the-compact
Board Of Trustees Tuesday, July 14, 2026 · 84 min

Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees Meeting on July 13, 2026

Transcript

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  1. Good evening and welcome to the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees meeting for Monday, July the 13th. If we'll all 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. Okay, welcome everyone. Tonight we'll open up item number one to public comment. If you're here to make a comment about anything on the agenda tonight, you can come up to the podium, and we'll ask you to keep it to three minutes. I don't see anybody coming up, so we'll close public comment and move to item number two, consider a consent agenda, ask for a motion to approve, or any other changes you'd like to make. I'd like to remove some items, board minutes, payroll and vouchers, so ABC. Okay. And, um, uh, aye. Aye. Okay, the safety path. Okay, we'll move those to, uh, after six absentee ballots. We'll move to A, B, C, and E after item number six. Okay. I'd like to make a motion that we consider the consent agenda, D, E, F, G, H. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes seven to nothing. Thank you. On item number three, introduction of our new police captain, Mike Buchek, presented by our chief, Jim Gallagher. Welcome, chief. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. And I think that's a good thing. It's been a minute since we've been here. Mike, come on up for a minute. First, I want to thank all the officers that came from the back. I know they're pushing it on the road today. They've been busy for the last couple hours, so I know Midnight's was able to come up before they start their shift, but if you see them run out, this warm weather definitely brings some busyness for us. So tonight's my privilege and honor to recognize before the board and Mike's family the promotion of Captain Mike Buczek. Mike joined the police department in March of 2005 after serving nearly five years with the Mount Pleasant Police Department in South Carolina. During the past 21 years, he has distinguished himself in every assignment he has held, serving as a patrol officer, a sergeant, a lieutenant, our field training coordinator, an evidence technician, and our department's training coordinator and lead instructor for reality-based training and active assailant response. Mike has built a reputation for preparing our officers for the incidents we hope never happen, but we always must be ready to face. He has led the development of our reality-based training program and has become one of the

  2. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes seven to nothing. Thank you. On item number three, introduction of our new police captain, Mike Buchek, presented by our chief, Jim Gallagher. Welcome, chief. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. And I think that's a good thing. It's been a minute since we've been here. Mike, come on up for a minute. First, I want to thank all the officers that came from the back. I know they're pushing it on the road today. They've been busy for the last couple hours, so I know Midnight's was able to come up before they start their shift, but if you see them run out, this warm weather definitely brings some busyness for us. So tonight's my privilege and honor to recognize before the board and Mike's family the promotion of Captain Mike Buczek. Mike joined the police department in March of 2005 after serving nearly five years with the Mount Pleasant Police Department in South Carolina. During the past 21 years, he has distinguished himself in every assignment he has held, serving as a patrol officer, a sergeant, a lieutenant, our field training coordinator, an evidence technician, and our department's training coordinator and lead instructor for reality-based training and active assailant response. Mike has built a reputation for preparing our officers for the incidents we hope never happen, but we always must be ready to face. He has led the development of our reality-based training program and has become one of the regions, especially in our area, leaders in active assailant and critical incident preparedness. And for those that were on the board in 2023, if you remember, Mike and Oster Smith developed and directed the full-scale mass casualty response over at the high school, which involved 700 to 1,000 people. And that was kind of all untold, but that was extremely successful. That incident demonstrated not only is planning a- but also its exceptional leadership under complex and demanding circumstances. This last year and a half, Mike served as our field training coordinator, where he carried a dual responsibility of leading a shift, being the patrol lieutenant on a shift, and running our field training and communications program. It was one of our busiest hiring years that any of us can remember. Mike had over probably 15 to 20 new employees start. Some of them made the program and some of them didn't. And why I say some didn't is that's where the challenge really becomes, is when we have recruits in our program that are struggling. They leave the program or leave the agency, and then we have to start all over again, all while maintaining a shift at the same time. Mike is also committed to his own professional development.

  3. He has led the development of our reality-based training program and has become one of the regions, especially in our area, leaders in active assailant and critical incident preparedness. And for those that were on the board in 2023, if you remember, Mike and Oster Smith developed and directed the full-scale mass casualty response over at the high school, which involved 700 to 1,000 people. And that was kind of all untold, but that was extremely successful. That incident demonstrated not only is planning a- but also its exceptional leadership under complex and demanding circumstances. This last year and a half, Mike served as our field training coordinator, where he carried a dual responsibility of leading a shift, being the patrol lieutenant on a shift, and running our field training and communications program. It was one of our busiest hiring years that any of us can remember. Mike had over probably 15 to 20 new employees start. Some of them made the program and some of them didn't. And why I say some didn't is that's where the challenge really becomes, is when we have recruits in our program that are struggling. They leave the program or leave the agency, and then we have to start all over again, all while maintaining a shift at the same time. Mike is also committed to his own professional development. He's a graduate of the Michigan State University School of Staff and Command, the Shield Leadership Institute, Michigan State University's First Line Supervision Program, and numerous advanced instructors and tactical leadership courses. His commitment to continuous learning has made him a better leader in his strength in our department and our administrative team. I've had the privilege of working with Mike since he started. While we had the same amount of time on, he was the first officer for me to train in our agency. Mike's not the one who wants to be in the spotlight about anything. He's always been a problem solver, identified the problems. Sometimes I think the guys in the room will tell you he's a little direct about it. But his passion is to make sure that every single night and every time these officers enter a patrol car, they're prepared to handle whatever. incident that comes about for them. And if that means we mess it up one time, he's going to be sure that the second time it's done the right way. And that's the kind of leader that we strive to have in our organization, especially now when we look around the agency and see how many young officers there are. What's comforting for me as a chief is that when Mike arrives at a critical incident, I have the complete confidence in assigning him operational responsibility because I know he will handle it exceptionally well. I'll use the example with Mike when the Corwell health incident happened. He arrived on scene and he said, Chief, what do we need? And I said, I don't

  4. Mike is also committed to his own professional development. He's a graduate of the Michigan State University School of Staff and Command, the Shield Leadership Institute, Michigan State University's First Line Supervision Program, and numerous advanced instructors and tactical leadership courses. His commitment to continuous learning has made him a better leader in his strength in our department and our administrative team. I've had the privilege of working with Mike since he started. While we had the same amount of time on, he was the first officer for me to train in our agency. Mike's not the one who wants to be in the spotlight about anything. He's always been a problem solver, identified the problems. Sometimes I think the guys in the room will tell you he's a little direct about it. But his passion is to make sure that every single night and every time these officers enter a patrol car, they're prepared to handle whatever. incident that comes about for them. And if that means we mess it up one time, he's going to be sure that the second time it's done the right way. And that's the kind of leader that we strive to have in our organization, especially now when we look around the agency and see how many young officers there are. What's comforting for me as a chief is that when Mike arrives at a critical incident, I have the complete confidence in assigning him operational responsibility because I know he will handle it exceptionally well. I'll use the example with Mike when the Corwell health incident happened. He arrived on scene and he said, Chief, what do we need? And I said, I don't know, Mike, I want you to find an area and I want you to command it. And that happened. Same thing at Temple Israel. Mike was at home, came in on duty or off duty when he heard what was happening. And again, when he showed up on scene, it was, what do you want? And it was stay close to the command. And so those things for us, when we're at home sleeping at night, knowing that we have people who can answer a phone call, it helps us out greatly. And since he's been promoted since on May, I think it was ninth-ish, his phone has been nonstop. I think I told him the other day, I've talked to you every week and at least once or twice. So with that, Mike, your commitment to our agency, to the men and women of this agency, has been exceptional. And we congratulate you on your promotion. Thank you, sir. I'll let you and the richie family. My parents are here. John and Pat. My dad is a retired lieutenant from Bay City. Did a lot of work. the FOP and M calls and my wife my sons aren't here they're at a football scrimmage they have there's a seven on seven tournament in Redford and my daughter Riley and all of them support me greatly and I wouldn't be here without them so I appreciate it and I appreciate all you guys

  5. health incident happened. He arrived on scene and he said, Chief, what do we need? And I said, I don't know, Mike, I want you to find an area and I want you to command it. And that happened. Same thing at Temple Israel. Mike was at home, came in on duty or off duty when he heard what was happening. And again, when he showed up on scene, it was, what do you want? And it was stay close to the command. And so those things for us, when we're at home sleeping at night, knowing that we have people who can answer a phone call, it helps us out greatly. And since he's been promoted since on May, I think it was ninth-ish, his phone has been nonstop. I think I told him the other day, I've talked to you every week and at least once or twice. So with that, Mike, your commitment to our agency, to the men and women of this agency, has been exceptional. And we congratulate you on your promotion. Thank you, sir. I'll let you and the richie family. My parents are here. John and Pat. My dad is a retired lieutenant from Bay City. Did a lot of work. the FOP and M calls and my wife my sons aren't here they're at a football scrimmage they have there's a seven on seven tournament in Redford and my daughter Riley and all of them support me greatly and I wouldn't be here without them so I appreciate it and I appreciate all you guys congratulations captain and I see the resemblance between you and your father you're identical what's crazy is his kid's even taller than Mike and he's only how old is he a pitcher too no he's not a pitcher oh boy golf ball I'm gonna move over to this okay can I control this now yes oh item number four police department 2025 annual report presented by our police chief Jimmy Gallagher welcome back Jimmy hey thanks again thanks for having us this evening for our 2025 annual report we're a little delayed this year and presenting it but nevertheless it's here it won't be real long you I think you received a copy of it of the report there may have been a page or so missing on the office of the year information but that has been updated some of that file was too large for us to email it so it'll be uploaded online as soon as we get the formatting proper on there we'll start with our new hires we just discussed it but last year we had at least 10 sworn officers that are currently employed with us still we had several others four or five that either

  6. greatly and I wouldn't be here without them so I appreciate it and I appreciate all you guys congratulations captain and I see the resemblance between you and your father you're identical what's crazy is his kid's even taller than Mike and he's only how old is he a pitcher too no he's not a pitcher oh boy golf ball I'm gonna move over to this okay can I control this now yes oh item number four police department 2025 annual report presented by our police chief Jimmy Gallagher welcome back Jimmy hey thanks again thanks for having us this evening for our 2025 annual report we're a little delayed this year and presenting it but nevertheless it's here it won't be real long you I think you received a copy of it of the report there may have been a page or so missing on the office of the year information but that has been updated some of that file was too large for us to email it so it'll be uploaded online as soon as we get the formatting proper on there we'll start with our new hires we just discussed it but last year we had at least 10 sworn officers that are currently employed with us still we had several others four or five that either resigned within realizing law enforcement wasn't their career choice or some that had struggled and resigned we also hired three dispatchers who are all currently still employed with us and doing very very well and then our cadet Hayden Hall was hired in April of last year Hayden has now been hired as a police officer and is attending the police Academy which will probably hopefully end in October ish our mission statement is to preserve the peace and protect our community with fairness integrity pride and respect and there are core values something that we live every day of integrity respect fairness pride and accountability and if you walk around our walls down the stairs you'll see that these are printed with their definitions so that every single day when we walk out these doors we can have fun in the station with each other but we walk out the door and that call answers we expect our officers to treat people this way last year in 2025 we handled 27,067 calls for service it's an increase in from 2024 by about 8% almost 9% and I wish I could tell you what the increase was or why some of it's because we have a little bit more proactive policing going on with our traffic stops and new officers as we get new officers and they become

  7. resigned within realizing law enforcement wasn't their career choice or some that had struggled and resigned we also hired three dispatchers who are all currently still employed with us and doing very very well and then our cadet Hayden Hall was hired in April of last year Hayden has now been hired as a police officer and is attending the police Academy which will probably hopefully end in October ish our mission statement is to preserve the peace and protect our community with fairness integrity pride and respect and there are core values something that we live every day of integrity respect fairness pride and accountability and if you walk around our walls down the stairs you'll see that these are printed with their definitions so that every single day when we walk out these doors we can have fun in the station with each other but we walk out the door and that call answers we expect our officers to treat people this way last year in 2025 we handled 27,067 calls for service it's an increase in from 2024 by about 8% almost 9% and I wish I could tell you what the increase was or why some of it's because we have a little bit more proactive policing going on with our traffic stops and new officers as we get new officers and they become more proactive on the road they generate calls for service just with their proactive policing in neighborhoods compared to 2024 where we added we handled about 24,000 just under 25,000 calls for service We still do our service-oriented policing, which is our vacation house checks, where residents call if they're gone for an extended period of time. We will periodically check their home while they're gone. We do vehicle lockouts still. We're one of the very few agencies that still do vehicle lockouts. When people lock their keys with side airbags and things of that nature, they're not as easy as they used to be. But we still do those. And then our school security checks, which that number's low. Our officers are always going to the schools. This is just some officers will call out that there's at the schools, but our school resource officers are in the schools all day long. Our call types and classification. So we have our part A, part B, and part C crimes. The majority of what we spend our time on are our minor offenses, whether our vehicle crashes, accidents, civil infractions, traffic stops, things of that nature. Our part A felonies are our major crimes, our assaults, robberies, murder, stalking. And I don't want to jinx anything, so knock on wood, but we haven't had a homicide since 2014.

  8. on with our traffic stops and new officers as we get new officers and they become more proactive on the road they generate calls for service just with their proactive policing in neighborhoods compared to 2024 where we added we handled about 24,000 just under 25,000 calls for service We still do our service-oriented policing, which is our vacation house checks, where residents call if they're gone for an extended period of time. We will periodically check their home while they're gone. We do vehicle lockouts still. We're one of the very few agencies that still do vehicle lockouts. When people lock their keys with side airbags and things of that nature, they're not as easy as they used to be. But we still do those. And then our school security checks, which that number's low. Our officers are always going to the schools. This is just some officers will call out that there's at the schools, but our school resource officers are in the schools all day long. Our call types and classification. So we have our part A, part B, and part C crimes. The majority of what we spend our time on are our minor offenses, whether our vehicle crashes, accidents, civil infractions, traffic stops, things of that nature. Our part A felonies are our major crimes, our assaults, robberies, murder, stalking. And I don't want to jinx anything, so knock on wood, but we haven't had a homicide since 2014. And so we're still maintaining that streak. We've been on several situations over the last couple of months, or over the last year, I should say. And these numbers hopefully will trend back down, but last year they trended up. Our response to resistance is now, per accreditation, we track all use of force, of course which we always have. What was new in 2023 or 4... Thank you. was that any time that we pull a firearm now or point a firearm at an individual in the current year, a TASER, that counts as a response to resistance, which is actually good for us, so that we can track and train and know the data on that. And so last year, when you look at, it's pretty amazing, when you look at our total police contacts, our calls for service of 27,067 calls for service, only 24 of them required any response to resistance. So that number is very low, which means that the training that we're doing and the de-escalation techniques and that our community responds well to the police. And some of those circumstances, obviously they did not. Some of those increases can be attributed to the LPR license plate readers

  9. but we haven't had a homicide since 2014. And so we're still maintaining that streak. We've been on several situations over the last couple of months, or over the last year, I should say. And these numbers hopefully will trend back down, but last year they trended up. Our response to resistance is now, per accreditation, we track all use of force, of course which we always have. What was new in 2023 or 4... Thank you. was that any time that we pull a firearm now or point a firearm at an individual in the current year, a TASER, that counts as a response to resistance, which is actually good for us, so that we can track and train and know the data on that. And so last year, when you look at, it's pretty amazing, when you look at our total police contacts, our calls for service of 27,067 calls for service, only 24 of them required any response to resistance. So that number is very low, which means that the training that we're doing and the de-escalation techniques and that our community responds well to the police. And some of those circumstances, obviously they did not. Some of those increases can be attributed to the LPR license plate readers when we're stopping felony vehicles that are entering the township and we're being alerted to them in real time. So some of those things are on there. But that's, we also had 3,099 traffic stops last year. And again, when you can look at a number of only 24, in my opinion, it's pretty amazing. We also do a pursuit analysis every year. Last year in 2025, we were actually down in vehicle pursuits. And when I say vehicle pursuits, these are vehicles that flee from us. 14 vehicles fled from us last year, which is a 25% decrease from the year before. We had one foot pursuit and the suspect was apprehended with no injuries. Per our policy and per accreditation standards, we- we review all pursuits related whether that's a vehicle that fails to stop and an officer doesn't even initiate the pursuit we will not try we always weigh the risk to public versus the benefit or the outcome on the traffic stop or event so we're not going to try to put other innocent people in harm's way because of a traffic violation it every obviously every situation determines that but we we try to not allow that to happen so you can see our vehicle

  10. to the LPR license plate readers when we're stopping felony vehicles that are entering the township and we're being alerted to them in real time. So some of those things are on there. But that's, we also had 3,099 traffic stops last year. And again, when you can look at a number of only 24, in my opinion, it's pretty amazing. We also do a pursuit analysis every year. Last year in 2025, we were actually down in vehicle pursuits. And when I say vehicle pursuits, these are vehicles that flee from us. 14 vehicles fled from us last year, which is a 25% decrease from the year before. We had one foot pursuit and the suspect was apprehended with no injuries. Per our policy and per accreditation standards, we- we review all pursuits related whether that's a vehicle that fails to stop and an officer doesn't even initiate the pursuit we will not try we always weigh the risk to public versus the benefit or the outcome on the traffic stop or event so we're not going to try to put other innocent people in harm's way because of a traffic violation it every obviously every situation determines that but we we try to not allow that to happen so you can see our vehicle outcomes two drivers stopped four supervisors terminated pursuits four pursuits were not initiated meaning the officers was the vehicle fled did not attempt and one of the things that we kind of look for when we do our reviews is whether vehicles if our driving or our presence is causing that driver to act in a differently and differently so if they're doing 100 miles per hour and we're trying to catch up to them we're going to catch up to them if we if they're doing 50 miles per hour and they go 100 because we're behind them we're going to weigh the outcome of that uh versus the risk versus reward um we're also teaching and training and boxing in so if we know we have a violent offender or somebody in a stolen car we're working on boxing those vehicles in before we even attempt to make a traffic stop or put our lights on to prevent a suspect from fleeing um you can see that 50 percent were for traffic violations 33 were percent were for crime related um 17 percent were in mental health um you and the majority occur at night. Dispatch. The Supervisor McCready is always coming down during busy times to dispatch just to see how things are going, and he can see truly how hard the ladies and men in there are working. He's been down there during critical incidents and just during storms.

  11. situation determines that but we we try to not allow that to happen so you can see our vehicle outcomes two drivers stopped four supervisors terminated pursuits four pursuits were not initiated meaning the officers was the vehicle fled did not attempt and one of the things that we kind of look for when we do our reviews is whether vehicles if our driving or our presence is causing that driver to act in a differently and differently so if they're doing 100 miles per hour and we're trying to catch up to them we're going to catch up to them if we if they're doing 50 miles per hour and they go 100 because we're behind them we're going to weigh the outcome of that uh versus the risk versus reward um we're also teaching and training and boxing in so if we know we have a violent offender or somebody in a stolen car we're working on boxing those vehicles in before we even attempt to make a traffic stop or put our lights on to prevent a suspect from fleeing um you can see that 50 percent were for traffic violations 33 were percent were for crime related um 17 percent were in mental health um you and the majority occur at night. Dispatch. The Supervisor McCready is always coming down during busy times to dispatch just to see how things are going, and he can see truly how hard the ladies and men in there are working. He's been down there during critical incidents and just during storms. So last year they took 51,538 non-emergency calls for service, or I'm sorry, telephone calls, 17,360 911 calls, and the new thing is now text to 911, which is about 670. We're a 24-7 operation down there. We dispatch for both us, the village, Franklin Village, and Bingham Farms fire. Our special units, most importantly here, this is just kind of showing the value of us being involved in our outside specialty units. Last year, NET as a whole, the Narcotics Enforcement Team estimated about $1.3 million in street value of drugs throughout our county. The FBI Violent Crimes Task Force is related around gangs a lot of time and the things that they're doing. They also do a lot of drug seizures, but 219 search warrants is a lot of search warrants throughout the year. And then SIU, which is our Troy Special Investigations Unit, which is a direct complement to our Detective Bureau. Sergeant Joe Monty was in there until last year, and now Officer Rob Ronk is there. Those numbers that you'll see there are... Those numbers that you'll see there are... Those numbers that you'll see there are...

  12. He's been down there during critical incidents and just during storms. So last year they took 51,538 non-emergency calls for service, or I'm sorry, telephone calls, 17,360 911 calls, and the new thing is now text to 911, which is about 670. We're a 24-7 operation down there. We dispatch for both us, the village, Franklin Village, and Bingham Farms fire. Our special units, most importantly here, this is just kind of showing the value of us being involved in our outside specialty units. Last year, NET as a whole, the Narcotics Enforcement Team estimated about $1.3 million in street value of drugs throughout our county. The FBI Violent Crimes Task Force is related around gangs a lot of time and the things that they're doing. They also do a lot of drug seizures, but 219 search warrants is a lot of search warrants throughout the year. And then SIU, which is our Troy Special Investigations Unit, which is a direct complement to our Detective Bureau. Sergeant Joe Monty was in there until last year, and now Officer Rob Ronk is there. Those numbers that you'll see there are... Those numbers that you'll see there are... Those numbers that you'll see there are... are our numbers with them. They did 56 total surveillances with 59 arrests and 49 search warrants. What I'll say about that is that will not encompass the number of stolen auto theft rings that they manage over the last couple years. We talked about that last year as well. But the majority of those arrests last year probably came from these auto theft rings that are just destroying our neighborhoods. Our co-responder program we talk about frequently that we've been a partner with since 2021. Just real quick by the numbers for just us, our agency, we had 212 referrals, 135 resources or crisis services were provided on the scene. 63% of all referrals resulted in a resource or direct crisis intervention, which is impressive in the value to that. 77, no further action needed, which just meant either they had services already on their own and we just may have reached out to their social worker or psychologist to reconnect those services. And 63 had a positive outcome rate, meaning that we're reducing the rates that were going on these homes or calls that there's direct crisis services being provided to them.

  13. are our numbers with them. They did 56 total surveillances with 59 arrests and 49 search warrants. What I'll say about that is that will not encompass the number of stolen auto theft rings that they manage over the last couple years. We talked about that last year as well. But the majority of those arrests last year probably came from these auto theft rings that are just destroying our neighborhoods. Our co-responder program we talk about frequently that we've been a partner with since 2021. Just real quick by the numbers for just us, our agency, we had 212 referrals, 135 resources or crisis services were provided on the scene. 63% of all referrals resulted in a resource or direct crisis intervention, which is impressive in the value to that. 77, no further action needed, which just meant either they had services already on their own and we just may have reached out to their social worker or psychologist to reconnect those services. And 63 had a positive outcome rate, meaning that we're reducing the rates that were going on these homes or calls that there's direct crisis services being provided to them. So we still have our two licensed social workers in Sydney and Courtney. And so this is still one of the best programs around. And I think we're up to 13 in the county now and just about every community minus. And we're up to 13 in the county now. And we're up to 13 in the county now. just a couple of county agencies we're still doing our community involvement um captain bazutia in the the second top picture there one dancing with the stars that we're a big part of every year some of those pictures are from the youth police academy the cards with the cops heather started last year going down to the beaumont pediatric area and playing cards with some of the pediatric patients in the hospital so we had a good time this year officer allen came this year and he got beat by a few of the um um patients down there so he's kind of a sore loser there he's got to work on his game yeah well you know i think it was what cheese pizza i don't know what yeah um and then again the full report will be published online on our transparency thing with all our reports our use of force or vehicle pursuits um and this is annual report as well so i'll take any questions if anybody has it um i'm in your report appreciate it any questions comments i just had one comment it was great report um but you know me the animal welfare person i was

  14. or calls that there's direct crisis services being provided to them. So we still have our two licensed social workers in Sydney and Courtney. And so this is still one of the best programs around. And I think we're up to 13 in the county now and just about every community minus. And we're up to 13 in the county now. And we're up to 13 in the county now. just a couple of county agencies we're still doing our community involvement um captain bazutia in the the second top picture there one dancing with the stars that we're a big part of every year some of those pictures are from the youth police academy the cards with the cops heather started last year going down to the beaumont pediatric area and playing cards with some of the pediatric patients in the hospital so we had a good time this year officer allen came this year and he got beat by a few of the um um patients down there so he's kind of a sore loser there he's got to work on his game yeah well you know i think it was what cheese pizza i don't know what yeah um and then again the full report will be published online on our transparency thing with all our reports our use of force or vehicle pursuits um and this is annual report as well so i'll take any questions if anybody has it um i'm in your report appreciate it any questions comments i just had one comment it was great report um but you know me the animal welfare person i was really pleased to see how well things are going in our animal welfare department and this morning i stopped by and visited and checked in with betsy and um offered her you know if you guys ever need my support i have three fosters at home i was going to bring them to the meeting but he's allergic so couldn't bring my furry friends yeah that's okay but yeah i'm just really glad that you know That's all working out really well right now, and I'm available to support if you do. We appreciate it. They are working great together, so we've made great strides over the last few years. Yeah. Nice journey. Thank you. I do have some, I've got two questions. The auto theft rings and the break-in rings, do you think that contributed to the increase in calls or requests to come out and check? I think a lot of it, I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head for the number of auto thefts. We were down this year compared to a year or two years ago where we were up almost 250%. The over, not necessarily in our area, those auto theft rings were throughout this entire county, but really this entire region, but that significantly would not have increased our numbers.

  15. comments i just had one comment it was great report um but you know me the animal welfare person i was really pleased to see how well things are going in our animal welfare department and this morning i stopped by and visited and checked in with betsy and um offered her you know if you guys ever need my support i have three fosters at home i was going to bring them to the meeting but he's allergic so couldn't bring my furry friends yeah that's okay but yeah i'm just really glad that you know That's all working out really well right now, and I'm available to support if you do. We appreciate it. They are working great together, so we've made great strides over the last few years. Yeah. Nice journey. Thank you. I do have some, I've got two questions. The auto theft rings and the break-in rings, do you think that contributed to the increase in calls or requests to come out and check? I think a lot of it, I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head for the number of auto thefts. We were down this year compared to a year or two years ago where we were up almost 250%. The over, not necessarily in our area, those auto theft rings were throughout this entire county, but really this entire region, but that significantly would not have increased our numbers. The, well, one is the number of officers that we actually have on the road. When we were down 14 officers a year ago at this time, that's a lot of proactive police work in neighborhoods at nights, whether that's, you know, somebody leaving their garage door open, and them making contact. We document every one of those. What we're seeing with the driving behaviors on the road, Mark, is just where I lost sometimes with the things that we're hearing out there. And so there's just, I really, a lot of it, I think it's the proactive police work from these young patrol officers. Okay. Uh, the, you'd mentioned, um, uh, checking in on, uh, schools. I was wondering, I've seen, uh, members of the police force around places at Florida should. Is that something we can add next year to the presentation? We absolutely can. Yeah, we have pretty much a daily occurrence or patrols at our places of worship. A lot of the officers write the reports in the parking lots at churches or synagogues. We are at those locations so much, but we can absolutely look at those numbers because those are numbers. We're at the Kirk in the Hills, hires us every weekend. And the Muslim Unity Center, we're there every Friday, Saturday.

  16. but that significantly would not have increased our numbers. The, well, one is the number of officers that we actually have on the road. When we were down 14 officers a year ago at this time, that's a lot of proactive police work in neighborhoods at nights, whether that's, you know, somebody leaving their garage door open, and them making contact. We document every one of those. What we're seeing with the driving behaviors on the road, Mark, is just where I lost sometimes with the things that we're hearing out there. And so there's just, I really, a lot of it, I think it's the proactive police work from these young patrol officers. Okay. Uh, the, you'd mentioned, um, uh, checking in on, uh, schools. I was wondering, I've seen, uh, members of the police force around places at Florida should. Is that something we can add next year to the presentation? We absolutely can. Yeah, we have pretty much a daily occurrence or patrols at our places of worship. A lot of the officers write the reports in the parking lots at churches or synagogues. We are at those locations so much, but we can absolutely look at those numbers because those are numbers. We're at the Kirk in the Hills, hires us every weekend. And the Muslim Unity Center, we're there every Friday, Saturday. Yeah, and I think it's important, just like you patrol our schools, you're patrolling our places of worships. We've had some unusual incidents in the area, and I think it's important that our community understands that you're doing everything you can. Yes, I agree. Thanks. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you. All right. Don't go too far. Oh, yeah. Item number five. He's trying to get away. This is your night. Yeah. Continue discussion of solutions to address police department present and future space needs. Presented by our police chief, Jimmy Gallagher. Welcome back. Welcome back. Here I am. Well, we don't have much of our presentation on that. I just wanted to readdress the board. I know we've had some internal discussions, and I know I want to bring it back to the board to start putting a plan in place and have for you as a board to have future discussions on the needs of the township. Again, that's one of the goals we've set from our agency is our infrastructure. Thank you. And I know Trustee Barnett stopped in today to see me on a matter just talking. And he said, man, I'm downstairs and there's people in the lobby trying to file a report on a personal matter. Where can they go? And I said, nowhere, you know, unless we take them out the front doors. And so the lobby was quite busy today in the last couple hours here in the afternoon with reports coming in.

  17. And the Muslim Unity Center, we're there every Friday, Saturday. Yeah, and I think it's important, just like you patrol our schools, you're patrolling our places of worships. We've had some unusual incidents in the area, and I think it's important that our community understands that you're doing everything you can. Yes, I agree. Thanks. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you. All right. Don't go too far. Oh, yeah. Item number five. He's trying to get away. This is your night. Yeah. Continue discussion of solutions to address police department present and future space needs. Presented by our police chief, Jimmy Gallagher. Welcome back. Welcome back. Here I am. Well, we don't have much of our presentation on that. I just wanted to readdress the board. I know we've had some internal discussions, and I know I want to bring it back to the board to start putting a plan in place and have for you as a board to have future discussions on the needs of the township. Again, that's one of the goals we've set from our agency is our infrastructure. Thank you. And I know Trustee Barnett stopped in today to see me on a matter just talking. And he said, man, I'm downstairs and there's people in the lobby trying to file a report on a personal matter. Where can they go? And I said, nowhere, you know, unless we take them out the front doors. And so the lobby was quite busy today in the last couple hours here in the afternoon with reports coming in. So that's just one of those minor, you know, little things that you noticed as you walked in the building today. And I know we've all had this discussion, but from a police chief perspective, I'd like to see us get into further, deeper discussions and make a plan of action. And I think, thank you, Jimmy. Michael put something together. Do you want to share it with the board to run through it, Michael? Sure. Hannah, can you bring that up? Actually, while we're doing that, I brought copies for everyone. Thank you. Okay, so this concept has been something that we've discussed now for several years. It began in 2024 when we were going through our strategic planning process. And we identified two areas within the strategic priorities. One is reliable infrastructure and best-in-class government and enhancing the community character.

  18. And so the lobby was quite busy today in the last couple hours here in the afternoon with reports coming in. So that's just one of those minor, you know, little things that you noticed as you walked in the building today. And I know we've all had this discussion, but from a police chief perspective, I'd like to see us get into further, deeper discussions and make a plan of action. And I think, thank you, Jimmy. Michael put something together. Do you want to share it with the board to run through it, Michael? Sure. Hannah, can you bring that up? Actually, while we're doing that, I brought copies for everyone. Thank you. Okay, so this concept has been something that we've discussed now for several years. It began in 2024 when we were going through our strategic planning process. And we identified two areas within the strategic priorities. One is reliable infrastructure and best-in-class government and enhancing the community character. and so when we thought about that and thinking about the infrastructure that we needed that led to us bringing in Redstone who predominantly does public safety buildings and they did a space needs assessment of our police of our administration and of the courts and so they presented their findings I want to say a year and a half ago at this point maybe a year in which they went through department by department how much space do we need where are we at and and where do we need to go that led to us doing a campus revisioning process where we brought in the planners from Smith Group and we went through a process of identifying you know before we set out in a direction how do we think about our Township campus what do we want it to look like what do we want the future to look like and so that we could really address this holistically aggress all you know all of the the concept all of

  19. and so when we thought about that and thinking about the infrastructure that we needed that led to us bringing in Redstone who predominantly does public safety buildings and they did a space needs assessment of our police of our administration and of the courts and so they presented their findings I want to say a year and a half ago at this point maybe a year in which they went through department by department how much space do we need where are we at and and where do we need to go that led to us doing a campus revisioning process where we brought in the planners from Smith Group and we went through a process of identifying you know before we set out in a direction how do we think about our Township campus what do we want it to look like what do we want the future to look like and so that we could really address this holistically aggress all you know all of the the concept all of the assets that we have here on campus they looked at obviously Township Hall and the police department They looked at the Cable building. They looked at the DBW building. They looked at the court, 48th District Court, and they looked at the animal shelter. And that led to more internal discussion and analysis where we had different ideas that we were, you know, thinking around, thinking about. And then ultimately we, you know, moved in a direction where we thought would make the most sense. And so we went out and got cost estimates and discussed potential layouts so that we knew what we were talking about. And so what that's done is it's led to two proposals that we have come up with, and they're here in this presentation. Proposal one is to build or replace this building with one new building in the parking lot between this building and 48th District Court.

  20. and so that we could really address this holistically aggress all you know all of the the concept all of the assets that we have here on campus they looked at obviously Township Hall and the police department They looked at the Cable building. They looked at the DBW building. They looked at the court, 48th District Court, and they looked at the animal shelter. And that led to more internal discussion and analysis where we had different ideas that we were, you know, thinking around, thinking about. And then ultimately we, you know, moved in a direction where we thought would make the most sense. And so we went out and got cost estimates and discussed potential layouts so that we knew what we were talking about. And so what that's done is it's led to two proposals that we have come up with, and they're here in this presentation. Proposal one is to build or replace this building with one new building in the parking lot between this building and 48th District Court. So basically it's where the secured police parking is right now. It would be one new building. We would move and consolidate the communications and community affairs department, which is our old cable department, into that building so that, you know, all of the administration functions would be there together and the communications functions. We talked about a new building. We talked about a, you know, new... kind of cutting edge public safety training facility that we could build on our gulf drive property that's property that we own uh in the northwest part of the township um kind of behind um menards and lows i think it's actually behind more lows um and create you know a training facility there move our shooting range which is currently in the basement at dpw um and has caused some consternation um on on behalf of the dpw staff because they're hearing the training going on and so we've been looking at ways to you know silence that more for them but also this would give us an opportunity to protect to move it off site

  21. And so what that's done is it's led to two proposals that we have come up with, and they're here in this presentation. Proposal one is to build or replace this building with one new building in the parking lot between this building and 48th District Court. So basically it's where the secured police parking is right now. It would be one new building. We would move and consolidate the communications and community affairs department, which is our old cable department, into that building so that, you know, all of the administration functions would be there together and the communications functions. We talked about a new building. We talked about a, you know, new... kind of cutting edge public safety training facility that we could build on our gulf drive property that's property that we own uh in the northwest part of the township um kind of behind um menards and lows i think it's actually behind more lows um and create you know a training facility there move our shooting range which is currently in the basement at dpw um and has caused some consternation um on on behalf of the dpw staff because they're hearing the training going on and so we've been looking at ways to you know silence that more for them but also this would give us an opportunity to protect to move it off site um part of this uh plan would uh require removing the animal shelter um so we'd have parking for the new building um and this building and then it gives us the opportunity for the first time to build a park uh here at the corner of exeter and telegraph would be the first township owned park um so some of the pros and cons um this would simplify operations by remaining in just one building the new construction would lower ongoing operating costs however it is a more expensive project than you'll see in proposal two uh it will require that we effectively communicate the vision to the voters as this would require a a new bond and that would require a approval of a new millage from the voters and if we decide to move forward in that direction, the plan would be to put that on our November general election ballot. The offsite training facility is preferred, gives us a lot of great opportunities to combine police and fire training, move the shooting range out there and provide for the first time township park or green space.

  22. silence that more for them but also this would give us an opportunity to protect to move it off site um part of this uh plan would uh require removing the animal shelter um so we'd have parking for the new building um and this building and then it gives us the opportunity for the first time to build a park uh here at the corner of exeter and telegraph would be the first township owned park um so some of the pros and cons um this would simplify operations by remaining in just one building the new construction would lower ongoing operating costs however it is a more expensive project than you'll see in proposal two uh it will require that we effectively communicate the vision to the voters as this would require a a new bond and that would require a approval of a new millage from the voters and if we decide to move forward in that direction, the plan would be to put that on our November general election ballot. The offsite training facility is preferred, gives us a lot of great opportunities to combine police and fire training, move the shooting range out there and provide for the first time township park or green space. That's something that was really heard from residents during our strategic planning process. There's also the synergies of having everything at admin, police, the emergency operation center all in one place and together. Moving to the next slide, this proposal 2 would build a new building again in the same spot in between township hall and the 48th district court. It would just be for the police department, which means that they would vacate their space here in township hall. That would give us the opportunity to expand our administrative offices. We'd be able to give PBO downstairs a lot more space. They're sandwiched in like sardines and we'd be able to give them more space. We'd be able to, again, bring in the communications and community affairs department into this building, which would allow us to, again, consolidate. but eight. all of our uh administrative departments uh it would it would just like in proposal one i think i skipped over this that we would take the old cable building and we would renovate it into a new animal shelter and since we have to remove the current animal shelter to provide parking for

  23. time township park or green space. That's something that was really heard from residents during our strategic planning process. There's also the synergies of having everything at admin, police, the emergency operation center all in one place and together. Moving to the next slide, this proposal 2 would build a new building again in the same spot in between township hall and the 48th district court. It would just be for the police department, which means that they would vacate their space here in township hall. That would give us the opportunity to expand our administrative offices. We'd be able to give PBO downstairs a lot more space. They're sandwiched in like sardines and we'd be able to give them more space. We'd be able to, again, bring in the communications and community affairs department into this building, which would allow us to, again, consolidate. but eight. all of our uh administrative departments uh it would it would just like in proposal one i think i skipped over this that we would take the old cable building and we would renovate it into a new animal shelter and since we have to remove the current animal shelter to provide parking for a new building we would move the animal shelter into the cable building and remove the current animal shelter so on the pro side this is less expensive than the first proposal it's a much simpler proposal all of the police and training operations would be together on the on the flip side we would now be operating out of two buildings one new building and then this existing building this existing building is 90 years old and will require expensive and unpredictable maintenance and repairs going forward it will only be about 60 occupied when you bring in the community affairs department and expand pbo there would still be a lot of unused space in this building and we will have missed the green space opportunity that we may never get back here on campus so going to the next slide um i put together with in consultation with uh our finance director and our bond council what the financial implications of these two proposals would look like um in proposal one is the one larger building that would accommodate um

  24. new animal shelter and since we have to remove the current animal shelter to provide parking for a new building we would move the animal shelter into the cable building and remove the current animal shelter so on the pro side this is less expensive than the first proposal it's a much simpler proposal all of the police and training operations would be together on the on the flip side we would now be operating out of two buildings one new building and then this existing building this existing building is 90 years old and will require expensive and unpredictable maintenance and repairs going forward it will only be about 60 occupied when you bring in the community affairs department and expand pbo there would still be a lot of unused space in this building and we will have missed the green space opportunity that we may never get back here on campus so going to the next slide um i put together with in consultation with uh our finance director and our bond council what the financial implications of these two proposals would look like um in proposal one is the one larger building that would accommodate um replacement for this building. That would be in total an 89 million dollar project, we would contribute 25 million from our capital reserve, which is what we've been saving for 10 million of that would go towards the rebuild of Fire Station three, which we're working on also. And then that would leave 15 million to go towards this project. So for a total bond size of a little under 75 million, which when it's fully levied in the first year, would be 0.56. And so for the average taxpayer, that'd be about $146. The second proposal would only be a two story building instead of a three story building, but it'd be roughly the same footprint, slightly smaller, or a lot smaller, but would just house the police operation. We would have to include some money to renovate this building. And we would have to set aside money to be able to be able to handle whatever repairs and maintenance would come up with this building. So that's a roughly $64 million project, we'd be able to contribute 5 million out of the capital reserve for a total bond size of about 59 million, which went fully levied would be 0.45 mils. And the difference there

  25. replacement for this building. That would be in total an 89 million dollar project, we would contribute 25 million from our capital reserve, which is what we've been saving for 10 million of that would go towards the rebuild of Fire Station three, which we're working on also. And then that would leave 15 million to go towards this project. So for a total bond size of a little under 75 million, which when it's fully levied in the first year, would be 0.56. And so for the average taxpayer, that'd be about $146. The second proposal would only be a two story building instead of a three story building, but it'd be roughly the same footprint, slightly smaller, or a lot smaller, but would just house the police operation. We would have to include some money to renovate this building. And we would have to set aside money to be able to be able to handle whatever repairs and maintenance would come up with this building. So that's a roughly $64 million project, we'd be able to contribute 5 million out of the capital reserve for a total bond size of about 59 million, which went fully levied would be 0.45 mils. And the difference there is just 0.1 mils between the two proposals. The second proposal for the average taxpayer would be about $118. which is a $28 difference between the two. So moving to the next slide, if we do put a millage on the ballot in November, and if it passes, this is what the timeline for the project would look like. Early next year, we'd issue an RFP for a construction manager and an architect. Later next year or in early 28, we would issue the first series of bonds, probably about half of the total. Early 28, construction would begin. Winter of 28, we'd have the first levy of the bond millage, but it will be smaller since not all of the bonds will have been issued yet. By spacing it out into two separate series of bonds, we don't have to pay interest on money that we're not going to use yet. So we take half of the money, and then a year later, we take the second half of the money, so that would be in late 28 or early 29. We would issue the second series of bonds. And so winter of 29 would actually be the first levy of the full bond millage.

  26. went fully levied would be 0.45 mils. And the difference there is just 0.1 mils between the two proposals. The second proposal for the average taxpayer would be about $118. which is a $28 difference between the two. So moving to the next slide, if we do put a millage on the ballot in November, and if it passes, this is what the timeline for the project would look like. Early next year, we'd issue an RFP for a construction manager and an architect. Later next year or in early 28, we would issue the first series of bonds, probably about half of the total. Early 28, construction would begin. Winter of 28, we'd have the first levy of the bond millage, but it will be smaller since not all of the bonds will have been issued yet. By spacing it out into two separate series of bonds, we don't have to pay interest on money that we're not going to use yet. So we take half of the money, and then a year later, we take the second half of the money, so that would be in late 28 or early 29. We would issue the second series of bonds. And so winter of 29 would actually be the first levy of the full bond millage. And then late 29 or early 2030, construction would be complete. So in summary, on the last slide there, in my opinion, Proposal 1 is a more comprehensive proposal. It efficiently utilizes space and eliminates the unknown maintenance and repair liability of this 90-year-old building. As I said, it would be about a $75 million bond, about 0.56 mils. And it would... decrease each year over the repayment down to a low of about 0.2 mils, and it would give us the opportunity to provide a park or green space here, basically in the footprint of this building, the corner of Exeter and Telegraph. Proposal two is a simple proposal. It keeps the police and training together, but leaves current or this building not fully occupied. And it would have, as I said, unpredictable repair maintenance costs as it's a 90 year old building that was really a conglomeration of three buildings. It was the original building was built in 1938. Then there was another addition put on, I believe, in the mid 60s. And then in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a third edition put on. So we basically got three different buildings with different systems, you know, you know, all working together here for this building. In short, the summary between the two proposals is 0.11 mils in the first year equating to about $28.

  27. of the full bond millage. And then late 29 or early 2030, construction would be complete. So in summary, on the last slide there, in my opinion, Proposal 1 is a more comprehensive proposal. It efficiently utilizes space and eliminates the unknown maintenance and repair liability of this 90-year-old building. As I said, it would be about a $75 million bond, about 0.56 mils. And it would... decrease each year over the repayment down to a low of about 0.2 mils, and it would give us the opportunity to provide a park or green space here, basically in the footprint of this building, the corner of Exeter and Telegraph. Proposal two is a simple proposal. It keeps the police and training together, but leaves current or this building not fully occupied. And it would have, as I said, unpredictable repair maintenance costs as it's a 90 year old building that was really a conglomeration of three buildings. It was the original building was built in 1938. Then there was another addition put on, I believe, in the mid 60s. And then in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a third edition put on. So we basically got three different buildings with different systems, you know, you know, all working together here for this building. In short, the summary between the two proposals is 0.11 mils in the first year equating to about $28. dollars. I'm also throwing out the idea that we could lower our allocated operating millage by that amount. When we fully levied the bond, which would be in 2030. And that would cost us 650,000 in the first year. And that would come out of our operating budget. That's something we can do with our allocated millage. And this follows on the strategic plan, which called for, you know, best in class government upgrades and infrastructure and park and green space. And then And then the last slide which we don't have to dwell on um is some proposed uh ballot language this was um prepared by our attorneys our bond council and general counsel um and um so we could look at that as well but why don't we leave the slide on the i don't know if you want to put it on the summary or um that's probably the best slide to keep it on and then you all have a printout of it here um in your packet or in front of you um and you know we're

  28. a conglomeration of three buildings. It was the original building was built in 1938. Then there was another addition put on, I believe, in the mid 60s. And then in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a third edition put on. So we basically got three different buildings with different systems, you know, you know, all working together here for this building. In short, the summary between the two proposals is 0.11 mils in the first year equating to about $28. dollars. I'm also throwing out the idea that we could lower our allocated operating millage by that amount. When we fully levied the bond, which would be in 2030. And that would cost us 650,000 in the first year. And that would come out of our operating budget. That's something we can do with our allocated millage. And this follows on the strategic plan, which called for, you know, best in class government upgrades and infrastructure and park and green space. And then And then the last slide which we don't have to dwell on um is some proposed uh ballot language this was um prepared by our attorneys our bond council and general counsel um and um so we could look at that as well but why don't we leave the slide on the i don't know if you want to put it on the summary or um that's probably the best slide to keep it on and then you all have a printout of it here um in your packet or in front of you um and you know we're really here to have discussion open discussion on this i know that there's some uh disagreement on the board about the direction that we're going to go in but that's why we're here we're here to hash that out and have the discussion um and see where we go so um this is you know all the work that we put on going back as i said a couple of years um through this process thank you michael all right any uh comments or questions let's uh i would like to uh table any discussion to give uh everyone a chance to review this this is the first time we've seen it and maybe we can put it on the agenda for the next meeting i'd like to make a motion to table the discussion at this time our residents have not had a chance to see the presentation or review it prior to the meeting and i think they should have an opportunity to comment. Well, we're not voting on anything tonight. We're here to discuss it openly as a board. I think we'll have multiple board meetings to discuss this and probably have to hold some open houses for residents. I think I'd like to hold off on not being

  29. you all have a printout of it here um in your packet or in front of you um and you know we're really here to have discussion open discussion on this i know that there's some uh disagreement on the board about the direction that we're going to go in but that's why we're here we're here to hash that out and have the discussion um and see where we go so um this is you know all the work that we put on going back as i said a couple of years um through this process thank you michael all right any uh comments or questions let's uh i would like to uh table any discussion to give uh everyone a chance to review this this is the first time we've seen it and maybe we can put it on the agenda for the next meeting i'd like to make a motion to table the discussion at this time our residents have not had a chance to see the presentation or review it prior to the meeting and i think they should have an opportunity to comment. Well, we're not voting on anything tonight. We're here to discuss it openly as a board. I think we'll have multiple board meetings to discuss this and probably have to hold some open houses for residents. I think I'd like to hold off on not being able to discuss it. I think that's why we're here is to discuss and these are Michael put these proposals together. It doesn't mean we're going with these proposals. He's put them out there to give us a outline of discussion so that we can start started started up. So nothing's going to be decided tonight, Mark. Well, that's fine, but I would prefer to before we get into any deep discussion, no one had a chance to review this. That was not within the township. Okay. Well, you've made a motion as anybody wants to support the motion. Okay. There's no support Mark. So the motion will fail. So we'll open up this for some discussion. So I have a comment. It's my turn. I apologize to Michael because he had approached me that we were going to try and meet and have some discussion on this ahead and I realized that it didn't we didn't have that happen yet. So this as like Mark, this is the first I've seen all this, but a lot of these ideas have been going around. I think I know it's a lot of money, but I think proposal one makes a ton more sense when you look at the age of this building and I know you took in the fact that it there will be some unexpected maintenance, but I worked with you some

  30. off on not being able to discuss it. I think that's why we're here is to discuss and these are Michael put these proposals together. It doesn't mean we're going with these proposals. He's put them out there to give us a outline of discussion so that we can start started started up. So nothing's going to be decided tonight, Mark. Well, that's fine, but I would prefer to before we get into any deep discussion, no one had a chance to review this. That was not within the township. Okay. Well, you've made a motion as anybody wants to support the motion. Okay. There's no support Mark. So the motion will fail. So we'll open up this for some discussion. So I have a comment. It's my turn. I apologize to Michael because he had approached me that we were going to try and meet and have some discussion on this ahead and I realized that it didn't we didn't have that happen yet. So this as like Mark, this is the first I've seen all this, but a lot of these ideas have been going around. I think I know it's a lot of money, but I think proposal one makes a ton more sense when you look at the age of this building and I know you took in the fact that it there will be some unexpected maintenance, but I worked with you some the school district when they did the consolidations and mergers in both Bloomfield and Birmingham. And one of the things you have to look at, too, is if we have unused space in this building, that's costing us money. That's costing us utilities, you know, and maintenance on unused space. That's why they demolished some of the schools, because the cost to keep the lawn cut and keep the building from becoming a derelict costs money. So I personally feel like I know it's a lot of money, but to get a brand-new building to the police department has been in need for a very long time, and it would put us in a very good position of not having unexpected issues. And the parks thing, I heard about the parks as recently as this weekend. People want the parks, and the fact that you incorporated a park and right here, what a cool idea. I like it. Michael, thank you, first of all, for presenting this and putting it in a nice summary form. This is nothing new that we haven't discussed at previous meetings, but it's nice to have more of a just conceptual look at it. Two really good proposals, and certainly a little different than each other.

  31. the school district when they did the consolidations and mergers in both Bloomfield and Birmingham. And one of the things you have to look at, too, is if we have unused space in this building, that's costing us money. That's costing us utilities, you know, and maintenance on unused space. That's why they demolished some of the schools, because the cost to keep the lawn cut and keep the building from becoming a derelict costs money. So I personally feel like I know it's a lot of money, but to get a brand-new building to the police department has been in need for a very long time, and it would put us in a very good position of not having unexpected issues. And the parks thing, I heard about the parks as recently as this weekend. People want the parks, and the fact that you incorporated a park and right here, what a cool idea. I like it. Michael, thank you, first of all, for presenting this and putting it in a nice summary form. This is nothing new that we haven't discussed at previous meetings, but it's nice to have more of a just conceptual look at it. Two really good proposals, and certainly a little different than each other. As we've discussed before, I've been kind of in the camp of let's take care of the police department. building and concerned about the expense, the extreme expense of also taking care of town hall. I know it's an old building and there are a lot of unknown maintenance issues. So that's kind of, I mean, not to say I couldn't give consideration to the first proposal, but I would like to see more actual numbers as far as what we're looking at for the maintenance of this building and whether it's on a yearly basis as moving forward, I'm sure it would be increased, but I think we need to have that before us. And I think those numbers would be very helpful maybe in convincing some of us to go along with the first proposal. I like the idea for the park here. I've been very much against these ridiculous park proposals in areas that shouldn't have a park, but this makes sense. So this one is a nice addition

  32. Two really good proposals, and certainly a little different than each other. As we've discussed before, I've been kind of in the camp of let's take care of the police department. building and concerned about the expense, the extreme expense of also taking care of town hall. I know it's an old building and there are a lot of unknown maintenance issues. So that's kind of, I mean, not to say I couldn't give consideration to the first proposal, but I would like to see more actual numbers as far as what we're looking at for the maintenance of this building and whether it's on a yearly basis as moving forward, I'm sure it would be increased, but I think we need to have that before us. And I think those numbers would be very helpful maybe in convincing some of us to go along with the first proposal. I like the idea for the park here. I've been very much against these ridiculous park proposals in areas that shouldn't have a park, but this makes sense. So this one is a nice addition to the plan and I'm sure it would be attractive to a lot of people. I like the fact, of course, with the first proposal that you have everybody and all the departments together in one building, which certainly makes it much easier to work together and rather than having, you know, numerous buildings as we could. currently have. So if the numbers would work, and by the numbers, again, it goes back to what is it gonna cost to maintain this building to convince some of us to go with the Proposal 1, then that's something I would give consideration to. I'm not there yet, but I'd like to see those numbers. Chris? Yeah, again, thank you for putting these together. The proposals you've shared are not new, as Neil was talking about, but they've also evolved. At one time, there were discussions about how do I bring in the court? Is there enough synergy savings by bringing them in because there's maintenance on that building? And again, as you get more information, these evolve, which is why you're here with two proposals. Either one we can go with, there could be a third one that come out of the discussion.

  33. in areas that shouldn't have a park, but this makes sense. So this one is a nice addition to the plan and I'm sure it would be attractive to a lot of people. I like the fact, of course, with the first proposal that you have everybody and all the departments together in one building, which certainly makes it much easier to work together and rather than having, you know, numerous buildings as we could. currently have. So if the numbers would work, and by the numbers, again, it goes back to what is it gonna cost to maintain this building to convince some of us to go with the Proposal 1, then that's something I would give consideration to. I'm not there yet, but I'd like to see those numbers. Chris? Yeah, again, thank you for putting these together. The proposals you've shared are not new, as Neil was talking about, but they've also evolved. At one time, there were discussions about how do I bring in the court? Is there enough synergy savings by bringing them in because there's maintenance on that building? And again, as you get more information, these evolve, which is why you're here with two proposals. Either one we can go with, there could be a third one that come out of the discussion. But again, the amount of effort and, you know, like a 10,000 foot view that you provided here is great. So thank you for all the hard work for this. I'm a lot with Neil. The need, we have needs, and then there are some wants. The need is a new police station and a new fire station. To me, those are like kind of non-negotiables. So however we get there, that's going to happen. Then we add some of our wants we want to it. Does it make fiscal sense to continue to maintain a 90-year-old building? Or is there enough capital improvements over the next five years for this building that will start to narrow that cost cost for making a new building? That's what I would like to see, just like Neil. So another one would be is what is our, we normally have a capital improvements. We're not too fast. And we're going to look for more observations, and yes, you will see that one of the tight Crimson Frank도 fund for whether it's going to be HVAC units some of these things I know you estimated around two million dollars for town hall renovations after the police fire moves out is that actually gonna be enough because we're really adding obviously PBO as well as cable and again if we're to keep this building we want to make sure that it's set up appropriately for them so just want to maybe sharpen those numbers to see what that actual differential is in proposal one the police department training center is that's a pretty expensive line item

  34. that come out of the discussion. But again, the amount of effort and, you know, like a 10,000 foot view that you provided here is great. So thank you for all the hard work for this. I'm a lot with Neil. The need, we have needs, and then there are some wants. The need is a new police station and a new fire station. To me, those are like kind of non-negotiables. So however we get there, that's going to happen. Then we add some of our wants we want to it. Does it make fiscal sense to continue to maintain a 90-year-old building? Or is there enough capital improvements over the next five years for this building that will start to narrow that cost cost for making a new building? That's what I would like to see, just like Neil. So another one would be is what is our, we normally have a capital improvements. We're not too fast. And we're going to look for more observations, and yes, you will see that one of the tight Crimson Frank도 fund for whether it's going to be HVAC units some of these things I know you estimated around two million dollars for town hall renovations after the police fire moves out is that actually gonna be enough because we're really adding obviously PBO as well as cable and again if we're to keep this building we want to make sure that it's set up appropriately for them so just want to maybe sharpen those numbers to see what that actual differential is in proposal one the police department training center is that's a pretty expensive line item for me so it doesn't mean that I don't love our police department so I'm going to get the looks now but when I look at some of the line items that kind of goes back to a want maybe not a need so depending on where the total dollar amounts come in that may be more of a want than a need but again we need a new police station however that comes about and we need a new fire station those are things that we have to we can't keep kicking the can down the road our guys and girls down there are crammed we can't have appropriate spaces for them that is that's not acceptable so I appreciate putting this together and I'm really excited for us to come with some type of plan that we're gonna vote on as a board and we're gonna move forward to be supportive of it so thank you if I could just add one more thing to one thing I didn't include which I know we've talked about before Mike is the training center and rather than going to up to golf certainly having an engineering study on the current facility that we have and seeing how much would it cost to sound prove it better to put additional materials in there so that they're not hearing all the sounds of the of the firearms you know upstairs and in public works so I think that's worth considering to see how much is it first of all do the study see how much it's going to cost to improve that

  35. one the police department training center is that's a pretty expensive line item for me so it doesn't mean that I don't love our police department so I'm going to get the looks now but when I look at some of the line items that kind of goes back to a want maybe not a need so depending on where the total dollar amounts come in that may be more of a want than a need but again we need a new police station however that comes about and we need a new fire station those are things that we have to we can't keep kicking the can down the road our guys and girls down there are crammed we can't have appropriate spaces for them that is that's not acceptable so I appreciate putting this together and I'm really excited for us to come with some type of plan that we're gonna vote on as a board and we're gonna move forward to be supportive of it so thank you if I could just add one more thing to one thing I didn't include which I know we've talked about before Mike is the training center and rather than going to up to golf certainly having an engineering study on the current facility that we have and seeing how much would it cost to sound prove it better to put additional materials in there so that they're not hearing all the sounds of the of the firearms you know upstairs and in public works so I think that's worth considering to see how much is it first of all do the study see how much it's going to cost to improve that facility that we currently have because right now it's not working. The off-site could be a separate project if you know if we can't fight it all right now that is kind of a project in itself although I know we need to do something for public works so I like Neil's idea of you know maybe there is some kind of soundproofing that we could do to improve that situation. Well and both Michael and Mike have brought up that again if we're going to be conservative with our finances maybe that is something that we tackle as some of the bonds fall off that are going to be in 2032 2033 that'll provide some additional money that the township currently bonds internal that could go for some of these additional special projects again I feel like that's more of a want than need I imagine uh chief's up here to uh to argue with me on that and I appreciate it let us just discuss this a little bit okay yeah yeah thank you so um but again when I'm looking at and we've discussed this there are lots of villages that are coming out for um our residents and residents you if well Thank you.

  36. to see how much is it first of all do the study see how much it's going to cost to improve that facility that we currently have because right now it's not working. The off-site could be a separate project if you know if we can't fight it all right now that is kind of a project in itself although I know we need to do something for public works so I like Neil's idea of you know maybe there is some kind of soundproofing that we could do to improve that situation. Well and both Michael and Mike have brought up that again if we're going to be conservative with our finances maybe that is something that we tackle as some of the bonds fall off that are going to be in 2032 2033 that'll provide some additional money that the township currently bonds internal that could go for some of these additional special projects again I feel like that's more of a want than need I imagine uh chief's up here to uh to argue with me on that and I appreciate it let us just discuss this a little bit okay yeah yeah thank you so um but again when I'm looking at and we've discussed this there are lots of villages that are coming out for um our residents and residents you if well Thank you. throughout the county so we are fiscal stewards and we understand that there are a lot of asks for our residents so I'm going to make sure that when we do ask it is a need not a want the strategic plan have shown these are the needs of our community let's do the best we can to capture as many of those as we can at the lowest cost I think our residents will support that when we get there and just a question for the clerk if we decide to move forward with something what's our deadline to have it on a November ballot if that's what we choose to do drop dead date is the effort to vote to put something on the November ballot is the first August meeting I think that's um August 10th the ballots get printed so early too and then Martin if I may yeah so again I've heard some people say okay you know why don't we put it on a special meeting or make it a specific meeting how much does it cost to run a special meeting that has no other election excuse me that has no other items on it well it is expensive and we operate these for school districts from time to

  37. throughout the county so we are fiscal stewards and we understand that there are a lot of asks for our residents so I'm going to make sure that when we do ask it is a need not a want the strategic plan have shown these are the needs of our community let's do the best we can to capture as many of those as we can at the lowest cost I think our residents will support that when we get there and just a question for the clerk if we decide to move forward with something what's our deadline to have it on a November ballot if that's what we choose to do drop dead date is the effort to vote to put something on the November ballot is the first August meeting I think that's um August 10th the ballots get printed so early too and then Martin if I may yeah so again I've heard some people say okay you know why don't we put it on a special meeting or make it a specific meeting how much does it cost to run a special meeting that has no other election excuse me that has no other items on it well it is expensive and we operate these for school districts from time to time we'll call a special election when there's nothing else on the ballot we track all of those expenses and except for my regular staff time so over time you ask but not regular salary and we've We've done a couple of those in the past few years, and it can range from $85,000 to $115,000 to do a special election. We have less precincts than we have in the past, so some of this is I'm just making some internal calculations. And again, like everything else, we're talking about a 10,000-foot view, but we talk about being sharp with township resources and money for our residents. If we don't put down one of these type of elections, it's again costing them more money. Our residents have told us, don't waste our money. So that's why I think putting it on the November ballot, if we decide to do that, would be smarter than trying to kick the can on the road again and having a special election specifically for this. In addition to that, the cost savings is that if we're going to ask for that much of a millage increase for these projects, we really should have it at the election that's going to have the greatest turnout, which is November. So that we're giving everybody the opportunity to be heard.

  38. on it well it is expensive and we operate these for school districts from time to time we'll call a special election when there's nothing else on the ballot we track all of those expenses and except for my regular staff time so over time you ask but not regular salary and we've We've done a couple of those in the past few years, and it can range from $85,000 to $115,000 to do a special election. We have less precincts than we have in the past, so some of this is I'm just making some internal calculations. And again, like everything else, we're talking about a 10,000-foot view, but we talk about being sharp with township resources and money for our residents. If we don't put down one of these type of elections, it's again costing them more money. Our residents have told us, don't waste our money. So that's why I think putting it on the November ballot, if we decide to do that, would be smarter than trying to kick the can on the road again and having a special election specifically for this. In addition to that, the cost savings is that if we're going to ask for that much of a millage increase for these projects, we really should have it at the election that's going to have the greatest turnout, which is November. So that we're giving everybody the opportunity to be heard. That's a great point, Neil. Like, the most amount of our residents, we do have a really good voter turnout, so that way we'll hear from the residents and be able to, you know, listen to their voice, which is a great, great point. Thank you. Well, and as we're talking about more expense, if we put it off another six months or a year to even go to a vote, the next time there's some other election going on that we can tag onto, the cost of construction, the cost of materials, you know, it's like we saw that, especially in the village. with the SADs that I mean it seemed like that project went up like ten grand per homeowner every time we revisited it so to call a special election I guess if we're you if we're serious about moving forward with this I'd like to see us take a chance on it and and put it out there on this biggest election so we get a good turnout we get a good a good review from our residents as opposed to them saying oh you put it on this you know this little school board election and you know and people were out of town and you know give people a chance everybody knows there's a big election in November so I think that's a good time for voices to be heard and if it's no then it's no so it's my personal thought

  39. So that we're giving everybody the opportunity to be heard. That's a great point, Neil. Like, the most amount of our residents, we do have a really good voter turnout, so that way we'll hear from the residents and be able to, you know, listen to their voice, which is a great, great point. Thank you. Well, and as we're talking about more expense, if we put it off another six months or a year to even go to a vote, the next time there's some other election going on that we can tag onto, the cost of construction, the cost of materials, you know, it's like we saw that, especially in the village. with the SADs that I mean it seemed like that project went up like ten grand per homeowner every time we revisited it so to call a special election I guess if we're you if we're serious about moving forward with this I'd like to see us take a chance on it and and put it out there on this biggest election so we get a good turnout we get a good a good review from our residents as opposed to them saying oh you put it on this you know this little school board election and you know and people were out of town and you know give people a chance everybody knows there's a big election in November so I think that's a good time for voices to be heard and if it's no then it's no so it's my personal thought any other comments I'm concerned about meeting payroll for public safety until we collect taxes the prior year we were about a 16 million dollar deficit the year before that we're at a 16 million dollar deficit until we started collecting taxes that's according to the quarterly reports and we don't provide fund balances so we can't judge what funds are actually being used and we can't judge whether or not the general fund is using reserves to meet those obligations until we collect taxes. I've raised those concerns on multiple occasions. I've raised concerns regarding the interest rate sweep from water and sewer into the general fund. Mark, we're talking about the building. That's $25 million there in the capital that was swept in. Mark, I know we have you coming up as the items that you've taken off the agenda, but we're

  40. for voices to be heard and if it's no then it's no so it's my personal thought any other comments I'm concerned about meeting payroll for public safety until we collect taxes the prior year we were about a 16 million dollar deficit the year before that we're at a 16 million dollar deficit until we started collecting taxes that's according to the quarterly reports and we don't provide fund balances so we can't judge what funds are actually being used and we can't judge whether or not the general fund is using reserves to meet those obligations until we collect taxes. I've raised those concerns on multiple occasions. I've raised concerns regarding the interest rate sweep from water and sewer into the general fund. Mark, we're talking about the building. That's $25 million there in the capital that was swept in. Mark, I know we have you coming up as the items that you've taken off the agenda, but we're just discussing the possibility of what a new building and what that building might be. I understand. We've gone back numerous times and answered these questions, and you clearly don't understand our answers and don't want to accept it. But I'll also remind you that every time you vote no on payroll and vouchers, you're voting no to pay our employees, including fire and police. You recognize that, I'm sure. I'm voting no because I believe that the general fund revenue is overstated. Well, again, they are not overstated. We've been audited. We have a triple-A bond rating. You clearly don't understand how our accounting works. You don't want to understand it. However, just understand that you're voting no to pay fire and police. Do you understand that? Clearly. I am voting no because of the revenue screen. Not because why you say, but you're voting no to not pay our employees and the fire and police. And they understand that. Okay? Okay? All right. Very clear. Now, our finance director's here, and he's happy to come up. He's got a presentation. He can give us a presentation at some point, but we're just really discussing a new building for public safety and our thoughts on that.

  41. Mark, I know we have you coming up as the items that you've taken off the agenda, but we're just discussing the possibility of what a new building and what that building might be. I understand. We've gone back numerous times and answered these questions, and you clearly don't understand our answers and don't want to accept it. But I'll also remind you that every time you vote no on payroll and vouchers, you're voting no to pay our employees, including fire and police. You recognize that, I'm sure. I'm voting no because I believe that the general fund revenue is overstated. Well, again, they are not overstated. We've been audited. We have a triple-A bond rating. You clearly don't understand how our accounting works. You don't want to understand it. However, just understand that you're voting no to pay fire and police. Do you understand that? Clearly. I am voting no because of the revenue screen. Not because why you say, but you're voting no to not pay our employees and the fire and police. And they understand that. Okay? Okay? All right. Very clear. Now, our finance director's here, and he's happy to come up. He's got a presentation. He can give us a presentation at some point, but we're just really discussing a new building for public safety and our thoughts on that. And so if you don't want to continue a conversation of that, we can close the agenda item, and we can move into payroll and vouchers. And if you'd like to get into your conversation again about your understanding of our financial situation. We have a financial portion of this document, and that's under discussion. Well, and that's regarding financing for the building, what a bond would be and what millage rates would be and what would affect each household. Correct. Okay. And will the millage rate be in addition to an existing millage, or would that be a separate millage? We would be asking the voters to go for a bond for a separate millage for this building. Would that be above the 10 millage that we're allowed, or would that be part of the 10 millage we're allowed? Probably it would be above. It would be up above. This is not included in the 10 cap, so the question is nonsensical. Yeah, it's a separate millage. Well, Ed, the question of whether or not it's a separate millage is valid. Jason, do you want to help respond to me?

  42. and our thoughts on that. And so if you don't want to continue a conversation of that, we can close the agenda item, and we can move into payroll and vouchers. And if you'd like to get into your conversation again about your understanding of our financial situation. We have a financial portion of this document, and that's under discussion. Well, and that's regarding financing for the building, what a bond would be and what millage rates would be and what would affect each household. Correct. Okay. And will the millage rate be in addition to an existing millage, or would that be a separate millage? We would be asking the voters to go for a bond for a separate millage for this building. Would that be above the 10 millage that we're allowed, or would that be part of the 10 millage we're allowed? Probably it would be above. It would be up above. This is not included in the 10 cap, so the question is nonsensical. Yeah, it's a separate millage. Well, Ed, the question of whether or not it's a separate millage is valid. Jason, do you want to help respond to me? Mark's question to clarify it? Well, if the voters approve a bond for building improvement, isn't that something separate? It's not in a cap. Jason, do you want to clarify this? This would be a debt service millage, similar to the existing 2007 campus construction bond millage is my understanding how this financing would work. So debt service millages are outside of the calculation of the 10 mil cap that we reference. And so we talk about limitations on public safety, road, senior services, all those other dedicated millages. Thank you, Jason. All right, so if there's no further discussion, we'll close item number five and move on to item six, presentation of absentee ballot process. Martin. I have presentation two, which Hannah's going to bring up for us here. And we're in the middle now of the election timeline for the August primary. It will be Tuesday, August 4. By the way, all of our elections are on the Tuesday. The chapter follows the first Monday of the month. So it is August 4th this year.

  43. Mark's question to clarify it? Well, if the voters approve a bond for building improvement, isn't that something separate? It's not in a cap. Jason, do you want to clarify this? This would be a debt service millage, similar to the existing 2007 campus construction bond millage is my understanding how this financing would work. So debt service millages are outside of the calculation of the 10 mil cap that we reference. And so we talk about limitations on public safety, road, senior services, all those other dedicated millages. Thank you, Jason. All right, so if there's no further discussion, we'll close item number five and move on to item six, presentation of absentee ballot process. Martin. I have presentation two, which Hannah's going to bring up for us here. And we're in the middle now of the election timeline for the August primary. It will be Tuesday, August 4. By the way, all of our elections are on the Tuesday. The chapter follows the first Monday of the month. So it is August 4th this year. We'll turn the next slide, please. Is it working? It's not working for you. You want to try it down there? Thanks. It's just frozen. We'll just close it and reopen it. Thank you. So can I ask a question? Oh, yeah. Let's do that. So I saw where one of our Democratic U.S. Senate candidates has dropped out of the race, and we also had on the Republican side a Republican for governor drop out of the race, but their names remain on the ballot, right? They do. They do. So they can say they dropped out of the race, and I suppose they have, but their name is on the ballot. And, in fact, if they got most of the votes, they would win, even though they've dropped out.

  44. We'll turn the next slide, please. Is it working? It's not working for you. You want to try it down there? Thanks. It's just frozen. We'll just close it and reopen it. Thank you. So can I ask a question? Oh, yeah. Let's do that. So I saw where one of our Democratic U.S. Senate candidates has dropped out of the race, and we also had on the Republican side a Republican for governor drop out of the race, but their names remain on the ballot, right? They do. They do. So they can say they dropped out of the race, and I suppose they have, but their name is on the ballot. And, in fact, if they got most of the votes, they would win, even though they've dropped out. So, oh, thanks. It looks like you got it going. So, yes. But let's say we had filled out our ballots and sent it in to you and voted. Now our candidate has dropped out. What do we do? So anybody who wants, if they have received an APC ballot and they have sent it in to us already, which we've received a little over 2,600 ballots already, if they want to spoil it, those ballots they can, which means they could get, that ballot would be deleted and set aside. They would receive a new ballot and they could do that up until the second Friday before Election Day. If they have not turned in the ballot yet, they can do that really up until the Monday before Election Day and get a new ballot. So far we've had, as of today, we've had 60 people come in and spoil their ballot for one reason or another. We have more information. Of course, it's none of our business. But that's, we've had 60 so far, which is a little, you know, a little higher than usual. I think it's July 24th is the Friday that's two weeks prior. Great. Yeah, thanks for checking that. So it's the Friday two weeks prior. You know, if you've

  45. And, in fact, if they got most of the votes, they would win, even though they've dropped out. So, oh, thanks. It looks like you got it going. So, yes. But let's say we had filled out our ballots and sent it in to you and voted. Now our candidate has dropped out. What do we do? So anybody who wants, if they have received an APC ballot and they have sent it in to us already, which we've received a little over 2,600 ballots already, if they want to spoil it, those ballots they can, which means they could get, that ballot would be deleted and set aside. They would receive a new ballot and they could do that up until the second Friday before Election Day. If they have not turned in the ballot yet, they can do that really up until the Monday before Election Day and get a new ballot. So far we've had, as of today, we've had 60 people come in and spoil their ballot for one reason or another. We have more information. Of course, it's none of our business. But that's, we've had 60 so far, which is a little, you know, a little higher than usual. I think it's July 24th is the Friday that's two weeks prior. Great. Yeah, thanks for checking that. So it's the Friday two weeks prior. You know, if you've thought about, if you've been aware of this before, the spoil deadline used to be the Friday before Election Day. That has changed because of two things. One, early voting starts that Saturday, the 25th, I guess. And goes for nine days. And then early absentee voting counting starts the Monday after that. So we may actually already start counting ballots. We are not here in the township, but a larger jurisdiction or really a sufficient large enough jurisdiction can take advantage of early counting of absentee ballots. And that's the reason why it's been going to push back a whole other week. Okay, so the election team, you know. All right. All right. This is a shout out to the folks that regularly are in my office working away on clerk matters and then also take on elections at the time they come up. At the bottom of the list there is Haley Bedell. Haley is our intern for this summer who's doing a fabulous job. Hannah Nassar is sitting here with us tonight helping us handle this meeting and congratulations I want to say by the way to Hannah who has received a Fulbright scholarship award and will

  46. Great. Yeah, thanks for checking that. So it's the Friday two weeks prior. You know, if you've thought about, if you've been aware of this before, the spoil deadline used to be the Friday before Election Day. That has changed because of two things. One, early voting starts that Saturday, the 25th, I guess. And goes for nine days. And then early absentee voting counting starts the Monday after that. So we may actually already start counting ballots. We are not here in the township, but a larger jurisdiction or really a sufficient large enough jurisdiction can take advantage of early counting of absentee ballots. And that's the reason why it's been going to push back a whole other week. Okay, so the election team, you know. All right. All right. This is a shout out to the folks that regularly are in my office working away on clerk matters and then also take on elections at the time they come up. At the bottom of the list there is Haley Bedell. Haley is our intern for this summer who's doing a fabulous job. Hannah Nassar is sitting here with us tonight helping us handle this meeting and congratulations I want to say by the way to Hannah who has received a Fulbright scholarship award and will be leaving us in the next couple of days to go in our Fulbright so it's really quite an amazing accomplishment and we're also very happy about that. Sean and Katerina are a stalwarts in the department have been there many years and lead different respective parts of this election process and then Dina the deputy clerk you know really we couldn't do anything without Dina so I don't overstate that so and then myself elected clerk. So Sean leads the equipment team and one of our very experienced election workers has joined Sean we used to have separate employees that would come in and help on that so we've streamlined our work and and Sean has picked that up and does a great job he ran the public accuracy test this morning with the election commission. You which is Neil and Val here and myself. Katerina Yankee organizes all of the Election Day activities, which takes a lot of time to pull together 127 volunteers as split nearly as possible between Republicans and Democrats

  47. I want to say by the way to Hannah who has received a Fulbright scholarship award and will be leaving us in the next couple of days to go in our Fulbright so it's really quite an amazing accomplishment and we're also very happy about that. Sean and Katerina are a stalwarts in the department have been there many years and lead different respective parts of this election process and then Dina the deputy clerk you know really we couldn't do anything without Dina so I don't overstate that so and then myself elected clerk. So Sean leads the equipment team and one of our very experienced election workers has joined Sean we used to have separate employees that would come in and help on that so we've streamlined our work and and Sean has picked that up and does a great job he ran the public accuracy test this morning with the election commission. You which is Neil and Val here and myself. Katerina Yankee organizes all of the Election Day activities, which takes a lot of time to pull together 127 volunteers as split nearly as possible between Republicans and Democrats and then train them all as required by law within a short period of time and then oversee the day of questions and answers that go on on a continuous basis. The AV processing team, we used to have a separate employee who came and did that as well and that's been absorbed within the department. We are running more efficiently and effectively as folks on the team really just love this work and are developing an expertise, a much broader and deeper expertise. Six people come in and help that out that live in the township and have been doing this for several years so they're quite efficient. The AV counting board is where we count the absentee ballots and the county and the township jointly work on those efforts together. But we couldn't run the election, of course, without the election commissioners who help us out and observe what we're doing and give us direction on different matters and then the township departments throughout the township that help out. Next slide, real quick. This is, we call them our AV special forces because they almost parachute in. They're really...

  48. to pull together 127 volunteers as split nearly as possible between Republicans and Democrats and then train them all as required by law within a short period of time and then oversee the day of questions and answers that go on on a continuous basis. The AV processing team, we used to have a separate employee who came and did that as well and that's been absorbed within the department. We are running more efficiently and effectively as folks on the team really just love this work and are developing an expertise, a much broader and deeper expertise. Six people come in and help that out that live in the township and have been doing this for several years so they're quite efficient. The AV counting board is where we count the absentee ballots and the county and the township jointly work on those efforts together. But we couldn't run the election, of course, without the election commissioners who help us out and observe what we're doing and give us direction on different matters and then the township departments throughout the township that help out. Next slide, real quick. This is, we call them our AV special forces because they almost parachute in. They're really... talented group of people that have been doing this for a while that there is a little bit of pay but no one really does it for that we've got some retired employees from the township that are involved and other community members that just have a passion for elections and we call them in a drop of a hat so I mean they don't work every day you know if we don't get a lot of ballots from the post office one day we don't call them into work another day we'll get a lot of ballots we call them in so they're really put their summer and fall life on hold to help us out and do this and so they really are special for us and and you really don't want to highlight them next line Hannah so this is me not the best on the left they're not the best view yeah yeah amazing how times times times change things and fly fly right by so we mailed out a little over 15,000 ballots so far and and this is a quick little video of what what is involved in this process in front of me on the right our ballots and I'm picking that up I put it in the secrecy sleeve while I'm doing that I'm checking the grabbing instructions I'm checking the the number that's on the envelope to see

  49. talented group of people that have been doing this for a while that there is a little bit of pay but no one really does it for that we've got some retired employees from the township that are involved and other community members that just have a passion for elections and we call them in a drop of a hat so I mean they don't work every day you know if we don't get a lot of ballots from the post office one day we don't call them into work another day we'll get a lot of ballots we call them in so they're really put their summer and fall life on hold to help us out and do this and so they really are special for us and and you really don't want to highlight them next line Hannah so this is me not the best on the left they're not the best view yeah yeah amazing how times times times change things and fly fly right by so we mailed out a little over 15,000 ballots so far and and this is a quick little video of what what is involved in this process in front of me on the right our ballots and I'm picking that up I put it in the secrecy sleeve while I'm doing that I'm checking the grabbing instructions I'm checking the the number that's on the envelope to see that the number matches the ballot and then I put it in the envelope and seal it up and drop it up there with the other one and then we do that 15,000 times you you you you Um, Well there's the AV special forces that are here and then the rest of my staff will be sitting at their desks and that's me in my office working on one and it takes us it just depends on how many and what what order we're doing things but we're we're we got our balance out on Tuesday of last week of June which was faster two days faster than anybody else I know of in Oakland County so you know we're pretty happy about that it takes a lot of coordination to pull that together and it's not something we in other words we mail out with no we don't outsource this it's it's ballots it's the accuracy that's required the ballot number that I picked picked up has to match the ballot on the envelope which is the ballot that's been assigned to a particular person who's dressed on that envelope and that's that's the beginning of how we part of the beginning of how we track every single ballot that goes out and how we know that any ballot that comes back is the official ballot and can just distinguish between one that you know is an attempted fake which we've

  50. grabbing instructions I'm checking the the number that's on the envelope to see that the number matches the ballot and then I put it in the envelope and seal it up and drop it up there with the other one and then we do that 15,000 times you you you you Um, Well there's the AV special forces that are here and then the rest of my staff will be sitting at their desks and that's me in my office working on one and it takes us it just depends on how many and what what order we're doing things but we're we're we got our balance out on Tuesday of last week of June which was faster two days faster than anybody else I know of in Oakland County so you know we're pretty happy about that it takes a lot of coordination to pull that together and it's not something we in other words we mail out with no we don't outsource this it's it's ballots it's the accuracy that's required the ballot number that I picked picked up has to match the ballot on the envelope which is the ballot that's been assigned to a particular person who's dressed on that envelope and that's that's the beginning of how we part of the beginning of how we track every single ballot that goes out and how we know that any ballot that comes back is the official ballot and can just distinguish between one that you know is an attempted fake which we've never ever seen once before ever and what's a valid a return ballot and so yeah very much a hand process and that was kind of fun yes are do other communities all do it by hand for the accuracy aspect or do they automate that process in a different way um like very large community can have an automatic ballot stuffing machine like Detroit is a it does it in house with a machine. Other communities will outsource portions of these things. We looked at, for instance, purchasing a ballot printing machine, or I'm sorry, envelope printing machine, and that would save us a bunch of times because the purple envelope above has a sticker on it for, you know, a mailing sticker with the ballot printed on it and a barcode. So we had to print those and someone sat around. Before we even get to this, you know, someone sat around and put 15,000 labels on every one of those envelopes. The yellow card at the left, we wrote that. That's, you know, instructions for the AV people. Those are printed and prepared. So it's weeks of work

  51. official ballot and can just distinguish between one that you know is an attempted fake which we've never ever seen once before ever and what's a valid a return ballot and so yeah very much a hand process and that was kind of fun yes are do other communities all do it by hand for the accuracy aspect or do they automate that process in a different way um like very large community can have an automatic ballot stuffing machine like Detroit is a it does it in house with a machine. Other communities will outsource portions of these things. We looked at, for instance, purchasing a ballot printing machine, or I'm sorry, envelope printing machine, and that would save us a bunch of times because the purple envelope above has a sticker on it for, you know, a mailing sticker with the ballot printed on it and a barcode. So we had to print those and someone sat around. Before we even get to this, you know, someone sat around and put 15,000 labels on every one of those envelopes. The yellow card at the left, we wrote that. That's, you know, instructions for the AV people. Those are printed and prepared. So it's weeks of work in advance of the days that we start putting it all together. And sometimes other communities will outsource portions of those things, but they keep the ballots with under their control. Yeah, just for security and safety. Yes. And I can't say all of them because it is possible to outsource this. But for two reasons, I'm uncomfortable doing it. Number one is we lose control over the timing and the process. And three, we lose control over really the ballots themselves if we went that far. You know, for instance, we could outsource the printing of the envelope, the purple return envelopes. But I don't know when the printer will get it back. I don't know how good the printer will be. I'm a little bit out of control on that. But if we're doing it ourselves, I know it takes. please. You know, six people, about four days to do it. It's surprising how long it takes to peel off the sticker, put it on there straight. But I know we can do that on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, stay late, and have our own goals and control over the process, which I'm much more comfortable with. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks for the question. On the right there is Dina and one of our community members, also doing the same thing I was doing, working to put the issued ballot with the right envelope and all the other

  52. you know, instructions for the AV people. Those are printed and prepared. So it's weeks of work in advance of the days that we start putting it all together. And sometimes other communities will outsource portions of those things, but they keep the ballots with under their control. Yeah, just for security and safety. Yes. And I can't say all of them because it is possible to outsource this. But for two reasons, I'm uncomfortable doing it. Number one is we lose control over the timing and the process. And three, we lose control over really the ballots themselves if we went that far. You know, for instance, we could outsource the printing of the envelope, the purple return envelopes. But I don't know when the printer will get it back. I don't know how good the printer will be. I'm a little bit out of control on that. But if we're doing it ourselves, I know it takes. please. You know, six people, about four days to do it. It's surprising how long it takes to peel off the sticker, put it on there straight. But I know we can do that on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays, stay late, and have our own goals and control over the process, which I'm much more comfortable with. Thank you so much. Oh, thanks for the question. On the right there is Dina and one of our community members, also doing the same thing I was doing, working to put the issued ballot with the right envelope and all the other materials. Do you want to go to the next slide? There I go again. So as we go through, in my office there are security cages. These are locked whenever we're not present in the office and secure. And on the right, all the ballots now pulled out. And this is the day before mailing. So here we are, everybody's counting each ballot by precinct to ensure that everything matches. And we'll know, we know exactly how many ballots we issued. And obviously, therefore, we, that is exactly the same number of ballots we're mailing. And it's really quiet in there at that time. It's like quieter than the library. It's a little, one, two, three, four, oh darn. And this is some material from our campaign to communicate to the community about the upcoming election. Over there, we will know that it is a pretty much for anything that counts as having this day before the election. We The cable department who has got so many creative people there, the community relations, communications and community relations, sorry, have so many talented people there helped put this together. We really thought that it's important to have something that grabs the people's attention

  53. I was doing, working to put the issued ballot with the right envelope and all the other materials. Do you want to go to the next slide? There I go again. So as we go through, in my office there are security cages. These are locked whenever we're not present in the office and secure. And on the right, all the ballots now pulled out. And this is the day before mailing. So here we are, everybody's counting each ballot by precinct to ensure that everything matches. And we'll know, we know exactly how many ballots we issued. And obviously, therefore, we, that is exactly the same number of ballots we're mailing. And it's really quiet in there at that time. It's like quieter than the library. It's a little, one, two, three, four, oh darn. And this is some material from our campaign to communicate to the community about the upcoming election. Over there, we will know that it is a pretty much for anything that counts as having this day before the election. We The cable department who has got so many creative people there, the community relations, communications and community relations, sorry, have so many talented people there helped put this together. We really thought that it's important to have something that grabs the people's attention to see something that's unique. This was the mailer that came out where it says one vote can change the game. It's a reference to Survivor, which is celebrated its 50th anniversary and it's a pretty popular show and you open it at the blue seal there and inside is what you see on the right. And some of the materials also are used in the social media campaigns and the theme is the same with regard to the primary. For instance, you have to pick your candidate and follow a party. You can't move from side to side. We'll actually be using the same theme but with the November information for a mailing in September. So the absentee voter checking process, there's many steps prior to receiving a ballot. We maintain two lists here, the permanent absentee voter application list, which presently has 4,700 people on it. This is the list where individuals ask to receive an absentee voter application for each election. On that application, they can put down the date, the elections they want for that year because we'll send one for the year. Nothingует on that pattern is still working. They even have to shoot!. All of them etcetera. So that's why these things were so wonderful to go to us. And the last question was, in the name of the school let that say, we're bothUDO websites

  54. We really thought that it's important to have something that grabs the people's attention to see something that's unique. This was the mailer that came out where it says one vote can change the game. It's a reference to Survivor, which is celebrated its 50th anniversary and it's a pretty popular show and you open it at the blue seal there and inside is what you see on the right. And some of the materials also are used in the social media campaigns and the theme is the same with regard to the primary. For instance, you have to pick your candidate and follow a party. You can't move from side to side. We'll actually be using the same theme but with the November information for a mailing in September. So the absentee voter checking process, there's many steps prior to receiving a ballot. We maintain two lists here, the permanent absentee voter application list, which presently has 4,700 people on it. This is the list where individuals ask to receive an absentee voter application for each election. On that application, they can put down the date, the elections they want for that year because we'll send one for the year. Nothingует on that pattern is still working. They even have to shoot!. All of them etcetera. So that's why these things were so wonderful to go to us. And the last question was, in the name of the school let that say, we're bothUDO websites down alternative addresses which is fairly common in the community here that people may be gone in the winter or in the summer or the fall who knows but we'll receive a lot of requests for an individual to send a ballot to an alternative location for a particular election. When those are returned back they of course have to be they are signed and we and we review those signatures on each of each of those applications that come back. The permanent mail ballot list is a newer feature that was put in place in the last couple of years. Most people who used to be on the permanent absentee voter list moved to the permanent mail ballot list and so once they applied once and we checked that they were a registered voter in the township and their signature matched on the application they've been placed on the permanent mail ballot list there's right now 14,850 plus people on it. On top of that we receive individual requests people come in the office on an ongoing basis and ask for an absentee ballot. If they do that if they are here in person they need to provide appropriate photo ID to receive it. We don't check a signature in that instance we check for photo ID. Part of the checking say for the mailing the ballot is you know we don't have to see an ID at that point because they have a properly applied properly qualified for the list and they provide us their

  55. down alternative addresses which is fairly common in the community here that people may be gone in the winter or in the summer or the fall who knows but we'll receive a lot of requests for an individual to send a ballot to an alternative location for a particular election. When those are returned back they of course have to be they are signed and we and we review those signatures on each of each of those applications that come back. The permanent mail ballot list is a newer feature that was put in place in the last couple of years. Most people who used to be on the permanent absentee voter list moved to the permanent mail ballot list and so once they applied once and we checked that they were a registered voter in the township and their signature matched on the application they've been placed on the permanent mail ballot list there's right now 14,850 plus people on it. On top of that we receive individual requests people come in the office on an ongoing basis and ask for an absentee ballot. If they do that if they are here in person they need to provide appropriate photo ID to receive it. We don't check a signature in that instance we check for photo ID. Part of the checking say for the mailing the ballot is you know we don't have to see an ID at that point because they have a properly applied properly qualified for the list and they provide us their signature and then we know we're mailing it to their house where they reside. If the mail comes back that's a reason to remove someone from the permanent mail ballot list which is a frequent thing because people who should probably have you been on the other list, because they go to Florida or they go up north, we mail the ballot. It's illegal for the post office to forward ballots, so they come back to our house if they haven't provided us an alternative mailing address. So the steps prior to counting the ballot, there's an initial review by the AV Special Forces team to ensure that the signatures match, and the ballot number on the envelope matches the ballot that was issued in our system. And if there's a rejection of some kind, we do have some data on that which will be on the next page. Oop, before we go there. Thank you. Yes, Mark, you have a question? Regarding the ballot numbers, is the ballot number only on the security sleeve or is it on the return mail-in ballot as well? It's on the address sticker we put on there, which has the ballot number and the barcode

  56. because they have a properly applied properly qualified for the list and they provide us their signature and then we know we're mailing it to their house where they reside. If the mail comes back that's a reason to remove someone from the permanent mail ballot list which is a frequent thing because people who should probably have you been on the other list, because they go to Florida or they go up north, we mail the ballot. It's illegal for the post office to forward ballots, so they come back to our house if they haven't provided us an alternative mailing address. So the steps prior to counting the ballot, there's an initial review by the AV Special Forces team to ensure that the signatures match, and the ballot number on the envelope matches the ballot that was issued in our system. And if there's a rejection of some kind, we do have some data on that which will be on the next page. Oop, before we go there. Thank you. Yes, Mark, you have a question? Regarding the ballot numbers, is the ballot number only on the security sleeve or is it on the return mail-in ballot as well? It's on the address sticker we put on there, which has the ballot number and the barcode that we can read along with our address. And then the ballot number is also on the security sleeve after you open the envelope or no? No, the number is on the tear off at the top of the ballot itself. Correct. But on the security sleeve envelope inside with the signature on it, the yellow one? The envelope has only instructions on it. The signature is not there. It's on the return envelope on the outside. So the return envelope that . We see, we don't open, you know, has the signature on it and the ballot number on the outside. It's not opened by us to review anything. So that way it stays closed and then they tear off the top and it stays in the security sleeve until it can be opened? Sort of. Let me try to answer that question with the very next step. Okay. Which is, so in our office we're checking, we see the ballot number on the return envelope and we see the signature. We match both of those. And if they match, we accept them. If they do not match, it is rejected and the individual is called to come in and verify their signature. If that happens, which is, I have some numbers on that, it's, you know, quite a few times we'll call people to come in and correct their signature.

  57. It's on the address sticker we put on there, which has the ballot number and the barcode that we can read along with our address. And then the ballot number is also on the security sleeve after you open the envelope or no? No, the number is on the tear off at the top of the ballot itself. Correct. But on the security sleeve envelope inside with the signature on it, the yellow one? The envelope has only instructions on it. The signature is not there. It's on the return envelope on the outside. So the return envelope that . We see, we don't open, you know, has the signature on it and the ballot number on the outside. It's not opened by us to review anything. So that way it stays closed and then they tear off the top and it stays in the security sleeve until it can be opened? Sort of. Let me try to answer that question with the very next step. Okay. Which is, so in our office we're checking, we see the ballot number on the return envelope and we see the signature. We match both of those. And if they match, we accept them. If they do not match, it is rejected and the individual is called to come in and verify their signature. If that happens, which is, I have some numbers on that, it's, you know, quite a few times we'll call people to come in and correct their signature. Or they've forgotten to sign, which is another common thing. And then if during the time we've received it and the time of election day or when we start counting, if the ballot would be pulled. If someone, we've received information and the person is deceased or they have moved. So a lot of ballots are, on an everyday basis, we have what's called the qualified voter inbox. We receive information from the state or the county that someone has died or someone has moved out and they're no longer qualified. And we remove those ballots from those that have been collected. And then at the end, we're going to, we constitute what's called the AVCB, the absentee vote. absentee voter counting board. And this board is the place where the ballots are finally counted. And at the very beginning, they check to ensure the number on the ballot matches the number on the envelope. And so each ballot goes through several stages. There's at least three steps. The person, step one, will check that number and check the number on the tear-off tab at the top. They then separate the envelope, which has the identity of the person, from

  58. If that happens, which is, I have some numbers on that, it's, you know, quite a few times we'll call people to come in and correct their signature. Or they've forgotten to sign, which is another common thing. And then if during the time we've received it and the time of election day or when we start counting, if the ballot would be pulled. If someone, we've received information and the person is deceased or they have moved. So a lot of ballots are, on an everyday basis, we have what's called the qualified voter inbox. We receive information from the state or the county that someone has died or someone has moved out and they're no longer qualified. And we remove those ballots from those that have been collected. And then at the end, we're going to, we constitute what's called the AVCB, the absentee vote. absentee voter counting board. And this board is the place where the ballots are finally counted. And at the very beginning, they check to ensure the number on the ballot matches the number on the envelope. And so each ballot goes through several stages. There's at least three steps. The person, step one, will check that number and check the number on the tear-off tab at the top. They then separate the envelope, which has the identity of the person, from the ballot and hand it to the next person who tears off the tab at the top because you cannot tabulate a ballot if it still has the tear-off with the number on it. But the first, by separating the steps between two people, we've continued the anonymity of the elector and they can't tell who's voted. Does that answer your question, Mark? Yes. Thank you. Okay. And the third step takes it out of the sleeve and flattens it out so it can go through our scanning machines and organizes them in groups of ten. And then before we scan them, we're counting that precinct. So a table of three people will have a precinct. I don't know how many ballots it might be. It could be 200, it could be 2,000. And before any of those go through, we balance that precinct to make sure everything checks out, the very same number of ballots. ballots. We've sent them as number of ballots they have. With some regularity that doesn't happen because people send back empty envelopes. And the only time that can be found out is when they open them on the absolute voting counting board. We don't open them in my office

  59. tab at the top. They then separate the envelope, which has the identity of the person, from the ballot and hand it to the next person who tears off the tab at the top because you cannot tabulate a ballot if it still has the tear-off with the number on it. But the first, by separating the steps between two people, we've continued the anonymity of the elector and they can't tell who's voted. Does that answer your question, Mark? Yes. Thank you. Okay. And the third step takes it out of the sleeve and flattens it out so it can go through our scanning machines and organizes them in groups of ten. And then before we scan them, we're counting that precinct. So a table of three people will have a precinct. I don't know how many ballots it might be. It could be 200, it could be 2,000. And before any of those go through, we balance that precinct to make sure everything checks out, the very same number of ballots. ballots. We've sent them as number of ballots they have. With some regularity that doesn't happen because people send back empty envelopes. And the only time that can be found out is when they open them on the absolute voting counting board. We don't open them in my office to check anything, so we won't know. And each discrepancy is explained in a log that's public available. Now we can move on. So we've issued 15,130 ballots, 2607 of the return and accepted, which means that the ballot number matches and signature matches. 19 ballots were rejected for signature mismatches, 17 for no signature at all. We contact each of those voters by by phone. If I'm successful, we will email and also text if we can. A lot of folks provide us that level of detail to reach them. Spoiled ballots is, as I mentioned earlier, 60 people. When's the last day to spoil ballots with the changes that Mike had mentioned on? It's that second Friday before the election. July 24th. July 24th. So our return rate is about 17% right now. As a point of comparison, in July 10th of 24, we had 13% return. Um. Yeah.

  60. when they open them on the absolute voting counting board. We don't open them in my office to check anything, so we won't know. And each discrepancy is explained in a log that's public available. Now we can move on. So we've issued 15,130 ballots, 2607 of the return and accepted, which means that the ballot number matches and signature matches. 19 ballots were rejected for signature mismatches, 17 for no signature at all. We contact each of those voters by by phone. If I'm successful, we will email and also text if we can. A lot of folks provide us that level of detail to reach them. Spoiled ballots is, as I mentioned earlier, 60 people. When's the last day to spoil ballots with the changes that Mike had mentioned on? It's that second Friday before the election. July 24th. July 24th. So our return rate is about 17% right now. As a point of comparison, in July 10th of 24, we had 13% return. Um. Yeah. I don't have the exact date, you know, to compare it to, but, you know, we're perhaps a little bit ahead of 24 or right on. It's very close to the return rate from the summer of 24. The important thing for the August partisan primary is that the law requires straight party voting. So you have to vote the entire partisan portion of a ballot and if you don't, that partisan part won't be counted. So if you start voting in the Republican lane, you must vote, stay in that lane. If you vote in even just one election in the Democratic side, the entire partisan portion of your ballot would not be counted. The nonpartisan portion of the ballot for proposals or any nonpartisan positions would still be counted if those were properly voted. We see this in the apps to vote and counting board frequently that individuals have failed to follow this rule. Overvoting means that you voted for more than the positions allow. So like for, you know, Board of Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees, you can vote for four trustees, but if you vote for five, you have overvoted and your vote for any of those people in that

  61. I don't have the exact date, you know, to compare it to, but, you know, we're perhaps a little bit ahead of 24 or right on. It's very close to the return rate from the summer of 24. The important thing for the August partisan primary is that the law requires straight party voting. So you have to vote the entire partisan portion of a ballot and if you don't, that partisan part won't be counted. So if you start voting in the Republican lane, you must vote, stay in that lane. If you vote in even just one election in the Democratic side, the entire partisan portion of your ballot would not be counted. The nonpartisan portion of the ballot for proposals or any nonpartisan positions would still be counted if those were properly voted. We see this in the apps to vote and counting board frequently that individuals have failed to follow this rule. Overvoting means that you voted for more than the positions allow. So like for, you know, Board of Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees, you can vote for four trustees, but if you vote for five, you have overvoted and your vote for any of those people in that race would not be counted. Undervoting is permitted, you know, so you could vote for four, but you vote for three. That's fine. The three votes would be counted. There's an advantage to in-person voting with regard to- these rules because the tabulator will reject a ballot that has overvoting or undervoting or crosses party lines and advise you of this information, at which point you can take it out and correct it or you can vote it as is if you'd like. I'm busy, I can get out of here. You can vote it as is. So that's a big advantage. On the absolute voting counting board, the members of the board do make an effort to determine what the voter's intent was. And so if there's an overvoting, let's just start at the top. If there's straight party ticket voting and there's seven races and one of them, their tabulator has rejected it because it appears to have crossed party lines, two people will review that ballot, one Republican, one Democrat. And if they agree that the voter's intent was straight party ticket voting, they would still count it. An example of intent would be they voted in all eight races on the Republican side and then one side on the Democratic side. They filled

  62. but if you vote for five, you have overvoted and your vote for any of those people in that race would not be counted. Undervoting is permitted, you know, so you could vote for four, but you vote for three. That's fine. The three votes would be counted. There's an advantage to in-person voting with regard to- these rules because the tabulator will reject a ballot that has overvoting or undervoting or crosses party lines and advise you of this information, at which point you can take it out and correct it or you can vote it as is if you'd like. I'm busy, I can get out of here. You can vote it as is. So that's a big advantage. On the absolute voting counting board, the members of the board do make an effort to determine what the voter's intent was. And so if there's an overvoting, let's just start at the top. If there's straight party ticket voting and there's seven races and one of them, their tabulator has rejected it because it appears to have crossed party lines, two people will review that ballot, one Republican, one Democrat. And if they agree that the voter's intent was straight party ticket voting, they would still count it. An example of intent would be they voted in all eight races on the Republican side and then one side on the Democratic side. They filled in the ballot, realized their mistake, crossed it out and said, no, I don't mean this. And we see things just like that. I would urge them instead to spoil that ballot and come in and get a new one. But if they did something like that and the Republican and the Democratic observer agree that the intent is to vote straight party Republican ticket, that they could send that through to be counted. If they disagreed, then the partisan part of that ballot would be rejected. If you say, what's the matter is, you can't feel like we don't be them to be able to to get the votes right and put it out and buy the votes and the votes right and say what's where the votes right is. So, let's say, what's the answer? Thank you. Any other questions about that? Okay, great. So our turnout for August elections since 2014. Yeah, we were kind of bounced around the last 12 years. We'll see where this one goes, but each election is really important. And we can go to the next slide. It's just super important. I encourage everybody to participate. Everybody who's a citizen is legally registered should, you know, really should be coming out to vote. It's a terrible thing to waste. You know, if you recently sat down and counted it, you could start voting at 18 and maybe live to 98. You've only got 19 to maybe 21 times in your entire life to vote for governor or secretary of state or attorney general.

  63. eight races on the Republican side and then one side on the Democratic side. They filled in the ballot, realized their mistake, crossed it out and said, no, I don't mean this. And we see things just like that. I would urge them instead to spoil that ballot and come in and get a new one. But if they did something like that and the Republican and the Democratic observer agree that the intent is to vote straight party Republican ticket, that they could send that through to be counted. If they disagreed, then the partisan part of that ballot would be rejected. If you say, what's the matter is, you can't feel like we don't be them to be able to to get the votes right and put it out and buy the votes and the votes right and say what's where the votes right is. So, let's say, what's the answer? Thank you. Any other questions about that? Okay, great. So our turnout for August elections since 2014. Yeah, we were kind of bounced around the last 12 years. We'll see where this one goes, but each election is really important. And we can go to the next slide. It's just super important. I encourage everybody to participate. Everybody who's a citizen is legally registered should, you know, really should be coming out to vote. It's a terrible thing to waste. You know, if you recently sat down and counted it, you could start voting at 18 and maybe live to 98. You've only got 19 to maybe 21 times in your entire life to vote for governor or secretary of state or attorney general. So it's a rare opportunity and I strongly encourage everybody to come out and vote. We're here. You can vote early. You can vote absentee. You can vote in person. Call us. Come on in. We're happy to help. Thank you, Martin. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Everybody asking great questions. Okay. Thank you. So we'll move to item 6A. I'll call it. And that was Mark approved board minutes for June 8th. Yes, I wanted to ask Tony if he confirmed on that. We I had asked him about the millages and if the millages were restricted to the road and the police department use only and you said you would check on something or Oh. ... Oh. I don't know. to make sure that those were only intended for those specific purposes. That's my recollection, but I'll get back to you with an email, okay? Okay, so can I have a motion and of support? So moved. Support? Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it passes 7-0. Okay, Mark, item B, approve payroll and vouchers for June 22, 2026. My no vote stands.

  64. your entire life to vote for governor or secretary of state or attorney general. So it's a rare opportunity and I strongly encourage everybody to come out and vote. We're here. You can vote early. You can vote absentee. You can vote in person. Call us. Come on in. We're happy to help. Thank you, Martin. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Everybody asking great questions. Okay. Thank you. So we'll move to item 6A. I'll call it. And that was Mark approved board minutes for June 8th. Yes, I wanted to ask Tony if he confirmed on that. We I had asked him about the millages and if the millages were restricted to the road and the police department use only and you said you would check on something or Oh. ... Oh. I don't know. to make sure that those were only intended for those specific purposes. That's my recollection, but I'll get back to you with an email, okay? Okay, so can I have a motion and of support? So moved. Support? Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, it passes 7-0. Okay, Mark, item B, approve payroll and vouchers for June 22, 2026. My no vote stands. I sent you guys a memo regarding my concerns, so I just want that on the record. Make a motion. Support? Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. It passes 6-1. Item number C, approve payroll and vouchers for July 13th. Same. Wait a second, excuse me. That's a misprint. It should be what? June 22nd was the first one. Yeah. Wait a minute. June 22nd was the meeting we didn't have. Oh, payroll and vouchers. Yes. It should have been June. Earlier June. It's June 8th and June 22nd. Okay, so I'll just change item C to June 8th. It's out of sequence. Motion to approve. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Hold on, hold on. Okay. Are we approving, we usually approve the payroll and vouchers for this meeting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I think this is correct. So it is? It should be June 22nd. Oh, and 13th. Okay, so it is correct. And July 13th is this meeting. Okay. Thank you, Mike. Okay. So it is July 13th. Yes. Yes. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Oh, nay. I'm sorry. Six to one. Okay. Thank you. And Mark, approve the 2026 Jan Rosselli Safety Path ADA ramp improvement contract at work. Item E,

  65. My no vote stands. I sent you guys a memo regarding my concerns, so I just want that on the record. Make a motion. Support? Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. It passes 6-1. Item number C, approve payroll and vouchers for July 13th. Same. Wait a second, excuse me. That's a misprint. It should be what? June 22nd was the first one. Yeah. Wait a minute. June 22nd was the meeting we didn't have. Oh, payroll and vouchers. Yes. It should have been June. Earlier June. It's June 8th and June 22nd. Okay, so I'll just change item C to June 8th. It's out of sequence. Motion to approve. Support. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Hold on, hold on. Okay. Are we approving, we usually approve the payroll and vouchers for this meeting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I think this is correct. So it is? It should be June 22nd. Oh, and 13th. Okay, so it is correct. And July 13th is this meeting. Okay. Thank you, Mike. Okay. So it is July 13th. Yes. Yes. Okay. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Oh, nay. I'm sorry. Six to one. Okay. Thank you. And Mark, approve the 2026 Jan Rosselli Safety Path ADA ramp improvement contract at work. Item E, the approval of the industrial waste control. You said aye. You said aye. Okay. So I thought I said aye. That's okay. Um, yes. Uh, I noticed that this is a recurring contract. Do we typically, is our policy to go back out and renew contracts, um, for the ramps? Did they go for RFP on this? They did. And this was a low bidder. Yeah, this was a low bidder. It was Italian again, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Significant, like it was a significant difference between the next qualified bidder. Okay. Yeah. But even though that, uh, so we go out every year for the ramps and we get a, because we did the same thing last year, correct? They're doing sections of the township at a time. They can't put every single ramp in, in one season. Okay. But they have a deadline, I think through the state. Is that right? That they have to complete the project. That they have to have them done by a certain time. Because of the matching dollars that we're getting. Right. And because of the funding and because of the state wanting them done. And so they're not replacing them all over and over again. They're doing a section at a time per year. They can't put every single ADA in, in one year. So we do a section. Thank you.

  66. approve the 2026 Jan Rosselli Safety Path ADA ramp improvement contract at work. Item E, the approval of the industrial waste control. You said aye. You said aye. Okay. So I thought I said aye. That's okay. Um, yes. Uh, I noticed that this is a recurring contract. Do we typically, is our policy to go back out and renew contracts, um, for the ramps? Did they go for RFP on this? They did. And this was a low bidder. Yeah, this was a low bidder. It was Italian again, wasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Significant, like it was a significant difference between the next qualified bidder. Okay. Yeah. But even though that, uh, so we go out every year for the ramps and we get a, because we did the same thing last year, correct? They're doing sections of the township at a time. They can't put every single ramp in, in one season. Okay. But they have a deadline, I think through the state. Is that right? That they have to complete the project. That they have to have them done by a certain time. Because of the matching dollars that we're getting. Right. And because of the funding and because of the state wanting them done. And so they're not replacing them all over and over again. They're doing a section at a time per year. They can't put every single ADA in, in one year. So we do a section. Thank you. a year and the board may or may not to seek additional bids it depends on the board's discretion okay and again the next qualified this one was 219 000 next qualified bidder was 405 000. so by going for bid and not just accepting the current we're able to sharpen that bed make a motion make a motion we approve unless you have more i don't my initial question is is our policy to go out every year for another bid on projects like this we do wow and we do unless the board decides not to the is the board policy and the board could also decide to continue a contract if the circumstances were appropriate for that or we could prove approve everything in one shot like we did in the uh consent agenda for the uh striker contract i'm not sure what your question striker is one of the only ones that can provide that service i think that's why they went for bid with striker yeah but it was a three-year uh support contract as well correct and that was done in one shot okay yeah thanks okay to make a motion to approve support support all in favor say aye aye any opposed passes seven to nothing that moves us to adjourn and item number seven all say aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye we are adjourned thank you

  67. a year and the board may or may not to seek additional bids it depends on the board's discretion okay and again the next qualified this one was 219 000 next qualified bidder was 405 000. so by going for bid and not just accepting the current we're able to sharpen that bed make a motion make a motion we approve unless you have more i don't my initial question is is our policy to go out every year for another bid on projects like this we do wow and we do unless the board decides not to the is the board policy and the board could also decide to continue a contract if the circumstances were appropriate for that or we could prove approve everything in one shot like we did in the uh consent agenda for the uh striker contract i'm not sure what your question striker is one of the only ones that can provide that service i think that's why they went for bid with striker yeah but it was a three-year uh support contract as well correct and that was done in one shot okay yeah thanks okay to make a motion to approve support support all in favor say aye aye any opposed passes seven to nothing that moves us to adjourn and item number seven all say aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye aye we are adjourned thank you Some of those in here.