City of Ferndale - City Council Meeting 06-09-25

Order at 07:01PM. If you're able, please rise for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States Of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

with liberty and justice for all.

Johnson?

Here.

Kelly? Here. Mikulski?

Here.

Polica? Here. Leaksmae?

Here. And now approval of the agenda.

Madam mayor, I move we approve the agenda with the following changes. Okay. I move that we pull the zoning ordinance amendments from the agenda and table those to a later date for additional discussion amongst the city council members. Additionally, I would move that we

I'm sorry. Could you identify which ones? Seven d and seven e, is there another one?

Seven

f? Seven f. F. Seven f.

Okay.

I move that we pull item seven e, adoption of an ordinance one two nine six to extend keeping a chicken's permit to two years from the agenda and table it to a later date to allow for some clarification. It looks like there might be a drafting error in the draft of the ordinance that's on the agenda, that doesn't match up with our current city code. So, Pro Tem Mikulski, and I would like to take a look that further. And then, additionally, we would like to move item seven d to the regular agenda to allow for discussion on, you know, what this, lead service line ordinance change means for

Support. Wait one minute. Sorry. One minute. There's one.

And seven f, is that being is that being postponed or just moved to the regular agenda?

Postponed. Hold from the agenda.

Okay. For a later date.

That we have a new date.

And then the the date that the flag flying Seven c. In the description for item seven c, the flag for Juneteenth will be raised on June 16 and fly through June 26. And I believe there is a typo in the description. So all of those amendments.

Sure. Yep.

Johnson? Yes. Mikulski? Yes. Kelly?

Yes. Polica? Yes. Leaksmae? Yes.

And we have a few presentations tonight. The one being Martin Road proposed facility design with our parks and rec director, Lorena Wheeler.

Good evening. Hope everybody's doing well. Alright. So, yes, today I'll be discussing the final site design for the Martin Road Park support facility that we've been working on for, the last four years. Well, we've been working on a building in the park for the last four years, but this is what we have, based on some of the needs that were addressed recently, to support our park operations and our programs within the park.

We as you if those are familiar with Martin Rowe Park, we have a lot of new amenities that's gone into the park, within the last few years with the more most recent amenities being the pickleball court, the full court splash pad, and additional, pavilion and full court basketball court and a splash pad. I'm sorry about that. And with those additional amenities, in the park brings more people, which is what we always want in our parks. That's what we build them for and develop them for. And so, we need additional restrooms and to to help service our community.

So we saw that need a while back, especially for our splash pad so we can accommodate the amount of users that our splash pad could hold. However, due to permitting requirements, we weren't able to have 288 people on our splash pad at one time because we didn't have enough restrooms to support that many people. So this project, also one of the main reasons is so we can accommodate, more users on our splash pad. From identifying that need in the park, we sought out grant funding for it, where we've raised over $2,100,000. And with that grant funding, our project scope was limited to, or started at a restroom and concession building that also consists of equipment storage and, staff space.

We have engaged in community since, 2022 where we actually put the the master plan put the put the project, in our master plan and got a lot of community feedback. I'm sorry. Is this going in and out?

It always goes in and out.

Okay. Alright. Where, we engage the community as part of our five year parks and recreation plan master plan in 02/2022. We also discussed it at several of our meetings, parks and recreation commission meetings that is held once a month. Those are public meetings.

In addition, we had four community design meetings last year that was led by the city as well as our, architect, who helped design the facility, Newman Smith. Some of those key themes that came from the public was they wanted to prioritize function over size. So it wasn't necessarily how big the building was, it's more so does it serves serve our needs for parks and our, and our residents who visit the parks. They also wanted accessible public restrooms, maintain green space in the park aesthetics. We have a lot of mature trees at Martin Grove Park and we wanted to make sure we kept them there and and not have to disturb them or remove any trees, based on this development.

And lastly, another key thing was to have covered seating areas, especially during the summertime. So as I mentioned earlier, we secured a lot of grant funding to make this project happen happen. Some of those sources included, federal funding from a community project funding grant which is being administered through HUD in amount of $704,000. We also were awarded a Michigan community enhancement grant in the amount of $500,000 and a Michigan department of natural resources spark grant for facilities in the amount of $951,000. Totaling, our grant funding for 2,156,000.000 which is exactly what we're estimating our project to be.

So we raised enough funding to cover the grant based on the estimates we and cover the project based on the estimates we receive without having to use any any general funding at this time. So now to, the fun stuff. What do we come up with? So what you see here is a master site plan, that shows the orientation of everything. So on the top