property tax just so everyone understands a personal property tax is it is taxes paid on machinery or equipment that a business and industry pay in the state of michigan it's been a tax that's been in the existence in michigan for more than one hundred fifty years in fact it goes back to the one nine hundred centuries and it is by all accounts no one really likes the tax but it has been part of our taxing structure in this state for a long time and the efforts to repeal it  are quite problematic in my view so i was set to testify never actually got to testify because they ran short on time or something like that and so let me read just a little bit of what i would have said and i will put the complete statement on the city's website on the sort of mayor's page of the website for review and this is just an excerpt of what i would have testified to today i know that many of you think that many cities in michigan spend money they don't have refused to face fiscal reality and to be blunt are largely dysfunctional places when it comes to their budgets while those sentiments might be an overstatement i can tell you that quite often cities are their ocean own worst enemies when it comes to revenue sharing personal property taxes or most reforms in general but do not let your perceptions and misperceptions of cities cloud your judgment on these bills consider the city of holland for nearly twenty five years we have held our health insurance premium rates in check by being self insured in fact in a survey we did eighteen months ago we confirmed that our rates are the lowest among any public entity in the area and are even better than the rates paid by some of our largest private employers our employees share of health insurance premiums were at least twenty percent long before that was mandated from lansing for a decade newly hired city of holland employees participate in a defined contribution retirement plan rather than a more expensive defined benefit plan today we've reduced our general fund budget total back to what it was in two thousand and four we've reduced our municipal employment by nearly twenty percent our employees receive no wage adjustments for nearly five years in short i think we have been a model for what the legislature would hope a michigan this apology would do to become more cost competitive oh and i should also mention that for the year measuring summer of summer two thousand and eleven twelve out of a county led the nation in job creation not the state not the west region but the nation this was no single flash in the pan as presently we rank number fourteen in that same nationwide ranking even with all of these changes and reforms we remain in a difficult fiscal position and are barely holding on why for an obvious reason that has a not so obvious consequence the obvious reason is that from its peak our property tax base which constitutes fifty percent of our general fund budget decreased by nearly twenty percent roughly twenty two percent of our entire tax base is personal property tax which translates into nearly two and a half million dollars this year but the obvious reason has a continuing consequence remember that under proposal a the taxable value of property can only increase by the rate of inflation or five percent whatever is less the decline in our tax base means that our tax base categorically has been reset to be more blunt even when the real estate market recovers the taxable value of these properties will not return because under proposal a the taxable value will be limited to inflationary increases cost of living increases property taxes will not just come back with a real estate recovery proposal a limits that but it's worse than that michigan severely limits the natural growth of cities through substantial restrictions on annexation i know annexations a touchy subject but other states including those who've eliminated personal property tax do not have the same sorts of restrictions on the natural territorial growth of cities when these items are taken together the result is this cities are built out but cannot naturally grow through the addition of new territory and cities tax bases have been permanently reset after the great recession and now will only increase that inflationary cost of living rates so for many cities the only place growth will occur is through the addition of new machinery and equipment in the built out factories and businesses through growth in the personal property tax base let me be clear i don't like the personal property tax as a philosophical matter but addressing personal property tax a tax that's been part of michigan's landscape since the one thousand century in isolation is like attempting to pull one string of the sweater without unraveling of the entire garment personal property tax cannot be looked at looked at in isolation from the other state laws that make our urban communities destined to fail even if they do the kinds of reforms that we in holland have done so there's that and again i'll post the entire statement on the city's website for review i did make visits to our local legislators and gave them a written copy of it so they have it in their hands and i made myself know cell number everything available to them if they want to talk about it but this will have very serious consequences we feel as though we have turned a corner in this community fiscally but if we lose two and a half million dollars which constitutes more than ten percent of our general fund budget probably closer to fifteen percent of our general fund budget after a reduction of twenty percent of our tax base bordering on close to thirty percent of our tax base that will mean that we will have to make some very substantial decisions and probably some very substantial cuts that none of us want to do and so that's the way it is and again these decisions are being made in lansing and there are suppose it promises to replace a lot of that income and to hold city somewhat harmless but those all depend upon the good will not only of the current legislature but future legislators who will have no memory whatsoever of the debate that happened today so i am quite pessimistic on the future of personal property in michigan and the reform of personal property in michigan personal property tax in michigan and its long term consequences of what might happen to our local community on that happy note or other communications from members of council this  little reminder about the pay it forward website we still have that go to pay it forward how when that org and if you give gifts or give time or encourage people or whatever to help encourage them to give as well with a little pay it forward how an card there's a story of someone from missouri who went to get ice cream and somebody paid it forward for them and they were given this card and they were just amazed at the generosity and had to go to the website to record their happiness and and they were going to go on to encourage somebody out so just remember to pay it forward no matter what else is going on in the world ok thank you nancy i'm trying to pause this for a second and having no luck doing it there we go anyone else communications from members of council this evening mr mayor mr mayor pro tem would simply remind folks of the events coming this holland friday evening and go on down and have fun indeed and beginning at five o'clock we have an open house here leon and i are happy to host the annual open house at city hall will be in the r decked out for the holidays so we would encourage everyone in the community to which it's this camera everyone in the community to come out and please enjoy the holiday spirit with us and then go off to the parade and any of the communications from counsel otherwise we will end before going into a closed center classes help or assist or clean out his smarts pete which stands for black pete and historically what happened is they would take you know young dutch children and put them in blackface with curly wigs and that clearly has not great connotations michigan it's mostly in dutch so perhaps a few of our regulars watchers to this program will will feel heartened by being able to speak the mother tongue and for other of us will just have to muddle along us and ironically center class got into a cab with a heineken banner on top so in any event all right and was there anything any business to take care of an open session we have a request from the city attorney to go into a closed session mr city attorney we believe we have a recommendation the council going to poster session for property acquisition you have heard the request of the city attorney is there a motion to do so reluctant yes motion passes and we are not into submitting any business to be done after this close session correct all right so we will not come back down here good evening everyone and we hope to see you on friday at the open house and s