By: Taylor Christensen | Royal Oak Review | Published January 24, 2024
CLAWSON — In a fairly heated discussion at the Jan. 2 City Council meeting, the council decided to set up a workshop to further discuss the fiscal year 2024 goals and objectives.
At the council meeting, City Manager Joseph Rheker presented a packet with goals and objectives for the 2024 fiscal year.
Within the packet there were six goals and objectives: “to deepen sense of place and community identity”; “foster an engaged and informed community”; “cultivate organizational excellence”; “provide efficient and resilient government”; “ensure a safe and comfortable environment for everyone”; and “encourage environmentally sustainable practices.”
Each slide presented to the council included a description of what each of these goals meant, and what the goals would be trying to accomplish.
The council had a lengthy discussion surrounding this, with some members claiming that the packet did not go in depth enough, and that the goals were not adequate due to their immeasurability.
“If we are going to have some real measurable, tangible goals here, they have to be measurable and tangible,” Mayor Pro Tem Susan Moffitt said. “We can’t just throw stuff out there.”
Councilman Matt Binkowski mentioned that he believes the goals need to be completely rewritten within the month of January.
“I’d rather start from scratch and say these are the goals we need before the budget process begins,” he said. “We need to talk about the things we need to see achieved.”
Mayor Paula Millan said that if they were to continue to focus on the six main topics, but include more direction under each, it could help bring clarity to the goals until the budget season.
Binkowski was concerned about the measurability factor of these goals.
“I find no way to measure his performance,” he said. “It’s more of a mission statement; it’s intangible.”
Because the goals and objectives don’t have clear explanations of what they will accomplish, Binkowski said that Rheker and his administration will need to change the goals.
“To me, an example of a goal would be preparing a comprehensive and coordinated plan to address roads, sewers and water mains in the city … by the year 2035,” he said.
Moffitt agreed, stating that Rheker needs to do whatever it takes to get it done, “but these are tangible things we are looking to have accomplished within a period of time,” she said.
Councilman Bruce Anderson said that some of these plans have already begun to be executed by Rheker, and his plan has been following the five-year capital improvement plan.
“That said, I do think Mr. Rheker owes us more specificity,” Anderson said. “I think we all acknowledge we want this, but it just depends on how we put it on paper.”
“You have to realize that there is a $177 million in capital improvement needs,” Rheker said. “Our ability to borrow is at $45 million dollars. How does the math work out? It doesn’t.”
Rheker said that they need to have conversations about that, including a capital improvement plan from 2021 that “didn’t see the light of day because of council.”
Rheker also said that an updated capital improvement plan is being done.
Binkowski said he wants to see what the plan is, and thought of showing this capital improvement plan and making it a goal.
Anderson asked Rheker his status for the plan on infrastructure, and Rheker replied that he has been working on that plan.
“Right now (Anderson, Eckstein and Westrick) is going back to the drawing board on that specific document, and I have been meeting with the finance director, Mark Pollock, to figure out what is the best way, what is actually palatable to the voter to support,” Rheker said.
“You have roughly $45 million dollars in debt that you can incur, which we wouldn’t do that, but you have nearly $177 million dollars in needs,” he said. “How are you going to get the voters to support a palatable millage, where 3 mills is only going to generate you $1.4 million. That’s the extent of the complication of this situation, and I feel like you are both oversimplifying this situation.”
Moffitt said that the plans need to be presented in an easy way to the public.
“It needs to be distributable,” she said. “We need to post on the website, post on Facebook; we need to be transparent and have something everyone can see.”
She said that this plan of action will give the citizens of Clawson a good idea on what’s being done, and what changes they can expect to see coming up.
Because of these reservations surrounding the presentation made by Rheker, the council unanimously decided to have a separate meeting to revise and finalize this document.
“What will make me happy is if we have a workshop,” Binkowski said, “and we amend this document to include infrastructure and other issues that I have, and I haven’t even talked about some of the other issues.”
Binkowski wanted this meeting to be held as soon as possible, and the council decided to have the meeting at 7 p.m. Jan. 30.