 I'd like to call the order of the 19th regular meeting of the 2019-2020 Common Council. Would the clerk please read the quote for the day? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year. Thank you very much for that advice. Would the clerk please call the roll? There are 10 present. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is the Pledge of Allegiance. Please stand and join me. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next item on the agenda is the approval of the minutes from our last Common Council meeting, Alderperson Wolfe. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion 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 seeing aye. Aye. Chair votes opposed. Motion passes. Next item is confirmation of Mayor's appointments. I'll turn it over to city attorney Charles Adams. We have four appointments that the mayor has submitted for your consideration to the Harbor Center Business Improvement District Board. David Gass, David Haneman, Susan Engler, and Jamie Hawke for terms to expire December 31, 2021. Thank you very much. Alderperson Wolfe. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to confirm. Second. Thank you for that motion. Second. All those, they say I have to call the roll. So if the clerk will please call the roll for confirmation. Ten ayes. Motion passes. Next we have a presentation, our 2019 year-end review of neighborhood revitalization focus areas by Nancy Maureen, our community and economic development planner. Nancy. Hello. DeChangia. Can you pull the mic down, Nancy? What's that? Pull the mic down. There you go. Thank you. Can you hear me now? I'm short. Okay. My name is Nancy Maureen. I'm the community and economic development planner with the city development department. And I'm going to talk about our neighborhood revitalization achievements in 2019 and look a little bit into 2020. Each year we choose some core neighborhoods that we develop baseline survey data for. This has been, we've done this since 2017. This year we chose South Calumet, Riverbend, Riverwatch and South Lake. And luckily they had enough time to also do King Park neighborhoods, so we got to do five neighborhoods this year. Those were our focus neighborhoods for 2019. And in this focus, we have an interdepartmental meeting that we hold on a monthly basis where the police department, the planning department, the building inspection department, DPW, the attorneys department, the mayor's department, the administrative department. We all get together and we discuss issues and ongoing concerns in the neighborhoods and particularly in our target neighborhoods. And every meeting we also invite the landlord association to come in and discuss any concerns or issues that they have. And through those meetings, we've really developed a positive relationship with the landlord association. They understand the mission that we are working toward with our neighborhood revitalization efforts. So it's really been a great experience. The baselines that are developed on those focused neighborhoods are really focused in two areas. And that's housing and structure and then property maintenance. Our staff in the planning department and a police officer or two walk each and every parcel in our chosen neighborhoods and they give them scores. Based on those scores, we send all of that data to a consultant and then that's mapped in GIS. We can refer to this data and see where the problem areas in our neighborhoods might exist to focus our efforts. But really what we're looking for is quantitative data that we can have measurable results for and then test that data against new data that we will collect five years from now and see what kind of impact we've had on our neighborhood revitalization efforts. Another, this is our second round of this data collection. And thanks to our third shift police officers who go out when it's dark, we have them survey our neighborhoods in our center core. And as you can see, the darker areas on the map are the areas that have scored darkest in our city. There's a couple reasons for that darkness. Sometimes it's overgrown trees, sometimes there's a light bulb out. But city staff takes the data that our third shift officers collect after it's been mapped and we evaluate each dark area that's identified and we decide whether or not it's a good placement for a new light. Our suggestions are then sent out to Align Energy and then we get their feasibility report on whether or not they can put lights where we request them to put lights. The first time we did this, we evaluated it in 2017 and the new lights were implemented in 2018. There were lots of hurricanes and other things that prevented Align Energy from doing it in the same year. So now we just make this a two-year process. Last year, we put in over 30 lights. This year there were 53 places identified as worthy of new lights in our neighborhoods. We have a new neighborhood association in 2019, it's End Park. This is the city's 10th neighborhood association. It joins Near North Gateway, Ellis Historic Memorial, Valrath North Point Historic Grant, Maple Heights, Indiana Quarter, and King Park as our neighborhood associations. And as a celebration for our 10th association, we had a special Mayor's Neighborhood Leadership Cabinet meeting where we had a grill out and we invited all of our neighborhood reps to come and eat and we invited all of you and our department heads and other staff members to come and meet with our neighborhood representation so that they could put names to faces and really start to empower them to reach out to city staff with their questions and concerns on their own. They were given a resource packet that also held contact information for city staff. It had applications for our programs. It had maps and whatever other information I could find that could possibly be useful for them. And we plan to continue those resource packets, continue that annual meet and greet so that these neighborhood associations really feel empowered to act on their own behalf. Every year we have ongoing achievements and events that most of our neighborhood associations participated in. Those include neighborhood cleanups, beach cleanups. Some of them have adopted a family for the holidays. Neighborhood planning, black parties, and informational meetings. New for 2019, DPW rolled out a large item disposal program. This was born out of the request of many of our neighborhoods and residents in general that we, as a city, don't provide a large item pickup program. So sometimes we find couches in an alley or mattresses behind a garage or they end up in our public spaces and so this is a way to combat some of that refuse that is, could maybe not be properly disposed of. Each of our neighborhood associations were eligible to apply for the large item disposal program and all of them participated. This year or in 2019 we collected 23, over 23 tons of garbage during this program. We, everyone was thrilled to participate and they are looking forward to participating again in 2020. We have one association, the Valrath North Point Association, who has planned historic walks. This was their third annual historic walk and that led to the Memorial neighborhood planning historic walk. These events were the most widely attended events out of any event that the neighborhood associations put together each year and it's through the generosity of our historical society and Travis Gross who puts together the information for the events and he's actually the tour guide, which is fantastic. It's a great turnout. Over 50 people this year attended those walks. We offered a neighborhood association grant program in 2019 and we had many neighborhoods interested in it, but we had one neighborhood that really fulfilled their application, which was for brochure holders. There's Chad being a model for the brochure holder. The Valrath North Point neighborhood has, like I said, held three neighborhood historic walks and they wanted, they get consistent requests for the brochures for those walks from their neighbors so that they can do self-guided tours so they thought it would be a great opportunity to make the brochures available to the public. So you can find the brochure holder attached to the shack on the walking path in Valrath Park and they've had to refill it multiple times so hopefully people are taking the brochures and using them. We had an achievement of a demolition of a gas station and that might sound like a strange achievement, but the Indiana Corridor Neighborhood Association identified this gas station as a huge blight in their neighborhood years ago. So this has been a conversation that's been ongoing really for years in our planning department along with the Indiana Corridor Neighborhood Association. In 2019 the county tax foreclosed on this property. It was turned over to the city. Demolition was complete and the tanks were removed from the gas station site. We're waiting to hear from the state on contamination issues and we will definitely include the Indiana Corridor Neighborhood on continuing conversations on how we're going to use that property and what the appropriate use for that property is going forward. That was a huge win for them. We really, the beat cops and the neighborhood cops that attend meetings are a huge benefit for neighborhood associations and there's been a couple of important achievements through police cooperation and those include a drug house issue in the memorial neighborhood which was a unique case because it was an owner occupied drug house and the neighbors had ongoing problems for years with this place. The police obviously had problems with this place so we sort of came together in those association meetings and the police and the attorney's office really guided the neighborhood residents on what they should be looking for, what they should document, how they can communicate effectively to the police on what's going on and through those conversations they now, her cases have been, you know, acted on in the court and the situation is workable right now and that's a great result for this neighborhood because it's been a long time coming. The Indiana Avenue neighborhood dealt with an abandoned auto issue for years that someone in the neighborhood was running an illegal business out of their home, fixing, chopping up cars, buying them at auction, not registering them, many of them weren't operable but they would be moved throughout the neighborhood, they were a total eyesore, some of them were dangerous so through conversations at those neighborhood association meetings, their beat cop is working on a resolution for that and it's looking really promising. In 2019 we held only one rock, the block event, of course this is an event that is planned by Habitat for Humanity but we cooperate with Habitat for Humanity, I do the mapping for them, we help identify locations for them to focus on, kind of give them tours of the city, help them see the alleyways and maybe the hidden places that they wouldn't identify on their own. This year they decided to partner with the Day of Caring in September so they held this event over three days in September, they completed 14 total projects and had 85 volunteers in the North Railway and End Park neighborhoods, they had nine homeowner projects including porch rebuilds, garage repairs, new siding, lighting and fence removal as well as five community projects that RCS empowers and cleaning up alleyways and streets. I'm not the only one that partners with Habitat to complete this rock the block event, DPW is a huge asset, they provide resources and manpower to make this possible. We held a landlord training this year, usually it happens in the spring but I was not here so it happened in November. This year we had 25 landlords in attendance which was great, we held it in this space which was perfect for landlord training, we had a slight change this year in that we brought in a real estate lawyer who really wasn't formative and helped the group understand updated landlord tenant laws and we're absolutely going to do that again next year, the landlords loved it, it was super informational. The landlords we get attending these events sometimes don't own any properties and they're looking to get into becoming a landlord and some of them own multiple properties and have for a really long time and they're just brushing up on their knowledge and on the laws or the resources available and this is really a partnership between our department and the police department to put this on. Here's a code enforcement update for 2019, we still have two part time code enforcement officers, one is on the north side and one is on the south side. Our housing inspection activity, our total number of violations is 1,047 that amounted to 670 inspections, an average of 1.57 violations per inspection. The number of violations fixed is 951 which is 90% of the reported violations which is an awesome rate. They issued 318 citations. In nuisance complaints, the total number of complaints is 683 and sanitation had the most at 505, then storage at 32 and off street parking at 128. The number of violations fixed here was 533 which is 80% of the complaints and 101 citations were issued. Looking into 2020, we will hopefully install the lighting that was proposed by our lighting assessment in 2019. We will establish baselines for four more neighborhoods. We'll continue the large item cleanup for our neighborhood associations. We'll hopefully continue to expand the adopt park program. We will offer another neighborhood grant opportunity and hopefully get some great projects out of that. And we will also partner on the 2020 rock the block which will be held in Franklin and King Park neighborhoods in 2020. Questions? Seeing none, thank you very much for that presentation and all the work that went into making it possible. Thank you. Next is public forum, city clerk? There's no one this evening. OK, then we'll go on to mayor's announcements. I'd like to ask our Pachniac to join me at the podium. Tonight we have a special proclamation. Whereas January is national mentoring month celebrating the benefits of youth mentoring across the country and locally, we recognize horizons for girls and other organizations in Sheboygan for their youth mentoring efforts. And whereas every day in communities across the country, caring adults volunteer their time with mentoring programs to create consistent and supportive relationships with young people. At this most basic level, mentoring is successful in real life because it guarantees that young people have an adult to turn to that they have a guiding hand to help them in dealing with day to day challenges. At a more complex level, there is a powerful mentoring effect that ultimately makes our communities stronger. And whereas quality mentoring programs are proven to build relationships that help to improve school attendance, academic achievement, promote responsible decision making, and provide skills to better navigate relationships at school, socially, and at home. And whereas report by mentor, the National Mentoring Partnership, found that young adults who were at risk for not completing high school but who had a mentor were 55% more likely to be enrolled in college than those who did not have a mentor. 81% were more likely to report participating regularly in sports or extracurricular activities more than twice as likely to say that they held a leadership position in a club or a sports team, and 78% more likely to volunteer regularly and that they're in their communities. Whereas mentoring programs have shown to be effective in combating school violence and discipline problems, substance abuse, incarceration, and truancy. Now, therefore, I, Mike Van Ersteen, is mayor of the city of Sheboygan to hereby declare January of 2020 is National Mentoring Month in the city of Sheboygan and call upon public officials, businesses, and community leaders, and educators, and encourage all the citizens of Sheboygan to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs in order to recognize the men and women who serve as a staff and volunteers at quality mentoring programs and who help our young people find their inner strength to reach their full potential. Shari, I'd like to present this to you. Do you want to come over here with me? Go ahead, Shari. I just want to very briefly thank the hundreds of volunteers that give tens of thousands of hours of volunteering to programs such as Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Boys and Girls Club, STARS, and of course, Horizons for Girls. This gives the students probably thousands annually the opportunity to discover their full potential and they come back to our communities and they are entrepreneurs, they are business owners, they are giving back to the community. So it's very important to not turn our back on these students but give them the opportunity to be everything that they can be. Thank you. And we have another volunteer opportunity on January 22 from 11 o'clock at night till 6 in the morning. There's going to be a meeting of the complete count group. And what they do is they'll take a point in time count of the homeless people in the city of Sheboygan. And this information gathered from the count is used at the state and federal levels to allocate resources for individuals and it also helps to identify services that may be needed in our community in order to best help with those that don't have any housing. This will be conducted throughout Sheboygan County, Kiwani, Dore, and Manitowoc County as well. And if you'd like to be a volunteer, you can contact Ruth Orscow at the Lakeshore Cap organization and her email address is ruthee at lakeshorecap.org. Or you can call our city planning department and they'll be happy to connect you. Thank you. Next we'll move on to hearing. Item 2.1 is hearing number four of 1920 pursuant to a notice published by the city clerk. There is a hearing scheduled for this evening to give persons an opportunity to be heard relative to the proposed amendment of the city's zoning ordinance. The purpose of the amendment is to eliminate the residency requirement for membership on the architectural review board. Is there anyone wishing to be heard? Is there anyone wishing to be heard? Is there anyone wishing to be heard? Seeing that no one came forward, all the person, Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to close. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next is item 2.2, hearing number five of 1920, pursuant to a notice published by the city clerk. There is a hearing scheduled for this evening to give persons an opportunity to be heard relative to the proposed amendment to the city's zoning ordinance. The purpose of the amendment is to add architectural review fee. Is there anyone wishing to be heard? Is there anyone wishing to be heard? Is there anyone wishing to be heard? All the person, Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to close. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. All those in favor of the motion, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Next, we'll move on to consent agenda, which will include items 3.1 through 3.6. All the person, Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to receive and file all ROs, receive all RCs and adopt all resolutions and ordinances. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on those items in the consent agenda? Seeing none, with a clerk call the roll for passage. 10 ayes. Motion passes. Under section on reports of officers, items 4.1 through 4.6 will be referred to various committees. Under resolutions, resolution number 139 of 1920 by Alderperson's, Wolf and Donahue, authorizing the appropriate city officials to enter into a section 125 flexible benefit plan adoption agreement for plan year 2020. This item requires suspension of the rules. Alderperson, Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to suspend the rules. Second. Is there any objection to suspension? Seeing none, please proceed. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to adopt the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion, would the clerk please call the roll? 10 ayes. Motion passes. Item 5.2 is resolution number 140 of 1920 by Alderperson's, Wolf and Donahue, authorizing entering into an agreement with Waste Management of Wisconsin, Inc. for residential and refuse and recyclable material, transfer and tipping services. Alderperson, Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to suspend the rules. Second. Thank you for that motion. Is there any objection to suspension? Seeing none, please proceed. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to adopt the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk, oh, I'm sorry, Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mayor. I had a chance to review this yesterday. And I think under the circumstances with the recycling world that I've been made aware of that this looks like a pretty good agreement for the city of Sheboygan going out the next, I believe it is five years. Thank you for those comments. Is there any other discussion? And then I'd ask the city clerk to call the roll for passage. 10 ayes. Motion passes. Items 5.3 through 5.10 will all be referred to various committees under reports of committees. Item 6.1 is RC number 220 of 1920 by Licensing, Hearings and Public Safety Committee to whom was referred resolution number 135 of 1920 by Alderperson Sorenson and Mitchell, authorizing the acceptance of monies from Acuity Insurance the amount of $1,000 recommends adopting the resolution. Alderperson Sorenson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to receive the RC and adopt the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 10 ayes. Motion passes. Item 6.2 is RC number 221 of 1920 by the Licensing, Hearings and Public Safety Committee to whom was referred resolution number 136 of 1920 by Alderperson Sorenson and Mitchell, authorizing the appropriate city officials to enter into a contract to license fire team testing from Ergo Metrics and Applied Personnel Research Inc. for pre-employment testing of applicants seeking employment with the city of Sheboygan Fire Department and recommends adopting the resolution. Alderperson Sorenson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move to receive the RC and adopt the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on this motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 10 ayes. Motion passes. Under general ordinances, item 7.1 will be referred to the City Planning Commission. How about 6.3? 6.3. Which one? 6.3. Okay. Item 6.3 is RC number 222 of 1920 by the Public Works Committee. Tumor is referred resolution number 137 of 1920 by Alderperson's Wolf and Sorenson, authorizing a relocation order in the city of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, recommends adopting the resolution. Alderperson Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to receive the RC and adopt 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? 10 ayes. Motion passes. Under matters laid over, item 8.1 is arrow number 117 of 1920 by the City Planning Commission. Tumor is referred general ordinance number 35 of 1920 by Alderperson's Born and Wolf repealing and recreating subsection 15.935, parentheses one, parentheses A of the City of Sheboygan Zoning Ordinance, so as to eliminate the residency requirements for membership on the Architectural Review Board and recommends adopting the ordinance. Alderperson Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. I'm sorry, Alderperson Born. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you very much. The items before us and under discussion, Alderperson Born, did you have anything? Okay, then Alderperson Sorenson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll be voting against this again tonight as I did on a similar issue at our last council meeting. I just believe it's a slippery slope and I believe if you live in the city, you should have more of a say about how our buildings are designed and remodeled and how they look. And I think it just is, it's another contribution to suburbanization. I think in the city of more than 48,000 people, I believe that we can find somebody to serve on this committee. So thank you. Thank you for those comments. Alderperson Donahue. I guess I have a question for the city attorney. With, it's my understanding that this change is being proposed because the mayor and others are having significant difficulty in recruiting, particularly architects for the Architectural Review Board. So my first question is this a required, statutorily required committee? The Architectural Review Board is not a required committee, but it is a statutory committee, meaning that if we have one, there are certain rules that we have to follow in running it. Okay, and if we amend the zoning ordinance to eliminate the residency requirement, we'll be in line with statutory requirements? Correct. So if we're not able to find enough people to serve on the committee, I presume the committee obviously would not exist or would not be functional. Committee would not be functional. And the issue we have with that is that we do use the Architectural Review Board in our zoning ordinance to take care of certain matters and we wouldn't have a committee to do that then. And I understand the matters include reviews of various architectural plans, property improvements and so forth. Correct. And so if there are not sufficient people to sit on that and the committee essentially goes away, do those decisions not get made or are they made just primarily by staff people or how would that work if the Architectural Review Board goes out of business as it were? Those decisions would not be able to be made as they currently stand and so development would, that requires an architectural review would not be able to occur any longer. But we would then amend the ordinance so that people could build things or make improvements. Right. There are other options allowed under state statutes than using an architectural review committee. It would basically move it over to one of our other committees. All right. So citizens voices essentially would be silenced or whether you're a resident or not, the citizen input on what can sometimes be important decisions would be eliminated. Is that a fair statement? I think that's a fair statement. Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you. I just like to add something to the discussion. We've only been having an issue with contractors. There's one contractor that has to be named to the Architectural Review Board and we've been having trouble finding a contractor that lives in the city. So I asked the city attorney to consider writing an ordinance that would allow someone who was a city resident and in the past held a contractor's license so he could still draw from that experience and he recommended that this would be the best way to go about trying to solve this issue with the contractors and allowing present contractors that were licensed and even though they do business in Chippewagon but might live out the city to fill that role. And you know, fortunately or unfortunately, this was broader because everybody is treated the same with the residency rule, but this is our only intent and this is to try to solve that one problem. Is there any other discussion? Alderprus and Wolff. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a quick question for Attorney Adams. If we allow the position to be filled with somebody that does not live in the city, which is what we're looking to vote for, are we able to have like some additional language that if an architect, since this is the situation, an architect within the city came forward at a later date that lives within the city and wants to be on the committee, could that person supersede and take the position? Not in the middle of a term. However, the mayor always has appointment authority after each term and there is no rule that requires that the mayor reappoint people to that committee at the end of their term. So if someone came up, the mayor would have the opportunity to appoint a city resident at that point. Right, and the reason I ask that is obviously, I support the situation because we need the committee, we need the voice of the constituent and it's unfortunate we don't have, or at least that we do have at this time, difficulties filling positions, but that is something that happens in all committees and in all groups, whether it's city related or outside groups, you have ebb and flow when it's trying to fill these positions. So although we may not like it, they still have guidelines that they have to follow and I'll be supporting this, thank you. Thank you very much. Any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Nine, aye's one, no. Motion passes. Item 8.2 is our own number 118 of 1920 by the city planning commission, to whom was referred general ordinance number 36 of 1920 by Alderperson Bourne and Wolf creating subsection 15.936 parentheses one, parentheses L of the city zoning ordinance, so as to add architecture review fee and recommends adopting the ordinance. Alderperson Bourne, thank you for that motion and support under discussion, Alderperson Savaglio. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I've been struggling with two things here. We seem to be wanting to grow our tax base, but yet at the same time, we put roadblocks in the way of letting people build here. In this case, another fee that's gonna be tacked on to putting up a new building in the city. I would like to hear from Chad to kinda get the explanation on why this fee would be needed. Sure, so the idea behind this fee is a minimal $100 because right now what's happening is we have architects that are submitting documents for the architecture review board, but they're not necessarily the final version. So there's this constant battle of trying to get people to submit what's actually gonna be heard before the board and it's just taking a lot of time to get the staff members to work on it, to get the right documents that need to go to the board and be referred to the board. The other challenge we have is we've got some architects that will come forward with plans and they haven't really thought about can what they design even be built? Can it be what kind of materials are they putting on the outside of it? They have no clue on any of that stuff and the architecture review board requires you to bring samples of stuff to the board meeting and so there's this constant work around trying to get them to bring what needs to be brought forward. So the idea behind the fee was based on what other communities charge of similar size and have had good results and it's very similar to the way we treat architects and engineers for conditional use permits where we charge $250 is really just making sure that when they come in everything is in order and ready to move forward and it's not this constant resubmitting and saying this isn't the right version and you adopted the wrong version and whatever else. Thank you. Thank you for that response. Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mayor. I have another question for Chad. Chad, many of the things that go to the architectural review board, they go there first and then they go to the plan commission second? Yeah, so the architectural review board typically meets on Monday and the planning commission meets on Tuesday so that a lot of that architecture stuff is dealt with and then they're just coming to the planning commission for site plan approval and layout and that kind of stuff. Now would there be anything that was approved by the architectural review board that came to the plan commission and the plan commission said, no, we don't want this certain section or whatever of the plan. We don't agree with the architectural review board. Then the architect would have to make a revision. Then that revision would not be subdued to another fee. That's correct. Okay, thank you. Next is Alderperson Donahue. I guess I don't understand how the fee solves the problem that you've articulated. The fee is really, I think it's looking at this kind of pay to play philosophy where if you're gonna come to us that you're paying the fee and you're understanding that this is the final version of the documents and you're ready to submit them and you're paying basically to have them reviewed and making sure that the consultants have everything in order before they get to us. So you would still be having all of the interaction that you have with people coming in anyway. Correct. And so you would not, I'm just trying to figure this out. So you wouldn't recommend then or would not allow a project to appear on the architectural review board agenda until it's completely taken care of. In other words, it's in presentable form. Is that right? So how does $100 help this? I'm just not understanding this. We have a number of meetings with the architects and consultants beforehand and work through the challenges that need to be done but we don't see a final version of those drawings until they're actually ready to submit an application and say this is ready to move forward and the challenge that we're having is the stuff is coming in but it's not that final version is not the final version and their clients keep changing things or they keep saying well this isn't the version we want to have approved. So the idea behind it is when you pay the fee and you submit the application that that's the last version of the drawings that then will be taken forward to the committee. And I know $100 is not over much money. I'm just saying why can't you do that? Why can't you have that rule? To say this until we approve this is a final plan subject to all the modifications that might be made by the architectural review board and by other entities. Why can't you just do that without having a fee? We've tried to do that without having a fee and it's just proven not to be, it's not working out. And Alderman Savalio is on the architecture review board and we've had a project that's come before them three or four times where a lot of that could have been worked out if the architect would have been on board and had everything kind of worked out. So the idea behind it is the staff is having to go back and work through three, four, or five meetings to get one project approved. Well, it seems to me if that's the issue then you'd probably want a fee that was substantially higher. I mean $100 is almost a nuisance fee. I'm just trying to understand. The decision is yours. If there's a decision to charge $25, you can charge $25 and if you wanna charge nothing, you can charge nothing and we'll just continue on the way we are. We're just trying to cover the staff time and try to hold people accountable. And don't be upset, but I understand that. And this is just a question that I have. And it seems to me, I've seen development, I've seen zoning be a real gatekeeper in terms of projects going forward. Those of us who have tried to take out a building permit, boy do we know, all right? So it's a small point. I'm just suggesting that I would disagree to some extent with older persons of all of you because I don't think it's not gonna stop business or whatever, it's just, it's odd. And I think your problem solving approach by imposing a fee, and maybe it'll work. And I'm happy to vote for it. I just think it's odd. If I might note we, so the architecture review board, I'm guessing has been here for 15 plus years. And the idea at the beginning was when we put another requirement on top of developers that they had to go to the architecture review committee as another committee in the process of getting a project approved. We didn't charge the fee right out of the chute because we wanted people to get accustomed to having to go to architecture review and the planning commission. Now as we look forward to opportunities coming forward on development and where we are, from a staff perspective, it made sense to implement a fee and to try to cover some of the time and to kind of hold people accountable when they're submitting their drawings. Thank you for those comments, both of you. Next is Alderperson Sarnson. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Chad, I got two questions for you. I guess follow up from Alderperson Donahue. Now I'm curious of how you came up with $100. Was this sort of kind of a general, what other cities do? And then if you can help me kind of better understand the process for someone that is doing, that is submitting a hypothetical project. When they're paying this architectural review fee, that's $100 and then it has to go to the plan commission. Are there additional fees that have to go with that? I guess my concern is the compounding fees that we're putting on some of these developers as well too. If you can just help me kind of understand that thought process, that'd be most helpful for me. So the first question about where did the $100 come from? We looked at what similar communities that have architecture review boards and our size are charging. And it's anywhere from 75 up to $250. So we just picked a number in between at 100. I mean, that number could be anything. It seemed like it made sense for the $100. There was a lot of them lent towards that lower amount. We charged $250 for a conditional use permit. So when an architect or a builder comes forward, there's a number of pre-development meetings where city staff and all of the other departments are present to see the plans, to work through the challenges, to figure out what needs to be tweaked. And then once they get kind of our buy-in per se on what's on their draft drawings, they go back and they revise their drawings and most of the time they'll resubmit with the application and all the requirements and the final set of plans that are gonna be going forward for Planning Commission and Architecture Review Board approval. Once those two groups approve it, there's a approval letter that's sent out with a list of conditions that they have to follow before a building permit can be issued. Once they get all those conditions worked through and get some permits from the Department of Public Works and those types of things, they can pull a building permit and move forward with construction on the project. When you look at this roughly now $350 on projects that most of the time are running half a million, 300,000, 250,000. I mean, it's just, it's a little bit additional fee, but what we've heard from architects is they're surprised. They don't have a fee. So that's kind of the honest for putting them together and that's where the price that that dollar value came from. Thank you. Next is Alderperson Wolff. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a couple of real quick comments. I understand the fee. I understand we're looking at other communities. I really just want to drill down to the root cause of the problem because I think just going off of what some of our other elders have kind of concerned about is we don't want to just have fees for every little thing. We want fees that have meaning and stop the problem that you're trying to address. So knowing that back in my younger days I actually worked in construction, I know that changes happen all of the time. I've been on different planning committees and things like that. I've been there when architects bring stuff in and don't have all their homework done. So I guess the question I have is you're looking to charge $100, but we're not addressing the problem that you're looking to address which is stopping all of these changes that they do their homework first, correct? Well, the idea would be correct. I guess the idea would be to try to that when they come and apply it's no different than if they go to the city clerk's office and they're gonna apply for a liquor license. They have everything put together and they're ready to move forward through the process. So we want, this is kind of showing them that the architects and builders and consultants that when you come to us you need to have all this stuff worked out before, we're not just, and we constantly are saying, we're not taking it. Well, we gotta get this on the agenda because we gotta get this going and da, da, da, da. But it's not all there. And then it's this constant getting what we need from them. So the idea is really to, when you're gonna come to us and you're gonna move forward, this is the final product and you're ready to move forward. So I guess my comment to the council is, I mean, $100 is arbitrary. Like Alderperson Donahue said, it's almost a nuisance fee. Really, I guess my question is, why aren't we dinging the architect the group for not having their homework done and making the changes? So yeah, you have a $100 fee, but if they come back with changes, then it's another $100. Because that's gonna cause grief for the homeowner. It's gonna also put pressure on the architect because you can't tell me, or you can tell me, but in my opinion, the architects getting paid for all these meetings, they're getting paid for all the changes and we're putting unrest on the city having to try to clean up and do their fix things for them to get it to rush it through. So to my understanding is that the fee is to try to get them to discourage them from just coming multiple times, which we're not addressing the problem. And it's really the problem is the people that are not doing their homework and bringing it in completed so that the committee can move forward and everybody can do things much more smoothly. If there's a fee that actually penalizes the problem, I support that much better because now the architect that's not, that's having this fee over and over and over is actually going to have to go and explain that to the homeowner. Why do I have a X fee while you made all these changes? Well, if the homeowner made the changes, they're gonna understand it. If the architect's not doing their job, then the homeowner shouldn't be paying for it. That's my statement. So thank you. Administrator Huffland. Chad, clarification, any item going before an architectural review board is not a one family, not a two family, but a permit that ultimately is of a commercial or investment nature. Chad, did you have anything else you wanted to add? Yeah, I'm good. Okay. Is there any other discussion, Alderperson Boren? Thank you, Mayor. I haven't sat on the architectural review board, but being that I've been on the plan commission the last couple of years, I can see the amount of work by staff that goes into all of these different requests for conditional use, all of this. It's a very, very thorough process that Steve and his staff goes through, Chad is involved in some of this stuff, and they have a tremendous workload and sloppiness on the part of the architects in this day and age, it's inexcusable. And if this is going to get them off the dime and present better plans than I support this, but I also sympathize with the staff because I see being on the plan commission the amount of work that goes through from city staff to present these things to the plan commission for approval. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. While seeing no other discussion, I'm gonna ask the clerk to call the roll. Alderperson Donahue. Oh, yeah, eight ayes, two noes. Motion passes. Next is other matters authorized by law, city attorney. 9.1 is an RO by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending December 31st, 2020, and June 30th, 2021. That'll be referred to the licensing hearings and public safety committee. Next is adjournment, Alderperson Wolfe. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to adjourn. Thank you for that motion and support. All those in favor of adjournment, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. We stand adjourned. Thank you for your time tonight.