 I know that there's a few items okay if you could add the agenda summary of the community survey. That was kind of a hold order last night. You know the guys that were the hardest guys to recognize nine years ago were the guys that played offensive defensive line for a football team. I got to know them because we're both out there. I don't know. You have a full bowl there. No, we have all my things. Don't you ever know your name? I don't even know my name on the phone. You have to get a hold of yourself. I'm an angry bird. You have to get a hold of yourself. He's not going to be here. I don't think, Billy has to work. So he couldn't make it today. I was wondering. I signed all my stuff. It's fine. No, go ahead. I don't know. I don't think I know anybody. Can I get some signatures from you, please? Are there any other documents that need to be brought to the clerk's desk? We're always signing very quickly. I need one of those. I can't even get the word. You put some of those arrows there. Thank you ever so much. Take your time. I'll stroll back into the natural. Thank you. I'd like to call the 12th regular meeting of the 2016-2017 Common Council to order. Would the clerk please read the quote for the day? Thank you, Mayor. We've learned about honesty and integrity. The truth matters that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules. And success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square. Thank you very much. Please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes from our last council meeting, Alderperson Donahue. Thank you, Mayor. I move to approve. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. There are no resignations nor Mayor's appointments this evening. The next item is confirmation of Mayor's appointments. City Attorney? We don't have any. Nope, we don't have any of those either. Nothing there either. Thank you. Next item will go on to an election for a position on the Board of Water Commissioners. Alderperson Donahue. Thank you, Mayor. I move to open the floor for nominations for the position of Board of Water Commissioners. Second. Thank you in that respect. I nominate Jerry van de Kreek for the position of Board of Water Commissioners. Second. Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? Are there any other nominations? Thank you, Mayor. In that regard, I move that the nominations be closed and to direct the city clerk to cast a unanimous ballot for Jerry van de Kreek for the position of Board of Water Commissioner. Second. Thank you. You all have a letter of interest from Jerry van de Kreek, and he served on the Board for over 30 years. And I'd just like to invite him up if he'd like to say a few words. Mr. van de Kreek. Okay, thank you very much. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Congratulations on another term. Next, we'll go on to a presentation which is an update from Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation by Dane Cekolinski, the Economic Executive Director. Dane? Well, thank you. It's an honor to be up here once again. And I think this is the first time I've had the opportunity to share a more in-depth update with the Common Council. So appreciate your time. Right away, the SCEDC is a nonprofit organization devoted to growing the local economy. We consist of about 40 board members in which the city of Sheboygan has dual representation. We have four full-time staff. And like I said, how we measure our success is typically by jobs, investment, and many of our municipalities also want to know the property tax impact. And so we're really an organization with 100 different organizations that support us financially that believe in rising tides, lift all boats, and that as long as the local economy grows, everyone should benefit. So right away, I wanted to get into a little bit of our budget just so you know where we stuck. Apologize. Well, when it comes up, I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it. So we receive funding from a variety of different sources over 100 different organizations. Of that, about 42% of our budget comes from public sources. 52, just over half, come from private companies like Kohler Company, Acuity, Individual CPAs. We have some in-kind and a little small revenue stream of our own. And then on the next one, we'll show how our expenses are very broadly. The bulk of our expenses are in staffing, about 61%. 10% overhead, and the remaining is essentially our program services. So our budgets to put together marketing materials, promotion materials, and go out and talk to companies. All said and told, we're looking at just about roughly around a half a million dollar budget. So all of our conversations in the last year to two years has really revolved around one key factor, and that's workforce. We are sitting on over 3,000 unfilled jobs within 25 miles of Sheboygan or commuting distance. And so when we talk to our companies and individuals who had just recently relocated here, they said, what do we need to do better as a community? And almost two things always pop up. The first is the lack of housing options, and the second is retail, and I'll get into that in a little bit. But on lack of multi-family, after the housing crash, when most people relocate, they rent before they own. And so it's important that we have a housing stock that people want. So we'll go right into the next slide. So we commissioned a housing study almost two years ago and took a look at housing in Sheboygan. Sheboygan Falls and Plymouth are what I kind of call the core of the county. And from that study, we started talking to developer after developer and property owner. These are the results within the city of Sheboygan. Each last one of these has cited our organization, as the reason why they became interested. And as it became interested, we basically passed them off to the city staff, and they've done a wonderful job of landing and sticking them here. So these are the first ones that come up, Meadowland Villas. We'll just quickly go through these. Most of these you're very familiar with. Portscape Apartments. The Oakbrook Encore Apartments, as it's called now. And then originally, we met with SMET, introduced SMET to the city that eventually became LCM funds and hopefully moving forward. So all said and told, these bring about 347 units into the city. To put that in perspective, that's more housing units in the city in about a year than what the county saw in about three years during the recession. It is an amazing boom. All said and told, we're looking at about $42 million of investment. And even if those investments are assessed at only 70%, they should generate about $270,000 for the city of Sheboygan alone. If they weren't inside TIP districts, if they were just, I don't want to say normal deals, because I think that is the new norm. But if they were without that district, obviously with the district, the city is able to be steward over more funding. The next one is just a comparison in the city invests $100,000 in us every year. And just with these investments alone, the city is poised to gain a return on its investment and annuity that hopefully will keep coming back year after year. And everything that we get from now on will simply add to those totals. So housing is one. Retail is the second. We'll go right away in retail. We'll go to scoring. Oh, again, please. Okay, so when we talk to retailers, and we're focused on this because that's what people who relocate to the areas are telling us that we need. When we talk to them, their favorite site in this area in the market is on 23 and 32, essentially Memorial Mall. Memorial Mall is the best retail location. However, it is pretty much all built out. There's nothing about homes and existing businesses in that area. So retailers say then they like the deer trace area on the south end. The challenge is there that really none of the land that looks available is for sale. And then finally they look at the north exit and they pretty much say, you know, we could see where this would have potential, but it's going to need some work. And so we decided to throw a lot of energy into option three simply because it has land available. When we did that, we did make a conscientious effort because of the support of the city to allow the city to have an add-on to that contract. We were willing to partner at the time. And I think those conversations went back and eventually molded itself into a consultant for the downtown to try to get downtown retail. So we're glad that the effort's going on. Sounds like it's bearing some success, but we are going to keep trucking on trying to get more retail into this area. Next slide, please. So one of our early successes, we belong to a couple different organizations. We were the first organization to reach out to Mayer when they heard that they built a DC. We were able to make a connection rather quickly. Once again, thank you to city staff who provide us with the right contact information for Memorial Mall. Once that connection was made, we handed it off to the city, and you guys have done a great job keeping that moving forward. So with those two major community development efforts underway, we also focus on the workers themselves. So in the workforce attraction, I did give a presentation just earlier on the someplace better. I did this earlier this year. I'm not going to go over that, but we are the only area in the state of Wisconsin. As a matter of fact, the nation that I'm aware of that has comprehensive sales tools to sell the area as a place to live. The feedback from our companies has been astonishing. They've noticed it a little bit easier to sell the area as a place to live. So I just wanted to share some results. These are based on the last 30 days of someplace better.org. So right away, we're seeing about 300 hits a day on that website. Of those, we're seeing about 60, 65 job searches. We have a comprehensive list of jobs in the area. And so that's really what this website is hopefully designed to do is to keep driving those analytics. Just to give you a little flavor on where people are accessing this website. Number one, Chicago, number two, Milwaukee, Sheboygan's at number three, Madison and Green Bay. So our real goal is to try to drive traffic of people who don't live here to be interested in this area. And I'll just do the next. You can see what companies they're looking at. These are just last 30 days numbers. The vast majority of these are within the city of Sheboygan. But of course, Kohler Company comes up, Merck, which is former Sigma Aldrich. So you just get a little flavor of what people are looking for. The next slide is we have done everything that we can to leverage the media. Our goal is to continue to try to get stories throughout the Upper Midwest on how Sheboygan County has jobs. Every time a story comes out, this website gets a lot of hits and our companies also see a bump on people looking for work. So the more we can push and drive that message, the better it'll be for all of us. Next, existing companies. This has always been the bread and butter of what we do and perhaps the primary reason why we started up. So here are just some headlines of some companies that we have worked with to help them invest in the city of Sheboygan. I just wanted to share one story with you. Gardener Denver. As a matter of fact, this was the reason why our organization existed. Back in 2009 when they moved their primary production facility out of here. Even though they still maintain a presence today and even larger today. So in August 2013, we were able to get them a workforce training grant for some upgrades in their processing equipment that they were going through. They ran into some snags with the State of Wisconsin over administration of it. We were able to get them out and we were able to gain enough trust in the organization that in May 2015, our organization was contacted. You get the next thing. And they told us in confidence that we have an opportunity to relocate our Illinois facility up here. It's only about a dozen jobs, but we think it's a good fit. So we know our operations, but what can you tell us about the area? How can we tell corporate that we get them more interested in moving the location here? So we gave them all the information that we could. We armed them as best as we had with every information we had available. And by October of that year, we were actually touring about a dozen people up here who were from their Niles Illinois facility. They had already decided to move the work up here and the company wanted us to show around people to get them interested in moving. Today, six of those 12 people currently still live and work in Sheboygan. So that's just one example of consistently working with a company. In addition to that, we have in the last year and a half or so really pushed our entrepreneurial services, helping companies form business plans and go after financing. About a year ago, the city indicated that it had a challenge with a lot of funds and it's revolving loan fund and we took it very seriously that we wanted to help get that money out on the street and moving. So about a year and a half later, these are all the different companies that have invested or re-invested, grown in Sheboygan, to the tune of about $9 million and about $1.4 million of city RLF funds are now down the street doing what they were designed to do. And we expect about 90 jobs from all these new jobs from all these various investments ranging from manufacturers all the way to retail and hospitality, so it's a pretty broad mix. And then finally, one of the biggest questions I usually get is, where does the SEDC and how does the city interact? What are the roles here? So I just want to share very briefly. So we work very closely with a couple different organizations to help companies take an idea or a concept, put it down in writing, create a business plan and get them to the point that they're ready for financing. At that point, we help them find a primary financing source if they don't already have one. And then finally, if that is not enough, then we work with whichever municipality that business is in to arrange a secondary finance. So these would be the RLF funds, TIF funds, those things of those nature. And at that point, we really start working very closely with the different communities. And then finally, once the financial package is put together, then really the city takes it from there and runs all the way and runs through a lot of the detail in terms of zoning, land use, permits, those sorts of things. But throughout the entire process, we are project managing it. We're always calling up the business saying, how are things going? Is anything stock? Do you need anything from us? And our goal throughout this entire thing is to get companies ready to invest and to set them up with the best success they have. We even look at marketing plans. And so far, our companies have done a very good job. We'll keep going. So the final thing I really wanted just to touch and note on here is that our organization was created to take action. Our organization was created to try to do good and encourage investment in the area. And we have taken some stances that are popular with some and unpopular with others. Please just note that we're in here to see investment in our community. And just in general, that's what we're here to do. So I just want to thank you, all of you, for your time. I want to thank you for what you do and to help make this community a better place. I'm really optimistic in what we're going to see here in the next couple of years. And I think the opportunities ahead of us are pretty rare and unique compared to most Wisconsin municipalities. So thank you. Dane, thank you very much for that presentation. Next, we'll go on to public forum. Okay. First on the list is Mike Brunette. Mike, can you give us your home address, please? 1925 South 26th Street. And you will have five minutes. All right. About two months ago, the city had a pretty cold meeting out at Maywood where a lot of you guys and a lot more of you guys, about 35 people, did a brainstorming session. And personally, I think that was one of the neatest things the city's done since I've been following this for the last 10 years since I moved back. And it's something that I'd like, there's one thing missing from it that I'd like to get involved and that would be normal people, citizens. Not that you guys are abnormal, but people that aren't doing it for, you know, officially, but regular citizens. And I'd like to get people together in some kind of informal session, probably on a Wednesday night, because I don't know any other time when people would want to do it, but just basically get together for a couple of hours. And what they did is basically have everybody go through and it's a brainstorming session. You just bring your dreams. You just put down on a little piece of paper, post it note, what you would like to see or something that you think is important. Get them all out there. And basically, you go through it again and people grade the, well, they vote on each of the items and you vote them up and then go into breakout groups. But being that it would be a public thing and everybody is not way up to speed on everything. I think it would be a nice thing just to get together, get all the ideas out there, post them online, make posters, post posters around town, have people comment on them and then get back together and do it again. And basically work on it. And I'm saying, and I'd like to see city people there too. And it's like, but basically I think it would be great to have a lot more input into the situation and build on it. And once again, I thought what they did was really great, but to me it was in a way when you are planning your future on a three hour meeting and it's like, and I know they're doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, but the initial input, I think it actually needs to be fleshed out a little more than that and it's something I'd like to be an ongoing thing and if anybody wants to get involved with it and it's like, I'm putting some stuff up on chevegas.com which is this SHE Vegas, like the crappy bar on Michigan Avenue and it's kind of like, and I'm Ichevegas at gmail.com and it's like, and you can get a hold of me and it's basically what I would like to do and a lot of people talk to me and they want to get involved in this and that and I'm like, this is a chance to do it other than just bitching about everything that isn't getting done. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Next on the list would be Kelly Camps. Is Kelly here? You want to come up, Kelly? Kelly, can you give us your home address please? 520 Euclid Avenue. And you will have five minutes. Okay. I'm concerned about the fire rings down at the beach. I know that for the most part, they are a good part of our community. They're a place where for the most part, good kids do hang out and have fun. It's a get together spot in the evening. The one thing that I'm concerned most about if you take these away is there's nothing good to replace them that's put in place. Therefore, I'm nervous that these kids may end up in mini-mart parking lots, getting into trouble, loitering. And mini-marts usually are in a neighborhood. Houses are surrounding them. They get loud, laugh, whatever. And now they're disrupting people and they start to become a nuisance. Carl, a friend of mine, has looked at the beach and we think that there could be some solutions. We think if we had the city place garbage cans near the fire pits, that it would hopefully decrease the littering problem down at the beach. If we enforced the laws, I think it would just take a few times randomly to enforce them that the kids, the adults, are going to start making sure those rules are being enforced because now we're getting fines and we better listen to these rules as consequences are being put in place. I also think that, I guess, you know, Carl will talk more about that, but permits, having somebody held accountable for these fire rings, board kids get in trouble, board kids find other things to do, board kids get into a lot of trouble and I don't want to see that happen. There's a lot of problems in Sheboygan and I run a support group. I know where they lead and we can't afford to have more problems in the city. People are saying it's a great place to live. Let's make it a great place. Let's enforce these laws. Let's give this a second chance. Let's see if it works, you know. If it doesn't work, please, you know, then decide if you're going to take it off, you know, and get rid of it, but can we please try to enforce the rules? Get the fines going, get garbage cans there. Let's try to make it possible for these rules to be followed and respected and if they're not then, then get rid of them, but at least give it a chance because I don't want my kid getting loitering tickets, getting into trouble and I'm sure you guys don't want it happening either. I guess that's all I have to say is can we just try to make it work by doing the things, you know, posting signs, getting those garbage cans there and really trying to make it work instead of being so set on it being a failure and let the kids, which 90% of them are generally good kids using it and families using it. You've got to stop letting the crap take away all the fun for the good kids. It's time the good kids get to win once and that's it. Thank you, Kelly. Next would be Carl Mertens. Is Carl here? Come on up, Carl. Carl, can I get your home address please? Yeah, it's 1924 North Second Street. Okay, you'll have five minutes. Alright, thanks. Some place better. That's what the city is touting. That's what has kind of gotten our attention. We just recently moved here from Chicago area back in July. My, let's see, I guess it'd be my great-grandparents lived in Sheboygan. So my father used to come up here as a kid and spend time at his grandparents place. So that's like the love of Sheboygan that's kind of been in the back of my head. I know the story. I didn't really know Sheboygan. Years ago we had a family party over at Valrath Park, which is actually where I live across from right now. That's my only experience with Sheboygan up until this past year. My parents bought a house here to retire in because in Chicago just the cost of staying in their house was going to be $15,000 in property taxes a year. They couldn't retire there feasibly. So they settled on Sheboygan. We've always gone up to like the northern part of Wisconsin to a cabin. We always saw my parents would retire there. They settled here. Started coming up here with them. Really fell in love with the city. I worked from home. My girlfriend works from home. Nothing was really tying us to the area that we lived in. Geneva, Illinois. Western suburb really a fluent, awesome area to be always in the top five places to raise kids and whatnot. We ended up coming up here, fell in love with Sheboygan. And prior to knowing what someplace better was, we always called it just in Sheboygan was our hashtag. And we'd come up here. We'd write stuff. We'd tag it in Sheboygan. What makes Sheboygan so cool that you can't do other places. The fire rings were part of that. Just learned about this possible removal this past week. And I went to like next door, fired off a quick rant. I was immediately just like, wow, this really sucks because part of why we decided to move here was the beach fire rings. It was really a cool feature. Many times I have friends visit, family visits. I always talk about the fire rings. We go down and have a fire to Kelly's point. Yes, it's a place for the kids to go. It's also a place for adults to go. Adults abuse it just as much as kids, I'm sure. I understand the safety reasons for wanting to remove them. But I think if we removed everything from society that had a safety issue or was abused at one point, we wouldn't really get too far as a society. There's always going to be issues. We just have to work at those. As far as enforcement goes, I understand that, you know, who's going to enforce them. The police are short staffed. Anyone in the city is short staffed, whatever. I get all that. I get the safety reasons. But I think there's got to be some other solutions. Even if it's you reduce it to nothing past nine o'clock, no fires past nine o'clock. If you think about if you are drinking, which you're not supposed to on the beach, or, you know, but let's say that happens, because obviously it happens, they're finding bottles and whatnot there. If you reduce the time to use it to nine o'clock, that reduces the carelessness that happens once you've had a few too many, or as the night goes on, putting waste baskets closer to the fire pits would be a start, too. There isn't, you know, if you go online, you Google search images of beach fire rings. A lot of them are these big cement fire rings, and then right next to it is a big steel drum for trash. We don't have that. Have we tried that? I don't know. Again, I'm new here, but I think there are some things that we could try out. A charcoal fire ring versus a wood-burning fire ring. Maybe that's an option. Run the two, color code them. One's charcoal, one's fire. Take a look and see if that, maybe the wood-burning one gets more abuse than a charcoal. Well, now you have an option of charcoal fire rings only. There are options you can try and see, and maybe there's been stuff done. Maybe there's stats and facts. I haven't seen them. The article I read in the paper was pretty much opinion-based from what I could gather. I'm talking to you from an opinion, but I think there's got to be some other options. If you are to be out there trying to get people to move and you're saying someplace better, what's better than having a fire on the beach? That's a pretty cool feature. It's pretty cool that you have a beach to have a fire on. There's only five Great Lakes here. We're on one of them. That's something that not too many cities can offer. We have the opportunity to have fires on a beach. That's a pretty nice feature. It's something that, when you live somewhere, visit somewhere, it's something you're going to talk about. You remove the fire pits, fire rings, and instead of someplace better, you're someplace ordinary. You're just like anywhere else. Excuse me, Carl. You're five minutes early. All right. Don't be someplace ordinary. Thank you, Carl. That would be it for tonight. Thank you very much. Next we'll move on to the mayor's announcements. This week a banquet will be held at Allen Alves and a special program will also be held at the Historical Museum to commemorate the Volga German Society's 250th anniversary. Tonight I'm pleased to present representatives of the Volga German Society of Proclamation to recognize the 250th anniversary of the migration of Germans to Russia and then their resettlement in the city of Sheboygan. I'd ask Kevin Gretens to join me at the podium to receive this proclamation. Office of the Mayor, city of Sheboygan proclamation. Whereas the year of 2016 marks the 250th anniversary of the arrival of German settlers to the banks of the Volga and Karma rivers and founded a series of small villages that turned unproductive lands into prosperous colonies which became the bread basket of Russia. And whereas on April 10th a small group of seven Volga Germans got Lee Mertz, his wife and son, two men named Henry Yerke, who were cousins and their wives from Rinewald, Russia, arrived in Sheboygan and were followed by settlers from the villages of Schaefer, Schultz, Kronovasier and Enders. And whereas the families, children and descendants of these immigrants of Germans from Russia numbering in the thousands have prospered and contributed greatly to the economy and growth of the city of Sheboygan. And whereas we acknowledge the contributions of Mayors Richard Susha, John Bulgert, James Schram, former Alderman John Weber, John Henning, Robert Richter, John Schneider Jr. and Alderman Scott Lewandowski to the governmental leadership of Sheboygan. And whereas we acknowledge the contributions and services of representatives of the Center for Volga Germans, the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia, Sheboygan Historical Society Museum, and the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center who have kept alive their unique German-Russian heritage. I, Mike van der Steen by virtue of the authority invested me as mayor of the city of Sheboygan to hereby recognize and commend the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the migration of Germans to Russia and their resettlement in the city of Sheboygan. There you go. I'd like to say a few words. Thank you, mayor, and thank you for having us have this privilege to be here. This weekend, we're going to be entertaining a lot of people. We actually had to overbook because Sheboygan is such a center for the Volga Deutsch, the Germans from Russia. My grandparents came here in 1909 but settled up in Oneida and there's a couple of other wonderful German Russians and I may be some of you in this room are Germans from Russia as well. But we have a wonderful committee. The mayor and his wife is going to join us at our banquet at Allen-Als. I think we don't have enough room at Allen-Als even. And today people have been calling to be represented by multiple states in Canada and they're coming here to be a part of Sheboygan because so many people have roots here because of the Volga Germans. So thank you and we're going to have a great time. If you want to stop by the museum or stop by Trinity, Trinity, the events in Trinity are going to be on Sunday and the featured speaker is Dr. Brent May from Concordia University in Portland, Oregon and now he's taken a position in Connecticut and he's the person that founded the Center for Volga German Studies and he has 10 of these events throughout the United States and they handpicked Sheboygan. So it's a great opportunity for us and I thank the city and the governor and all of you for giving us this privilege. So thank you very much. Speaking to Germany, we'll be celebrating our 50th anniversary with Esslingen Germany as a sister city next year and I'll be leading the delegation of Sheboyganites to visit Germany to participate in that celebration. The group will be leaving on May 16th and if anyone's interested in participating in that trip you can just call our office. We've got a detailed itinerary list to help you out and we hope that we can bring a group of somewhere around 45 to 60 people along to Germany for this event. I'd like to also thank local 483, the Sheboygan firefighters. They ran a fundraiser, fill the boot campaign for muscular dystrophy. They raised $17,065. Lieutenant Blaine Werner organized this event and they really would like to thank all of our community who participated for their generosity. The turnout for transportation is an event that was referred to in the just fix it resolution that was passed at our last meeting and that will be held on September 29th at seven o'clock in the Sheboygan County Health and Human Services building on North A Street across from Fountain Park. It's going to be held in room 372. Thank you. Next we'll move on to the consent agenda. Alderperson Donahue. Thank you mayor. I would move to accept and file all reports of officers, accept and adopt all reports of committees and pass all resolutions and ordinances. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on any of the items on the consent agenda? C9, will the clerk please call the roll for passage? 11 ayes, 1 no. Motion passes. Next we'll move on to reports of officers. Item 3.1 is an RO by the City Planning Commission. Tumor is referred. Resolution number 81 of 1617 by Alderperson Born approving the capital improvements program recommended by the Capital Improvements Commission for the program period of 2017 through 21 and adopting the program for implementation and wishes to report this matter was discussed at the regular meeting of the City Planning Commission on August 23rd and September 13th after due consideration recommends approval of the resolution. Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you. I move to accept and file and pass the resolution. Thank you for that motion. Second. And support. The resolution is before us. Is there any discussion? Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I represent the Planning Commission as the only Alderman that's on that that's selected by this body. And my name was called for this. I do not support this. For those at home in the newer Alderman the past number of years what we've been doing is borrowing three million dollars annually for capital and during that timeframe probably five, six years ago our debt was up around 64, 65 million dollars. We have worked very hard to reduce our debt, lower our borrowing and get us back in line and we've done an outstanding job of that. During that process we were able to get our bond rating improved. We had a little hiccup a couple years ago where standard and pours reduced our bond rating. But since then it's been moved back up. I've had several lengthy conversations with Carol Worth and for those of you who don't know her she's the one who does our bonding for us and handles that and talks to the council when we refinance our debt as well. She's with Wisconsin Public Finance Professionals and what she wanted me to be aware of and hence this body I'll pass this information along. What we're looking at right now is we were looking at 10.3 million dollars for next year that is looking to be borrowed. Last number of years we've only taken out three million dollars. That 10.3 million represents a 243% increase over what we normally borrow. If we were to take out the four million dollars just for the City Hall portion of that borrowing and had the 6.3 million dollars that 6.3 million dollars would be 110% increase over what we normally borrow. I think an escalation like this is unwise and I think it can have unintended consequences down the road. In my conversations with Carol Worth she stated that City Hall should be looked at as an anomaly in a one-off and when they do a rating call with Moody's what they'll do is they'll say, do you have a plan? How are you going to fund this? This is only a one-time occurrence and they will probably look favorably upon that portion of the borrowing. What they will not look favorably upon is the 110% increase in the other capital borrowing that we're doing and the subsequent plan to borrow in 18, 6.8 million in 19, 4.3 in 20, 7.4 in 21, 5.4 million dollars. Those five years total up to 34.4 million dollars. Right now we're at 32, 33 million dollars in debt. We've got a capacity where we could borrow 70-some million and if we go and do this borrowing plan for the next five years we will be at the ceiling of what we can borrow. We will have basically taken in five years and borrowed to the maximum of our capacity or very close to it and again I think that's unwise. I think it's foolish seeing as the history that we have of paying down our debt and being very conservative in our borrowing. I realize that there's capital needs out there and that all the department heads have wish lists and they want to have their capital funded but we don't need to do it all in one year. What we've done is we've had a wheel tax to address the roads. We have our favorite cities or county sales tax that is going towards roads and we also have the garbage fee that's going for roads. We've got all these different mechanisms and special assessments that we're going to continue to do to address roads as well. We've got those in place already. I just don't think that it's the wise thing to move forward and to be borrowing at this extent and extending ourselves out like we're doing. What I would like to do is I would like to offer an amendment where instead of the $6.3 million for capital we cap it at $3,500,000. That would be a 16% increase. It's over what we normally borrow. It's a double digit increase. It's a half a million dollars more than we're used to borrowing but I think it's in line and it addresses some of the capital needs that the city has and then I would also like to have 50% of City Hall be funded with reserves and then 50% could be borrowed for as well. In the past number of years we've been very conservative. We've had under runs year after year after year. We've built up our reserves. That is what reserves are for. Reserves are for one time expenses like that. The public at home and that are here tonight at the meeting see that we keep having under runs. We keep building up our reserves, building up our reserves. Why are we extending ourselves and borrowing this much then for that? Based on my lengthy conversations with Carol Worth, I think that's the prudent way to go and that will protect us in the future with our bond rating and I would offer that as an amendment. Thank you. Second. Thank you for those comments. We have an amendment on the floor and I'll just to clarify the amendment. The amendment was to reduce the number in the resolution from 6.334909 to 3.500000 and to use reserves and additional bonding to cover the cost of a future City Hall project. Is that correct? Pardon me? 50-50 with that. So it would be if City Hall is $8 million, bonding would be $4 million and paying out of reserves or other fund balances would be $4 million. Okay. Is that okay with the second? Okay. So that amendment is on the floor right now. We're under discussion on the amendment. Point of parliamentary procedure. I believe that the proper motion would be to divide the question. These are two completely separate issues and they cannot be voted on as a joint issue. That would be my thought and I guess I would ask the City Attorney whether the division of the question would be appropriate. Well, I would tend to agree that the two issues that Alderman Bellinger put in the motions really are separate items. Okay. If it's all right then, what I'd like to do is accept the amendment to amend the number from 6.334909 to 3.500000 and then we can deal with the second amendment later on with City Hall. Is that okay? Yes. Okay. So we're voting or discussing first of all the amendment to change that number and the resolution under discussion on that amendment. Alderperson Donahue. Thank you, Mayor. I have a couple of points, but as an initial matter, I would ask the City Administrator to address the issue of our bond rating and his conversations with Carol Worth to enlighten us as to whether this increase to 6.334 million does in fact endanger our bond or our rating. Carol. In addition to meetings as well as conference calls with Carol Worth, which Alder Bellinger alluded to, the basis for the conversation was, again, associated with our bond rating. As many of you heard when Carol was here for our refunding or refinancing approximately a month and a half ago, Moody's now relies upon what's referred to as a scorecard, which looks at over a dozen elements or criteria. Based upon the five-year capital improvement plan as presented by staff, reviewed and recommended by Capital Improvements Commission and in the last week, recommended by the Plan Commission, those criteria were entered into and an adjustment was made to the scorecard. Those adjustments were discussed with Carol. She identified that although there is a slight adjustment, it's not material in nature and as a result, our current bond rating would not be in jeopardy. I recognize that 10.3, including half of the City Hall project, is significantly higher than your past several years. Again, I think the recommendations by staff and again, reviewed by two different committees or commissions are an indication that there's in essence a backlog, not only of municipal facilities, but also street projects including bridge work and as a result, there was support to increase for 2017 the amount of borrowing as compared to the last several years. This five-year capital improvement plan is in fact just a plan prior to any issuance of debt in 2017. You will be sitting here and you'll make the final decision regarding the borrowed amount, whether some existing fund balances could be applied instead of borrowing some of the money, but that's a decision that you'll be making next spring. My hope is to recommend to you in the next month that the calendar associated with the five-year capital improvement be amended. My thought is the discussion we're having tonight really should be occurring to coincide with the timetable associated with borrowing. So my recommendations are that in March and April that you be deliberating as you are tonight on five-year capital improvement and then immediately go into a possible bonding so that your debate, your reviews are fresh in your minds, in the public's mind and ultimately that plan then goes into a mode of actually borrowing. As a terminology for this plan is in fact a plan, the expectation is we'll have more information in late winter, early spring. Some of these numbers could change, some of the projects could slide or change and as a result I would be surprised if the 10.3 is the exact number or maybe not even the exact list of projects that you'll be interested or will entertain in borrowing. As I mentioned, both the capital improvements commission as well as the plan commission have reviewed the five-year plan and are supporting what's before you tonight. The three million has been the rule of thumb for a decade or more. The average recommendation over that five years is roughly four and a half for general obligation so it is an increase. Again, that four and a half would be subtracting out City Hall as a major one-time, hopefully a lifetime project. The focus of the plan commission specifically, even though there's five years where the borrowing, the plan commission did focus on the most immediate year, which is 2017, there was a list of projects that were referred to as mandatory projects that we really can no longer delay and those alone added up to more than three million dollars. If you add in some additional street projects, as many of you know, the City Council a few years back borrowed money from the Motor Vehicle Fund, several million dollars were strategically were trying to pay back by borrowing money to be able to have the Motor Vehicle Fund sort of stand on its own for the future so that's an additional million dollars that we're sort of tagged with as far as the responsibility to pay back or give back to the Motor Vehicle Fund. So the 6.3 unfortunately does up, add up quickly, but again, based on the review by committees over the past month, 6.3 plus potential four million for half the cost of a future City Hall project are what's before you tonight. Available for any questions if you have any. All the person down here, are you finished? Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you. Next move on to Alderperson Boren. Thank you Mayor. On the plus side, a good reason to probably borrow the 6.3 right now are the current interest rates being quite low. However, that could change at least a little bit on Wednesday depending on what the Fed decides to do. I was on the Capital Improvements Commission and my name was on the resolution but I kind of took it for granted that we were going to be getting a formal opinion from Moody's before we were going to vote on the 6.3, actually vote on it. My concern with the out years is that if our bond rating does take a hit and I realize there's a number of things that go into the bond rating in future years what we're proposing on borrowing if our bond rating does take a hit then that means that there's going to be a bigger cost for borrowing those dollars in future years. So I am quite concerned with the 6.3 without getting a formal opinion from Moody's and I also agree on that well I'm only talking about the first item now so I may have some comments on the second one in a few minutes. Thank you very much Alderman Person Bellinger. Thank you Mayor. I attended the Capital Commission meeting and of course I'm on the Plan Commission meeting I was at both those meetings one was a meeting where it was just a discussion and it was put off until the next meeting where it was voted on. I was quite frankly alarmed after the Capital Commission meeting when not one person went through and debated any of the merits of any of the scored items that was on there for the capital and quite frankly what it came down to was the total capital for everybody's wish list we've got a brand new leadership for the council we've got a brand new city administrator we don't have the fiscal restraints that we had with Jim Amodio and Don Hammond and everybody put in their wish list it was all going to be funded until Alderman Born said instead of 7.3 million why don't we just knock a million off and that was with no discussion of any of the projects that were on the multiple spreadsheets that were handed out and I just sat back there and I just went wow this is just crazy this is just going on unchecked and going through this commission or that committee and so then it went on to the then it went on to the Plan Commission prior to it going to the Plan Commission I sent an email to the city administrator and said I've got this list of issues that I want answers to before I vote on that and I want to have Carol Worth part of the conversation and I want to have Nancy Busse part of the conversation there we had that meeting there were concerns brought up there was this scorecard issue and for you people that aren't familiar with the scorecard and those at home the city is basically below the AA2 rating on a number of issues and what brings us up to get the enables us to get the AA2 rating is our financial position in our balance our fund balance so that's what's you know carrying the day for us there's demographics and there's some other things in there that quite frankly it's going to take a long time for the city to turn those around and enable us to get those up to where they need to be but that being said during that meeting it was agreed upon by everybody in that room that before the before the plan commission were to vote there would be a call to Moody's and we would have a ratings call to go through different scenarios because part of that scorecard is a subjective portion where nobody knows what percentage that or how heavily weighted that subjective portion is and for example Carol brought out the city of Brookfield the city of Brookfield it's an outlier has a AA rating in all the scorecard categories they don't meet one of those AA or those AAA rating and none of them do they meet the AAA requirement but yet because of the subjective nature of it they get it and Cheboygan is kind of an outlier too because we don't meet the criteria for a AA rating in a lot of the different areas but yet our financial strength is so good that it overrides it in a subjective nature so I wanted to have that meeting and have a ratings call I was told I would have it and then it never happened and I had several emails go back and forth last week with the city administrator and voiced my displeasure and all I wanted to do was get all the information that I could have to properly make the vote and have the information that I think as an alderman we should have had and I was told that I was going to have so that's kind of what's transpired by this and so subsequently I've had several conversations with Carol Worth and I've told you what she's had to say and so I stand by my opinion that I think it's in the best interest of the city to be a little more fiscally conservative in this instance and increase our borrowing by 16% instead of 110% Thank you for those comments Administrator Huffland Yeah Alder Bellinger in light of your subsequent conversations with Ms. Worth as you mentioned at any point did she indicate that our bond rating was in jeopardy as a result of the 10.3 million What she told me was that City Hall should be taken off and viewed separately and be not part of that conversation because it's a one-time occurrence and that could be explained away and she thinks that that would sail through and that would be fine She did say that while the scorecard would be adversely affected somewhat she did say that it would probably go through next year and you would maintain your rating but what she did say is you're setting the table for future years if you continue this borrowing she said that it could be in jeopardy that's the way it was explained to me She didn't say anything definitive She said that everything on those calls is subjective and even when you talk to Moody in the ratings call she said some of the stuff they won't give you a for sure until everything comes through and they meet and they have this subjective portion of it and then the next year you get different rating analysts that look at it and might view things differently so it's a fluid subjective thing and that's the way she explained it to me Again the conversations that I as well as City of Sheboygan's finance director had with Carol Werth there was no indication that our bond rating is in jeopardy it's something that we need to carefully monitor as you correctly identified it's very hard to increase its fund balance whether it be in the general fund or in the debt service fund I think that is one, you know two of our strengths specifically and as a result allows us to have a very really excellent bond rating just as you have a very strong passion for our finances and our related debt service policy please be assured concerned about those as well and we would not be recommending future borrowings if we're going to jeopardize our bond rating as I mentioned in March and April we'll be updating our five-year cap improvement it's at that point when the bond will be put forward and our bond rating will be reviewed and ultimately set by Moody's so there's an opportunity to mention between now and then to modify if necessary I strongly support your vote tonight for the five-year cap improvement as presented by the cap improvement commission and the plan commission thank you very much Alderperson Donahue thank you mayor I just want to call out my gratitude to Jim Amodio and Don Hammond for the years that they worked to reduce our debt load and they did an excellent job of it but it came at a cost and the cost is that mandatory projects that needed to get done weren't getting done so the analogy that occurs to me is we're essentially in charge of a nice big house and that house needs to be maintained for example just as by comparison it might need a new roof now we can borrow X number of dollars to replace that roof or we can wait until we have all the money and then we can contract with someone to replace the roof the problem is is that over that period of years the costs to make that repair have been increasing when we look at our own homes we typically if we have large projects we probably need to borrow in order to make those projects happen now we haven't done as much borrowing as we were and so we are down in this nice position of being at only 28% of our statutory limit in other words we can borrow up to 100% and still be fine the problem that I see and the reason for this fairly large jump is that over the years of reducing the amount of debt we haven't made needed repairs and so when it comes time to make the repairs they're just that much more costly I really I really don't think that our department heads come in with a nice list of silver plated faucets in the bathroom and heated parking spots and all those kinds of things as Mr. Hofflin pointed out the mandatory projects the things that we just can't put off any longer exceed three million dollars I mean that's just the way it is we've been on something of a starvation diet and it's kind of starting to show the bones are getting a little weak and we need to address that but if we go back to the three million dollars those road repairs that we are planning are not going to get made they just aren't we're going to go on in the same pattern of our citizens getting more and more angry about the fact that the roads aren't being repaired it's going to cost more and more money to make those repairs when we finally get there this is not financially irresponsible it does appear that the in my profession we would call hearsay with respect to what Ms. Worth is telling us is you know maybe somewhat in question one of the questions I have is if we go to a single A bond rating what does that mean and how much more does it cost and so forth but I think tonight this six point three million dollars is supportable and again with great thanks to Jim Amote on Don Hammond for the work that they did but that can't go on forever we really need to invest in our city just like we need to invest in our own houses thanks thank you for those comments Alderman Bellinger thank you I just like to reply to a couple things that Alderman Donahue had to say and number one I'm proposing three point five million dollars a sixteen percent increase a double digit increase over what we've been previously doing I believe the mandatory projects equal three point one million dollars they would be funded under my proposal and you know so that would be taken care of thank you Alderman Bellinger so that means you're going to get rid of about half of our road projects what else have you decided to take off the list I haven't decided to take anything off the list I think that would go back to the capital and they could decide what they want to do what I want to do is be fiscally responsible and if you look at the the wheel tax the garbage fee the special assessment and our favorite county sales tax we've addressed the roads we've gone over and above on the roads we can't just keep throwing everything at the roads and start borrowing and borrowing we need to pay as we go this horrible hot in place that would wasted $400,000 that has all been repaved now too we need to be a little bit more prudent with the dollars that we spend and how we spend them and we've already addressed how we're going to deal with the roads well if they do go back they're going to go to next year and they're not going to get done this year Alderman Bellinger Alderman Holschew thank you mate would it be a horrible thing if we called in our bond reading gal and she could maybe have a chat with us and put this on hold for a bit you'd have to make a motion I didn't know if there was any brush to get this passed tonight or any specific did you want to respond to the timing is there a timing issue with this how long do you would you like to wait I think we have another council meeting in two weeks you know the goal is really to finalize the decisions associated with the 2017 capital projects prior to serious consideration being given on the 2017 budget a two week delay would not impede the ultimate development and approval of the 2017 budget I just think for a comfort zone if we have bond gal here to better explain and maybe go over those projects that need to be done and how paramount they are I'm not sure she will be able to address the importance of the projects but she can address the impact to our scorecard and ultimately her expertise as far as anticipation of how it would be received by Moody's credit service it's just a thought so were you making a motion all the person holds you or not I believe I am okay she's made a motion to hold this document and have our consultant appear at hopefully the next council meeting if we can arrange that is there a second to that motion I'll second it okay we have a motion on the floor am I okay in this direction very good is there any discussion allowed on a motion to hold there is discussion permitted is there any discussion on that motion to hold seeing none will the clerk please call the roll for holding this item we're designating it for two weeks for the next council meeting for the next council meeting all right motion to hold until the next council meeting in two weeks Rosemary, 11 ayes 1 no motion passes and just to note the second part of the question which was kind of divided out I think it would be appropriate to bring up tonight because it's not a part of the resolution so moving on then all the person bellinger thank you mayor I guess if Carol is going to be here next week I would like to have the second part of the question addressed with her as well sure we can make that happen but just wasn't available tonight because of the way the agenda was set up you're welcome item 3.2 will lie over to our October 3rd meeting items 3.3 through 3.10 will be referred to various committees under resolutions 4.1 is a resolution by Alderman Boren Bellinger, Donahue and Schneider expressing the common council's willingness to consider and support several potential models of ownership of the Sheboygan Armory in order to maximize the success of Sheboygan's bid for a D-League team for the Milwaukee Bucks Alder Person Boren thank you mayor I make a motion to put the resolution upon its passage thank you for that motion and support the motion is on the floor under discussion under discussion mayor we were made aware last Monday night at finance the finance committee that Sheboygan is one of the free finalists for the Bucks D-League team I believe it's Sheboygan Mr. Ashgosh and Kenosha and Mr. Wolfe addressed our finance committee he was there with his brother and gave us an update on how this is proceeding and the finance committee thought it was a good idea to come up with some scenarios I don't have them up on my screen perhaps the mayor or the city attorney could go over those so the public knows what's in the resolution any final agreement we were chosen to have the D-League obviously would have to come back to the council for approval but maybe either the mayor or the city attorney could go over what we're proposing what's in the resolution thank you I'd like to clerk to read the now there be it resolved portion of the resolution okay that the common council hereby expresses its willingness to consider and support several potential models of ownership of the armory in order to maximize the success of a proposed D-league team of the Milwaukee Bucks including but not limited to number one sale to the lakefront jewel group or other similar entity for a nominal sum number two a long-term lease 99 years for example to the lakefront jewel group for a nominal sum and third is retention of ownership along with a contract with lake shore jewel I'm sorry lakefront jewel group development and operation of the property. Please finish with the other two paragraphs. Okay. Be it further resolved that in addition, should the city retain ownership pursuant to item number three above, the city is willing to accept donations sufficient for remodeling and redeveloping the property in order to meet the buck's requests for proposals and be it further resolved that the common council is also willing to consider and support the use of tax incremental financing and use tax proceeds or proceeds from a payment in lieu of taxes, the pilot agreement to fund a portion of the capital expenses for remodeling and redeveloping the property. Thank you very much. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll for passage? 12 ayes. Motion passes. Joe Wolf is with us this evening. If there's no objection, I'd like to invite him to the podium to make any comments. Just to update and thank you everybody. We are in the process of trying to bring the D-League team here and it's an arduous process but we're giving it a go and every day it's something that evolves out of the process but we're checking out of our historical tax credits and all the different grants that we can to help our project and some of the stuff that the resolution addresses is the fact that we still have to make a decision on all of that and so this gives us the availability to do the different things based on how those tax credits and grants affect the Jule Group. So I thank you and hopefully we keep going forward. Thank you and best of luck with the rest of your decisions. Thank you, Mayor. Moving on to item 4.2, a resolution by Alderman Bourne authorizing the transfer of appropriations in the 2016 budget to establish an appropriation for settlement of the JF1 LLC NRFC Memorial Holdings, LLC for a refund of excessive real estate taxes. Alderperson Bourne. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to ask for suspension of the rules on this. Second. We have a motion for suspension. Could you please explain the suspension? Yes, I can, Mayor. I had a discussion with our finance director on Friday, I believe and the full payment will be $838,305 plus interest at $91.80 per day. This transfer is for the city portion only, which is $318,000. The charge back can be filed prior to October 1st, 2016 and the city will receive payment of $520,305 from the other taxing entities in February of 2017. As mentioned, interest is accumulating at $91.80 per day and if the charge back is not filed by October 1st, 2016, the other taxing entities would not have to reimburse the city until February of 2018. So therefore, the reason I'm suspending the rules is because we wanna get this done file before October 1st, 2016, so we don't have to wait for the other taxing entities to reimburse us until February of 2018. Appreciate that explanation. Is there any objection to suspension? Seeing none, please proceed. I make a motion to, while we suspend it and I'll pass the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll for passage? 12 ayes. Motion passes. Under reports of committees, 5.1 is an RC by finance to whom was referred resolution number 93 of 1617 by all the persons born, Bellinger, Donahue and Schneider, authorizing the transfer of appropriations in the 2016 budgets to establish an advance from the Boat Facilities Fund to the Marina Fund for Marina Deicing and Aeration Equipment Funds to be repaid with interest earnings based on local government investment pool rates and recommends approving the attached substitute resolution. All the person born. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to accept and adopt and pass the substitute resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 12 ayes. Motion passes. Item 5.2 is an RC by law and licensing to whom was referred pursuant to RO number 95 of 1617 by the city clerk, various license applications for the period ending December 31st of 2016, June 30th of 2017 and June 30th of 2018 and recommends denying taxicab driver license application number 1682 based upon her failure to accurately reveal all relevant convictions on her application, her record of violations related to the license activity and her failure to cooperate with the committee. All the person holds you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move that the reported committee be accepted and adopted. Second. Thank you for that motion and support under discussion. Yes, is Patricia Morton here? Patricia filed for a taxicab operation license and revealed no convictions in her application. When she should have revealed the following, a speeding and a no proof of insurance, the committee wanted to speak with her on this matter and her response was that she wasn't gonna appear before us, that she wasn't going to be taking off time from work and she wasn't gonna appear before the council. So our committee denied her license for lack of her cooperation with our committee. Thank you for those comments. Any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll. 12 ayes. Motion passes. Item 5.3 is an RC by finance who is referred resolution number 98 of 1617, a direct referral by Alderperson Wolf authorizing a transfer of appropriations in the 2016 budget to establish an appropriation for repaving of the cul-de-sac on South Pier, additional parking along South Pier Drive and replacement of street trees on South Pier and recommends approving the resolution. Alderperson, born. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to accept and adopt and pass the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion in support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll for passage. 10 ayes and two noes. Motion passes. 5.4 is an RC by finance who is referred general ordinance number 15 of 1617 by Alderperson Bellinger amending section 74-63 of the city municipal code entitled fire control as to eliminate recreational fires on beaches and recommends approving the ordinance. Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I move to accept and adopt and pass the ordinance. Second. Thank you for that motion in support. Under discussion, Alderperson Jose. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'm gonna make in regards to this resolution of motion to instead for the city to charge a fee, maybe for people to take out a permit to have these recreational fires. I have not got as many emails or phone calls or responses for an issue since the Aurora Surgical Center issue over a year ago. And 100% of what I've gotten is against getting rid of recreational fires on Sheboygan's lakefront. So I would like to make a motion instead of denying people the citizens of Sheboygan this privilege, I think we find a way to pay for it at a nominal expense to the people that wanna have the fires. So I'm gonna make a motion that instead of eliminating the fires that we charge for a city permit to manage the fees. City Attorney, I need your advice. Is this appropriate to talk about permits and other things or do we just need to either vote this up or down? And if it's voted to keep it, then the committee can come back with other recommendations for permits. Well, there's really two answers to that question. The first answer is there could be a motion crafted that would be directly on point, which would be to amend the ordinance as it's drafted to include those specific provisions, including a specific amount for the fee, the specific language for the ordinance. That could be done. I don't think Alderman Jose's motion has done that. And so the problem would be is if you passed it, I don't know that you'd actually have an ordinance in front of you. So it may be that an alternative to crafting on the floor an amendment that meets all the requirements that we'd need to meet to make it a proper ordinance. And another way to deal with it would be to send it back to committee or to not pass the ordinance and send the matter back for discussion of a fee. Thank you. Alderman Jose is either of those acceptable to you? Yeah, I would amend my motion to send it back to committee for further consideration, send it back to public works for further consideration. Thank you very much. Is there a second to that amendment? Oh, second. Okay, we have a second. Under discussion of that amendment to send it back to committee, any discussion? All other person, Donahue. I know that Mr. Curlin is in the audience, at least he was. And maybe if he could just come up and explain the, I mean, I don't object to referring it back, but just to explain the issue for us in a little bit more detail and efforts that have been made to try to deal with the problem. Is that your main under what we're discussing now? Well, it's probably not. Yeah, it's questionable, I guess, is the best way to put it. And it's probably better just to vote on the question to re-refer to public works. If that doesn't pass, then... Then you can come back to this. Okay, we have some lights for Lewandowski, Trester and Heidemann. Any of you want to make any comments since the discussion changed? All the person, Heidemann? Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Again, seeing that it came out of finance and I understand the importance of the finance committee because it was a permit or whatever, I would have rather seen this come out of public works because those are the people that take care of our parks. They take care of our beach. Finance doesn't. So if we're gonna refer this or hold this document, I'd like to see public works be able to get a look at it also. Okay. It came from public works. It came from public works. I think there's maybe a typo on... It's wrong. Oh, it's wrong. It came from public works. Sorry. We're having a motion to refer back to public works. So this would be a motion to refer back to public works. Any other comments? Trester, did you have any? Go ahead, Alderman Trester. I would just like to say that my phone has been ringing off the hook this past few days and I have not had one person say they were in favor of removal. They all want the fire pits to stay and I could not vote for an ordinance to have them removed. Appreciate that comment. Okay, any other discussion on the motion to refer back to the public works committee? All the person holds you. Thank you. A number of calls, everyone wanting to have it. I'm not in favor of getting rid of it but I'm also not in favor of charging the fee for it. I'd like to see there be garbage cans set outside and maybe out there. But if it turns into being a continual problem with garbage and wood, I would also like to see a sign made up saying what is required to do the burning on the beach. But if we're needing someone to clean up after this and we're paying public works to do that. Is anyone entertain the idea of the people who are trying to get community service hours back, our Huber system, whatever, to have them man our beaches, I'm sure. We do have some volunteers right now that go through the current pits and make an effort to clean those up. So maybe they consider still doing that. So I'm not in favor of a fee, but I guess all this could be chatted about in public works, that's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you, any other discussion? Okay then, would the clerk please call the roll on the amendment to refer back to public works? Rosemary? We are. Says refer back to public works. 11 ayes, one no. Motion passes. Next move on to 5.5, which is an RC by salary and grievances to whom was referred general ordinance number 18 of 1617 by Alderpersons, Donahue, Heidemann, Lewandowski, and Wolff. Amending the municipal court is to create a budget analyst position in the city administrator's department for the city of Sheboygan and create a job description and recommends that the ordinance be passed. Alderpersons, Donahue. Thank you, mayor. I move to accept, adopt, and put the ordinance upon its passage. Second. Thank you for that motion and support under discussion. Other pieces, personally, Lewandowski. Yes, I voted against this twice and on the committee level. And the reason for it is that it's creating another job description and it's not, nothing in the document says that it's eliminating a job or replacing a job. And we have three firefighters short. We have at least one police officer short. Public works is complaining about not having enough help. I don't think we should be creating a new job description and a new position to fill. Thank you for those comments. Alderpersons, Holschew. I just have a couple of questions. Number one, we're creating this position for a budget analysis. Have we ever had a person like that before that did this job that we need to create a job to do this? Administrator Hoffland? No, this is a new job. And why do we need it? We've managed for however many years without one. Why do we need one? What are the points that will convince me that we need to have a budget analysis person? Wouldn't that be part of your job or someone else in the finance department's job? During the approximately four months that I've been your city administrator, my role has been to assist all different members who are on the management team. As many of you have had an opportunity over the past couple of weeks to look at the budget document, what was a year ago roughly 32, 33 pages is now 396 pages. The expectation of that document is to help the management team establish strategic action plans, monitor those actions, and ultimately identify performance measurements or analytics in order to gauge. Again, this is to assist you as common council members to ultimately make the best decisions possible regarding your allocation of resources including property taxes. This position, even though it has the title of budget analyst, it serves also as a management analyst to assist in special projects, research on behalf of the city administrator and specific projects that may be identified by the common council. And as I mentioned to assist and monitor the development of action plans associated with the strategic plan. We heard earlier tonight, assist in identify what is perceived as really a step forward with the strategic plan that many of you participated in. It would be unfortunate if the strategic plan really stopped there without further development. Again, of action plans, objectives, and monitoring and ultimately reporting. It's my hope and goal that the management team will, if they're not already, be developing key reports of criteria associated with their activities, whether it be on a monthly or quarterly basis. Again, to assist you that are on select committees to monitor and better understand exactly what's going on as far as activity in those departments. This position will assist in the development of those analytics as well as assisting in the monitoring of the action plans. Can I have a follow up question, please? Please go ahead. Is this a full-time position? Full-time position. And it can't be done on a part-time basis because of the benefit issue. And what would the salary be? The salary, I don't have it in front of me, that's why I'm asking. Because the listed midpoint is 52,340 dollars. The, as many of you know from my sort of accolades, the director of finance was, played a critical role in the development of this very comprehensive program and annual budget. Expectations are that over the next six months there will be an announcement within the finance department of some turnover. And as a result, as discussed at the salary and grievances committee, this position will not result in an additional position, but in essence will be a no net increase. The hope is that prior to the turnover occurring that this person could be mentored by members of their current finance department staff to make sure that this person hits the ground running and can be as effective as possible. With the salary being, again, midpoint of 52,340, the net, there's an expectation that there'll be a net savings as a result of this position. Thank you very much. Any other discussion? Alderman Bellinger. Thank you, mayor. I don't really know whether this merits another position or not. You know, I certainly, you know, chief administrator, you would know that better than myself, but I do question the timing of this when we could be making a decision on a city hall and coming up with some consolidation and becoming a more efficient, effective organization. Maybe there could be some economies there and there could be existing personnel that could fit in and fill this role. You know, I don't know the answer to that or not because we haven't gotten that far, but we did hire Bray who was here to do a study on efficiencies and, you know, so maybe that would be available as well. And as I recall, this pending turnover in your department, it was addressed a year or two ago when we hired somebody else to bring in to take on those responsibilities, pending that retirement. And I thought we already addressed this at that point in time. So thank you. Thank you for those comments. Oliver Persson-Born. Thank you, Mayor. When I first saw this on the salary and grievance agenda, at first I had kind of a negative reaction to it, but then when I took the time to read the job description and having discussions with City Administrator Hofflin going forward particularly in 2018 with his priority-based budget, I frankly was very impressed with the job description and I just hope that we can get a person who can fulfill 80 or 90% of that wish list on that job description. So I'm in favor of this new position and I think it's gonna aid the City Administrator in freeing up some of his time to do other things and also help him with his priority-based budgeting that I've been talking about for the last two or three years, fell on deaf ears. I referred a very lengthy document on priority-based budget and I never could get it out of committee, but I was happy to hear when I first talked with City Administrator Hofflin after he joined us that that is one of his priorities is to do priority-based budgeting and I think that's very similar to what the county has done over the years and very successfully. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. All the person, Lewandowski. Yes, you said that you anticipate somebody retiring from your department and this position would then take over that spot. What happens if that person does not retire? I'm not sure I said retire. I simply identified turnover. At this point, there has been a no announcement regarding a specific position. As many of you are aware, there was an additional position created several years ago in an effort to more effectively transition as far as transition of knowledge within the finance department that is ongoing and expectations are that that will be completed and again, the turnover within the finance department will occur in the first quarter of next calendar year. Thank you all. Person Lewandowski, is there any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll for passage? Ten ayes, two noes. Motion passes. Items 5.6 through 5.10 will be referred to various committees under ordinances. Item 6.1 through 6.5 will also be referred to various committees. Under other matters, city attorney. 7.1 is an RO by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending December 31st, 2016, June 30th, 2017 and June 30th, 2018. That'll be referred to the Law and Licensing Committee. 7.2 is a resolution by all the persons born in Schneider, Ballinger and Donahue, authorizing the sale of city-owned property in Sheboygan Business Center, lots totaling 8.7 acres and 5.8 acres to Kiernan West LLC. That will lie over. 7.3 is an RO by the city clerk submitting a communication from Dennis Radke regarding safety concerns at the intersection of North 12th Street and North Avenue. That will be referred to the Public Protection and Safety Committee. And 7.4 is an RO submitting a claim from AF Group on behalf of Janet Nelson for alleged injuries when she tripped on uneven pavement of the sidewalk outside of the Salvation Army. That document will be referred to the Finance Committee. Next item on the agenda is a notice to discharge a strategic fiscal planning committee regarding RC number 378 of 1516. All the person down here. Thank you, Mayor. I would move to accept and adopt the notice. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of the motion to discharge, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. And I need a second motion. All the person down here. And that motion, Mayor, I'm not sure what you're looking for. 8.1. 8.1 would be a separate motion to accept and adopt the report from strategic fiscal planning regarding the Building Use Committee's recommendation for a presentation to Common Council advocating for the renovation of Current City Hall. Thank you for that motion and support. At this time, I'd like to call up representative from Braian Associates for a presentation. Okay, thank you. Appreciate being here. We were here maybe three or four months ago, I think. And we were asked to, at that point, we had presented an option for renovating City Hall that really would have gutted the building and created virtually new space throughout the building. And in addition to that, it would have taken care of all the other items, the tuck pointing and the kind of deferred maintenance that needed to happen. And so the council at that time said, would it be, what could we do if, could we get the budget down? And they said, what about $8 million? And so we went back, kind of back to the drawing board to see what could we do for around $8 million. And that's what we want to present tonight. Right now, what we did is, again, as I said last time, really the plan was to kind of gut and redo. And so what this plan does is takes a step back. We're not doing as much renovation, but the idea would be to work with as many of the existing walls and structure as we can. One of the biggest items was to keep the toilets in the same locations they are. And the last iteration, we had looked at kind of blowing those away and reconfiguring the organization of the building. We sort of left the organization as it is in terms of the, we're keeping the major stair, we're keeping the toilets where they are on all floors. And again, keeping most of the existing walls intact. We are adding two new stair towers, which we had done before, and that's really for code reasons, for safety reasons. We're putting in a new elevator also for some safety reasons. But the structural reconfiguring is not as, extensive as it was before. And you're looking at the basement floor plan now. One of the things we had done last time is we had anticipated putting the IT department in the basement, and I know there was some discussion about we had some additional space available on other floors. So what we did in an effort to get the costs down was bring that IT department up to the third floor where we had some space available. And we're proposing that the basement really becomes a non-public use. And it would be an effort to save the costs we wouldn't do as extensive remodeling down there. We would really just kind of upgrade the HVAC, the electrical, we'd give it a fresh coat of paint, but we wouldn't do much more than that. We'd have all this, obviously the safety issues, the fire protection, that sort of thing. So that took a substantial chunk out of the budget right there. And then on the first floor, if we could go to that, on the first floor we would continue the concept that you saw last time where we would enter, we would create a new entryway off to the north side of the building and create a new plaza. And within that plaza we would make up the grade difference so that anyone in a wheelchair that had disabilities would be able to come up that backside up the ramps and get into this first floor level. And then from there they could get up to the, subsequent floors by using the elevator. We also put the two, we've got the city clerk down here, human resources and purchasing, since those are the, there's a synergy between them. Those were also the departments we planned on putting on the first floor on the other plan. This is just, they're a bit more separated than they were in the other plan, but we think that that's gonna work really well anyway. And then up on the second floor, this is where we've combined the city planning and engineering, kind of a one-stop shop there. People would go up that main step. We would open up those walls so that it would give them more collaboration. We created the, or we kept the concept of the conference rooms kind of off of the corridor so that city staff could go, wouldn't have to come out in the corridor. They could meet people at a counter, kind of like they do now, but they could go and meet them then if they had to do more conferencing in a kind of a shared conference room. And those conference rooms obviously would be available to anyone and they could access those without going through departments. And then next to them would be the city attorney's suite and we've got, that would be off of the corridor. They sort of have their own separate entrance. And then up on the third floor, we're showing the mayor's suite, a suite for the city administrator. And then you can see on the west side, we're showing the IT department fits in there very nicely. That would be where we would centralize the server room and then their staff, et cetera. There's even a room up there for training or conference. I know they do a lot of training up there within that department. And then finally, we're showing this room being completely renovated, restored back to what it was. We see the ceiling coming out. We're told there's a skylight up there somewhere. There's some, all these windows would be replaced. And essentially when we would be done, this building would look, I won't say brand new, but it will certainly look very well restored and probably good for another 100 years. So I think I got everything. And as far as the budget, we did put a budget together. And right now we're showing this, we sort of, we're at about, I think it's about 8.3 million. We're giving ourselves a little bit of a 2.5%, one way or 2.5% the other way. So around 8.1 to 8.5, we think we can certainly give you a building that is gonna be good for another 100 years, at least with some maintenance. And thank you very much for that presentation under discussion, other person born. Thank you, Mayor. Going back to the first floor, well, first of all, in the basement, would that still be available for meetings like we use it now, would there still be meeting rooms down there? It could be. Yeah, we would essentially leave it as it is other than screwing it up and making it look good. But there is a meeting room down there. We're not proposing to do anything with the showers and the toilets that are down there, only because there was no reason to do anything at this point, and again, in an effort to keep the cost down. The areas that would be affected would be the existing boiler room. And we're gonna have plenty of space down there. We're thinking that the fourth floor would actually become a mechanical room because that's inaccessible right now. And boilers nowadays, most of you probably know are much smaller than they used to be, so we don't need that size of a boiler room. So we think we have plenty of room to take care of our mechanical needs and any of the electrical panels and that sort of thing. But the answer is yes, you can still use that room. And it would be accessible, I mean, the public could go down there from a code standpoint. We're tying that into the elevator and the two access stairs. And then also on the first floor with the north entrance that north entrance you're proposing, that assumes that the garage is gone. That's correct. And then also there would be relatively close parking on the north side of the building in where the garage is now for handicapped parking and then just people that wanna come in and do business. Yes, we, I guess we had the site plan in here, but we had about 10 spots on the north side. And then also you said the restrooms are gonna stay in their current locations, but I assume those are gonna be upgraded to be ADA compliant. That's correct. They would be upgraded to be ADA compliant. So size, the doorways would change, but the guts of it would stay in the same location, which is gonna help with our saw cutting and piping and that sort of thing, routing. And do you have any estimate if we decided to stay at City Hall to would you do this piecemeal or all at once, what would be your recommendation? Well, that's a good point. I mean, the generally speaking, the least costly way to do this would be to have everybody move out, let the contractors come in and have at it. But there's a cost to that too. And that means there's a cost to moving other. So we would look at, we haven't done it yet, but we would look at maybe phasing this. Maybe they do a floor at a time. If you can move the third floor down to the second floor, redo the third floor, and then so on and so forth. We can certainly look at that and put some scenarios together. If that's what you're gonna do. Thank you for those questions. Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you, Mayor. Under this scenario, what kind of timeframe for a build out from start to finish are you looking at? We think it's gonna be probably nine to 12 months. Probably 12 months. It's still about the same, yeah. Okay, and then from an efficiency standpoint, that first floor and then second floor with the planning and do you see that we've maximized the efficiencies that have been noted in your previous study? I think so. It's probably not, we had kind of created this atrium and there would have been more of a, it's kind of, it's hard to pinpoint, but it's one of those things that would, you could stand at the bottom and sort of look up and see what's going on above. But I think you won't have that, but with proper wayfinding and signage, we can certainly get people to be, to get where they need to go pretty easily here. And I think for the staff, it's gonna be much more efficient because we're taking down, there's kind of a maze in this building that's just happened over years. You've built this and built that and moved it all here, moved it all there. There hasn't been any real master plan. This would be much more open, which a more collaborative kind of an approach to office environment. Okay. Thank you very much. Alderperson Lee Wendalski. I have just one question. You said that the basement would be a non-public area under your proposal. And I probably, I should have said it would be, a public could certainly go down there, but we wouldn't, we didn't plan on having any departments down there or any reason for them to go down other than maybe that meeting room down there. So we didn't put any necessarily program space down there. Would you put something in to prevent the people from going downstairs then on five steps and only have to use the elevator? We could certainly do that, sure. By keying it or, you know, I don't know if we're gonna be using key fobs. We don't know how we're gonna key it, but that would be a fairly simple security thing to do. Yeah. Thank you, Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you, Mayor. I would just like to open the floor to, we've got some up in the building news committee here. Joe Clark, if he's got any questions, I would just, as long as he's here. Is there any objection to that? Seeing none. Joe, did you have any questions? No questions. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. I wanna thank you very much for the presentation and we'll take this under advisement and determine which direction we're going and let you know. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. Appreciate it. Next item on the agenda is a contemplated closed session. Alderperson Donahue. Thank you, Mayor. I would move that we enter into closed session pursuant to the exemption provided in section 1985, sub one, sub E, for competitive and bargaining reasons require a closed session relating to development opportunities in the 600 block of North A Street Memorial Mall and Founders Club LLC. Decker. Thank you for that motion and support. The clerk please call the roll for closed session. 11 ayes, one no. Motion passes. Just for viewing public's notice, we will be adjourning in closed session so this will end our broadcast for this evening. Thank you. We'll take a three or four minute recess and reconvene.