City Council Special Meeting 08182025

And we have a roll call, please.

Johnson? Here. Kelly Mikulski? Here. Polica?

Here. Leaksmae?

Here. Madam mayor, I would move that we excuse council member Kelly.

Thank you.

Johnson? Yes. Polica? Yes. Mikulski?

Yes. Leaks May?

Yes. Great. Approval of the agenda.

Approve the agenda as

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? This evening, we have a presentation with the Michigan Municipal League, and they'll be in they'll be talking about our thriving communities present thriving communities presentation, but I remember having this presentation at the board of trustees. I've I'm going to open it up.

We have Harrison Richards. We have

Margaret. Margaret Mooney.

Mooney. Mooney. Mooney. Here from MML to kick us off, and I I hope we come up with some great ideas and and learn a lot tonight and work towards pushing our community forward. So I open it up to our speakers, and, take it away.

Thank you so much, mayor. Good evening, everyone. I have to catch myself because it's daylight, but we're in the evening. Right. And it's still a beautiful time of year when we'll still be able to do that.

But, again, I'm Harrison Richards from Michigan Municipal League. I am on the state and federal affairs team, so I'm one of your lobbyists for municipal government in Lansing. I've been with the league for about six years now. And in addition to the government affairs work I do, I also have had experience facilitating, organizing, and so I've been really, really excited to work and lead in our climate communities work and engage our communities. You're one of the first communities.

We've done maybe about three or four community based facilitation, so thank you so much for extending your time and your attention on this. We've been really excited in watching the work that you've all done on the head lead override proposal. Congratulations on that successfully passing. We're really excited to be here tonight to kinda talk about next steps, highlight some of the core priorities that you guys have established, and, you know, do a little bit of work to understand, you know, what your goals are for the community and how you can best get done the vision that you've set for for your community. I'll turn it over to Margaret to introduce herself.

Hi, everyone. So like mayor Leaksmaier said, I'm Margaret Mooney. I've been with the Michigan Municipal League for just about four well, actually, just over four years now, in our membership engagement department. And so I work pretty closely with some of our core affiliate organizations. If you're familiar with the Michigan Association of Mayors, the Michigan Municipal Executives, which, mister Grissen here was formerly on the board of, the Michigan Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, and lots of our other member engagement work, including, a bit of our thriving communities.

So I'm very excited to be here, and we'll kick it off. Yeah. Thanks.

I wonder if I could

Do you wanna stand maybe side by side next to

this or something? Maybe. I should have checked to see if this works before. I often forget that I am

five feet tall, so standing behind the podium may not have the most of that to me.

The the

podium may now have

the most of that to me.

Can you

guys hear me alright? I do. Excellent. And then should I talk? Okay.

Perfect. I was like, I don't know if we're streaming this anywhere to make sure if we can hear me.

There you go.

Alright. So this is a brief overview of what we're gonna cover tonight. We're gonna talk about what is thriving communities, the work that we've made an endeavor on through the league as it, you know, comes from our work in the place making space and really focusing on how we're gonna grow this state collectively, but also focus on the contributions and the opportunities from our communities. We're going to set the baseline frequency for Ferndale with the equalizer tool. This is the tool that you all were able to look at over the weekend, take some time to fill out on your own.

We're going to aggregate all of the, results that you all have developed from individually and then talk about what that means collectively as a vision for Ferndale. We're gonna talk about the priorities that you all have outlined after your successful Headley override. I know you've had three key priorities that you've really focused on that you've communicated to residents that you're now using to build on as you go forward. And then we're just gonna highlight some points on the additional tools that we have for thriving communities, our future work, and how we hope we can bring you along with us as we continue on that journey. So just a quick refresher for folks who may not be familiar with the Michigan Municipal League.

We are a statewide organization that represents over 500 full service cities, villages, and some select urban townships. We are over a 125 years old, so we've been here for a while. Our core mission is protecting Michigan's communities, advancing their priorities, you know, protecting local control and your ability to make local decisions. And we do that whether it be our advocacy work, through our membership services that we provide, training, research, some of the innovative work, which the thriving communities work falls under, but anything that we can do as an organization to help our communities succeed. We are positive.

We are energetic. We believe in a really wonderful Michigan, and we value the contributions that each and every one of our communities make into that. And we work with partners across the state, both in the government space, local government such as the Townships Association, Michigan Association of Counties, and then also other organizations. Everything everyone from utilities to planners, economic development. We really try to make our work known and highlight diversity of Michigan's communities and all the work that you do across that to make Michigan a great place.

So emerging from the challenge and moving towards thriving. Michigan has been through a lot in the past fifty years or so. We've seen a lot of change. We've seen a lot of opportunities come our way, some that our state has taken advantage of, some that we've missed. And that brings us to this work of why we're thinking about what's next for our future.

So it's no surprise that we've been on the decline for some time. You know, looking at one of the states that we often see ourselves as a peer to, Florida, you know, realizing that population has grown in some places. It's had the opportunity to grow here in Michigan, but we've been pretty lax in those years. Are folks familiar with the governor's Growing Michigan Together Council? Yeah.

So we were part of that a couple years ago, and it really highlighted how our population has significantly dropped over years over the years. And now we're really bearing the brunt of that, whether it be trying to find folks to fill jobs, have opportunities for our state, economic development being attractive to other industries coming to our state. But we realized we really need to focus on the people. The people are the magic that makes place. And so we really need to dig our heels in and do the work to catch up some of our competitors like Florida, like California, like my home state of Tennessee that are drawing people in day in, day out, and really building economies that are thriving because people wanna be in those places.

So it was really that catalyst moment that helped us launch into thriving communities to really see what we needed to do there. And this is just a map that we've had on our team. This is percent of foreclosures across the country.

Can you zoom it a little bit?

Yeah. Please do. Oh, it may not do it on this side. Yeah. If we were in presenter mode, I'd actually be able to put a lens on and show Michigan, but I hope everybody can see how it looks like Christmas time in Michigan.

Right? And that correlates with a five to 7.5% of foreclosures in those areas. So what you can see is that Michigan was hit really, really hard during the earlier recession. We saw a lot of folks, you know, leave the state. A lot of folks lose their home housing.

I'm sure that's at top of everybody's mind every day thinking about what brings people to a place, how they're able to stay. But we've recognized across the country, Michigan really, really got hit hard in that dynamic. And, again, losing housing through foreclosure, that was the opportunity of us losing a lot of people. So, again, we've had a little bit of a harder time compared to our other states. So in the same time is when the league took the lead on placemaking, you know, highlighting that places where people wanna be can really be the foundation for a good community.

Our tagline at the organization is we love where you live. And so back in 02/2007, we collaborated, with MSHDA at the time to create the sense of place council. And so that was really what we were talking about all the valuable things our communities have in the sense of place making, parks, collaborative opportunities. You know? What are the things that make people feel ownership and love for the places that they're at?

So when everything else might be going through mayhem, they're still choosing to be and stay in Michigan, and also their belief that if some of these things that were really valuable maybe thirty, forty years ago, they have the capacity to bring that back. But we also realize that that's not enough. No. We have become leaders in our place making work, talking about place making now on a global scale, but it's only part of the answer. You know?

We can have an amazing park. You can have an excellent streetscape like 9 Mile. You can have lots of opportunities that, you know, happen throughout your communities, but it's the rest of the human experience. Right? It's still the housing.

It's still public safety. It's still the environment that gives you safe, clean water to drink or utilities that are reliable and affordable. It's thinking about what opportunities there are for education, workforce development, and things that really ground people in a place. You can have small things that you love, but how are we collectively building that human experience that's holistic and really keeps people in a place where not only they can grow and thrive but be able to demonstrate that continuously for generations. So that brings us to thriving communities.

This is an evolution of our place making work. So beyond, you know, big entity bringing hundreds of jobs to a place, success, or, you know, you build a really big park that's beautiful that you can brag about, success, we're thinking about the full picture. It's multifaceted. It's integrated, and it really does start with community building too. It can't just be the big idea, but it's how it brings everybody else together.

And so using the legacy that we have as a trusted organization, over a 125 of policy, thoughtful, practical education, and really just cheering for our home state. We wanted to lead in this work and tell the story and also support the active strategic work our communities were doing to make Michigan a vibrant and exciting place and to get people to stay where they're at and also being able to articulate that story to lawmakers, to policymakers, to folks who are making the appropriations that fund your communities, resources that you have, talking to partners in economic development, partners outside of the state to really showcase why they should choose Michigan, why they should stay in Michigan, and working collectively together to make sure all those systems that we as humans rely on for success are actually there. We wanna remind our members that they cannot do it alone. You have a very key role, folks around this table today, as conveners of place and stewards of your community. There is a significant level of trust that comes with local government.

You're the closest government to the people. You know everyday services that are happening. You know the needs. You know your community members by name, and you are the individuals where if folks have a problem, they'll come to you first or at least they'll look to you first and expect you to have the answer. So we wanna start there.

And not only that we wanna start there, but we wanted to remind other stakeholders to start there. Because something I I feel like we've seen over the past couple years is the superhero entity coming in, the big corporation coming in trying to save the day, the big philanthropic organization coming in to save the day, and often doing it at the expense of local government. Say it in the sense, well, they fell short. They can't bring that to the table. They can't help out.

Reminding that the groundwork is the hard work and reminding folks of the importance of that, but also the difficulties of that, that it's not one size fits all. That's why, you know, we're everyday fighting preemption. But also reminding that it take reminding partners and stakeholders elsewhere that it takes time. It takes resources. But also reminding our members too that you have the patience and the perseverance to do this.

And so, hopefully, what we've done over the course of several months and what we hope to continue to do is build those resources, build the opportunities for those conversations, and provide you guys opportunity to showcase your very best selves. So this is our wealth community wealth building wheel that's migrated into thriving communities, but a lot of familiar themes that you've seen us as a league talk about over the past several years. And so, visually, this shows case showcases what thriving communities is, connection, accessibility, integrated opportunity, and really setting a mindset of what we should look for as leaders. I'll hand it over to Margaret, and she's gonna talk us through the six focus areas of thriving communities.

Alright. Thank you. So, yep, the league has kind of evolved through language like community wealth building into thriving communities. We've had many years of, really anchoring on these six focus areas is now the language we're using. They've been called pillars.

They've been called six, well, pillars, but we're now using focus areas as the language here. So arts and culture, financial security, sustainability, infrastructure, public health and safety, A lot of these are aligning super closely, you'll notice, with, Ferndale's core priorities after your Headley override, and then, of course, lifelong learning. So as you completed your equalizer exercise over the weekend, you would have seen on the backside all of these definitions for the six areas. And so this is just that overview once again. And then to give a little bit more context or remind What these all might look like- financial security could be a municipality strong bond rating or general fund surplus.

And economically flourishing main street or an attractive environment for business high population of homeowners. A strong local philanthropic culture. So those are just some of the many examples of financial security that a community can have. Sustainability is, of course, keeping the environment in mind, environmental sustain That's okay. Oh, here it is.

Environmental sustainability, recycling management, climate awareness, and weather resilient infrastructure. So, again, these are just some of the examples, but infrastructure, that's a lot of times you think roads, transit systems, utilities, walkability, and accessibility is a big one. And then digital connectivity and broadband access for a lot of community success to happen. It takes being online, so that's one one area too. Arts and culture and I love arts and culture, and I know the city of Ferndale does too.

You are really leaders in that, that this can look like festivals, celebration of culture, museums, historic landmarks, recognizing, you know, the community's history, all of those things. We love when we see our communities doing that all across the the state because many communities have really just beautiful and rich cultural history, heritage, all of those things. And so it's awesome when those celebrations can live in your downtowns and in your in your community spaces every day. And then, yeah, community events for religious, ethnic, or other identity recognition. So, again, this can look like a lot of things, but Ferndale is doing a really great job with this.

So I wanted to say that. Public health and safety again this is of course something that's really- key to some of the priorities you're working on now we know- but this is police fire EMS. Physical wellness and well-being and so that extends to your residence but includes also your local leaders and- everybody working in the city. And then emotional and mental safety so again this can look a lot of ways but- finally lifelong learning this is access to high quality education things like libraries I noticed we're right by the library here at City Hall tonight. K 12 and continuing education higher education and like Harrison I mentioned work force development and making communities places where people can advance their career, learn, and, and succeed in their life as individuals.

So these are six of the, what we call, focus areas of thriving communities, and it all kinda goes on with the backdrop of trust and belonging. So these are trust and belonging are awesome words, that really you know, you hear the word belonging, and it's feeling like you're you're at home. We love where you live. It's feeling like. You're welcome in your community and you have access to all of these opportunities and are able to to succeed.

Trust and belonging anchors and connects emphasizing trust in neighbors community leaders local governments and other partners. Building the connection between community members and the places they inhabit- and offering participatory agency to access resources and social networks. So that's just a great big fancy way of saying trust and belonging is super important. And you know this evening we'll be talking about your successful headway override that was something that involved by in from the community and so they are. You know putting their trust in you all to continue prioritizing the needs that have been.

Established by the community as a whole, including leaders and residents. So, yeah, I'll leave it there.

And I'll just add a point if we go back to the last slide of the wheel. In these six focus areas, it may not be the city taking the lead or administering all of these. I I wanna highlight that. You know? Every community is different.

Some communities are doing everything you see recognized, identified in this wheel. Some might be doing some. Lifelong learning, for example. In many cases, the municipal government may not be tied into the schools. They have separate governance, community colleges.

But think about it in the context of the environment that you foster that allows these things to be successful. Right? Like, is this a community or is your community a place where you encourage learning, you encourage diversity of thought, you encourage and support opportunities for maybe other entities, for example, in a workforce development program to come in and help collaborate and foster that type of opportunity so that people in your community do have the place to learn, advance their careers, advance their knowledge, and be successful in that capacity. Same thing for sustainability. That's a service many communities outsource to a private hauler, for example, for their trash or recycling if they work collaboratively with another entity to do that.

It's still something that there needs to be an environment that creates that to be a place for that to be successful. So I wouldn't if some folks were, just because because we we do wanna remind folks, that you don't have to be the mechanics and the administrators of every single one of these pieces. It's more of thinking about the environment that you foster with that. But what I will say, especially for those who are in elected leadership, trust and belonging is so important, especially recognizing that many of you who are elected are conduits of agency for the citizens that you represent. I'm sure a lot of you have folks come to you to express things that they may not come to a city council meeting and be able to express.

But are you accessible in the sense of administering their agency? Are you hearing them and listening to them and putting them in a position where I trust that person to recognize where I'm coming from even if they don't agree? But they're in a place where I know as a local individual in this community who contributes, who pays their taxes, who lives and thrives there, that they have the ability through many different avenues to feel heard, to feel included, to feel respected, thus bringing in that anchor. So in all those different areas, they truly do feel they have trust and belonging. So we're gonna do our first exercise.

So does everyone have a phone or a laptop or some sort of technical device to work with? Just maybe a show of hands. How many folks have used Slido before? Okay. Cool.

So we're familiar with it. So we'll be using that a lot tonight. And the cool thing about Slido is you can probably keep this window open or the app open wherever you are, and it will automatically change to whatever whatever we're doing at the time. Yeah. And if you don't have the QR code, if you go to slido.com, you can enter Ferndale in.

You'll get there just fine as well. So if you're having some issues with that because I know we're at a funny angle for some of the table. So we're gonna do an activity that's kind of just starting things off, asking what makes or what could make your community thrive. Now this is single answer words. Feel free to put as many submissions as you like.

We're gonna play around with this and create a word bubble, which we'll pull up shortly. But just think about what do you love about Ferndale? What makes Ferndale a thriving place? Or if you're aspirational about something that you really think could be meaningful, throw that in there, and we'll have a quick conversation to kinda see what we all start to visualize. We'll take about two minutes and do this.

I

can get the slow ones.

Wanna start? There's no one.

Yeah. I was one of the one of the people ones. Okay. Because, you know, every community has public services. Every community has buildings.

It's the people in that community that really bring the uniqueness to that community.

Can't have people. Can't have a place about people. That's when it starts. Anyone else? Alright.

Bring in a mic.

I put fiscal sustainability as my first. Maybe it's just top of mind recently. But, you know, at the end of the day, if you can't find the right way to allocate your resources towards the needs of the community, it's kind of all for naught.

Need resources to make things happen. Alright. Last one. Anybody else wanna take it?

I didn't get my name, but I think trust is big, but I also we hear that a lot in our community.

Mhmm.

And I think when, you know, the voters and the taxpayers and, you know, you're paying your taxes, you wanna trust that your city is gonna be good stewards of that. So the transparency, how it's being used, what they're doing with it, all that stuff matters. And it's our responsibility regardless of position even as the fire chief that I'm being yeah. That's why. I'm sorry.

I'm the fire chief. You know, my stuff is expensive. Right? And so I have to show that I have to that I'm being responsible with that when the city's trusting the community or our leadership to make a decision to buy a million dollar fire truck. That is the right thing, and it truly is needed.

I think fostering and developing that trust is important.

I appreciate you brought responsibility and trust as well too. So it's not even just the trust to acquire something.

Trust was mine too. All of these all these other words that are on there, fiscal sustainability is phenomenal, and I love that you put it in all caps with that little bit of emphasis. But even if we are fiscally sustainable without the trust, does anybody believe it? Does it is it actually being communicated to people? So that's that was my core pillar that I focused on.

Process is at the anchor to all of this. Right? Because it's not just, you know, what you're doing. It's how people feel about what awesome. Thank you.

Alright. We'll jump back over slides.

You're okay.

Anyone needs it again? Start with these now. A note to everyone, your answers are anonymous. So right now, you're not gonna see what you've selected. No peeking, no cheating off of your neighbor's paper.

This has to be your own opinion. But feel free to be honest. This is a safe space. What we're going to do on the back end is aggregate these results together, so we'll get an average of the room's contributions. So right now, you should have up on your Slido where the question of where you would rank financial security, and you can go ahead and make those submissions.

And so how we're gonna do this is we're just gonna sequence through each of the focus areas.

And in Slido here, you will be seeing stars, but it's 10 stars and that lines up directly with each of the 10 notches on the focus area lines. From top to bottom.

Yeah. Top bottom to top. Sorry. Yeah.

Thank you so much.

The target

here. Okay.

Alright. Alright. Now arts and culture. Alright. Public health and safety.

Alright. Then our last one is lifelong learning. Alright. Thank you, everyone. So if we look to the bottom three questions while Margaret tallies up what the results are for your frequency, we're gonna go through those in Slido.

So a little bit different. This is one where we're back to the word cloud. But what is one thing that your community can show off? One thing that you are proud about in Ferndale that is an opportunity that if you had to pitch somebody, this would be what Just one. Alright.

Let's change that. Opportunity for your community to find got y'all stumped every day at work at the council table when you've tried to find The game chamber changer if you would. Anyone wanna elaborate on that? We don't have one. Okay.

Okay. Can I pass you this mic? Just make sure we can hear

you.

Her arms are not that long. All bad.

There you go. Okay.

So we had the Kulik Center, which was technically owned by the school, and we were running the space in there, the senior group, different, community community groups, and it was used. We have exited agreement due to the misrepair of the building and a lot of other different factors. So we lost how people see at the community center, and we're in process of bringing out the replacement of that.

So is that one where it's

Like, something here.

Text or, email or website. What's what are the even paper. Like, what are the what are the ways that people need to receive communication, and how do we ensure that we have a clear message for them to receive?

Yeah. I appreciate that so much because the form is very important, but also anecdotes versus facts. Like, which comes first? Because the anecdote can be just as powerful as presenting that information, but I really appreciate that you talked about the form and the environment for that. Yeah.

Coming on to the Facebook part, that there's such a divisions, like, some people who have strong opinions and very much pay attention to what's happening in the city are cut off from, like, the Ferndale Forum. And so we get divisions of different groups talking once each other, and we don't get a common forum because some people would actually have opinions that say Ferndale isn't perfect, and they get cut off from Ferndale Forum. So that's one of the thing problems with communication. Yeah.

And that ties into trust and belonging too of finding environments where we all can be heard and we can all be able to share on equal platform. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you guys for this one. Margaret, I think we're ready with the equalizer.

Right?

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah. I was pretty much on on target, on what this says. I did have public health and safety ranked a little higher, but pretty much pretty close.

Okay.

Yeah. I agree. I think maybe we balanced each other out, Lorena. I was a little lower on public health and safety and lifelong learning, but coming in very close to those.

Was anybody way off or you see one that you're like, it's not right. Could be better. Could be different. Could be worse. Because these can also vary.

Right? Because we did this collectively of everyone, both elected and staff. Perhaps if you are working on the administrative side, you might see something completely different than somebody on council. Right? And are we all at large?

Yes.

Okay. Awesome. So alright. So yeah. So you guys are looking holistically across community in your experience.

Awesome. So yeah. Any any differences there maybe from someone who is on one side or the other? Okay. Alright.

Mental health services and things like that.

Okay. Okay.

Not so much as, the work of our fire.

Okay. I'd say? Yeah.

Yeah.

In that way, they they're they're higher, but in this different type of services that still impact wellness and and all of that a little bit lower. Now thinking about the goals of the the Headlee override, and we'll talk a little bit more about this later, are there any of these that you envision shifting and changing? And I wanna emphasize too that when we change one area, like, leaders gonna be a change in the other. Like, you know, right now, you're at five. We start making investments around infrastructure and public health and safety.

Like, that might might go down a little bit because we may not be as complete with investments as we were, obviously, before we started spending money. But do we also see any areas where, you know, by increasing or lowering those, we have an opportunity to change others?

I mean, I'm going with the Headley override. And one of the things on the original one, there was a rider for, like, the new public safety facility. Mhmm. When we redid it, we took that off. However, if we get back to that, that's gonna impact multiple of those.

It's gonna hit a major infrastructure deficit we have right now with the facilities in our, police station and fire stations and the health and wellness of our, responders. But it also and the plan is to create a community space which fills a need there too. So our training room would double as a voting precinct, as a community room that the community can use, all these things. So it's gonna check a lot of boxes potentially for our community if we're ever able to bring that project to fruition. So that's one of those things that'll improve public health and safety, improve, hit a major infrastructure thing, hit some other things as far as maybe lifelong learning because some of the engagement with community and stuff could happen a lot better.

So it could really drive some of those up.

Excellent. Alright. Any other thoughts, observations, opportunities? Alright. Alright.

Thank you, guys. And so this is something that when we're done, we're gonna share back with the city so you all will have this. Some of the benchmark of where you guys, as of August 2025, collectively, have anchored yourselves. So it's going forward and really working to the implementation of what you're doing with the Headley override. You can kinda reference this visually just to see where you've been, where you're going.

Yes, ma'am. Mhmm.

I'm just really interested to ask to remember whoever

So question to the group of why

I think it should have been a higher or lower, ma'am.

I think it should have been

I I'm lower.

Oh, I ranked it higher.

Yeah.

We can do that.

I also had it lower.

So Yeah.

Yeah. Understood. Go back.

Well, I was thinking of our school systems, our library. I mean, you know, a lot of communities don't even have their own library anymore.

Yeah. But when you described it as to how we can look at it, Mhmm. K 12 education, no problem. Right. Learn and learn opportunities, no problem.

But I just think that the opportunity, like, for, in the

community, like, adult learners or for, like, connectors.

I don't I guess I didn't know how it fit with the with our city. Do you know what I mean? I don't know how it connected somehow. And I just our library is top notch. I I just that was my first reaction.

Like, no. We're not we're not at a park.

I feel I I feel like in the community, there's a missing piece of, like, old

opportunity.

We don't do anything

Partners on those topics. Mhmm. So we may be getting that traditional page. Oh, but we're really not getting much beyond that.

Yeah.

You know

what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

And and it can be interpreted a lot of different ways. Right? Like, I I love when we brought up relationships. Right? Like, relationships with workforce development entities.

You know? Would Oakland Community College be the closest community college for y'all? Yeah. And so yep. Relationships there.

You know? Are there connections between, you know, residents knowing that it is just two miles up the Road and how accessible their courses might be? And are they reaching people in the places where those individuals are who need that? And that's in it also a place too. It's like thinking about what data does the city have about education credentials of the residents that live here.

Are you getting a lot of college grads from Michigan and MSU coming living here? Or do you have folks who have spent some time in the community kind of getting in their vibe, seeing what they wanna do, and then all of a sudden, they're looking for educational opportunities that can get them to the next step, that they may not then be traditional learners? So it's a lot of different ways on how that can be interpreted. And then also what information do you as local leaders have to find out where those people are, where those resources need to be, you know, diverted to? Alright.

Any other reflections from that?

Yeah. I'm glad to see for the most part

that we're pretty

much on target, and it

didn't vary too much. So then we all are kinda in agreeance of what needs to be improved or what we're already successful in, and we move can move together in that effort to make whatever we need to change, change.

Thank you. Alright. So we are in a natural spot before we jump into our next big activity, which will be the remainder of our time together. Do we need to do a quick pause? Anyone need to run out, make a phone call, take a bowel break, anything like that?

I always ask because I I hate to go two hours and just have people, like, like, at the end. Alright. Awesome. So we'll jump into the next part of our program. Let's talk about trade offs.

Are are folks in the room familiar with this term, trade offs at all? Alright. We we live and experience them day by day, but oftentimes, we don't name them. So just quick and simple definition of trade offs, This is the immediate long term consequences of a behavior, action, or inaction. Right?

Like, congratulations. You passed your override. You have demonstrated trade offs and communicated that to your community and given them, this is what will happen if we can do this. This what might happen if we don't. And you've put the decision in front of them.

They've made a choice, and now they're moving forward with you in that opportunity. And so now the real work on identifying those trade offs is about to begin. So every decision includes trade offs. Right? Asking the question of the pros, the cons, you know, the consequences of an action.

They're they're they're in everything. You know? As humans, we are avoidant by nature. Right? Avoidance loss is a big thing for people, and I'm sure everyone has experienced this in the course of the work that they do.

We are always trying to hold on to what we have no matter how significant or, you know, insignificant that might be because change can be really difficult for people, especially if they can't tangibly hold and experience what's coming their way. So a big part of the work that you do as local leaders is communicating what those trade offs are.

Should I

swap out my mic? It's getting a

little funky. Maybe.

Yeah. Just communicating, I

I'm gonna

take a mic anyway.

Yeah. Give me the crappy ones.

Thank you. I don't know if it's just the connection or maybe the battery. Yeah. But, you know, as humans, we're conditionally wired to really not want to experience change because we're taking something away I can't tangibly experience or recognize what that change would be. But the big piece of it too was that trade offs are different for different people based on their agency, where they're at, what they've experienced, past traumas, past opportunities.

You know, many people might hold off on a big change that's significant to them, especially when it comes to investment and capital in that capacity. So we try to highlight that a lot, and that also can be the biggest barrier in decision making because oftentimes people are saying no because they don't have the experience or they don't care to experience a negative trade off for the decision that they have made or is that's made for them. And that can be one of the biggest hindrance hindrances in government, especially local government. Right? We talked about how significant the local engagement that you get is, how there's often lots of pushback that you're getting from individuals and not just any individuals, but the people that you directly see eye to eye and engage within your community every single day.

So it makes these big endeavors, very valuable but also very costly if they go the wrong way. You don't have a lot of room to go if things go bad. So a big part of the work that we're gonna do today of the trade off tool is understanding trade offs, trying to put yourself in the position based off of your role of understanding what those trade offs might be for different people, different communities that you represent, different stakeholders. Right? Because we can talk about trade offs in the sense of recognizing, understanding what your residents are going through, but also from the stakeholders that you're seeking to collaborate with.

You know, what are the opportunities that are present for them? How can you bring them to the table to be successful in collaboratively what you're trying to do? And to make sure that, hey. Maybe if there is a negative trade off in one capacity, how can we potentially alleviate that in another form? So we did our homework.

We looked at the website. You guys have a really great and super informative website on the Headly override, by the way. Explaining Headly to anybody is already like, woof. But what you guys did was was really, really cool. And I appreciate too in in the context of what you have available, you know, publicly.

You talked about what didn't work at the first attempt at this, how you corrected it, and then re reevaluate it and then reassess what those core priorities are. So we found the three priorities that y'all had together, sustaining quality public safety services, maintaining and repairing aging facilities, and prioritizing the health and safety and wellness of its civil service staff. So really meaningful priorities. I see a lot of interconnection here. I see a lot of themes on, you know, public safety, the infra collective infrastructure and services that help those services operate.

And then the the quiet part is the money. Right? Because we need investment to be successful in all three of these. And so I think what you guys did and put this together, it was really good. So we're going to jump to our activity.

Now I see some folks have it up looking at the trade off analysis tool. So we're gonna do this in some different parts. Some of this we're gonna do together. Other parts we're gonna break up as teams and kind of talk in small groups, and we're also gonna bring it all the way back and have a group discussion on this. So this first page and feel free to fill this out as you go.

This will be yours to take home and keep with you and use future dates. But we started filling this out for you. We've been pretty targeted what we wanna talk about today. You know, the policy project or initiative is implementing your Headley override, which is intended to sustain quality public safety services, maintain and repair aging facilities, and prioritize the health, safety, and wellness of its civil service staff. I'm gonna pause here and pass the mic to James because I think this next this next one, I think, is really good just to get the conversation of folks.

I know different folks have been here for different amounts of time, have different experience, and also different roles in the community. But we wanna talk about the starting point. Like, if it's replacing something, in which I know there's some advancement that you're trying to achieve in this, and also what was this originally intended to

do? Oh, you

wanna start? No. Okay. Yeah.

Are we supposed to be copying that or

This is just simplify like, you can write whatever you like on the page. We just started it off to simplify since we are working on a very targeted topic. So yeah. And then when you guys get in your groups, we'll talk about this, and it could be, hey. I feel like we could tweak this a little bit, adjust it a little bit.

James, do you wanna kick this off of the third bullet of

Yeah. I mean, sort of. It's it's kind of a tough one because the override was a renewal. So, sure, it did replace what we were, you know, going to be losing, but it wasn't the original, proposal. This was the the reworked version.

So we did lose some stuff by going with by getting this proposal done as opposed to the original one in the fall of last year, by not being able to fund the public safety headquarters or the full scale, Martin Road facility. So those are a couple couple of the trade offs that we actually had pretty immediate by by losing the November proposal, and then reworking it for what we have now.

Anyone wanna add to that? Hey. So the last bullet in this section is the focus area that's most directly impacted. Now I took a quick gander at it with an asterisk, so kind of include, like, it doesn't mean everything. Hey.

But financial security. Right? It's the fundamentals of this is about having the resources to get this started. Now I put put that asterisk there too because we talk about focus areas that are most directly impacted, but I can definitely observe in the core priorities y'all have listed together that there are a couple focus areas in here. I had mentioned public public sorry.

Public health and safety and infrastructure. Right? Those are three that I think we're in this conversation, we're really focused on, but I'm not negating the other ones as well. Right? Because we've had some conversation throughout the night of unintended consequences, you know, connections, and and all of that.

So as we go through this exercise, we're going to go through all the different focus areas and really talk about, you know, how all of these are impacted, potential trade offs, and who they impact, and really, like, breaking down the decision from those core priorities of, are we going the direction that we wanna go? Because it is easy to put up a plan, but it's also sometimes a little bit more difficult to go in and then understand, like, how are you gonna implement it and do it. Before we get to that section, we're gonna start off with some small in your small groups with some questions. So we're gonna talk again, you know, from y'all's perspective what this policy is. So people's interpretation of it or ideas of it might change.

But the late the later three bullets, you know, what are the challenges that come with this? I mean, one piece that sticks out to me is that it's taken many iterations to get this across the board, buy in from your residents. You know, thinking about that, like, are there challenges that present itself? Like, some of the things I've heard tonight is that we've limited some of the goals that we were originally trying to achieve in order to get that buy in. Like James said, that's a major trade off in that.

And so does that get us still to the priorities that we've listed? Are there bottom lines and nonnegotiables? You know, one that I gathered off the bat is that you have a finite amount of time to get this done. Right? This isn't just the Headley's extended forever.

Like, you have an an amount of time is ten years. Correct? Ten years in which you have to get things moving and get some results out for your community before, you know, some of these opportunities for revenue change. And so think about that as a nonnegotiable. Something you have to work with, but are there others?

Right? Are there some things where the additional revenue only gets you part way? You're gonna need some other support, whether it be through loans or grants or other opportunities financially to really help you, you know, get to the mile there. Thinking about who you're going to bring to the table. Are there contract requirements?

Are there certain individuals or certain companies or certain contractors that can help with that, and there are only those set people.

So those are some of the

things we wanna start talking about again too. And then we talked a little bit about this earlier, but, like, what are the assumptions that are being made about this? Again, we can put out, you know, the priorities of our vision of where we're going, but when we actually put it into practice, is there still some hesitancy that's coming from the community, from stakeholders, from partners, and things in the sense of communication that we're gonna have to adjust and clarify along the way? Again, we talked about proactive communication. Right?

Are there things you're gonna have to get out ahead of in order for them to ultimately be successful and implemented? So this is the time to start thinking about those things now. So we'll start with these questions. I will start cycling through. Yeah.

We need three groups.

Or too many groups?

You can count off by four. Yeah.

Yeah.

We mix it up. Alright. We're gonna count by four to four and then restart back in grade school. Right? And then this is such a cozy room.

What we've provided is some stickies. They can tear these off as stickies against the wall. We have markers. This is paper papers that you can do whatever you want. If you're brainstormers and throwing ideas up there, we can do that.

Later on in this process, we're actually gonna work on laying out the community partnership map. I know you guys already have, like, the living map here at Ferndale. Alrighty. But we talked a lot about stakeholders and partners. We're gonna start mapping those out to identify who those people are so that you can either do it on the small worksheets that you have in front of you, which include the instructions.

Or if you wanna get big and get busy over here, you can also draw them out on your map. Don't worry about making the connections yet. Just start drafting out who are the people who are gonna be in play for this. And then independently, if we have enough time tonight or if you guys wanna take this home and do it later, you can start building those connections on how you wanna build out. You know?

Do we have a working relationship with this entity or this sub section of the community or this partner? How can we develop that? And we can move forward from there. So Margaret is setting up sections. Yes.

The whole anyway.

In each group? Yes. Who are my council members? Alright. Oh, you're I just, like I just saw your hand there.

Okay. Alright. So I'm gonna do one, two, three, four, and then y'all scoot back in your chairs real quick. Alright. Then one

Three. 4.

1. 234.

01. Okay. 1. Sorry. Okay.

So remember your numbers. Council members go to your pre assigned groups.

I forgot which page, though. Was it 12?

Yeah. I'm two. You two. You're 12. Okay.

It's okay. So now

I think you're three, and you're 4?

I'm 3.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. Okay. I'm 234. I did that weird. I'm sorry.

Alright. And then alright. We'll have group one over here, group two, and then maybe on this back it's three. Okay. Fine.

And then four out

of the

Yeah. +1, 23, and then 4 by the door. Oh, that rhymed.

Look at that. Oh,

Oh,

yeah.

Oh, yeah. Sure.

Because I wanted to probably see work on that one. Yeah. Yeah. How

about we have somebody work Yeah.

On the first Just do it. Okay.

Yeah. Okay.

So are we complete schedule those questions?

That's the project. Whose project do we wanna use? Well, I was forced to two, but

Alright. So

Can you make sure that

Hey. Is everything focused on having what you started up there? That's what all of our conversations so where can you start it at all?

Thank you. Right?

Yeah. This is what Yeah.

So the we're thinking about the implementation of those core priorities. So any projects that you have involved in that, any, you know, big ideas and things you wanna communicate to the community are look. What what so we have the question, like, what are the assumptions being made? Like, earlier, we we'd heard, you know, it can be difficult sometimes when social media gets out ahead of what you're trying to achieve. Are there things that maybe there needs to be a social media campaign that highlights you know, this is our vision for priority one, priority two.

Things that you can get out ahead of so that, you know, you don't get the opportunity lost through misinformation. Or maybe you just do some blanket facts about some operations in Ferndale so people kinda understand, like, what's the collective starting point. So, for example, community members don't think you're fixing a problem that doesn't exist. So really just so yeah. So we're looking at like, if we're going forward to implementing this, like, what are the things that we have to do?

You know, we're required to do. You know, our timelines are resorting the fullest extension of our resources, but also, you know, what are the things that are super important for us to communicate, to illustrate, and to ensure that you can continue to keep the community on board? I'm gonna float around too. So if folks need help, I'll pop into groups. That'll be good.

What are the challenges? About the service.

And the challenge is

So if one person from the closest to their seat can grab their community partnership map, that kinda gives some preliminary instructions. But what we're gonna do here, and again, don't worry but we're gonna create our ecosystem of stakeholders that are involved. How we usually do this is that we put the community at the center. Maybe we could do since we're a mix of administrative and city council, if we see a difference in this, I'll leave this up to your group, but you can make, like, a little Venn diagram for Ferndale with both parties included. But, you know, you look immediately confused at me.

But go ahead. Yeah. So so think, like, we have Ferndale City Council, Ferndale City Administration. Right? You guys were obviously we're in a room collectively working together, but you have different responsible parties.

Right? City Council's responsible to the res stakeholders who are involved, you know, respective of all your different roles. Who is involved in this opportunity to get this done for this to be successful? You know, we've talked I heard you guys talking a lot about assumptions and challenges, who you're gonna communicate to, who you might need help. Let's start building out that ecosystem.

These can be local community groups, actions in the community. It can be, you know, local businesses. It can be the state. It can be federal government. It could be all all of those different parties who will be involved in this being successful or might be in a position where, you know, if they they're involved, like, you might have to persuade them and bring them in a little bit.

You'll see on the worksheet, you know, on the back we have a key that'll help you define the relationship. Again, you don't have to do this right away. Right now we just wanna get who those stakeholders are on the board. But the different keys are no connection, a broken connection, a tenuous connection, which is like, healthy one way connection, healthy two way connection. So as you're thinking about this, you're gonna have a variety of different relationships.

Like, that that's not necessarily the point right now. There's still people, entities, you know, groups that are in the ecosystem that are part of finding a solution in this. So we've talked a lot about, like, where these assumptions might come from, where these challenges might come from, think about who you're communicating with, who you're collaborating with. We're gonna start marking those up. And then once you're done with this step, you're gonna take the worksheet that you're currently on the trade off tool, and you're gonna start going through the analysis by focus area.

So we're gonna go through all those six focus areas. We're gonna identify what are the challenges, the opportunities, and then identify who those stakeholders are, and you can just list them on the worksheet that are involved in this. And so again thinking about who you need to communicate with, who might start communicating with you, you know, who is at the table, who might be impacted. Because again we're trying to identify those trade offs because all these decisions are gonna impact communities. They may have some assumed trade offs.

There might be some very direct trade offs that are involved here, and so we wanna understand who is in that universe. And then as we go forward, you can start looking at the questions on the very back, but we'll do those last questions together at the end after we do some initial reporting. But based on how you identify these individuals might change how you approach your original core priorities, and so that's the circular point that we wanna get back to at the end of the night. Alright. So Margaret came around, gave you guys another sheet of paper that you can brainstorm on that together.

Start creating those bubbles and listing who those people are. Once you're good on that, jump into the worksheet, go through those six focus areas, we'll pause there, and then we'll finish the rest of the worksheet through slide out in the back. I'm coming over here. Start with, like, Ferndale in the center of the head. And so if you guys wanna dive deeper later

on, evaluate I guess what's confusing is that's part of the city. It's you know, that's you know? And then you have housing developers, you know, county government. You know? It's I I understand those.

Okay.

Okay. So at some thirty four, we can do a call. Alright. We're gonna give this section about one more minute to finish up your bubbles, and then you should be transitioning over to the focus area portion of your worksheets.

Edinson.

Was it one of the things you wanted to have?

Better stuff and more wages for police.

Thought I just got it back, and then it I gotcha.

You're okay. And we haven't put any changes.

Increasing crime.

Technically, a game.

Right. Right.

Always go back.

Her gains are short term. Oh, no. Really?

K. Which is

Yeah.

I mean, this is probably

Our soon Well, you guys you'd have better knowledge than I because Good. Oh, yeah. Long term is in jeopardy. Long term invested in jeopardy. I don't know if you just wanna click.

Arcs or well,

I guess that's not a group.

That's community.

Yeah. I mean, I would say we, as far as we are able to offer.

Where does parks

parks and rec do you think

Are those all those things that

come? No.

We're trying to get, like, a fashion.

Post it in here. Yeah.

Yeah. So that falls in there. I thought this was lifelong.

Well, I mean, we don't have

working

on

parking. There's some extras.

And With parks and

Buses.

That would mean, like,

Alright, everyone. We're gonna give this one about two more minutes. You should have gotten through most of these areas. So jot down some final thoughts. Two more minutes, and then we are gonna do some reporting out by group before we jump back into Slido for the closing questions that we have in the reflection section.

I'm sorry. You say sit down?

Oh. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. Thanks?

I'm only here for my penmanship.

Okay. I'll I'll carry my weight in this group.

If you can even read that.

Of course.

Oh, yeah.

I was like, oh, he can even write small.

Yeah. Except they don't have spell print.

Oh, Like, I always feel so,

She was looking at me with my mouth open going. Got the memo. Right?

Yeah. I'm scared. I love this outfit. Oh,

Like, with parts and rec, you gotta ready

to go to a meeting,

and you gotta be ready to flip the tables. So

I love this. Sure.

You gotta gotta get in between there.

Hi. Alright.

I'm okay.

Hello? Is it going? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Alright. So, we know that you are diligently working, and we have not been wanting to stop your flow. But we are gonna head in the direction of sharing out sharing out what you've come up with right now for that backside of the, analysis worksheet. That's right.

Is it? Okay. I can't tell. It kinda comes in and out. That's okay.

So if you wanna take your seats and do that, or should we just share outstanding?

Oh, yeah.

Perfect. Alright. I just there see, now that is

the real Go ahead, James.

Okay. That's okay. Yeah.

What are we sharing?

So share

really quick in forty five seconds or less.

How long is this?

Oh, top lines. Okay. So the top lines. Financially, we were looking at, the gains or losses. So the plus is we don't we're not cutting anything with our current Headlee or the the what was passed.

Right? But we did lose opportunity. We lost opportunity to make capital gains that would have a long term savings. We lost opportunity to do the facilities, you know, that would create investment and buy in and attraction, right, for certain groups. So our stakeholders, obviously, in this case, police, fire, labor groups, parks and rec, but also all all of our residents, specifically youth and seniors in the case of the community center or not having a community center.

As far as infrastructure, thinking about we can allocate money to extend useful life, but again, we don't have extra capital for long term sustainable improvements or improvements that would have a larger payoff or maybe at the bare minimum more so. From public health and safety, it's a talent issue. Will folks wanna come work here in these current facilities? Again, same stakeholders, police, fire, labor, residents. We go to sustainability.

It's not just, oh, we can't do sustainability programs, but it's we have negative impacts on our climate action plan. We're not gonna be able to meet our climate action goals

Okay.

Because we don't have investment or our facilities won't be able to have that long term sustainable impact. That impacts all of our residents, but also our staff, our environment as a whole. Anyone with health issues, we could go really granular if we wanted to. Yeah. Lifelong learners, we don't have space for programming in the current iteration.

That doesn't help residents who wanna be lifelong learners. It doesn't help business owners who maybe need, have a gap that we could fill. You know, again, our youth, our seniors in that case, with, like, some of the senior specific or youth specific programs. For arts and culture, we we said it was maybe not a a negative impact. Arts and culture exists, and if weed weren't here, they would it would still exist here in Ferndale

Yeah.

Because of the culture of the, you know, the community of the people, but that's it. Others? Did I hit 45? Alright. Sweet.

Perfect. Yeah. Thank you. Alright. Pass it down.

Group two. Thank you.

Alright. So for financial security, we said there's not enough funding to last us for ten years. The gain would be, having competitive wages as of now. Some of the trade offs or the impacted stakeholders are residents and staff. As we move to infrastructure, it says the infrastructure will continue to deteriorate because we can't build new buildings.

We just have to use some of the funding we have now to work on what we have. But, again, it's limited because costs are continuing to rise, and we're still working with a a limited amount of money or a predetermined amount. Who's impacted would be residents, staff, and businesses, public health and safety, a potential reduction in the services that are provided. And who's affected are the unhoused residents and businesses, sustainability, short term gain on workforce and programming, but what's the long term? And then who's affected would be the community.

Then we move on to lifelong learning. The gain would be we maintain parks and rec staff and programming. The loss would be a facility, who's affected, children, families, seniors, and adults, and we carry that over for arts and culture as well.

Thank you. Group two. Alright. Group three.

Alright. Hello? There we are. Okay. Okay.

So for financial security, we noted, well, we kind of first focused on the sort of the reality of situation that the money is not gonna last us all ten years. We know that with inflation. And we know that the trade offs here is, you know, with fewer resources, we have fewer staff, and we have a decline in services. And that affects not only our staff who may or may not have jobs, but also the residents and the services they receive. It also affects visitors to the city.

So this really isn't everyone. So you see we did a cop out here. But that's because but that's because it's true.

Yeah.

So the community is not yes. It's comprehensive. You know, these everything that happens in here affects not only the people who live here and work here, but also the people who just visit here on a weekend, and that sort of thing, infra which then leads into infrastructure. You know, if your infrastructure is bad, you get a poor reputation. Ferndale had a poor reputation.

We know what it's like to have bad infrastructure because we know what Ferndale was prior to its renaissance. And we know the struggle that Detroit is going through to dig out of that hole, and part of that is driven by infrastructure. If the roads suck, no one wants to come to your town. If the sidewalks are broken, no one wants to come here. As infrastructure deteriorates, it's a lack of visitors and residents.

Residents may move away to seek better infrastructure, more reliable infrastructure. Public health and safety, we know that as we increase services in this area, we that's a draw. People want communities that feel safe. They feel walkable. They feel like they can be out and about and not worry.

They know that if they trip and bump their head, that Ferndale Fire EMS will be here in a moment, and they will have you taken care of. They know that if someone breaks into their home and they call, FPD will be there when they call, and there's no question about it. As these things improve, this really improves your economic, the economic and physical health of your community. We know that there are direct ties between pub community being safe and having lower crime rates and, outcomes on physical health as well because there's a lower level of stress in the community. Sustainability, we know that as we decrease our carbon footprint, that really increases our reputation.

It makes us a standout community, not only nationally, but internationally. We continue to be recognized as a small town that does big things in the area of sustainability, and that not only increases our reputation, but it does bring us money. People wanna give us grants to take the next step, and that's really good. It it pays dividends as you move down that, space. However, right now with resources, you have the luxury of balancing development with your green spaces and your sort of sustainability decisions, your climate decisions.

As resources become constrained, you may make choices that are less economic or environmentally friendly, less green space friendly as you attempt to backstop the loss of resources, at the expense of sustainability. And then lifelong learning, we know that, you know, although we don't control the school district, what we do control, is recreational programming and public safety education. So something we do really well here in Ferndale, especially in our public safety education. You know, the fire department spends a lot of time doing fire trainings and evaluating people's homes to see where they they need fire, smoke detectors and then getting those smoke detectors for them. Do FPD does a lot of public safety trainings and helps with fraud intervention trainings.

Recreation department, I mean, there's no limit to what recreation can do if they're given the resources. We can teach classes. We can host, you know, volunteers to teach language courses, home economics type courses, learning how to cook. These are all things that big, well funded recreation departments can do. When you don't have that, you don't have that draw for your community.

People think, well, there's nothing to do here. That doesn't involve spending money as we talked about earlier. I can go out and get dinner, but I can't go and learn Spanish. These are things you can do there. And then arts and culture arts and culture are the soul of your community.

You can build a community, but without that, it's just a automaton. It's just a robot. It doesn't have a soul. And so if you have your events, you have investment in public arts, you've really put that light into that entity, and you've given it its soul. And so, you know, as we lose those things, a city that's ugly is a city people don't wanna be in.

We all know that. And, we know that because we have neighbors that are having the same struggle. Like, what do we do to physically make our city look approachable and welcoming? And part of that is stuff like fun events that are safe, and arts that make it beautiful. So and these are it's everybody.

Visitors, residents, city staff, I mean, government partners. This affects everything.

Good job. Thank you, group three. Alright. Group four.

Sound like tag team this? Okay. They're out. Alright. So for financial security, we viewed, this area as having some short term positives with the adoption, of the millage, but still a lot of misconceptions out there regarding what the city's capacity is as a result of that.

It doesn't take us as far ahead as maybe some in the community would like to see because there was more of an operational stop gap than anything else. And the issue there too is there are some losses on the front end to get the millage supported. We made substantial cuts to our budget to show, that we could be more fiscally responsible and fiscally resilient, particularly to staff in the courts, community development, and communications, which are still down, from their peak levels. And we have to start asking ourselves, whether it's right that those, positions still remain unfilled or if we're gonna continue to have capacity issues. We've seen firsthand how quickly losing a couple staff members, can dramatically impact the capacity of staff to function at its highest level.

To me, that speaks issues with redundancy. Regarding infrastructure, again, saw short term gains to being able to catch up on some of the facilities maintenance we have, but this is more of a, kind of treading water type situation than necessarily getting ahead. There are no specific solutions for long term improvements. That being said, some of those short term gains can get us there. Some of the ideas that we had conceptualized during our budgeting process, like investing in GIS and data gathering, can be the planning solutions that we need to get ahead.

So, we feel like this is a pretty good time and a and a good win, at least to help us tell a story on infrastructure in the future. Oh, sorry. I'm supposed to be saying most impacted stakeholders. I'm not gonna say it. One.

On financial security, we we felt, on financial security, we said homeowners and taxpayers were the most impacted, general property owners, and then followed by businesses and city staff. On infrastructure, we felt that public safety staff, in particular were highly impacted as well as property owners and our service providers. So public health and safety, again, because of the investment in public safety, which is really what the the millage was based around, we saw sustaining that high level of operation, so a positive, but no forward movement in that category. Mostly just continuing to to meet the the existing needs we have. That still leaves some losses in the area of, like, mental health support where we could continue to grow.

Most impacted stakeholders are public safety, seniors, families, residents in general, and then outside community organizations and nonprofits that work with us. Sustainability, we saw this as an area that would likely have some losses because there was no specific focus on this in the proposal, and, the inability to direct operational funds to advance that mission, is definitely obvious in in the current environment we're in. So it's really beholden to us to find outside solutions where we can to make that work. And we view that mostly impacting, families, people with children, homeowners in general, and then other outside leadership, so our state and national leadership. Lifelong learning, kind of a neutral approach in this one because we felt like there's a lot of opportunities, like low hanging fruit we're not going after right now that don't actually cost us money, other than staff capacity, which we've already covered.

But better relationship with the schools, better relationship with possible workforce partners in the region, and then just understanding what our capacity is within, like, parks and recreation and our own team to start, delivering us for those adult learning opportunities. And the most impacted partners would be schools, families, businesses, our own staff, and other leadership. With an arts and culture kind of similar to sustainability, this could be an area that ends up having some trade offs. If we can't find outside resourcing to continue to support that, we view this as highly impactful to our boards and commissions, our DDA, and then general neighborhood partners, families, seniors, and community organizations. Oh, that doesn't I none

of that is actually written on. So we are gonna do one last one last round of Slido. Back to your seats. And we're gonna use, you know, what we heard from everyone when you just elaborate about that.

K.

They don't have the means to separate a private solution. They just don't have the means to do that. And so they really rely on government services as good as a social good. And without that good, it have and that can be devastating.

Investments and services that will attract more people to come to this community. Bring more people in and then else before you go to the next question.

Next. I couldn't abbreviate this one. So

opportunity to involve your community. Yeah.

Will you take the boss to explain the why behind?

The be busy and just tell the why and keep running. But just because you understand the why doesn't mean anybody else does. And we have to pause. We have to take the time and invest and explain the why to the public, but also inside our own walls to our staff. Because just because I understand the why on something for my department doesn't mean anybody else, even other city employees, understands the why between behind stuff that we do, police does, DPW, clerk, anybody else.

So I think we need to do a better job explaining the why across the board to each other and to our community to increase the understanding, which then becomes a trust.

Bonds and debts to maybe decrease the tax burden on on taxpayers. It's a it's a small decrease, but it's still a decrease.

Well, I think it's important to note that we when we we lowered Texas not very long after Headley was approved, the second Headley, and that didn't make any headline. Nobody nobody really knows about it. We almost hit off the increase from HeadLink. Right. And the we basically almost made the tax impact neutral.

Exactly. And everyone's still talking about how we raise taxes, but we didn't. We lowered them a month later. That wasn't communicated to the community. It needs to be communicated clearly.

There's still more opportunity moving forward to, you know, pay down our debts, to set ourselves up for a new debt. Mhmm. Because, like, note here, like, we're, like, going to still be required. Wait. Like, dollars are not gonna go as far as and we're gonna have to have some pretty difficult, yeah, conversations about Haslow's hierarchy of needs.

You know? What are the needs versus the wants, for us? But one of the things we

know we need is the interest.

So if we're paying down debt that we already have and we're reducing that debt early as best we can, defeasance or early redemption, then we can go to residents and say this the net impact of this on you is not that much greater Yeah. Or not great at all Mhmm. As a result. And so, you know, we're gonna have to make these kinds of clever thinking. With grants right now is that the primary funder of a lot of grants was the federal government.

Grants were maybe administered by the state or they were passed through entities. Not there currently. Or they're held up or they're stuck in limbo. The problem with that is, like, the philanthropic side of grant making, they're now overtaxed with all the requests that people say, hey, can I get a grant for this? We had a state of Michigan grant for that or.

And so, you know, grant my worry is that we can't hang our hat because what remaining grantmakers are they now have a thousand more requesters than they had grants to municipal governments that maybe were not seeking philanthropic support at all. They they had leveraged really great federal grants and they were recurring. Well, now you've got, you know, Royal Oak has to go to the table and compete with us for the same parks grant they probably didn't need to go for. Now we're competing for that same group. Competitors is even greater.

That's what's gonna make this

I was I was gonna add to that. I think, like, I'm hopeful that some of the expectation that, oh, there's community groups that can do some of this stuff or they're, like, they're like, that people will chip in if they felt that this city was not going to manage funding or expenses well, that, like, oh, I can get somebody to do that cheaper. Well, I hope they will come and partner. And then I think he also with the notion of grants too, it the key things that I keep seeing are staffing levels. And if there is, like, the same expectation on who can do what with diminishing staff.

Writing competitive grants is like college applications. I mean, it's not like something you phone in and expect to get funding for. So I think that that's something that people underestimate, like, why that's there are professions that do that for to increase your chance of getting grants. They're not free, and they don't work for Ferndale. So

to do this.

I'm gonna say I think it's really helpful to, one, I think we get so busy in our day to day that sometimes we forget and to be able to come together and really think about the things that we would like to see in this community and how where our focus should be and kind of to reset, kinda like we what we did with the Headley, reset, our priorities, I think, was very helpful. And I'm very appreciative of you, Harrison, and you, Margaret, for coming and and taking the time to help get us on the right path. All set. Alright. Thank you.

Alright. Well, we're still in a in a public meeting. Thank you. And now we're opening it up to call to audience where audience, members can have three minutes to talk about anything for tonight or not the agenda? That would be you.

If you want to. Cody? Yeah. You're fine. Okay.

Well, okay. Yes. I came because, of course, I heard about it, and I, of course, I'd love to have more people in the community actually come and feel that it's that is, beneficial and you'll be heard. And, and, yeah, I'm involved with the, Taxis Hero Terrible Group, which, you know, is kinda like a silo because, of course, you know, you these people are outspoken and are concerned about the community, so that's why they're they get banned from the other forums like Ferndale Forum or fabulous Ferndale Forum. And so, yeah, I wanted to come here and find out, okay, what's going on?

What's the thinking on city councils? Pay attention and understand what's going on. And, and, yeah, there's a lot of trust that needs to be in Ferndale and some procedures that really are awful and, need to be really to get fixed. And so yeah. So I came here today.

And we had a few more stages.

Thank you. Alright. With that being said, what time is it?

08:41.

There's no objection from counsel. I call this meeting I adjourn this meeting at 08:41. Thank you all for sticking it out with us tonight. Thank you.