Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees Meeting on May 11, 2026

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Transcript

Click any timestamp to jump the video to that moment. Auto-transcribed; expect occasional errors on proper nouns.

1. 0:00

   Good evening everyone and welcome to the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees meeting for Monday, May the 11th. Will please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. 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. Good evening everyone. Welcome. It's hard to believe we're into May already, almost mid-May. Wow, time really goes by quick. Anyway, we'll open up item number one, the public comment. If you're here to make a comment on any agenda item, I can ask you to come up to the podium, introduce yourself, your name and address, and if you keep it to three minutes, we'd appreciate it. Okay, we'll close public comment. And I noticed a couple of former elected officials in the audience, so I just want to take a moment to recognize Pat Hardy, who Pat and I served together in the city of Bloomfield Hills. Hi, Pat. Pat, and I know you're doing some work in Birmingham now. You're on one of the boards in Birmingham, right? Parking. Parking? Oh boy, good luck with that. Nice to see you. And Jan Renseli, our former clerk, is in there too. Hi, Jan. Hi, Jan. Nice to have you with us tonight. Okay, item number two, consider consent agenda. Items A, B, C, D, E, and F. I'll take a motion. I would like to remove items A, B, and E. A, B, and E, Mark? Yes. Okay, we'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. Thank you. Any other item? If not, I'll take a motion. So moved. Support. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes. Seven to nothing with the movement of those three items. Item number three, a proclamation honoring John Marshall for his contributions. And I'm going to turn this over to our clerk, Martin Brooke. Okay, good evening. The board is being asked to consider tonight a very special proclamation honoring John Marshall. John was a significant contributor in our community, a friend of many, and he passed away on February 9, 2026. John contributed much to my department and the clerk's office with regard to historical items or finding out research. He also did the same to my predecessor, Jan Ronselli, who's here and provided great assistance to the township in that regard. John's passing made us all think that it's time to recognize him for his contributions to the township.

2. 1:15

   Okay, item number two, consider consent agenda. Items A, B, C, D, E, and F. I'll take a motion. I would like to remove items A, B, and E. A, B, and E, Mark? Yes. Okay, we'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. We'll move those to the end of the meeting. Thank you. Any other item? If not, I'll take a motion. So moved. Support. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes. Seven to nothing with the movement of those three items. Item number three, a proclamation honoring John Marshall for his contributions. And I'm going to turn this over to our clerk, Martin Brooke. Okay, good evening. The board is being asked to consider tonight a very special proclamation honoring John Marshall. John was a significant contributor in our community, a friend of many, and he passed away on February 9, 2026. John contributed much to my department and the clerk's office with regard to historical items or finding out research. He also did the same to my predecessor, Jan Ronselli, who's here and provided great assistance to the township in that regard. John's passing made us all think that it's time to recognize him for his contributions to the township. By the way, this is the second time we've done a recognition for John, which I'll explain in a minute. So, before me, I have a proclamation that I'll read. After that, we'll be inviting John's daughters who live in the township, Julie Garcia and Karen Wishheimer, to come and speak. Followed on by Dave Bogart, who is president of the Bloomfield Historical Society and also... Treasurer of Preservation Bloomfield by the way so with us are many members of Preservation Bloomfield and the Bloomfield Historical Society two organizations that contribute greatly to the well-being and character of our community so thank you for all of your work John is one of you but John didn't do these things by himself either he he was participating as part of a group and doing a lot of work on his own but also as part of a part of important organizations that support this community in a great way so now to the proclamation proclamation honoring John Marshall whereas John Marshall passed

3. 2:30

   By the way, this is the second time we've done a recognition for John, which I'll explain in a minute. So, before me, I have a proclamation that I'll read. After that, we'll be inviting John's daughters who live in the township, Julie Garcia and Karen Wishheimer, to come and speak. Followed on by Dave Bogart, who is president of the Bloomfield Historical Society and also... Treasurer of Preservation Bloomfield by the way so with us are many members of Preservation Bloomfield and the Bloomfield Historical Society two organizations that contribute greatly to the well-being and character of our community so thank you for all of your work John is one of you but John didn't do these things by himself either he he was participating as part of a group and doing a lot of work on his own but also as part of a part of important organizations that support this community in a great way so now to the proclamation proclamation honoring John Marshall whereas John Marshall passed away on February 9th 2026 after residing in Bloomfield Township for 51 years whereas his interest in Bloomfield Township history began in the 1990s when he researched and wrote about two historic homes near his house whereas John was one of the founding members of the Bloomfield Historical Society and while serving as program chair he organized over 60 presentations on local history whereas John was on the board of directors for preservation Bloomfield for 13 years serving as secretary and was instrumental in the restoration and preservation of the Benjamin Barton farmhouse in the Craig log cabin whereas he worked tirelessly researching and documenting Bloomfield Township's history in print and video often at the request of residents or the township, whereas he researched and cataloged over three dozen of the township's historic homes and told the stories of the families that came to Bloomfield Township and built these beautiful country homes. Whereas John's efforts leave lasting records that will allow future generations to experience and learn about the township's character, legacy, and recent history. Whereas John aided the work of many township departments, including the police department who awarded him the Civilian Accommodation Award in 2019 for assisting the police department

4. 3:45

   proclamation proclamation honoring John Marshall whereas John Marshall passed away on February 9th 2026 after residing in Bloomfield Township for 51 years whereas his interest in Bloomfield Township history began in the 1990s when he researched and wrote about two historic homes near his house whereas John was one of the founding members of the Bloomfield Historical Society and while serving as program chair he organized over 60 presentations on local history whereas John was on the board of directors for preservation Bloomfield for 13 years serving as secretary and was instrumental in the restoration and preservation of the Benjamin Barton farmhouse in the Craig log cabin whereas he worked tirelessly researching and documenting Bloomfield Township's history in print and video often at the request of residents or the township, whereas he researched and cataloged over three dozen of the township's historic homes and told the stories of the families that came to Bloomfield Township and built these beautiful country homes. Whereas John's efforts leave lasting records that will allow future generations to experience and learn about the township's character, legacy, and recent history. Whereas John aided the work of many township departments, including the police department who awarded him the Civilian Accommodation Award in 2019 for assisting the police department by locating the historical Gilbert Lake Cemetery and the persons buried therein. And whereas the local history of a community is essential to developing and maintaining its character and identity, and as we embark on the township's 200th year, the contributions of John Marshall's research, efforts, documentation, and organizing of our shared history cannot be overstated. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Trustees bestows to Mr. Marshall the unofficial title of township historian in recognition of his many years of dedicated historical research into our community. Be it known to all regarding this resolution that it was adopted by the Board of Trustees on May 11, 2026, and is included in the minutes as a permanent record. So, I would invite Mr. Marshall's daughters to join us if they'd like for a moment, and please just feel free to provide us. some important additional information and recognition of your father. You can come right up to the podium here, yes. Is this the first one? Yes, the first one. Okay. Do I speak into this? You can move it too.

5. 5:00

   who awarded him the Civilian Accommodation Award in 2019 for assisting the police department by locating the historical Gilbert Lake Cemetery and the persons buried therein. And whereas the local history of a community is essential to developing and maintaining its character and identity, and as we embark on the township's 200th year, the contributions of John Marshall's research, efforts, documentation, and organizing of our shared history cannot be overstated. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Trustees bestows to Mr. Marshall the unofficial title of township historian in recognition of his many years of dedicated historical research into our community. Be it known to all regarding this resolution that it was adopted by the Board of Trustees on May 11, 2026, and is included in the minutes as a permanent record. So, I would invite Mr. Marshall's daughters to join us if they'd like for a moment, and please just feel free to provide us. some important additional information and recognition of your father. You can come right up to the podium here, yes. Is this the first one? Yes, the first one. Okay. Do I speak into this? You can move it too. Yeah, you can move it up if you want. You can move it up. There you go. Introduce yourself, please. My name is Julie Garcia. I am John's oldest daughter. Thank you so much for honoring our dad tonight. He truly loved this community. My dad's interest in local history began around 1992. Our 1965 Pulte Colonial in the Nantucket Green Subdivision is set between two historic homes. Adams Castle, built in 1927, adjoins our backyard. And Strand Crest, built in 1924, is located on a hill across the street. After researching these homes, he then expanded his research to other homes in the one square mile of Bloomfield Township that included our home, Section 24. His interest in Section 24 broadened to the history of everything within it. The roads, the Rouge River, the Grand Trunk Railroad that passed through, the Mastodon discovery, evolution of the subdivisions, et cetera. He began doing some local presentations at neighborhood association meetings, the local libraries, and over the years, became known as the go-to guy for interested owners of historic homes to contact. During the first several years of his local history journey, vocational journey. Last response is a Srila Wars record. Let's talk about it.

6. 6:15

   You can move it too. Yeah, you can move it up if you want. You can move it up. There you go. Introduce yourself, please. My name is Julie Garcia. I am John's oldest daughter. Thank you so much for honoring our dad tonight. He truly loved this community. My dad's interest in local history began around 1992. Our 1965 Pulte Colonial in the Nantucket Green Subdivision is set between two historic homes. Adams Castle, built in 1927, adjoins our backyard. And Strand Crest, built in 1924, is located on a hill across the street. After researching these homes, he then expanded his research to other homes in the one square mile of Bloomfield Township that included our home, Section 24. His interest in Section 24 broadened to the history of everything within it. The roads, the Rouge River, the Grand Trunk Railroad that passed through, the Mastodon discovery, evolution of the subdivisions, et cetera. He began doing some local presentations at neighborhood association meetings, the local libraries, and over the years, became known as the go-to guy for interested owners of historic homes to contact. During the first several years of his local history journey, vocational journey. Last response is a Srila Wars record. Let's talk about it. my sister and I were busy working, getting married and having kids. Of course, we knew of his local history, vocation, but didn't really have a concept of its death. With my mom's untimely passing in 2013, he began devoting even more time to his research and involvement in the Bloomfield Historical Society. He enjoyed researching the history of any and everything, the schools our kids attended, local country clubs, prominent local residents and architects, even people and events he would encounter in the many books he read. If I found out that any of my friends in the area lived in an old house, he would do his research and provide them with anything he found. My sister would ask him about historic houses she would notice on her walks. He loved receiving a question about a local home, usually by email, and then using all of his resources to provide the homeowner with a packet of information. His knowledge of Bloomfield Township's history was unmatched. He truly was a high-level, lifelong learner, remaining curious throughout his life. During the pandemic, knowing my dad was spending a lot of time alone, I decided to spend some time with him most days, along with getting regularly beaten by him at chess, so much so that I suggested backgammon,

7. 7:30

   my sister and I were busy working, getting married and having kids. Of course, we knew of his local history, vocation, but didn't really have a concept of its death. With my mom's untimely passing in 2013, he began devoting even more time to his research and involvement in the Bloomfield Historical Society. He enjoyed researching the history of any and everything, the schools our kids attended, local country clubs, prominent local residents and architects, even people and events he would encounter in the many books he read. If I found out that any of my friends in the area lived in an old house, he would do his research and provide them with anything he found. My sister would ask him about historic houses she would notice on her walks. He loved receiving a question about a local home, usually by email, and then using all of his resources to provide the homeowner with a packet of information. His knowledge of Bloomfield Township's history was unmatched. He truly was a high-level, lifelong learner, remaining curious throughout his life. During the pandemic, knowing my dad was spending a lot of time alone, I decided to spend some time with him most days, along with getting regularly beaten by him at chess, so much so that I suggested backgammon, which he tried but thought it was a poor substitute because it was too much chance. So we decided to walk the neighborhoods of Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills, and Birmingham, occasionally branching out to other communities. . . . he would plan our route and i would drive us there these neighborhoods he had chosen most always contained some historic homes or had some historic significance which he would point out and give me a short history of often followed up by an email summary with further details we also walked the cranbrook grounds often and he spent many hours researching the history of this local gym once the pandemic subsided i was fortunate to be able to accompany my dad on visits to historic homes in the area which was always a treat he so enjoyed meeting new people and loved sharing the information he had discovered on their properties we certainly have some beautiful homes in this community i will forever treasure this time with him my dad's legacy is one of hard work trustworthiness honesty humor and a treasure trove of research that is now at the bloomfield township public library and for that we are grateful while we miss him greatly he lives on in our memories and in his work thanks

8. 8:45

   so much so that I suggested backgammon, which he tried but thought it was a poor substitute because it was too much chance. So we decided to walk the neighborhoods of Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills, and Birmingham, occasionally branching out to other communities. . . . he would plan our route and i would drive us there these neighborhoods he had chosen most always contained some historic homes or had some historic significance which he would point out and give me a short history of often followed up by an email summary with further details we also walked the cranbrook grounds often and he spent many hours researching the history of this local gym once the pandemic subsided i was fortunate to be able to accompany my dad on visits to historic homes in the area which was always a treat he so enjoyed meeting new people and loved sharing the information he had discovered on their properties we certainly have some beautiful homes in this community i will forever treasure this time with him my dad's legacy is one of hard work trustworthiness honesty humor and a treasure trove of research that is now at the bloomfield township public library and for that we are grateful while we miss him greatly he lives on in our memories and in his work thanks um i'm karen wishmeyer the other daughter and um mine's not that formal but i just wanted to say that he loved what he did he loved all of you and as i said in the reception um he was a lifelong learner and he loved the history and i really feel like he did a lot for the community but you guys gave so much to him and it gave bye you Thank you. him so much joy to research these homes and to meet the people and nothing made him happier than when he would send an email or a letter to somebody in a house and he would get a response I mean he was thrilled they would talk about it and he'd be frustrated if he didn't hear back immediately because he had so much information to give the people but he loved it and I think like after my sister's what my sister said about my mom's untimely death it really gave him a project and something he loved to do and he really found a community and with the Barton farmhouse and the Craig log cabin and his group of daubers I mean he made him so happy to have all of you so we are very grateful for that and I mean a couple quick things the moving of the Barton farmhouse was a great event and I

9. 10:00

   memories and in his work thanks um i'm karen wishmeyer the other daughter and um mine's not that formal but i just wanted to say that he loved what he did he loved all of you and as i said in the reception um he was a lifelong learner and he loved the history and i really feel like he did a lot for the community but you guys gave so much to him and it gave bye you Thank you. him so much joy to research these homes and to meet the people and nothing made him happier than when he would send an email or a letter to somebody in a house and he would get a response I mean he was thrilled they would talk about it and he'd be frustrated if he didn't hear back immediately because he had so much information to give the people but he loved it and I think like after my sister's what my sister said about my mom's untimely death it really gave him a project and something he loved to do and he really found a community and with the Barton farmhouse and the Craig log cabin and his group of daubers I mean he made him so happy to have all of you so we are very grateful for that and I mean a couple quick things the moving of the Barton farmhouse was a great event and I was so happy that my boys were able to attend they were only I think eight six and four but we got to walk along with the house and it they still talk about it they do remember it and it kind of made an impact on them that grandpa was this really important guy that got to you know made this thing happen so I'll never forget that and also the for me going to the Chalmers house for the historical haunts event which I think was in 2024 that was great for me because I have not been able to do a lot with him with the historical part but I got to see him in his element talking with all of you and I feel like I've met all of you but sporadically but that was really cool for me to see my dad is kind of a little celebrity in this event And he loved it. And he's a pretty quiet man, but I think he felt the love and he felt appreciated. So, you know, as he got older and slowed down, at least he still, I don't know, he had that. And he still wanted to learn, and it was super important to him. And I love these videos, too. The History Next Door, I'm very grateful that those exist and that we can still watch him doing what he loves and sharing his knowledge. And while it's hard to see him, we will forever have those, and I think that's a wonderful thing.

10. 11:15

    couple quick things the moving of the Barton farmhouse was a great event and I was so happy that my boys were able to attend they were only I think eight six and four but we got to walk along with the house and it they still talk about it they do remember it and it kind of made an impact on them that grandpa was this really important guy that got to you know made this thing happen so I'll never forget that and also the for me going to the Chalmers house for the historical haunts event which I think was in 2024 that was great for me because I have not been able to do a lot with him with the historical part but I got to see him in his element talking with all of you and I feel like I've met all of you but sporadically but that was really cool for me to see my dad is kind of a little celebrity in this event And he loved it. And he's a pretty quiet man, but I think he felt the love and he felt appreciated. So, you know, as he got older and slowed down, at least he still, I don't know, he had that. And he still wanted to learn, and it was super important to him. And I love these videos, too. The History Next Door, I'm very grateful that those exist and that we can still watch him doing what he loves and sharing his knowledge. And while it's hard to see him, we will forever have those, and I think that's a wonderful thing. So I guess that's it. I thank all of you. And, you know, again, he got, I think, as much from you as he gave to the community. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. And we have Dave Bogart. And we have also Dave Bogart here. Oh, Dave. Hello, everybody. Kind of preaching to the choir here today with all the John Marshall fans here. It's sort of with mixed emotions that I'm here because we certainly will all miss John Marshall. But this is great that he's being recognized today. He really was an amazing person who contributed so much to our understanding of local history. My name is Dave Bogart. I'm the president of the Bloomfield Historical Society and vice president and treasurer of Preservation Bloomfield. John was a founding board member, as you heard, of both of these organizations, and I got to know John in 2008 when the community came together to save the Benjamin Barton House and the Craiglog cabin. On behalf of the Bloomfield Historical Society of Preservation Bloomfield, I'd like to express our gratitude for all the work John did in helping us understand the history of our area.

11. 12:30

    And while it's hard to see him, we will forever have those, and I think that's a wonderful thing. So I guess that's it. I thank all of you. And, you know, again, he got, I think, as much from you as he gave to the community. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Martin. And we have Dave Bogart. And we have also Dave Bogart here. Oh, Dave. Hello, everybody. Kind of preaching to the choir here today with all the John Marshall fans here. It's sort of with mixed emotions that I'm here because we certainly will all miss John Marshall. But this is great that he's being recognized today. He really was an amazing person who contributed so much to our understanding of local history. My name is Dave Bogart. I'm the president of the Bloomfield Historical Society and vice president and treasurer of Preservation Bloomfield. John was a founding board member, as you heard, of both of these organizations, and I got to know John in 2008 when the community came together to save the Benjamin Barton House and the Craiglog cabin. On behalf of the Bloomfield Historical Society of Preservation Bloomfield, I'd like to express our gratitude for all the work John did in helping us understand the history of our area. We are also grateful that Bloomfield Township is issuing this proclamation today. I was in the Craiglog cabin once after we had restored it, and one of John's high school classmates came by. He told me that John was the class intellectual, which was not surprising at all, and that's the kind of guy you want researching local history for you. It was his intellectual curiosity that led John to study the history of our area. That curiosity led to research on over 200 homes, properties, and past residents. John also organized over 60 presentations on local history for the Bloomfield Historical Society and wrote numerous articles for our legacy newsletter. In addition, when we would get inquiries via email, as John's daughters mentioned, John was our go-to person to answer those questions, and I might add that the unsuspecting residents who made those inquiries were often surprised by the amount of information heaped upon them. It was really amazing. I spent many hours working with John as part of the five daubers, restoring the Craiglog cabin, and we have a couple of the daubers here today. John led those restoration efforts with the same thoroughness and organization that he did his historical research with. He was always a player.

12. 13:45

    On behalf of the Bloomfield Historical Society of Preservation Bloomfield, I'd like to express our gratitude for all the work John did in helping us understand the history of our area. We are also grateful that Bloomfield Township is issuing this proclamation today. I was in the Craiglog cabin once after we had restored it, and one of John's high school classmates came by. He told me that John was the class intellectual, which was not surprising at all, and that's the kind of guy you want researching local history for you. It was his intellectual curiosity that led John to study the history of our area. That curiosity led to research on over 200 homes, properties, and past residents. John also organized over 60 presentations on local history for the Bloomfield Historical Society and wrote numerous articles for our legacy newsletter. In addition, when we would get inquiries via email, as John's daughters mentioned, John was our go-to person to answer those questions, and I might add that the unsuspecting residents who made those inquiries were often surprised by the amount of information heaped upon them. It was really amazing. I spent many hours working with John as part of the five daubers, restoring the Craiglog cabin, and we have a couple of the daubers here today. John led those restoration efforts with the same thoroughness and organization that he did his historical research with. He was always a player. pleasure to work with. It cannot be overstated how much he has contributed to our understanding of local history. The Historical Society of Preservation Bloomfield will miss John immensely, not only because of his prolific contributions, but because of his friendly and gentlemanly nature. John Marshall was one of the best people I've met in my life, and we were lucky to have him in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Thank you, Dave, and thank you, Karen and Julie. I forgot to also mention Michael Duell, who was elected official. I know very involved with this. Michael, welcome. It's great to see you again. Michael and I, Pat, all served together on the City Commission of Bluefield Hills, but there's also a gentleman who's not with us that was very involved with this in the Barton House. Moving that was so near and dear to him was Dave Kellett, and I think you all know how much he participated, and I know he's with us in spirit today. I just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Okay. And any other comments? I just wanted to say that I knew John Marshall, and in addition to being a trustee, I serve on Preservation Bloomfield, and I met John, and what an amazing man, so kind, so just a lovely person, and a walking, talking historian. For those of us that were new on the board,

13. 15:00

    pleasure to work with. It cannot be overstated how much he has contributed to our understanding of local history. The Historical Society of Preservation Bloomfield will miss John immensely, not only because of his prolific contributions, but because of his friendly and gentlemanly nature. John Marshall was one of the best people I've met in my life, and we were lucky to have him in our community. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. Thank you, Dave, and thank you, Karen and Julie. I forgot to also mention Michael Duell, who was elected official. I know very involved with this. Michael, welcome. It's great to see you again. Michael and I, Pat, all served together on the City Commission of Bluefield Hills, but there's also a gentleman who's not with us that was very involved with this in the Barton House. Moving that was so near and dear to him was Dave Kellett, and I think you all know how much he participated, and I know he's with us in spirit today. I just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Okay. And any other comments? I just wanted to say that I knew John Marshall, and in addition to being a trustee, I serve on Preservation Bloomfield, and I met John, and what an amazing man, so kind, so just a lovely person, and a walking, talking historian. For those of us that were new on the board, when I came on, he had like a little tutorial educational session, and then it really helped me when I was being like a docent in the Barton Farmhouse one night, because I could say, oh, yeah, I know this. So he was a lovely man, and I enjoyed working. working with them and I'm very sorry for his passing. One last comment before we vote, which is, you probably can tell I'm a big fan of history and love hearing the stories too. And the Bloomfield Township's 199th meeting will be, the anniversary of the 199th meeting will be May 25th. We meet the following day, May 26th. So we are starting our 200th year since the first meeting of Bloomfield Township and it's an exciting time. Thank you for being here and anything else? I'll invite you back to you. We'll call the roll call vote. Okay. We'll call the roll call vote. Okay. I have a motion to support the proclamation honoring John Marshall. So moved. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. That passes seven to nothing. Thank you. It's great to see you all. Thank you. Thank you for your support of our community and our history. Thank you. Thank you. Item number four, Bloomfield Township Library's presentation of the History Collection New

14. 16:15

    lovely person, and a walking, talking historian. For those of us that were new on the board, when I came on, he had like a little tutorial educational session, and then it really helped me when I was being like a docent in the Barton Farmhouse one night, because I could say, oh, yeah, I know this. So he was a lovely man, and I enjoyed working. working with them and I'm very sorry for his passing. One last comment before we vote, which is, you probably can tell I'm a big fan of history and love hearing the stories too. And the Bloomfield Township's 199th meeting will be, the anniversary of the 199th meeting will be May 25th. We meet the following day, May 26th. So we are starting our 200th year since the first meeting of Bloomfield Township and it's an exciting time. Thank you for being here and anything else? I'll invite you back to you. We'll call the roll call vote. Okay. We'll call the roll call vote. Okay. I have a motion to support the proclamation honoring John Marshall. So moved. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. That passes seven to nothing. Thank you. It's great to see you all. Thank you. Thank you for your support of our community and our history. Thank you. Thank you. Item number four, Bloomfield Township Library's presentation of the History Collection New Digital Archive presented by Laura Crawley, Bloomfield Township Library Head of Adult Services. I saw the library. Emma. Nice to see you. Okay. Hi. As you said, my name's Laura Creeley. I am the department head for adult and teen services at the Bloomfield Township Public Library just down the road. And one of the things that falls under my purview is the local history collection. Uh, we are a relatively young library compared to many in the state and our history. Street collection is even younger than the library itself. It began as a dedicated space within the library in 2008 as a result of the last expansion and renovation. So we do have a physical collection on site of books that circulate, of reference items, and then we also have an archive room that holds items which do not circulate and kind of are available for researchers but may not be ones that we can just put out on the shelves for anyone to take a look at any time. We collect really with an eye on telling the story of the Bloomfield area. I feel strongly my charge is to have expertise in this place. You know the Burton can handle Detroit, the Bentley can handle Ann Arbor,

15. 17:30

    Item number four, Bloomfield Township Library's presentation of the History Collection New Digital Archive presented by Laura Crawley, Bloomfield Township Library Head of Adult Services. I saw the library. Emma. Nice to see you. Okay. Hi. As you said, my name's Laura Creeley. I am the department head for adult and teen services at the Bloomfield Township Public Library just down the road. And one of the things that falls under my purview is the local history collection. Uh, we are a relatively young library compared to many in the state and our history. Street collection is even younger than the library itself. It began as a dedicated space within the library in 2008 as a result of the last expansion and renovation. So we do have a physical collection on site of books that circulate, of reference items, and then we also have an archive room that holds items which do not circulate and kind of are available for researchers but may not be ones that we can just put out on the shelves for anyone to take a look at any time. We collect really with an eye on telling the story of the Bloomfield area. I feel strongly my charge is to have expertise in this place. You know the Burton can handle Detroit, the Bentley can handle Ann Arbor, my job is to handle Bloomfield Township. As a result of that the library has made an investment in this new digital archive. It's built on a platform called Recollect which is used by a lot of other museums and libraries throughout the country. But what it allows us to do is make so many of those archival items visible, searchable, and in a modern interface. You know previous to this you really would have to physically come to the building or you would send me an email and say do you have anything on this? And I'd be like maybe and then I'd have to go do some research and get back to you. This is a modern index site, hyperlinked everything. is OCR, which is optical character recognition. We have the issues of the eccentric on here that we have digitized so far, resuming that project soon. Many things now, as Pam and the other members of the Bloomfield Historical Society have said, now we have a place to put things, right? When I get a really amazing donation, and I have to say, I got yet another box of John's files earlier this week. So when I get a great donation, I can put those items on Recollect,

16. 18:45

    have expertise in this place. You know the Burton can handle Detroit, the Bentley can handle Ann Arbor, my job is to handle Bloomfield Township. As a result of that the library has made an investment in this new digital archive. It's built on a platform called Recollect which is used by a lot of other museums and libraries throughout the country. But what it allows us to do is make so many of those archival items visible, searchable, and in a modern interface. You know previous to this you really would have to physically come to the building or you would send me an email and say do you have anything on this? And I'd be like maybe and then I'd have to go do some research and get back to you. This is a modern index site, hyperlinked everything. is OCR, which is optical character recognition. We have the issues of the eccentric on here that we have digitized so far, resuming that project soon. Many things now, as Pam and the other members of the Bloomfield Historical Society have said, now we have a place to put things, right? When I get a really amazing donation, and I have to say, I got yet another box of John's files earlier this week. So when I get a great donation, I can put those items on Recollect, not just for the people who are going to come to the library physically, but for researchers all over to be able to come and look at. We kind of want to let everyone in the township know we have these resources, but we are also actively collecting. The library is interested in your things. Now, when I say things, I do mean things about Bloomfield. And I do mean, I always say flat things, right? Things like books, papers, photographs, yearbooks, local publications, menus, any other things like that. We are unfortunately not a big archive. We can't take three-dimensional objects. If you have a beautiful sculpture or something like that, I'm happy to help you find it home, but it's probably not going to be at the library. We host semi-annual history harvests along with the historical society where we ask out to the community to bring those items. But I'm at the library five days a week. We're open seven days. a week i can guarantee that i will be able to take a look at your item i can't guarantee i'll accept it but i'm always glad to take a look um so you know my ask is check out the history uh history collection either in person or online let us know if you have suggestions and uh when you are out

17. 20:00

    I can put those items on Recollect, not just for the people who are going to come to the library physically, but for researchers all over to be able to come and look at. We kind of want to let everyone in the township know we have these resources, but we are also actively collecting. The library is interested in your things. Now, when I say things, I do mean things about Bloomfield. And I do mean, I always say flat things, right? Things like books, papers, photographs, yearbooks, local publications, menus, any other things like that. We are unfortunately not a big archive. We can't take three-dimensional objects. If you have a beautiful sculpture or something like that, I'm happy to help you find it home, but it's probably not going to be at the library. We host semi-annual history harvests along with the historical society where we ask out to the community to bring those items. But I'm at the library five days a week. We're open seven days. a week i can guarantee that i will be able to take a look at your item i can't guarantee i'll accept it but i'm always glad to take a look um so you know my ask is check out the history uh history collection either in person or online let us know if you have suggestions and uh when you are out talking with the the greater constituency of bloomfield township you know please let people know that we are collecting and we're very interested so that's kind of what what i had to say i'm happy to take questions if you have any librarians love questions thank you lord you're welcome questions for more comments okay one quick question the archives available online for anybody so the everything is in the library's catalog right so you can look things up in the catalog the archive items itself it's mediated by a librarian so if it's not something that's digitized you'd be able to do that but this is linked from our website if you just head to our website there's a whole thing called history collection and you click on it and you'll get right to here i've noticed for instance you can access the entire catalog of the birmingham eccentric uh newspaper which has a great it's a great way to look at uh historical it really is i i i almost have a hard time doing research with it because you get lost right you get you're looking for the thing but then you're like man this article is really interesting i wonder what was happening on this random you know random random day of the week um and like i said we're hoping to resume that digitization we paused at six 1964 during the pandemic and now we're back up so soon we'll have the whole the whole run thanks laura

18. 21:15

    collection either in person or online let us know if you have suggestions and uh when you are out talking with the the greater constituency of bloomfield township you know please let people know that we are collecting and we're very interested so that's kind of what what i had to say i'm happy to take questions if you have any librarians love questions thank you lord you're welcome questions for more comments okay one quick question the archives available online for anybody so the everything is in the library's catalog right so you can look things up in the catalog the archive items itself it's mediated by a librarian so if it's not something that's digitized you'd be able to do that but this is linked from our website if you just head to our website there's a whole thing called history collection and you click on it and you'll get right to here i've noticed for instance you can access the entire catalog of the birmingham eccentric uh newspaper which has a great it's a great way to look at uh historical it really is i i i almost have a hard time doing research with it because you get lost right you get you're looking for the thing but then you're like man this article is really interesting i wonder what was happening on this random you know random random day of the week um and like i said we're hoping to resume that digitization we paused at six 1964 during the pandemic and now we're back up so soon we'll have the whole the whole run thanks laura also want to recognize tara moon who's here the library director my apologies sorry thank you laura all right item number five presentation of the fire department and report chief good evening included in uh this board this week's board packet was the fire department's 2025 annual report and i'd like to present to you a little bit of a condensed version of that just to show what we did this last year i'm happy to say for one of the first times in my six-year career it was almost a like status quo type of year instead of some event or something coming at from multiple different directions it was it was breath a little breathtaking to be able to just have one of those years uh so everybody just more more so for the people um bloomfield township's 26 square miles roughly 44 000 residents that we serve with 16 000 homes we are a our median age is 48.3 years which is the oldest in oakland county um so when we we um proudly state that we try to allow

19. 22:30

    also want to recognize tara moon who's here the library director my apologies sorry thank you laura all right item number five presentation of the fire department and report chief good evening included in uh this board this week's board packet was the fire department's 2025 annual report and i'd like to present to you a little bit of a condensed version of that just to show what we did this last year i'm happy to say for one of the first times in my six-year career it was almost a like status quo type of year instead of some event or something coming at from multiple different directions it was it was breath a little breathtaking to be able to just have one of those years uh so everybody just more more so for the people um bloomfield township's 26 square miles roughly 44 000 residents that we serve with 16 000 homes we are a our median age is 48.3 years which is the oldest in oakland county um so when we we um proudly state that we try to allow our residents to age at home whether it's assisting them when they fall and helping them up when they're not injured things like that to helping with smoke detectors and things like that we are always happy to do that and and our elderly residents we'd rather them not climb ladders and try to do those things and get hurt and and really um we'd like them to be able to stay at home for as long as possible because they are they've earned it uh bloomfield township and 20 fire department 2025 as always we have four fully staffed fire stations 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year we have 20 assigned firefighter paramedics per shift and i'm happy to say for the first time in recent memory all those positions have been filled on a daily basis we have three engines one ladder three to four rescues depending on the staffing with vacations and sick time and all of those units are licensed to the highest possible level by the state of michigan being advanced life support so they can carry medications airway interventions um cardiac advanced cardiac interventions and at any time no matter what unit arrives first it is a as a paramedic unit which

20. 23:45

    years which is the oldest in oakland county um so when we we um proudly state that we try to allow our residents to age at home whether it's assisting them when they fall and helping them up when they're not injured things like that to helping with smoke detectors and things like that we are always happy to do that and and our elderly residents we'd rather them not climb ladders and try to do those things and get hurt and and really um we'd like them to be able to stay at home for as long as possible because they are they've earned it uh bloomfield township and 20 fire department 2025 as always we have four fully staffed fire stations 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year we have 20 assigned firefighter paramedics per shift and i'm happy to say for the first time in recent memory all those positions have been filled on a daily basis we have three engines one ladder three to four rescues depending on the staffing with vacations and sick time and all of those units are licensed to the highest possible level by the state of michigan being advanced life support so they can carry medications airway interventions um cardiac advanced cardiac interventions and at any time no matter what unit arrives first it is a as a paramedic unit which we were we've been doing it for over 15 years and we were one of the first in the area that have maintained that all the way through and last year um our average response time from the moment that the tone went off to we walked in on scene was five minutes and 49 seconds so all of those things it was a little bit longer if you take into account the dispatch aspect we've also implemented some uh changes at dispatch with the way we prioritize dispatch for the safety of the residents, allowing for priority and non-priority responses through our ProQA dispatch software, which allows us to determine whether it's an emergency by the accepted standards and we need to get there as fast as we can, and non-emergency, meaning it's not a life or death situation and that it can be updated or changed at any time. There's only about a 55-second delay between emergency and non-emergency response, which you wouldn't think is that much, but in key situations it can be a very, very important thing.

21. 25:00

    interventions and at any time no matter what unit arrives first it is a as a paramedic unit which we were we've been doing it for over 15 years and we were one of the first in the area that have maintained that all the way through and last year um our average response time from the moment that the tone went off to we walked in on scene was five minutes and 49 seconds so all of those things it was a little bit longer if you take into account the dispatch aspect we've also implemented some uh changes at dispatch with the way we prioritize dispatch for the safety of the residents, allowing for priority and non-priority responses through our ProQA dispatch software, which allows us to determine whether it's an emergency by the accepted standards and we need to get there as fast as we can, and non-emergency, meaning it's not a life or death situation and that it can be updated or changed at any time. There's only about a 55-second delay between emergency and non-emergency response, which you wouldn't think is that much, but in key situations it can be a very, very important thing. Currently our staffing, this is our staffing model, that's our organizational chart, the fire chief's at the top and working our way down. You'll see the fire marshal, the operations officer and the EMS captain, they're all at the same level. And then all three of those shifts, depending on the function, report to those personnel. Each shift is led by a battalion chief, with now a newly promoted captain at station one, and all the outstations have a lieutenant and three firefighter paramedics. And that's, the outstations are staffed all the time with four personnel, and station one, the staffing fluctuates given the vacation time or sick days and injuries. Station one is... used as the station that backfills those outstation positions last year as you can see one of the biggest components up there is we only have eight firefighters over 25 years ten over between over 20 years eight over 15 ten over ten years and 31 under 10 years of experience we've had a very significant change over and the last few years and we've gotten a much younger department so last year we

22. 26:15

    Currently our staffing, this is our staffing model, that's our organizational chart, the fire chief's at the top and working our way down. You'll see the fire marshal, the operations officer and the EMS captain, they're all at the same level. And then all three of those shifts, depending on the function, report to those personnel. Each shift is led by a battalion chief, with now a newly promoted captain at station one, and all the outstations have a lieutenant and three firefighter paramedics. And that's, the outstations are staffed all the time with four personnel, and station one, the staffing fluctuates given the vacation time or sick days and injuries. Station one is... used as the station that backfills those outstation positions last year as you can see one of the biggest components up there is we only have eight firefighters over 25 years ten over between over 20 years eight over 15 ten over ten years and 31 under 10 years of experience we've had a very significant change over and the last few years and we've gotten a much younger department so last year we ran my glasses 6062 calls 58% were EMS related incidents and 42 percent were fire related incidents now that's not include that's not all fire actual fires that's your wires down your fire alarms any call for service that doesn't fall under EMS I lumped into under fire up so in the next slide I'll show you don't change it the five-year trends but last year we had 15 structure fires 37 43 thousand four hundred and three thousand seven hundred and forty seven EMS incidents 400 hazardous conditions which are those are like your wires down things like that fire alarms where they're not emergencies and they're we once we found it on scene they were coded that way we had 17 vehicle fires and 41 other types of fires that's vegetation refuse small small types of things any type of fire not including your a home or something like that or a structure we ran 126 wires down which

23. 27:30

    and the last few years and we've gotten a much younger department so last year we ran my glasses 6062 calls 58% were EMS related incidents and 42 percent were fire related incidents now that's not include that's not all fire actual fires that's your wires down your fire alarms any call for service that doesn't fall under EMS I lumped into under fire up so in the next slide I'll show you don't change it the five-year trends but last year we had 15 structure fires 37 43 thousand four hundred and three thousand seven hundred and forty seven EMS incidents 400 hazardous conditions which are those are like your wires down things like that fire alarms where they're not emergencies and they're we once we found it on scene they were coded that way we had 17 vehicle fires and 41 other types of fires that's vegetation refuse small small types of things any type of fire not including your a home or something like that or a structure we ran 126 wires down which is actually down in the recent years due to detroit addison's cutting and trimmed back significant amount of the trees but also we don't we didn't have that many uh really bad summer storms last year one thing that we are seeing is an increase in motor vehicle accidents as anybody has been seeing driving down the road the number of people that go through a red light or just fail to follow basic traffic laws is increasing over really since the pandemic and that trend has been up every year we see more and more vehicle accidents resulting in it and that could be associated with distracted driving and things like that and our fire alarms were about 480. so if you look at the five-year trend as i've showed you before we've had we've pretty much plateaued we're staying right within the accepted not accepted but the standard over the past few years with no real fluctuations and with last year being an outlier year with a reduced number of calls we came back this year we were up about 300 calls this year back to within the normal previous years so if you look at the five-year

24. 28:45

    including your a home or something like that or a structure we ran 126 wires down which is actually down in the recent years due to detroit addison's cutting and trimmed back significant amount of the trees but also we don't we didn't have that many uh really bad summer storms last year one thing that we are seeing is an increase in motor vehicle accidents as anybody has been seeing driving down the road the number of people that go through a red light or just fail to follow basic traffic laws is increasing over really since the pandemic and that trend has been up every year we see more and more vehicle accidents resulting in it and that could be associated with distracted driving and things like that and our fire alarms were about 480. so if you look at the five-year trend as i've showed you before we've had we've pretty much plateaued we're staying right within the accepted not accepted but the standard over the past few years with no real fluctuations and with last year being an outlier year with a reduced number of calls we came back this year we were up about 300 calls this year back to within the normal previous years so if you look at the five-year trends um really as in both building fires uh 2022 stood out for some reason it was a very busy year it was one of those years i was referencing um but really it went back down and we're right back to where we normally are i i expect that to change next year um and i'll mention it later but um the national fire administration and the federal government have implemented a new reporting software which the way things are coded are going to probably you're probably going to see an increase in fires next year because some of those other fires are now going to be classified as structure fires one of the prime examples is kitchen fires where you have a pot on the stove that was on fire was never categorized as a structure fire before and those type of things are going to be rolled in and accounted for differently moving forward the fires if the fires have been down trending down since those those um pandemic years of when we had in the 80s and that was a direct result of more people being home they've trended back to being normal citizen assists have trended down however

25. 30:00

    trends um really as in both building fires uh 2022 stood out for some reason it was a very busy year it was one of those years i was referencing um but really it went back down and we're right back to where we normally are i i expect that to change next year um and i'll mention it later but um the national fire administration and the federal government have implemented a new reporting software which the way things are coded are going to probably you're probably going to see an increase in fires next year because some of those other fires are now going to be classified as structure fires one of the prime examples is kitchen fires where you have a pot on the stove that was on fire was never categorized as a structure fire before and those type of things are going to be rolled in and accounted for differently moving forward the fires if the fires have been down trending down since those those um pandemic years of when we had in the 80s and that was a direct result of more people being home they've trended back to being normal citizen assists have trended down however oakland county and the state of michigan now require us to pull an incident report on every citizen assist that you citizen assist was when we would go help somebody up off the floor they'd state they're not injured things like that but now even if they say they're not injured we have to pull a medical report off of them so depending on how it gets entered into the software that's why you've seen a rise in ems incidents on the other side and then you can as you can see vehicle accidents have been doing nothing but really rise over the past five years to a i mean that's a significant jump last year over past years and part of that was is we had a very early winter and we had a lot of traffic accidents this year associated with those icing conditions that we had with those rapid freezes and or the cold temperatures when the salt wasn't working in december particularly and then last year the wires down trended down and that was just due to a lack of storms and what dte has done with the lines i just thought this would be interesting to show the ems top the top complaints or when we arrive on scene this is what the top 10 of types of incidents that we responded to last year

26. 31:15

    oakland county and the state of michigan now require us to pull an incident report on every citizen assist that you citizen assist was when we would go help somebody up off the floor they'd state they're not injured things like that but now even if they say they're not injured we have to pull a medical report off of them so depending on how it gets entered into the software that's why you've seen a rise in ems incidents on the other side and then you can as you can see vehicle accidents have been doing nothing but really rise over the past five years to a i mean that's a significant jump last year over past years and part of that was is we had a very early winter and we had a lot of traffic accidents this year associated with those icing conditions that we had with those rapid freezes and or the cold temperatures when the salt wasn't working in december particularly and then last year the wires down trended down and that was just due to a lack of storms and what dte has done with the lines i just thought this would be interesting to show the ems top the top complaints or when we arrive on scene this is what the top 10 of types of incidents that we responded to last year and significantly no injuries is the one of them that's that's people falling at home or going out on traffic accidents where they just want checked out things like that but if you look at general weakness um all the way those are pretty much the standard chest pains right in the middle and anxiety depression things like that but um it's really there's so many codes to choose from. Depending on how they get entered into the report, it really throws off the data for the year. Because respiratory is classified under three different things. So it's not just difficulty breathing, you can have respiratory distress, you can have just breathing difficulty. So depending on what the person putting in the report and the way the federal government and they want us to classify it, it changes everything. So last year, these are our incident breakdowns by station. It's stayed pretty much true as to past years. Station three is our busiest station, but it also has the most houses. They are actually down 2% last year from their previous years.

27. 32:30

    on scene this is what the top 10 of types of incidents that we responded to last year and significantly no injuries is the one of them that's that's people falling at home or going out on traffic accidents where they just want checked out things like that but if you look at general weakness um all the way those are pretty much the standard chest pains right in the middle and anxiety depression things like that but um it's really there's so many codes to choose from. Depending on how they get entered into the report, it really throws off the data for the year. Because respiratory is classified under three different things. So it's not just difficulty breathing, you can have respiratory distress, you can have just breathing difficulty. So depending on what the person putting in the report and the way the federal government and they want us to classify it, it changes everything. So last year, these are our incident breakdowns by station. It's stayed pretty much true as to past years. Station three is our busiest station, but it also has the most houses. They are actually down 2% last year from their previous years. And station two was up a little bit. And a lot of that is the driver of services. We can directly attribute that to our managed care facilities that we respond to. Station two's area has skilled nursing home at Big Beaver and Adams. And that is a nursing home which provides assistance to people that, hospital assistance that need it. And that is a big driver of services to the point of over two calls per bed per year. Versus, you know, some of our senior living centers, which are about 1.2 calls per bed. And then we can also attribute some of the ebbs and flows with these responses. to those managed care facilities when there's a change in ownership and new policies are implemented. Some go down and others go up on any given year. I thought I would just throw in our apparatus. We are almost complete with our apparatus replacement schedule. Currently, we have two of those newer engines up there in service, first bought in 2018 and then 2022. The new engine one is scheduled to arrive later this year.

28. 33:45

    And station two was up a little bit. And a lot of that is the driver of services. We can directly attribute that to our managed care facilities that we respond to. Station two's area has skilled nursing home at Big Beaver and Adams. And that is a nursing home which provides assistance to people that, hospital assistance that need it. And that is a big driver of services to the point of over two calls per bed per year. Versus, you know, some of our senior living centers, which are about 1.2 calls per bed. And then we can also attribute some of the ebbs and flows with these responses. to those managed care facilities when there's a change in ownership and new policies are implemented. Some go down and others go up on any given year. I thought I would just throw in our apparatus. We are almost complete with our apparatus replacement schedule. Currently, we have two of those newer engines up there in service, first bought in 2018 and then 2022. The new engine one is scheduled to arrive later this year. And then we have two reserve engines. Rescues, we have four frontline rescues and one in reserve with a new rescue arriving later this year. Ladder four, we used to have two ladders, if you might remember, ladder one and ladder four. Ladder one was just sold to a company out of Quebec. And ladder four is remaining with a scheduled replacement between 2029 and 2030. Squad one's a newer squad that was helped purchased last year with funds from the state of Michigan and the incident command unit, water rescue. And most people don't realize this. We do have a boat, even though we don't have very many powerboat lakes and things like that. But each summer, that boat will, in an emergency, will respond to four to five emergencies in the summer with people swimming accidents in the lakes, missing people, things like that. And then my pride and joy is that new tower that was purchased and received. just before the first of the year with the arpa arpa money and i just like to showcase those those are the new apparatus that we received this year the rescue and the tower the tower was almost a three and a half year wait the rescue was a three year wait and it was very nice for the first time

29. 35:00

    The new engine one is scheduled to arrive later this year. And then we have two reserve engines. Rescues, we have four frontline rescues and one in reserve with a new rescue arriving later this year. Ladder four, we used to have two ladders, if you might remember, ladder one and ladder four. Ladder one was just sold to a company out of Quebec. And ladder four is remaining with a scheduled replacement between 2029 and 2030. Squad one's a newer squad that was helped purchased last year with funds from the state of Michigan and the incident command unit, water rescue. And most people don't realize this. We do have a boat, even though we don't have very many powerboat lakes and things like that. But each summer, that boat will, in an emergency, will respond to four to five emergencies in the summer with people swimming accidents in the lakes, missing people, things like that. And then my pride and joy is that new tower that was purchased and received. just before the first of the year with the arpa arpa money and i just like to showcase those those are the new apparatus that we received this year the rescue and the tower the tower was almost a three and a half year wait the rescue was a three year wait and it was very nice for the first time in my career um in ordering all these trucks since the supply chain uh delays we got battalion one which is a ford transit we got that in and to have a manufacturer a local manufacturer that turned it around in 100 days and they met it right on time and we didn't have to wait it was very it was a very good thing to have for us so last year uh the motto of our fire department is is every day is a training day so we had um 469 hours per member of the department to over 28 000 hours of training that equates to almost four hours a day of some sort of training going on and those trainings when that's not just fire training that's all i broke it out into a some different categories there so some of it's fire related but you know physical fitness a big big uh driver of training this year was that ems paramedic school that was all those young firefighters that we hired that were basic emts that we supported

30. 36:15

    three and a half year wait the rescue was a three year wait and it was very nice for the first time in my career um in ordering all these trucks since the supply chain uh delays we got battalion one which is a ford transit we got that in and to have a manufacturer a local manufacturer that turned it around in 100 days and they met it right on time and we didn't have to wait it was very it was a very good thing to have for us so last year uh the motto of our fire department is is every day is a training day so we had um 469 hours per member of the department to over 28 000 hours of training that equates to almost four hours a day of some sort of training going on and those trainings when that's not just fire training that's all i broke it out into a some different categories there so some of it's fire related but you know physical fitness a big big uh driver of training this year was that ems paramedic school that was all those young firefighters that we hired that were basic emts that we supported and we sent them to paramedic school to finish their paramedic training, and all of them passed first time through. It was very good for the department, and I can say that all of our personnel are now paramedics. We have no EMTs left, everybody is now a paramedic. And then we have those specialty teams between the Michigan Task Force One members and the professional emergency managers that help run the EOC, and the tech rescue and hazmat team. I couldn't break, so that's our breakout for the year. Those are the topics that we trained on all the time. When I got into this business 25 years ago, some of those you would never even look at. Mass casualty incidents on the EMS side, unified incident command. On a couple of the other EMS ones that are really nice, the OB and the obstetrics and the intravenous lab, we got the ability to, using our base hospital, St. Joe's, has a simulation lab, and they open it up to us and our personnel, and we schedule trainings throughout the year. And that is really a state-of-the-art facility

31. 37:30

    and we sent them to paramedic school to finish their paramedic training, and all of them passed first time through. It was very good for the department, and I can say that all of our personnel are now paramedics. We have no EMTs left, everybody is now a paramedic. And then we have those specialty teams between the Michigan Task Force One members and the professional emergency managers that help run the EOC, and the tech rescue and hazmat team. I couldn't break, so that's our breakout for the year. Those are the topics that we trained on all the time. When I got into this business 25 years ago, some of those you would never even look at. Mass casualty incidents on the EMS side, unified incident command. On a couple of the other EMS ones that are really nice, the OB and the obstetrics and the intravenous lab, we got the ability to, using our base hospital, St. Joe's, has a simulation lab, and they open it up to us and our personnel, and we schedule trainings throughout the year. And that is really a state-of-the-art facility that they can run any simulations through that you can think of. And it's really beneficial to our crews to be able to do that. Last year, we received some significant amount of money from from both the federal government and state through grants. We received $190,000 from the state of Michigan and that was for a second set of fighter turnout gear for all firefighters that were employed by the township. This was part of the state of Michigan and the Michigan Professional Firefighters Union's cancer prevention program that they're trying to reduce the amount of cancer that's found in firefighters. So they got a second set of turnout gear so that way when after a fire you don't have to come back and contaminate or keep wearing dirty gear until the end of shift or until it gets laundered. It can be immediately switched out instead of exposing those crews to those carcinogens. We received $55,000 from state representative Samantha Stekloff through the Michigan budget appropriations and we took it upon ourselves to purchase a specialty washing machine for the SCBA which allows us to further that cancer

32. 38:45

    And that is really a state-of-the-art facility that they can run any simulations through that you can think of. And it's really beneficial to our crews to be able to do that. Last year, we received some significant amount of money from from both the federal government and state through grants. We received $190,000 from the state of Michigan and that was for a second set of fighter turnout gear for all firefighters that were employed by the township. This was part of the state of Michigan and the Michigan Professional Firefighters Union's cancer prevention program that they're trying to reduce the amount of cancer that's found in firefighters. So they got a second set of turnout gear so that way when after a fire you don't have to come back and contaminate or keep wearing dirty gear until the end of shift or until it gets laundered. It can be immediately switched out instead of exposing those crews to those carcinogens. We received $55,000 from state representative Samantha Stekloff through the Michigan budget appropriations and we took it upon ourselves to purchase a specialty washing machine for the SCBA which allows us to further that cancer removing those carcinogens and those chemicals from those units instead of before they would never get you would brush them off, wash them off but the stuff that was in the fabric would never truly get eliminated and this machine specialty washes it and takes care of that and we were able to get some fire gloves and extrication gloves through that. and then we also for the second year in a row were awarded a FEMA AFG assistance to firefighter grade. for enhanced firefighter physicals and for health and safety physicals, which involved cardiac screenings and ultrasounds and things like that for the newer members and then a basic enhanced firefighter physical for all of the other members of the department to build off of their previous year's physical. I couldn't stand up here and do a presentation on an annual report without mentioning Oakway. Oakway is our mutual aid organization in southeast Michigan, and on any given day, somebody in Oakway is responding to another Oakway agency to help out and assist when we get extremely busy. Hopefully it's not all of us busy at the same time and the same day.

33. 40:00

    which allows us to further that cancer removing those carcinogens and those chemicals from those units instead of before they would never get you would brush them off, wash them off but the stuff that was in the fabric would never truly get eliminated and this machine specialty washes it and takes care of that and we were able to get some fire gloves and extrication gloves through that. and then we also for the second year in a row were awarded a FEMA AFG assistance to firefighter grade. for enhanced firefighter physicals and for health and safety physicals, which involved cardiac screenings and ultrasounds and things like that for the newer members and then a basic enhanced firefighter physical for all of the other members of the department to build off of their previous year's physical. I couldn't stand up here and do a presentation on an annual report without mentioning Oakway. Oakway is our mutual aid organization in southeast Michigan, and on any given day, somebody in Oakway is responding to another Oakway agency to help out and assist when we get extremely busy. Hopefully it's not all of us busy at the same time and the same day. We haven't seen that yet, but a prime example would have been the active shooter situation and West Bloomfield. All those departments were up there, were over there responding at a moment's notice. And on any given day, over 150 firefighters are on duty as part of these organizations all the time. So moving forward into 2026, as I mentioned, we're going to have a new engine. One will be here later in the year. The rescue is supposed to be arrived later this summer. Um, we expect changes in incident accounting due to the new near East system and the federal incident reporting standards that are out there, and they are evolving to this day. Do you want to do that now? Do you want me to do that? uh we switched over our software in december and it's been a little bit of a hiccup and then the department is also looking for a new operational software which will account for this new neary soft this new neary system and also allow for multiple different departments Thank you. whether it's ems fire prevention to have access to the information that they are all using in different software systems to try to get them all under one umbrella in order to so the incident

34. 41:15

    Hopefully it's not all of us busy at the same time and the same day. We haven't seen that yet, but a prime example would have been the active shooter situation and West Bloomfield. All those departments were up there, were over there responding at a moment's notice. And on any given day, over 150 firefighters are on duty as part of these organizations all the time. So moving forward into 2026, as I mentioned, we're going to have a new engine. One will be here later in the year. The rescue is supposed to be arrived later this summer. Um, we expect changes in incident accounting due to the new near East system and the federal incident reporting standards that are out there, and they are evolving to this day. Do you want to do that now? Do you want me to do that? uh we switched over our software in december and it's been a little bit of a hiccup and then the department is also looking for a new operational software which will account for this new neary soft this new neary system and also allow for multiple different departments Thank you. whether it's ems fire prevention to have access to the information that they are all using in different software systems to try to get them all under one umbrella in order to so the incident commander can pull up on scene very quickly fire prevention information for available commercial buildings or any anything that's on the map we can then enter our hydrant all of our hydrant inspections and stuff into it that we do and when a hydrant goes out of service or is found to be frozen or damaged or something we can mark it on that map as out of service so our crews know while responding currently we have several separate uh computer softwares but none of them talk to each other and are very difficult for the incident commander who's on scene to be able to remember which one to pull up to find the required information on a given time so we're going through a review process right now of the two manufacturers that provide that that we're looking at heavily with that i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have or uh anything else okay thank you john any questions for the chief i just wanted to say thank you as as always you know i'm a fan and sorry that i was contributed to your busy 2025 hopefully and i won't do that again to you but i saw your ems runs were up and incidents so um but uh you know how much i appreciate and support the fire department and we're we're all very lucky to have such a great

35. 42:30

    different software systems to try to get them all under one umbrella in order to so the incident commander can pull up on scene very quickly fire prevention information for available commercial buildings or any anything that's on the map we can then enter our hydrant all of our hydrant inspections and stuff into it that we do and when a hydrant goes out of service or is found to be frozen or damaged or something we can mark it on that map as out of service so our crews know while responding currently we have several separate uh computer softwares but none of them talk to each other and are very difficult for the incident commander who's on scene to be able to remember which one to pull up to find the required information on a given time so we're going through a review process right now of the two manufacturers that provide that that we're looking at heavily with that i'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have or uh anything else okay thank you john any questions for the chief i just wanted to say thank you as as always you know i'm a fan and sorry that i was contributed to your busy 2025 hopefully and i won't do that again to you but i saw your ems runs were up and incidents so um but uh you know how much i appreciate and support the fire department and we're we're all very lucky to have such a great crew thank you thank you i do want to also thank you for uh making sure we have enough personnel to get the elderly if they're upstairs down the stairs i noticed that in two different incidents in the past year and the those residents were very appreciative of that so i want to thank you for doing that for the community number two i have a question about the incidents by station and what are the expected changes if we do end up taking some responsibilities uh from uh in franklin is it franklin bingham bingham and that we're we're waiting to see on anything to do with that um right now i've already moved that response districting line farther south to actually because if you saw on those um station graphs station four and station one are relatively or significantly um i'm not going to say slower uh reduced in their amount number of calls that they go on and i've moved the line already as a result of doing some breakdowns and analysis that probably should have been done a couple years ago so so you you you

36. 43:45

    and support the fire department and we're we're all very lucky to have such a great crew thank you thank you i do want to also thank you for uh making sure we have enough personnel to get the elderly if they're upstairs down the stairs i noticed that in two different incidents in the past year and the those residents were very appreciative of that so i want to thank you for doing that for the community number two i have a question about the incidents by station and what are the expected changes if we do end up taking some responsibilities uh from uh in franklin is it franklin bingham bingham and that we're we're waiting to see on anything to do with that um right now i've already moved that response districting line farther south to actually because if you saw on those um station graphs station four and station one are relatively or significantly um i'm not going to say slower uh reduced in their amount number of calls that they go on and i've moved the line already as a result of doing some breakdowns and analysis that probably should have been done a couple years ago so so you you you move the response line for station four up into central's area a little bit farther to try to remove that reduce that drive on station three's responses okay and we'll start to see those results next year next year's you maybe you will see the results on rescue three's responses significantly less okay um and i can break that out for you next year if you'd like um i'm just yep asking in general and just wondering as you move ahead with bingham farms what the expectations are to the changes yeah that's that's what we've done to our and we've we did it regardless of anything that happens we actually found something that needed to be changed we've already made those those changes to move in that direction to alleviate some of those even if nothing happens to alleviate some of those from that station okay thank you all right thank you john you're welcome all right item number six consider placing renewal of public safety millage number one on the august 4th 2026 ballot presented by our clerk martin brooke martin okay um this is a we have three public safety millages um and this is the third renewal that we've addressed in the last

37. 45:00

    move the response line for station four up into central's area a little bit farther to try to remove that reduce that drive on station three's responses okay and we'll start to see those results next year next year's you maybe you will see the results on rescue three's responses significantly less okay um and i can break that out for you next year if you'd like um i'm just yep asking in general and just wondering as you move ahead with bingham farms what the expectations are to the changes yeah that's that's what we've done to our and we've we did it regardless of anything that happens we actually found something that needed to be changed we've already made those those changes to move in that direction to alleviate some of those even if nothing happens to alleviate some of those from that station okay thank you all right thank you john you're welcome all right item number six consider placing renewal of public safety millage number one on the august 4th 2026 ballot presented by our clerk martin brooke martin okay um this is a we have three public safety millages um and this is the third renewal that we've addressed in the last several years i think since 2021 uh all three will have been written uh put to the voters for renewal uh this is a request for a 10-year renewal um you and the information and the motion are in the file. Okay, any comments or questions? My only comment would be that it cannot be emphasized enough that it's a renewal, because there will be people in the community who will either intentionally or unintentionally claim that it's a new millage or an increased millage, but it is a renewal. Yeah, I just want to piggyback on Trustee Barnett on that. It's not even a heavily override, which would allow us to go back to what we originally had asked for. This is just a renewal of the already rolled back amount to continue that same process. So thank you very much for bringing that up, Trustee Barnett. Okay. Will we be pulling back some of the rollbacks that have occurred or no? No, that'd be a Hedley rollback or a Hedley override. We're not doing that. Okay. We're not. And then are we going to consider reducing the second general fund millage to help reduce the transfers to public safety?

38. 46:15

    we have three public safety millages um and this is the third renewal that we've addressed in the last several years i think since 2021 uh all three will have been written uh put to the voters for renewal uh this is a request for a 10-year renewal um you and the information and the motion are in the file. Okay, any comments or questions? My only comment would be that it cannot be emphasized enough that it's a renewal, because there will be people in the community who will either intentionally or unintentionally claim that it's a new millage or an increased millage, but it is a renewal. Yeah, I just want to piggyback on Trustee Barnett on that. It's not even a heavily override, which would allow us to go back to what we originally had asked for. This is just a renewal of the already rolled back amount to continue that same process. So thank you very much for bringing that up, Trustee Barnett. Okay. Will we be pulling back some of the rollbacks that have occurred or no? No, that'd be a Hedley rollback or a Hedley override. We're not doing that. Okay. We're not. And then are we going to consider reducing the second general fund millage to help reduce the transfers to public safety? I don't think at this time. Okay. All right. If so, I'll take a motion. So moved. Support. Support. Motion by Neal and support by Val. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0. Thank you. Item number seven. Consider placing renewal of the millage on August 4th, 2026 ballot presented by Clerk Mark Brook. Mark. So this is the second item that we would... We hope to put on the August ballot. It is a straight-up renewal, also, of the road millage for a period of 10 years. Okay, any comments? I'd like to make a motion. Okay. Support. Motion by Trustee Galinsky, support by Trustee Murray. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0. Okay, let's go back. Mark, we had item number 2A, approve the board minutes from April 27th, 2026. Yes, the board minutes. I wanted to add something under item 9, which was approval of the water and sewer rates.

39. 47:30

    reduce the transfers to public safety? I don't think at this time. Okay. All right. If so, I'll take a motion. So moved. Support. Support. Motion by Neal and support by Val. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0. Thank you. Item number seven. Consider placing renewal of the millage on August 4th, 2026 ballot presented by Clerk Mark Brook. Mark. So this is the second item that we would... We hope to put on the August ballot. It is a straight-up renewal, also, of the road millage for a period of 10 years. Okay, any comments? I'd like to make a motion. Okay. Support. Motion by Trustee Galinsky, support by Trustee Murray. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes 7-0. Okay, let's go back. Mark, we had item number 2A, approve the board minutes from April 27th, 2026. Yes, the board minutes. I wanted to add something under item 9, which was approval of the water and sewer rates. During that discussion, a factual discrepancy in the audit disclosure was discussed, and I think the meeting minutes should reflect that. Tony, how does that work? I move that we approve the minutes as presented. Well, if that's the case, I'd like to make a motion to amend the minutes to state that a factual discrepancy in the audit disclosure was identified under item 9. So, I mean, I guess I, you know, you brought up and made a statement at the meeting without providing any notice or background or information to anybody here. And there are responses associated with that. That comment, as I said, when I do the minutes, there is no verbatim discussion in any item about what people said specifically. And that question is not related to the setting of the water and sewer rates. Actually, it is.

40. 48:45

    I wanted to add something under item 9, which was approval of the water and sewer rates. During that discussion, a factual discrepancy in the audit disclosure was discussed, and I think the meeting minutes should reflect that. Tony, how does that work? I move that we approve the minutes as presented. Well, if that's the case, I'd like to make a motion to amend the minutes to state that a factual discrepancy in the audit disclosure was identified under item 9. So, I mean, I guess I, you know, you brought up and made a statement at the meeting without providing any notice or background or information to anybody here. And there are responses associated with that. That comment, as I said, when I do the minutes, there is no verbatim discussion in any item about what people said specifically. And that question is not related to the setting of the water and sewer rates. Actually, it is. It changes the investment income requirement. And the comment that I read from the audit is investment income from cash and cash equivalents is assigned to the water and sewer fund based on the average amount invested by this fund during the year. Okay. So, we have a motion though. You still have your motion still? Yes, I do. Okay. Is there support for the motion? Okay. There is no support. So, the motion fails. Okay. So, we have a motion to approve item A, approve the board minutes from April 27, 2026. So moved. Support. Support. Motion by Clerk Brooks. Support by Neal. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes seven to nothing. No, I just wanted to say that if Trustee Antockley has an issue. I vote no. I vote no. You vote no? Okay. Six to one. Thank you, Mark. If he has an issue with the minutes, we're given those minutes like 10 days. to two weeks before this meeting and so that's something that could have been discussed and researched or you know to do it at the last minute of the meeting when it you know it isn't necessary that those details were in the minutes but if you wanted it in the minutes the best way like if i notice a typo i send hannah a note and i say hey hannah i think you meant you know

41. 50:00

    Actually, it is. It changes the investment income requirement. And the comment that I read from the audit is investment income from cash and cash equivalents is assigned to the water and sewer fund based on the average amount invested by this fund during the year. Okay. So, we have a motion though. You still have your motion still? Yes, I do. Okay. Is there support for the motion? Okay. There is no support. So, the motion fails. Okay. So, we have a motion to approve item A, approve the board minutes from April 27, 2026. So moved. Support. Support. Motion by Clerk Brooks. Support by Neal. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes seven to nothing. No, I just wanted to say that if Trustee Antockley has an issue. I vote no. I vote no. You vote no? Okay. Six to one. Thank you, Mark. If he has an issue with the minutes, we're given those minutes like 10 days. to two weeks before this meeting and so that's something that could have been discussed and researched or you know to do it at the last minute of the meeting when it you know it isn't necessary that those details were in the minutes but if you wanted it in the minutes the best way like if i notice a typo i send hannah a note and i say hey hannah i think you meant you know this instead of that and you know excuse me if i'm wrong um and she'll let me know that you know whether that she's fixed that ahead of time so that when we get to this meeting we aren't sitting here nitpicking you know names or dates or anything that might not have been recorded correctly so that's just my my advice um well thank you i appreciate it uh and to be honest i was uh waiting for a response from treasurer sostak because he was um he couldn't respond to uh my question and he was uh for lack of a better term appeared to be gobsmacked what's that and with regards the investment income not being recorded per the audit notes um even clerk book signs off on the audit and um when there's that discrepancy and i've been told a lot of times that the uh we have a policy and looks like a policy is cited in the notes of the audit and that's not what's being recorded and that is a problem for so you

42. 51:15

    way like if i notice a typo i send hannah a note and i say hey hannah i think you meant you know this instead of that and you know excuse me if i'm wrong um and she'll let me know that you know whether that she's fixed that ahead of time so that when we get to this meeting we aren't sitting here nitpicking you know names or dates or anything that might not have been recorded correctly so that's just my my advice um well thank you i appreciate it uh and to be honest i was uh waiting for a response from treasurer sostak because he was um he couldn't respond to uh my question and he was uh for lack of a better term appeared to be gobsmacked what's that and with regards the investment income not being recorded per the audit notes um even clerk book signs off on the audit and um when there's that discrepancy and i've been told a lot of times that the uh we have a policy and looks like a policy is cited in the notes of the audit and that's not what's being recorded and that is a problem for so you township so piggybacking on what val just said if your purpose is to surprise you're doing a good job at that if your purpose is to participate on this board and help us come to good solutions that i think is lacking what the response to that is is that the audit is is is is um incorrectly reporting the policy in that instance it's we it's supposed to report what policies we have in place and it um is inaccurate in that section we don't have to reflect what the audit says the audit is supposed to reflect us um and as you may recall the auditors have been at this meeting and has respond have responded to your specific question on this on this on this item about the the where um actually they did not go in the meeting because and they said that our policies mr mccready said they don't comment on policy so the policy in the audit says one thing the financials say something else the general fund revenues therefore could be considered as being overstated and the water and sewer understated so mark i i understand what you're getting at but i'd have to go back i remember when the the three auditors from uhy got up and spoke to us and i

43. 52:30

    township so piggybacking on what val just said if your purpose is to surprise you're doing a good job at that if your purpose is to participate on this board and help us come to good solutions that i think is lacking what the response to that is is that the audit is is is is um incorrectly reporting the policy in that instance it's we it's supposed to report what policies we have in place and it um is inaccurate in that section we don't have to reflect what the audit says the audit is supposed to reflect us um and as you may recall the auditors have been at this meeting and has respond have responded to your specific question on this on this on this item about the the where um actually they did not go in the meeting because and they said that our policies mr mccready said they don't comment on policy so the policy in the audit says one thing the financials say something else the general fund revenues therefore could be considered as being overstated and the water and sewer understated so mark i i understand what you're getting at but i'd have to go back i remember when the the three auditors from uhy got up and spoke to us and i know you asked them that question and they confirmed our practices were were in line with um their their regulations and their audit. They didn't find anything irregular or unusual. And then I think you pulled out that paragraph on page 50, and we have gone back to UHY to clarify that with them, but they did make a statement, a more broader statement than being specific, that our practices were good and that we still do receive that AAA rating from S&P. So I don't know if there's really anything there. Well, what did the auditor say? I'd have to go back and look at the video, and I haven't, so I can go back and look at it. I thought you said you spoke to the auditors about what's on page 50. We did, and they're looking at it and they're going to respond to us. They haven't responded to us yet. The response was that they made it a mistake in that section, just not the policy of the township. But have they sent us a written on it? No. Will they be reissuing the 25 and previous audit reports? Because it dates back, I've looked at every one. Yeah, you said the 2015, I believe, right?

44. 53:45

    have to go back i remember when the the three auditors from uhy got up and spoke to us and i know you asked them that question and they confirmed our practices were were in line with um their their regulations and their audit. They didn't find anything irregular or unusual. And then I think you pulled out that paragraph on page 50, and we have gone back to UHY to clarify that with them, but they did make a statement, a more broader statement than being specific, that our practices were good and that we still do receive that AAA rating from S&P. So I don't know if there's really anything there. Well, what did the auditor say? I'd have to go back and look at the video, and I haven't, so I can go back and look at it. I thought you said you spoke to the auditors about what's on page 50. We did, and they're looking at it and they're going to respond to us. They haven't responded to us yet. The response was that they made it a mistake in that section, just not the policy of the township. But have they sent us a written on it? No. Will they be reissuing the 25 and previous audit reports? Because it dates back, I've looked at every one. Yeah, you said the 2015, I believe, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah, I would assume if they were going to change something, they'd send us some writing, but I haven't seen anything at this point. But I do recall when they were up there and you asked them a specific question, they were more general that we were, our practices were fine and in line with our industry. So when we get that in writing, I assume we should see it soon, we'll be sharing it with the board and trustees. Okay. Okay. Item number B, approved payroll and vouchers for May 11th. My vote still stands. Okay, so make a motion to approve. Support. Okay, motion by Neal, support by Val. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. And if you'll notice, I'm trying to specify who's making the motion to support to help Hannah because when she goes back to listen to this, so if you find me kind of stalling, I'm just working through it. Thank you. Okay, thank you for your patience. And item number E, approve, transfer, and commit funds to the Equipment and Replacement Fund for Fiscal Year 2025-26. Mark? I'd like to make a motion to table until we receive a response from the auditors about section 50. Okay, is there support? About page 50. Okay. Is there support? There's no support. I make a motion, we approve. Support. Okay, support. Motion by Neal, support by Chris.

45. 55:00

    looked at every one. Yeah, you said the 2015, I believe, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah, I would assume if they were going to change something, they'd send us some writing, but I haven't seen anything at this point. But I do recall when they were up there and you asked them a specific question, they were more general that we were, our practices were fine and in line with our industry. So when we get that in writing, I assume we should see it soon, we'll be sharing it with the board and trustees. Okay. Okay. Item number B, approved payroll and vouchers for May 11th. My vote still stands. Okay, so make a motion to approve. Support. Okay, motion by Neal, support by Val. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. And if you'll notice, I'm trying to specify who's making the motion to support to help Hannah because when she goes back to listen to this, so if you find me kind of stalling, I'm just working through it. Thank you. Okay, thank you for your patience. And item number E, approve, transfer, and commit funds to the Equipment and Replacement Fund for Fiscal Year 2025-26. Mark? I'd like to make a motion to table until we receive a response from the auditors about section 50. Okay, is there support? About page 50. Okay. Is there support? There's no support. I make a motion, we approve. Support. Okay, support. Motion by Neal, support by Chris. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. Okay, passes six to one. Thank you. And as that, we'll move to item eight for adjournment. All in favor say aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you, everyone. This is coming in. Thank you, everybody. I've already been waiting for a chance to see it. I have to go on now. Thank you, everybody. I know. I'm going to have to leave. Thank you. You may be happy. You