And
welcome to the February
2017 edition of City Connection.
It's the live call-in program where you,
citizens of Grand Rapids, can ask Mayor Roslyn
Bliss about local issues.
With Community Media Center, I'm Linda Galash.
Also on today's show, we'll talk about
city's public work services.
And Mayor Bliss invites on the program,
James Hurt, Grand Rapids Public Services Director,
who joins the program at about a quarter past the hour.
You can also take part in the conversation
at half past the hour.
We'll still have James Hurt here with us.
You can ask a little bit about public works
and then at a quarter or two.
We'll have general questions.
You do this by calling 616-459-4881.
Email works too.
It's cityconnectionatgrcmc.org.
And through Twitter, it's at GRTV Access,
as well as GRTV's Facebook page.
City Connection is broadcasting live right now today
on February 6th on Community Media Center's
GRTV LiveLiveChannel 24 and streaming live
at therepidian.org.
In the GRTV studio with me is Mayor Roslyn Bliss.
Welcome, our first program of the new year.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Yes, happy new year.
Likewise.
It's February, but still a new year.
And you've got a year under your belt now
as mayor of this city.
Yeah.
Tell me your thoughts.
One year gone and your foot's well into the new year.
Yeah.
You know, it's interesting.
I've spent a lot of time in December especially,
just reflecting on the year.
And it was really an amazing year.
It was a little bit of a whirlwind at times, to be honest.
I think the learning curve was probably a little bit more
than I anticipated.
Just getting my head around a lot of regional and state
and even in federal issues that, you know,
as commissioner, you're just not as engaged in.
There's a lot of things that I think a lot of people
didn't realize Mayor Hartwell was involved in.
I didn't realize.
And so I spent a lot of my time last year learning,
developing relationships, meeting with other mayors,
just better understanding all of the different facets
of the position.
And then it's a lot of learning.
Like I had a lot of firsts.
You know, everything was a first for me.
So it was a great year, but it was an incredibly busy year.
And so it was nice to pause in December and reflect
and recalibrate a little bit, figure out where you want
your energy to be going forward this year.
And I've been spending a lot of time thinking about priorities
for this year, what we did well last year,
what we can do better.
So it's been good.
I'm glad to have a year behind me.
Okay.
Yes.
Well, three to go.
So lots to plan for.
Yeah, not to take the wind out of the sailor.
Yeah, there's lots to happen.
And one of the newer things last month, citizens were invited
to weigh in on what now is the new master plan for the parks
and recreation after several months of taking city citizen
input as well as working on that.
Tell about the new master plan for parks and recreation.
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up.
This is a significant move forward.
So as we talked about in the past, updating marks past the
parks master plan is required.
We have to do that every five years if we want to apply
for MD and our trust fund dollars.
So we took this opportunity to take a deep dive into our parks
and come up with a updated comprehensive master plan.
So the master plan itself, it's out on the website.
You can take a look at it.
There are hard copies at libraries at the city if you
want to take a look at the hard copy.
It's about 200 pages.
So it's a lengthy document, but it's really, it's really
well done.
It has a lot of good information.
There are areas that I personally would like to see more
information added and a little more detail.
So I have a list of things I would like to see added to
the document, including just better maps drilling down into
specific neighborhood areas that need green space and park
space, but we're in the, we're in the public comment period
right now.
So the document is available.
We have a scheduled public hearing this month at our
city commission meeting on the 14th.
So that's coming up and then we'll continue to take public
comment.
We'll take those comments and go back and make some revisions
to the document before it's brought back to the full
commission for adoption.
So please take a look at that.
It has a lot of information about, about our vision for all
our parks, but also it, it has information about the vision
to connect trails, to how do we connect our park systems?
How do we make sure that even if you have a park in close
proximity, how do we make sure that it's in safe walking
distance?
So we were looking at, is there safe crosswalks?
So it has a nice holistic approach.
And then it's looking at opportunities for parks.
So how can we think differently about parks and how do we
sustain parks?
So towards the back of the document is a list of ideas
that we'll hopefully spend some time talking about.
So how do we look at additional revenue streams for parks?
You know, do we lease out space?
Do we allow concessions?
Do we allow, for instance, boat launches at certain parks
along the river?
So there's a lot of ideas and kind of, it's kind of the last
chapter of the, of the document.
So hopefully people have a chance to look at that and give
us feedback before we finalize it.
So you did take a lot of public input before this City
Commission really worked hard on receiving some input from
citizens.
And you mentioned a number of features that are in there.
How much of that came from citizens up?
Yeah, quite a bit.
There's a section that talks about how we view parks and
as we look to redesign parks, what are some key elements?
And then it gives examples of specific parks and neighborhoods,
what they look like now and what potentially they could look
like in the future.
And I believe the bulk of that feedback came from the
community engagement forums that were facilitated by the,
by the consultants.
Okay.
You said feedback time is still open.
So how is that received?
How does that happen?
Yeah, so you can do it in multiple ways.
You can email.
You can call.
You can show up at the public hearing.
You know, there's all, any of those ways, you know,
whatever is easiest for you.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
So changes there are some new additions.
Also, you mentioned to me before we went on in.
I didn't know this, but there's some zoning ordinance amendments
in the works.
What are those?
There are.
So, so these are also available online and you can actually
see the red line version of the zoning amendments.
And it's, I posted it on my Facebook page, but I know it's
also on the planning department page.
So you can take a look at those.
We also have a public hearing for those coming up on the 14th
and a lot of the recommendations are around recommendations
that came onto the GR forward plan.
So recommendations about height and density, mixed use,
especially in the area that's part of the GR forward plan,
which is largely downtown area.
But then there's some other, there are other recommendations
to that the planning commission reviewed.
So it's, it's a, it's another lengthy document.
Unfortunately, but you can see the red line version online
and then you can give us some feedback on that as well to
opportunities for feedback.
And that makes me think, is there a way for citizens to sign
up or maybe notices whenever there are public hearings in
addition to the regular commission meetings and the
committee meetings and all those sorts of things.
Yeah, you know, that's a great question.
I know that we do that for certain services.
And then I know that you can get on a list if you want to
look at planning commission agendas and BZA agendas,
but that's a great idea.
And you know, it's good timing.
We're, we're in the process right now of updating our website.
So we, we had a, let's see, it must have been in December.
We approved an agreement with open cities and we're in the
process right now of redoing the website to make it more
customer driven, user friendly, easy to navigate.
And so I, we have a team in town this week actually working
on the website with us.
So let me ask about that.
Okay.
Good feedback.
A revised website was a priority for you.
I know it is a priority.
All these engagement kinds of tools that really could be a
part of a new site.
No, that's a, that's a great suggestion.
Another question for you on just something that's going on
with city commission and that's vital streets,
a new plan adopted there and what's new in that.
So that's a, that's another pretty comprehensive plan.
We did adopt that.
You'll find a lot of things in there.
Our vision for complete streets.
What does that mean?
But then also feedback from the community and then you'll have
an analysis of the streets based on their current condition.
So, and you can find this list on the city's website too.
And it actually was just printed in the we are gr edition.
So if you get that at your house,
I believe towards the back of the, of the edition,
you'll see a list of all the streets that are slated for street
construction or street work this summer.
So you'll see this construction season, all of the streets,
but that's on our website as well.
And it's in the vital streets plan.
Okay.
The city streets kind of felt the effects of a number of
years of lack of funding and that was a very deliberate plan
of maybe two to three years ago now to really kind of bring
those up to par and it was kind of the big takeaway that I got
out of that is when you let them deteriorate,
it costs exponentially more to get them up to where they
should be and then keep the maintenance there.
What kind of funding, you know, there was a big concern a few
years ago that it was state money that used to help with this
a lot and a lot of that went away.
How's it being funded now?
So it still is a mix.
So we still get, we still get transportation dollars from
the state and that goes to roads.
They have been cut over time, but the significant local funds
come from the extension of our income tax.
So that extension of the income tax for 15 years to keep it
at 1.5, all of those dollars are dedicated to streets.
So it's about $8 million a year locally dedicated to streets.
And then as I said, we do get funds from the state.
We're hoping that that goes up a little bit this year with
the gas tax increase.
Was that part of the tax commitment to pass that along
to cities?
A portion of it.
So a lot of it goes to MDOT and to, you know, other projects
that are already kind of on the books, but we're going into,
we're just getting started with our budget discussions and
we'll have a full analysis of that going into this current
budget and hopefully starting July 1.
Okay.
And then back on funding a little bit, but when you mentioned
the parks, you said there is some state monies available there
if you follow certain criteria.
What is that about?
Yeah, so how that works is so there's the MD&R trust fund
grant, which is a grant at the state level and we every year
we submit grant requests and part of that grant request is
that you have to have local dollars to match them.
But you also have to have an updated master plan and in
that plan you have to say what your priorities are and then
what you submit for a grant has to be aligned with that
master plan.
So we've submitted, we've submitted MD&R trust funds in
the past, even in the past couple of years to help us
with funding larger park projects.
So we're working right now on replacing the Huff Park trail.
So we got some MD&R trust fund dollars for that.
That's a significant project, well over a million dollars.
I believe we got like $350,000 for that.
We got a significant MD&R trust fund grant for the property
along the river on Monroe North to turn those as well parking
lots into a park.
So that was $7.5 million of an MD&R trust fund grant.
So it's a state grant, but you have to have your parks master
plan in alignment and it has to be approved and it has to be
updated.
So that's why it's really important because it enables
us to apply for some of those funds.
But there's always a, there's always a local match with MD&R
trust fund dollars.
So the nice thing is that we've had the parks millage with
dedicated dollars for capital improvement and we've been able
to use some of the funds from the parks millage to leverage
some of these MD&R trust fund applications.
Okay.
All right, well just a quick note.
Then you had already brought up that budget season starts
very early for the city.
It's a budget that begins in July, but there's a lot of
public hearings associated with that.
Even after the city commission is working pretty diligently on
that, has the city manager provided you with a template of
anything like that or how does it go?
What is the process?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So we are in conversations right now about the budget and
every department head works on their own individual department
budget and then that's reviewed with the city manager and the
CFO.
So they do a lot of behind the scenes work before the final
budget is presented to the full commission.
The city manager also meets with all the commissioners.
He meets with me.
We talk about our priorities and then he usually will present
the actual budget to the full commission typically in March
or April and then we will have weekly budget sessions.
So typically usually starting right after spring break in
April, the city commission will meet every single week usually
for two to five hours a week and that goes all the way through
till mid June when we vote on the budget.
And then it's usually about an eight week process where we
meet every week.
We review sections of the budget.
Within that timeframe we have public hearings.
So we have public hearings on any fees that are proposed, the
actual budget.
We provide ample time for people to provide input before we
end up voting on a budget and we have to vote on a budget by
the end of June and it has to be a balanced budget.
That's under state law.
We're required.
Right.
So a long process there.
It is.
It is a long process.
But I've gone through this process a number of times.
Last year was my first time as mayor and then it was, last year
was interesting because not only was it my first time as mayor
but we transitioned over to a new financial management system.
So the budget that was presented didn't look like budgets we had
in the past.
So it was really interesting last year to have a brand new format
for the budget and then also try to work through it with a
relatively new commission because several new commissioners.
It was their first budget.
So I'm hopeful that this year we worked out some kinks that we
felt last year and that it will be a little bit smoother
process.
Okay.
We will take a break now and Mayor Bliss will be visiting
with James Hurt, he's public services director.
So right after this we'll be back.
Getting around downtown Grand Rapids is easier than ever.
Thanks to our city's improved dash transit service.
Hi.
I'm Cara Wood and I'm proud to serve our community as the
city's economic development services managing director.
On September 1st, Grand Rapids introduced a new park once
downtown district.
The park once district is part of a comprehensive effort to
modernize Grand Rapids public parking and municipal transit
systems.
From now on the dash downtown shuttle services free to the
public.
That means everybody, downtown employees, students and even
out of town visitors can simply park their car once.
Walk to a nearby dash bus stop and get on board a dash bus to
reach their favorite downtown destination.
Dash buses are now arriving every seven to eight minutes.
So riding the dash is fast, easy, convenient and best of all
it's free.
But wait, there's more good news.
You can now use the Grand Rapids Silver Line services at no
cost when you ride downtown anywhere north of the wealthy
street station.
Keeping Grand Rapids informed about our parking system changes
is among our top priority.
We're on the web at grparkingchanges.org.
Smartphone users can download two new mobile apps with real-time
information, GR Park and MyStop Mobile.
Or call MobileGR at 616-456-3290.
I'm Cara Wood and I encourage you to start dashing around
one of America's best downtowns.
Music
Welcome.
So glad to have you here.
So we have James Hurt, our director of public works with us
today to talk about, I would say, some of the services that we
provide that most immediately impact our residents.
At least through the services that, as a city commissioner, I
got the most complaints about.
Absolutely.
We touch a lot of residents in the city.
We do.
So why don't you share a little bit about yourself?
You've been with the city 18 years.
Almost 18 years.
And you've had a number of different roles.
I've been in a number of different departments.
I will even go back further.
I grew up on the other side of the state.
Came over to Grand Valley.
Went to school.
Met a wonderful young lady.
Got married.
Never looked back.
I stayed on the side of the state because this is a very nice
place to live.
Yeah, it is.
So I know when I first started as commissioner, you were in
charge of code enforcement.
So I worked pretty closely with you then.
And then you moved into public works.
And that department has changed a little bit over time.
But why don't you share a little bit about what you
currently oversee?
Sure.
Public services, we do basically two major functions.
All solid waste management in the city.
So we do all the refuse and recycling and yard waste
collections.
And then we have street maintenance, which encompasses a
whole lot of things.
One being winter operations.
We do all the snow plowing.
We take care of all the salting of the streets.
We street sweep.
We patch the potholes, which is where you get some complaints.
We do paving.
We do graffiti removal.
Basically anything that's within the road right away that
needs maintenance, my department takes care of that.
And sidewalks.
We don't do sidewalks.
We may fix some here, but engineering manages the
sidewalks as far as making sure they're fixed and in good
shape.
Okay.
All right.
So tell us about some of the things happening in the city
in those departments.
Okay.
We'll meet back up even further.
Okay.
So we're going to do some solid waste.
City of Grandpas has been doing solid waste for over a
hundred years.
Now back in the day, you know, we would have horse and buggy
going down the street, picking up leaves.
Mary may not even know this, but we used to have a service up
into the fifties where we would go in the back, back door of
homes and pick up trash right in their backyard, right through
the backyard into their house.
So a lot of exciting things happening in my department.
A lot of changes happen.
I started this department in 2010.
At that time, we rolled out single stream recycling, which
was a great hit.
We're up to about 55,000 customers that are using our
services for recycling.
Our tonnage has gone through the roof.
As you know, I preached that issue a lot on the recycling
side.
Again, we rolled out last year sorting stations and I know
there's a graphic that we provided on the sorting
stations and that was meant to educate people at special
events.
We wanted to really get into the business of educating folks
who visit our downtown or other areas of our city about
recycling.
We provided these stations.
They were graphic.
They held six carts and it really taught people which cart to
put the right thing in.
It was interesting.
We did some observations there in our prize and it was very
interesting to see how people responded.
So we're rolling that out for all special events.
We're getting a lot of requests to talk about the sorting
stations.
We're excited to offer that as a service.
We are even looking at doing dumpsters for special events.
So something that we're kind of expanding some of our
service that we do provide.
And James, we've touched on, I know you and I have talked
about this a little bit, but we're always concerned when
recycling bins are contaminated.
That's right.
And, you know, when we have to lose recycling because of
contamination, how are we doing on that?
And, you know, what do you want to make sure that residents
know about recycling?
What I want to make sure that our residents understand is that
they need to think about before they put it into which
container.
Recycling, we did have an uptick of contamination and
whether that be putting trash in the recycling container.
We've had dog feces that have been put in their clothes.
I mean, I know clothes can be recycled, but it's not, that's
not the right way to do it.
We were running about 14, 15 percent contamination last
year.
We did some educating.
We did some sampling on certain streets.
We've put out flyers to help educate folks on what to do.
And if we find that you're contaminating, we'll remove the
cart from the house because it does cost us money and it does
contaminate the whole load.
So we're getting better.
We're continuing to educate.
And that's part of what the sorting stations were about was
getting people educated on what to put in the right container.
And I think it's working.
Well, good.
Thank you for your work on that.
And I know Weemiac has partnered with us on that as well.
Yeah, it was a great, great collaboration between Weemiac,
Kent County Department of Public Works, ArtPrize, and us.
I mean, the image shop did help as well.
We did a number of things there and it worked out really well
at ArtPrize.
Yeah.
So I know it's not that time of year, but I know you have worked
really hard on the four leaves and drop off over at our site.
And I know we get lots of questions about composting as well.
So why don't you talk a little bit about that?
Well, yard waste, like I said, has been around for over 100
years.
We do curbside collection now.
We use carts and bags.
We do get a fair amount of leaves in the street and our fall
street sweeping is pretty much a leaf cleanup program.
Our Domtar site that's out at 2001 Butterworth continues to grow
with volume.
People have learned that it's there and it's no charge to
residents.
It's part of their taxes that they're paying.
So we are looking at ways of how do we manage that waste?
How do we manage and do something with that compost if we're
working with it?
So the sorting stations did provide a composting bin to start
educating folks on composting.
And one of our transformational goals is to look at having
curbside composting.
I know that's something you and I have talked about.
It's a goal of mine.
And just how do we roll that out?
I think we're a little bit, maybe another year or so before we
can really work hard on that.
But as the volume continues to grow at Domtar, we need to
look at how do we reuse that material and make it, we'd even
make it available to our residents.
Well, that's exciting.
And we could collect food waste at the same time.
Yeah.
And we did, a year and a half ago, we allowed backyard
composting and appropriate bins.
But I know we still get a lot of requests for curbside as well
as where can they go to get compost?
We're getting it more and more from special events.
Wanting to do composting.
There is a number of events in the city now that are zero
waste and they know how to do it and they're doing it well.
One of the struggles is there's not a lot of locations in this
West Michigan area where you can take compost.
So that's another thing that we're kind of looking at.
Yeah.
Exciting.
It is exciting.
Yeah.
So anything else about refuse or you want to talk about?
Well, our Pays You Throw program.
Oh, yes, please do.
We got some graphics in there.
We launched our Pays You Throw program back in 2012.
It was designed to give residents an option, help control
their costs for their trash service, encourage more recycling.
In all accounts, we've had some challenges along the way,
but I think it's working really well.
A lot of residents I hear from talk about how much they appreciate
it.
If they're gone, they don't have to worry about their bill not
getting paid or the trash not getting picked up.
If they're there and they put it out, it gets picked up.
If they don't want to use it that week, they don't have to pay
for service that week.
So it's pretty simple and it helps encourage recycling
and you pick the size cart you need that fits your family's
needs and you only pay for service when you need it.
All accounts, it's going well.
We're still looking at a couple of things here and there as
far as improving and enhancing the service.
But as you know, Mayor, it's one of the most unique programs
in the country.
And I get calls about it.
People want to know how it's working.
And you know, speaking of that, we should touch on with
recycling, my GRCITY points.
So we still have that program with Local First and you can sign
up and every time that you recycle, you can earn points.
And you can go online and you can trade in those points for
coupons to use at a local establishment.
That's correct.
And it's continuing to expand.
Yes.
You know, we have others that are involved now with getting
people signed up and offering rewards.
I think that the future for that is going to grow.
But yeah, it started out with recycling and a lot of people
use it.
It's a really popular program here.
It is.
It is.
All right.
So what else is on your list?
You want to share with us today?
I just want to mention about carts.
You know, you talked about contamination.
I also want to mention or remind our residents that you
can't store your cart out the street.
I get complaints about this in certain neighborhoods where
people just don't move their carts.
You're not supposed to put them on your porch.
They really should be on the side of your house or back
behind your garage somewhere that's out of sight from the
road.
I just want to remind people of that one.
Which is especially important this time of year, especially
for our snow plows.
For snow plows, they're going to hit them.
You know, we're going to knock them over with the snow.
And then they're laying on the ground.
And we don't want your trash laying on the curb.
So just remind residents of that.
Winter operations.
I just want to touch briefly if I could.
Yeah.
A few more minutes.
We have really enhanced that service.
We've added wing plows to our trucks.
We're using liquids now where we're actually getting the
salt wet before it goes down.
It sticks faster.
It activates quicker.
And it's actually a reduction in salt use.
It's really good.
It's good for the environment.
Yep.
And if you may have noticed that we have some green lights on
our plow trucks now.
Have you seen them?
I have.
So does the county.
Yep.
It's kind of a statewide.
The legislation changed where we, as municipal snow plow
operators, we can use green lights.
And I think you'll see that's a lot more visible.
You know, there's been tests done on it and shown that you can
see it a lot better than the amber lights.
Yeah.
And I should remind people, I should say, please follow the
odd even parking.
Please follow odd even parking.
We've done some stories on that.
I was really appreciated.
Yep.
And we'll do our best to get back to the next day.
We do try hard to get there.
But, you know, abiding by that odd even helps us clear that
street to the curb and make it easier for you to park your
car.
Yeah.
So yeah, good reminder.
Yeah.
Anything else about winter?
People should know about?
Just getting ready for pothole season.
I know.
Well, and when that comes, encourage people just call 311.
Call 311.
And we'll get to it as quickly as possible.
Yeah.
I know we've talked about vital streets.
And there's been a lot of work done on our street system.
And I will say that it's really paid off as far as potholes.
The improvement of our street condition is evident.
Yeah.
You know, our pothole complaints are going to be down.
But we've had some warm-ups this past couple of weeks.
And it's played some havoc on our potholes.
Yeah.
And sometimes I think people, I've had a few residents I've
talked to and I sometimes think they don't realize this
fluctuation in temperature from freeze, thaw, freeze, thaw,
rain, freeze, thaw is really problematic for our streets.
It actually makes them worse.
It is.
It makes it pop out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate all of your work.
Thank you.
I know everyone out there appreciates the snow-cloud
drivers who get out into our neighborhoods.
Yeah.
And I know sometimes I live on a tertiary street.
So my street isn't plowed immediately.
Yeah.
Because it's not a primary street.
But I know that you all work hard to get there as quick as you
can.
So thank you for that.
Our goals to get through the whole city in 24 to 36 hours.
Yeah.
Well, thank you.
Thanks.
We'll take a break and come back for some questions.
Celebrate winter in West Michigan with Friends of Grand Rapids
Parks at the seventh annual Winter West at Richmond Park on
Sunday, February 12th from noon to 5 p.m.
We love winter at Friends of Grand Rapids Parks and we are
deeply passionate about creating a park system that is vibrant
and alive with activity year round.
Richmond Park has the perfect landscape to showcase all the
fun that can be had outdoors when it snows in our city.
This year's Winter West has an activity for everyone in the
family with snowshoe demos from Moose Jaw, a guided tree
identification hike with our forestry expert, arts and crafts
with kids' food basket, and the return of the Winter West main
event, the Crazy Cardboard Sled Race.
Registration for the Sled Races begins at 12 o'clock p.m.
with the kids' heat kicking off at one and the adults' heat
kicking off at two.
We'll have prizes for top finishers and for most creative
sled design, so be sure to visit the Winter West's
Facebook page to find sled design inspiration.
The warming shelter will be open all afternoon where you can
heat up chili fingers and toes with complimentary hot
beverages and learn more about the Park Strategic Master
Plan from our friends at the City of Grand Rapids Parks and
Recreation Department.
Two Scots barbecue will also have their food truck on site
for the event.
Winter West is presented in partnership with the City of
Grand Rapids Parks and Recreation Department, Grand Rapids
Public Schools, and the West Grand Neighborhood Association.
All event activities are free and open to the community
thanks to support from West Michigan Credit Union, Open
Systems Technologies, Rockford Construction, Riley's Ace
Hardware, and Meijer.
Registration and additional information for the event can be
found online at friendsofgrparks.org or on the
Winter West's Facebook page.
Welcome back to City Connection.
We're sitting here with Mayor Rosalind Buss along with her
guest.
It's James Hurt with Public Services Department.
Great interview.
They learned a lot.
Had a few questions, but gosh, how interesting.
I had no idea all that covers.
I wanted to ask you about the pay-as-you-pro program because
it just makes so much sense.
Did it affect the income for the city at all when that switch
happened?
It did, initially.
There was probably about a four to six month transition for
people, whether they were using our trash bags,
to actually start to see the revenue to be where we thought
it would have been.
We did struggle that first year and a half.
Like with any new business, you're going to see that.
But right now, the revenue is exceeding what we anticipated.
So we did see kind of a downturn at the beginning.
Just transitioning, you know, 40,000 people to a new program
that was self-managed.
There was no bills going out.
There was some changes that they needed to get adapted to.
And it was new.
Plus, we didn't really anticipate how often people were going
to put their carts out.
We knew it wasn't going to be every week.
But it's averaging right now about every other week.
It's really about 50% of the time that people put their carts out.
And then you have people like me who still use the blue bags.
Like a stack in your garage.
I do buy them.
She buys them in the bulk.
I do.
You can still buy them.
Yeah.
Interesting about that because I just assumed that that meant
if everybody wasn't being billed at the same rate,
there would be a little bit less income
but possibly then maybe less drivers or something like that.
We did do some reductions.
We reduced drivers, reduced trucks.
We went to an automated arm system on our trucks.
The previous system was the guys would get in and out of the truck
five, six hundred times a day throwing bags.
And we experienced some pretty significant workers' compensation claims.
So I'm moving to an automated truck system with a joystick.
Carts greatly reduced our workers' compensation liabilities.
And it made them more efficient.
They were faster.
They could go through the city quicker.
And it's an RFID technology.
I know we had a graphic, but we didn't really explain that.
Yeah, why don't you explain it?
So every cart has an RFID tag in it.
And when the truck pulls up, it can actually read the cart.
And it can know if you have money on your account.
It knows it's at the right address.
And if it does, it can tip your cart.
And as soon as it tips it, it deducts from your account.
So it's a prepaid system.
And then when you tip it, it deducts from your account.
So we have three sizes and three different prices based on that size.
Does that same RFID tag system then do the my points when it's recycling?
That's by weight.
Is that right?
Is that how that works?
Okay.
Interesting.
When there was first that talk of the transition to the type of recycling service
that the city was going to do,
there was a lot of criticism of the single stream recycling.
I'm just wondering how, you know, living it a few years now,
what have we learned?
What do we know about that?
I think the contamination was the issue,
or maybe it was the labor that would take to sort.
You can speak to it.
I can speak to it.
It's something I've been watching very closely for the last five years.
Across the country, single stream facilities have had some struggles.
Some have closed down.
But in this community, it's made it a lot easier for residents to recycle.
We have had some contamination.
By and large, I think it's a better system than what we had before,
because you had to get out, you had to separate it.
And our tonnage went up dramatically with almost the same number of customers at the beginning.
It was just easier for people to recycle.
You just put it all in one container.
Now, from the processing side of it, yeah, there's more costs involved.
They have some labor on the belt when they are sorting the material.
Some of it's automated, but some of it's still labor-intensive.
But it seems to be working.
But even in the old, so having been at the city when we converted,
remember those blue tubs?
A lot of people had trouble, especially elderly.
We got a lot of complaints from people had a hard time getting out to the curb.
But then also for our drivers, they had the same thing.
They had to get out, pick it up, dump it in, sort it, put it in the right place.
And then even at the old facility, there were still people working on the line
sorting and organizing things there.
And so I don't know the numbers in regards to how many man hours or woman hours it takes
at the single stream versus the old one.
But I do know that we spent quite a bit of time looking at that.
And the county's been a great partner in this.
And they spent a lot of time analyzing what it would take to convert over.
And we did see a dramatic, just even without the MyGR city points,
just with the conversion to single stream, we saw a pretty significant uptick
in recycling city-wide.
And the throughput on the new system is faster.
So they can process more material very quickly.
So the old system was more labor-intensive, it was slower,
because they had to separate everything out.
Now it's just, it comes on the belt and some of it's automated,
and then it's just picked right out.
And the throughput, I understand, is much higher than what it was before.
Have you been to the facility?
You know, when it was unveiled, but not, didn't fully see it in operation.
You should check it out.
And that's a great thing, too, that Kent County does, is they do tours all the time.
They have groups go through both students, but then also just community groups
who want to learn what happens to their recycling and how it's sorted.
And so it's, you can go up top and really get a good look at the entire process.
And it's absolutely fascinating.
And it's a public asset.
So I always encourage individuals to go and take a look at it.
It's great.
They do a fair number of tours a year.
Yes.
They have school kids, fourth graders, eighth graders, something like that.
They have a whole education center in there, in the building.
And I would encourage you to go check it out.
Who should be contacted if they want to do this?
Who's the lead person over there?
Well, Kristen Whelan is their, like, their community relations person.
I would start with her, or you can obviously call the director, Darbaz.
If anybody's interested, that's where to start.
That's where it starts.
And they accept other types of products that can be recycled.
So they do batteries.
They do computers, hazard waste, paint.
So the county, you know, for something that isn't appropriate for our single stream,
if you have something that you want recycled, you can always call the county.
Okay.
Well, we do have a question, and this relates to this neighborhood.
And it says, it's from Carol.
It says, the week of November 7th, community media center.
So our building right out front here, we share with the library.
The bins were set on fire and burned.
So completely that the remains of the bins were melted into the sidewalk.
And then when we actually reported it to the city, we were told that there were a few such vandalisms
in the neighborhood that particular night.
Just wondered if you know anything about where offenders caught.
Does this happen often?
What's that all about, really?
It sounds pretty dangerous.
I'm not familiar with the offenders in this situation,
but I'm familiar with some of the containers being burned.
As you can imagine, that's not a good thing.
We do replace those.
So I'd be happy to look into it further.
I'm not familiar with this particular neighborhood as far as what happened.
But you said it was after the election.
It was November 7th, yeah.
November 7th.
That night.
That's unfortunate.
Yeah.
So that would be a PD question on the follow up to that.
Sure.
But it is good to know that we will replace those.
So if you do have a bit that's burned or damaged in some way,
just call the city.
Okay.
All right.
Let's see if this other question relates to...
Okay.
I'm going to save this one for after you and just for the mayor.
But I had a few more questions at the beginning of the time.
Sure.
You mentioned graffiti.
Yep.
That's something you're...
My department handles graffiti abatement.
And so there was a graffiti task force.
And I don't know if that included citizens that kind of helped address this.
But how is that?
I look at the west side and that's what I'm most familiar with.
I'm here and it seems to be slightly less.
I hate to speak that out loud and change the course of that.
But how is that kind of abatement going?
I would say our complaints are down.
Okay.
You know, we have some areas that tend to get more graffiti than others.
And we will go visit those on a regular basis to try to be proactive.
We know that graffiti, if it's not abated in a reasonable amount of time,
it tends to grow fast.
We have some active neighborhoods who will call us and let us know there's graffiti.
You know, we've got some tunnels, particularly on the side of the city,
that tend to be a magnet for graffiti.
We hit those quite often throughout the year.
But our neighborhoods are really good about keeping us informed.
And our guys get out there and take care of it.
You know, we take care of basically public areas.
We go down alleys.
We'll do the backs of garages of prop owners as long as they give us a release.
We'll do fences.
Particularly if it's a vulgar item.
We want to get that off of there as soon as possible.
But I would agree with you.
I think what I'm seeing and what I've been hearing is the number of graffiti issues in the city are down.
I'll add two things.
One is we have a goal to get to them immediately.
As soon as we find out about it, our goal is to get to them and have them removed within,
are we at 48 hours?
Yeah, it's like 72 hours.
Unless it's vulgar, we'll try to come right out for those.
And so people can report them in a number of ways.
With the 311 app, you can take a picture of it and submit it.
So typically that's what I do.
Geocodes it too.
Yeah, geocodes it.
And that's often how I report graffiti.
And if I see any, I always report it.
I just take a picture, submit it through my 311 app.
You can call 311.
You can call the city.
And as soon as we know about it, we'll get out.
The other thing that I've noticed, and I really appreciate it for a multitude of reasons,
but you'll see a lot more murals.
So we're starting to see utility boxes that are painted with artwork.
You're seeing more murals in parks.
And on these large walls that in the past often got tagged.
And we know that murals tend to, they don't tend to get tagged with graffiti.
And they also add so much to, you know, a neighborhood or an area, just adding art.
And so that's been nice as we see.
I think we see less graffiti because we're seeing more of these spaces, these canvases,
as I call them, filled with art.
So I take it there's a process to put your own mural up.
There it is.
But what would the city do say?
Something official didn't happen, but it was more than tagging.
It was really actually art.
Yeah, that's a good question.
I mean, typically we can tell the difference pretty quickly.
The projects with the utility boxes are usually organized with the city and the neighborhood associations.
There's an arts advisory committee as well that reviews the murals.
But I think your question is, what if someone just put one up?
I think we would look at it and see, maybe even run it by the committee after it was up.
I think we may have looked at a couple of those in the past.
You know, if it meets certain criteria and it's not offensive, I think we would allow it.
Last thing I want to bring up, as you mentioned something, I'm jumping topics here,
but this was street cleaning, not street cleaning, but it was the snow removal and the salt.
Now there's an option of something liquid.
Is it less corrosive or is it just more effective?
It's a little bit less corrosive.
It enhances the salt that we put down the street and it makes it activate faster.
You know, our goal is to get that street in the best shape as fast as we can for the traveling public
so that it's safe, that they're not slipping, they're not causing accidents.
And it's a product and it's becoming pretty well known in the country where you get the salt wet before it hits the ground.
So you're spraying it at what we call the spinner on the back of the truck, have you seen the spinner?
So usually if you don't get it wet, it comes off dry and they have what they call a bounce and scatter effect.
It hits the ground and rolls into the curb.
Well, you don't want that.
You want it in the middle of the road where you want to place it down.
So it's wet, it sticks faster, it activates faster and use less salt.
So our goal is to be environmentally sensitive and to try to save money
and to try to use the best technologies we have available.
You might have seen we put wing plows on our trucks now too, so we can do like one and a half lanes
so our drivers are much more efficient in getting the streets cleared up.
As long as the cars are out of the way.
As long as the cars are out of the way.
As long as the cars are out of the way, because they do have a blade sticking out the side.
I know, I know.
That would be noticeable.
It would be noticeable, especially the green light on it.
Yes.
Well, James, Director of Public Services Department, thank you again for joining us and speaking with us on City Connection.
We'll take a break and we'll be back with some more questions after this.
Hello.
I am Adeline Vantol.
I'm a community organizer at Disability Advocates of Kent County.
Our organization works to create an accessible and welcoming community for all
and to support individuals with disabilities and living full and exciting lives.
We offer 12 different programs, which focus on housing, government changes, education and employment for individuals with disabilities,
which all focus on independent living.
A big part of being able to live independently is being able to leave your home.
For individuals with disabilities and older adults, snow and ice can make it difficult to maneuver throughout our community
and sometimes even prevent people from leaving their homes.
Therefore, we are working to get the word out about the importance of snow removal.
The City of Grand Rapids does not provide snow removal services for driveways or sidewalks.
The clearing of snow and ice on the sidewalk is the responsibility of the property owner.
The full width of the sidewalk should be cleared within 24 hours of the accumulation or placement of snow or ice.
Grand Rapids City Ordinance requires that sidewalks be completely cleared of all snow and ice down to the concrete.
When you are shoveling your sidewalk, don't forget to shovel the curb cut.
While the city trucks plow the road, the snow and ice between the sidewalk and the road can build up and stop a person in their tracks.
If you have questions or need help, some suggestions are united way at 211 American Red Cross and your Neighborhood Association.
Also, resources such as your local church, private contractor, neighbor or family member could be of assistance as well.
Clearing snow from fire hydrants, sidewalks, bus stops and catch basins benefits everyone.
Grab a shovel, help your community.
Welcome back to City Connection, February edition of City Connection.
I'm Linda Glass here with Mayor Roslyn Bliss and we're to the part where we take your questions.
We've got a few in the queue, so Mayor, we're going to maybe group them a little bit.
We have a couple related to housing, so we'll start with this one.
It says, has the city considered implementing a community land trust in partnership with community organizations such as Tool for Expanding Workforce Housing?
What would be the pros and cons of doing this sort of thing here in Grand Rapids?
Yeah, so that's a great question.
It is something that we have talked about.
I wouldn't say that we're actively looking at doing that right now.
A couple things about affordable housing, which continues to be a top priority and it's complex for a number of reasons.
It's probably a much longer conversation.
It's related to wages and access to affordable housing.
We're having an influx of people who want to live here.
We're having developments in neighborhoods.
It's kind of a mix of a number of issues, in my opinion, that have kind of come together to create this real complex problem we're in today.
It's so different than where we were eight years ago.
I remember when I was a commissioner, we were scrambling to figure out what we're going to do to prevent families from being pushed out of their home in foreclosure.
We were putting money into foreclosure response and prevention.
Now it's trying to get our head around what we can do as a city, what's in our authority to really push affordable housing.
We have had some conversations about community land trust, but there isn't anything actively that's being looked at outside of some conversations that are happening around a housing advisory committee.
Two things we did last year, as a city commission, we created an affordable housing trust fund.
That was put in place in July of last year, where the city put money into the affordable housing trust fund.
We started to identify revenue streams. We're looking at taking a percentage of every market rate development and putting that into the affordable housing trust fund.
So we're looking at options, but we haven't finalized anything yet to continue to put money in the affordable housing trust fund.
And then we're looking at how the funds from the affordable housing trust fund can be used to have the greatest impact on affordability and affordable housing.
So could it be down payment assistance? Could it be rehab money? We're looking at that right now through this group that I appointed called the Housing Advisory Committee.
So it's a group of about 25 people. I appointed them back in, it must have been October, a few months ago.
They've met four times now and they're looking at two things.
One is, how do we use the affordable housing trust fund? Who oversees it? What's the eligibility?
And then what are other policy changes that we need to make to try to incent and encourage affordable housing as quickly as possible?
So my hope is that that committee wraps up their recommendations by May and they can be incorporated into our budget process.
So it's a long answer. Community Land Trust is a part of that discussion, but there's a whole host of other things that we're looking at right now in addition to that.
Well, this one is a little bit in a similar vein, but this has to do with housing here on the west side.
It says, in the past, Ms. Bliss, you have praised Rockford Construction for offering affordable housing on the west side.
Yet all the already built housing developments are market rates, such as full in place at $1,300 for one bedroom apartment.
New development on stocking has a small number set aside for affordable housing.
And Rockford Construction has announced no additional plans for affordable housing in the continuing with the overall development approach.
This is what many would call justification.
And the question is basically, does the city have a plan for combining from combating this or looking at this or bringing more of that in here as far as affordable housing?
You know, it's a great question. And that's the struggle is the, how do we find this mix of affordability?
So the recent project at Stocking, I was actually excited to see that there's a partnership between Rockford and ICCF for low income housing.
And they got Lytec funding for that.
So that project is going to move forward now that they were able to secure the Lytec funding, the low income tax housing credits.
So ICCF is going to move forward with that and that will provide some low income housing here on the west side as a part of that project.
And then there have been a couple projects where, you know, they're much smaller apart, you know, affordability.
Some developers, including Rockford, they're building smaller units to try to stay within that price point.
That works for some people who are single, you know, and can live in a smaller space and afford it.
But it's not what families need. And I am concerned about families and making sure that families have an affordable place that they can live,
especially right here on the west side, so that they can have access to the challenge scholars.
So that's a significant concern to me.
What the city can do, you know, we can't necessarily force developers, you know, understate.
We have limitations of what we can do and can't do.
So right now in our state, we can't pass an inclusionary housing rule that's not allowed under state law.
We can't do rent control. It's not allowed under state law.
So we're looking at what can we do? What do we have the authority to do?
And that's what we're looking at right now, both as a full commission, but also as a part of the Housing Advisory Committee.
And there are some options. We have some public-owned property.
So just last week, we put out an RFQ for the 201 Market Site.
That's an 18-acre parcel on the river.
And because the city owns it, we can be a part of requiring what needs to be included in the proposed project.
And we will be saying it needs to be mixed income, mixed housing.
It will have to have affordable units. It will have to have green space.
It'll have to have access to the river. It'll have to have green infrastructure.
So there are parcels around the city that we own that are public.
And as we sell those, we can put in a purchase agreement,
or we can be really thoughtful about how that property is developed to ensure that there's mixed income, mixed housing within that project.
Okay. Thank you for that one.
We're down to like three minutes, so I'm going to run through a bunch of questions.
Okay. All right. Sorry. This one's from Ashley.
It says, as department heads set their budgets, what directives are given by the city council?
For instance, are they required to reduce costs or increase efficiencies in their departments?
What kind of directives?
Yeah. So I don't sit in with the department heads.
They all report to the city manager.
So the city manager is active on the front end with the department heads.
We're always looking at efficiencies.
So that is a message that's given all the time around sustainability and efficiencies.
And I would say that's an expectation of department heads.
And then last year, we approved our sustainability plan,
and there's a number of goals outlined in there, and some of them are very specific to certain departments.
And so the department heads should be looking at those.
I'm assuming they'll be given that directive from Greg,
but it was pretty clear when we adopted the sustainability plan as a commission
that these are priorities over the next four years.
So those go to 2021, and the department heads who have responsibility for those
should be building those into their budget recommendations.
Okay. We're going to take this question now from Sonia.
It says, as individual rights continue to be attacked on the national stage,
how is the city protecting citizens concerned about their rights being taken away?
I know there was a statement put out by the city encouraging people to report harassment or anything like that.
Yes. Please report it to our police department.
So I have had multiple conversations with members of our Community Relations Commission,
as well as our police chief, and we absolutely want people to report any crimes, any concerns they have.
Let us know about it, but we're also being proactive too.
So the chief has been going out, meeting with different groups of individuals,
letting them know what their rights are, letting them know that we're a safe city for them.
He's gone out and know that he just recently met with some individuals at a mosque,
and then he has reached out to a number of other churches in the community
to talk to them and hear their concerns and listen and then to give them information
so that they know what their rights are.
So he's very committed, as is everyone in our police department, to build those relationships
so that if there is an issue or a concern, people feel safe bringing that to the attention of the police department.
But please report them. We need to know about them so that we can respond appropriately.
You used the term safe city, and it was a different context, but when it comes to immigrants,
is Grand Rapids a safe city? There's some federal declaration that can't happen.
Yes, so we are a welcoming city, and we actually signed on to be a welcoming city about a year and a half ago,
and we are committed to being an inclusive, safe city for immigrants.
There's a number of things that we're doing. I had a meeting with a number of key community stakeholders,
including a number of individuals from our Community Relations Commission,
and we're looking at other ways that we can make sure that we're communicating, that we're a safe city,
and that, again, what do people do? Who can they go to if they have problems?
Okay, we're going to close out, but just a quick mention that you brought to my attention Neighborhood Summit
is on March 4th, Saturday the 4th, and you said by the next time we get together,
we'll be looking at Neighborhood Match and Fund Awards.
We will.
We'll talk about that then at the March Gathering that we have in City Connection.
Mayor Bliss, thank you so much for being here. This is City Connection on GRTV's Live Wire, Channel 24.
I'm Linda Galash, and thanks for joining us.
.
