I don't need one.
Good afternoon, evening. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Board of
Commissioners August 6, 2005 meeting. The first thing we do at this meeting is rise for the
Pledge of Allegiance.
So I added, I added some words. Ashlyn, could you call the roll?
Commissioner Beaman. Present. Commissioner Hawke. Here. Commissioner Labar. Here. Commissioner
Mike.
That's it.
Commissioner Masiasky.
Commissioner Robbie.
That's not here.
Commissioner Sanders.
For the moment.
Commissioner Scott.
I'm here.
Commissioner Sanchez.
I'm here.
Great.
We're all here.
Usually at this time, we do public participation.
Not to stymie anybody, but I'm just going to start this
evening with a few of our honorary resolutions we have.
have. So the people who are here to receive those can go home. So the first person I'd
like to go to the podium to present is Commissioner Justin Hodge.
All right. Well, this is a big one. So we've talked about it a little bit over the last
few meetings. We have a resolution recognizing Hazel Sanders and Michigan Community Actions
Volunteer of the Year. Want to come on up? Come on up. Come on everybody. OCD team.
Thanks
for making it.
I'm going to read it now.
All right.
Whereas Hazel Sanders has served as a foster grandparent in Washtenaw County since September
1st, 2005, marking nearly 20 years of unwavering commitment and approximately 20,000 hours
of volunteer service to the children and schools of our community.
And whereas Hazel has dedicated her service to supporting some of the most under-resourced
and high-need schools in Washtenaw County, offering not only academic guidance and
and reading and math to children with exceptional needs,
but also social and emotional support
to help students navigate the complexities
of childhood and school life.
And whereas throughout her tenure,
Hazel has provided individualized support
through dedicated work plans to over 65 children
and has lovingly served as the classroom grandma
to more than 450 students,
nurturing generations with kindness,
compassion and wisdom.
Whereas Hazel Sanders is the oldest volunteer
in the Washtenaw County Foster Grandparent Program and yet among the most energetic and dependable,
driving herself to school each day, arriving on time, dressing professionally,
taking on summer assignments, and participating in every training offered.
Wow. And whereas Hazel was beloved for her gentle spirit,
joyful presence, and wholehearted dedication to each child she serves,
arriving each day with her own cart of handmade flashcards, happy stickers,
and an ever-present willingness to say,
I'll do what I can,
even in the face of challenging circumstances.
And whereas Hazel's outstanding contributions
have touched not only students,
but also teachers, staff, and the broader school community,
serving as a shining example
of the intergenerational service and civic purpose.
And whereas, in recognition of her extraordinary impact
and tireless volunteerism,
Hazel Sanders has been named Volunteer of the Year
by Michigan Community Action,
a well-deserved honor that reflects
the immeasurable difference she has made across Washtenaw County and beyond.
Now therefore be resolved that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners
does hereby congratulate and honor Hazel Sanders for her dedicated service,
her compassionate spirit, and her well-earned recognition as Michigan Community Actions
Volunteer of the Year. Thank you so much, Hazel.
Please would like to say anything? Go ahead.
Thanks to everyone. It's been a joy, though, to serve and be with all the children,
my goal is to help them to be whatever they can't want to be and I tell them
that they can be whatever you want to be. You can have a goal and go for it.
Thank
you for having us here today and for recognizing how important it is to
have our foster grandparents continue in our community serving children and
and have our programs serve our older adults.
So thank you very much.
I believe we have won the statewide Washtenaw County
volunteer of the year two years in a row now, right?
Yeah, okay.
So thank you for making us win two years in a row.
I don't know if other counties win multiple years in a row,
but Hazel made it happen here.
So thank you.
All right.
Oh, and also Foster Graham here program,
one of those programs I'd love to see us use
some older adults' millage dollars for it
to make even stronger.
So I mean, we could keep the reign
of number one volunteer and watch that coming.
All right.
There you go.
Okay.
I'm not crying.
You're crying.
That was amazing.
Thank you.
Next commissioner with a resolution for us is commissioner Yusuf Ravi.
Thank you.
And I would ask anybody that's here for Gwen to just come on up to the
front.
I know we have several people that have come to support Gwen's, you know, resolution and honor her
life today. So please just come on up, stand behind me. Wow, there's a lot of people. I realize there
were so many people. That's great.
So I'm actually not going to read the resolution. I can read the
last, therefore be it resolved, but I kind of just want to speak from the heart today. And
And it's so great to see so many people here that, you know, we're part of Gwen's life
and her activism.
And for those of you that don't know about Gwen, nice tune, I said that right.
Gwen was an amazing person and it had amazing impact on our state and our community and
as somebody who will be sorely missed.
When I first learned about Gwen's passing, I was pretty devastated, not just as somebody
who had known her for many years, but as somebody who cares about the issues that she was passionate
about.
For those of you that don't know, Gwen and John lived in a beautiful home in Burns Park,
filled with frogs.
And I remember being over to their house several times and seeing, like when I say
filled with frogs, I mean like there's frogs everywhere.
everywhere. Their plates had frogs on them. Their Christmas tree had frog ornaments. They
were frog statues, frogs everywhere. It was actually quite incredible. I didn't realize
that frogs existed on so many things, but that was, you know, to me, part of what made
the relationship and the experience and them as people stand out so much. But what stands
out even more as a community is remembering and reflecting on both the work that both Gwen and John
did. At their core, they were people that cared about our planet. They cared about the earth and
the people that live on it. Gwen was instrumental in working to expand the role of the Michigan
Sierra Club. And I am now in addition to my role here, I volunteer as the chair of the
Michigan Sierra Club. Gwen was instrumental in helping to, and so was John, in helping
to expand the work that the Sierra Club does in the state of Michigan. Instrumental in
fighting for, you know, environmental justice and instrumental in fighting for preservation
of lands and making sure that we have clean air and clean water. These were all central
to who both of them were as people.
Just as importantly, these were two people
that were a part of the Ann Arbor community for a very, very long time and made a mark
on, as you can tell, so many different people who they brought in with love, care, and compassion.
And from the very first time that I met Gwen, and I saw her smile, that stays with me
even to this day.
And no matter where I go in the world, when I'm doing environmental work, when I'm fighting for the people,
I will remember the warmth of Gwen, her handshake, her hug, and her smile.
Because I know that those were things that came from a place that was from a deep genuine place that you don't often see.
But for her, it beamed through her eyes, her smile, her very existence.
And it was a light for all of us that lifted everybody that you see behind that was inspired to come out today that lifted everybody that met her, and she was not loud like I am she didn't you know get up and give a bunch of speeches, but she was, she had a quiet way of inspiring and motivating and pushing and prodding her
change in her every day in her every action in her every waking moment all
the way until the day that she passed away and so I want to take a moment just
to honor her life and I also want to honor John's life as well who passed
before her with the last therefore be it resolved which says now therefore be
it resolved that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners hereby honors
and celebrates the life of Gwen Nicetune expressing deepest gratitude for her six decades of service,
her unyielding dedication to preserving Michigan's precious natural heritage,
and her embodiment of civic responsibility and environmental justice.
So I'm going to present this tribute to the family, and I believe for Son-in-law,
I would like to say a few words, and her daughter is here as well. So.
I just wanted to say one frog necklace and I just want to say trees can't vote and they
should and my mother I think spoke up for them and my dad and I want to thank you for recognizing
her efforts.
Most of the people standing behind me know the dining room that was just described.
And when you come into the dining room, it's not ostentatious.
And indeed, you can sit at that table for a while until you notice the first frog,
which might be the centerpiece, and then the second frog, which could be the chandelier,
Or the third one, which is the pattern on the wallpaper, or the fourth, or the fifth, or there was a point where we were going to have a raffle to see if people were willing to guess how many frogs there were in the house.
But then we couldn't quite decide how to count them.
That's the experience you have sitting in that dining room.
But that was not Gwen's experience.
Her experience was actually to pull on a pair of waiters, go out in the middle of the pond.
and start by seeing nothing at all on a on a dark night and we would we would
see her out there and wonder well when is she coming back we check on her 20
minutes later she'd be in exactly the same position like a statue herself just
listening and watching she would come back after a couple of hours when she
had seen all the frogs in the pond on a dark night it takes that kind of
patients to appreciate the details and the confluence of features and factors of life.
And I think that's part of what made her, it gave her the strength to speak politically.
So she was engaged in politics her entire life, but she was never sarcastic and never
cynical.
Now, who among you can say that?
Sarcasm and cynicism, it's the coin of the realm in politics these days, but not for her, not at all.
And as you contemplate your credentials as an environmentalist, and I'm sure you all feel you are environmentalists
on some level or other, please don't forget to go out and get those waiters.
And, you know, rather than say voting on or approving massive infrastructure projects that required hundreds of tons of concrete and steel and glass,
but just one pair of waiters and an evening in a frog pond, and I think you'll find that you're a better environmentalist for that.
Thank you.
Let's take a group picture.
Let's take a group picture. Everybody come this way if you could. Oh, let's go in the hallway. Yeah, let's go in the hallway and do it that way.
We can do the next one. Thank you all.
That's a lot of poetry so far. I feel like we've had at the county commission tonight. So I'm the next commissioner presenting the next resolution.
And this resolution is a resolution honoring Jennifer McCool for over two decades of service to Washtenaw County
and congratulating her on her retirement from the Washtenaw County Clerk Register of Deeds Office.
Yes.
Come on up with me.
Here you come.
Oh, here you come.
Okay.
All right.
I'm going to read this to you.
Whereas Jennifer McCool is dedicated over two, cool?
Yeah.
Okay.
Where Jennifer McCool has dedicated over two decades of service to Washtenaw County in the Clerk Register of Deeds
office, providing support for all aspects of the office, and contributing to the success
and mission of the Washtenaw County Clerk Register of Deeds Office, no small thing by
the way, and whereas Ms. McCool has been immensely valued for her work ethic, commitment
to a high standard of excellence in exactness and maintaining the records of the Clerk
Register of Deeds Office, and whereas Ms. McCool began her career with the Washtenaw
County Clerk Register of Deeds Office in 1997 and returned in 2003 and whereas Ms. McCool
became a Senior Clerk Register Analyst in 2010 and a Program Manager in 2012, whereas
throughout her career she has remained dedicated to efficiency, the Detroit Lions, good governance,
the Detroit Tigers, and to customer service, and whereas Ms. McCool will be sorely missed
by her colleagues in the department and the county.
Now therefore be it resolved that the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners hereby expresses
its deepest gratitude to Jennifer McCool for her exemplary service to Washtenaw County
and congratulates her on a well-deserved retirement.
Thank
you.
I'm honored.
I'm the worst public speaker in the history of anyone.
but I did. I started in 97 and then I left and had my children and yeah they
were they were babies and Catherine was three and the county you know I went
through buying houses and you know soccer game all of it and so my whole life I
grew up here too so I just want to thank everyone this is quite an honor thank
Thank you.
I don't even look at my retirement date, so congratulations once again.
And now I'm going to have Commissioner Sanders and Commissioner Light present the last honorary
resolution for this evening.
Hey, y'all.
How y'all doing today?
We're back.
Seems like we haven't been here in a month of Sundays.
Today, Commissioner Sanders and I will bring forth a resolution recognizing and celebrating
the 10-year anniversary of the summer works program for Michigan Works Southeast.
So we will start.
Is there someone from Michigan Works here today?
Come on up.
You can represent because you all have been going strong the whole team.
The resolution states, whereas the Washtenaw County summer works program was launched in 2016 through an initial partnership between the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office, Michigan Works Southeast, and the Washtenaw County Office of Community and Economic Development,
and has since grown to include University of Michigan,
Michigan Rehabilitation Services,
the Washtenaw Intermediate School District,
Washtenaw Alliance for Children and Youth,
and the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Converts.
And whereas Summer Works matches young adults ages 16 to 24
living or attending school in Washtenaw County
with a 10-week paid internship and mentorship opportunities
through local employers and organizations, and whereas over the past decade, SummerWorks has
placed more than 600 youth in internships with 143 participants engaged in 2024 alone
through placements with 59 employees earning wages from 15 to 17 dollars an hour.
That's
As the core mission of SummerWorks is to build relationships between you, local employers
and the border, Washtenaw County community in order to promote equity through youth empowerment,
professional growth and workforce development.
And whereas the program's vision includes ensuring that all young adults, regardless
of background or economic situation, can I repeat that part?
Regardless of background or economic situation, have access to career building opportunities,
supportive mentorship, and professional networks in Washtenaw County.
And whereas summer works offers structured professional development such as resume and cover letter training,
career exploration modules, and mentorship matching, preparing you to begin their careers with confidence.
and whereas summer works has emerged as a community pillar
fostering diverse partnerships
and supporting workforce equity in Washtenaw County
over its 10 years of operations.
Now therefore it be resolved that the Washtenaw County
Board of Commissioners hereby recognizes
and celebrates the 10th anniversary of summer works
and commends the County University Employer Mentor
and community partners whose collective engagement over the past decade has enabled this transformational
youth employment program. Be it further resolved that the board thanks the program staff and
youth participants who have shaped summer works with their energy, ambition, and commitment
to the community.
Thank you for this recognition for summer works. I'm Lauren Slogter. I'm with the
Team of Poverty Solutions at U of M. I'm afraid I'm a poor substitute for Kathleen Clancy and
Morgan Cox, the ones who run the summer works program and make it such a positive and meaningful
experience for the youth in our community. But thank you for the recognition of this program
and just, yeah, the impact that it's made over these 10 years. Appreciate it.
Okay. Thank you, everyone, for letting us get the honorary resolutions into the hands of
the people and families that deserve it. With that, we're going to move on to public participation.
So if you're here this evening to speak to us as a board of commissioners, you'll
three minutes to come to the podium, introduce yourself, your city or your
township, where you're from for record keeping for our clerk. You have three
minutes, the lights will correspond to your time. Green, go, good. Yellow, start
thinking about wrapping it up. Red means it's time to stop. I will stop you
if the light goes to red in order to try to maintain fairness for the
room and we will not respond to public comments person by person but will hold
our response to the end with that. Anyone here for public participation?
Good
evening commissioners. My name is Letitia LaMelle Sharp and I reside in
Ypsilanti Township where Commissioner Justin Hodge is my commissioner. This
evening I stand before you in this esteemed body in my official capacity
as your Washtenaw County Treasurer. It is my distinct honor to introduce my newly appointed
Chief Deputy to both this Board and to the public. I'm delighted to welcome Mr. Tyrus
Wall Sr. to the Office of County Treasurer. Mr. Wall's began his duties on July 14,
2025 as the Chief Deputy Treasurer. He started his career at Washtenaw County in 1999 as
the Count Clerk in the Sheriff's Office and has since held various senior and executive
leadership roles in finance management.
Mr. Walz was appointed and deputized on July 17, 2025 and has hit the ground running.
He shares my vision as a treasure for the people where our mission is to responsibly
manage public funds, provide transparent treasury services, and support residents with fair
collection, collection and programs with fair tax collection and programs that
promote economic stability and equality. As Chief Deputy Treasurer,
Tires will oversee the day-to-day operations of the Treasurer's office and
provide executive support to my role as the Treasurer. On a personal note, I
have had the pleasure of observing Tires in the community over the years
and have always been impressed by his dedication, integrity, and commitment
to public service. I am confident that his leadership will be a tremendous asset to our
office and to the residents of Washtenaw County. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Tyrus
Wall Sr. to his new role.
Thank you so much. I just want to thank the treasurer whom I
am so delighted to step into this role. I am, my heart is just grateful, a spirit
of gratitude. And you know, my name is Tyrus Wall Sr. I reside in Ypsilanti Township,
Commissioner Justin I just my commissioner and you know I just look forward to working with each and
every one of you and again you know to have a full circle moment to start at the sheriff's office
work under Sheriff Shible, Sheriff Menze, Sheriff Clayton and now to work in the greatest office
in the county the treasurer's office under treasurer sharp um it's a privilege and an honor
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hello, everyone.
My name is Jessica Kelly.
I reside in Pittsburgh Township.
Commissioner Sanders is our commissioner.
I am here on behalf of my son, Brandon.
He was picked up by AAPD and Arbor Police Department
on July 1st, 2025.
He was homeless for several months
and battling chronic mental illness.
and Arbor Police Department knew of his mental illness.
January 2023, he was picked up and transported
to U of M Hospital by Ann Arbor Police Department
for displaying erratic signs then.
My son also told me those officers were very unkind to him
and he gave me reasons.
August 1st, 2025, those officers,
Clara Stewart-Lays and for Westinow County Jail
Community Mental Health finally called me
after I left her, and District Attorney Jen Genesky
a message seven days prior requested immediate treatment
for Brandon after witnessing his erratic behavior in court.
Sarah claims Brandon has to exhibit behavior,
a threat to himself or others
in order to receive court order treatment,
yet I have discharged papers from Havenwick,
mental facilities, and community mental health
at Washtenaw County in regards to his chronic mental illness.
As of today, I tried visiting my son for the fourth time at Washtenaw Community Jail, and
I have not spoken with my son.
He has not received any type of court order treatment, and I am fighting tooth and nails
trying to get my son the help that he needs.
I was a single parent.
I raised my son and my daughter, and Lansing, we moved here 12, 13 years ago, because
I was just trying to make a better life for all of us.
It was great, but this ongoing issue with my son and his mental health issue has been
taken a toll on me trying to fight and get guardianship for him.
I had spoken with Kara Gallagher.
Gowler of operations for NAMI. She explained that her son had hit an officer and asked Carol Gowler,
is her son receiving treatment or is he being held at Washtenaw County Jail?
Hello, my name is Jade Miller and I'm a resident of Pittsfield Township and have been with the county
at CMH Youth and Family for eight and a half years and in total I have over 20 years experience.
Recently, the mental health professionals or MHPs at youth and family submitted a JAQ
proposal for our position to be reclassified.
We worked hard and had everything submitted before the deadline, and were expecting the
results by the date HR had provided.
That was a month from the deadline.
That date came and went, and we did not hear results.
A week later, we were finally informed that our classification was going to go from
a pay scale of 111 to 112
Geneva or Genevieve Cox from HR sent an email to one of my colleagues
Who was the one who actually submitted the form on six?
or June 6 of this year with the results in the email
Ms. Cox stated if you would like to learn about our findings in more depth
I'll I'd be happy to provide it
any explanation or the explanation of our analysis. Later that day, my coworker on behalf
of the MHPs, who were behind the JAQ, replied with an email stating we wanted to appeal the
decision and wrote, in addition, I am requesting the offered explanation for HR's analysis.
We were hoping to get the analysis before the appeal so that we could better prepare,
but Ms. Cox did not provide us with the offered explanation of HR's analysis.
At the appeal meeting, the youth and family MHPs were disrespected.
We do not actually know if Ms. Cox was listening to what we were saying as she was turning her camera on and off through the appeal meeting,
and it appeared she was eating and focused on other things during the meeting.
She also made it clear that our pay is based on the bare minimum, and it is great that we do more, but that is not what our pay is based on.
We feel we deserve to get paid the same as the behavioral psychologists at CMH who are a 114.
We have the equivalent education and more job responsibilities at youth and family.
If the county does not want to make all MHPs a 114, maybe the MHPs that youth and family need to be split from the other MHPs as we do at least two positions, if not more, we are responsible to hold the cases and do case management on top of the MHPs role as a therapist.
So,
I would just like to say that we do a lot and we felt very disrespected by the process.
And we would encourage you to look at our pay and to pay us fairly so that we can afford
to live in this county.
And also, a question is, are we being held back because MHPs are predominantly women
and minorities?
And could you boost us to a 114 so at least we can live in this county and get paid for the work that we do. Thank you for your time.
Good evening, I'm Barbara fortune. I am also a mental health professional with community mental health youth and family.
I reside in Western Wayne County into in Canton Township because I can't afford to reside in this county.
And I'd just like to support everything that Jay just said and say that it was a disillusioning
and disappointing process, the JAQ process, and to realize when they say, well, HR will
consider your appeal.
HR is one person.
One person.
I don't know if she even understands what we do at community, mental health, youth
and family.
We save lives.
We save lives every day.
And that's an important thing to consider when you're considering our salaries.
And I heard Commissioner Lamar earlier today talk about you cannot replace 20 years of experience
with a brand new hire.
I've got 24 years and I'm still staying.
I'm still here, even though I'm eligible for retirement.
But I would like some incentive to remain here.
Thank you for your time.
My name is Rachel Kozla and forgive me if I seem a little bit shaky.
I've been working since this morning and came straight from work and I haven't had
a chance to eat dinner, which is on me, but I hope that it also shows my commitment to
serving this county, because I too am a government employee of Washtenaw County. My name again
is Rachel Kozla. I live in York Township, but I am also a mental health professional
at Youth and Family along with Barb and Jade. And I also want to add my comments
about the process that we were recently involved in.
I provide case management, therapy, crisis intervention,
and evidence-based treatment,
often for children experiencing suicidal ideation, trauma,
abuse, and severe emotional dysregulation.
This is critical life-saving work.
work. It is also emotionally and psychologically demanding. Despite the complexities and intensity
of our role, our request for a higher job classification was denied. The decision sends
a clear message that the work we do is not fully valued by the county we serve. Professionals
with similar education backgrounds and credentialing are at higher pay grades and compensated
more fairly by the county. These are my colleagues. Yet we as mental health professionals at youth
and family department at community mental health are underpaid, underappreciated and overextended.
Despite carrying the weight of secondary trauma and performing duties essential to the public
health and safety of this county. So I have to ask this and I echo a little bit of what
Jade said earlier. Is it because we are in a profession that is predominantly held by
women or minorities? Or is it because we serve a population that is economically disadvantaged?
Is it because we serve children that are often forgotten about? Why are, is the Youth
and Family Department, so underrepresented in the pay that we receive, the appreciation,
and also the time that people give to listen to our concerns.
It's also painfully ironic that we work for this county but cannot afford to reside here.
Despite our commitment to making this county better, we are not asking for special treatment.
We are asking for fair recognition for the critical and complex role that we as mental
health professionals at Washtenaw Community Mental Health Youth and Family Department provide
on a daily basis.
Thank you for your time.
Anyone else in the room for public comment?
Good evening.
I'm Barbara Niece-May and I'm the CEO and President of Ipsilanti Meals on Wheels.
My public comment today is on reflection of the topics covered in the working session this evening.
I am humbled by what the county leaders have shared.
And with this few minutes, I wish to bring additional focus to the senior nutrition funds that support Meals on Wheels programs
and their nutrition services throughout the county.
We are grateful for this support and we wish to highlight a white paper I shared in conjunction with other Meals on Wheels programs
programs on August 1st with OCD and with commissioners. In short, we have documented the grim perspective
of delays in funding for our programs. The Office of Community Economic Development can
further share how the funds are distributed and how the amounts that are billed out.
And I can say for our programs, it is material. As a result of this emerging situation,
and consideration is requested for GAP funding
if federal funds are delayed in 2025 and 2026.
It is incredible that in these times
that we have the older adult knowledge,
and I mean that truthfully,
and thanks to you all for bringing it to the voters.
We also look forward to learning
how millage funds can assist in this situation.
Thank you.
Anybody else in the room for public comment?
Good evening, everyone.
Hope everyone's been having a good summer so far.
And it's a reminder that the Johnny Lawrence Summer Jazz Festival is going on at Warlake
Park Nipsey Township, every Friday from 7 to 9.
All right, to the meat of the subject here,
I'm sure you guys are aware of the shootings
that's been happening in Nipsey Township on Tuttle Hill and Marks Road.
Hopefully, you're aware that the two suspects have been arrested and stuff.
And some of those homes that they shot into were actually occupied and I can go horribly wrong
We've heard of that gone wrong before where people been shot little kids been shot dead land in their beds
Those suspects from a Washtenaw County prosecutor has not been charged with felony firearm again
few times
And if he township we I'm asking
commissioner hodge with the support of the other commissioners to ask to bring
employer you to bring the Washtenaw County prosecutor to have him stand where
I am to ask him why he isn't at charging that charge I don't want to hear
from some letter or I've had some phone call and here's what he said he's
going for the state's highest lawyer position in this state he needs to
stand here and explain himself or his actions.
If he's not representing Ipsy Township,
he's not representing the rest of the county either as well.
And I don't think he'll serve the state well as either.
I know this because I had experience
with a person that I know I don't know no longer.
In the past couple of years, they
were found and branded a very large knife against somebody.
and I asked him, why wasn't that a felony?
It was a misdemeanor.
And all I could hear from this person
was how they beat the system and got away
with pulling a big, big knife on somebody.
When you don't charge people properly,
some people have the tendency they got away with it
and will continue to do things again, unfortunately.
And I don't know if you all have any experience
with people who've had firearms
hold on themselves before I personally have when I was younger had a small 22
danger type pistol stuck to my right temple so now so obviously some not
forgot about it the people who have firearms pulled on them were shot at them
will not forget that experience this wash not County prosecutor is
for getting the victims and helping the perpetrators and the crimes. This needs
to be addressed. I'm asking you, especially Commissioner Hajj and all the
other commissioners, to support to bring the Washtenaw County
County prosecutor here to ask them why is any charging that charge. Thank you.
Will you just say your name and I know we know but say it for the record.
Thank you.
Anyone else in the room for public comment?
Ashley, do we have anybody online?
Yes, chair.
First, we have Abigail Allman.
Go ahead, Abigail.
Good evening, commissioners.
My name is Abigail Allman.
The last time I addressed you,
I lived in Ypsilanti Township,
but I have since moved to the city of Detroit.
I work for the county in the Access Department
Community Mental Health as a clinical social worker and intake assessment for both adult teams.
I'm also the unit A chapter chair of AFSCME Local 2733.
I represent Community Mental Health as well as a large majority of the county workforce.
You heard some of my colleagues and union members speak today regarding their process with the JAQ.
I just wanted to come on here and show support for them.
You know, as social workers, we are, and care providers,
we are often, you know, instructed to advocate for our clients,
which, you know, I've had the privilege of learning from them,
specifically how youth and family MHPs provide support to the families of
Washington County.
It has been pretty eye-opening to learn about their,
you know, the expectations of their role and how, you know, it is quite more significant
than other MHPs in the county, you know, taking on three and four, you know, different job
roles that are not necessarily reflected in their position.
And, you know, as social workers and care providers, I think it's courageous and worth,
you know celebrating when you know
We obviously advocate for our clients, but this stigmatize and even discourage to advocate
for ourselves in a better workplace. So that's all. I appreciate their time. I apologize that
I could not be there in person. Thank you.
Thank you. Anyone else online, Ashley?
There's no one else online, Chair.
Okay. At this time, it is Commissioner Fowlow to public participation. Commissioners, Commissioner
Hodg.
Thank you, Chair. I kept a list here. I think I won today with the most constituent of giving public comment.
I'll start to thank President Sharp coming out and introducing us to TIRIS.
So thank you very much and looking forward to working with you. Thank you for coming out.
To the constituent that we're not – this one's not one of my constituents,
but for the person that mentioned the challenges with AAPD in the Sheriff's Office and in the jail,
I think probably the best recommendation is to engage the Sheriff's Office directly or file some sort of complaint.
I think they can provide you more information than we certainly can here.
I think there are other challenges that play that we were not aware of.
If you haven't already done that, I think somebody here could help you and the people sitting at the desks there.
For everyone that came to talk about the mental health professionals, I want to thank you all for your work.
So earlier in my career, I was a clinical social worker at the CMA in the Lansing area, and I had a comparable position to the ones that you're talking about.
So I understand how challenging it can be.
And I appreciate you sharing the difficulties
with the JEQ process and the work environment.
So it's certainly something that we can all talk about
and work on.
So thank you.
Your work is very much appreciated by,
I think, everybody up here.
But I'll say, especially me, is the one social worker
sitting up.
So thank you very much.
Jeremy, I will attempt to have a conversation
with the prosecutor.
Where are you at, Jeremy?
There you are.
OK.
I don't know if we could necessarily
really like do what you're suggesting where you come and happen to stand at the podium
and so we grill them on it, but I would try to expeditiously get information about that
and we could talk more about it. Did I miss anybody? I did? No, those are other notes.
We had one written public comment to respond to as well. It was from Phoenix Mobility related
to the older adults' knowledge and their request or hope that they could be included
than some funding allocation related to transportation.
So just in case anybody missed the written public comment,
that's there too.
It's the time to respond to all the public comments.
So thank you all very much, especially the social worker.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
I didn't know we were keeping square about constituents.
I won today.
You know, you'll win another.
I had no idea that was a competition until today.
Commissioner Sanders?
I had a question about the last employee that spoke about the job reclassifications.
She indicated that they were denied, and that wasn't what I thought I heard from the previous
two, that was the job reclassification denied or was it not provided the level that was
requested.
I think we can't actually have a back and forth. Yeah, so I think that's
an entirely for me. Yeah, I just think that we need to yeah. I want to make sure that if we're
if we're making this information available to the public that we're giving them the actual facts
and so if a job classification was requested and it came back one level higher
and not possibly four levels higher.
We need to be clear with our residents that it wasn't denied.
They just didn't receive what they wanted.
And I also wanted to address,
I wanted to address the narrative
that we continue to get from our employees.
And I believe that they are all committed and hardworking,
but there's a narrative that somehow the county owes our employees a salary that
will allow them to live in the county and I don't know that that's a very safe
narrative especially when we don't require as a condition of employment
that they live here in the county as someone who has I don't know what it
is to work one job, I've had to work two jobs. And I've lived here 36 years. I'm not saying
that it's a, you know, we're, we could be considered a high rent district.
But I do
think it's a, it's, it's, I don't know that it makes a good argument, because that's
not something that is a condition of employment, that we owe you a salary that will allow
you to live here and also there's no guarantee that even if we paid you a
salary that would allow you to live here that you're committing to living here. I
never hear that. I've never heard that nor seen a guarantee that if you were
to get this increase that you want no matter what that is that you're gonna
uproach your life where you are and move here because you've received an
increase so and I want to be clear because we'll have employees walking away
saying Commissioner Sanders doesn't support us that's not it I've taken many
lashes for some of these employees publicly I support you but I just want
to be clear that I don't know any employer that guarantees that they're
to pay you a wage that would allow you to live in any particular area or district and I know I'm
not certain it is a strong argument. When you're talking to us about your skillset, your education
level and things like that, that's something different and that's HR related but the narrative
that you know somehow it's terrible if we don't give you a raise just so you can live in
Washington County, I'm not sure that that's a strong narrative. And it and I
never hear anyone say I'm gonna move as soon as I get that raise. And if I were
you and I weren't living here and I got a raise, I would stay where I was and
save the race. I wouldn't spend it on higher rent necessarily. So I've not
address that in the four years but I just I need to say that thank you. Thank
you Commissioner Robby. Thank you chair appreciate it and thank you to
everybody that came and spoke I just I want to mainly address the,
wow there's
It was like the voice with no disembodied voice.
I wanna speak directly to the staff that showed up today.
I wanna start by saying thank you for coming and speaking.
It is not an easy thing to do to come before this body
as employees of this organization and say what you did.
There I know from talking to other county staff
that there is all kinds of fear
that comes along with coming and speaking in these settings and I want to thank you for your courage
to come forward and to share with us directly. I think that we need an environment at the county
where all employees feel that they can come to that podium and speak their mind to us and not
have any fear of anything happening but anything but us listening and acting. So I want to thank
Thank you for your courage, first and foremost, for coming and speaking out.
I want to say that I fully support your folks that are in your job classification getting
bumps beyond the position that was offered, sounded like 112th level was what was offered
to you.
I fully support you getting paid more than that.
I think that it is the it's not just the job that you do but it's you know it's
the importance of the job that you do it's the amount of hours that you all
put in it is the danger of the job that you do is the emotional strain of the
job that you do it's the emotional strain on your families of the job that
you do and I don't think there's any reason why you know we shouldn't be
giving strong consideration to more pay for your position.
I also want to note that it is somewhat with frustration
that I hear what you've brought forward.
This body didn't really bat an eye
when we had a proposal in front of us
to pay 17 county employees,
half a million dollars structurally,
divided amongst them.
and those are all basically top earners at the county already and you know the
county the board passed that and we gave them all their pay raise and you know
you're not making as much money as those folks do and here you are having to you
know fight and scrape and claw to get what is likely to amount to even if you
go up to 114 not that big of a pay increase in the end so I am very
sympathetic to your advocacy. And I believe that we should not have a double standard at
this body of treating administrative staff with more leniency when it comes to salary
determinations than we do the folks that are, in my opinion, doing the actual work
of serving our residents. So that is something that I definitely have in mind. And I will
just closed by saying it is a goal, a personal goal of mine as one of the nine commissioners
that we do pay our employees a wage that is adequate to live in our county, whether they
choose to live here or not is their choice. But I do believe that it is important that
we pay a salary that allows for people to live in our community. That is the least
we can do and it's a standard I believe that we should uphold. And so I am one of
Only only one of nine, but that is that is what I believe and that's what I wanted to say. So thank you for coming today
Thank you Commissioner Somerville
Thank you chair
Your name plates are not switched
Katie scouts over there and Angela bars over there. Oh
So I just wanted to follow up to a few things
Thank you Barbara for coming. Ipsy Meals on Wheels is located in my district and they
do really great work. And I've talked to Barbara a lot over the last couple of months about
the impact of what's happening at the federal level and state level and how we can fill
gaps and make sure people older adults are fed and not just the bare minimum with
the millage. So I'm looking forward to continued conversations. And to the employees
that spoke. I think what was consistent across the board was the fact that there's not pay equity
among people who do the exact same jobs in different areas of the organization. And I find that
very frustrating. And that type of scenario makes me wish that we had more power as commissioners
to be able to just make something that seems to make a lot of sense to me to provide pay equity in that situation.
So I guess I'm voicing it here. I support you all and I hope that there's something that can be done to provide pay equity for you
because it's really, at the very least, you deserve pay equity, but I think I manage a small office
and I tell people this all the time, just because I'm the chief of staff.
Like there are people that I manage that the office couldn't function without them and the only reason why I can do my job is because they're doing theirs.
And so it's always the people that are lower.
I hate saying it like that because in my eyes the people who answer the phones in my office and answer the emails are actually more important than I am.
And so that's how I feel about all of our employees at the county, the people who are
actually doing the work that impacts the day-to-day functions are the most important.
And I think that should be reflected in the way that you're paid.
So I, and I know how hard it is for you to come here out of fear of, you know, like
retaliation and I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it is a scary position
to be in when you're an employee and you're not sure if you can speak out with
being retaliated against.
And so thank you for doing that.
And I think the points made too about the way certain positions, and this is a national problem,
jobs that are typically held by women and minorities are often on the lower of the pay scale and just
not considered that important even though those are the positions that hold up the world.
So thank you for coming, and I hope we can get you guys pay equity.
Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner Somerville. Commissioner Maciaski.
Thanks, Chair. I just wanted to thank Barb from FC Meals on Wheels for coming in. And I
guess, Greg, I want to follow up to better understand the funding flow, because that's
a little bit different than what I've experienced in the past in terms of disruption. So I just
want to give you more shadow. I'm going to ask about that outside the meeting. But
But I have to know Deputy Treasurer, Tyrus, I have a history with Tyrus, because Tyrus
was supposed to be the new emcee at Older Michiganians Day next year.
And now he shows up as Deputy Treasurer.
So I know Tyrus from the aging world.
So it's good to see you welcome.
I'll tell the Treasurer she got a good one.
Tyrus is a really good guy and welcome to Washington, I'm kind of glad I had him
here. And even though we're losing you out of the aging space to be here at the
county's fantastic. So welcome.
Thank you, Commissioner Marcheski.
Commissioner Light,
I would like to thank everyone who came out today.
Okay. For our employees that showed up, thank you for showing us and speaking out. I am always
available if you do not want to come forward and you think that there will be some kind of
retaliation. I'm here for it. And I will advocate for you because it can get uncomfortable.
We've had employees who have come to share and it just wasn't so great afterwards. So
thank you, um, fall me if you need me, text me, email me, send smoke messages, I'll be
there. I show up in person. So, um, I understand, I worked in social services and education,
and so definitely, um, some underpaid, uh, some underpaid careers, and so, um, I understand,
and now the conversation has been had. Everybody's been put on notice, so it
heard and just call me. The next thing I wanted to say is Barbara, thank you. I know we have a gap
to feel and I'm down with being a gap filler. So I am going to hustle, bustle, and run and try to
figure out a way, you know, to get us to the finish line and making sure that we don't experience
what we have presented in front of us.
So thank you and myself and my colleagues,
we are all working on it.
Jeremy, thank you for always showing up
and giving us and providing us with information.
Our community violence has been on the uproar here lately.
Additionally, I know you spoke of that there were
you know, some shootings in Tuttle Hill and I believe you said March Road in Ipsley Township
and then also in Ipsley Township at the end of the month in July, there were two fatal
shootings, one on E-Course Road in Ipsley-Lanny near the McDonald's, I think the McDonald's
Park and Lot, one a couple of weekends ago at Anderson Villa Apartments as well in Ipsley
township so our violence has been on the rise and I think I'm going to circle
this back to our community violence intervention teams are not being provided
resources and stipends and being able to go out and work in the community and
and being able to prevent because community violence
intervention is a preventative measure.
They go out and they get into the community.
And so that's something that they
haven't been afforded to do.
They haven't been able to do because they haven't received
the funding that has been provided to them for grants.
and so I bring that up to circle back to making sure that I state that our
sheriff's office, this is my last time talking about this publicly,
allocate the
funds, provide the funds to our community violence intervention team
because we don't need to continue to have a up war in numbers of fatal
shooting is ridiculous so provide the community violence intervention team the
funding I'll make this analogy when I was an undergrad I would receive
scholarships or financial aid and I would want to utilize funding for one
semester from another semester and they would say you can't do that
whether it be utilizing new money for your past you know balance you couldn't
do it or using you just can't do it. So we have past funds that were allocated
from the state to the Community Violence Intervention Team that is now
being used for current community violence intervention that has been made up along
the way some kind of way we're not doing that so I just want to say get it
together allocate the funds because it's my last time saying it we're not doing
that and I believe that this will eliminate if we are able to continue
you the work that has been done.
And then that rotates into where our,
where Elisabeth will be able,
where he won't even have to go about with these charges
and wondering why this is a misdemeanor, why this is not,
but he has to follow the law.
And he can't just decide how he's gonna charge,
what he has to charge.
There is work behind that.
But I began some education in a paralegal degree.
It is lots of work.
It is lots of things that go behind it.
He doesn't just get to say, hey, this is that.
But I know he will be more than open to have that conversation and to be, it'll be
justified and it'll be legal.
So just, you can go to his office, you can call him, you can email him, but we will
make sure that we reach out so that we can get that information.
I believe that is all that I have.
Thank you, Commissioner Beaman.
Thank you, Chair. I want to thank everyone who came forward to speak tonight.
I apologize, I didn't get the name of the mother from Pittsfield,
but I would like to follow up on that because that was deeply concerning the care in the county jail.
I would like to have some answers to that and a little bit more information.
So feel free to reach out directly to our new WEE Treasurer, Mr. Walls.
Great to have you here.
I got to meet you the other week, but it's great to have you here in person.
So thank you for joining us for this evening.
For Barb from Meals on Wheels, thanks for coming forward and everything that you do.
I'm deeply, deeply concerned for the nutrition of our seniors, of our entire community a bit,
But as of our seniors, so thank you for coming forward and being such a vocal advocate for our staff.
I'm the commissioner that always says we don't make widgets. We have services and people are behind those services. And so I deeply thank you for what you are providing to the community.
I'm very concerned for the future of CMH in general from the presentation that we had
in the prior session and the caseloads and the workloads and all of those things.
So I'm very upset to hear that you feel you weren't valued because that's where you
are and that's where you should be.
You should be valued in your work every day and there should be dialogue and there
There should be questions answered and we don't necessarily always get the answer that we want, but if we're not having that back and forth, that's beyond frustrating. So I'm very sorry to hear that that's happening.
And I hope that there can be a greater resolution in the future and to Commissioner Somerville's point, I wish we had a little bit more poll and those things because you just do you do the work.
You do the work, you're why we're here as a board.
You're here to do the work that truly matters in our community.
So just thank you for continuing and coming forward
in all of those different pieces.
And I'm just going to add a little bit, a little tiny nugget.
We still don't have a budget from the state.
So if anyone tuning in at home wants to reach out to their state representative or specifically
to Matt Halt, that would be great so that we can make budgetary decisions as we will have
a forced government shutdown come October 1 if we don't have a budget.
July 1 is when it was due.
Let's see today's date.
Today's date is August 6.
Over a month, we still don't have the information. We're waiting. Schools are waiting. Everyone's waiting. So if you can tune in at home, want to give them a call. Please do. Thanks.
Thanks, Commissioner Beaman. Spoken like a true instructor, professor. Your work is late. Get it in.
Commissioner Somerville.
Okay, I just have a small funny things I forgot until Commissioner Maciejewski spoke up, when
Treasurer Sharp introduced me to the new deputy and I found out he had experience in the older
adult space.
I jokingly, half serious, encouraged him to apply for the office of aging director of
Goliath.
All jokes aside, I did share this briefly when I ran into them outside of work setting
I'm just that I'm excited to work with both of you on how we can get to that.
One of those core issues that we decided are going to be part of our work with older adults
in preventing and eliminating homelessness for people, especially homeowners and preventing
foreclosure.
So I'm excited even, you know, I think it's great actually that we have people in
a different department that understand the older adults face, especially when we know
housing is such a big piece of the puzzle.
So, just welcome to the county. Welcome back, I guess. It sounds like welcome back. So, just excited to have you. And I was going to not bring this up, but Chair Scott thought it would be, would lighten up the mood.
So, a commissioner trying to steal a new employee for a different department. It was a joke. Thank you.
Thank you, Commissioner Somerville. Any other commissioner follow up to public participation?
I'll go real quick. I did. I did tell Commissioner Somerville sometimes it's nice to have a little levity. I'll try not to bring us back down too far.
Debbie DeWalls, welcome. And I think it was a brilliant idea to try to steal you but unfortunately Treasurer Sharp got you first. So I'm happy that you're here. I'm happy that you're doing that work with her.
or you guys look like you will be a fun team.
Jessica, Kelly, that was the Fitzfield mom,
Commissioner Beaman.
I don't know if you're still here,
but your story was brave and honest
and you're being the best mama bear
that you can be out here advocating for your child.
And I see you and I appreciate that
and we're gonna try to see what we can do
to connect you with people so you can be sure that your son is getting services that he needs.
Okay. Thank you, Barbara Neath May for coming. As always, Jeremy, I'm always interested to hear
like if like boots on the ground what we're hearing from you. And then finally, to the county
the employees who came, I want to say that I do know that it is difficult to stand in
front of a board like this and make comments. It's also sort of a scary thing to do. And
I also know that compensation is one of the most important ways that we value people.
And it's also one of the most complex pieces to get right. I want to mention here, note
that I talked to administrator Dill just on the side a little bit here who's
going to get us more information soon he assures us that that will happen and he's
talked with our HR director who's here tonight too so I want you to know that
we are thinking about how we review compensation structures, budget, realities
but that being said I do want to recognize that sometimes what seems
fair on paper doesn't always feel fair in practice and so I want to continue to
stay in conversation about about this and I want you to know that your voice
matters and that while I might not be able to promise an immediate resolution
to this I can promise more transparency and more advocacy and assure you that
this is something I take seriously. So thank you for coming and advocating for
you, your professions, and ultimately the people you serve. So thank you. That is the
end of Commissioner Fala to public participation at 8.25. It's a record for
us right now.
That being said, you can all see the agenda here and at the
end of the agenda is a closed session, but I'm going to move that closed session forward.
Is anybody Commissioner Hodge? Thank you, Chair. I move that we go in a closed session to discuss
one, Fox v. Washtenaw foreclosure litigation with Council and two, negotiation strategy for
union negotiations. Great. Do I have a second? Would I have a roll call about please?
Commissioner Beaman. Yes.
Commissioner Hogg. Yes.
Commissioner LaBar. Yes.
Commissioner Light. Yes.
Commissioner Maciejewski. Yes.
Commissioner Robbie.
Commissioner Sanders.
If we must.
Commissioner Scott.
Commissioner Somerville.
Oh.
She's already going down. Okay, so what is that motion passed so so what this means if you're here is that we
go into closed session in a downstairs conference room and we'll be back upstairs when the closed
session is done if you're watching at home. I think you just see a blank screen. I'd really
I'd really like to get some, like, some, some, there is.
There's a background music. There's a method. Andrew's saying we have it. I want music. I want
some nice jazz. Yes. Okay. We'll see y'all soon.
Yeah, this
is the best we've ever owned a picture until it starts.
So we've got a lot of work to do.
We've got a lot of things to do.
We've got a lot
of work to do.
We've got a lot to do.
We've got a
lot
to do.
Yeah.
your own experience.
You know that,
and you're on it.
You're doing it.
Yeah,
you're doing it.
I'm
trying to help
you.
Yeah.
I'm trying
to help you.
You're
doing it.
You're doing it.
We're calling the meeting back to order. I thank you for waiting for us in closed session.
Next item on the agenda is liaison reports. Any liaison reports? No? Yes? Okay. Commissioner
Hodge, I tried, friends. It's only 9.45 and we should do the liaison report.
All right, well, there's people waiting to present to us. I'll make it quick here.
So I got some good stuff from the health department, as usual, and we still have friends
from the health department and the audience there. I'll be quick about it because we're
going to see more of the budget information soon from them, but I did want to highlight
a couple of things. We have this document here that we could send out, but this part
we can accurately be able to see it. But it goes over some of the positions that are going
to be held because of funding challenges. That includes some of the Washtenaw Health
Project positions that we talked about before, but also it includes health equity, a health
equity position. So my hope is that since we value health equity here, we can find
way to make that happen with the budget. Another thing that was useful or interesting from the
Health Department is we passed a resolution honoring the 10th anniversary of the Washtenaw
County Dental Clinic at the last Board of Health meeting. I won't read it since, you know,
it's okay, I don't got to read it. But congratulations for the 10th anniversary
of the Washtenaw County Dental Clinic. We also had summer health day today.
All right, summer health day was a good day at Washtenaw County Health Department.
I think it was bigger than the last two years whether it was also better because it was rainy. I think one of the years
No cornhole this time, but they had other games and pigtak toe and all that good stuff. Oh connect four. So that was fun
So thank you and congratulations to the health department again on another successful summer health day
Pictures to come plenty of pictures to come another one
We have I'll be quick on this one an advisory council reparations meeting the one from July that we had
that we are entering into a partnership with a unit at U of M that's going to provide us
some pro bono research assistance with the work there. So no cost to us at all. So thank
you to that group and thank you to where's Derek at. Thank you to Derek, wherever Derek
is.
OCD, so from Community Action Board, we haven't had a meeting since the last
one of these, but they did want us to highlight two events that are coming up.
One of them is Ipsy Food Fest, which is on August 9th from 1230 to 730.
And then we have the Summer Fest, the Joe Doolan Summer Fest also coming up soon.
So stay tuned for those things.
And that concludes my liaison report.
Thank you Commissioner LaBarre.
At COC we had our meeting and the big thing to highlight there is two full one.
Then the HUD budget that they are working on in Congress right now is going to be detrimental.
It will largely be detrimental with slight a hand in terms of not a lot of cuts in some
places numerically for programs, but then, you know, 26 percent cut in staff and other
hurdles that will exacerbate the challenge.
The other thing is they are coming after the tenant-based rental assistance.
And so I don't want to be a broken record, but it's bad news.
It's detailed bad news, and there's a lot of it.
The other thing to keep in mind just as it relates to COC is there was some discussion
of this executive order that President Trump has signed that basically criminalizes
as people who are homeless.
And I think that will exacerbate
a number of mental health issues, public safety issues.
It's, again, very detrimental policy.
Maybe the one saving grace is that it's an executive order
that's, I think, likely not really something
that can be enforced the same way,
but someone will get hurt by it somewhere soon.
And so I just flag it because it was obviously discussed with COC. That was about it. Sure. Thanks.
Thank you very much. Any other liaison reports? Okay, we'll move on to the report from the County Administrator.
Thank you, Chair. I'll be joined by Brady Peck today. He'll give you an update on our older adults millage. I think he has a couple of slides.
While that gets teed up by just a couple real quick hitters for you all in your inbox should be a mid-year organizational update.
That update is a takeoff on what we've accomplished year to date and it is using or leveraging your information from the conversation that we had setting your priorities as a guide.
So, take a look at that. It's planned to go to the full organization in the morning.
Animal Control, we will be sending a communication with updated data metrics to our partners,
and that will be a precursor to face-to-face discussions that I will have with them
related to having a more balanced funding strategy. Lastly, you heard Shona Terazus
Let's talk this earlier in our meeting about the Townsley Health Tour.
I was a part of that tour this morning.
I want to thank her and she kind of singletary for taking some of their time and some of
their talent to walk me through not only the building but the budget.
And I think that is a tremendous opportunity for this body to lean in and do something
transformational for our community.
So I look forward to having something back for you all to take a look at.
I've talked to the chair about it.
And I think between the two of us, we can co-author something for you all to consider.
So with that, I'll turn it over to Brady, just has a couple of quick slides and that will
conclude my report.
All right.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you.
Thank you, Administrator.
So last meeting in July, you all approved the millage operating and operating framework.
And so here's an update on how we've been operationalizing that over the last month.
month. So, we posted the Director of Aging Services. We had 78 applicants that closed,
I believe, yesterday. There's a number of applicants we were extremely excited about.
We had a transportation RFP that closed last Friday. We received four proposals. Senior
Center allocations. Those contracts have all gone out to the senior centers. Four
of them have been executed in those disbursements prior in progress. The remaining six contracts
projects are in progress. Largely, those centers need to take it to their boards for approval.
Food bank allocation that is in progress, we are receiving regular invoices from food
gatherers and the skip allocation is complete and those dollars are out the door.
Upcoming milestones, Director of Aging Services, we are planning to have the first round
of interviews later this month, early September, pending schedules for the interview committee
and also the applicants. Second round interviews if necessary later in September and an offer
late September, early October to our preferred candidate. Transportation RFP, the team is
currently scoring those proposals and will bring our funding recommendations back to
you the next meeting, September 3rd. Senior nutrition program, we're planning to transition
that to the Office of Aging for the policy framework in Q4 of this year once they
begin their new fiscal year and also once we have the Director of Aging Services
on board. With that, any questions?
Thank you, Ms. Somerville. Yeah, no, I just appreciate the update and I just want to
thank our staff for all the hard work. Thank you. Thank you. Any other
questions? Thank you so much. Yeah, a lot of work we've set out for you to do
and like always, you're rising to the occasion. Thank you. Thank you.
that concludes my report okay fantastic the next item on the agenda okay yeah so in
terms of the animal services update that you just gave us what so what can you
repeat so you were saying basically you're going to start meeting with the
local jurisdictions what's the timeline on that what are the
conversations that you're planning to have.
I mean, we need monies to start flowing
in those local jurisdictions.
Correct.
Right now, it's my plan to make sure
that those meetings have concluded
during the month of August.
So that gives us just a few more weeks to move through that.
We have updated data and metrics.
As you all know, I want to leverage
That information to make sure that we're talking about those conversations in the right way and
that we're talking about what it will take to effectively fund the animal control program
in Washtenaw County. And to me, that implies that our community partners are going to step
up and meet us in the middle on funding. That has not always been the case. I hate
that I'm saying that in public, but that's really the elephant in the room as we think
about what comes next. I hope to have an update for you guys at the September third meeting.
I will look forward to discussing this further on September 3rd.
I'd like to assure everybody that even though we're discussing it further,
I don't think it's in anybody's plans to do like the Denmark Zoo. So
you should just Google the Denmark Zoo and then there you go. Commissioner Light?
I just wanted to let the administrator know that if he needed any suggestions or recommendations
with the animal control and with our partners' partnering, I have a lot of them.
I may need some backup, but I'll come to you for backup soon.
Okay, great.
The next item on the agenda is the report of the chair of the board of commissioners.
And I do actually have something for this evening.
I've asked Pam Smith to come and talk to us about BOC funding strategies.
I think we've talked a lot about coordinated funding, coordinated informed funding, etc.
And it strikes me that sometimes what we've done from the stable is a little bit haphazard.
So I've asked Pam to come and talk to us with her experience as a major, an organization that
was a major funder and now a member of our county staff.
So we can have some ideas about how we want to move forward,
talk about funding from this table.
I'm very excited about the conversation
that's just gonna open for us here
and super excited to have you here.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate that.
So thank you.
My name is Pam Smith.
I'm the Human Services Administrator.
Thank you to Commissioner Beaman
for representing New York Township.
Appreciate that.
And this conversation was just born out of a number of conversations I had with Chair Scott,
talking about a wide variety of different kinds of things, post-coordinated funding.
And so I just kind of wanted to go through a few different funding strategies.
What we have tonight, although I only have five minutes, I know,
we do have the luxury of time in talking about this,
and that's why it was important for me to try to get it in front of you now while we still had time.
So the new human services partnership, as you know, where do I point this?
Oh, okay.
Many of you know about the new human services partnership.
It is set to expire in June 30th of 2027.
So that gives us about 18 months to really talk to you as the board of commissioners on what you want your strategies to be moving forward.
It's currently about a $15.2 million investment over five years in a partnership with the city
of Ann Arbor.
You agreed to these different focus areas in 2022, safety net, high impact, and mini-grants.
So those are currently the new Human Services Partnership.
But it is a significant amount of money, and so it's a great time now to talk about
strategy and what you want to happen in the future.
So, I thought some of the great places to begin would be with these options.
Internal County Coordinated Funding, a lot of you have talked about Coordinated Funding
and what it had done.
I did operationalized Coordinated Funding.
I was on the original committee that launched that and so it was interesting to me when
I came here to the county.
I was interested in understanding how much money went out from the county and how
you all tracked it. So we'll talk about that in a second. A BOC approved focus
areas. So now in two more years you'll have the chance to say is poverty,
racism, and trauma where we want to stay? Or is there other things that we need
to discuss now so we know what we're going to do when the time comes? And
then a mandated financial review is just kind of a best practice among
grant makers and funders. So I wanted to put that just kind of in your
thought process. So what would internal county coordinated funding look like? So
it would be a coordination across all county department's grant making to
optimize an understanding and understand really the cross departmental
investments that are being made. So examples of departments that may
currently make investments OCD, CMH, administration, the BOC makes investment,
The sheriff, the treasurer may also make investments.
So, if we understood where all outgoing funding was going,
we could really maximize the impact of taxpayer dollars,
we could reduce duplicative funding,
and we could more effectively deploy taxpayer dollars
in our community.
Just something to think about.
The BOC approved focus areas.
So, I think it's really important to think about
what is the Board of Commissioners,
is your vision and vision?
What kind of collective impact do you want to make in the community?
By being mission and vision aligned, you're going to be able to make more collective impact happen.
You'll acknowledge that funding is finite.
I know that you guys get countless requests for dollars, for important initiatives, for new grants, for all kinds of things.
And when you acknowledge that funding is finite
and you only have X amount of dollars
and you have talking points about that,
it predetermines the spend.
And I know that there's always going to be
unplanned and catastrophic pandemics or whatever,
where things would have to change.
But you are able to really take the time now
to think about what areas of focus are really important.
So, if you stick with poverty, racism, and trauma, that's the current NHSP focus areas.
You could think about health, education, and financial stability.
As Administrator Dill says, we are the safety net of the safety net.
That could be a focus area.
But when you agree upon the scope, what it really allows you as the Board of Commissioners
to do to have clear funding award decisions, you'd have improved ability to aggregate
great outcomes and really rely on impact. You can talk about Washtenaw County as a whole,
not what is CMH doing, not what is OCD doing, but what is the county? I think Commissioner
Robbie, you say almost at every meeting, what kind of impact is the county making
and are you being recognized for it? So I know that there's probably a general fund
ledger out there somewhere that would tell you where every dollar is being spent
in the community. I think that would be pretty powerful to know. And then you'd
have increased transparency for taxpayers on county priorities for human
services. The mandated financial review is just a best practice and it builds on
the precedent that was set during Washington coordinated funding time. So
before funds were promised or granted to a partner by the BOC or any
Department, a complete financial review would be completed before a resolution would be presented.
You want to do this because you want to test the organization's emphasis on financial stamina.
You want to know what their operational capacity is. You want to know about sustainability of
operations. If you make a grant in 2025, are they going to be around in 2026 to make sure
that the program happens? Is there financial accountability, audits, financial reviews,
and what's the staff expertise like.
And again, it's not to be punitive.
It's so you have a better understanding
before you give someone a check
of where your dollars are going.
Benefits of the county then
is you're mitigating financial risk.
You're ensuring that the partner
has the appropriate cash flow.
You have due diligence
that demonstrates responsible stewardship
of taxpayer dollars.
And for the grantee,
you have a capacity building opportunity
that illuminates compliance to best practices
And it gives them additional information and professional development opportunities as well as areas for attention, possibly.
So this is just a primer, my grandma probably would say a primer.
But we have a lot of really great work happening in Washtenaw County.
We have a tremendous amount of expertise among nonprofit directors.
They need to be supported. They need to understand what the rules of the game are.
Like, if you think about in sports, football has a field, soccer has a pitch, basketball
has a court, right, a baseball has a diamond, but everyone understands when you walk into
those boundaries of that particular game, you know the rules, you know what you're
supposed to do when you enter that arena or that court.
And I think by having some of these things in line, then you will have not only the
the rules of engagement delineated for people,
but they'll know how to step into that court
and deliver top-notch results for you.
So just food for thought.
I think there might be some questions.
And I mean, so colleagues,
so you know that the idea here was to start this
is like, this is the beginning of a discussion
to have like this.
Because I think we spend a lot of time
thinking about what we're gonna do
about funding external organizations
and sometimes mis-focusing on internal things.
But I think if we knew the arena field pitch of Diamond
that we were playing on,
it would clear up some of those things
and we would have a good idea as a board.
And especially the idea of the coordinated funding
with the county.
And it might make it clear for everybody
what the county does if we have an idea
to have that narrative.
Um, so this is sort of the beginning of a series of conversations. I'm hoping we can have to talk about what our priorities might be and things like that. And I think this.
I said, like, 5 minutes and it was so good. So, thanks, commissioner Robbie already indicated he's got a question here.
Section out of question given the late hour, I will just say, I fully support this effort and I fully support everything that you've said.
This absolutely needs to be done for the county and it would make our ability to do this work, you know, just it would amplify our ability to do this work so much more.
So thank you for presenting the outlines of what could be a really cool policy and plan for our county. Thank you, chair for bringing this conversation forward. I fully support this effort.
anything else for for Pam Smith before she okay so much I really appreciate the
opportunity thank you and obviously it is late and so I'm not gonna you know ask
anybody to have a protracted conversation but if you would review maybe
what Pam said here today and start thinking about your own ideas on the
subject I'll be interested to talk to each and every one of you about next
sex. Next item on the agenda is a special order of business. So first is a public hearing on
creating the gross farm historic ordinance. I call the hearing open. Any comments on this hearing
here at the meeting?
Okay. I've seen on that public hearing as well as the new public hearing
on amending the Washington County property assessed clean energy base program. It feels
It's funny, I'm getting the gable.
Any comments on that here today for this public hearing?
Okay, that hearing is closed.
And finally a resolution to set a public hearing
on Broadway Park-Brownfield plan for September 3rd.
Let's just move that.
Yeah, can somebody move that please?
No, support.
And we do have, we can have discussion on that.
Any discussion on that?
Okay. That's all those in favor. Please say aye. Does it have to be voice, voice, role? Sorry, I was wrong. I was as soon as they connected. I was like, I knew it was a role. All right, action.
Commissioner Hodge. Yes.
Commissioner Labar. Yes.
Commissioner Light. Yes.
Commissioner Matiaski. Yes.
Commissioner Robbie.
Commissioner Sanders.
Yes.
Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda is appointments. Would somebody like to move the
appointments?
All right.
Discussion?
Mr. Robby.
Just a quick factual correction. This is immaterial probably, but I just wanted to note that Susan
Susan Bryan is not a reappointment to the position that we are re-appointing her due.
We are appointing her to the position that was formally held by Susan Lackey who resigned
mid-term and so she's, Susan Bryan is being appointed to complete the remainder of Susan
Lackey's term.
Okay.
So I just wanted to correct that on the appointment document.
Okay.
Okay. Any other discussion? I can do a voice with that one, right? Roll, roll, roll.
Roll, roll.
Commissioner LaBar. Yes.
Commissioner Light. Commissioner Matiasky. Yes.
Commissioner Robbin. Commissioner Thanders. Commissioner Scott. Yes.
Commissioner Somerville. Yes.
Commissioner Beaman. Yes. Commissioner Haas. Yes. Appointments there. Okay, great. Consent
agenda is the next. Anybody want to move the consent agenda? Move. Thank you. All right.
All those in favor, I can do a voice vote on that one. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.
Any opposed? All right, item passes regularly.
We have no first readings and no final readings. So under three single reading, a resolution authorizing
the 2025-26, indigent public defense budget compliance plan, b, a resolution ratifying the
community corrections comprehensive plan, c, a resolution ratifying the submission and
acceptance of the Michigan health endowment fund behavioral health initiative grant, d,
resolution authorizing the 2526 state
child care fund budget from trial
court e resolution to approve the award
of two million two hundred twenty five
excuse me two million two hundred and
fifty thousand of opioid settlements
from health department after resolution
authorizing the creation of an opioid
settlement advisory committee from
health department g resolution to
adopt an ordinance designing designating
Growing Groves Farm as Washtenaw County Local Historic District, age a resolution authorizing
the application of the Mission Department of Environmental and Environment Great Lakes
and Energy Grant to support brownfield activities, I resolution accepting the Weatherization
Assistance Program Pre-Weatherization Grant from OCED, J resolution to accept $25,000
grant from Huntington Bank for economic stabilization progress, K, a resolution
allocating budgeted housing and homelessness dollars to support the
continuing care winter sheltering task force, L, a resolution adopting
amendments to the Washtenaw County Property Access Clean Energy PACE
program from resiliency office,
and a resolution setting the 25 Washtenaw
county millage rate for here on Clinton Metro Metropolitan Authority from finance and resolution
up to in the Washtenaw County capital asset policy from finance O resolution to adopt the revised
Americans with Disabilities Act compliance policy from court counsel P resolution to adopt the
revised holiday provisions policy from corporation council Q a resolution to adopt the revised
payment of interns policy from Corporation Council are a resolution celebrating August 26th as Women's
Equality Day, ask a resolution recognizing Hazel Sanders as Michigan Community Action Volunteer
of the Year, tee a resolution honoring the life and legacy of Gwen Neistun,
you a resolution honoring Jennifer McCool upon retirement from Washtenaw County via resolution
celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the summer works program and approval of claims support
yeah I believe I did but a resident okay I reread G for the record a resolution to adopt
the ordinance on the gross farm designation I still support it
coming, but we'll give to that and we'll give to that.
What would you like to pull for separate consideration?
Sometimes you're wrong, but you're not really going to believe me.
I have to think about this one. Hang on.
Oh, item H probably? Yeah, what about that one?
Let's pull that one. And then actually if we could also pull item Q.
HQ. What do you know? That's the in-term policy. Just those two for me.
B and C please. B is in Boyd and C is in Charlie.
That's in the
Okay, please chair
in fact. Yes, K is in Katie the name which I believe you also have yes
I'm sorry, can I add each?
Oh, sorry, I don't hear that
Or he did it
Yeah, thank you. I think that I'm going to support all these. I just have a quick question
on the opioid settlement funds specifically for,
I don't have it in front of me,
but I'd asked you about it earlier, Amanda.
There was that one company that's doing MAT
and I believe that they're receiving
quarter million dollars.
And I just want to make sure I understand
what we're giving them money for
in the sense of, obviously,
they know what Medicaid-assisted treatment is, but is it because they're a for-profit
company, are we basically hiring them to provide a specific service for a specific number of
people? How is that structured through that contact?
Sure. I will attempt to answer that, Commissioner Robby. And also, I'm joined by Dr. Marquez,
as our medical director who's been very involved in this work and really has been leading much
of it.
Therapeutics, LLC.
Please chime in, yes.
Your question is related to Therapeutics, LLC.
So this is an organization that provides treatment services, particularly in this case, medication
assisted treatment.
It also is a what's considered a sudden, sorry, substance use disorder health home.
And it is an existing provider of these services.
Many of the services they provide have been typically supported by our local PHP, the
Community Mental Health Partnership of Southeast Michigan.
they have experienced quite a bit of funding reductions, and they're no longer supporting this program for people who do not have Medicaid.
And so what they are requesting in their proposal is to be able to provide MAT, peer support services, telehealth services for people who are not eligible for Medicaid
and would otherwise not be able to pay or have coverage for these services.
And I believe they're proposing to serve an additional 40 individuals with treatment services.
Thank you. How does that... Oh, did you have anything to add?
Okay. How does that break down in terms of, like, are we paying a normal rate for those services?
Or, I mean, I'm just trying to ascertain, like, I feel like sometimes with, especially when we get money to nonprofits,
there's an element of you know sort of like one-to-one service provision that
we're paying for and there's an element of sometimes of like helping to support
their administrative costs for the nonprofit and I'm trying to understand
like because this is a for-profit it's a little bit unusual in my opinion it
wouldn't be unusual if it were like a contract to provide services so I mean
if, you know, if their plan is, okay, we're going to serve 40 people, you know, my questions
are like, how do we determine that those 40 people are, right? Do they have to be Wachnaw
County residents to receive those services? What are the criteria and then also like,
what is the cost of providing the care to those 40 people? And does this dollar amount
100% cover that cost or is there excess that's going somewhere else?
So, first of all, in terms of who would be eligible to submit a proposal in response to the RFP, there was no – they were eligible to submit a proposal even as a for-profit organization.
And also, there were obviously requirements amount around the details that they had to provide in terms of a work plan, in terms of a budget.
The review committee that reviewed all of the proposals submitted, reviewed all aspects
of the proposal, including the budget, and certainly looked at many of the budgets because
we had way more in requests than we actually had available to fund.
And so budgets were looked at very specifically, ensuring that the amount that was being
asked for not only was a reasonable amount for what they were proposing, but also
So that it really aligned with the priorities that we identified through our needs assessment
and through what are the allowable expenses.
So that was all taken into consideration.
And you'll see that the amount of funding that they're receiving is in line with what
other programs are receiving, in fact, a little bit less in comparison to some of the programs.
So, certainly the budget was reviewed and felt to be reasonable in terms of the services
that they were proposing to provide and the number of people that they were proposing
to serve.
But I guess, like, is it a one-to-one, like, are we purchasing services from them?
We're purchasing, like, treatment services for additional people.
For 40 people.
Yeah.
And the cost of providing services to 40 people is the $200 and whatever thousand dollars.
And that's just one-to-one the cost of providing the service.
There's nothing else going anywhere else.
Do you recall the details of the budget?
I don't have the details of the budget.
But obviously it's the service.
There are always other expenses that kind of go to support the delivery of services.
But again, from my recollection and looking at the notes, there was nothing unusual or
out of place in terms of the budget and what they were proposing compared to other programs
that we reviewed.
I guess for a future reference in terms of like what I would like love to see is I
think when it comes to a for-profit company that is presenting themselves for funding,
it makes me a little bit uncomfortable to fund them in this way.
I think it would make more sense to have like, I know we did it as an RFP, but like an RFP for
service and have various bidders that are providing a service applied to be the service providers
for a, you know, one-to-one service that we're trying to get funded. It's, to me,
feels unusual to like fund a for-profit company in the context of funding nonprofits and
and public entities that are applying for a program
and a fund base, this is, you know,
so it just feels unusual to me
that we're giving money to a for-profit entity.
Again, if the rationalization is there's 40 people
and this is paying for those 40 people
to get services over the course of,
I believe it's two years?
Three.
Three years, so I can live with that.
It's just this format is unusual to me and I feel like there could be a better way of doing it if you wanted to provide opportunities for
companies to provide services to our residents in that way.
Thank you for that feedback. I will just point out that they have been funded in the past by community mental health partnership of
treatment providers in our county and so really I think being kind of broad in
terms of looking at who are the treatment providers who has a good track
record and experience providing these services is is important and they they
have many of those they meet many of those criteria. Yeah and I don't think
that anything you said I don't disagree with anything you said I think that's
that may be the case. I just think that making sure that we're, I would like to see us fund
like if we have a specific number of people that we want served, then we say what companies
can provide the service. And we put that out and say who can provide the service? Great,
therapeutics all see. You came in at the lowest bid to provide the service. We'll
provide, you provide the service. It feels weird that we're saying here's a bunch of
money. You're saying you're going to do this thing. I know we have that we're
to see this committee to make sure that they're following through on it, so there are some
checks and balances, but it just doesn't feel like a normal process for procurement.
And so whether or not, you know, the PIHP is doing this or the CMH is doing this doesn't
change my opinion of the guardrail, I feel like that is needed for when for-profit companies
are asking for public money.
So I'm going to vote yes, but I have that because.
Okay, well, yeah, thank you and just for clarification
Please know that we worked with purchasing through the whole process and followed all of the procurement policies and procedures of the county
I will just add that I feel really good about the way the RFP process worked on it
worked for this and
The proposals were very broad, which is maybe why you're seeing
I mean, it was, there was an RFP, but it provided a broad,
There was a number of different ideas that people had out there. So it wasn't like we were
just saying, give us an RFP to do this one thing. There was an RFP and a number of different
programs and ideas presented were in wellness. And I'll just have my own little other editorial.
Some Pete companies that are for profit make less profit than some of places we know in
towns that are non-profit, big employers, maybe.
OK, any other questions on that page?
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Jimena.
Thank you, Juan.
I know a lot of work went into getting the recommendations
to us, so I wanted to thank you and everyone that worked on it.
Andrew, you worked on it, too.
And anybody else in the room worked on it?
Sure, Scott.
Thank you, too.
And thank you to everybody that's not there with the camera.
Thank you to everybody that's not here that worked on us.
There's a lot of work.
I appreciate the recommendations, and I'm glad that we're able to move forward.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Any further discussion?
Thank you.
Any other discussion on any other BPD?
Mr. Rodgers.
Thank you.
Jay, I know it's a small grant, but just wondering, I know, I know that we've had some recent announcements about businesses that have closed or that are announcing closure, somewhat related to
impacts from the pandemic.
What is that is that what this money is going to be used for.
And how micro, I mean, 30 businesses, $25,000, not a lot of money for business.
So it will be used to help stabilize the businesses.
This is round three.
We've had two other grants before this that'll help them.
So this is to help them find technical assistance as far as if they need to add a position.
How do you need to add a position?
So it's really looking at 30 of the 80 businesses that we've worked with and as and helping them
just grow and stabilize. So as far as the grant money, it will go to the technical
assistance providers and give them a consulting. Okay. Thank you.
Justin or Commissioner Hodges. Thank you. Hey, that's fine.
My late night familiarity with table. We're all friends here.
Thank you. Since you're at the podium, you know, I really appreciate the
the economic opportunity work that you do.
And I think if I remember correctly,
Huntington Bank has been a good partner
with some of that work
and that's why we've received this grant multiple times.
Could you speak about that a little bit?
What would you like me to say?
Don't be like, you know,
about some of the economic opportunity work,
the small business support,
the partnership of other things
that look like those kind of things.
Okay, so they've been a partner for us
for about four years now.
This would be grants that we've applied
This is the third time applying.
If we get it, this is the second time that we've gotten it.
They do capital readiness workshops with us.
We just did a series in the month of May,
three workshops with them.
They've come to our small business expo.
They've been a sponsor for that.
They have a couple programs, Lift Local.
I don't know if you're familiar with it,
but it helps local businesses
and it helps low to moderate income entrepreneurs
get prepared to borrow money, which helps them scale.
So they've been really good
at helping our entrepreneurs that have been missed,
that have been underserved, fulfilling the blank reasons, really be competitive and grow
and stabilize the business.
Awesome.
I'll just take the opportunity again to thank you for the work with the Small Business Expo.
I got to learn a lot about that there and look forward to going to it next year.
It's been a huge success and in large part because of your work.
So thank you.
Thank you.
Any other questions or comments on this item?
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Any other questions or comments on any other item then?
B, C, D, H, K, Q.
That's great. Let's do a vote. Ashlyn.
Commissioner Light.
Yes. Commissioner Muschewski. Yes.
Commissioner Robbie. Yes. Commissioner Sanders. Yes.
Commissioner Scott. Yes.
Yes.
Commissioner Beaman.
Commissioner Hodge. Yes.
Commissioner LaBar. Yes.
Motion passed.
Fantastic. Thank you.
All right, let's go on to item B.
B.
Boy, B.
This is Community Corrections
Comprehensive Plan.
Questions, comments, considerations.
Commissioner Light.
So just on principle, I am pulling, I wanted to pull B and C for conversation for one until
the CBI funding has been allocated, those stipends have been allocated, I am going to pull anything
that has to do with the Sheriff's Office, community corrections, anything I want to
pull every time.
So I just want to give everybody the heads up that that's going to occur.
I wanted to know what is the local funding, what is that, or what's the local funding?
Yeah, sorry.
Oh, I was going to, Ashley looked like she was going to answer it, but.
Oh, okay, okay, sorry.
So sorry, Chair.
I just wanted to let you know, Renee Casey, the Community Correction Director is online
and he's available to answer questions.
Okay.
Okay, for permission.
Okay.
Sorry.
Was this pertaining to proposal B or item C or item B?
Item B.
My apologies.
So it was the local funding because it has, you know, the state grant and local funding,
general funding.
I just kind of want to know where is the, what's the local funding like?
Sure.
I will defer to Manager Casey on that, who is apparently online.
I am.
Good evening, commissioners.
My apologies for not being able to attend in person.
The local funding is in reference to the County General Fund transfer end that occurs.
So the original $500,000 and then the additional $500,000 that was agreed upon I believe two
years ago.
I couldn't hear really well.
I just heard that it was the County General Fund and then I didn't hear the rest.
Yeah, so it was the original 496,000 that the county general fund contributed. And then about three years ago the.
Can
you hear me now? Yes.
I'm sorry. Sorry.
So the 496 was the original general fund contribution that the county contributed to the community corrections budget.
In about three years ago the county agreed to increase that with an additional 500,000 to offset some of the deficits we were seeing at the time.
So that's the total 996 that comes from the general fund that answer your question commissioner light.
Yes, kind of.
Yes.
And then the next thing that I want to say what is the miscellaneous like, what's a few things that might be in that miscellaneous.
The fees from
collecting fees from people who are paying for the service institution.
No, not restitution. It's like supervision fees, people who need copies of their IDs, those kind of miscellaneous fees that we collect that aren't directly tied to a specific program like electronic monitoring or our substance use testing.
Commissioner Sanders, she said that aren't electronic monitoring that are not.
Are not.
Okay.
Electronic monitoring has its own revenue line, separate and distinct from miscellaneous fees.
Okay, so did you break down the fees and services or did you just give us the explanation for the miscellaneous?
That was just the explanation for what could be in the miscellaneous fees.
Okay, so what might comprise fees and services to the tune of $870,000?
That would be our electronic monitoring, our contracts that we have with specialty courts, and then our substances testing.
So I believe I was present at a meeting where the electronic monitoring was being discussed.
And I'm going to ask the chair to help me with this recollection that at some point there
was a threat of related to not having enough funding for electronic monitoring and a threat
of stopping the acceptance of people into the jail.
because of that into the committee that the discussion was a discussion that they
had that they were at capacity for people on tether and that they were
going to say that they couldn't accept more people on tether that was at the
first meeting of the C.J. Cousine.
And at that meeting, then we did get that idea to not happen.
And since that time, the courts have been engaging
in more vigorous review of their cases
to try to figure out like just seeing
if people are still appropriate to be on Tether.
and that has seemed to be able to control the caseload a little bit better but
yes that was the initial conversation and part of that was also to like concern
about what was happening not only with the budget but also I think in terms of
caseload about what they could handle. So I guess I'm wondering so this
amount is supposed to be sufficient that we won't be like three minutes in
and strong-armed into more money?
I don't think so.
I think that this amount, Renee, you're still there, right?
But I think that this amount still has a budget deficit.
Maybe with this, is that correct?
Yeah, correct, it could.
Since we engaged with those original conversations
and have been meeting regularly with the courts,
we have definitely seen an increase
in our revenue collection march until now,
which has positively impacted what we originally were projecting to be a deficit.
If we continue those trends, then, yes, this number is much more realistic.
We would need to continue, you know, to have the partnerships of the courts
in terms of encouraging individuals who are able to pay to pay their tether piece in the full
amount. And just real quick in reference to the case size and numbers, Commissioner Scott,
you're right, that conversation did come about as a capacity. Shortly after those conversations,
we did see a significant decrease in our case load sizes in the numbers of people that we were
monitoring on electronics, electronic monitoring. I do just feel the need to say that as of today,
we're back to 475 active cases. It has skyrocketed in the month of July in the beginning of
August. So far this week, Monday through Wednesday, we've had 26 new referrals. So we're starting
to trend back up.
Yeah, I think we may have expected that over the summer. Commissioner Sanders.
Okay. Well, I'm just a visitor to those meetings. But I would hope that as a result,
we will have more transparent and timely communications regarding anything that has
to do with community corrections.
Thank you.
Commissioner Somerville.
Thank you.
Renee, would you mind maybe briefly touching on some of the changes that have happened recently that may impact the budget from the state level.
And then because you maybe share if anything's changed related to like are we seeing an increase in collection of bees for the electronic monitoring.
We are seeing an increase in the collection rate and the fees, and that was what I was
referencing.
You know, since we've really started engaging more with the courts and through the work
of the CJCC, we have started to see, you know, the deficit close that we were originally
projecting earlier this year.
In terms of changes at the state, the biggest change that we're going to see with the
grant dollars moving into 2526 is that they're no longer going to provide money
two community corrections to run SUD programming in the community for probationers.
Back in 2020, the Department of Corrections entered contracts with our PIHPs to make probation
and parolees priority populations for SUD services in the community.
Washtenaw County since then has been one of only a handful of counties across the
state that was still receiving money from the Department of Corrections to run an
additional SUD program in the community specifically for probationers and they're no longer going
to do that. They are going to continue to fund SUD services in the jail, but they just
will not fund the SUD services through the community. So what that means is anybody
who's on probation, whether it be district court or circuit court, will now have to
go through the PIHP to engage in treatment services.
Yeah, thanks for your name. And then I guess kind of a question for you.
And just want to put it out for the whole board for folks who aren't on the CJCC.
We haven't had, we have a meeting coming up, I think, on the 15th, yep.
And we've expressed a desire to be able to take a look a little bit at some of the decisions
that are being made around how can we identify who's indigent and use those standards to
require that people are paying for the electronic monitors just because we're going down
on this path of like, something's gotta give.
And I know I've asked for some data from the courts
that we don't know we'll ever get.
But I'm curious and I don't know if other folks
on the board are curious,
but I would like us to see like a breakdown
of what like offenses are leading
to an electronic monitor, second offense, third offense.
Like there, you know, there are different offenses
that might lead someone to be on an electronic monitor
and there's also considerations up
if they're indigent or not.
And we should consider that
before we just agree to pay for their electronic monitor.
No other county in the state I think does what we do.
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be mindful
of people's financial capacity
but it is gonna be a continual battle
until we make some decisions
around how we wanna move forward
with electronic monitoring.
And I think a lot of that stems
from like us being able to identify who's indigent and work that through the process like some time
between the occurrence of the offense and when a judge orders it and making it known at that time
either you're indigent or you're not and you will be responsible for this or you won't.
And I mean even having some level of consideration of like is this their second or third offense
And like at a certain point, should we, should our taxpayers be just wiping fees for folks,
especially if it's the third, like, and I don't know, I'm just going off of not having,
I don't have any information and I don't know how we'll get that information.
But I do think it would be useful for us to have some better understanding of who's getting,
at least for electronic monitoring.
I think that'd be a good place to start.
So that, yeah, I'm done. Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Commissioner Beaman.
Thank you.
My question is pretty brief.
I just want to confirm that the state grant dollars are in hand.
We're not waiting on those.
We are still at the mercy of the state passing their budget as well.
But as always, you know, this is contingent on what the state budget ends up being.
I do feel fairly confident, after speaking with our grant coordinator at the DOC, that
the 850 that's included in this is wearable land.
We had requested a little over 900,000.
We were told that that's not likely possible at all, and we were able to have some conversations
and negotiate the 850.
Okay.
You have greater faith than I.
Thank you.
Commissioner Lay.
I just also wanted to ask that our reported crime rate in the county, it was reported that
the crime rate has went down in Washtenaw County, which I'm trying to figure out how
that has occurred and caseloads are going up.
I, there's, I mean, that's not, the math ain't math.
So I just wanna know what's going on.
I mean, because I know personally,
like I said earlier in public comment,
there were four shootings in the last two weekends
in Washtenaw.
Hello?
Renee might not have an answer to that question.
Because Renee is, so just to be fair to her,
because she's not the one who's reporting that crime's going down.
So I think it's an observation to make,
but I don't know that Renee has an answer for us on that.
Yeah.
I do not.
Thank you.
Yeah.
But it's an interesting observation.
May I ask the Sheriff's Communications Director
to she's here to explain that?
Sure, if she's willing.
if she's willing. But if not, it's okay. I can just wait for an email.
Okay.
I got you, Caroline. You're next.
Do you need me to re-save the question?
Yes, please.
Commissioner Light's question was how we've had a report that the crime rates
are down in Washtenaw County, but our rates for community correction
in the first skyrocketing in I think the jail population too.
So she's just wondering about the confluence
of those two numbers.
So what I can share is that the public safety update data
that you received and received from the sheriff
is based on January through June,
and it is also based on those areas
where the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office contracts.
So it does not include anything outside of those areas
and nothing after May 31st.
So, while that does not speak to the specific
uh, statistic that you're referring to or the incidence over the last two weeks,
the data that was shared out is specific to contract areas
and specific for January 1 through May 31st.
So, if there was some sort of like demographic
correlation, then you would say the places where people are
entering into the community corrections or carceral system
Are not from the contracted areas. No, I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say that at all
I think commissioners summer rail asked a good question in terms of what types of charges are coming
But I think that's data that I don't personally have this evening
So I couldn't answer that but I wouldn't I would not say that
The data is only coming the data relates to community corrections is only coming from contract areas. No, okay
Okay.
Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Commissioner Sanders?
Just to add on to Commissioner Somerville that I don't believe that we should be waiving.
Fees I think that there's an opportunity for us to put fees and penalties in advance
because your circumstance may change.
so you may be indigent one day and a millionaire another day I would rather see
us I think for the sake of our taxpayers put debts in abeyance so that we have
the opportunity to recoup them if circumstances change and possibly you put
time limit on it, but I don't believe that unless you are indigent, I don't believe that
the burden should be placed on the backs of the taxpayers for your bad behavior.
Any other comments, questions, and concerns on this item?
You can, Commissioner Simon.
Yeah, thanks.
I just want to thank Renee for all of her hard work.
It has been a couple of years of just constant, I think, stress related to the funding
for monitoring specifically and so I just want to say I appreciate all the work
that you're doing and your interest in improving this with us. Thank you. Thank
you. I agree. Thank you Renee. You sound like you might be getting over maybe
feeling under the weather so I appreciate you being here at 10 to 11
at night. I do think that there are still a lot of questions people have
about community corrections and even what it means to have community corrections as part
of the carceral system, those communication or conversations are ongoing.
All right, any other items now for discussion other than, oh wait, we are on the item, sorry,
that was B. Any other, any questions on B? All right, let's just do B and then we'll go to C.
Thank you very much. Now we're on to see questions comments or considerations on item C.
question or light as
in public comment we had a mom to come and to inform us
about some health issues that her son is having and he is now in the county jail
and I believe that these grant funds are supposed to support behavioral and
mental health, and it all ties in and goes to our sheriff's office. And so if these funds,
I just want to make sure that if I'm going to vote yes on this item that the services
that are needed in the jail are going to be received. And so I'm just, I just kind
of want some assurance that we're going to make sure we're utilizing funds and
grants appropriately because that that's concerning and I just want to make sure
that we're doing that so I just need some kind of blanket to make me feel that or
you know something to justify to say like hey yeah we're using funds the way
they should be because in the past that hasn't been I'm just gonna say CVI
Sure. Sorry, I don't do great with feedback. Your feedback is very welcome to that type of
feedback, Lesso. Yes. While I need to be careful about the confines of my particular role within
the organization, yes, I'm an executive analyst in the organization. I prepared this grant,
which is why I'm here today. I definitely take those concerns very seriously and will
make sure that they are reported appropriately within the organization to the people who
can, whose role it is to have that occur. As it is for this particular grant, the thing
that was really motivating for me, when we have been speaking with individuals who are
incarcerated in the jail, we identified, it's about three in five, so it's 61.5%
of the individuals in our jail when we do our screenings have some sort of a mental
mental health diagnosis. The amount and the rates of all types of disabilities, but especially
mental health, it is profound. And the needs are immense. And we need to make sure that
we're providing the appropriate programming to help people. This is a type of intervention.
I would create a peer support program inside of the jail that would go over some psycho
education pertaining to trauma. One of the challenges we have is we have a very
short amount of time that people are incarcerated. I mean that's a very good thing on average
but we'd rather that than longer. But it does make some of the service delivery kind of challenging
when you have people for weeks on average instead of longer. So we did want to make
sure that when people came there was some sort of programming for people to get the
information about trauma especially given the very high rates of depression, anxiety
and PTSD. So that is what we were looking to really do with that was to create
peer support programming. So that's what that is there for. I think that's an appropriate use
of funding. I mean, obviously, you know, I think it's incredibly important given just
the very high needs and the very high rates of mental health challenges.
Commissioner Lai, go ahead. So with this funding, with the organization, was it life after
incarceration date or later yeah with this funding be something to be able to
bring them back because those services were provided by them and so if this
grant if you've already seen this grant then why couldn't we utilize those
services because I mean they you know they were there and the services were
working in all of those areas. And so I just want to know if that's something that –
Sure. So I can't speak to specific prior relatives that pertains to that, but I can
say the way that the vendor selection would work for this particular application.
One of the requirements in the funding criteria for this RFP for the grant funder – and I
agree with this. I think it's a good idea – is to make sure that the people who are
most impacted actually have a say so in the way that the program is designed. And one of
ways that we attempted to meet this criteria in our application was to have people who are incarcerated
work with frontline workers, with some members of our administrative staff, and that would
actually be the RFP selection committee. So I don't want to speak on behalf of the, you know,
of the people who, the agency we are trying to promote. Part of the way that they will exercise
their agency over this program is to have a direct say in evaluating who we should
move forward with so so there will be a RFP it's not already it hasn't yeah and
we just to be clear we have not actually received this funding we are a
finalist for it but yes okay thank you commissioner summerville yeah I'm sorry
wait I'm sorry I did it out of order is it okay sorry I was like it's an ass
it's an ass summerville Sanders Beeman can you just maybe give us some
background on envisioning justice solutions. Are they based out of California?
Yes, so envisioning justice...
Justice solutions is the,
Dr. Nasina, whose first name is unfortunately eluding me, but
it should be in there somewhere, actually created a lot of the methodology for how the interventions
that are proposed by this are actually evaluated. So as part of the grant proposal, a very small
amount of dollars that was not put in for her to actually provide some level of technical
assistance for us to understand how we should be measuring the success of the program.
So we are following their actual model for evaluating the actual success of this.
So they have a variety of tests and pre-tests and post-tests and other evaluation methods
that they do to actually make sure that this is helping people's PTSD, anxiety, depression,
symptoms, et cetera. So we would be looking to replicate that and thought it would be very
beneficial to be able to have some support from the people who have actually done those
evaluations prior. Okay. Another follow-up question. So like in the application, there's
a list of organizations that you collaborate with on reentry services, a brighter way,
corner health, SOS, home of new vision. But we have existing reentry partnerships with
Avalon too. So I guess are these just like, why are these ones listed but not?
That may have well been, yeah, I don't have a specific answer to why that would have
happened.
I was just curious what led and then I guess my final question slash just comment is I guess
we're looking at the application and we have to approve applications all the time and we've
had situations where we've approved something and then like fast forward to a year or two
later something that was in the applications not actually being executed.
So I guess just thinking forward how are we going to make sure that this application
that we're approving, like, how are we going to know, because it's my understanding that things
can change later and we don't get to go back through this process. So I'm just kind of like
trying to get a better understanding of the commitment to what's in this application
and if we should anticipate that anything will change.
Sure. I guess one level, I don't want to speak outside of my role, you know, as it pertains to the way that we do this as a general practice.
I will say that I have a deep personal and emotional commitment after speaking with the people who, you know, are most impacted to do everything that I can to be able to ensure that people are receiving the care that they need.
that, you know, to me is something that is incredibly just resonant and important work.
I cannot personally, you know, I don't, as far as the actual ways in which the structure,
you know, may change moving forward, that is not something that I have anticipated.
But as far as the actual, if there are more specific things that you may want to hear
We're about to be happy to run that up to the people who are more able to have those
communications.
Okay.
No, I just think it's like a general feeling of like how do we know and I think just having
more background on like the relationship with envisioning justice solutions and the organizations
that were listed.
But I think the way you respond to this fine and understand that you can answer
every detail of every question that we're asking.
I'm just generally curious, and I did pull up Envisioning Justice Solutions and look a little bit into them, but yeah.
Yep.
So thank you.
Of course.
Now I'm going to look at Commissioner Somerville and say Commissioner Sanders, the way I looked at Commissioner Sanders and said Commissioner Somerville and Commissioner Sanders.
So you said that you have included in this process residents who would be affected by
this reentry programming. I've got a question about how those individuals were selected.
it. I also just want to make a comment that I'm just wondering out loud, you know, Michigan
and California are starkly different. So it seems like we're going across the country
to find experts and I'm just wondering out loud you may not be able to answer this.
You
to spend our money. But more importantly, I really was interested in knowing how were
those individuals selected?
Sure. And the answer is that they have not yet. That would occur upon awarding of the
funding, which has not occurred yet. And we would anticipate that that would be in
the second and third month of the actual program itself. Before doing any of that,
There's some administrative work that we would need to do in terms of how we would make those determinations as to who would be included on such a thing.
So I have not, you know, made a term, we have not made a determination as to who would specifically be included in such a committee to answer the second question.
is that okay?
There are specific interventions we are doing called Healing Trauma Plus and
Exploring Trauma Plus. Those are specifically selected because they are six sessions long,
so we can do three per week for a couple of weeks and actually have this be a program
that people could realistically get through while they are incarcerated in a jail, given
in the shorter length of stay compared to other types of programming.
There unfortunately are not many people who have evaluated a variety of the types of interventions
that have occurred in these sorts of settings, but Dr. Messina had done so for this specific
intervention and had found that to be, in addition to, there have been also some replication,
but have found it to be effective in reducing between 90 and 100 percent of symptoms that
that they had tested for, depending on the study.
So what we are really looking more so to do
is to have Dr. Nassima from New Virginia Justice Solutions
provide technical assistance for our team,
which will include a vendor that is local,
really leading and us co-creating the actual work.
So that's more so a resource for someone,
for our more local team to be able to have help
from a, in terms of doing the actual analysis from someone who has done it.
So I'm not sure if you were here earlier, but I actually had a constituent who has been
in contact with me about her son who is experiencing some issues and is currently incarcerated
in our jail.
And I guess what I want to say because I have a bit of a bad taste in my mouth
about the CVI and us not honoring our agreement basically, but more importantly, having the
Board of Commissioners as the approver of these grants be seen in a bad light because essentially
the Sheriff's Department decided that they wanted to do something different with a grant
that they were not the original initiator of and we're coming in at the end of the grant
and deciding that they were going to change it up. So that has left a bad taste in my mouth
because I don't appreciate having us look as though we are not keeping our word
to our own community. It's not a good look. It was something that
I'm going to say was petty and could have just been you know it just wasn't necessary to sort of
rescind an agreement so I'm saying that because this is a grant you are asking the commissioners to
approve it and I want to make sure that there is full transparency so if we're if you are selected
if this is approved and you are selected for this grant and we ask for information or the general public wants to know basically every step that you're taking, you have a responsibility to provide that information.
So I just want to put that on the record.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
You're answering our questions.
Thank you.
Commissioner Beaman.
Mine's just really quick.
For the in kind of revenue, can you speak to that?
Sure. So we needed to essentially, when we're doing a grant application, one of the ways that you get evaluated is in terms of what level of resources you are actually providing as well.
We wanted to make sure that we were accurately looking into the staff time. There are no additional financial expenditures that occur as a result of this grant. There's nothing of that nature.
But things in terms of, for example, there are going to be as the grant is proposed, about 260 of these total classes that would occur.
Corrections officers have to take people from their housing unit to the actual location and fill out the paperwork.
That's about an hour of time for each of those.
It's going to take a few hours a week from our, you know, leadership within corrections.
We have to account for that.
If we're doing an RFP, someone's got to write it, so we have to account for that.
And by the time you factor in all of those sorts of administrative requirements of a program like this, it came out to about that 160 in some change figure for salaries and fringe over the two-year period of the grant.
Of course.
Any other questions, comments or concerns?
And my only observation is that I'm surprised that six sessions in two weeks produces such
a change.
And I'm wondering if there's any longitudinal study about that change, that seems awfully
quick.
Can I find a therapy session that will do that for me, because I haven't yet.
No, that's a very good point.
I have not seen anything longitudinal in the literature.
Yeah.
Will, I want to thank you for being here and being so eager to answer the questions and have that us ask you those things.
I will say I wish your boss was here too.
I think it would probably be easier for you in some ways to have her be able to answer some of the questions you couldn't.
So that being said, any other questions, comments or concerns on the item?
All right. Let's do a roll.
Commissioner Robby. Yes. Commissioner Sanders. No. Commissioner Scott. Yes. Commissioner Somerville.
Yes. Commissioner Beeman. Yes. Commissioner Hobbs. Yes. Commissioner LaBarna. Yes. Commissioner Light. No. Commissioner Mashayevsky. Yes.
Motion passed.
Thank you.
On to item D.
This is a child, a state child care fund from the child court.
Questions, comments or concerns here on the B.
Commissioner Sanders.
Tell me everything.
Where do you want us to start?
I got to 5 a.m.
That was not funny.
We've come carelessly close to that before, too soon, too soon.
Okay, so tell, just help me understand or help me understand for the sake of, you know,
any of our residents that may know nothing about us.
This funding is utilized to do what?
To make sure that the kids that are coming in our system don't make it into the criminal
justice system as adults.
That's the goal.
Okay.
We're trying to stop the trajectory of the system because we're failing terribly.
Yes.
So listening to that gentleman earlier tonight, we're with him.
We understand.
And if we don't start doing something soon and doing it successfully, we might as well
just go home.
So I asked that question.
You and I have talked offline.
I asked that question and I'm not expecting you to be able to fix or change anything that's already in place right now.
But I asked that question because I actually have had a close experience with youth who have needed to be serviced.
But because our system kind of says, unless they rape, murder, use, you know, a knife or a gun to threaten someone that juvenile services won't hold them.
Won't hold them. They won't hold them. They release them or you may not put the magistrate says you can't hold them. They release them.
and then if the parents are in fear for their own safety the parents are still
being told either you come get them or we're gonna file a child protective
services report against you and I'm trying to understand if we've got this
money what is the population that we're actually serving with this money and
what is the population of juveniles offenders that we're not
So, the range is going to be a lot bigger than it was before. The way the fund is set up
previously, the childcare fund would not allow for really any kind of prevention services,
so they really did have to be far into the system before they were going to be able to draw
down this money. That's not the case anymore under the legislation. So, we have a whole
unit around prevention, truancy, all of those things that we know are direct
theaters into the criminal justice and the juvenile justice system. So we're
able to use that money now that we could not use before. When did that change?
In October of 2023, October 1st. So it was the last fiscal year and it is
already making significant impacts. When we looked at the fiscal year for
October 1st, we had 86% of the kids were in our formal docket, which meant that they did
have to have the opportunities through probation and things that were much more serious offenders.
Now we've completely flipped that on its tail, so to speak, and I apologize it's late.
But the reality is, is we only allowed kids that had retail fraud 3 to come in on
our consent docket.
They had a shoplift before they could even come in.
And that's not required anymore.
They don't have to have a formal charge.
They have to have something that's bringing them
to the court's attention.
So it has to be some type of a document
that even the school can say, look at this kid
is really out of control.
And rather than put them into a level of criminality
that they're not quite there yet,
what can you do to intervene?
And so it's moving the system completely to the left.
And we've developed a continuum of care
that we're feeling very confident with.
and so that's the service level this year
that we're asking to have funded.
So we've kind of redistributed things where we did have,
we had a program called Intensive Probation before.
Personally, not all that successful
because by the time you get a kid
that far along into the system,
many times it's obviously not been their initial fall
to get them there
and the parents don't wanna cooperate
because they've just had it.
I mean this has been going on for years so if we can back it up five years and have a young man
who is not quite as tall and quite as violent and quite as angry and really start to get those
services in place to figure out what's causing the anger what's causing the issues that have
not been properly addressed to that point then we can really start to make some change and
we're finding the parents are really agreeable to this because they're not being brought
in front of us where okay you're the problem and that's why your kid is the
way they are that's just disrespectful and we're trying very hard to make this
a respectful system and one where people want to come to us and say we need
help don't judge me just give me the help and so we've been looking when I
was listening earlier when you were saying do you have services in this
community we're very actively looking for services in the community
because we don't want to go outside.
That's not really going to benefit anybody.
We don't want people traveling,
but if they need to get services elsewhere,
we're making sure we're providing transportation.
We have two actual case workers that are there
to be providing the kids' transportation
to the different programming that we have in the area.
We've brought in the same folks that are using
through the Children's Center of Services Legacy Barbership
where they have a man who is just phenomenal.
He's providing entrepreneurial-ship type of services.
He's also doing mentoring,
and he's teaching some of the younger men,
because they are men at that point,
how to get barbering certificates.
So we're really pushing a lot of skills building
and entrepreneurial services
for the kids that are a little bit older,
but anybody that we can draw in under that same premise,
we're trying to pull in the whole family.
So working a lot still with Flo Roverson, who's your mom's, who is phenomenal.
And she has that way about her that gets everybody to kind of come in and talk and figure out
what's really going wrong.
And so using those kinds of services, we can do a full triage on the case.
One of the other things that's really different is that we didn't have a lot of assessments
going on in the system.
It was pretty much no offense to any of us, but we weren't clinicians.
We weren't in the family.
we didn't know what the kids needed. And now the actual mandated assessments, we have to do these.
We're finding a totally different set of kids. And so that's why so many of our numbers now
are showing more of the informal. We have kids coming in on assault and batteries. And before
that, what the other piece of it is, is that, you know, you were concerned that they had to
be serious offenders. So minor offenders are like, we're going through it. They'll
outgrow it kind of thing. Now we look at that as hey this is a red flag. What are we
going to be able to do for this kid who is coming in at 11 years old who's beating up
on everybody who is witnessing that in the home and how can we serve the family, the
mother, the father, whomever else that young man or young girl views as their caretaker
to make sure that they're part of the process.
So when you say explain this,
I could start off with a systems of mess.
I have been in this over 40 years
and I said that the other day and I went,
oh God, how did you get so old?
I mean, it was just phenomenal.
I started off as a prosecutor in 1983 in Wayne County,
walked in and somebody said, I don't have a phone.
And I thought, oh, how terrible.
That's really hard for you.
And boy, have I come a long way.
So now looking back at this, it's like before we just used to say we couldn't do anything.
Now we're going to say, okay, we can, we have to figure out how and who else is going to
help us.
And so I think we've changed a lot.
I really do.
Our numbers are so far down.
I was, okay, I don't want to say it because I don't want to lose staff, but the reality
is that we're rerouting them.
So that before they would have 30, 40 cases, you can't do anything for that.
you're just pushing paper and you're pushing kids.
We now have very small caseloads
and they really are being assigned.
They're masters in social work
so they know what they're doing
but now they're getting kids that they have to get to know.
Don't just have this as the kid on your caseload.
Have this as the young man or young woman
that's gonna do something later on.
So I think there's huge changes that are going on.
I really do.
So if you wanna say no, say next year
But not this year because I really think we need it so from our end from the children's services, and you know we operate the youth center
We also operate a day treatment program that we've been learning since 2022 and previously
All those years we were operating a day treatment program
It was only for kids who want full probation usually moderate and high-risk kids that typically are not going to be a successful in the community
based program this past year on October 1st
we were able to start taking referrals for kids from public schools who are showing that trajectory
where they're probably going to be involved soon or they've had maybe they've been on diversion
or they can send docket. We've been able to start taking those kids into our programs. It's been
really beneficial. The legislation has widened the net so to be able to serve kids.
Okay. I appreciate you both for the information and the answers. And I think the only
The other question I have for you, if you could assign a percentage to sort of the early intervention,
how much of this funding is likely to be utilized for the early assessment and intervention for
youth that are experiencing difficulties?
If I could, off the top of my head, I'd say 75%.
Okay.
And I mean, it's a high number.
But the reality is, is that if we do it correctly, we can get to groups in a very short period of time.
We're working with the schools, we've reestablished a lot of the relationships that we had lost, and we lost them because we couldn't do anything.
And so they're like, why do I even bother to call you?
You're going to let the kid do this, that anyways, and then they lose credibility.
So, we've really been spending some time, we've just hired two more folks that are going to
be doing all of the prevention and the diversion as well as the truancy and that's going to
be pretty.
And one of them was a former clinician with Home of New Vision.
And one of the things we're really excited about is that she's going to be doing a
group for women that is going to be like the mothers that really start to need the
internal support system.
So when you say, and I say 75%, I think it's going to end up being that because we really have a very, very small percentage that are on the high end now.
We only have 12 kids on probation now. It's phenomenally low, and we've worked really hard to do that.
And quite frankly, we have a really good relationship with the Children's Services Administration.
And so we don't put kids into tension unless we absolutely have to.
So it used to be the kids that were like on violation of probation.
We don't do that anymore.
They can't go into detention.
But what we want to do is to talk with a mom, father, whomever.
How can we figure out how you can handle the behavior in the home
without having to detain them to do it?
So I think it's a different attitude.
And what I would offer, we would love to sit down
and talk to you a lot more in-depth.
You sure?
Absolutely.
No, I am.
I've heard a lot about it.
So yes, I'm still more than willing.
and actually would be very interested in.
I would accept that.
And I think we could get a lot of really good ideas from you as well.
I'm not from Washington County.
I'm one of those that moved in.
Me too.
People on Earth moved in.
Well, this one did.
And I came from Detroit.
A very different environment.
Whereabouts?
East or West?
Northwest.
Oh, sorry.
We still claim it.
But in any event,
I'm just saying that we would love to talk about what we're doing okay, and I'll take you up on that offer
We have my ear anytime you want it and I appreciate you
sharing that information
You know in part because we do now have
seniors
Raising grandchildren and they're struggling
They're scared too. They are yeah, I would be and I'm Cason O'Grady. By the way, I don't think we've met
so formally anyways thank you both thank you thank you for your interest we
appreciate it any other questions comments or concerns that was really like good
information well the offer is open yeah I mean you you are our ears eyes nose
everything else we really need the support and we want to support from the
families too. I can't imagine raising a kid nowadays. But frankly, I can see the
care in both of your faces. So thank you. Thanks. Let's do a roll call vote. Thank
you. Thank you.
Commissioner Sanders. Yes. Commissioner Scott. Yes.
Commissioner
Yes.
Commissioner Matiasi.
Yes.
Commissioner Robby.
Yes.
Motion passed.
Great.
Thank you very much, everyone.
We're on to A, my favorite letter.
Not really.
H, we're on to H, my second favorite letter.
Not really.
Yeah.
No, let's do H first.
Let's go in order.
I like it.
All right.
H, as I turn my page back.
This is the wrong field.
So unfortunately, if it, all right, Commissioner Robby.
Again, you can save the best for last.
No, let's get it done.
All right.
Cool. Well, thank you all for taking the time to answer some questions on this one.
I will just jump into my questions and then at the end I will talk about my feelings.
Why not? So to start off this site for those of you that may not be aware is in my district.
It is a contaminated site. It was contaminated many years over by Mishkan and previous iterations
of Mishkan that were since bought by DTE, which is a Fortune 500 company, by the way. They
are the responsible party for this contamination. Is that correct?
I'm just trying to confer who is who is answering questions. James is here on behalf of the Brownfield authority. Yeah.
Good evening. I'm James Harless on behalf of the County Brownfield authority. Hi. I didn't know if you wanted Brownfield authority or if you want County. Who do you want to ask questions to?
Or the developer can answer them too. Okay, go ahead. We do have representatives from the developer as well. Whoever wants to answer can answer.
So what was your question, please?
Is DTE still the responsible party for this contamination?
I did read it in your application that they are.
Their responsibility has been discharged through EGLE.
What was the extent of their responsibility?
I read that they had to dispose of certain types of contaminations and certain types of soils.
Yes. The way the statute was interpreted by EGLE in the way that we negotiated the settlement
that allowed the development to go forward is that DTE was responsible for getting the
property such that it was safe as a non-used property.
EGLE wanted them to also remove
some blue soil and some other contamination that was on the site. They paid for taking
that out, that you got it to ego satisfaction, that it was ready to be...
Re-developed. And then now everything that's happening is the developer is doing their due
care responsibility. It's not associated with actually remediating the site.
So the site's been remediated? The site will never be fully remediated. It
is being developed in such a way that it is safe for reuse. And that is the goal of the
Michigan statutes.
Okay. Will somebody coming up to answer
Yeah.
Further?
Hi, commissioners and Commissioner Robby in particular, David Derrida representative
at this point for the purposes of this evening for the lower time concern is the applicant
for the $500,000 grant that's before the commission this evening.
I feel like and I don't want to get too technical because I think Commissioner Robby is asking
a simple question which is who was the responsible party and then what did EGLE agree to and
They agreed to, and James, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm trying to turn this
into simple English.
They agreed to DTE completing a certain amount of remediation on a site that largely dealt
with offsite remediation into the river, and to a response activity plan that the developer
would then take on to undertake substantial remediation of the soil to allow that site
to be redeveloped for residential and recreational uses.
That work has been ongoing now for about two years, and in fact the site has been substantially
remediated, including removal of, I believe, 20,000 tons of soil.
So a lot of good work out there was a substantially contaminated site, and I certainly commend
EGLE for having the, I think, foresight and flexibility to be able to see DTE through
to certain series of obligations and also permitting the development exercise to move
forward, which obviously required substantial additional funding.
So I don't know if that's anything I can say is inaccurate, but I honestly
think that was a perfectly legitimate question from Commissioner Robbie, and I just want
to make sure we didn't get too confused at this late hour.
I appreciate that.
I guess I'm sort of wondering what is left in terms of contamination on the site at
this time?
We're still completing remediation, and SME, who's represented here, obviously,
obviously, as well as helping oversee the final closure of the site. And these funds
from DEQ are part of – there was an initial $500,000 grant that was part of the overall
remediation up to a total of a potential million. We identified remediation requirements
that were not met either by our famous enhancement grant,
Commissioner Robby.
Very famous.
Or additional funds that we anticipate
through the Brownfield,
which we are coming back before this body
for amendment two,
we're more than happy to discuss in that context.
And so the important thing,
two things, I guess a couple of things
to walk away from understanding
this is very complex development
and took a long time to undertake.
And that was absolutely a public-private partnership
that involved identifying dollars for remediation,
dollars for the conversion of that site
into a usable public space,
and then dollars for infrastructure
that would support that usable public space.
And every one of those dollars is accounted for.
And every one of them,
and these are the right questions to ask,
every one of those dollars represents a dollar
that needed to be spent to get the result
that had been overwhelmingly supported
by the community in the context of the conversion of the site from an industrial site to a mixed
use and public space site. So those dollars, I will defer to James and or actually I should
probably ask Dan Cassie what specifically the 500,000 that is before you tonight is going to,
but I believe it is portion of the remediation. Sure. Yeah. Hi, I'm Dan Cassie with SME,
were the consultant for the Conservancy. So with the 500,000, nearly the entire amount
of the grants going towards source removal. So finishing that remediation that David just
talked about.
So what?
Soil removal.
I know that Commissioner Sanders has her hand up and I'm happy to stop asking questions
if Commissioner Sanders wants to keep going. But I have a whole list of other things
I'd like to ask, but she's, I'm happy to stop.
Okay, Commissioner Sanders, I'm going to be quick, Commissioner Robbie.
I wanted three things, I wanted to make sure that all of you tell us your name and who
you're representing.
Absolutely.
Two of you so far.
I don't know if I got that from that.
I'm James Harless.
I represent the County Brownfield Authority.
Okay.
And then I wanted you to tell us, for those of us who don't know, what is blue soil?
No, please. I really want to do this too.
It's contaminated with iron ferrocyanide.
I don't know what that means. Okay.
It's a byproduct of co-gasification.
Okay.
It's a contaminant and it is a bright blue.
The cyanide makes it blue.
And then my last, I think, question, and then I'll turn it back over to Commissioner Robbie, was what is the planned use and will this remediation make it safe for the humans that will be utilizing whatever it is you're planning?
The planned use is a seven-acre public space that will be owned and operated by the Lower
Town Riverfront Conservancy under the terms of the agreement that we entered into with
the city of Ann Arbor to develop that site for that purpose.
The site is essentially now safe for that use thanks to the aforementioned 20,000 tons
of removal and additional soil that was brought back on.
And then the sculpting and landscaping of that site that will open to the public
on September 12th of this year.
And then we're looking forward to inviting all of you
to that opening.
Okay.
Thank you.
Commissioner Robby.
I will not be there intentionally
because I am in vehement disagreement
with the whole concept that you guys have outlined.
And I will explain that now
because I was planning on saying that later anyways,
but if it is truly a public space
it should be owned by the public. You receive $20 million of public money from the state
in order to remediate that site. You're receiving Eagle dollars, you're receiving Brownfield dollars,
you're receiving plenty of public money. And if that is truly a public space and it should
be owned and operated by the public. And I think the idea of having a developer control
private park is antithetical to everything that I believe to be honest with you. And
And I believe that the public's role
in subsidizing this development
has been completely out of proportion
to what should be contributed in this type of situation.
And I have a true belief that a public space
of this caliber with so much public funding
should be a public park and not a private park.
And there are so many social issues that come with that.
the fact that your board gets to determine the usage of the site, who gets to operate on the site, what types of activities get to take place on the site, what the hours of the site will be, what the uses of the site will be.
That is not determined by the public, even though the public has already invested with
if we pass this and the Brownfield plan, tens of millions of dollars to make that space available.
So I think that it is disingenuous frankly to call it a public space to begin with because
it is not publicly owned or operated, it is privately owned and operated.
And I just, so I'm in vehement ideological disagreement with the concept that you are presenting.
And so that shadows my entire thought process on this project given that you've already received so much public subsidy to make this happen.
But my questions that I was asking earlier,
DTE being a Fortune 500 company conducted some remediation and my understanding is that there
no further action report has not been finalized yet, is that right?
I believe it's in finalization now.
The draft can go in at the end of this month.
And that's the document that says that they don't have to do anything else basically?
It will acknowledge that they did what they were asked and obligated to do and and it's
being issued in conjunction with the follow on no further action letter as it relates
to the soil that that we just talked about.
I mean, I just like again, I feel like it feels wrong to me.
I mean, I know this isn't even our money at the county, but it's our money as tax
payers that, you know, a company, a Fortune 500 company that made a huge mess. And I know that DTE bought
Mishkan. Yeah, technically, they didn't make the mess. It doesn't matter. They bought the company.
They bought the company. They knew what the risk that they were getting into. And just like with
any project, just like with Gellman, Paul bought Gellman. Paul takes on the responsibility of the
contamination. DTE takes on the responsibility of the contamination. This is their mess. They
and the tax theory shouldn't have to clean it up.
And so the fact that this grant again is,
it's not just subsidizing your development,
it's subsidizing the responsibility that DTE has
to clean up the mess that was created by a company
that they now own and profit off, by the way.
They own all the gas transmission lines in our county.
They're profiting off of that.
I pay my bills every month.
They're profiting off of that.
They're a Fortune 500 company
even in a billion dollars in profits last year,
why are they not cleaning up this site themselves?
So I don't even know if you guys can answer those questions.
I don't even know if that's a question,
but it's a frustration with the current situation
that I'm in.
Mr. Robbie, it's clear that there's nothing
that I could say that would persuade you
because you're taking a philosophical point of view
about how to create and maintain a public space
that is simply different from the point of view
that the city council took
when they essentially mandated
that we make the space privately operated, funded, and managed through a
Conservancy in our entitlement documents on recognizing that that is a trend and
an activity that goes on across the state, very much so in City
Detroit through the downtown Detroit partnership, the 300 Conservancy, the
Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, the Grand Circus Park Conservancy, I could go
on, the Chandler Park Conservancy, the Belisle Conservancy. It is a common
practice it is not common in an arbor and I recognize that and you might if you were in
wing county be objecting to that there and so I'm not going to try I would object to
it no matter where it is it's a very it's a very much a producing concept that shouldn't
have ever been approved by city council or any other government body I think shame
on every elected official that participated in helping to make that project happen because
that should be a public park if you're getting that much public money it should
be a public park.
I again I respect your point of view I just want to make sure for the benefit
for the other commissioners, they understood that this was the very basis of the partnership
we forged with the city of Ann Arbor, which anticipated that we would seek other governmental
and non-governmental dollars to form this park that set the terms of how that park would
operate, that created a public easement across that park to address the questions of whether
or not that public space would be available to the public, and recognized, as I said,
that the proposition of privately non-profit conservancy
managed and operated public parks
is not a new idea in America.
It was unique in the city of Ann Arbor.
But the city of Ann Arbor did not want
one more publicly owned public space.
And they understood that to get to that public space
was going to cost the better part of what we thought
in our newly-guilded era pre-COVID would be something on the order of $20 million.
It turned out to be more like $37 million.
And we have since raised through that process, and this is why, again, I am not here to
try to convince Commissioner Robby that this way of doing things is the right way.
But it did achieve what the city of Ann Arbor expected it would achieve.
And it's why we're cutting the ribbon on that public space, before one building
gets built. But for one of the things that actually produced the tax revenue that will
actually pay for that brownfield is even a shovel in the ground. And it also, it certainly
raised the $20 million, which was the enhancement grant in 2022 that accelerated this thing and
otherwise would not have occurred as quickly as it did. But it also brought other grant
dollars, both private and public. In fact, private foundation and giving to this public
space is now in the order of $10 million. So it is engendering, giving for public purpose.
And I am not here to change your mind, though I welcome this discussion and would have it
with you over a cup of coffee or over a beer at the park.
But I'm not. I won't be setting foot in that park.
I understand that, sir. In your circumstance.
But I, and I'm not dismissing your concerns, but I did want to make sure the rest
of the commissioners understood ours, or at least our point of view, and we welcome questions
on the score. Thank you.
Change of topic. How do you plan to dewater when you're doing the – I understand that
some of this money is going for utility trenches for the site. So as you dig up into what
I assume to be more contaminated soil, there's
We have money in here for dewatering into the river, and my understanding is that already
thousands of gallons of water were discharged into the Huron River from the site, from the
dewatering that had to occur.
We did all the dewatering within EGLE standards. Again, we're happy to have SME talk about
that in excruciating detail, if you'd like. We're going to continue to dewater in accordance
with standards. And actually, we did a little better than we thought we would on the dewatering
in front. It is often held in tanks. It is processed all in accordance with EGLE requirements.
The heavy lift on that has largely occurred as it relates to the actual public space.
There will be undoubtedly some more as foundations are put in place for buildings in the coming
years. But we actually did a couple other things to help make that less impactful
including a green in advance of any actual change to the law to put most of the buildings
above the 500-year flood event level, and it kind of lifted things out of the water.
Now, that was making a virtue of necessity, candidly, Commissioner, because it avoided
the necessity of dewatering.
But I can say this without the slightest risk of contradiction.
What we just accomplished out there was the largest environmental cleanup in the city of Ann Arbor in modern history
And we're kind of proud of it frankly, but I understand your concern
I would just note that Eagle's standards are not great on a lot of things
And so they were undoubtedly contaminants poured into the Huron River when you were dewatering
I can't be kind of a pain in the ass to be honest with you
What's that I found them to be kind of a pain in the ass to be honest with well
Well, that's probably a good thing.
But they should probably be more of a pain in the neck.
And so that's interesting.
So in terms of the barrier that you're also
using this money to create, there's
money to create a two foot soil barrier
that you're going to put, I assume,
between what is still contaminated soil and the grass
or whatever feature on the private park you're creating.
That that two-foot dermal contact bearer was installed into the original half a million dollar grant. That's already in place
Okay, the application seemed to imply that it was part of the new money too. No, it's it's already in place
Okay, and is that is two feet enough?
distance to prevent
Yep people that are sitting on the grass above it from yeah once again
It's yeah that that the design of that barrier was
Is it just soil or is it like something?
It's soil and vegetation. It's stabilized with vegetation.
But yeah, it's soil.
Okay, so two feet of soil and vegetation is enough to keep whatever this contaminant is from people breathing it?
Correct.
Everybody along the way felt that was two feet. Interesting.
Hopefully nobody digs into the ground there.
Is there, like, kids playing or something like that?
Is it going to be grass or is it going to be concrete or what?
There's a lot of grass out there, but there's also pathways that are concrete, yes.
So there is grass and concrete.
Okay.
All right.
Well, I'm going to have more to say in September.
A lot more to say in September.
I will just close by saying that what this model that you guys have proposed is frankly
dystopian.
It makes me feel like we're already in some dystopian novel of the future where corporations
control everything, things that should be public like parks.
parks should be public owned by and operated by the public. And so I guess the last question
I would ask of the developer is how much money are you going to be making on this project?
In working for the Conservancy, and we've been at this project for 10 years, we are
not charging a dime for the work we've done. So, and we've made a $1.5 million contribution
contribution to the project. Some day after 100 residential units, 20 of which are affordable
and a hotel and some retailer built, we might make some money. We haven't made a dime yet.
We're hoping to, because we want to generate the tax revenue to help support the brownfield
that will come back and talk about in September.
I'm sure that you wouldn't. I'm sure that you will make more than some money,
and I'm sure that you wouldn't have done this if you believe that it was only a possibility.
You're right. We take entrepreneurial risks. This wasn't a particularly attractive one in the end.
But we do have a reputation for seeing through complex economic development projects.
We've done a lot of it in Detroit. We used to talk about a reputation there,
but after three years of doing it here, I talk about what we've accomplished so far here.
And if we ever make some money on this, I'll be very pleased. I'll be honest with you.
And we're certainly trying to, but it won't be on the public space, and it won't be on the reclamation of this site, not one dime.
And in fact, we've contributed 1.5 million.
You think there's a chance you won't make money off this project?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a chance. That's how for enterprise works, we win some and we lose some.
There is a chance we won't make money on this project, but I'm not here to complain.
I'm actually very grateful for the support, but what we're doing here today is to finish
the job of the public space.
And I can say, as I said before, and as I think the Washington County Brownfield Authority
understood, and EGLE and DEQ understood, these dollars were necessary to achieve a
public good, and we are acting as stewards of that public good right now on behalf
of the Conservancy.
I'm not going to try to pretend like we're angels, but I also don't think we're – there's
anything wrong with trying to make money.
It's just right now that is not what we're doing.
Right now we're trying to finish public spending.
Nothing wrong with trying to make money, but you're receiving massive public subsidy
for the project.
And I think that's the difference.
There's no public subsidy that we are receiving as it relates to the eventual construction
of the buildings that will generate the tax revenue.
There's a whole Brownfield plan that we're approving. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that is that is there's no question
That is an incentive for development that was necessary to achieve that development
And those dollars are being funneled back into this project in accordance with Brownfield plan
Which I didn't actually think was the subject today, but delighted to talk about it on September 3rd
and I am not
Like I said, we're not here to say we weren't we aren't trying to ultimately
on the development side, putting the private hat on, not the conservancy hat that we're
not ultimately trying to earn a buck, but this will not be anything close to the most
proper project we ever engaged in, but we'll be proud of it because I think it will have
fundamentally transformed a very, very contaminated and very, very underutilized site for public
benefit. And sometimes you do well by doing good. I think this is one of those cases
And we'll stand by it in the end, but I appreciate the question.
Can I can I host an anti-Trump rally at the park?
You're going to have to talk to the Conservancy. I'm just working out the public space for them right now.
Okay, that's what I thought. Thanks.
Commissioner Light.
Well, thank you all for coming.
My question, I just wanted clarity, but I kind of think you did.
So, I was just wondering when you explained about, even though this is private, you gave
a comparison like Belal or, and so because you are utilizing Brownfield, that does that
mean that you have to use, utilize some of that space for public.
And so that's kind of like with that, when you did housing developments, you know how
You have to utilize a portion of the housing has to be like before the whole or well there again
You're getting into some of the things that the city and we through the planning commission and city council
Worked out. I think the city was very focused on public benefit here
They understood the park itself was one of those public benefits
They understood and this guy's does maybe doesn't go without saying that there was no amount of private development
That was going to occur on that site that could pay for that remediation and that public space
by just profits from the project and so they set out requirements for us for public use
in that space.
And they were concerned, as I think legitimately, we show up in 2018 and say, hey, we'd like
to create this privately managed public space.
It happens all the time in other cities.
It's new to Ann Arbor, but we think it'll work, particularly when they said, we don't
want that space.
We don't want to own it.
How is this going to work?
and we were very clear with the parks department. We'll collaborate with you. So, while I absolutely
understand Commissioner Robbie's point about parks should be, I don't agree that it should
be so black and white, that parks should be owned by the public. I think they should
have that these, if they're going to be public spaces, there should be ground rules.
And the city laid out myriad ground rules in the entitlement process, including what
But I just said, public easements across the space, hours of operations that conform with
this city of Ann Arbor's parks department, parking requirements consistent with the Ann
Arbor parks department, they also required us to develop a certain amount of affordable
housing on this because it went beyond that simple public space requirement.
So I don't know if this is answering your question, but I think what that public
space is while technically owned by a non-profit entity is a fundamentally a public-private
partnership. And its governance was set forth by the city in which we are – it's being
located in Ann Arbor. Now, this body might have said, well, I would have made you do
this, right? I mean, I would have made you do that. The city of Ann Arbor made
us do a lot of things, including contribute dollars to that space, which we have done.
Um, and, um, and I think they understood the, the bargain that was being struck.
Yeah, so for me, it's not necessarily private when it's a nonprofit organization, but that's just me. That's not.
Necessarily private, but teaches their own, but, um, I'm, I'm kind of excited about it. And, um, just looking forward to seeing, um.
I'm all for cleaning up something. And I know the city of Ann Arbor didn't want to touch the project because we said it costs much and it didn't want the responsibility of the taxpayers and so, but I look forward to seeing how the project is going to move forward.
And any
other comments commissioner Sanders just a quick question
Help me visualize. Where is it?
You can walk to it from here, I just did
Place on the highway the other day on the corner
Broadway and something
I'm just trying to make sure it's sorry if you know where the Amtrak lot is yes
Right next to it. You have to go over the bridge and turn into the Amtrak lot. Okay, and I'm delighted
That people don't still don't know where this is because we're gonna just shock it off. Okay. It is it gets oh it opens up at
You'll be able to enter off of a new street. We're running in there called River Street. Okay, and then you'll ask me
We'll go under the berm undercut
Right train tracks. Okay, and you come right onto the site and you'll be able to take the border to border trail
Well Wilson Foundation gave him a grant to this project because it helped connect the Board of Border Trail to the site.
Okay. That was one of the many grants received. There will be a, we're right now raising funds for a year round indoor outdoor pavilion that will be on the site for public events and private events as well.
And that'll help fund the park.
Okay.
Parking.
Yeah, there's 480 spaces ultimately as part of the overall development. And we have to figure out how to manage all that this the city wanted to make sure certain of them were designated for park use.
Okay.
Okay, thank you.
Commissioner Scott just showed me the area. Oh, thank you. So thank you.
Look forward to having you all out.
I want to know when the skating ribbon is going to open.
Oh, don't get started.
It's still going to be there, right?
That's still on the plan.
We're really, that is, that's turning out to be a bit of a geological challenge, because
the land is somewhat in the flood plain, but we're working on it.
We haven't raised the funds for that yet.
Just finished raising the funds for the pavilion.
That's part of the 10 million that has been raised.
The ice ribbon and that sort of section is next.
So the city made us agree, and this is the thing we're proud of.
The city made us agree and wouldn't have happened frankly without that much maligned $20 million
enhancement grant, but the city made us agree in our entitlement that we could not get one
certificate of occupancy for a single condominium or residential or hospital unit until the
baseline public space, which is what we're about to open next month was complete.
We haven't even pulled a permit for those residential or
hospitality and the park will be the baseline public space will be complete.
So, thanks to support like this.
So we really are very appreciative.
I mean, it's interesting to hear about the park and what's going there.
But again, like the decision to put a park there or not and
to work with you was a decision of the cities.
We're really talking about the brownfield money here.
and so. But the moment we're talking about the Eagle Grant. We're talking about the Eagle Grant
and are anything we're saying about this about the Brownfield money or the Eagle Grant but the
decision or not to have a park there was was purely the city's decision so. Commissioner Robbie.
It is relevant to the Brownfield plan and I think that's that's critically being missed here
because part of what's being shifted is...
Because more of the project was able to be paid for by the $20 million grant that you received,
which we can talk about in September. But the reality is, you know, when you say,
much of the line, I just want to say, you know, my quote of the day is shady as hell.
It was shady as hell. Because you guys got $20 million in the state budget.
Nobody really knew who was in there. And that was, that I was being asked about it
because this was in my district. I was being asked about where this $20 million
dollars come from I have no idea where the $20 million came from because
somebody in the budget process and the enhancement grant process you know at the
time in 2022 that was the same the same time that we got paid they do and the
money for her nonprofit which spent it $500,000 on a salary vacations all
this different stuff same same time and so there's all this money to state
budget that's public dollars that's spent in a super shady way, a lot of that's being changed
actually. So this, both the Senate and the House improved their processes for how to give these
enhancement grants out so that it's not as shady anymore. I'm hoping that they stick with that.
But, you know, you got this grant kind of out of nowhere, $20 million from the state.
And I just, you know, and so now we're going to talk about it more in September. So I'll, but it is related. All these pieces are related to one another. And this project, you know, it, like you said, wouldn't have been possible without that public investment.
So, you know, my feeling is that it should be a public.
So, any
other continued comments questions or concerns.
All right, let's vote. Thank you, gentlemen.
Mr. Scott. Yes.
Mr. Somerville. Yes.
Mr. Beeman. Yes.
Mr. Hodge. Yes.
Mr. LeBar. Yes.
Mr. Light. Yes.
Mr. Machieske. Yes.
Mr. Robbie. No.
Mr. Sanders. Yes.
Motion passed.
Thank you.
So now we're on to Kaye, question, comments, concerns, Commissioner LaBar.
Thank you, Chair.
It's late.
I'll be really quick.
This is wonderful lifesaving work that we're going to approve.
And I really just wanted to highlight it and thank the task force, thank the staff.
It's a very tangible piece of county action that will save lives.
It's just wonderful across the board and appreciate that we're doing it and doing it again.
And when I pulled it, I thought maybe there'd be more time for discussion and so forth,
but I think we've hit that.
So I look forward to voting yes, and hope you all do the same.
Thanks.
Any other questions, comments or concerns, Commissioners, Sanders?
So, I'm excited that we are going to continue to try and support that population that struggles
in ways that many of us can't imagine.
I would just like to put on the record that if I were asked, which I have not been,
I probably would have proposed additional funding for the family shelter expansion
Because we know that there is a new facility that will be utilizing or will be serving families.
I think I've triggered something with Commissioner Somerville.
It's coming. That's coming. Yes.
Commissioner Somerville?
Yeah, I just wanted to follow up and reaction to that comment.
that I believe the 280,000 you see there
for family shelter expansion is the ongoing operational support
for the expanded site that will leverage private dollars.
And there is more funding coming for them.
Coming soon.
Okay.
To a board table near you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Any other comments, questions or concerns?
Krishna Ravi.
Thank you.
I'm wondering if somebody can explain about the barrier busters funding on the list that said
barrier busters at the direction of SOS community services. Is that always the case or can other
does it all have to go through SOS? How does that work?
Good evening again. Yep it always goes
through barrier busters because SOS case managers are the ones that provide the case
management services and barrier busters has the efficiency and the operations to get the
money out the door quickly for eviction prevention.
So a call might come in that $3,000 is needed, the case manager contacts barrier busters
and then those checks are delivered to the landlord or somebody has to go to SOS in
order to get barrier busters money.
In this case, yes, for eviction prevention program.
Why are we restricting it to just one nonprofit?
profit. Well, the dollars can go ahead. Oh, I'm not sure. Okay.
They work in tandem,
but the case management is provided by SOS is why you saw that delineation. So, so walking
through if somebody wants to access barrier busters money, do they have to call SOS community
services in order to get that money.
For eviction prevention, yes.
They call, so any dollars that go out through barrier busters
has to be accessed by a case manager.
Sure.
So the case managers, homes are with the nonprofits.
So barrier busters is just the way to get the money out
of the door.
But SOS is the only one that does eviction prevention?
for the for families. Yeah. And is this just for families? And then the shelter does individuals. So
the shelter is money is just for families. Or is this barrier busters money for everybody that
needs eviction prevention. So why is the shelter not included as am I making sense? Maybe I'm
not making sense. But like I, if there's two nonprofits that are providing eviction prevention
services, and this pot of barrier busters money is just for people accessing it through SOS.
What about the people that are trying to access eviction prevention through the shelter association?
They both can provide that access, but the shelter provides case management for individuals
and SOS provides the case management for families.
But the way the fund was described in our board packet it looked like it was just for SOS as direct. It's it as directed through SOS
in front of me.
I mean, I, I can try to pull it up to it was.
Yeah, it says very, very besters as referred by SOS for direct assistance 566,000 666 that's
in the resolution.
Yep.
I believe you, I just don't. I don't have the answer, but I can get it for you.
I mean, because that's a lot of money for one organization to, and it says as referred by, which makes me think that's the only organization that can refer people to that money.
I'm going to go to Commissioner Sanders.
So, I think that I would have a similar concern, and it really is based on the fact that I've
gotten feedback from people that feel like they have not been appropriately serviced specifically
specifically by SOS, as well as employees of SOS sharing information about, you know,
the ways that they feel like they are not respectfully treated when they're attempting
to do their jobs.
So, I guess I want to renew my years ago comments, concerns about the fact that we do not have
a portal or a way to assess quality and satisfaction of residents that are utilizing services
of nonprofits that we held on support.
And I think that we need to find a way to do that
because I wanna hear from the people
that feel like they're turned away,
they're not responded to, whatever it is,
because,
how do I put this?
First, I don't wanna be, I'm not being disrespectful
to any of the employees of nonprofits.
But I've said this before, if you're a nonprofit and you get a complaint, it's not necessarily
in your best interest to let it be known that you've gotten that complaint.
And we don't really have a way to check and balance that.
If it's something that's an in-house service of the county, we have a number of ways that
that we have to address it, that we can not ignore it.
But with nonprofits, they're kind of an island out there
and nobody's policing them.
And so on behalf of the residents,
on behalf of the most vulnerable people
that are utilizing these nonprofits for lifelines,
I'm gonna reiterate that we need a system
that allows them to share their experience with us.
And a resident survey or something,
it doesn't just go to the nonprofit.
I would prefer that it's a way for them
to share their experience and it goes two ways.
It goes to the nonprofit
and it comes to somebody at the county
that allows us to say, okay, what's going on with this?
because I'm not seeing it. We do have through hawk the oh my god well through
there I say this every time and I'm not going to apologize because I've had
people employees want to push back and say you're being disrespectful no hawk
has been a broken thing for a while and I keep saying we need to change the name
because it's a bad confrontation that goes with it.
But nobody listens to me.
I'm not gonna apologize for my immediate response
whenever that name is brought up.
I'm sorry.
No offense.
None taken.
There is a grievance and complaint form.
People can call the Hock Cross Center
to share their experiences
with local shelters and nonprofits.
Once that complaint comes in, it's documented.
We contact the said shelter whichever one that it is and they're given a response. So we do have tracks
I'd like to see sure that that data I'd like to see those reports
So I'm gonna make I'm making that an official request. I want to see them
Okay, or as far back as they go. We've got them. Thank you. You're welcome. And as far as hot goes
I've been in the community for over 20 years and no matter who holds
They're continually drugged through, you know, a fine tooth comb, let's say.
So when SOS had it under Gary and Fay, you know, it was there.
They got a lot of backlash.
It was moved to Salvation Army.
Salvation Army held it for a decade.
It got, you know, the same feedback, you know, the same kind of reaction.
When the county put out an RFP for it, no one responded.
So the county took it on.
And so what I'd like to say about Hock is that as a system, it does do the job.
But I think there's a misperception of what Hock really is and what it isn't.
Hock is a resource line.
It is a place for people to call to say, I have multiple problems usually.
And then Hock tells them exactly what the next steps are in the process.
Is it true that some people have been trespassed out of shelter for a myriad of reasons?
Yes.
You know, is that the kind of, that's not always the last answer, but it does happen.
And so hawk is a resource.
And I understand the immense pressure that people are under when they call and they
need to fix right now.
But a hawk operator is not the person that is going to fix that problem right now.
They're able to offer the resource and the connection.
So I think there's a misperception about what hawk is and what it isn't and what it can do
and what it really is not able to do.
Do I know that hawk calls are answered within minutes of calls, of the call actually being placed?
Yes.
Do I know that we have a satisfaction rate or at least a good response time?
Yes.
Do they get everything that they need immediately?
No.
because
That's not what a call center does. It's very similar to 211. So 211 is a resource line
that is partially funded or supported by the county through United Way. And people expect
the same kind of thing. I need the help now, and I know what I need. But those operators
are connectors. They're saying, here's where the resources are. Let me help you connect
Is it terribly frustrating when you might not have a phone, when you might not have Internet?
So we're constantly searching for ways to fix things for people, and we appreciate feedback like that,
because we started the tracking of the grievances because of feedback like yours.
So I appreciate it, and I'm here for it.
And I think when we all come together and put community first, we put the people in the center of the solution
Instead of visualizing them as the problem, then I think we all benefit.
And it's only when we come together and hear all the different voices at the table
is that when we can come up with solutions.
Good.
I have Commissioner Somerville next in the queue and I know I have Kristen online
who can answer some questions with use of 2L.
So I want to point out that Tony, the director of OCD is here too,
You might have to be able to answer questions for us also, but I'll go to Commissioner Somerville
first and then we'll go back to Kristen to help answer you, so it's a question.
Yeah, I think that I just wanted to point out like barrier busters is is like a glomerate
of all of the organizations that can be an access point for eviction prevention dollars.
And then like one of the ways people get connected to those organizations before
where they can get funding approvals like calling hawk and having eviction for work.
So just to write that's my understanding. So I just wanted to clarify, but I think maybe
Kristen on the line there who knows more about this than I do can clarify some of the questions
that Commissioner Robbie and Commissioner Sanders had.
Maybe this is a good place for Chris to jump in here.
Maybe I should turn my microphone on. Maybe this is a good place for Kristen to jump in here.
Good morning, folks. Can y'all hear me okay? Good morning.
It's officially midnight. This is Kristin Cunis, the OC supervisor. I just wanted to go back to Commissioner Robbie's question regarding SOS.
Just a point of clarification, SOS is the Prevention Assessment Agency for Washington County, which means they do complete prevention assessments for both individuals and families.
Similar to what Pam had mentioned, when we released a request for proposals process for
both the call center and other roles within coordinated entry, only SOS volunteered and
identified themselves as an interested entity to do that work.
And so that is why they're only currently the only nonprofit doing that work on behalf
of Washington County.
But again, they do do prevention for both individuals and families.
So does that mean that anybody wishing to access this money has to go through
SOS? They go through first and foremost the call center. The call center completes an intake
and then schedules a prevention assessment agency. But yes, SOS is the only authorized
agency that is responsible for completing the provisioned assessment. That assessment is pretty
thorough and so they are the only agency that has the discretion to do so. If another agency
If we wanted to, we would have to do another request for provost process and kind of open
that up to other entities.
So all barrier busters money, anybody that wants money from barrier busters has to go
ultimately get assessed by SOS in order to get barrier busters money.
No, just for eviction prevention.
So this $500,000 that we're putting forward is just for eviction prevention?
Yes.
Yes. Eviction prevention and diversion.
It's the most economical way to keep people
housed. Sure. But I mean, those are not the only purposes that barrier busters can be used.
No, no barrier busters. This money that we're putting forward is just for that purpose
within barrier busters. Yes. So we're creating like a special category within barrier busters
just for this. Just for this, right. Barrier busters
is a conglomeration of many different funding streams that deal with all different kinds
of things.
So like community mental health donates or grants $40,000 to barrier busters, different
municipalities within our community donates barrier busters, and they all come with specific
stipulations from the donor.
So like let's say Pittsfield Township gives $20,000.
They can say it's only for Pittsfield Township residents.
Or if CMH, it's only for CMH clients.
So there's a different variety of funding streams that is braided into what barrier busters is.
This is one component.
Okay.
I guess like I would be more comfortable if we remove that part of the resolution that says as referred by SOS because I mean, I would just rather take barrier busters.
But if my colleagues don't agree, then that's fine.
Commissioner LaVar.
Commissioner Ravi, I hear your point there.
SOS has that designation within the system,
in part because of what Pam just spoke about and what Christian just spoke about,
that they're the ones who are, in this case, the only ones stepping up
and willing to do that work with the designation.
And so I, to some degree, removing that language
would be detrimental to that system.
Maybe in the future, we can come up
with accommodating language to speak to, I think,
what is your concern, which I think I have a sense of.
But I would argue, let's keep it as is tonight
and try and do that in the future if needed.
Thanks, Chair.
Thank you.
Mr. Sanders.
Pam, do we have a, I'm asking this for a reason.
I think I know the answer, but it may not be,
the public may not be aware.
There is a maximum, there is per family, per year, right?
that we can spend to prevent eviction. Are you comfortable sharing that? The only
reason I'm asking you is because I've met that maximum with at least one of my
constituents and they I think they felt that I was being cruel by not
exceeding that maximum. It's three thousand dollars. I exceeded it. I didn't
I thought it was more than, I think it was more than that.
I didn't ask for it to be exceeded,
but I wanted you to share that publicly
so that people understand it's not an unlimited pot.
So once you get that amount,
you can't turn around two months later
and be in the same situation
and expect that we are gonna be able
to give you additional funding.
Right, correct.
It might be great for Barry Buster's
to come in and do a presentation
during working session or a BOC session.
I'm not a simulation.
I would love a simulation.
Sure. We can share all the data.
And going back to Commissioner Robbie,
it's the reason SOS is in place is to make sure that they're doing the assessment
so that your tax dollars are spent wisely
or all donations are spent wisely
that people aren't coming back again and again
or that they are indeed eligible.
So it's a plus for the system. SOS does great work.
And I know that there are a variety of opinions, but I could say there's a variety of opinions about every service that's offered.
Because if somebody needs something and you don't have it when they need it, then you're not, you know, you're not meeting their immediate need.
Are you still going?
Last thing is that I'm not saying I don't I understand why the process why we
need to have the processes right I have recently myself tried to get someone a
family housed it wasn't an eviction situation but they were homeless and
after like making an emergency call right then calling the lift they
refused. They prefer to sleep with two children outside. They did not want to be
even put in a hotel overnight. And so what I have learned through that and other
processes is we have the processes because we need to make sure that I
don't know how to say this
that families that are well versed in our
systems are not taking advantage of the system, meaning you go one place, you get help, you
might get put out because you don't want to follow the rules.
And then you go to another place.
The point of having the central system is that you have access to all of those records
and you can say, well, we've offered this, they didn't return our phone calls or they
were not responsive to our case workers.
So I understand that doesn't mean that there are not some emergencies that I'm going to tell you I don't care about the process.
I want these babies housed at least overnight.
But I do understand that there are reasons why we have the process.
And I think that we do have solutions on the horizon.
You know with the new shelter opening at Trinity through IHN and alpha house there will be 30 more
You know 30 more rooms available for people so that when
You know Shona tells the story that a mom is on the street at 1 a.m. She has a place to go so
And I and I think the county and the state actually for bringing dollars together to make that happen. So
commissioner summerville
Number three things I wanted to bring up but I
The comment about the limitations, I just want to point out the limitations, the way
that I understand it, the money that we get from the feds, there are like strict limitations,
but the money that we've been putting in from our general fund could be more flexible
and I brought this up a few times when we've had these conversations about eviction prevention
because I do think that hopefully in the future we can figure out ways to put
more money into eviction prevention annually and look at people who say in the beginning
of the year run into a situation and crisis within that frame of not being able to use
federal dollars. Again, we still have our own general fund. Same thing with like the
senior millage if we're trying to prevent senior homelessness. And I could see a lot
of scenarios now with some of the things happening at the federal level where we may
want to use millage dollars for an older adult more than once a year that would
exceed $3,000. And so there are certain funds that we get that we use for eviction
prevention that are restricted and then there's general fund and millage fund that are more
flexible and it's always cheaper to prevent homelessness. So I just wanted to point that
out and then I know it's when we've gotten presentations on hawk in particular there's
like the scenario drawn out there's the main call center and then the path if you're an adult
or family and those requirements by the state of Michigan and so all the points that you
already made but I just wanted to clarify like in the past when we've seen this kind
of laid out that those are the directions that it points you in.
Part of the reason
even though it's like somewhat not related to the winter sheltering proposal but I think
some of the reason why there's still some negative feelings associated with hawk and
even like the pathway for families and I hope some of that has changed because
we put more money into the system last year that set up the process for families, like
I would say back in my first year on the board, we were getting a lot of complaints about
the timeline. Part of the problem was SOS, even though they could take in the calls,
they didn't have anywhere to put people. And that, like my thought, and that was, well,
we have to either, like us, we have to make the decision that we want to figure out
how to have master leases so we can actually have places to place people because that's
the larger problem is when you have that many families calling because they need
to be rapid, really, housing, you don't have anywhere to put them.
And I don't expect people who are in crisis to be able to peel back those layers and understand.
And so to them, it's HAW or SLS and not the overall lack of support and resources for
the whole system.
And so I just wanted to point those out because I see it more of an issue of not the ability
for like our folks on the phone or SLS staff, it's more of like resources.
But all the feedback that I've gotten in the last year since we've increased the amount of money we're putting annually towards the winter shelter season, it's reducing a lot of the issues that we saw back in 2022, 2023.
So, honestly, consistency and being able to put more money in every year and figuring out how to do that, I think is what's going to make the biggest difference.
and also with HAWC, like, I mean, there was a whole, like, budget cycle where we still
didn't even appropriately fund the positions until kind of like the tail end of that.
So a lot of it, I mean, a lot of lessons learned, but historically there's not enough
money passed into the county to manage these systems, even though it's a requirement.
And so it's like we need more support that gets passed down to help with the call center to begin with I think I mean there's still things that we can improve with the call center of the state and feds gave us more support to do that so I just wanted to make those points.
And again, I appreciate you being able to try to answer all of these on the fly.
Absolutely. Commissioner Robby?
Somebody that comes through this process, goes to SOS, receives very investors' money. How do they know that it's counting money?
Well, when you say they, who do you mean they? You mean the client?
The client.
The case managers share it with them.
So that's a standard protocol that every conversation they talk about it being funding from Lushknot County.
If it is, because you also have real townships that even over other places.
But that's shared in every conversation that they have.
They're asked to do it.
So am I standing there with each case manager?
Is it built into our contract with SLS to provide that?
So the information, yeah, the county is always, it's always documented on their websites in
any like public statements they make, press releases, stuff like that.
I think we have really good partners.
This is an editorial and I understand that and you can cut me off, Chair, if you'd
like to.
But I think we're extremely fortunate to work in this community because the caliber
of the nonprofits and the executive leadership that we have is exceptional.
We were just complimented by MISTA, which is the Michigan State Housing Authority that
uses our COC as an example around the state.
And she's asked the MISTA representative as asked if we are willing.
Kristin Kunas, especially.
Kristin, thanks for staying up past your bedtime.
I appreciate it being on the phone.
It has been asked to mentor and talk about what we are doing in our community to make things better.
So I just want to give a shout out to the shelter employees.
They do an extremely difficult job dealing with a challenging population and they do it really well.
So thanks to all my partners out in the community.
I wasn't commenting on the quality of our partners. I think it's still, regardless of the quality of our partners, it's still important that the people receiving services understand that they're receiving services thanks because of the county and our contribution to those services.
and so I just I want to make sure that that is I know I've said this at every meeting and you
acknowledge that I say it at every meeting I'm just trying to make sure that it's actually becoming
part of our standard protocol of how we operate with these nonprofits and that when we're I mean
and this isn't just for barrier busters but all the other funding that we're providing today
too I want to make sure that and I'm not talking about like inviting all the commissioners
to a cookout. I'm saying like this it needs to be like the people that are receiving the service
and the members of the public need to know where their funding is going. It's in our contracts
with them. So I can send you the a template so you can see. Okay Tony has already sent it to me.
I'm just trying to make sure that it's actually getting done. Yeah it is. Okay.
I'm glad that
This is just for the conversation.
When people are in crisis mode, we can say it 10 times while they're panicking and their
heart's racing and they're trying to figure out all the pieces of what's going to happen
to them because they don't even know if they're going to get funding, they're not
going to remember.
And so I think a better solution for how we continue to make sure that the community
knows that we're investing in eviction prevention is to figure out creative ways to share
that out that's more palatable, more like visual because people in crisis, like even like it
doesn't, you're not thinking and you will forget because usually when you're under that
much stress, you're just, you're in fight or flight mode. So for me, you know, I and
And maybe we should bring forward a formal resolution for a better communications plan.
I personally really like our annual report.
I utilize that often when I'm talking with local units of government in my district because
I'm usually trying to encourage them to continue investing in extra barrier buster dollars
because there are a lot of pieces.
So if somebody from the city of Ypsilanti calls and gets approved for eviction funding,
are we telling them that the federal government, the state of Michigan, Washington County and the
city of Ypsilanti, like are we breaking down the percentages that's funding their eviction
prevention? That's overwhelming. And so I think our annual reports are great, but there might be
better ways that we can like share that information out through videos and maybe testimonials for
people who like voluntarily want to participate. And you know, I think that's a good way to
do it. Same thing with like the skip funding for people who were using those resources
for for eviction prevention. But the actual annual reports I find like visually pleasing
they're easy for me to show other elected officials at the local level like this is
actually what's happened in the city of Ypsilanti and this is why you should continue this
investment. And even when residents ask like what are you guys doing on eviction prevention
I can actually show them the annual report. And so you know there's probably ways
that we could get that out more regularly, like maybe every year, every two years we try to do more
of like a media push. Like I don't know, did we put out a press release this year when we had the
annual report? So maybe we try to like proactively get more interviews on it. I'm just thinking of
ways that we can get people who maybe never use the service or people who did use the service,
But we're in such a crisis at the time don't even realize like which entity is even the one that's like the main funder
That's the feedback that I've got from people like
It all happens. It happens really fast. Sometimes it gets denied. They don't really know and so
You know being able to communicate it in more creative ways
I think could be helpful our partners have been really helpful
there is a
Well, there was an NPR station WMU that does, fingers crossed it still is, Washtenaw United
and a lot of our partners have been on that and they talk about everything that they're
doing and their partnership with OCD.
The annual report has been really helpful as well as our social media channels.
But you raise a good point because we recently did Stacey Steele as the program manager
for barrier busters, did a great presentation to the leadership. Administrator Dill allowed
her to, you know, talk to the leadership, which is about 50 people, I think, 50 or 60
people. But that's an internal audience. And so you're just, you're bringing up the point
that we need to do better externally because internally our partners know about it and
the county knows about it, but we need to make sure that the external partners or
the external, you know, population knows about it. So thanks for that.
I just wanted to say I, and I understand where Commissioner Robbie is coming from about who provides the help making sure that those that are receiving the assistance knows that we're helping but we also have to be delicate because some folks come in, they're very ashamed.
They're in survival mode, they're just at their last, as Commissioner Somerville said,
and so by the time you sit down and you try to pull the resources from all of the agencies
and you're saying, well, I want you to know the county they did, X, Y, and Z, they don't
give a darn.
They just, they're just appreciative and thankful that they are getting the assistance
that they need.
And I have worked through social services.
I did it for a long time.
I worked in the PATH program where in Michigan works
where the funding was provided by the state,
then Michigan works will provide social services.
We worked with SOS, we worked through various busters.
And so money was coming and going from everywhere.
And majority of my clients, as I said,
did not give a damn about where it was coming from.
They just knew that it was gonna come or it was not.
And so us, going in and they say, you know who paid for this thing, that's, it's not
fair.
And people are in trouble and feel like I got to go and get a handout, I got to go and get
assistance.
They're ashamed.
And us always making sure now for our providers or for the organizations.
Yes, make sure that we promote that we are partners.
But for our clients or residents that receive the services, they'll see it.
They'll see it in the information packets, but the majority of the clients that I served
were very shamed and were just didn't. And so we come to say, I want you to know that,
you know, Washington County, they made this happen for you. That's not the correct thing to do.
And still working with individuals right now, I work with about five families
that are receiving services and the county is assisting and we have funded
different organizations to assist them I don't dare not I don't ever say you know
the county is making this possible I just don't do it because they're already
right here I just don't want to just push them in the ground and send them to
hell because you know like they already feel they feel that way and so let's
to be courteous of what and how we promote ourselves, you know, we're not
God, we are not the ultimate, we can't just do that and so please be careful, like
I said, I assist families right now and I do not want to say, you know, this is
possible because of the county and I get thank yous, you know what, I we
They know then just they're like, they figure it out coming you know is making this happen. So I am not in agreement with just pushing and pushing and making sure that those receive the services right one and that the case workers are like well you know why should I am not in agreement with that.
And that is not the way in the ideal way to do that
when somebody receives assistance, how do they receive it is like a direct transfer to their bank account.
No, it's paid directly to the landlord.
Okay.
I just want to say that I, you know, I hear what everybody's saying.
The reality though is that we have a nonprofit that is meeting with individuals under the banner of their organization with their organization staff.
And if people are not clear about where the money is coming from, one would be susceptible to believe that it is just SOS or any nonprofit that is providing all of these services alone.
And I don't think that it is indicative of the importance role that government plays in supporting people's lives and livelihoods in our community.
And I do believe that it is important for folks who are receiving services to
Understand that it doesn't have to be like a big part would have to be a big show
But I do think it's important to understand where the money's coming from and that it is not a
Hand out that it is our community investing in the success of that individual
Any other questions comments or concerns commissioner lights are you did raise your hand and thank you
I just want to say that any support of services through any organization or through the county, there is never a direct deposit.
It is always provided. The funding is always given to the service provider. So if it's getting car assistance, it goes to a licensed mechanic.
If you are getting assistance with registration, insurance, whatever the case may be, it goes
directly to the state of Michigan, directly to whatever prior insurance.
If you are receiving clothing for interviewing, there is either the caseworker goes to the
store with the person receiving the service and they pay for it and they take that receipt
back and they log in. There is never a direct monetary checks provided to the individual.
And I don't want to make this seem like it's a back and forth, but I understand what Commissioner
Robbie is saying, but I just wanted to be clear that the organization or the agency,
see they let you know that they have that information that we are a provider of funding
that is wonderful. But as I said, sitting down with individuals that I did for six years,
that was not the number one on my mind because some of them were either homeless, some of
them had CPS cases and me telling them that the organization that I work with, that was
not the number one goal. I didn't do here because guess what? It's not my personal money. This
is not our personal money. And it is not a handout. Yes, we want them to know that.
But being a seasoned case manager, I can smell somebody's BS from a mile away. So if you
were coming thinking you were getting a handout and you're gonna do the over don't
know me it never works and I knew and I will tell them this is not my money
however but you're not gonna play the system so a lot of caseworkers are
seeking that way they know but just telling somebody you know those the
communists that's not it it is not it and I think until you have
experienced it one-on-one work
We're not going to clearly understand from one another how that works, because if somebody
came and said, hey, you know, the county is the one who provided this amount, okay, that's
great, guess what? Somebody's helping me.
So I just, and like I said, I understand, I think
the organization to have to make sure that they provide that Washington County is allocating
funds to their organization to make services happen. But having the case workers to pass
that along to clients or residents, that is not the answer. It's not a good look.
And I just recommend that we do not push that through our organizations or any case
work.
Commissioner Beaman. Thank you chair. I'd like to call the question support. Hey, Ashlyn.
Commissioner Somerville. Yes. Commissioner Beaman. Yes. Commissioner Hodge. Yes. Commissioner LaBar.
Yes.
Commissioner Light.
Yes.
Commissioner Macias.
Yes.
Commissioner Robbie.
Commissioner Sanders.
Yes.
Commissioner Scott.
Ten thousand times yes.
Motion passed.
So I'll vote on item K please.
Commissioner Beeman.
Yes.
Commissioner Hodge.
Yes.
Commissioner LaBar.
Yes.
Commissioner Light.
Yes.
Commissioner Muffiesty.
Yes.
Commissioner Robbie.
Commissioner Sanders.
Yes.
Commissioner Scott.
Yes.
Commissioner Summerville.
Yes.
Motion passed.
Right, we're on to item Q. I just also just want to make a quick note. I want to gently remind us based on the conversation, not just from this last one, but a few things to try to say.
focused on the resolutions currently before us. I know that contact and past decisions
can be important. The discussion is most productive at this table when we're addressing the specifics
at hand rather than revisiting settled matters or exploring hypotheticals. So let's work
together for the last two items on our agenda. Don't forget we have a supplemental to
Let's work together to start conversation grounded in the current action items so we can move forward effectively.
Let's try to continue to do that at all the meetings past tonight as well, too.
There is a lot of hypothetical and revisiting past discussion, and we are veering from talking about actual matters at hand.
So let's try to stay focused.
Item Q, a resolution to adopt the revived payment interns policy from Corporation Council.
Questions, comments, and concerns.
Commissioner Robby.
I think we should pay our interns and I'm going to vote no on this change because it would make it so that we don't have to pay our interns anymore.
Any other questions, comments, or concerns?
Good job.
We'll call a roll on that one.
Commissioner Hodge.
Yes.
Commissioner LaBar.
Yes.
Commissioner Light.
Yes.
Commissioner Matiaski.
Yes.
Commissioner Robby.
Mr. Sanders?
Yes.
Mr. Scott?
Yep.
Commissioner Somerville?
Yes.
Commissioner Beaman?
Yes.
Motion passed.
Okay.
The lovely Ashley Hall is passing us the supplemental.
Thank you.
Commissioner Hodge, are you going to move that?
Yeah.
Thank you.
I'm going to move a resolution authorizing a settlement in the ongoing foreclosure
litigation Fox at all versus Washtenaw at all.
Do I have a second?
Any discussion?
Okay.
Seeing none, we'll have a vote.
Commissioner LaValle?
Yes.
Commissioner Light?
Yes.
Commissioner Matiaski?
Yes.
Commissioner Robbie?
Mr. Sanders?
Yes.
Commissioner Scott?
Yep.
Commissioner Somerville?
Yes.
Okay.
Items for current and future discussion we did close session and I moved away from liaison reports apparently so quickly.
really hours ago, I miss Commissioner Robbie. Commissioner Robbie?
I'll just keep it quick, but I just want to let everybody know that both at the Environmental
Council and at the Heron River Waterford Council, we have been in intense discussions
about the oncoming onslaught of data centers to our county, and there is deep concern
that is growing in both entities, and I think that there will be an ask for us
takes some sort of action at our next meeting.
Any other items for current and future discussion?
Richard Hodge? Just really quickly, Kevin Mercer from WMU was here earlier yesterday
and it was his birthday. So he came, yeah, and he had the late
meeting the other night. So they said my birthday, wherever you are, Kevin, happy
I believe it's worth it.
Happy birthday, Kevin.
Thank you to staff for staying for another late night.
Any other current and future discussions?
All I can say is summer schedule is nice,
but it will be good to go back to two meetings a month.
And hopefully not being here till after midnight.
Good motion to adjourn?
To move.
Court.
All in favor?
Aye.
Goodbye.
Good night.
Thank you.
No.
Not be happy.
What's going to happen?
Hi.