City of Ferndale - City Council Meeting 2-24-25

Which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Johnson? Here. Kelly? Here.

Michalski? Here.

Polica? Here. Leaksmae? Here.

And now approve of the agenda, please.

Mayor, I wanted to remove seven e for further discussion. Seven e? Or table for further discussion.

So seven e is the approval of the renew the annual software agreement.

Oh, I have

Well, maybe I wait. Where's this? This is my new one?

You may have the old one.

Okay. Got it. Okay. Never mind.

Just to confirm, you wanna move to item eight c as regular agenda? No. Or just table it?

Yeah. Just table it.

Any other proposed changes?

We need to support

and vote. Okay. Supported by Polica?

Mikulski?

Yes.

Polica? Yes. Johnson? Yes. Kelly?

Yes.

Leaksmae?

Yes. Now we have, pre we're into presentations.

Something here.

Alright. Item four a, snow operations process information and updates presentation from our DPW director.

Thank you. So, with the snow, I thought it was a good time to go over snow emergency and snow maintenance procedure. So it's kind of a longer presentation. I'm gonna get through a lot of things, a lot of data. So I just wanted to, at the start, summarize what we're gonna go over.

We'll go over snow emergency definitions, snow maintenance procedures, priorities, snow routes. I'm gonna show some maps, the cost of snow maintenance, the cost of overdoing it, reasoning for our current snow procedure, and a look at last snow emergency. So snow emergent snow emergency in the simplest terms. Two weeks ago, I just kind of murmured around the word variables, which wasn't very clear. It wasn't very helpful.

So I wanna say these are the characteristics of a snow emergency because they are complicated. But simply put, we look for three things, four inches or more accumulation. We try to ask ourselves if we think the local streets are gonna be impassable, and we ask whether the conditions are likely to worsen if we do not intercede. And I'll make a note that decisions are subject to change with unpredictable weather. We do our best to be, make good decisions, but sometimes they don't pan out based on what happens, and we always try to learn from those mistakes.

So the snow maintenance procedure, DPW admin uses many resources, leading up to a snowstorm. We have ClearPath, which is a great weather app. It gives us atmospheric road temperature, accumulation projections, a lot of stuff that, we share with the, people in the Department of Transportation Network. So it's a pretty cool app that not a lot of people use. Local news every morning.

I have coffee. I watch it. It's not always accurate, but I still watch it. We talk to neighbors. I talk to the DPW directors in Oak Park, Hazel Park, Berkeley often.

Police and fire department, we also coordinate with them. At nights when the roads freeze over, police and fire are the ones here twenty four seven, and they will be the ones that contact us to come in and solve, when our guys are at home asleep. So we also listen to the DPW highway team. They're the ones that put the salt down. They're the ones that plow the streets.

They know the roads better than anyone else, so we always make sure that we listen to our staff. And then the next thing I'll move on to is, I'll say that service level varies by storm. So as everyone knows and as some people are, occasionally upset by, non emergencies, we work on major roads, emergency routes, sidewalks, parking lots, and bike lanes. In an emergency, we do all of those things plus all the residential streets. So the prioritization of services, it is necessary.

It is something every city does in the Metro Detroit region, and these, designations, vary a little bit, but, there are only so many different, alternatives. So number one priority for us is major area roads. This includes, the MDOT highways, Woodward and 8 mile. Our emergency routes, connector routes, and school routes are number two. Sidewalks, crosswalks, parking, bike lanes are number three.

And number four are all other residential streets. Now to continue with the snow maintenance procedure, regular snow maintenance, we clear all the major roads. We then clear the emergency connector and school routes. Those follow the majors always. Sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, park paths are cleared at the end of the storm.

Parking lots are usually cleared once after everyone has left them, usually around after 2AM. Salt trucks spread salt and brine on snow routes for small snow. So if we get some freezing temperatures, five trucks will come in. They'll put salt down brine. And I should have said earlier, if there are any questions or any pauses, just jump right in there.

So emergency snow maintenance, it looks a lot like regular snow. Major roads are cleared first. Emergencies, connectors, school routes, which I'm gonna jump to maps pretty soon here for all of those. Then we clear the following, those are cleared following majors. Sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, again, all those are done.

Parking lots are cleared once, usually at the end of the storm, if possible. Residentials are cleared once, usually, at the very end of the night or early in the morning. And then I'll say that also, this requires multiple participation from other departments. Police have to enforce no parking to keep the streets clear, which can be a large undertaking. So the prioritization matrix, simply put, high impact areas, low effort, are gonna get done first.

Well, high impact, high effort are the majors those get done. Sidewalks and crosswalks are high impact. Bike lanes are lower impact, lower effort, and

probably should

have started with, what all this means. But, number one, major roads are heavier traffic, higher speeds, inner city travel, and intracity travel. That means, there's more cars on the roads, cars are going faster, accidents happen more often, and they're more serious when they do happen at the higher speeds. Number two, the emergency schools and connectors are important. It's obvious from the name.

These are the emergency routes that DPW fire and police take to get around the city to respond to emergencies. Schools are adjacent to schools. Connectors, which we'll talk about a little bit, are the streets that are outside of these other designations that, are required to make sure that residents only have at least two blocks to travel to a, fresh pavement maintained road. The ADA bus, bicycle, pedestrian, and travel is what's important for the third priority, which is sidewalks and crosswalks. And fourth and finally, the low traffic, lower speed, highest total mileage locals.

Those are the highest effort, and they have the lowest impact because there's much less traffic. Traffic is moving at slower speeds, and there is a very high total mileage. So success for us looks like doing high quality work on our highest priorities. Failure looks like doing low quality in all the areas because we don't have the capacity, and I'll look at some of the other reasoning to do all of them simultaneously. So now we go to maps.

These are our primary routes. These are in all of our trucks. Don't pay attention to the colors. Those designate which trucks go where. But what's that's important to know is that these are all the primary routes that we solve and maintain no matter what.

This is priority one and no matter what. This is priority one and priorities two streets. This is 95 line lane miles total, about 30 of which are Woodward and, eight mile. So the major roads or priority one are the roads you see here. That's a act 51 map that shows these are higher highly traveled routes.

So it's about where you would expect. Pinecrest, Livernois, Allen, Hildenwada, Nine Mile, Marshall, Camborne. And they can also be emergency routes, but they're primarily major roads. So the emergency routes and connectors, these are usually streets that are not majors. In this map, it shows Camborne.

Cambourne is one of the majors, and it's also an emergency route route. There's about 15 miles of those. School routes, pretty obvious. They're adjacent to schools. We only have about two miles of those.

Local routes to kinda demonstrate, with my bad penmanship, there are about a hundred four miles of those. So those are the mostly miles of any of our designations. There are a lot of them. And what you should keep in mind for a plow truck, there are a lot of turns. There's not a lot of straight runs.

These take a lot of time. So the snow route selection process, routes are determined annually by DPW, police, and fire. We coordinate based on, whether police needs us, fire needs us, or DPW needs us. And this year, we added a connector route, which is fielding because we realized that there are some long blocks in the Dales that made travel a little bit difficult, outside of snow emergencies. And then to look at another street, if you look at Beaufield between Alberta and Amwell, even from the worst area furthest, from a paved street, only has about 800 miles to go until they hit, again, fresh concrete or asphalt.

So the reasons for our snow maintenance procedures, number one is safety. Number two is capacity. Number three is cost. Number four is sustainability, and then I'm gonna give a detailed look at each of these. So number one is safety.

Front wheel snow maintenance procedures enhances traffic. We prioritize high, traffic areas versus low. We prioritize higher speeds versus low. As I mentioned, crashes are more frequent with traffic, and they can be more, deadly with high speeds. Pedestrian, bicycle, alternative travel is important.

It's important that we clear sidewalks, ramps, bike lanes of ice and snow because it makes traveling alternative methods impossible. Emergency vehicle travel, so we've mentioned that. Police, fire, and DPW need to quickly respond in emergencies. Staff exhaustion, so some of these are interrelated, but staff exhaustion is one where we try to eliminate truck accidents by making sure that people aren't working twenty four hours in a row. These are big, heavy salt trucks.

They do a lot of damage when someone falls asleep behind the wheel. And it doesn't seem obvious all the time that driving a truck is an exhausting job. You're not just driving. You're driving. You're checking your mirrors.

You're spinning salt. You're putting your blade down. You're plowing. You're talking to people. You're looking at other cars.

It's it's really something that you have to pay a lot of attention to for twenty four hours, and that can be very taxing. So reason number two is capacity. The snow maintenance plan considers our capacity to maintain the roads. What does that mean? Well, DPW has a staff of 27 total, not counting administrators.

We don't count for snow operations even though we try to help every once in a while. Two supervisors, 20 five operators. We have voluntary overtime here. We don't have mandatory overtime. We can't just call and say you have to be here and then cover the shifts.

So 60% of them is roughly 16 people, if my math is right, which I should have put in my notes. The equipment, we have six main salters, and this is another area of overlap. We'll talk about cost next, but salters cost about $250,000. And then 4% is usually what you budget for maintenance over time. That's 10,000 annually for each salter.

So if we have six, that's 60,000, and that's a pretty big investment. And we replace these off the time I had, I believe, every seven years. Two plows only. These are older vehicles, so we use our surplus, as a backup because we don't often need eight or nine trucks on the road. We have four small plows.

Those are the four by fours. Usually have two fifties. We have two vent tracks, which are basically two smaller tractors for sidewalks and crosswalks. We have two loaders for loading the salt trucks, pushing the parking lots, and then we have two skids that do a little bit of everything. Hours, long storms, long shifts eventually need to end, so we just don't have the capacity to keep going and going and going.

And then, this is a complicated sheet. So I'm not gonna go everything, but just know that every color is a person. And this is a twenty two hour snow emergency modeled off of the one that we had on Wednesday. And you can see there's people that are working nineteen hours, and they're working nineteen hours, but they're here for twenty two. And we needed 19 people total.

And I'll say that this one started at 3PM, and our regular shift is 07:30 till four. So we staggered shifts a little bit, made this work, but there are scenarios where we get unexpected snow. And guys start at seven, and they continue on until 7AM, nine AM, ten AM. Then regular snow maintenance, you'll see a lot less color. This is an this is something that we could do every day.

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday Saturday and Sunday might be a little hard, but we can keep doing this, to keep up with everything because we can stagger shifts. People can work twelve hours, twelve hours off, twelve hours on. And this is for regular snow maintenance. This is modeled after what we did Saturday, Sunday. So the third reason is cost.

Cost of overdoing snow maintenance is very high. You need more equipment to do it faster, to do more, more labor, more parts, more oil, more gas. It all has a cost. Overtime hours, after hour snow means overtime. More people on the road means more overtime paid.

Salt, there's a cost for salt, and the cost for salt increases roadway and curb damage. Salt plows the roads faster. You're putting metal plow onto a hard surface. It is scraping it up. Salt eats away at it like it does in this picture.

Sewers, salt damages those. It damages structures. Mantles and catch basins are made of metal. Salt damages those and so do plows. So the roadway snow maintenance cost, I kinda put these together based off of, we've got a spreadsheet that goes over equipment, labor, salt, based on the maintenance type that we're doing.

And the three at the top go, by Woodward and 8 Mile, which is, paid for by MDOT through local agreements. So, even though the cost is about $3,500, most of that is reimbursed from the state, if not all of it. The majors, emergencies, connectors, and schools are the next, and they're the next highest at around $8,000. So when we do a salt run, and everyone comes in, runs a snow route, those two things combined are what our cost would be. And when we add locals, which are the residential streets, to the total, the total gets high quickly.

It's about $17,000 just to do those residential streets with equipment, labor, and

salt.

So the total for all those roads combined is $28,367 roughly. Total cost for those items is based on one salt, one plow, roadways only. Parking lots, sidewalks, crosswalks, bike lanes, park paths are cheaper. They cost about $5,000, take less people, less costly equipment, less time. So equipment, the m dot rental rates, are what we used to come up with this, and those, assign a price per hour based on repair, storage, operating fuel, oil, etcetera, and depreciation.

Labor, we calculated the labor cost at about 1.5 wages, times the average employee wage. We could have even done that a little higher because there are times where we pay two based on, duration of the shift and if it occurs on a Sunday. SALT, cost per ton through the through the my deal contract, based on the actual historical amount of salt that we use, on average for each of these areas. More people, more equipment, more salt equals higher cost. Cost for the scenario, again, was checked against historical data from the last snow emergency and were accurate within $60.

So what is the cost for overdoing snow? This is kind of a a spreadsheet that demonstrates what our current costs are. So our current service level, annual cost, and this is rough and it's an approximation, is about a hundred and $42,000. And that's based on the snowfall that we've got in the last few years. We're gonna step that up, be more aggressive.

Declare five snow emergencies a year instead of one, we would maybe not even have the capacity to do that. But if we did, it would be about $90,000 more a year. If we were to do what some people asked for, to declare a snow emergency every time we put a plow down, do every single residential street. Even with the small snowfall we have this year, we would be at about $271,000 over what we're currently paying. If, snowfall ever returns to historical rates, plowing everything, would look more like $375,000 extra on top of what we do currently.

So the fourth reason is sustainability. Snow maintenance procedures have been adjusted in the last several years to make sure that they're sustainable. Salinity of freshwater is not something that was really considered a long time ago. Well, I wouldn't say a long time ago. Ten years is not that long, but we weren't really considering this not very long ago.

Salt in Great Lakes, we have really big lakes. It takes a long time, but we are using a lot of salt, and they are still affected. There are unknown ecosystem changes even in big lakes, and salt in the water system is very bad for smaller bodies of water. There are also secondary effects. So all of the water that we get and we we pump, goes through metal pipes.

Those metal pipes will corrode as salinity levels increase. It's really bad to continue pumping salt into the stormwater system and into our Great Lakes. Trucks need gas, diesel, and oil to go, so we use more, fossil fuels. Those are burned, put into the air, we all breathe them in. Salt scattered destroys vegetation.

And again, the state through MDOT and EGLE are regulating salt usage a lot more. And I'm gonna show you a some data from our salt history that kinda shows change over time. So the snow and salt trends, there's been less snowfall, there's less salt needed, and there's a lower salt to snow ratio, which is kind of a mushy, ratio. But if you look at the data, the closer you are to green just means that you're not ordering more salt than you need, and you're not ordering, two less than you would want. So we do a pretty good job with less salt, and we use theory, practice, and training.

So we send guys to APWA snow conference. We look at MDOT papers, white papers, research. We listen to our drivers. We put all that together in the field to use the appropriate amount of salt. We stick to our prior our priorities.

We make decisions based on data, and luckily for us, salt technology has advanced. And I'll show you a calibration data next that'll kind of show how we use less salt to fight snow. But I will just show real quick, salt ordered. There's a little bit of guesswork at the very end, but I do have some data from 2014 through 2020 that tells me how much salt was used, close to how much was ordered. And then really right now, our average ideal order, we should expect about 37 inches of snowfall based on the last ten years.

And in that case, we would need about 1,800 tons of salt. This year, we ordered 1,300 tons because we also have 2,400 in reserve in our salt barn. So a calibration chart. This is a calibration chart that we do for each of our salt trucks in our main salt fleet. And I won't point out everything, but I'll just say that this tells you if you're driving, 20 to 25 miles as an hour, and it is, a certain temperature and you're getting snow or freezing rain, it tells you exactly how many pounds of salt per lane mile plus brine if you're using brine, and we do in four out of our six main salters.

It tells you exactly what your salt setting should be set at. So so then finally, we'll just do a quick snowfall report from February 12 to the sixteenth so that everyone understands the thinking behind that process. So, February and Thursday Wednesday and Thursday, February, we declared a snow emergency. The predicted snow was four to five inches. We had three and a half inches roughly of accumulation over a twenty four hour period of time.

The next seventy two hours were projected another four inches. So this occurred Wednesday night, Thursday AM. We maintain all priorities in this emergency, and you can see and I'll kind of talk about that, but we expected to get more. It was important that we removed what was there before that happened. Saturday, February 15, was was a regular snow maintenance.

Prediction was two to five inches. We were expecting to have to declare a snow emergency Saturday or Sunday, but the twenty four hour accumulation was greatly lower than it was. We actually had some warm weather and a lot of sun that melted about an inch off of three and a half to make it two and a half on the roadway. Next seventy two hour projection then was four to six inches, so we were prepared to declare a snow emergency on Sunday depending on whether those predictions actually held. And in this case, we, maintained one through three priorities and then kept our staff in reserve.

So Sunday, February 16, again, we just did regular snow maintenance. The prediction was three to five inches. We had a twenty four hour accumulation of one inch. Next, 72 wasn't supposed to do much. Saturday to Sunday, again, priorities one through three were maintained.

And then we don't need to get into all of the nitty gritty unless anyone wants it, but I feel like what we did, was appropriate based on our snow procedures. Accumulation was much lower. I'll say that we did have one concern. It was at the freezing temps the following week were there, but we also tried some treatments and there were no effective treatments that would clear residentials. And our snow emergency declaring neighbors fared pretty much the same.

And I'm not trying to throw shade on people, but, when we do or do not declare a snow emergency, often I wake up the next day and I take a tour of all of our neighboring communities. And without pointing fingers, these are all of our neighbors. Some declared a snow emergency, some did not. Ferndale is on the top left corner and the bottom right corner. And you can see it doesn't matter what anyone did, and the only time you can see pavement is because a car was parked there and then it moved or we had salt down on a main street like you can see in the top right corner.

And I I will say that we, achieved the same results for a much better price. And that is it. Thank you. And I did wanna normally, I have, like, a a nice little downtown Ferndale picture on my thank you, but this time, I I put Cambourne on there just so that we could see on Sunday. That is a main street.

That is the way all of our main streets, emergency routes, connectors, and school routes looked.

Thanks, Tim.

Any questions for

no questions. But, I just wanted to, thank you very much. You and I had a conversation, about a week ago, and I said, you know, can you throw something together? And I throw a couple of things I'd like to see, and and you went way above and beyond what I was hoping for, and I appreciate that. I think this is something really good.

This if if we could, from communications, if we could maybe prop this presentation and make it available for when people wanna know more about why we make decisions, we can just send them the video and and, allow them to, become educated if they, you know, aren't at home watching this right now. But, no, thank you very much. I I really appreciate it.

Alright. Thank

you. Alright. Now our second presentation

oh, there.

Oh, she's

we'll have Riley present the resolution honoring the public service of Ferndale Communications Director, Cara Soko.

Good evening, mayor and council. As you know, this is Cara Soko's last council meeting with us after ten years serving the city. She explicitly told me do not make a big deal out of it, and here I am making a big deal out of it. So, so myself and a couple other staff members wrote her resolution. So I personally requested to read it, so thank you for honoring that.

So this is a resolution to honor the public service of Ferndale communications director Cara Sokol. Cara Sokol's appointment as the city of Ferndale's first communications director in 02/2015 marked a significant milestone for Ferndale's municipal operations. Under her guidance, the formation of the communications department centralized communications to educate and inform the public through authentic, inclusive, transparent, timely, and necessary communications. Carol's role as the communications director established her as a subject matter expert. Her thorough and robust knowledge of Fournelle's operations, policies, and procedures granted her the ability to articulate complex topics in a way that is digestible and clear to understand.

This role positioned her as an information advocate, gauging the community's pulse and delivering insight and feedback to city staff and council with an empathetic understanding. Her wise intellect and quick thinking helped navigate the city through times of uncertainty, including the COVID nineteen pandemic, the Headley override proposals, Woodward moves, lead service line replacements, snow emergencies and other crises, and much more. Her focus and drive as a leader of the crisis communications team are essential. This passion led her to develop the city's first crisis communications guide, a detailed document that grants security and accountability during pivotal circumstances. These efforts will help the city stay prepared for years to come.

Kara's writing and storytelling capabilities are the force behind hundreds of articles, posts, and projects over the last decade. During her time with Ferndale, she composed a nationally awarded methodology detailing the city's efforts in modern and inclusive policing. She was instrumental in the storytelling of Ferndale's facilities through the development of the facilities task force report and the finance committee report. She also wrote and developed multiple city policies on social media, website and digital use, and customer service. With every project that has come along, she gave her a voice through multiple accessible and inclusive mediums.

Kara's ultimate strength is her personal and collaborative relationships with the staff and community. Many residents and community members know her on a first name basis. Kara frequently attended city meetings, public forums, and special events to engage with the community and build relationships. She leads with compassion, collaboration, and most importantly, cats. Cara brings out the best in this community, and her vision for Ferndale will remain for years to come.

Thank you.

Her family is also here

to take a picture and celebrate too.

Oh my god. I can't really You

wanna do pictures?

Okay. And we are not finished, Kara.

Oh, absolutely.

Should we get a picture with everyone? Yeah.

So now we need someone to, adopt the resolution.

May I approve to, I approve the resolution honoring the public service of Ferndale Communications Director's Cara Sokol as submitted by the interim city manager.

Support. Nikolsky?

Yes.

Polica? Yes. Johnson? Yes. Kelly?

Yes. Leaksmae?

Yes. Now this is the time, at council where we have call to audience. Anyone can come to the podium and speak on anything on or off the agenda. You have three minutes to state whatever it is you'd like to state or make any comments you wish to make, and that's starting at 07:34. Please state your name and your address, please.

Good evening, council and the Ferndale community as a whole, plus beyond. My name is Summer Wheely. I'm the engagement manager for the Downtown Development Authority. I wanted to take three minutes, hopefully less than I'm timing myself at two minutes ten seconds to let you know about Art March. We have heard for year after year from many people, including the Ferndale Arts And Beautification Commission, that the creative energy in Ferndale exists.

It's strong, and we need to celebrate it. So we have declared the month of March art march. So kicking off this Saturday will be a, all day event at Ferndale Haas. At the lower level, you enter through Shiffer Park. There's a community art center actually that we're opening up that supports and compliments what's already existing in downtown Ferndale.

So the public can visit the community art center to learn what hidden gems are around Ferndale that you're not already seeing in conjunction with the public art program that our department runs. We're really excited that this is our first annual. It's a soft launch. So we're hoping this returns year after year. At any time, you can visit artmarchferndale.com.

There's a full calendar of events in addition to the pop up community art center's programming. The month will end with a public art information session taking place at no better place than Rust Belt Market, which is the mecca in the heart of our art and creative energy in Downtown Ferndale. That's gonna be taking place on March 30. It's a Saturday from one until four, where we're going to be asking the public and the community at large to let us know what they would like to see moving forward with our public art program. There's activities all throughout downtown.

This is really just a compliment in us shining a light to what already exists. On artmarchferndale.com, you can also see music venues, theater venues, specialized interactive locations within Ferndale downtown and beyond that are continuously programming events and bringing foot traffic into our great city all with the creative energy as the heart and the purpose of celebrating. We think that this couldn't be any better of a time when we're in March after the winter and the world and so much is uncertain. What we do know is the vibe in Ferndale is strong. It's filled with love and it's filled with creative energy.

Art March is celebrating that. I hope you all can join us, and once more, artmarchferndale.com.

Hello. Chris Best, owner of Rust Belt Market, downtown Ferndale, Ferndale resident. Ferndale has a walkable downtown, bike friendly, family friendly. People love the downtown. One of the biggest reasons people wanna live in Ferndale is the downtown business community culture.

A vibrant, fun, safe, walkable community needs a vibrant, fun, safe, walkable downtown. Well, I'm here to inform you, this precious part of the community is under threat from one individual man, a man named Jerry. It seems silly to say out loud. It seems ridiculous that one man can make many employees of downtown businesses feel unsafe to go to and from work. One man can make customers of coffee shops and restaurants want to opt out of sidewalk cafes and stay indoors.

He screams, I will fucking rape you. Much, much louder than that, by the way, to any woman he pleases. He screams all manner of obscenities at ear splitting volume, jarring the nearby families simply trying to walk to their favorite restaurant. He has spooked near three year old children. He punched in the window at Java Hut Cafe recently.

He kicked and broke glass

that was part of the Signature Tattoo storefront. He punched a random downtown patron. He has been arrested three separate times. Two of those times, he was released back into Downtown Frindale where he simply picked up right where he left off. The third time, the most recent arrest for the damage at Java Hut, he was arrested for and is still in county lockup.

He will go in front of judge Longo, March fourth, for said charges, and this is where you come in. Members of council, I implore you to email judge Longo on behalf of the city of Ferndale, the downtown, to ask him to order a psychiatric evaluation of Jerry. This will helpfully lead to involuntary commitment to a hospital. It is important to note here Jerry has repeatedly refused help for his mental health disaster. He needs mandatory commitment.

Here's a list of Jerry's crimes while being the resident menace of Ferndale. Eight Thirty Twenty Two, malicious destruction of property at Woodward in Saratoga. Four Twenty Four Twenty Three, trespass at an undisclosed address, Worthington Street, 72323. Assault and battery at West 9 Mile Allen. 8 16 20 20 3.

Indecent exposure at West 9 Mile Allen. 9 20 1 20 3. Indecent exposure, probation violation at West 9 Mile Allen. 11 9 20 20 3. Malicious destruction of property at West 9 Mile Allen.

8 8 20 20 4. You're in a meeting in public at West 9 Mile in Allen. Twenty Fourteen Twenty Twenty Four, malicious destruction of property at West 9 Mile. You were democratically elected to represent the community of Ferndale. Judge Longo was democratically elected to serve the interests of the community of Ferndale.

This moment is so important. If Jerry gets released back onto the streets of Ferndale, we are all simply we will simply be waiting around with fear in our hearts who will be the next innocent victim. Thank you.

Hello. My name is Mark. I have owned and operated my shop, Signature Tattoo in Ferndale for fifteen years. My business is directly affected by Jerry on a daily basis. He kicked in all the hand painted panels on my storefront.

He smashed out my mirror to the tune of a $1,500 repair. He was charged with malicious destruction of property. He was sleeping on the bench in front of my shop later on that day despite probation dictating he wasn't allowed to interact with my business at all. He targets my business. He paces back and forth, screaming expletives and threats of violence.

He urinates on my doorstep every day. Chris Best and I have been walking downtown through the streets, talking to the business owners and employees. Our call for action has been received almost unanimously. The amount of time we have put into this endeavor is exhausting. Why do we do it?

Because we care. We care about this downtown community. We care about the cross pollination that businesses provide for each other. We care about the safety of our employees, our patrons, our residents. We do not believe that the responsibility of this effort should fall solely on our shoulders.

We need your help. The governmental tolerance of this madness is unacceptable. The police say they can't do anything. The DDA is sympathetic. This is not a stand against a community of people.

It is concern over one dangerous individual. It is not our fault that he won't take his medication. We call for a mandated involuntary mental health examination. We have a strong opportunity while Jerry awaits incarcerated for his hearing on March 4. Many of my customers have to be escorted out because they're scared.

My own mother and father refused to visit me in my business because Jerry screamed at them. My question to you is this, will you support our cause? Will you stand up for the businesses and residents of this community? Will you contact judge Longo on behalf of the downtown or will yet another blind eye be turned? If the answer is no, what happens on the next event?

Something potentially catastrophic. Thank you.

Hey. Raymond. I'm a resident and also the owner of SoundSound. I just wanna re reiterate what Chris and Marco both said. I've witnessed it many, many times.

I get to the shop early, sometimes 08:00. I leave late, sometimes midnight, one o'clock. Jerry's just walking up and down and up and down and up and down, shouting, screaming. I've also had urine in my foyer. I've had a few personal incidents with him.

Nothing too crazy, but enough that he's a bigger guy. You know? I he could do bad business with me. I've also seen Jerry on his meds, and he's well spoken, polite, but that's so infrequent that I think when he takes when he doesn't take his medication, he's almost like an agent of chaos, sort of like the joker. He just wants to see the world burn.

And I just think we may need help as a business owner. So thank you for your time.

Hi. Good evening. My name is Peggy Harp, and I'm at 566 West Saratoga. And I'm here to talk about the FLOC, automatic license plate pilot. I think there's a lot of things that is that are is wrong with this technology, and I would like us to, not go beyond the pilot.

But, specifically, tonight, I wanna talk about that I don't think that the city and the Ferndale Police Department have acted in good faith in regards to our neighbors in Detroit, and that that what this technology will likely inflict upon black and brown bodies. You know, the city, has not conducted the required racial impact assessment for using this technology, which violates its own anti racism statement of 2020, which I'll read. The elected council members of the city of Ferndale have committed to the elimination of racial disparities in the criminal justice system, to prioritize racial equity in our decision making processes, to acknowledge that communities of color have borne the burdens of inequitable social, environmental, economic, and criminal justice policy practices and investments, to understand that the legacy of these inequitable policies have caused deep disparities, harm, and mistrust, and to recognize that racial equity is realized when and only when race can no longer be used to predict life outcomes. So in light of this, the city council has voted to double voted to double the amount of cameras when we have had no data on racial, you know, equity or or, you know, hits or any of those things.

There's been there's been no look at this. And the placement of the cameras, the over half of them are on the border of eight on 8 Mile Road. You know, why did we place that many on the border of Detroit, a largely black population that has to cross the border for goods and services in the suburbs. One of the cameras had no hits, and that one has been removed.

But, you

know, one remains there that has very, very low hits, which I really hate that word. And so is my understanding, and I could be wrong, but that Flock suggested the placement of our cameras. And why are we allowing a company to, to determine where those go? So I don't know if Flock has any kind of racial equity statement at all, but I think it is also disingenuous that we fly the Pan African flag here in Ferndale when we have over half of the cameras on eight mile and no racial lens to evaluate it. In 2023, mayor Leakes May said that I hope that the flag serves as a reminder of the city's commitment to anti racism to those who pass through Ferndale.

I think the cameras are a big reminder that Ferndale talks the talk but does not walk the walk. We'd like to have half of the cameras removed and a racial equity, assessment done right away, And we'd like a report on the plans and activities of the community police advisory and review board. And, ultimately, I think we should not have this technology in Ferndale. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello, everyone. My name is Heidi West, four nine three Pearson Ferndale Resil for thirteen years. I'm here tonight because the renewal of the flock mass surveillance camels are coming up in a few months. So I'm here to ask city council not to renew the contract of the 16 flock mass surveillance license plate reading cameras currently installed in Ferndale. I'm concerned that these cameras are exacerbating racial profiling by the Ferndale police since more than half are placed at or near the border with Detroit, and the Ferndale police department already has issues with this as cited in the ACLU report and the lawsuit.

They're able to be used to track and monitor people considered risk, including racial justice activists, such as myself. They're able to be they could be used to be to track down people to to deport. And I'm also con concerned that the Ferndale Police Department provides no information about the use of these cameras on its transparency portal, and limited information was shared with city council, including they don't share demographics, particularly race. And these cameras have been shown to have a 10% error rate that could result in a mistake in stopping and arresting of innocent people. I'm especially concerned that Ferndale City Council off authorized over half of these surveillance cameras to be placed at the Detroit border even though our city has four even borders, has not conducted the required racial impact assessment for using this technology, doubled the number of allowable cameras under the original contract without reviewing any reports about effectiveness or risk and without knowing where the cameras were placed and allowed the Ferndale Police Department to accept corporate donations to help fund the initiative, a move seen by many as an unethical conflict of interest that prioritizes business interests over human interest.

For all of these reasons, I'm asking you to not renew the contract for these mass surveillance cameras. Thank you very much.

Hi. My name is Prasad Venugopal. I live at 1425 West Troy Street. I'm here tonight also to speak about the license plate readers. I was not aware until last meeting that the pilot period had been extended to 2026.

I don't know if that's true or not. It's just information I received from another resident. And if that is the case, I was unaware that we had any discussions citywide discussions about it, like the town halls and the community forums that we had when the original contract was signed. What I what I am aware of that is that neither city council nor city government nor the police department as a whole have engaged a conversation between those who support these license plate readers under the rubric of safety versus those of us who oppose the use of these license plate readers without because we are concerned about the assault on our civil liberties, on our privacy, and on the racialization and existing racialization of the question of safety as my, as the two people before me have spoken. But there's more.

The even the data that was provided by the police department, the sixty day report, makes it very clear that we actually don't have the kind of transparency that was promised. One thing that is known, and this is from Forbes, is that Flock Safety has consistently provided false and misleading statistics about the, decrease in crime as a result of using these license plate readers. So the one of the articles that I'm gonna hand you says, they claimed there was an 70% decrease in the city of San Marino when it turned out there was actually a 5% increase. That is not a joke. And the same was true in places like Fort Worth, Dayton, and Lexington.

There is a second article that talks about, that I'm gonna give you also from Forbes, where a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia allowed for a lawsuit to proceed against flock safety on the basis of, of the Fourth Amendment. And and as this as the the judge in that federal lawsuit said. Now he allowed it to move forward that I know it doesn't mean that they won, but the lawsuit the the judge ruled, it is possible that plaintiff subjectively believe they have reasonable expectation of privacy that is being violated because the flock camera system is creating a dragnet system of surveillance that effectively tracks the whole of plaintiff's physical movements. Law enforcement secretly monitoring and cataloging the whole of tens of thousands of individual movements over an extended period clearly violates society's expectations of privacy as the Supreme Court ruled in the Carpenter case. And the last one I'll say, because I only have ten seconds here, is that I don't know if you're aware, Flock Safety and Axon have broken off relationships with each other.

And that is huge because FlocSafety and Axon used to coordinate and integrate the application program or interface that they used. This is gonna change the way FlocSafety actually works. And one of the reasons they broke off their, partnership is because flock safety acquired Aerodrome, a $300,000,000 drone surveillance system, which, Axon already had. So they are actually becoming competitors. And I think that I would not be surprised if the next time over the next couple of years, we are asked to buy more cameras, more drones, and more surveillance technologies like gun spotter, shot spotter, and so on because that's how Flock makes its money while peddling false and misleading claims.

Thank you.

We should end this contract.

Hello. My name is Karen Toomey. I'm at two four zero five one Rensselaer. It's nice to see some familiar faces after a few years apart. There's really nothing I can say about the FLAW cameras that hasn't already been said as far as the facts, but I just wanted to remind, especially some of those of you who have worked with in the past about what it is that makes us in Ferndale so fabulous.

We are always an incubator of thoughtful policy that leads to a better place every time. Think about not just things like this art march or the Rust Belt, which are so unique and lovely, but we were the ones who were really out there pushing for bike lanes and busing and for, think about the idea that we were out there doing studies with Rod Motts really early on, ACLU, looking at the disproportionality studies that they had collected on the police department, trying to figure out ways to do things better, to lower those numbers, work with the schools, to work to improve through community policing, to go and find protocols that would help with people who are neurodivergent. We are the ones who try to lay the groundwork, the foundation, the good strong policies so that something like this is safe. And I'm just shocked when I come and first find that we do have something that has red flags already around Fourth Amendment rights. It has red flags around the archiving of the information.

And we do have recommendations available to us on best policies, and we're not using them. That's scary to me because while I love and trust most of you, some of you I sadly haven't had a chance to get to know yet, but I know you and I know you well and what you stand for. I'm not worried about you. The reason that we build something like Ferndale and we use good policy is because what about the next person? We have all in this room lived through a situation where there is somebody in a political public office who we loved and trusted, and then somebody else comes in that absolutely does not have our trust and is misusing our data, our information.

And these systems, while they say they're not collecting those pictures of the man standing by the car, how do I know that? And these are cameras. Any of us who have a a phone, I've done searches, and my phone in Google doesn't know the difference between me and my daughter or my dog and a goat. So how do we know in the future how this might be used? Because we have to be protective of tomorrow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. My name is Christopher Hall at 1845 Syme Street. Hello, city council and mayor. The reason why I'm here, I currently sit on the Parks and Rec Commission. I did put my notice in in regards to stepping down for that commission to be part of the planning commission.

The reason why I did that, with my experience with strategic planning with GE Aerospace, my, former employer and also my new employer at Ford Credit, I work closely with, the chief, staff and also the chief technology officer in regards to their communications for, Ford Technology Ford Credit Technology. I'm sorry. And, my experience working closely with some of the vendors in the Metro Detroit area like CBRE that manages some of the facilities throughout Metro Detroit. I was a part of a team that actually rebuilt the GE Aerospace location in Livonia, Michigan working with CAD designs and those vendors, with implementing new, office technologies. For GE Aerospace, I also did a really cool bubble assignment in Cincinnati while being completely remote with rebuilding some of their Cincinnati Reds, the Bengals, unfortunately.

Xavier University in their suites, had a really cool deadline of gain. That facility ready for the Taylor Swift concert for the CEO of GE Aerospace. And, no, I wasn't invited, but I was told to do it and get it done a a seven three weeks. And I think, most importantly, about being on a planning commission, I just wanna make sure that things are equitable across the board, especially with affordable housing. I think that's extremely important right now for Ferndale and also the residents of Michigan.

And that's one of the things I really wanna be really mindful for if I am appointed into the planning commission. So that's all I have. Thank you.

Hi.

You just cut somebody off here.

Oh, I'm sorry. I should've turned.

Do we have time?

Yes. We do. Alright.

This one's quick. Hi there. I'm Jason Schneeman. I live at 676 West Hazelhurst. I was I've recently moved to Ferndale in the last year and, have applied for the Sustainability Environmental Council.

I actually spoke with Logan recently and had expressed interest in the role. I just wanted to stop by tonight and introduce myself. First time coming to a city council meeting, so very nice to meet you. I hope to get to work with you in the future. I bring a lot of experience in the world of sustainability.

I've actually worked in corporate sustainability, in a variety of industries over the last ten years, most recently here in Michigan or in Southeast Michigan, with Carhartt Corporation. So just wanted to introduce myself and and say hi. Thank you. Welcome to Ferndale. Thank you.

Lots of great volunteers to look forward to. I'm Sharon Chess, president of the Ferndale Community Concert Band. We have a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our tenth anniversary in Orchestra Hall on March 30 at 03:00 in the afternoon. I invite the entire community and all of council to participate in the celebration with us. It's a free concert.

So how often do you get to go to Orchestra Hall and not have to buy a ticket? So please join us for that. I've missed a lot of council meetings over the last few months, and I have just so much to say. Kara, it's been wonderful knowing you, working with you off and on through the past. Your resolution states the reason why we need you.

We've needed you. And when she leaves, we're gonna continue to need somebody to try and fill her shoes because other cities are looking to hire her as we all know. That's why she's leaving because they recognized how important communication is. Don't go backwards. Continue moving forward because she's created a wonderful road to us in succeeding in communication with our departments, our council, and our residents.

On that note with this flock thing coming up, my rule in life is always don't complain unless you have a better idea. What the police department, my opinion, which I'm always just so thrilled to share with everybody, is doing the best they can to keep us all safe. This is one idea, a pilot program. Okay? Is it a %, the thing that we're gonna move forward with or that we need?

Currently, it's the only thing out there that we're aware of that does a, the job that we're looking to do. When you look at our crime, most of our crime, is committed by people who live in Detroit regardless of what their race may be. So that's why the cameras are most by eight mile. And anybody, any business, or any resident who's been, a victim of that crime wants those cameras or wants another way to keep their business and themselves free of harm. So if you do have a better program or a better idea, then present that.

Don't just complain about it or help with the situation. On another note on a Saturday note, my husband, David Chess, recently passed away. David started as an entrepreneur here in Ferndale over fifty years ago. It's people like David that kept us here in Ferndale because Ferndale is just a community filled with entrepreneurs, talented people, educated people, giving people, thoughtful people. And I want you all to be aware when you're making decisions, we have so many businesses and legacy families and legacy businesses here.

Take into account how important that these people are. There's not a single person in here on council that's been here fifty years or operated a business for fifty years, like my husband, the Emmy family. Okay? Heating and cooling. Where would we be without the Emmy family?

Saltman, many other businesses, Tom Perlman and his landlord and Brian Kramer, the Johnsons, all the years that they've committed, Valentine, all of a sudden, miss May. I mean, they've committed Mike Kennis, they've committed and they've worked in this community. They've given to the community. So moving forward, please think of the future and the past at the same time and bring them together and work together. Don't lose one to try and achieve the other.

Thank you.

Any more for call to audience? Closing call to audience at 08:02. And now we're moving on to a public hearing. The public hearing is regarding the DNR grant applications.

Good evening, mayor and council.

So,

it's that time again of the year. Every year, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources puts out a series of grants available to parks and recreations and municipalities across the state for the purpose of acquiring and developing different properties for outdoor public use. These grants have been instrumental as we've continued to develop our parks systems. They were a big part of the developments at Wilson Park, the splash pad at Martin Road Park, and various other, projects that we've been putting on over the last four to five years or so. So, this year, we are planning to apply for, upwards of a hundred and $50,000 to demo and replace the current playscape that exists at, Martin Grove Park.

So what's gonna happen as part of this project is further east of what you see in that area or I'm sorry. Further west of what you see in that area is the old playground. All of that will be taken out. It's been deemed unsafe already, via, playground sort of, playground inspection, and also one of those, units was also hit by a drunk driver, in the last month or so. So what we're gonna do is take all of that out, and then we're gonna, install new features to the north and south of the existing play structure that you see pictured here.

There's gonna be units that goes in this red area as well as one in this red area. And the playground area, structures that we're looking to get are gonna be a little more targeted toward an older school age demographic. The one that we have out there right now is great for, toddler use. It's great for, you know, the the littles, but the older kids at the playground, don't really have a place to be able to exercise their gross motor capabilities and and have fun, on the play structure. So that's what we're looking to do as part of this project.

So we're looking at applying for two different funds.

One is the

land and conservation fund, and Both of them are offered through DNR. Both of them require a 50% match in order to get all of the points available, via the scoring system. Applying for one of these grants is a months long process, and it's very involved with a lot of attachments and a lot of different, elements that need to be included in it. And if we were awarded one of these grants, we'd be accepting one of them. Even if we were awarded both, we'd only be able to accept one of them.

The city's match can be made up of, in kind services, which would include any, work that DPW does and parks parks and recreation volunteers. And we also already have a, grant of about $64,000 from Oakland County that would also be contributing to the match for this particular project. That's not including anything that we're we're applying for, after this either. So a little breakdown of the timeline. The grants are the grant applications are due on April 1.

Around September, we'll get the opportunity to receive our initial scores. And then at that time, if we want to withdraw from, consideration for these grants, we can do so then. In December, the grant awards will be announced, and we anticipate executing the grant in May of next year and then, beginning construction in summer of twenty twenty five. And that is it. So there's no required motion or anything for tonight.

This is just an informative thing. When we come to the next council session, we'll be asking for approval for applying for the grants.

Thank you for always, looking ahead and applying for the grants that we need. Well, thank you for always applying for the grants that we need. And, I know that you all are quite capable of getting them as you've proven in the past. So I look forward to, upgrading our parks. Thank you.

Did you wanna open it up to the because the public Yes.

I do. In fact, it is a public hearing. So this is an opportunity for anyone in the public to speak regarding what we heard regarding the DNR grants. If you have any comment or any questions. Alright.

Now we're moving on to the consent agenda. Consent agenda item seven a, approval of the 02/06/2025 and 02/10/2025 meeting minutes. Seven b, approval of the annual planned maintenance and on call service for HVAC control systems for city hall police station by Siemens for a cost of $6,975 from the account 101265818000 and approve the director of public works to sign the agreement with Siemens after approval by the city attorney. Seven c, approval of the listed appointments and reappointments to city boards and commissions. Seven d, approval to renew the annual software agreement with ESRI GIS services in the amount of $4,960 from account number five nine two zero zero zero eight one eight.

Seven e, approval of bills and payrolls as submitted by the finance director and subject to review by the city by the council finance committee. May I have a motion?

I move we approve the consent agenda as as amended. Support.

Johnson? Yes. Mikulski? Yes. Kelly?

Yes.

Polica? Yes. This week's May.

Yes. And I'd also like to take this opportunity to welcome the new boards and commission appointments and reappointments, as well as, thank the outgoing board members. We have, we have, I believe we have some outgoing board members for DDA, which was what is his name? Is it Grant? Oh, Grant.

Grant Sabaj, Dejana Dingus, and Omar George. I wanna thank them for their service. And I just wanna thank all the newcomers who are coming aboard because it takes, a lot of commitment to volunteer for these boards and commissions, and I appreciate you wanting to serve. It's taking a lot of your time, but we couldn't do it without you. So I want you to know how much we appreciate you.

So welcome aboard, and I'm sure that the the chairs of the boards and commissions will be reaching out to you soon. We are now moving on to the regular agenda, item eight a, approval of the employment agreement for the next city manager.

Good evening, mayor and council. As you recall, on February 10, you selected Colleen O'Toole as the city manager and directed the city's labor attorney to negotiate the terms of the employee agreement. I acted as liaison, with the mayor and the labor attorney in that process, and it's now your opportunity to discuss that contract tonight.

We've all had a chance to look at it, so I'll open it up to counsel for any comments, any concerns regarding the contract that's presented. Everybody's good with it? Yeah. K. Alright.

I mean,

I think just for for just for the public's sake, so that doesn't look like we're just approving this with no discussion, you know, we all individually had to go through a lot of conversations via the you know, with the mayor as the liaison with the labor attorney and and Dan, our HR director. So we all got to have a say on the negotiation side of the contract outside of the public space, on our individualized basis, giving our own input and thoughts of what we were okay with and not okay with. So we're not just approving this because we haven't engaged on it. In fact, we've been engaging a lot on it in the last week or so. But, because we've been doing done so, what we see before us tonight and what you see on the agenda before you as the public is what we have all kind of come to with our consensus through our individual conversations.

Awesome. Thank you.

And and thanks to Dan for sort of helping cohere that into a into a meaningful package of of of feedback and information to give to the labor attorney. So it's, you know, it takes a lot of work to take five people's thoughts and feelings and turn that into an actual contract. Thank you for the work you did, on that. Thank you. You and John.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. And John as well. Yes. That being said, I move we approve the employment agreement for city manager candidate Colleen O'Toole as submitted by the human resources director.

Support.

Johnson? Yes. Polica? Yes. Kelly?

Yes. Mikulski? Yes. Leaksmae?

Yes. Alright. And with that being said, we are moving on to items eight b, approval of the special event policy guidebook proposed revisions. Larry will present. Hello.

Good evening.

Okay. So tonight, we're bringing before the body, the recommendations of revisions to the special the current special events policy guidebook. This guidebook is is, to help special event planners with information on the expectations that are required to have an event on public space. For example, we just want

to

in 1996 the city of Ferndale established a city code, section sixteen twelve one one nine four, to regulate the planning and execution of large events held on public property. To enforce safety, noise levels, traffic control, and other factors to ensure the event is conducted responsibly. It defines what constitutes a special event and the necessary steps to legally host one within the city limits. The city has continued to embrace a multi range of diverse events that represent the vibe and energy of the city that brings friends and families together for fun and entertainment. In 02/2016, the city approved its first special events policy guidebook to provide event planners with rules and regulations that are enforced by the by assigned city departments of the special events committee.

The director of special events is responsible to process and streamline the planning and review of the special events. Since 02/2016, there have been two other revisions in 02/2017 and also in 2022. In December 2024, the special events committee initiated a review of the current policy and recommends the proposed updates that I'll be presenting to you tonight. On January 30, 2025, the special events committee met with event planners to note notify and discuss the proposed policy revisions that require city council's approval. First, and foremost I just wanna, mention that some of these policies are are based on concerns that have been repeated concerns and then others are based on policies that do exist but they're not in the special events policy.

And that could be as much as a city city policy such as in communications or it could be a a fire code safety rule or public any kind of public safety rule. For example, in the city of Loebrun, use in its event advertising, the city requires that you do request the approval to utilize the city's logo. The pre promotion and or advertising an event without the approval of a special permit is discouraged. What that means is that because you apply for a request to present an event in downtown front of you should not assume that it's gonna be approved until it comes before city council. So we want to make sure that people understand that you're taking the risk to start promoting an event that has not been officially approved yet, especially if you're an event that has never been held in Ferndale.

Annual events are somewhat a little different because more likely after ten, fifteen years of being here, you know, we're more or less we're we're gonna continue embracing that. Cancellations, this is where we request a written notice of a cancellation that should be sent to me, the director of special events, And to re to apply, to give that notice and receive a full refund, that notice needs to be thirty days prior to the date of the event. If it's if it's fourteen days or less, then there is a nonrefundable, funds. The city and its public safety departments had the authority to cancel event due to adverse weather conditions, acts of God, public health, safety, and security alerts and threats, common information. Event setup and breakdown requirements, special events to provide a vendor setup and breakdown schedule.

For safety purposes, no vendor vehicles or personal property, tensor tables, or other structures are to enter the event area until setup has been completed. This of course is again, it relates to public safety. When there's a lot of case chaos happening during a setup, there are great concerns about whether or not a vehicle that might be in the event area could potentially hit someone or equipment could be falling, and we need to make sure that there's as little as possible of people that are in the way until necessary. And this again would be at the at the guidance of public safety. Then the duration of the event, no vehicles may enter or exit without the approval of public safety as I just said.

Parades, five k walks, and and requirements. Here again, we have a situation where in the past where we've, permitted a five k run and yet we're not doing the best job we can in making sure that the residents or the businesses are impacted or are are informed. And so as the city currently has the block party requirements to where if you wanna do a block party, you have to do a petition and get 51% of the residents on that street to support it for before the city will approve it. So we're feeling that this is the same model we should be using for five k runs or parades, where if you want to apply for the opportunity for a five k, you would be required to get a petition of the streets that are gonna be impacted and businesses to sign off. 51% of those have to sign to agree to do that, to embrace that.

We also wanna require that even seven days prior to the event, if it's approved, that there is a notice to remind the residents and their businesses of the five k or the parade that will take place. Next is our parking lot rental.

May I just ask a question? Yes, ma'am. So regarding the five k run, you mean the petitioner needs to notify the residents?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. In in parking lot rental?

Here, Park Ferndale is the department that's responsible for all public parking lots and spaces and provides an overview of the services. Events requesting the use of any municipal parking lot or spaces may be charged a fee according to the city fee schedule approved by the city council annually. Here what we're proposing and and I was not at at this time I'm not asking council for any, fee schedule because in in April we'll be we'll be bringing that to you as we do every year for city fee schedules. So currently, the city does not charge a special event to utilize any of our parking lots. So therefore the city, is not reimbursed for the loss of revenues for those parking lots.

And so what we'll we'll be proposing is a reduced rate of rental fee to use a parking lot if it's part of your footprint. Next is our event liquor license and legal liability insurance. Basically, it's just it's just advising them that they are responsible to provide the city with legal, with a certificate of insurance and that if there is a third party vendor involved, they also have to provide a certificate of insurance that includes the city of Ferndale as an additional insured. Next is our patio zone, the pay and take it outside, or formally or legally known as a social district. This is where in downtown there's a district that, provides people to go to a a a an establishment bar restaurant that has a social district license where you can purchase a drink, an alcohol beverage, and then you can they put it in a social district cup, what we call the patty zone cup, they can purchase it and then they can go out within a within the zone downtown and enjoy the refreshment as they're going maybe shopping or going you know, just to hang out in Downtown Ferndale.

So with this, there is a a situation where if a special event has requested a temporary liquor license to serve alcohol at their event, it's required by state law that it has to be fenced because you cannot take a you cannot purchase a Patio Zone drink at Mezcal, for example, and then go across the street and attempt to take that into Pig and Whiskey if it's a fenced off area because of their alcohol sales. And vice versa, the event can't allow any of their spectators to take a drink that they bought in the event outside of the event area. However, we have a patio zone. And the patio zone should be embraced and so how we're seeing it is that we have the bars and restaurants that pay to have the license to which is the intent that the law even was created is to help business. And so we're saying that we want to make sure that we're embracing our local businesses that do have a Patio's Own license.

Now we're not implying that no event can apply for a special temporary liquor license. What we're saying is that how do we reduce the footprint of a fenced area so that both the event, if they want a liquor license, they can place it in a smaller area but another area of the event is open for anyone including people who are enjoying a patio zone drink can participate in the event without having to either quickly drink it once they get to the fence or they have to throw it out. So that's how how our thinking is on in regards to the patio zone. When it comes to fencing, fencing is, is is if it's required, fencing must be secure and able to withstand any potential weather hazards so it doesn't fall over. And the location of the fencing and the number of entrances, exits shall be determined by the city's public safety departments.

Food service participation requirements. The special events committee shall conduct a review of all food service providers, including mobile food trucks and trailers to communicate the terms and conditions of the city sustainability, fire code safety, and Oakland County Health Department requirements. Event planners must provide the special events committee with a list of all their proposed food service providers no less than four weeks prior to the first day of the special event to conduct the review and approval process. Of course, a special event, if they got all their food service providers already booked and they have them today, but their events not until June, we can start calling them to make sure that they know that they're accountable to our sustainability policy. They're accountable to our fire code safety rules, which means that they have to for example, they have to go to the Ferndale fire department to be inspected to make sure that their mobile food truck is safe.

And also that they must make sure that they are under the they have a current license with the Oakland County Health Department. The event planner, there's what they call the temporary food service permit. Each one of those event planners are to apply with the Oakland County to identify the the location and the amount of food trucks or food service providers they're going to have at their event. Mobile food services, the use of fuel fire cookie equipment must be inspected and licensed by the Ferndale Fire Department and Oakland County. And then in here I I show you a graph and there is the application that that the event planners have to fill out and then this participating form service is what we're we will be asking the event planners to provide myself and what we do is myself and, Logan with sustainability and the fire department will contact these food vendors on each of these different requirements to make sure that to make sure that they understand the that they have to follow the sustainability policy or that they must be inspected by the, the fire, department.

So that the we are making sure that people who are participating in the event are not serving food in styrofoam, for example. And the reason why we created this one is because unfortunately some of the events claim that they've given the they've given the event the food vendors the information, but then the food vendors on the day of when they're asked that they when they're told they can't sell products and stuff on them, they say no one ever told us. So now the responsibility is up to the special events department and not the event planner to make sure that food service providers are following the policy. Another one, oh, it's self explanatory, flame effect flame effect and open flame performances, they must submit four weeks prior to an event and get approved by the Ferndale Fire Marshal. Fire lanes and hydrants.

Fire all fire hydrants including wall hydrants must have a minimum of 10 feet clearance from any tents, canopies, or other temporary structures. This is another one where the fire the fire hopefully never will have to worry about a fire, but they need to make sure that they have clear access to get to a fire hydrant to put the fire out. The public site walks, here again we've had situations where events have set up on sidewalks and it's been asked that they make sure they get permission from the storefront or that it's an empty storefront, but sometimes they set them up assuming that it's okay to do it and then the storefront owner is upset and they start calling me, they call the DDA because they say that no one asked. So we feel that it's best just not to allow special events to utilize the sidewalks. City ordinance only permits merchants to utilize sidewalks during special events, their first the first five feet in front of their storefront.

Public safety stations, this is basically saying telling the event planners, you must provide space for public safety to to set up a a 10 by 10 tent within your event area during your event. Drones, here again, to utilize drones at a special event, pilots must have proof of the FFA remote pilot certificate and valid insurance coverage. In case of accidents, provide the police department with a copy of their valid FAA remote pilot certificate prior to operating any drone or any other small unmanned aircraft systems. Roadway and parking lot barricades. This again is about public safety and that the public works department and the public the police department had the authority to determine the location and the quantity of barricades to secure the area to prevent any unfortunate situation.

And that there must be a mandatory 20 feet clearance from any barrier in the first structure. And this has to do with the impact if if for some reason someone tries to do damage, that that 20 feet should prevent that unfortunate first structure hit. Electrical services, again, we've had some situations where people tap into our electric the poles on the street and it's caused a a power outage. So now if you do ask for that, you must make a request with the DPW no less than fourteen days prior to the event for review and consideration.

And there is already on

the city fee schedule a charge for, you any utility such as water or electric. Sustainability trash recycling and food waste. Food and beverage service providers to use certified compositable packaging materials and brands made to provide multiple options depending on the needs to reduce land, fill waste and to become better environmental stewards. This reverts back to the other one about the providing us a list for the food vendors. Why is it that when you talk a lot you get caught in mouth?

Hate it. Prohibited food and service beverage service items. Food and beverage service providers shall not use Styrofoam, single use plastic, and glass. Vendors are to remove any packaging that they bring on-site that is not sustainable packaging and or service products. Here again, this policy already exists, it's known as the zero waste policy, but we wanna make sure that it's put into the special events policy for notification to event planners.

Event planners are required to notify each food service vendor of the required guidelines. So it's a double communication to our food service providers to make sure that they're doing the right thing to make sure that Ferndale is is doing its best to stay green. Level class four waste management service requirements. Large events must use a third party waste management service to plan and manage on-site landfill trash, recycling, and food waste, along with maintenance cleaning service of the event area plus 300 feet adjacent to the event. And that is because even though you have your event area, people who might have, like, that patios on cup, as they walk away, they're still gonna throw that trash away.

Container maintenance. The city becomes the required number of sustainability container bins to collect landfill through recycling and food waste. Portable toilets and hand sanitation. ENET must provide portable toilets for public use with hand sanitizing dispensers and cleaning services. Overhang banner, which already exists, but, some of you might be aware that this past year the cable broke, and they believe that one of the reasons why is because different events had different size banners and every time they had to move it, it just weakened the cable.

So now we're just gonna require that every banner has to be the same size so they never have to slide those, metal that goes across the cable. So this way it stays standard, they just have to hook it on this because it's always gonna be the same size. And of course, bike parking station. The bicycle parking station designated areas to be available for event attendees at hazard class level three and four events. The amount of bike parking will be determined through planning process.

And that is based when we say class level three and four because those are the larger size events where just our standard bike racks that we have in downtown just won't be a won't be able to accommodate the amount that's possible. And of course, what's already in the policy is policy enforcement. The special policy will be enforced by the city, the applicable codes and regulations will be enforced by municipal code. Noise ordinance is amplified sound. Sound application shall be limited to to 9PM on Sundays.

City services and fees, all non city sponsored events are required to make full payment of all city staff fees and services including overtime cost, use of any public facility or property may require waste management and others third party services at the expense of the event of the event and an estimated cost for city staff and service shall be provided to an applicant during the review process. Failure to to pay within thirty days after the amount can, be a result of denial of future applications. There you go. It this is actually short compared to what we went through on January 3 when we thirtieth when we met with these events planners.

Is it up to counsel for any

Yep. If I could start. So thank you, Michael. A bit more detail than I was expecting, but I appreciate it. So kinda going through the list of of items that I I wanted to inquire further.

The first one is, the event advertising. So it says pre promotion and or advertising of an event without the approval of a special event permit is discouraged. The problem I see with this is that sometimes we don't get the special event. We don't get, the ability to vote on that maybe a month or two before the actual event, which means the special events promoter can't even start promoting their event or you're discouraging them to promote the event before it ever comes for approval to counsel, which could be two months before the event. When you have a big event like the art festival or DIY, Pig and Whiskey, Pride, those take, like, six months.

You're trying to advertise that those events six at least six months in advance.

True. But they could promote it as an event in Downtown Ferndale with but they don't necessarily need to use a logo to do that.

Okay. That's not what I understand here. Mhmm. What I understand is that you're not allowing the event to advertise that you're having an event in Ferndale until it's been approved in the permit. But you're just saying pre promotion using the logo is discouraged before you have the event.

And I think it should be worded that way because, well, the way that I understand it, I don't know if by anybody else, but I understood it as you don't want an event to advertise until the permit has been approved.

Okay. So I I misunderstood you, but the the logo and advertising are two separate things. Okay. You are correct. Because and and as I said earlier, the events that have been been established as an annual, they come every year.

It's it's not necessarily them that we're targeting as much as it is when someone knew that it hasn't even gone through the process. And they're already advertising, and they're promoting, and they're using our our logo. And it's it's in poor deep, pixel. It's, you know, it's just disappointing. Mhmm.

But they're assuming something without ever having any history with our with the city.

Okay.

So that's why when it comes to pre promotion advertising and we say discouraged so we're not enforcing anything, we're just discouraging it. So that if for some reason, if it's a new event and it comes before this body and for some reason y'all decide not to approve it, we've told them we've discouraged it, but we're not saying it's adamantly not it's unacceptable.

Maybe the wording should be first time events are discouraged. Because, again, I I'm looking at it as if I was, you know, I was doing an event two, three, four years, and I know that it's gonna happen over and over based on how it's worded. I was under the assumption that every event had to get approval before they could start advertising.

Well, I'm gonna speak for communications because I do know that we do have a policy on how the logo is to be used.

I'm not talking about

the logo.

I'm just talking about the advertising. I'm not not interested. No issue with your logo. You have them both together. So They're not what I would probably say is first time applicant.

First time applicant. Okay.

The second item that I have is event setup and breakdown. Now you say that no vendor vehicles or personal property, tense tables, and all other structures are to enter the event area until setup has been completed. What setup are you talking about? Because a lot of vendors that come into a lot of events, they're bringing their own stuff to set up. They're bringing their own tents and their own tables.

So at what point at some of these events are you saying that, this has to be done before you can let these other vendors in that are also gonna be setting up?

Equipment.

Well, this specifically has to do with the event itself and its equipment.

So So you're talking about you could well, because the event sets up tents and tables and chairs.

Right. And so I and ex you're exactly correct. And they also set up this they have someone who comes in and sets up the stage. They place the portable toilets. You know, the food, the food trucks come in.

We don't we need to discourage more people on the street during that chaos. This is about trying to reduce the chaos. Mhmm. It's not ever gonna be perfect. The policy is only a guide.

That's why it's called the guidebook. It's not set and done, but there has to be some kind of structure to make sure that we know, as a city, that we're doing our due diligence to be as safe as we can make it. It's never gonna be perfect.

I understand. Understand. I I guess I just wanna make sure that there's some flexibility because I know with a lot of events, they have timing. You know, I have, you know, the porta potties delivered at seven. I have the stage coming in, you know, at at 07:30.

Sometimes it takes a little longer for the porta potties to come in or it takes longer to to finish the stage, and then you have a hundred vendors standing in line waiting to drive in. So I just wanna make sure that there, you know, there's a little bit of flexibility

Mhmm.

In, you know, this is what we planned on. This is how the world works.

Yeah. I mean, we do ask for a timeline schedule.

Okay.

And and Julia, for example, is really good at at providing that kind of schedule for us. And, yeah, it's not ever gonna be perfect, but she's also a good communicator. Well, she will let us know if that something's not going well. So at least the communication between her and myself or with public safety is spot on.

So if I'm if I may, council member, just as a to maybe try to clarify this a little bit just in my head since you brought this up and now I'm thinking about it. So thinking about an event, I'm trying to conceptualizing this an event like pride where we have, let's call it the event and all the infrastructure around the event. And then we have individual vendors, tents, these folks who also need to set up their stuff.

Mhmm.

What this policy is saying is basically, Julia and her team, they're going to make sure the stage is set up, make sure the water stations are out, all that kind of infrastructure stuff. Julia is shaking her head at me, but I can't see that there'd be any other way that we would do this other than setting up the main infrastructure of the event, and then the people who have tents can come in and do their tents. Because while we're setting up stages, while we're having DPW do their thing, all this other stuff that's provided, that's gotta get it set up first. Because otherwise, if I have got Huntington Bank coming in trying to do all their stuff, Mhmm.

And

they're moving around in the space, that's adding people who don't need to be there at that moment for the event to be set up. Is that at all conceptually accurate?

I'll give you an example of a lot of vendors come in vehicles and they wanna pull onto the street, unload, and then there's another car behind them and another car behind them. And sometimes they don't unload, get back in the car, go park it, come back and start setting up. There becomes chaos. So again, this is this is designed so that we can reduce that headache for not just the event itself, but also for public safety who has great concerns when this kind of situation happens. And there's also the great concern that when you're building a stage, what if something accidentally drops when they're 20 feet in the air?

You don't want public walking around possibly getting hit because it's not just the event that gets sued, it's the city also. So it is it's it's it's it's designed a lot in a lot of ways about public safety. It's and, again, it's another thing. It's not perfect. It's a guide to to help us reduce this kind of concern.

Understood. But, you know, to to be clear, I'm I'm not in the business of adopting policies whether they're perfect or imperfect. Uh-huh. I'm also not in the business of adopting policies if it feels like there's still work to be done.

There always will be work to

be done. Understood. But, again, adopting a policy because it's the policy of the government, whether it's a guidebook and it's nonbinding, it's still a policy of the government. If we have this kind of uncertainty about how these things are going to be applied or interpreted, I think we have to make sure we get it right before this body adopt something. I'm not saying the work was not good, but I'm saying that we've already gotten two points in, and we're not a % sure exactly what this policy means.

And what is being asked of this council is that we adopt, on behalf of the city, this policy and stand behind it. I don't know that I can explain some of this policy because I don't feel like I'm I don't feel like I understand how some of these things work in actuality. And if I don't understand it, I can't then impose this policy and ask vendors and the public to also try to comply with this policy. And so I think that this is not right for a vote tonight. I don't know that I'm ready to vote on this because I think we need to make sure that some of these issues that council member Pawlika has brought up and some of my concerns, I want them more explicitly stated.

I don't you know, I I want them written out and more clear than what we're getting here at the table. Does that make sense?

So, Michael, may I ask, all of these items, these red items, items jotted in red, are these new additions to the policy, all of them?

Yes. They're either new additions or they're, such as like I was saying about some of the fire code. Mhmm. We just wanna inform it's about informing the event planners of what is expected of them because the situation is that we have a lot of conversations and then something happens and we say, well, you you're you're not you shouldn't be doing this. But there's nothing that's written saying you shouldn't be doing this.

So there it's just like I was saying about the the food vendors. If you give the information to an event planner who then is supposed to be giving it to the food vendor and the food vendor then says he never got it, But if we put it in the pause, it says, you need this needs to happen. But if that's not gonna be the problem, then we are looking for the solution. And the solution is then the Department of the Special Events will take that responsibility to to actually contact these food vendors so that now they're accountable because we know that they were communicated with, and they can't blame the event planner for saying what allegedly was said or not. And You have a and and I've I'm I'm sorry.

Go ahead. You said it.

I'm saying that it's it's always been my understanding when it there's there's a city ordinance, which there is a special ordinance, and within that, then you are allowed to create policy guidelines. Guidelines are not necessarily supposed to be law. They're supposed to be guides, something to to guide people to better understand what your expectations are. And not necessarily, so I think that the term guide is the the key here, that if it it's not gonna be perfect language. And and we don't want a 300 page policy booklet either.

And even the existing policy is is written similar to the same thing, where it implies things that you need to do, but it's also based on reverting back to, like, fire code safety. So if if you can't if that's not clear enough, that's why the fire code safety rule is there where it is the 50 pages that you can look at. But we can't put everything in here or we would have, you know, the City of Ferndale Bible. Yes. But you'd say

Go ahead. Okay.

Sorry about that.

So do we have regarding the activities that are the events that are to come up to come up this year

Mhmm.

We already have a schedule of those events.

They haven't gone through the process yet, but we've already have secured their request for the dates. And, they've been sent the special event application. And so we're just waiting for the all those to come in.

So how would this if there's things here that council members need to see you provide more clarity, how will that impact everything moving forward? Will it delay you too much to bring this back to us?

No. I don't I don't think it does, but I also again, you know, I see maybe because, you know, I've been doing this for twenty one years, I I see things different than than the than someone else would. And then even event planners, they're they see things different from someone who's never organized an event to understand what their expectations are. So it's you know what I mean? It's kinda like, don't ask me about IT because I'm not really gonna be able to explain to you what IT is about.

I'll I'll go ask someone in IT for for more clarity. But at least if I got a guideline of what IT expectations are, I can I can kinda see the steps that I need to go?

So we had two, questions of clarity for two different sections here. I guess more. Well, okay. That's what I was gonna ask. Are there more?

Yeah.

I have I have several more. Okay. I okay. Go ahead.

Okay. Alright. You wanted something to say. You had something to say.

No. I I just think I think instead of going down that list right now here at the table, I I think we can just move this back and and continue to work on it in advance of the next council meeting.

That's fine.

That would be But who is on it is my question and how who who will be working on it? Will it just be Michael or will we'll be sending your input to Michael? We what would that look like? Through the chair,

could we potentially do individual study sessions with Michael and maybe come back as a small clusters and discuss it? I I feel like there's there's a lot of really good information here. The only question I had was about parades and how it might impact the Memorial Day parade because I don't understand how the route would potentially require signatures. But I feel like having someone on one time with you to go through this 1 x 1 Mhmm. That might that might help.

Well and you bring up a a really great point, dear pro tem, is there are times where city, promoted events seem to operate outside of these guidelines. And so that's a conversation that I think needs to have happen. The other thing that I also wanna talk about is, you know, we we request special events to jump through a lot of hoops, over a lot of hurdles. What are we promising them? So for example, they're utilizing the downtown.

They're paying thousands of dollars to be, you know, bringing all these people down here. And yet, I know with a number of special events, the day of setup, all of the trash cans, the city trash cans are packed, you know. And so the event is going through and cleaning out the garbage cans of the city because the city garbage cans are are packed. No one has checked the streets to make sure that they're and the sidewalks to make sure that they're patched properly. You know, we should be guaranteeing that.

They're coming in with these events and people are tripping over, you know, small little potholes. That's something that we should be promising to these events. And I know that this is a a guideline, but I think as part of the whole special events process that, you know, if we're gonna ask these people to come in, we should be guaranteeing them something, that they're gonna have a a safe, walkable space to operate in, that they're going to have a clean space to operate in. So, that's why I think this all kinda needs a bit more work.

What committee does this flow through? What council committee?

It's not a council committee. Council committee.

There's no one on council that represent is represented on the special events committee.

How would you like the input, Michael? Do you are you open to

Oh, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I just want I just wanna reemphasize that, you know, we could spend a lot of time in in adding a lot of words, but then you're gonna have more people uninterested in reading the policy rather than understanding why we have policy.

Yeah. But if we're gonna set expectations for people, those need to be clear. And if they're not clear to us, then I can't expect the public to be clear on them. That's the point. It's not that we wanna add a whole bunch of extra language.

It's that the language we have needs to be clearer so that when we set an expectation, it's just like a staff review. If my boss doesn't set expectations for me, then I don't know exactly if I'm not clear what that is, then I don't know exactly how to comply. And then I set my then I've been set up for failure. And so I think we just wanna make sure that these events, folks, are very clear about what's happening. So my policy my position as a council member and my policy will always be that if I myself cannot understand what I'm voting on, I will not do it because I have to be able to say that I'm setting an expectation that I myself understand.

So I think that I'm going to move to table this, and, we will have discussions offline to make sure that we just get our questions answered.

Sure.

Because I think it would take too long to do it here at the table tonight. So that being said, madam mayor, I do move that this be tabled until the next regular council session.

Support.

Johnson? Yes. Mikulski?

Yes.

Kelly?

Yes.

Polica? Yes. Leaksmae?

Yes. Thanks. Alright. Thank you, Michael. You're welcome.

I don't think that it will be a whole lot of revisions, but just to be on the safe side, I hope.

Sure. Absolutely.

Thank you. Alright. With that being said, we are now at the point where it's called a council. And, James, I will defer it to you for department head updates.

Wasn't there one more one more item that got pulled from consent to be did this good enough? That was tabled.

It's tabled. Okay.

Alright. So with that, then, first up, Kara will, step in for finance to give some announcements.

My area? Okay. So, our city clerk tells me that at this time every year, our finance director gives, reads something from Oakland County, treasurer's office about foreclosure prevention, and so I'm gonna read that on his behalf. The Oakland County treasurer's office is in the final stretch of our foreclosure prevention efforts. Tax foreclosure deadline for the 2022 and or prior year taxes is March thirty first of twenty five.

That means if these taxes aren't paid off by March 31 or any interested party hasn't entered into repayment schedule with the treasurer's office by then, the property will be foreclosed. Since December of twenty twenty four, the treasurer's office has conducted over a thousand taxpayer assistance meetings to assist taxpayers, with keeping their properties by working with them to get on a repayment schedule, or identifying resources that may be beneficial to them in their situations. We're here to help. They're here to help. I'm sorry.

Reading this wrong on their behalf. They're here to help and strongly encourage taxpayers to contact them before the tax foreclosure deadline if they have delinquent taxes for 2022 or prior. Any taxpayer interested in taking advantage of this and scheduling, a taxpayer assistance meeting can call the county at (248) 858-0611, or they can, head online to www.oakgov.com/treasurer. We'll make sure that this information is, on the city's website and social media because the next announcement also from finance is another reminder that the last day to pay any remaining summer or winter property tax balances is Friday, February 28. Beginning March 1, all unpaid 2024 property taxes are considered delinquent and have to be paid with additional penalties to Oakland County Treasurer.

So though city hall is normally closed on Fridays, they are going to be open to the public for limited hours, to accept tax payments on, let's see, Friday, February 28. So they're gonna be open from 8AM until noon, and anybody who's doing the last minute payment can come and see them at that point. If you have any questions about that, I probably won't know the answer, but feel free to ask.

And

since I'm already up here, I just wanna thank everybody all so much. I'm not one for this kind of emotional stuff. But I appreciate you all. I just celebrated my ten year anniversary in, January,

and

I was thinking back to starting here in 2015. There was no communications department, no policies, no anything. They had one social media page. It was a Facebook page, and the ability for, users of the page to comment or message had been turned off. So it was literally just a megaphone.

And I just feel like, we've built a really great thing here, and it's really been my honor and privilege to work for all of you and for everybody in this community. And I will continue to be around. So and I will I will, bless Riley with the stop clock. She will take it from there. And, also, I'm spending this by thirty seconds, but my niece will go crazy over this.

I went outside. She gave me this beautiful picture she drew of the council meeting tonight, and it even has Jim presenting the snow, beforehand. So Elliot, Maisie, and Henry, Ferndale residents, thank you so much. I love you guys.

Thank you. Thank you, Kara.

So next, we'll have Emmanuel to, talk about all things parks, such as summer camp, Skate Jam, and more.

Oh, hello again. I have a lot of things to talk to you guys about today. So let's start with the summer camps here. First of all, we will be we are currently seeking qualified individuals to, hire on as, for our summer camp staff. Those positions will include summer summer camp counselors, which need to be 18 or older, and summer camp assistant directors and directors, which will need to be 21 or older.

The program is a nine week program, Monday through Friday, from nine to four, generally. We take a field trip once a week. You get paid to come in and have fun. So anybody that's interested, the application links are up on the city's website now, and I'll be reviewing them, in the next month or so to, fill out our staffing positions. Along that same, thought, summer camp registration will be opening up on March 17 this year.

We are planning to open it to residents first before we open it up to non residents a few days later on March 20. It's possible that we that we may decide to do an in person registration in order to cut down on the rush that people have had to, sign up for it online, but that's something that we're still talking about as administrative staff in the parks department. So keep an eye on our Facebook page for any future updates as the date approaches. We'll continue to post