There are eight present. Alderperson Donahue and Rosemary Trester are both excused. Please stand and join me in 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. Next, we'll move on to approval of the minutes from our last council meeting, Alderperson Wolfe. We have a motion before us. Is there any questions, discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Next item is Mayor's Appointments. City Attorney, we have one appointment for your consideration, Terry Jacob, to be considered for appointment to the Sheboygan-Squared Board of Directors to fill the unexpired term of Scott Grinke, whose term expires 12-31-2019. That appointment will lie over till our next meeting. Next item is Public Forum. There's no one signed up tonight. Very good. Then we'll go on to Mayor's Announcements, freely by citizens and soldiers, and millions who have answered the call to arms have died on the field of battle. And whereas a nation at peace must be reminded of the price of war and the debt owed to those who have died at war, the red poppy has been designated as a symbol of sacrifice of our lives in all wars. And whereas the American Legion auxiliary has pledged to remind America annually of its debt through the distribution of the memorial flower, I now therefore, Mike Van Der Stee, Mayor of the City of Sheboygan, do hereby proclaim the day of May 25th of 2018 as Poppy Day in the City of Sheboygan and ask that all citizens pay tribute to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom by wearing the memorial poppy on this day. I'd like to present these ladies the proclamation. On behalf of Sheboygan County Council, American Legion auxiliary, I'm thankful to the Mayor and the City Council which started with a woman in World War I. It was Moina Bell-Michael and she gave out for the benefit of veterans and we are still doing this to this day. So if you see us out and about in the community on the 25th and 26th, that's what we're doing, offering poppies and getting donations for our veterans. Thank you so much. And again, I'd just like to remind the residents at home that might see the broadcast of this, that City Hall is half moved. We've moved all the offices on the first floor of City Hall to the former Social Security building on 9th Street right across from City Hall to the west. And next week, all the offices on the upper floors, second and third floor, will be moving to the Sheboygan County highway offices on North 23rd Street. The City Hall is changing their hours and will be open from 8 o'clock until 4.30 for all offices. There are a few offices like Building Inspection who will be open a little earlier and later, but most of City Hall offices will be closing at 4.30. Thank you. Next item is a presentation on CIVMIC by Paulin Allen. All right. Thank you, everyone. I'll try to get through this efficiently so you can get back out and enjoy the weather. So, my name again is Paulin Allen, and I'm the Manager of Member Services and Risk Management at CIVMIC. And earlier this year, I was at a conference and I got to talking to Darrell a little bit about the fact that we were getting out in front of some of our councils in the membership and explaining a little bit about the story that we have. I think we got a fantastic story and we'd like to share it. It really is both of our story together. So, if you like the presentation tonight, you can thank Darrell. If it's one of the worst presentations you've ever seen, you can thank Darrell. I'll jump right into it here and I'll kind of skip through some of the more basic slides and I think get into the material that you might be interested in. So, I'm going to call it CIVMIC from here on out, but we are Cities and Villages Mutual Insurance Company. We have a mission statement and a vision statement, of course, and that drives a lot of what we do and who we are. If you don't mind going to the next slide. There is one thing on here I do want to pay particular attention to. If you look at the main paragraph there in the upper right, it says, CIVMIC is guided by the principle of teamwork and our success is a direct result of the municipalities that are collectively engaged and invested in their membership. And I just want to point out that our board of directors, which comes from our membership, specifically wanted us to put in that last part that says we are collectively engaged and invested in their membership. Again, the story that we have really works because our members are actively involved in what it is we're doing. And to give you a very, very quick back story because I think it's important to understand how we got to where we are today. In 1987, the insurance market was crumbling. It was very difficult to find insurance. If you could find it at all, it was extremely expensive. And so in that market, a group of municipalities throughout the state saw an opportunity to create this entity to provide insurance basically back to itself. That was CIVMIC and that's when and where it was formed. Sheboygan was one of the founding members of CIVMIC and so we have a 30 plus year relationship that we're going on here today. It's been tremendously successful. It's expanded over the years to provide different services. The reason that it's important to point out how we got to come to existence really is that you understand as far as an insurance company, we are in business solely for the purpose of our members. The coverage is that we provide, the service that we provide. This is called the stewardship report that I have in front of you because that's how we look at it. We are stewards of your resources and we try to give back in a way that makes sense and benefits our members as a collective. So if you want to go to the next slide please. A very quick overview, let's do a fly by. We started with that general liability. Here it's listed as public entity liability insurance. Really that's general liability insurance and that's how we began. About 1996 we added workers compensation and then around six or seven years ago we added additional coverage called auto physical damage. Those are three main areas that we provide insurance for. There's a whole bunch of other ones under there. This entire presentation if you walk away and you go, that was extremely riveting and I want to know more. It's all available on our website, civmic.com. You can go out and see this report and go through and find our detail. But again for the purposes of kind of streamlining it, we'll skip some of that stuff on the bottom corner there. So if you want to hit the next slide please. So what do we look like overall? We have 48 members throughout the state and we cover every corner. We're in Superior, on Alaska. We're down in Racine and Kenosha area and up to Green Bay and then obviously quite a bit in between. If you total up our premiums, we're coming in around 14 million, the biggest of which is eight and a half for the workers comp. A little bit over four for the liability and then about one and a half for the auto physical damage. So that's a nice broad spectrum of what it is that we do. If you want to hit the next slide please. Now this one gets kind of complicated and where you might want to dive in later. The only point I want to impress upon you here is when you put all of our resources together, we have between employees and volunteers right around 26,000 people that are involved. So each one individually has its own set of challenges, but they're all municipalities.  And so over the years, we've been able to collect a lot of knowledge, not just for ourselves internally, but from you as fellow members. Our members are fantastic about sharing what it is they do. I told Daryl actually in this spirit of being very forthright that we basically stole your strategic plan and mixed it up a little and made it something that we could use for ourselves internally. And it just pointed to the fact that we're a partnership for ideas. And you'll see going forward how we get a lot of your ideas into action. So if I'm the owner of an insurance company, which you are, again, you are one of 48 owners, I guess one of the things I'd like to know is how is it doing. And in a very quick glance, you can see it's been highly successful. And the way you can determine that in the world of insurance, not to dive too deep, but probably the most important thing really is your loss ratio.  You can see that for our workers' comp, in the last five years combined, we're at about a 46%, which is just fantastic. On the bottom left, 51% for autophysical damage, and then when you come over to liability, it's 35% loss ratio. All of these numbers are outstanding. I spent about 10 years on the private sector side. I've been with Civic now for 15 years. When I was on the private sector side, if I would have went and showed these numbers to anybody in the room, they probably would have thought I was lying to them. This wasn't possible. We're very aggressive on the service end, but it's one thing to provide the service. You and the other members are actively involved in receiving the training, asking from us what it is that you feel will help you do better, be safer, you know, treat your employees in a way that keeps them protected. And it really is this interaction that goes on. I can't stress that enough. If I ever get caught up here talking like, Civic is wonderful and you're along for the ride, I apologize right now, that is not it. I have a story to tell because of you and our other members participating in such an aggressive way that we've been able to have an amazing story together. So the next slide. So a training summary. To bring it down to your level, and I did bring out a handout here, so for the older people, I guess if you could be sure to have one. We'll go over a show later. I probably should have kept one of those, but I'll go for a member here as best as possible. Thank you. So while that's going around, I'll talk about overall what our numbers look like. I mentioned that we provide training back to our members. That comes in a variety of forms. We will come on site, which is the largest section in there in the orange, and we'll train to our members in their backyards, in their environments, on a variety of topics. We do regional programs where you can come and be our guest. We have our main office, or actually our only office is in Wauwatosa, but we do our regional programs in areas throughout the state. We hit the Fox Valley. We hit the Madison area. Sometimes we get up near Wausau. So that's about 10% of our overall training. But we realized maybe six years ago, five, six years ago, that because of our members, their demographics, we needed to come up with another alternative as well. Many of our members have people working 24-7, and on weekends, we have distance challenges. And so just to have training either on site or in our backyard, probably wasn't going to cover you like you needed to. So we added webinars and online courses, and all of these services, everything that I talk about today, these are all free just for being a member with CIVMIC. And so that kind of makes up the overall training last year. We trained over 18,000 people in one program in one way or another. Did 709 total about 38,000 hours. But let's take a look at Sheboygan, because again, I think this is probably the most important part is what does it mean to us? So last year, CIVMIC conducted 13 member contacts with Sheboygan. You can see the variety of training that was done there. We're not going to get into too much detail, but our training is really focused in two main areas. It's going to be your HR, what we call EPL, Employment Practices Liability. So that's all of your supervisory skills. It's your soft skills. It's your conflict resolution. Sometimes it's just, why can't people get a long training? But that's one big part of what we do, because we feel if our members are interacting with each other in an appropriate way, that trickles down into the other areas of their business. It trickles down into less claims, better morale, and just all in all, a more participative member. So then the other side of our training that we do is safety related. And we'll do everything from your basic, what I would call regulatory training, a blood-borne pathogen, or a lockout takeout. It has come, but also we get into the very technical trainings. We'll do hands-on excavation training, confined space, hands-on chainsaw training, bucket trucks, just to name a few. Now all of those ideas and trainings came out of the fact that our members participated through focus groups and interactive opportunities to say, here's what we really need. If you could provide this, it would be wonderful. And so we have worked hard to, again, hit you in places that you're going to find to be valuable and effective. The member training summary, item three there on that list. So I think this is one of the best parts of the program because this shows how engaged Sheboygan is as a member. They attended 27 regional programs. So they traveled to our location last year alone, had 72 people and closed 850, almost 900 hours of training, where you sought it out. As a municipality, you said, we have a need for this and you came to us for training. That is a fantastic number, just speaking in comparison to other members throughout the state. On site, we were here to do nine programs, had about 165 people go through that and another 280 or so hours. And then the distance learning utilization. And this kind of ebbs and flows, it tends to be one where once people discover it, it really explodes. And so, again, this is a service that we provide. It's accessible. All of our webinars are recorded and made available again to our members at no cost. So if you want to advance one slide, please. One of the other unique items in being a Civic member are what we call our Advantage programs. These are programs that are provided strictly to our members and they're creative ways that we've tried to find to return those resources to you. Again, being stewards of it and the beauty of this is, because we're a mutual, when we take in too much, we get to give it back. We don't answer to a profit share organization. We have a board of directors, but their interests are, of course, so we keep this thing moving and solvent and steady. So last year alone, I mentioned we brought in about 14 million. Just in dividends alone, and not to insult anybody's intelligence, you may know this already. If you do not, a dividend is simply money that we return at the end of the year. So again, we take it in. Once you get through the insurance season, we had more than we needed and we gave it back. So we return just right off the top, 3 million of that $14 million that we took in. I can almost tell people and friends at parties that I work for an insurance company when I can say something like that. It takes away a little bit of the bad name. Then there's a grant program that we have. And a grant program sounds like a very complicated thing. It's extremely simple. Again, this is your money. We're not going to make you work too hard for it, but there are things that you need, training, equipment, supplies, materials that you maybe couldn't get otherwise. We set aside a chunk of money that we give back to the members. And so last year alone, just through the grant program, our 48 members received $300 plus dollars back through the grant program. Cyber-liability insurance. You don't have to look too far these days to see the challenges that face us in the world of cyber-liability. Obviously, it's quite a risk. So what we normally do in an area like this is we do what's called group purchase. We use our buying power. We get the coverage. And then we allow our members to go ahead and choose whether or not they want it. In this particular case, we said, you know, cyber-liability really impacts everyone. They don't get a choice. Everyone is getting cyber-liability insurance whether they want it or not. So it's a very strong coverage with data breach coaches. Just a top notch coverage. Again, we're able to use our buying power and go out and get for the entire membership. So then to look at how some of the other creative items are that we've been able to do. The Neil Gov products down into the middle, these are HR tools and resources that our members were buying on their own. And when we started to realize that they were spending pretty good money individually, we thought maybe we could come in and get a group discount. So we coordinated the purchase of all these HR tools for our membership because oftentimes our members are really struggling in this area. We have small, medium, and large members. Our smaller members really don't have HR departments for the most part. And they utilize these types of tools to get something done that they probably would not be able to do otherwise. So for us to go out and buy it and give it to them as a free service has really been effective. Out of our 48 members, we have 44 of them that are using all these products. So that's been fantastic. I won't get into too much detail here, but these are just other ways. We have a battery shutoff program. And on the back of your sheet, in item five, you can see what your utilization of these have been. You've maxed out the grant program. I believe you've done that every year. You've utilized the battery shutoff switch program. I can explain that in further detail if you want. Just probably give me a call. I won't do it here now. But it was a market problem where vehicles were starting on fire. This was our aftermarket solution. We purchased it and gave it to the members to prevent fires. The IT assessments, you have done that. You've taken advantage of it. Very discounted rate that we pay half of so that that whole cyber liability insurance that we provide, we wanted to make sure we were providing, or we were actually ensuring decent risks. So we came up with a way to do IT assessments and get a better handle on our exposure. We have Wiley, we had a Narcan program. If any of these are generating questions, please feel free. But otherwise, I'm just going to keep on getting through the material here. All right. If you're not seeing any questions, we'll go ahead and get to the next slide. I mentioned our partnership in action. It is truly a partnership. I was very thankful to Darrell, mayor of the council, that you were willing to let me come out this evening and just share a few words because one of the things that we are experiencing, our success story has again been fantastic, but some of that is getting a little bit lost over time. People maybe not recognizing or understanding why this has been such a great relationship back and forth. And so it just felt like a time to get out this year and tell the stories. I've had an opportunity to do this for a few other councils, and I appreciate that you're letting me spend a few minutes of your time. So that's one way that we plug into our membership. You can see all the different groups that we get involved in there. If you want to go ahead and hit the next slide. That dizzying array of services speaks a little bit to what we do. It's more than just training. We get into inspections and we do lost trend analysis or policy development audits, the whole gamut. I think the only thing that I want to draw attention to on this particular slide is just the fact that you have a dedicated claims representative. You have a dedicated lost control person and a dedicated EPL, that HR person. So we give people to you directly. That seems to help the relationship, make sure everybody understands and gets to know each other better, and it's been a very good model for us. All right. Thank you. So you are on there. I see you up on the top there, the original members. You might notice your logo. I think the thing that's worth noticing here, because again, if I'm yourselves and I own part of this organization, I'd like to know a little bit about how does your business model work?  We are not running around the state, shouting from the rooftops that we're open for business. We try to be very selective. It's not that we won't add new members. We will, but there's a fairly thorough process that takes place. We owe it to you as existing members to bring in good new members, and it protects your interests as they are now. And the other thing, realistically, if somebody comes in and they are not terribly interested in training and service and doing the right thing, I'm not sure this is going to be a good fit and everyone will probably be frustrated. And so we work pretty hard to bring the right people and continue being a part of our operation. I think that's pretty close to the end. There are board of directors. I don't know what to say. I always feel like I owe you a comment about whether they're handsome or something like that. That's your board of directors. They are a very solid group. They have come from two of these members, come from our large members. Then there's another two that come from the medium members and two come from small and there's an at large. They can come from any one of those. But they've been extremely effective. Nice collection of skills and talents. Reasonable yet watchful. And I think it's a board you could be proud of. I think that might be the last slide. So that was a very, very quick synopsis of who CIVMIC is. And hopefully gave you a better understanding of why you would want to know a little bit more about our partnership. If you have any additional questions, I'm going to say that you can go ahead and ask there. Hopefully that's okay. You don't mind. And I'll be happy to get you any answers or clarification on anything that you saw here tonight or going forward. Thank you very much for that presentation, Mr. Allen. We appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor. We have a second presentation tonight. Our first quarter strategic plan action items and critical measures by our city administrator, Darryl Hoffman. Thank you, Mayor Van der Steen. On your desk is a copy of our first quarter of 2018. So January 1st, 2018 to March 31st, 2018. So most of my comments are going to be focused on that time period. From time to time, I'll probably identify if some additional information subsequent to that March 31st date has occurred. I may highlight those. Because it is the first quarter, in many cases on the action items, we have not accomplished certain projects. Again, if you recall, if you're a trustee who's our older, who's been around for more than one year, but for the newer all alters that were elected in April, again, this is all tied to our strategic plan. In our strategic plan, the original strategic plan, we had 2017, 2018 action items, and then we had specific critical measures or measurements. So in essence, I'm giving you an update on what progress we've made to that strategic plan. I created a couple slides to help us go through and highlight some of the more notable items that have occurred so far, again, in the first quarter of 2018. Meredith, if you want to... Again, this light blue is a little hard to read. I'll choose a different color next time. Because it is light, I'll just talk a little bit about some of the items. Again, it says that some projects are unable to be completed within an annual timeframe. As a result, several have been moved up from 2017 to 2018, or in fact, some of the 2018 may be postponed to 2019. We do work collaboratively with internal and external partners for support and improved relations. Staff leverages all intergovernmental resources and contributions to maximize savings and improve input. Staff utilizes public feedback for improvement modification, and comparative benchmarking with other municipalities is used to ensure our efforts are fiscally responsible. Again, really light for those maybe toward the back. A couple of things I want to mention is, again, I'll be referring on your spreadsheet to the first column. It has a number on the first page. It's 1 through 17. You follow? Okay. So on line 9, EMS response of 36 seconds or less, the goal is 90% of the time that we are to respond within that 360 seconds for EMS. This first quarter, we're at 54%. And one of the reasons, Vern Koch is here from the Fire Department, one of the reasons is that now with the emergency medical, what's a D stand for, dispatch, EMD, the clock doesn't start for them until they've gone through their list. So as a result, our times are much longer. So that's something that we'll have to either adjust the measurement or talk with the county as far as when the clock starts because they no doubt they have a way to provide a certain time or within a call and we may need to either work with them when they start their stopwatch, so to speak, or whether we're going to change the 360 second measurement. So that's something we hope to give an update to you. Most likely we'll be at a public safety committee. Part one and part two crime rates, line 13 and 14. The good news is that the benchmark that we've established, we're right in line with that for violent crimes. For property crimes, we're far below the benchmark. And again, 25% of the year has passed, so that's what we're using in essence as to where we're at for this reporting period. So we're only at 15% for property crimes. Line 18 is on the next page, is walkability score. This identifies that we haven't identified a score through the first quarter in checking as late as yesterday that score is 86 from our downtown. Actually, I think I have it noted on our spreadsheet. So we're at our expectations of 86. Line 20 is trips per revenue, vehicle mile is 15.41. It exceeds our goal of 13. Again, this is specifically for Shurn Line Metro. Again, the number of passengers on our trips. For Metro connections, we're right on the mark. We're at 100%. For line 28, prescription drugs, the major collection initiative occurs after March 31st. So when Chief Domogowski filled this in, at that point we didn't have an amount. I talked with him over the weekend and he identified 474 pounds, or 40% of our annual benchmark or goal has in fact been received. Next, infrastructure and public facilities. Line 46, stormwater management plan. In fact, on your agenda tonight, there's a recommendation to have Public Works Committee review hiring strand associates for pavement ratings. Again, this typically is done every two years. So on line 49, the goal is to be at 6.5. You can see in the notes all the way to the right under the status column. In 2015, we were at 5.93. 6.25 is where we expect we're going to be. The benchmark is 6.5. So we're getting close. So we're at 96% of achieving the 6.5 goal. Next slide. Economic development is our third focus area. Line 52, assembly redevelopment sites and key areas, specifically the Innovation District. 100% of the properties were acquired over the last year and a half. Capsule property being one larger track. And then many properties as you recall along Indiana Avenue. Line 64 is a square feet of industrial property. We've identified zero as far as commenced in 2018. A couple of projects that have been, one project that's been approved and we're waiting for construction is FedEx. I'm talking with Chad. We just received a notice that a state set of plans have been approved. We hope they'll be coming in for their local approval. We're also working with a north side development team that hopes to put on 184,000 square foot additions. So that's something to watch for on a future plan commission agenda. Line 54 is coordinated with consultants for a new business park project. As we talked about, I think during the groundbreaking ceremony, a groundbreaking ceremony for the phase one business park, this is a project that, again, with a lot of coordinated effort, multiple departments, hiring good consultants. We did a feasibility study last year. We did a TID study last year, project plan, land acquisition occurred, negotiated, but closed, I think, first week of this year. And of course, we completed the design, all within roughly a, probably a seven month period of time. And as you know, we've recently awarded contracts and phase one construction has started. Next slide, neighborhood revitalization. On line 75, this is a project I'm just really proud of. Chad heads up this meeting. It's monthly interdepartmental staff meetings to coordinate neighborhood issues. Every month, succinctly, January, February, March, no doubt subsequent to that we've held meetings is to gather, because it's going to take a multiple departments to work on a solution. Please, fire, city development, the mayor's office, my office, public works. We invite habitat for humanity, lake shore landlord association. We all get together brainstorm. We update each other. We identify areas of concern. We target specific neighborhoods as far as next year's goals. This is something that is very dynamic. And so far, I think very successful. A number of new neighborhood associations, zero to date. But I know in talking with Chad that two new associations are in process or under consideration. Line 81, continuing funding for two neighborhood beat officers. Again, a very worthwhile program. We hope that you will continue to fund that in future budget years. Line 86, which is a number of abandoned vehicles towed already in our first quarter this year at 59%. Last year, the total amount towed was 83 vehicles. So good news, bad news. There's a lot of vehicles that we're towing. So hopefully that means we're cleaning up some of these neighborhoods. No doubt we would love for our residents to take care of these themselves. But if called upon, we will take care of it for the betterment of neighborhoods. Line 87, which is number of garbage complaints investigated slash cited. We're at 88% already in the first quarter of 2018. So 264 and our benchmark was set at 300. Again, sort of good news, bad news in calendar year 2017. We had 820 related complaints. So again, this is part of our plan of attack in working with some of these neighborhoods that are very fragile and hoping to provide a better environment for those that live in those areas or adjacent. Next slide, please. The fifth of six focus areas is governing and fiscal management. First one is on line 100. This is about Munis, which is our sort of master software programs, a module that we're going to be implementing in 2018 for the benefit of 2019 that's associated with our budget. So staff as they begin developing their budget requests. In the past, we've used Excel. Now we're going to be translating or transferring to this new module associated with our Munis system. Some additional, clearly it's additional work for our management team and their support staff. But once they get it underway, it should be helpful and be more efficient for them in future budget years. Line 88 is continuing providing detailed city budget documents to citizens. As you're aware, we create a budget brief. We put our budget on our draft budget on our website. And ultimately, when it's approved, we put in flip book format to make it easier for citizens to use it as a tool as they have an interest or a possible question. Line 92, a submit budget for GFOA award consideration that did occur. We should learn sometime in July if an award is merited. Line 94 is a newsletter, employee newsletter. They're done quarterly. Line 97 is a conducted transit transportation development program for the next five years of operations of Shoreline Metro. Derp Mink is working with Bay Lakes Regional Planning Commission on the development of a transit plan. Last slide I have is communication, our last focus area. Line 103 is create a monthly electronic community newsletter. In January, February, March, so 25% of our goal has been completed. Continue citizen survey on an annual basis. We moved from what had been in the past, a June or July survey period to February, March in 2018. We did that to make sure that you had information as we went into the updates for our strategic plans, action items, and critical measurements. And based upon staff's workload, we think we'll probably stay with that February, March survey timeframe. The next three are social media related, Twitter, next door, Facebook. We're seeing a significant increase in the amount of our followers, whether it be users or likes, whatever terminology is. Number of televised common counsel and community whole meetings, we're at 34%. So I think 10 meetings, again, January through March.  And they're almost at 200% of where they were, which was, again, as a new form of medium. They started with zero, now they're at, I think, 189. That concludes my remarks. Any questions? Again, I'll be giving you an update in roughly three months. Many of these measurements, plus others, the department heads will be presenting to you at your respective committee commissions and boards. You'll have an opportunity to maybe have a little more of two-way discussion, so I would encourage that if you have questions. As you know, as part of the retreat process, some additional critical measures or measurements were identified. And so staff is already gearing up for 2019 to, again, better match the critical measures that we keep track, in essence, our analytics, and what we think are critical reports of activity so you can have a better sense as to workload and ultimately our accomplishments. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for that report. Next, we move on to the Consent Agenda. That'll include items 2.0 through 2.26. Thank you, Mayor. Make a motion to accept and file all our O's, accept and adopt all our C's and pass all resolutions and ordinances. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on any of the items in the Consent Agenda? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Aye. Motion passes. Item is reports of officers. Items 3.1 through 3.5 will be referred to various committees. Under resolutions. Item 4.1 is resolution number 29 of 1819 by Alderperson Rindfleisch and Bourne, approving the Fiscal Year 2018 one-year annual action plan for the Community Development Black Grant Program submission. Alderperson Rindfleisch. Is there any objection to suspension? Very good. Then the motion is on the floor for discussion. Alderperson Sorensen. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a quick question. I know that this is the HUD Community Development Grant. I'm just curious why we're suspended for this one. I know that this is kind of a larger grant that we get from the federal government. I believe last session we suspended as well to pass this. If I was correct, I'm just curious why something like this is not going in being discussed through the Finance Committee. Thank you for that question. Elast City Planner, Chad Pellecek to respond. This is, it's actually, there's an RC that came out of finance and these items were supposed to be included in that RC and they were not. This has been approved by the Finance Committee at their last meeting. But this resolution is just kind of encompassing all the items together into one document so we can submit it to HUD. But it has been approved by the Finance Committee. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll. Eight ayes. Motion passes. Next move on to reports of committees. Item 5.1 is RC number 33 of 1819 by the Finance and Personnel Committee. To whom was referred, RO number 10 of 1819 by the Director of Planning and Development submitting a request to accept $20,000 in sponsorship contribution towards the 2018 City's Freedom Fest celebration from the Valrath Company recommends filing a document. Other person, Rin Flesch. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Other person, Rin Flesch. Thank you for those comments, well deserved. Seeing no other discussion, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion passes. Moving on to item 5.2, it's RC number 34 of 1819 by the Public Works Committee. To whom was referred, direct referral resolution number 4 of 1819 by Alderperson's Wolf and Sorensen authorizing and executing a sewer project memorandum of understanding for a project involving improvements to a portion of a sewer line located on South Business Drive to accommodate development within the South Point Enterprise Campus and recommends passing the resolution. Alderperson Wolf. Thank you, Mayor. Make a motion to accept and adopt and pass resolution. It should be to accept and adopt and pass the amended resolution. Sorry. Accept and adopt and pass amended resolution. Second. Okay, thanks for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? I should probably explain the changes. Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mayor. That's what I was going to ask Attorney Adams to go over the updated document as I haven't had a chance to review that when I did read the original. Attorney Adams? Yes. So this has been an ongoing project in negotiation with the town and the town sanitary district. There are three changes to the document that was in Board Docs to the document that you now have on paper in front of you. First, there was some back and forth just in the recitals. And we've agreed in Section C simply to indicate that the MOU is intended to provide the terms and conditions of the district's agreement to the property. And that's fine. That's pretty close to what we were looking for. There is an additional paragraph, the new paragraph one that was not in the prior document. Simply an indication the parties have authority to enter into the MOU under a particular Wisconsin statute. There's been some back and forth about that because this really is a memorandum of understanding. It is not a contract. A contract is one thing. A memorandum of understanding is designed to sort of explain a contract and explain how the parties understand it. But I don't have any particular objection to that additional document even though in some ways it refers to the wrong statute. There is also what is now paragraph three was a new paragraph. And that's probably where the potential rub is. The paragraph three does provide for the city and for the town to enter into negotiations to update an addendum to the master agreement that we currently have to the 1975 joint sewage agreement. So just as background, the 1975 joint sewage agreement is an agreement that the city has with a number of entities in the area including the town of Wilson. For basically a sewage district and that sewage comes into the city. The city treats that sewage. The city and the town of Wilson later I think around 1986 or somewhere around there entered into an addendum to that agreement just between the city and the town related to the fact that in that area you've got areas that are in the town. The city it's a very checkerboard pattern. And so relating how do we deal with the sewage in that area. The town as part of this has really insisted that the city enter into additional negotiations. Our position had been that those are really separate issues from what we're trying to do here. But we couldn't get them to do that and potentially they were holding up the project that we've got going down there. This language in essence it softens up some of what we had really objected to before they had laid out very specific language that they were saying that we would agree that this language would be in the document. I don't feel that we can commit you to that especially when we're just trying to get this passed through rather quickly. But this does commit us then to by no later than June 1 2019 or at least as close to that date as possible to look at some potential changes updating capacity allocation plans to reflect with the actual anticipated flows are in the area. Updating cost allocations creating some triggers that require actions by the parties and establishing a mechanism for intergovernmental cooperation for sewer planning because these because the towns current language which they provided three hours ago does not bind you into very specific agreements. My feeling is that while this is not the language I would write and if there weren't other things going on I would perhaps not recommend this given the cost benefit analysis of basically objecting to this and putting off the agreement. It's probably worthwhile to agree to these changes and so I think staff is making the recommendation that you do enter into it.  As a city attorney identified I'm in support of the amended changes that were given to you this evening as Chuck alluded to. This is something that we've been in discussions with the town of Wilson for several months. This is critical to our phase one construction of the 150 acres of the south point enterprise campus. Potentially without a memorandum of understanding again the DNR would not issue us a permit to allow us to proceed with the installation of the Sanctuary sewer associated with this phase one. And then potentially since we've awarded contracts there is the potential for a delay of construction penalty that the city could start incurring if we're not able to allow the contractor based upon their timetable to proceed with the project. Thank you for those comments. Is there any other discussion? All the person? Thank you Mr. Mayor. What is the number on that delayed construction penalty? We have not incurred any as of yet. But the concern is that you know it's the contractor has set aside time to perform in this business park. And as a result if they have to pull off or have this window where they're not in essence making a profit then the city potentially has some penalties that we would incur. Second thing I didn't mention is that you know without this memorandum of understanding the city possibly would resort to seeking a remedy legally and no doubt that would be additional costs the city could incur. I'd also like to ask Department of Public Works Director to respond to that. The potential could be you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in delay because you know the total contracts around $10.5 million in sanitary sewer is a portion of that at least I'm thinking a couple million dollars just in sanitary sewer cost alone. This section for the pipe bursting in that is almost a million dollars in and of itself that could be severely delayed. So that's again when we talk about cost benefit of expediting this contract versus taking a longer I guess legal and fight in other words to try to remedy is this is probably the best alternative. Many of the issues that that would be discussed as part of that addendum that they're talking about clearly are going to be triggered a lot by future city development. So the city has probably the burden of the majority of those future costs anyway. Just a matter we do have some other agreements with other townships such as the township Boigen for instance that talks about cost share of future developments as well as flows within joining pipes or joint joint sewer pipes in other words. So who pays for what based on volume in other words. There's already mechanisms that we can relate to. So although it's not the best but in terms of where we're headed in terms of timing. This is probably the most prudent thing at this point. Thank you very much. Is there any other discussion all the person boring. Thank you, Mayor. Director Beable is it kind of guesswork out there of what's coming because it's such a checkerboard of residences out there. Is it kind of a guesstimate of the city flows or the town flows. And my other question is when is the last time we've updated our our charges to those various townships etc that are that are using our wastewater treatment plan. Go ahead. We update the charges every year as part of the rates that we calculate based on our budget so those get updated every year. We are looking now however at especially now with the business center expansion as well as other lands for future development either residential development in the future based on land use future flows. So we're actively the town has done some of those calculations. We have done some now we need to get together and based on what development occurs on vacant land. Either industrial commercial or residential it depends on that type of development on on the future flows and that will be that's what will probably be the biggest source of this. Addendum will be how do we calculate it how do we come to a mutual understanding of what those future calculations will be. As far as what the flow is what this out in that area what the flow is from the city and what the flow is from the from the town. Correct. And what would what really needs to happen is the current infrastructure infrastructure that serves this area is undersized for future development. Let's say 2550 years in the future once this land which is is is and you know basically experiencing more and more pressure to be developed along this corridor. The existing infrastructure will be inadequate for future. So what we need to do is design accordingly and then build that infrastructure. Once we build it it will be who pays for it. And it's basically based on volume and flows who is sending the amount of volume and then there's cost sharing agreements that we can can work through with these agreements. Thanks. Any other discussion. City Attorney is it expected that the town board will be voting on this same measure this evening. What I've been told is that they have already provided authorization for this document as it is. It's actually not the town board but it's the the sewage district. Okay. All right. With that any other discussion. Not will the clerk please call the roll for passage. Eight eyes. Motion passes. Item 5.3 is RC number 35 of 1819 by the finance and personnel committee. Who was referred resolution number 12 of 1819 by the resolution. By all the person right flesh authorizing a transfer of appropriations in the 2018 budget and recommends the resolution. All the person right flesh. Thank you for that motion in support. Is there any discussion on the motion. Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll. Eight eyes. Motion passes. Next item is item 5.4 that's RC number 36 of 1819 by the finance and personnel committee. Who was referred resolution number 13 of 1819 by all the persons down here in Sorensen providing for the sale of approximately 25,000 excuse me 25 million 465,000 in general obligation promissory notes and note anticipation notes. And recommends passing the resolution. All the person right flesh. Thank you for that motion in support. Is there any discussion on the motion. All the person right flesh. Thank you very much for those comments. Any other discussion. Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll. Eight eyes. Motion passes. Item 5.5 is RC number 37 of 1819 by the public works committee. Who was referred resolution number 17 of 1819 by all the persons will from Sorensen approving the terms and conditions of the land lease for the boots and sports complex between the city of Sheboygan and Lakeshore United FC for a soccer facility to be located on the west of south business drive between Hiawatha court and Barron's Parkway and recommends passing the resolution. All the person will. Thank you. I make a motion to accept and adopt and pass resolution. Second. Thank you for the motion in support. Is there any discussion on the motion. All the person will thank you. Mayor. This is a great opportunity that's going to be a legacy for the city of Sheboygan with the growth and development of this facility. It's going to be as we were told, you know, probably the diamond that'll bring people to not just Sheboygan County but to the city of Sheboygan with a lot of tourism, a lot of games, young generations, old generations having a lot of fun. So this is going to be a great opportunity for many lifetimes. Okay, next. All the person boring. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to basically second what Alderman Wolff said. This is in my district 10 and this is going to be excellent for the south side of Sheboygan. I've read the document. I think it's a good document for both parties and I'm looking forward to this coming to fruition. Any other discussion. Seeing none. All those in favor. Sorry, we have to take a roll call on this. Eight eyes. Motion passes. Under general ordinances, 6.1 is general ordinance number four. And that'll be referred. And under other matters, city attorney, 7.1 is an RO by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending December 31, 2018, April 14, 2019, June 30, 2019 and June 30, 2020. That'll be referred to the Licensing, Hearings and Public Safety Committee. Next is contemplated motion to go into closed session. Alderperson Wolff. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to convene in closed session under section 19.85 sub 1 sub e of the Wisconsin stats for the purpose of deliberating possible tentative agreement with the Sheboygan professional police officers association. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Motion's on the floor with a clerk. Please call the roll. Eight eyes. Motion passes. We'll take a two or three minute recess and then reconvene. Thank you very much. And to those watching at home, we will be rather a journey in closed session. So this will end our broadcast for this evening. We will be taking action. I'm sorry. We will be coming back.


The employer praise principle says that no worker should pay for a job, the cost of recruitment should be borne not by the worker, but by the employer. We set it up that way to show the recruitment industry that there's still a place for them in this space as well. It's just that they need to change the way that they're taking their fee at the moment, so that they take their fee from the employer for services provided. And companies are really starting to look for ways that they can ensure that workers aren't just being treated well within their supply chains, but also the entire recruitment phase is being challenged. And the global compact provides the space where there can be an alignment of that work by the private sector, but also with the very necessary role that government can play in that space. This doesn't just protect workers, but provides this level playing field for business to compete fairly within the law, without being undercut by companies who have no ethics whatsoever.


Is it a wall that's turned? Oh how weird I Thought we were gonna land it, but we are kind of through the parking lot Hello everybody, I'm EvilRabbit. We're here in a drift tune rear-wheel-drive Subaru Bradley car converted to drift car on a GT4 map from Grand Theft Auto 4 So make sure you follow me on all social media all the fun shoots box below. We're gonna do some street drifting. Let's get to it so I've not Really driven this this map at all. I did a little testing here just to make sure everything was slightly good But I have absolutely no idea what's on this map and this is a newly Rural drive converted Subaru installed it Oh Okay, that's a little bumpy I'm feeling Bumpsons map. Oh This is a handful But what better way to bring out a bit of a fresh. Oh Fresh real-drive drift car then to go on the streets. This car's got a lot of force feedback And these bumps are crazy Let's take it that way We got it. Man, this is a lot of fun We're kind of just pre-styling this Okay, this car has Massive amounts of feedback why something I need to Correct, I think we can drift to that building.  We're gonna try and go through it. Oh, man. This is really bumpy This is probably not the best Tract to be freaking out this car to give it a shot, but we're going full send you guys have this map or not I'll leave the link down in the description box below to get it off of Lawson Well, that's why I get all my jerk mods. I remember being this bumpy in the game. Oh Boy, then again, I don't remember ever using a wheel either. No, it could have been this bumpy This is like trying to Drive on gravel and bumpy surfaces rally car.  They're all just when we came but oh Geez trying to remember remember this map for what it was There's a lot of jumpers going on This sawing at this wheel. This thing keeps snapping a lot of my hands Probably need to Lower our fourth feet back down some We are just basically throwing up. It's the Jim Connors Street style through this thing It's sweet if we had other cars on here or maybe a cop car chasing us an idea do a little Cat and mouse or Good guy bad guy drifting through the streets. This is something else that was really airborne Like I said, I don't remember it being this bumpy in the game, but then again We're on controller I don't know we're going This is a workout hop over and kind of just jump ourselves To the highway basically we can't get a little speed run in the subi. Oh boy. Is it a wall? Let's turn oh I thought we were I Thought we were gonna land it, but we are kind of through the parking lot. That was kind of epic that we ended up Kind of where we started we wouldn't have fallen through the map. I'm gonna go up this gas. So I'm gonna go this way Why do I force myself to do this? I Should have started 360 Done it That would have been okay, we got to do it again now. I've been super cool. We gotta do this We need to Come full send down this off-ramp Drive it like we would In real life, it's really bumpy and really narrow You got it though. Whoa. Oh, man. Oh Estation a little bit of hooning through all through the streets Grand theft auto for there's a lot of fun if you guys enjoy this guys want to keep seeing more You're on the channel and of course, let me know down comments down below. They said I'll leave the link for the map Description a lot of this map does not look very familiar to me. Oh, but we're trying So I think that might do it here for this episode here on the set of Corsa Doing a little crazy street fun. There was always I like thank you guys for coming back I'm gonna upset my wrist. I need to turn the feedback down Me full friend. Oh Jesus. Oh, no. Oh, no. I'll see you guys. Oh My gosh What I do this? Oh Hurts my hands It's weird


About three days ago, my wife told me that she wanted to go somewhere. I didn't want her to go. At the same time, I didn't want to control her life. So I was like, okay, yeah. Trying to cool my anger about this situation, she came to me in the kitchen and asked, is there money in this ATM card? My response to that question was a statement I'm too embarrassed to share in public. I regretted that moment and I had to apologize to her after I got my head back.  In fact, God made the world with words. Now, you don't even have to believe in the Bible of God. If you believe in science, that's enough. According to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts. Still wondering why life is messy for most people? Well, we wake up every day and spend the entire day unconsciously killing ourselves. With 80% negative thoughts and those being repeated every day of our lives, how can we ever succeed? Many research studies have shown optimism as a real impact on the ultimate success or failure in life. Those who are more optimistic can see into a brighter future, meaning they are more resilient in the face of day-to-day struggles. Now, as we approach a new year, I want to share with you three sentences or statements you should stop saying to yourself. 1. All opportunities are taken When I was growing up in a Nigerian village, I observed that most people seem to hate whoever is wealthy. I didn't understand why, until later in life when I noticed that people tend to believe that the rich have taken all the opportunities in the world and therefore nothing is left for them. Okay, wait, let me tell you something blunt. Opportunities are like rivers. You can take some water from the river, but you hardly can take all the water. Let me explain this with some example. Opportunity escapes from the old to the young. Let me explain this with some examples. When Mark Zuckerberg was dreaming of a world where everyone is connected, according to him, he thought that giants like Google or Yahoo could only build such platforms. But none of those guys in these giant companies could see a perfect picture the way Mark saw it. Most people see Elon Musk as a giant billionaire today, but he didn't have that brand until he dared Tesla and SpaceX. The question here is, why didn't Toyota, Benz or other automobile giants be the king of electric cars? Well, they are too old to see those opportunities. You see, the whole point I'm making here is that opportunities can never be caged by certain persons no matter how rich or big they are. By its very nature, opportunities often escape the old and go to the young.  As we start a new year, stop believing that opportunity is nowhere. Stop saying you're screwed. Start repairing yourself for an opportunity. Start being optimistic that you can find a loophole in the market that will make you rich. 2. Yesterday was better There are several versions of this statement. Some people say millennials are screwed or things used to be cheap. A friend of mine complained to me several months ago that he is poor because there were fewer opportunities in the world today, unlike his grandfather's time. Well, most people who think this way don't know what they are talking about. I built my first successful company in the year 2016 and within a year, we were making money in about 21 states of my country, Nigeria, and other 4 countries of the world. I was living in a very small town, yet my company made money from many countries. Who do you think could have done that just 50 years ago? Do you think such a thing was possible 100 years ago? Look at this channel. We started it for free. And today our audiences are from about 100 countries of the world. Some of you watching this video are from America, India, South Africa, and while I sit down one Saturday morning in my Lagos office to write the scripts for this video. Was that possible for an ordinary person just 30 years ago? How then can people be deceived to believe that things are more difficult? Today is worse than yesterday or that our fathers had it better? As we enter a new year, stop believing such silly things. Now is the best time any human can ever live in. It's 10 times easier to make money, become a success or be happy now than at any point in entire human history. You're not screwed. Your father or grandfather didn't have it better. You're lucky to be alive today. If you are curious enough to look for that luck. 3. The next president will solve my problems In my country in Nigeria, the best time to be alive is in the election year. Everyone is excited. Everyone is happy. Everyone seems to be busy talking and hoping. I remember my father always running around for campaigns and telling us when he gets home, you see if XYZ becomes the governor, he will provide jobs for my children and that's what I'm working for. No politician ever provided jobs for his children and none of his children had a better life because he was busy campaigning. As we start a new year, stop expecting that anyone will solve your money problem, not even the elected politicians. You see, life is too complex. It's like biblical salvation. Nobody can get it for you. Traditionally in Africa, your parents never push you out of the home. If you have some money and you need it at 33, they are willing to give it to you. However, as a guy of 21 or 22, I told my elder brother that I wanted to break away from my parents. I wanted to live my life without expecting any favors from them. I wanted to fight for my life and see whether I will win. Not just my parents, I never expected any favor from the government. See, political leaders don't solve personal problems. Stop hoping that the next president of your country will make your life better in any way. If you want it, it's up to you. This doesn't mean that you can't seek help, partnerships or assistance from other people. But you can't possibly expect they must say yes to you. Here are the things I've discussed with you so far. 1. Stop saying that you're screwed or that every opportunity has been taken. If you prepare yourself, remain optimistic and search curiously, you'll find more opportunities in the world than you ever need. 2. Stop thinking that life was better for your father or grandparents. Such thoughts make you weak. Now is the best time to be alive. You're lucky to be here now. 3.  Nobody will solve your problem and the good news is that you have what it takes to fight hard and win in the battle of life. My name is Steve Courage. I'm a Nigerian entrepreneur who lives in Lagos. If you wish to know more about me, see my ugly face or consume videos I specifically make for Africans, check the description box and join my new channel where I show my face and teach Africans how to build successful businesses. I love you.


Welcome to the 23rd International Relations Capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. The topic today is a new pandemic treaty proposed by the World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization in a decision on 31st May 2021. The idea is that the members of the World Health Organization would get together from November onwards to negotiate a treaty which would strengthen the World Health Organization to deal with future pandemics in the light of the experience gained in dealing with COVID-19. The expectation is that the failure of the United Nations to deal with COVID-19 should be examined and measures should be taken to deal with such emergencies in future with greater efficiency, incorporate them in a treaty and thus enable the United Nations to deal with such situations in the future. All of us know how the United Nations failed to deal with COVID-19 at the appropriate time. When the WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, ideally the United Nations Security Council should have met and authorized the entire UN system including the specialized agencies to work together to combat this pandemic. But we all know why it did not happen. It did not happen because there was suspicion even at that time that China was somehow responsible for the outbreak or at least China had kept it a secret that the Wuhan virus was so lethal and many people had died in China even before the New England. So China used its veto in order to prevent a meeting of the Security Council to take any action. Not even a meeting of the Council was possible. Many statements were made outside but the Security Council did not take any action and therefore the whole issue was moved to the WHO. President Trump criticized the WHO, left it, Chinese defended the WHO and made more contributions to it. So in a sense, international action was stopped by China's attitude and the entire process of dealing with the pandemic fell into the lap of the WHO. This was particularly objectionable because at the time of epidemics like HIV, AIDS, Ebola, SARS, etc., the entire UN machinery was deployed effectively and the situation was brought under control. This demonstrated the fundamental flaw in the United Nations which is that the power of the veto has given the permanent members of the Security Council absolute power even in very grave circumstances. This is the first time that the veto was used to prevent the UN from saving the world from such a disaster. So now the thought of a treaty has come. After millions have died, many have suffered, livelihoods have been lost and irreparable damage has been done to the economy of the world. So it was not because of lack of any system or scheme that the UN failed because if this is an existential threat to mankind, there is no greater to international peace and security. There's no greater threats to international peace and security. So quite obviously the Security Council could have done that. Having failed to do that, now the WHO is finding a kind of excuse that there was not enough machinery, resources and regulations to deal with it. This is really not true because the World Health Organization has detailed regulation relating to pandemics. There was no vacuum of international law to deal with the situation and as it happened in the earlier cases, the UN could have easily dealt with the situation, energized all the specialized agencies and thus prevented or at least reduced the catastrophic effect of COVID-19. So in a sense, World Health Organization is doing something which the UN does all the time. When they fail in something, they blame the institutional structure and the loss and then some good intention people will get together and to prevent this kind of thing, let us have a new treaty, new convention, new declaration, new resolution. None of it was really necessary. So in a sense, this is a kind of cover-up that it was because of the lack of a properly negotiated instrument that the UN and the WHO failed in it. So the idea is that negotiations will start in November 2021 to draw such a treaty because pandemic is a global challenge and no single government or institution can address the threat of future pandemics at all. It is believed that a legally binding instrument under international law would enable countries around the globe to strengthen national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. Even though the decision was taken by consensus, all the countries of the world are not unanimous in the need for a long negotiations and discussions in order to come to a treaty of this nature because there is no vacuum as far as international law is concerned. But the proposal has come from Europe, the European Council. They had proposed it as early as end of 2020, but it did not gather much momentum and now 194 nations have agreed to do that. But among them, 25 heads of states and international agencies have come up with a statement to support the initiative, thinking that there is not enough enthusiasm for long negotiations. People are more interested in action. So these heads of states, including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Chancellor of Germany, President of European Council, heads of government of Spain, Norway, etc., have issued this statement urging the international community to seriously consider negotiations. This has also said too, for the feeling that it may not be enthusiastically received by the other countries. So it is yet to be seen how the negotiations will begin and how it will be completed. Something that we must note is that the US, China, Russia and India are not among these 25 countries. So many countries have reservations on this decision, but this is like motherhood, who can challenge the United Nations having a set of decisions in a treaty in order to deal with the pandemic. So nobody will oppose it, but many people feel that this was not necessary. So what the WHO is proposing is nothing but a standard practice of multilateral institutions to create new institutions and the bureaucracy. And much of the resources necessary for relief, etc., could get diverted to this new organization or a new bureaucracy. That is the hesitation that people have. But the expectation is that such a treaty can enhance international cooperation in a number of priority areas, such as surveillance, alerts and response, but also in general trust in the international health system. A globally coordinated approach to discovering, developing and delivering effective and safe medical solutions, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and protective equipment would benefit collective health security. The objectives proposed are certainly novel. But as I said earlier, all these were possible if there was the political will on the part of the United Nations to do that. If you examine the international health regulations of the WHO, you will see that the presumption is that a pandemic outbreak might take place in a developing country. This was the presumption and it will spread to the developed world. So in this set of regulations, the stress is on the possibility of a poor country causing somewhere in the south and then it's slowly spreading to the north. But our experience this time was the exact opposite. Of course, China is a developing country, but the outbreak in the world came when it infected Italy, United States, UK, Germany and other developed western countries. So this is the main correction that you may be required that a pandemic need not necessarily be originating in a developed country. It could also happen elsewhere. Of course, in this particular case, there is already an investigation was already done about the origin of the virus and the WHO inspection unit said that they could not say whether this was natural virus or it was created in a laboratory. But it is widely believed as President Trump himself had believed right from the beginning that this was created by a Wuhan laboratory and the Chinese had suppressed the truth of the matter. Now President Biden has called for another investigation and we do not know how far it will go, but it's quite possible that China will use all the tricks in their bag in order to prevent the truth from coming out. So perhaps one of the reasons why this negotiations on a treaty have been started to divert attention from the discussion on the origin of the virus. So a new pandemic treaty in my view, if it has to be successful, we will have to set aside the conventional wisdom of absolute sovereignty for the country's concern. Because whenever we talk about UN action in certain cases, there is always the principle of consent of the party's concern, even in peacekeeping operations for example. The consent of the party is necessary in order to send a peacekeeping force to any country or any border. And it cannot be removed unless the party is concerned with it. We know the case of the Kashmir peacekeeping operation. There is a peacekeeping unit called UN MOGIT, between India and Kashmir, established with the consent of India and Pakistan. But now it is not doing any work, we do not recognize it because the ceasefire line is not there anymore and it's only a line of control which has no relevance to the United Nations. But United Nations cannot withdraw the peacekeeping operation between India and Pakistan unless both sides agree. We agree but Pakistan does not agree. And so we still have the peacekeeping operation doing nothing. UN is spending money, Pakistan is spending money, we are spending money too, though we would have liked it to be withdrawn. So this is a very important principle in international relations. So the worry about preaching relating to a pandemic is whether the nations will agree to deployment of relief personnel or distribution of vaccine etc. without insisting on their sovereignty for decision making. In fact, if we do not have that possibility of right to influence or right even to intervene, a treaty like this would be not very useful. And this is a concern we have. How much will you be able to do this if necessary even if the nation concerned does not want such intervention? So that will be the crux of the negotiations when they take place. Will the theory of sovereignty and interests of the countries and then finally the treaty will become a meaningless document with the common denominators. They will say the subject to the willingness of the countries concerned and so many considerations will be made and a set of elaborate regulations will be made and it will not be very effective. So whether this treaty will make up for the Security Council having failed humanity on this occasion is the question. Very often what happens is many important issues relating to peace and security are sent to the General Assembly because the Security Council is unable to act because of a veto. There is a uniting for peace resolution according to which if an issue is not possible to consider in the Security Council, they shift it to the General Assembly and discuss and vote on it and most of the time the General Assembly resolution is adopted. But the difference is the General Assembly resolutions are only recommended to be while the Security Council resolutions are mandatory. So on many issues relating to global competence or the global security, such things are negotiated only in the General Assembly because Security Council can only deal with threat to international peace and security. So we can argue that pandemic belongs to that category since it was not done, now this will go to the World Health Organization and the General Assembly. So we have experience of this kind of treaties like for example climate change. The Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It was a very good outcome at that time because very many principles of equity, justice were incorporated into that and developing countries were supposed to get technology and resources to deal with the Climate Change Challenge. But we know what has happened since then. Meeting after meeting, principle after principle was being dropped from the future negotiations of protocols and decision making etc. So in 1992 to now, most of the principles adopted in Rio de Janeiro have been dropped and we have come to the Paris Agreement which is entirely voluntary and also further now we are moving towards a new regime by which each member state is supposed to declare when they will be carbon free and work for it and there is no talk about technology or resources for the development practice. So such negotiations may raise many hopes but it may not reach a conclusion that is desired and that is the problem of multilateral institutions. Another example is a comprehensive convention on terrorism which India proposed to the UN General Assembly. I personally presented it in the General Assembly in 1992. Of course, people misunderstood it. They said that this is a trick by India to criticize Pakistan and negotiations started, how do we start the negotiations and it has not started even till today. Basically the problem was how do you define terrorism? This is the funny thing about the UN. You are negotiating a convention against terrorism and then people ask questions as to what is terrorism and therefore we are not able to move forward. So even here the question may be immediately asked how do we know it is a pandemic or we know where we originated and all these things are real excuses for inaction which of course the United Nations is famous for but this our draft for a comprehensive convention on terrorism was lying around in the sixth committee which is a legal committee of the United Nations for some years but suddenly when 9-11 occurred there was a great interest in this convention against terrorism. Only it appeared that it will immediately be adopted by the General Assembly because of the sense of despair and the sense of feeling that we had that the whole globe was under the attack by terrorism but it cooled off, special meetings were held, special discussions were held, everybody spoke about the need to adopt this convention but again somebody asked but what is terrorism and the whole thing stopped. So the history of the UN recently negotiating a set of rules which will give it strength to deal with such important issues that has not been very encouraging. Of course we have many conventions and declarations quite particularly human rights conventions etc are helpful you can criticize some countries for not following those agreements will stay themselves have accepted all this happens all the time. So basically what the UN tries to do is establish standardization of behavior but within which that standardization of behavior it happens that many countries will escape responsibility. Developed countries have really escaped the responsibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and also supporting developing countries to do so. So the fear is that and so what are the things that we should look for in this? What is it that countries have to insist in this new pandemic treaty? In my view it should focus on security of people without considering national borders because when you say health security it is not the security of borders or security of countries it is the security of people. Are we willing to accept that? And since this is a matter of international peace and security this dimension should be taken into account and perhaps say in the treaty that in such circumstances the batter will be immediately referred to the security council for action and this is the test whether such a provision can be included in the new convention because everybody accepts that nobody is safe until everybody is safe. So even if the entire world is focused on something suppose one country like China or anybody else says that we do not need your support we will manage it ourselves and perpetuate the pandemic than what happens. So there are many possibilities of course they will take the WHO regulations and correct them here and there update them etc. But in my view unless this relationship with the security council is established in a binding of course similar resolutions are not binding or at least in a recommendationally manner included in the new pandemic treaty such a treaty may not be of great use. Hopefully there will be no pandemic in the for the next 100 years and so the world will carry on. But to have a meaningful treaty we need to deal with the issue of borders and security of health means security of mankind and security of a particular country and the country should be able to surrender a bit of their sovereignty to enable the UN to take action and that is where we may probably have a problem with this. But interestingly in as early as 2005 Barack Obama who was a senator at that time had predicted something similar because he said that in an age when you can board planes in Bangkok or Hong Kong and arrive in Chicago, Indiana police or New York in hours we must face the reality that these exotic killer diseases are not isolated health problems half a world away but direct and immediate threats to security and prosperity here at home in the United States. So at that time there was no COVID-19 but he had the vision or the fear to think that such a thing could happen and if we are able to accept that fact that this is a common threat to humanity and able to incorporate in this new pandemic treaty it may not be worthwhile. So let us see how the negotiations take place and what route it will take and whether in the continuing crisis around the world the United Nations will have the will to draft a treaty which will be effective timely and every country will be accountable to implement it. Thank you very much.


Welcome to our hands-up date. These are today's headlines. The French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is currently conducting its first operations against ISIL from the Arabian Gulf. Charles de Gaulle is the flagship of Commander Task Force 50, which is currently led by French rear admiral Rene Jean Crignola. Crignola's leadership of CTF 50 marks the first time that the French Navy has commanded a U.S. Task Force in the region. USS Kiersarge hosted a special visitor this weekend in time for the holidays. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his wife visited the deployed amphibious assault ship to share their holiday message and their appreciation with Kiersarge's sailors and Marines. As the 21 days of fitness continues, it is important to not only take care of your physical health but your mental and spiritual health as well. Navy chaplains are standing by ready to help. If you would like to learn more about the role chaplains can play in your mental and spiritual health, visit the Navy live blog. You can read more about what's happening around your Navy at navy.mil.