[0:16] we would like to call the regular meeting of March 4th um to order we have

[0:22] a determination of a quorum

[0:26] absent coming is um everyone is Pres present and before we do the Pledge of

[0:32] Allegiance and a moment of Silent prayer I just want to let everyone know that

[0:36] Miss Kaiser who attends our meetings Faithfully for at least two decades that

[0:43] I know of she passed away on Saturday so please remember her family and and in

[0:48] your thoughts and prayers moment we're going to do the

[0:53] pledge of Alle

[1:00] States of America and to the for it stands one nation God indivisible withy

[1:09] and justice for all you remain standing for a moment of

[1:14] Silent

[1:19] prayer thank you the first item on our agenda is the approval of the

[1:24] agenda so moves support Peterson motion ALR support Peterson are there any

[1:31] changes or um anything to be pulled out from the consent

[1:40] agenda hearing none all in favor I opposed motion carries first item on the

[1:46] agenda is the consent agenda it's the minutes of the February 18th regular

[1:51] meeting in statements and checks so move Peterson motion Peterson support Thor

[1:58] support any questions or

[2:03] comments it was support thoron all in favor I opposed motion

[2:12] carries uh number five is a general legal update Mr wyers mam chairperson uh

[2:18] just to give the yeah I start State the court the board a brief update uh in

[2:24] regards to the ongoing issues of inspections at Harbor one Apartments as

[2:29] is all of your aware the city continues to do their

[2:32] inspections on the city Side on the township side our inspections will start

[2:38] uh next week and there's a team assembled to go through the town homes

[2:43] uh we're not expecting to see what has occurred over there in the in the city

[2:47] side but at the same time I know uh supervisor stumo myself and ordinance or

[2:54] compliance community community compliance director

[2:58] Kingsley we have participated in a number of Zoom meetings with Misha as

[3:04] well as with the inber Housing Commission and from those meetings it

[3:08] has become apparent that there are multiple agencies all of which are

[3:13] issuing vouchers but there's a multiplicity of inspections that are

[3:18] going on but there's no centralized U place to rec to to file

[3:25] those inspection reports in other words the city's doing theirs the Township's

[3:29] doing ours m is doing the a inor Housing Commission and so we have discussed the

[3:34] possibility of trying to streamline those inspections so that there will be

[3:39] a central repository on all the uh uh apartments in which uh Section 8

[3:46] vouchers or housing Choice vouchers are being uh issued to to recipients so that

[3:53] we make sure that those units are in keeping with the Township's established

[3:58] uh building codes um on a different note the township continues to work with uh

[4:05] and the Planning Commission continues to proceed with a number of projects the

[4:10] Culver's Restaurant uh was on the agenda for the Planning Commission at the

[4:14] February 25th meeting has now been sent to the zba for uh several variant

[4:22] requests the holiday and uh there'll be be it is scheduled to be built behind

[4:28] Leo's corny over there on joall Drive continues to make its way through the

[4:33] process and there would as well as a need for another traffic signal at their

[4:38] intersection uh comfort in continues to get close to getting their

[4:42] preconstruction meeting and they want to be in the ground this coming summer and

[4:47] likewise the uh sheets uh 24hour um gas station is on board to be um built this

[4:55] summer as well so there's a lot of commercial activity in different

[4:58] different parts of the township and we'll continue to keep you prized in

[5:02] regards to new ones that come along as well as the outcome of our inspections

[5:07] that are scheduled for Arbor one uh the next

[5:13] week thank you questions or

[5:17] comments hearing none we'll go on to new business item number one is the approved

[5:22] the Michigan indep Indigent defense Council contract with Washington County

[5:27] public defenders office for the 20242 fiscal year in the amount of$

[5:59] Services we used to contract out privately for that but now we do it with

[6:04] washingon County hearing know questions or

[6:08] comments all in favor I I opposed motion carries the next item is to authorize

[6:14] was County Road commission for 2025 agreement for additional Township wide

[6:19] street sweeping and crack ceiling in the estimated estimated amount of

[6:25] $327 se1 which is budgeted move Peterson motion Peterson support Swanson support

[6:33] Swanson other questions or comments on this again this is another annual um

[6:41] contracts that we do there will be another one that'll be brought back for

[6:45] the um improvements which will be a much larger contract that'll be at a future

[6:50] board meeting all in favor I opposed motion carries item number three is the

[6:57] appointment of Georgia violent to the an aror area Transportation Authority AAAA

[7:04] Board of director directors with the term ending 430 of 2029 so Mo

[7:12] Peterson motion Peterson support

[7:17] row M georgees is here yes you'll be happy to just go to the microphone if

[7:22] you'd

[7:28] like is it turn turned on I think it is yes would you like to just tell us a

[7:35] little bit about yourself and your resum was in the packet okay yes um I did

[7:40] submit my resume um I'm Georgia Valentine I reside in iany Township I am

[7:46] currently an employee of was County I work for the public defender office as a

[7:51] legal assistant um I've been with Wason County for 28 years uh in October um I a

[8:00] student at Eastern Michigan University pursuing a major in public and nonprofit

[8:05] Administration as well as minoring in elderly uh or aging studies is what they

[8:11] call it now um I saw the post on Facebook that you had a vacancy to serve

[8:18] on the aaata board for Ipsy Township and um I thought I should apply I'm um

[8:26] excited and uh humbled and honored to be appointed to the position and I look

[8:31] forward to serving the community as far as their needs go regarding um

[8:36] transportation thank you yeah thank you very much other questions or

[8:41] comments hearing none all in favor of appointing Georgia Valentine say I I

[8:47] oppose motion carries congratulations thank you

[8:55] [Applause]

[9:01] the next item on the agenda is to approve a five-year extension agreement

[9:05] with WJ O'Neal company for HVAC control services in the amount of $

[9:13] 74,7 which is budgeted in the different line

[9:17] items so moves support Peterson motion Eldridge

[9:23] support Peterson good evening John Hines

[9:27] Municipal service director uh before speaking on the memorandum I wanted to

[9:32] take the chance since I did not at the last board meeting to introduce the

[9:35] board officially to Matthew doring who is the new park superintendent for the

[9:39] township uh Matt's been working for us for about two weeks now and comes with

[9:43] over 20 years of experience and uh working on Park maintenance and uh

[9:48] facility Grounds Maintenance and has been a welcome addition to the team so

[9:52] you'll see him out and about uh in the Parks quite a bit this

[9:56] year welcome

[10:00] okay thank you so uh before you is a request for a 5year extension with WJ

[10:05] O'Neal for our HVAC system this would be for our controls which allow myself and

[10:10] other staff remote access to all the HVAC for the four affirm mention sites

[10:16] which are part of the extension agreement as well which would be our law

[10:19] enforcement center the Civic Center the community center and the court the price

[10:25] for 2025 would be the price that we've paid over the last 5year agreement

[10:29] and then it' be a 5% increase for 2026 to 2029 and the rate listed under those

[10:36] years would be the rate each year WJ O'Neal has been the Township's primary

[10:40] HVAC vendor since 2018 again coming off a five-year agreement uh that ended at

[10:45] the end of last

[10:49] year questions or comments hearing none all in favor I I

[10:55] opposed motion carries thank you John y number five is approved change order

[11:01] number two with kab Enterprises for

[11:06] $746 for West Willow Park area project which is

[11:10] budgeted still Move Motion Aldridge support support

[11:16] row Mr hin yep uh so this is a request to sign change order two with kab

[11:21] Enterprises for West Willow Park as part of the arpa West Willow and Burns Park

[11:26] contract that was signed in 2024 uh this is the second change order

[11:30] as listed and it's for three items one one and two are direct result of change

[11:36] order one that was signed because we added the additional pathway work it um

[11:42] then added extra work on top of that which was removal of safety surfacing

[11:46] was increased because there was actually more material on site at the park

[11:50] pre-existing than we knew beforehand um second is the restoration due to that

[11:56] removal and then third is a request to extend the contract deadline uh from

[12:01] October 1st 2024 to May 1st 2025 I'm not sure if you had the chance to go to West

[12:07] willower Burns Park but the parks are about 98% done Burns Park is finished

[12:13] minus a little bit of touch-up on some of the concrete and West Willow is

[12:17] finished except for putting the benches back on the pathway that they were taken

[12:22] out of the playground area and then a few areas where the asphalt was uh

[12:26] crumbled from their machines so they just need to touch those up and all of

[12:30] that expects to happen as soon as the weather allows and then both of those

[12:33] will be ready for final payment and completion questions or comments mam

[12:40] chair John is the I'm sorry is the equipment up

[12:44] also yes it is yeah at both parts yes so we didn't uh replace Burns part right

[12:51] right but at West Willow it's done the pathway is I have to go see that you

[12:54] should it looks really nice great great thank you John mhm there's been a lot of

[12:59] positive feedback from what Willow residents on the

[13:03] Improvement great I'm glad to hear again it does look really nice and Paving of

[13:07] the pathway really made a big difference yes yes and the last thing I want to add

[13:12] about the budget amendment is the funds are being taken from a part an arpa

[13:17] purchase order that was under budget last

[13:23] year great questions or

[13:27] comments hearing none All In favor I opposed motion carries thank you John

[13:34] number six is the approved upgrades to the police camera system with a not to

[13:38] exceed project value of

[13:58] $188,100 Poli Services uh camera system that allows our town Washington County

[14:03] Sheriff's Department to uh assist in investigations we're in the

[14:09] process of upgrading the networks that connect all these individual cameras

[14:14] together in a more secure reliable uh fashion and what we found as we moved

[14:18] through the project is that a lot of the boxes that are on the

[14:22] poles uh are in desperate need of service some of them are leaking some of

[14:27] them are uh not are too small they don't have proper environmental controls the

[14:33] boxes are getting too hot uh so it came in discussion between myself DSC who is

[14:42] our new camera support vendor and Comcast who would be putting the

[14:45] equipment in the box that it is uh best recommended that we actually replace all

[14:51] the or most of the boxes that are on the poles we're trying to pick and choose

[14:55] which boxes we have to replace uh to best you know protect the

[15:01] investment that we have on these polls the other aspect to the request is the

[15:07] necessary upgrades to the servers that store all the camera video footage

[15:13] itself these servers are extremely dated they're over

[15:17] capacity uh and you we need to replace them within the next year uh Windows 10

[15:27] is end of life in o October after that you know there's no

[15:31] way we can get security patches for the actual camera servers themselves uh

[15:37] because they won't support any of the latest operating systems

[15:41] so happy to answer any questions thank you Travis questions or

[15:48] comments hearing none all in favor I I opposed motion

[15:56] carries number seven is budget amendment number three k

[16:02] Swanson to sorry sorry sorry motion to amend the

[16:07] 2025 budget number three move to increase the general fund budget by

[16:15] 7,464 to 2,62 21,

[16:23] 62488 and to improve Department line item changes is

[16:27] outlined move to increase the law enforcement fund by 100,000 to

[16:36] 10,241 1827 and approve the department line

[16:40] items as outlined so moved Swanson motion

[16:46] Swanson support support row

[16:52] discussion hearing none all in favor I opposed motion carries authorization in

[17:00] bids we have accept the low bid from Jean butman Ford for the purchase of one

[17:04] Ford F-150 in the amount of 5234

[17:10] 625 which is budgeted motion row support support

[17:20] thoron discussion I didn't have my mic on that motion was by Lovejoy row so

[17:25] sorry motion I said motion row is I they oh thank messed up I was fixing it sorry

[17:35] thank you yeah I hear you but the audience to hear Goa thank you well the

[17:39] person doing the minutes questions or comments I'm happy

[17:45] to see a local vendor um received the bid for the vehicle all in favor I I

[17:52] opposed motion carries there's no other business are there public comments and

[17:59] you have three minutes you'd like to say if you're from the township or not that

[18:03] would be

[18:08] great Jeremy Haley um my thing is the summer jazz festival thing is coming up

[18:16] at for Lake Park and I what I last meeting I was at

[18:20] the County Board of Commissioners I asked him a certain question they were

[18:25] all in supportive of it but a few were hesitant about it in a way

[18:31] because they they said they give the amount about

[18:35] $10,000 to the F to help it continue and they said they have not

[18:42] received a p some paperwork from you that they had asked about what you

[18:47] received in parking

[18:51] and and some of them held reservation on saying that the County Board of

[18:57] Commissioners are giving this thing money to go but yet the

[19:03] Township's charging money for people access to a free concert for parking

[19:11] fees and some of them had reservations about that

[19:16] issue as to why are we giving money here out of our budget and the townships just

[19:23] charging people $10 to get in for the access to the best you know music

[19:31] thing just let let you know how they answer it freely you can go back I think

[19:36] a few weeks or not at the last me you can hear the responses

[19:40] whatnot but it is something i' assess the whole board to consider how to

[19:48] remediate this situation like that cuz it he offers it as a free concert but

[19:53] yet when you pull up you charge $10 to get into the park

[19:59] is thank you to my knowledge no one has reached out to us but we will reach out

[20:06] to the County Board of Commissioners to find out they normally give money to the

[20:11] Johnny Lawrence organization not to ipsan Township well I know that that's

[20:16] what I said so I I'm not sure but no one's reached out to us yet to my

[20:20] knowledge but I'll follow up thank any other public

[20:27] comment here none I'm sorry M J's waving oh I'm sorry can you go to the

[20:35] microphone please color is the truck going to

[20:41] be [Music]

[20:46] silver good question all right are there a board member comments

[20:53] do we have any board member comments we had quite a few meetings

[20:57] this week I won't go through them all one of the um most important meeting was

[21:01] a stakeholder meeting we had internally with the um washaw County Drain

[21:05] Commission and um omm who did the flood study report and um there was a large

[21:14] amount of people around the table and then we presented they presented and to

[21:18] the public last Thursday I think it was and there was a good turn

[21:23] out so the township um was a $400,000 study that we partnered with the um

[21:30] Water Resource Commission and there's lots of recommendations in there and

[21:35] it's somewhere around 30 million for suggested improvements and we were

[21:41] trying to we're going to regroup and just figure out how can we also help

[21:46] with um getting information out to residents on things that they can do at

[21:50] their home to prevent um yucko was there as well there's backflow preventers that

[21:57] can be installed that would help especially if it's in a known area yaka

[22:02] was looking at doing a pilot project to see if they could partner because it's F

[22:08] say it's $4,000 $5,000 that's a lot of money so they're looking to partner in a

[22:13] shared cost with people to help for future

[22:17] flooding there's things with the down spouts that actually go into some of the

[22:23] homes um storm water goes into their sewer so when there's a lot of water it

[22:30] fills up and causes a back a backup so there's things that are going to be

[22:35] recommended and they had educational pieces that were being handed out but um

[22:41] so we're still in that process and they'll do a presentation to the board

[22:44] as well that meeting happened um we met

[22:48] with um U ofm today and talked about some of the

[22:55] Partnerships and we also asked them about the electrical question that was

[23:00] asked at the last board meeting will the data center they're proposing take from

[23:05] our electrical grid and they said that um the plan is to add a substation so it

[23:12] will not affect the our um residents and our businesses um supply of electricity

[23:21] so that was the answer that they provided and as we move forward in

[23:26] partnering with them we we'll let you guys know when there's something solid

[23:30] right now we're just talking in developing relationships we talked about

[23:34] Economic Development um marketing but those talks

[23:39] are just still going and um they said it's still not been formally announced

[23:46] of when they're going to do it they still thought they would get the funding

[23:50] from the federal government so it's a $1.5

[23:55] billion investment and 200 jobs supposedly but

[24:01] nothing is really solid right now so once it gets solid and they announce it

[24:06] and start um informing us of more of what they're doing then we will they

[24:12] said they're going to come to a board meeting and do a presentation so

[24:15] everyone can hear it so a resident came in and asked us about that and reminded

[24:21] me that we need to update the board here did you want to talk about that or

[24:26] did you want okay and then the um we had firefighter interviews there were three

[24:32] vacancies um currently we have 10 people to interview we interviewed three so

[24:38] this week we're going to wrap it up and um fill the vacancies in the fire

[24:43] department good candidates very good and finally a resident came to visit at the

[24:49] counter and suggested that we have um uh was called a hyperlink and I'm not even

[24:55] sure how that works but on our agenda packet so you can hear the audio while

[25:01] you're looking at the agenda and I know that our click's office was looking into

[25:05] that so it was a great idea and suggestion by our residents just by

[25:11] having a conversation that's all I have okay uh Christina Reeves I um you

[25:18] mentioned about the uh a committee for the parking Rec up for the community

[25:24] center that's being built and I signed but I haven't heard anything yeah we

[25:29] haven't had a meeting with them yet to determine that I did send an email and

[25:33] let them know that we had some board members and um residents that were

[25:38] interested in it we're supposed to have a follow-up meeting because I've never

[25:42] met with them in a with their group yet other than um that one meeting oneon-one

[25:47] so we're having a follow-up meeting next week with the um Parks and Recreation

[25:52] Department or was County Parks and R okay thank

[25:56] you motion to adjourn Madam chair oh I'm sorry trusty Peterson just very quickly

[26:01] I didn't hear you mention a couple more meetings who went to we went to Golf

[26:05] Village resident meeting yeah they are asking that the board if you come to the

[26:11] next meeting to bring uh Easter candy can you the mic Easter candy to donate

[26:20] to the um children in that neighborhood G Village okay also went to the

[26:26] African-American celebration uh that was at the Civic Center Bron and

[26:31] I attend and then we also attended the senior uh meeting at the county with

[26:37] Justin Hodge and the seniors showed up very well to discuss that $1 million at

[26:43] the county so we thank you Gloria thank you motion to

[26:49] adjourn motion Eldridge supp support row all in favor I I opposed motion

[26:58] adjourned at 6:27 and God bless Miss Kaiser yes

[27:04] ma'am miss her oh my God hard to

[27:10] believe oh yeah John was there you should have told me I seen you coming

[27:15] from the side I'm sorry you should have said and my me too yeah I seen you

[27:20] coming from the side

[27:27] [Applause] you

2025-03-04 Township Board Regular Meeting Audio

Transcript