Good evening everyone. Welcome to tonight's meeting. Before we start the meeting I'd ask our city clerk to Give us a quote of the week. Thank you, mayor Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare Thank you Call it 13 the regular meeting of the Common Council to order Please call the roll. Lauren Berg Serda Excuse Davis excuse graph Hannah Kittleson Clowness Manny Myer Montemayor Racky Ryan Susha Vanderwill and we're hassled 14 present quorum is present this time and so I'd ask the 4-H club to lead us in the pledge of allegiance a Front please who's gonna be the lead? I pledge allegiance to the flag United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God Indivisible with liberty and justice for all Thank you President Burke. Yes. Thank you. I asked that we dispense with reading of the minutes and that the approved be approved Is entered on the record? Motion second any Discussion on the minutes They're being on all those in favor say aye Any opposed motion carries. Thank you Next item will be mayor's appointments and confirmation of appointments First one is stated today hereby submit the following appointment for your consideration All the person James graph to be considered for appointment to the Blue Harbor Resort Convention Center Committee to fill the unexpired term of Alderperson Jeff Radke whose term expired 4 16 0 7 signed by the mayor that will lie over and Reappoint Rick Scroggins Mary and Keith are and Mike van der steen for new three-year terms On the business improvement district board to expire 9 11 0 9 signed by the mayor That's for motion to confirm Motion second to confirm any discussion There being none all those in favor say aye Any opposed motion carries appointments confirm Thank you Proclamation of a for Appreciating teen month. I'd ask that Jessica Dalsky step forward This is a proclamation that we that I'm proclaiming appreciate teens month this month And it's very appropriate because as you know the teens or our future and many of them Hopefully will be sitting where you're sitting and I know it sounds scary, but believe me. It's a good thing. Okay Whereas the civic bodies and service organizations of our community in the departments of government Recognize the great service rendered to the city of Sheboygan by the family resources Center of Sheboygan County And whereas this organization of civic-minded members has contributed materially to the betterment of the city of Sheboygan through its participation and involvement in all areas of service and Whereas the appreciate teens month committee has said in motion a countywide appreciate teens month promotion Now therefore I want Perez mayor of the city of Sheboygan do hereby proclaim that October 1st through October 31st is Appreciate teens month. Thank you very much For the family resource centers of Sheboygan County and the appreciate teens month committee. I'd like to thank you guys. Thank you I'd ask said mr. Randy Meyer step forward and this is another one for our youth My sorry sir. Good evening Proclamation whereas 4h is a community where young people learn leadership citizenship and life skills And whereas 4h is one of the largest youth development organizations in Wisconsin with nearly one in every 33 Wisconsin youth belong to a 4-H club and Whereas 4h in Wisconsin claims 37,000 youth members and 14,000 adult volunteers while Sheboygan's County's 4-H program numbers over 1060 members and over 400 volunteers and Whereas 4h is part of the University of Wisconsin extension cooperative extension system is a program where youth learn together in all kinds of projects Events and activities and whereas 4h has been helping youth and adults learn grow and work together for more than 100 years Now therefore I want Perez mayor of the city of Sheboygan do hereby proclaim October 1st through the 7th 2006 as national 4-H week Congratulations Thank You Mayor Perez on behalf of the 4-H youth and the leaders of Sheboygan County and also there are few in the city of Sheboygan We hope to increase those this year. I'd like to thank you for issuing this proclamation I also have some some gifts for the mayor and if possible. We have a 4-H flag that could perhaps be flown over a location in the city Thank you very much Yes, um, Henry Capitulo and Henry I need your home address, please 1619 North 38th Street And that's the town of Sheboygan Okay, you want to pull the mic up just a little bit then we'll there you go, and you will have five minutes, sir Okay, I Would like the council to seriously look at the priorities that face you when developing and approving the budget for this coming year You as elected officials must look at what city departments are more critical to the safety and well-being of this community I know that you want to be fair and possibly ask all city departments to make the same amount of reductions Or even more because of the budget situation I have heard that the police department is being asked to make a reduction of over five hundred and thirty four thousand dollars I would like to ask if any of you have done any research on the crime statistics such as actual crimes committed Statistical changes in crimes crime criminal offend offenders victim characteristics number of police officers in other Wisconsin cities and in the city Sheboygan and Or increase in certain crimes for example every 23 23.1 seconds one violent crime is committed every 32 minutes and 0.6 minutes one murder is committed Every five point six minutes one forceful forcible rape is committed In fact, this is one of the crimes that has increased by one point one percent in the Midwest Every one point three minutes one robbery is committed Every thirty six point nine seconds one aggravated assault is committed furthermore Every three point one seconds one property crime is committed Property crimes make up seventy five percent of all crimes committed Every fourteen point seven seconds one burglary is committed Every four point five seconds one larceny theft is committed Every twenty five point five seconds one motor vehicle theft is committed property crime Not violent provided the highest percent of crime against persons age 65 and older About one in five personal crimes against the elderly were thefts Compared to one in 33 in person's persons ages 12 to 49 More than nine in ten crimes against the elderly were property crimes while persons aged 12 to 24 Experienced only four in ten The estimated number of arrest of drug abuse violations for adults has been increasing as has the number of adults Convicted of a felony in state courts In fact the Midwest ranked second in the United States for sale and manufacturing of drugs Over half of the increase in state prison population since 1995 is due to an increase in the prisoners convicted of violent offenders The percent of the percentage of crime reported to the police has been increasing in fact in fact Direct expenditures for each of the major criminal justice functions police correction police Corrections and judicial have been increasing local government spend more criminal justice than state government and federal government You may say what does this have to do with us? My response is that Wisconsin and the city of Sheboygan are not immune to crime We cannot insulate ourselves from what is happening more and more We are seeing an increase in crime within the city of Sheboygan ten years ago It was not common to read such things in the Sheboygan press as man charged in home invasion 45 45 year old man child charged with felony child abuse 24 year old Sheboygan man was convicted in March of leaving a court appearance for beating his girlfriend to attack her again Furthermore it has been documented that we have a very serious drug problem in the city of Sheboygan that includes such drugs as crack cocaine Crystal meth marijuana prescription drugs as oxy cotton Vicodin and other such narcotics and dangerous narcotics such as heroin morphine and methadone You may say this is hard to believe but it is true Just ask the policemen and police women that work on the streets of Sheboygan Just ask yourself how many crystal meth labs have been found operating in the city of Sheboygan and have been shut down by our police department I say to you now is not the time to be cutting the police budget Be responsible and look into these issues You cannot say I support the police department and look to slash their resources to fight crime Keep in mind the city has already provided developer Developers loans such as blue harbor four million dollars and all they have to do to pay this back is to pay their property taxes Sheboygan senior community Inc. 2.5 million dollar grant is an incentive payment If the city can afford to make these kinds of deals with developers who stand to make millions Such as the former CEO of Great Lakes who received a bonus of close to two million dollars when the company went public How many millions of dollars will Sheboygan senior community Inc be making excuse me Henry would you like an additional minute your five minutes are would you like It how many millions of dollars will Sheboygan senior community Inc be making it is Is it asking too much to make the same kind of investment in our police department to fight crime? When looking to attract new businesses Development in the city of Sheboygan keep in mind They too must share the burden that other homeowners and existing businesses Already are responsible through their local taxes Do not lessen their tax responsibility at the expense of cutting other city services such as law enforcement The city of Sheboygan is entrusted the tax the city of Sheboygan is entrusted by the taxpayers To generate revenue for the city and not just spend their money Thank you very much. Thank you Henry and that is it Thank you very much Next item on the agenda is a I'd like to make some comments to the council to the community first thing I'd like to talk to the council about would be the perhaps asking you to revisit the rules of order procedure and conduct and And it's this little booklet here that was prepared and adopted by the council in March 6th of 06th There's been some concern that perhaps Alderman and committee members are getting a little bit lax and procedure and conduct during some committee meetings and It's a particularly a particular concern because You deserve respect you've earned the title of Alderman and you deserve respect from the public and Respect from each other and that's very important because when we break that respect we break More things and we can envision at times and it's very important to To not only extend respect to ourselves, but to remind ourselves what it is that What a relation is to each other and to the community? So again, I would ask that please review the general rules if you don't have a copy my office can provide one for you and If you have any questions feel free to ask me The other area I'd like to talk about would be the We hear so much we hear so much talk about taxes and We've talked about taxes before and in the committee of the whole and in other committees and The city in Alderman and in particular the mayor gets blamed for high taxes You get blamed for high taxes and you get blamed for a lot of things and so do I and that's just the nature Of the job that we have and we have to live with that. Oh, I always joke that I I Put in 10 to 12 hours of work get blamed for 20 and get paid for five And that's just the way it works and I feel that some of you may may do the same thing But it's important to know that property taxes are tax and levied collected and levied by five political entities and that's the school district would be the biggest entity to do that and they 38% of your dollars tax dollars goes to the school district. Now. Why am I saying that? That's because everybody thinks that the city taxes or just city taxes the taxes people pay or divided in five The city's portion is 33% and I know I've joked before but in the more I think about it I think I'm serious we should we deserve only 33% of the criticism because that's the amount of taxes that we assess The next entity would be the county. They're responsible for 22% now You don't hear much about the county, but they're still collecting taxes from the city taxpayers a little over 13 million dollars of city taxpayer dollars is on the county tax levy And many have asked what do we get for it? You need to ask that question yourself The other entity political entity would be LTC Lake York Tech College. They collect about 6% Now this year their Their levy is going to go up About 3.5% That's LTC The state always gets a little bite of the apple so the state's going to get 1% Those are the five entities that are collecting taxes from our residents here in Sheboygan school city county LTC and the state Now it's important to note that the council and I have been challenged to keep a 0% increased tax levy The problem there is that if the county does not do the same thing the school does not do the same thing LTC does not do the same thing People are still going to see any increase in taxes and guess who's going to get blamed for it We are for the most part It's important that we challenge the other entities who are responsible for this tax burden if that's what you want to call it to meet our standards of Performing in government and that is at a 0% increase The school is likely to go up the county as you know announced in the paper I believe last week they're going to go up 2.3% And I believe that sir cap that's about as high as they can go Hours is about 1.3 under the 2% cap limit that we've got There's people now, and you've heard it tonight Concern about cuts being made in the budget You have to make a choice you can't cut taxes and you can't increase expenditures it just doesn't work that way our Expenditures far exceed our revenues and they create this little gap big gap called a deficit So we have to adjust that either way And that's the challenge because Somewhere in between there is our job and that is to provide the basic services people expect deserve Pay for in a consistent effective cost of cost effective manner And we have to do that and wait against their ability to pay That's what they're asking us to do We have a job not only to do that but also To try to inform the public about what our job is and what it is we're trying to do Many times because we propose a tax cut or we propose cuts in departments We're perceived as anti this anti that or you you're not being sensitive to the needs You're not being sensitive to that it's not the case all we're trying to do is be good managers Of the revenues that we have and good stewards of the taxpayer money That's all we are trying to do Now the other thing that I'd ask the council to consider would be to Consider being a disseminator of information as I said and to champion The positive things that are happening in shambuagon There's a lot of good happening in shambuagon and I think it would this message would be stronger if 16 alderman and the mayor Would champion the positive message out in the community? We have a responsibility to go talk to people and say this is what's going on This is what's happening good in our community because there is a lot the other thing that I think that that we need to do is When we talk about informing the public we need to let the public know a lot of the basis for our decisions And by that I mean we don't have to say well, this is it This is what I took into consideration. I took this into consideration I think that when you make a decision and I've said it before you represent a district But you don't just impact that district you impact the whole community So your job is a little bigger than just representing your district Along those lines we're going to have to consider making some tough choices in our budget and There's going to be repercussions for that and reactions for that But if we don't have if we don't call upon our political will and strength is alderman To do what we need to do We're always going to have the same problems And I'm willing to say tonight That a zero percent increase in the levy may just not fly next year We have cut to the bone this year is cut into the bone folks Next year a zero percent increase in the levy is going to me Positively mean cutting people away You're going to have and I'm not talking just two or three You're talking about a lot of people are gonna have to get out because our expenditures are going to reoccur They're going to increase and our revenue isn't going anywhere So our problems if you think they're bad today, they're going to be worse next year And this is not a doom and gloom message. This is reality folks This is what's going on and we need to be very cognizant of that I am hoping to work with some departments and looking into some structural changes Now I've said it over and over again from a managerial standpoint. I have to look at organizational structure in My mind the problem in our solution lies in the same structure Sometimes you didn't have to reshuffle the card The cards and that may be what we have to do So I'll be talking about possible changes and restructuring and earn our organizational structure I hope we have the support to do that if we don't That's okay We're going to have to live with that decision not to act and that'll have an impact next year And I say that because we have to look at the big picture. I Look at the back big picture. I cannot afford. I don't have the luxury as much as I'd like to Have a luxury of picking favorites. I can't say the police department is my favorite but them have more money I can't say the fire department is my favorite. They can have more money or any other department I have to treat every department just as fair and just it equitably Because a minute you give one department more money Guess what happened somebody takes a hit that means somebody's going to have less money in their department because all you can do right Now folks is shift money. All you're doing is shifting money The only way I can address that and live with myself is to treat people treat departments fair Inequitably when we do appropriations Now even said that if anybody knows of a better way Please tell me because I'll tell you I've looked at this budget Flip through pages over and over and over again for the last year I don't see any other solutions other than a lot of action happening at the state legislature And there's another issue that I'll be working this coming year is working pretty hard with our state legislatures To enact legislation that's going to give us a tools It for us to do what they're asking us to do and that is to be more fiscally responsible. I Don't think you should ask someone or any political entity to be more politically responsible. I mean most are fiscally responsible Not give you the tools to do it So we're going to have to I'm going to have to go up to the state level and pound and pound and pounds hopefully get some Some changes down there We have a mandate by the people Make government affordable that's all I'm trying to do I'm trying to make their government affordable to them That's all they're asking and if it takes going out and disseminating information on behalf of the council Just think of the leverage we have here 16 17 We all go out into the community and inform we could gain a lot of ground I do it every day if it is as the opportunity comes, but it's it's a lot of work All that all that worked in you're going to have a lot of pressure put on you You're going to have a lot of pressure put on you by people who feel that this department should get more money Or that department should get more money or this department should get more money You're going to get phone calls. You're going to get letters. You're going to get emails You're going to get stopped in the street. You're going to get stopped in the store You're going to get bombarded That's the way things are happening. That's the way things are. I go back to asking you to have the political will. You or the people, the people of Sheboygan elected to do a job. And I think we have a responsibility to do a job and do it will, keeping the entire community in mind, keeping our entire municipal government in mind, and not picking favorites at all. Thank you very much. Next item. Consent agenda. President Burke. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I would move to accept and file all our rolls, accept and adopt all our C's and pass all the general ordinances. Motion in second. 13-1 to 13-16. Any discussion? There be a none. Please call the roll. Born. Aye. Burg. Aye. Graf. Aye. Hanna. Aye. Kittleson. Aye. Cleunas. Aye. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Wacky. Aye. Ryan. Aye. Sushia. Aye. Vanderweel. Aye. Ann Verhastel. Aye. 14 ayes. Motion carries. Communications. 13-17 to be referred. 13, Report of Officers 2, 13-18. Alderman Meyer. Thank you, Your Honor. I would ask for suspension of the rules. There are motion in the second. Is there any objection to that? There be a none. Please proceed. I would ask that the report of officers be accepted and adopted. Motion in the second to accept and adopt. Any discussion? There be a none. All those in favor, do we need a roll call? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. 13-19 will be held for when we act on 13-37. Please note that. 13-20 lies over. 13-21 through 13-36. To be referred, please note that on 13-25, the appropriate committee to be referred to is Marina and Harbor Committee and not City Plan. 13-25, change of committee. Resolutions introduced 3. 13-37 by Alderman Meyer. Authorize and enter into a contract for the end park splash pad outdoor water playground. Alderman Meyer. Thank you, Your Honor. I would ask for suspension of the rules. Second. Motion in second. Is there any objection? There be a none. Please proceed. I would ask that the resolution be put upon its passage. Motion in second. Put the resolution 13-37 upon its passage under discussion. Alderman Rosenberg. Yes, so thank you, Your Honor. I'm going to vote against this in light of the fact that we just talked about controlling our expenses, although there is probably a few hours that are spent setting this up. We're talking about essentially an unfunded liability whenever we have block grant money that involves equipment such as this. And the disconnect for me is we are going to approve this this evening. And then we'll cut public works budget, but yet there are the people that are empowered to maintain the facility. And if such things as draining pumps, making sure the thing is working, et cetera. And I think when we start to draw the line, a splash pad I think is a very nice addition to the city. But I don't think it's particularly necessary. And in the future, I would likely be bringing in a resolution so that every time we have a building project like this, we have some idea of what the expense is rolled up pro forma year after year. So thank you. Alderman Bard? I had a question on another document. That they were going to act later? It was on number 1320, but. I am sorry. I'm sorry. You want me to do that now or after we're through it? 1320 was. That was going to be a lot. It lies over. I'll come back to it. Thank you. Get down here. We have other Alderman Van der Wiel. Thank you, Your Honor. If my memory serves me right on the splash pad, we approved it in capital improvements last year for the capital improvements. And to me, this is a quality of life issue in that area. You have so much residential. You have schools, lots of children. And I think it's just going to be a great addition to that area. And I would ask if Tom Holton could step up and comment on it a little bit. Thank you. Mr. Holton, please come to the podium. Thank you, Mayor and Council. Alderman Van der Wiel was right. It was approved in capital improvements for last year for this year, $125,000. The bids came in at under $116,000. There isn't a lot of maintenance to it. The park shelter that was constructed a few years ago was constructed to accommodate that structure, so it's plumbed. We just have to extend the water out about 100 feet to where the pad's going to be. As far as operational costs, you're probably looking at a couple $1,000 worth of water, any repairs it may need on the apparatus itself. But as Alderman Van der Wiel said, it's a quality life issue. It's going to serve a lot of the north side of the city. The splash pad down here is a huge success. And to me, it's worth every penny. Mr. Holton, let me just ask you this question. Do you have any objection to the splash pad being put up? No, I do not. Thank you. OK, thanks, sir. Alderman Ryan. Thank you, Your Honor. I will have to agree with President Berge on this issue. If we are indeed in such financial straits as a city, when it comes down to we're at a zero budget increase, we're talking about possibly next year doing away with people's jobs. When it comes to a splash pad or our city employee's jobs, I will vote on the side of jobs anytime, so I will also vote against this. Thank you, Alderman Ryan. Alderman Sousha. Thank you, Your Honor. I believe that when we borrow money for the capital improvements that we have to designate in the loan documents what we're going to be using the money for. And if we've already applied for the loan and we borrowed the money, I think we have to use it for the splash pad. This isn't something that we can transfer into employee's salary. But I think that Alderman Berg brings up good points in regards to, I think we have to look at the long-term ramifications in the Capital Improvements Committee. We don't usually have many discussions on the maintenance, so I think he's bringing up a good point. And I also wanted to say that in the future I think that we need to do things differently in capital improvements. For example, I've been saying this for a long time. We often go to that meeting and we get oral reports. Last year we were told orally that it was going to cost us $125,000. We approved $125,000. We did not have any bids in hand when we approved that money. And this is how the committee has run for years. Now we hear that the bid came in at $116,000, less than the amount of money we set aside. So my question is, if we would have approved $100,000 for the splash pad, would have the bids come in at $99,000? Because once we approve the money, that's public information. And any contractor can come down to City Hall and see how much money we've approved. And it's really no wonder that we get some of these bids that we get. So I appreciate Alderman Berg's comments. However, I do believe that we did approve this splash pad last year. We borrowed for it. And therefore, I will be voting to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Sousha. Alderman Montemayor. Thank you, Your Honor. I certainly agree with Alderman Vanderweel. It is quality of life. Many children use End Park now, often, daily. And the parents of these little children live in Sheboygan and pay Sheboygan taxes. I definitely feel we should be doing that. Thank you, Alderman Montemayor. Alderman Meyer. Thank you, Your Honor. I just would like to add to my motion that we file the RO on that. Is there a second? Was there a second agreed to that? Second said. OK. Alderman Groft. Thank you, Your Honor. Just to add to what Alderman Sousha had said, this was something that was debated last year in 2005 in the council improvements brought to council in the end of 2005 to be approved in 2006. The monies that were borrowed for this project must be used for that type of project. And I'm sure Mr. Holton has included maintenance in his budget for 2007 for this. And so it's covered in 2007. And because it is, as two older persons have pointed out, a quality of life issue, I think we need to do this. It's a neighborhood quality of life. And I'll be honest with you, council. Mr. Holton had said it's going to have a heavy burden on my department. I'd be the one saying let's not do it. But I've asked him to point blank. And he has no objection. Alderman, Ryan. Thank you again, Your Honor. This is more of a question than a statement if this money was borrowed last year and has not been spent. Where is this money right now, if it has been borrowed? It's a capital improvements program that's borrowed at a certain day for the following year. That's the way it does. It carries over every year. So it's an account. So it's in the city funds right now? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman, Ryan. OK, we will call the roll. Berg? No. Graf? Aye. Hannah? Aye. Kittleson? Aye. Clayunas? No. Manny? Aye. Meyer? Aye. Montemayor? Aye. Radke? Aye. Ryan? No. Sousha? Aye. Vanderweal? Aye. Verhaselt? Aye. And Boren? Aye. Leveneyes, three noes. Motion carries. 1338 by Alderman Sousha, Graf, and Vanderweal to contact the town of Wilson to see if they would like to contract with the city for fire protection. Alderman Sousha? Thank you, Your Honor. I move that the resolution be put upon its passage. Motion is second to put 1338 upon its passage under discussion. There be it. Alderman Hannah? Thank you, Your Honor. I just said, really, this is a point of order when an issue such as this comes up, I'm assuming we work closely with the fire department to make sure that they're interested when this makes sense to the owner. Yes, by all means. OK. Good point, Alderman Hannah. Alderman Clears. Thank you, Your Honor. I was wondering, are there any other townships or areas that we're contemplating communicating with? Why is town of Wilson chosen over other? I think Alderman Sousha would be best to answer that. Thank you. Alderman Sousha? Thank you, Your Honor. On the most recent election, the town of Wilson, I had a referendum question about purchasing a new fire truck, and they voted it down. So I looked at that as thinking it was an opportunity for us, since we just built a brand new fire station right on the edge of the town of Wilson and the city of Shboygan, to just extend the opportunity for discussion on if they would have any interest in contracting for fire protection services. Because I wouldn't want to see any harm come from people down the road from our brand new fire station. And perhaps there's some interest, but we'll never know unless we ask. So it's just a letter asking if there's any interest, and if there is, I'm sure it would come back to council, and we can take it from there. And once that contact is made, Chief Lasuski, you will be apprised of all the details, Chief. OK. We would call the vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 1339 by Alderman Meyer, authorizing the proper city officials to enter into a contract with traffic analysis and design incorporated for the Taylor Drive corridor traffic signal study. Alderman Meyer. Thank you, Your Honor. I would again like to ask for suspension of the rules. And then ask that the resolution be put upon its passage. Motion in second. Put resolution 1339 upon its passage under discussion. Alderman Montemayor. Thank you, Your Honor. I looked at this document in 18,500. That's a lot of money to coordinate the signals. So I'm just asking, how off are they and how much coordination has to be done for $18,500? Mr. Holton, thank you. I'll be with you, Alderman Clioness. Thank you, Mayor and Council. We're looking at a closed loop system on Taylor Drive from Superior Avenue to New Jersey Avenue. And we have not looked at that chain of signals since Walmart went in back in the early 90s we looked at, I guess, when shop going in, I'm sorry. It just takes a matter of a few seconds and changing the timing. If you change it on one end, it could change things, make it worse on the other end. This company will come in and count each intersection one by one to get the traffic counts turn movements. They have the software, the programs, to run the data through to come up with the ultimate timing, I guess you'd say, for the area. We do not have the capabilities of doing that. And for a few seconds, I could save a lot of gas for people going through there. Therefor reduces emissions also. That's why we look at it. I got three lights. Any of the Aldermen's wish to speak, one to address, please stay there. Alderman Clayunas, you're next. Yes, Mr. Holton, is this related to the new Super Walmart as well? Is that part of why we need to do this? No, not at all. Thank you. Alderman Ratke. Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Holton, the Walmart at Taylor Drive at Taylor Heights is about ready to close. Why are we doing this study now? Why can't we wait till the spring time when we can see what the new traffic patterns are going to be out there? I mean, when Walmart pulls out of that, and I know firsthand from having worked in that store for many years, that there's a lot of traffic in and out, especially on the, cut in by the community bank there, in Erie Avenue, but with them pulling out at this point in the next month, month and a half, why don't we wait till the spring time to do this study? I think anything that's going to go under is going to be retail, so it shouldn't change the pattern too much, but the real problems at Taylor Drive and the ramps to 23, that's where we're having the backups and the most difficult time getting through that, where you can't get through all the lights. Usually you're held up by one of them. That's where the bulk of the problem is on the north end. Alderman Van der Weel. Thank you, Your Honor. I drive that area off, and I just wanted to say I agree with Mr. Holton that that area needs to be looked at and it needs to be tweaked a little bit. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman, we've got all these Christmas lights here. Alderman Vanne. Thank you, Your Honor. I would say reluctant yes, in committee on this issue and ask the questions. I think common sense could resolve this if we just took some time. We could do it ourselves. But in fact, Mr. Holton noted that there are clear guidelines from the state we're not so allowed to do. So this is a company that's authorized, and so in my mind it's necessary, but reluctant money to spend. It's bureaucracy. Thank you, Alderman Vanne. Alderman, what did my order? Thank you, Your Honor. I think Alderman Vanne expressed my feelings, but Mr. Holton, when you said the word emissions, that certainly meant a lot, because that is our quality of life here in Sheboygan. So I thank you for saying those words. What we like to do though is we need to change the timing on the Rams to 23. We cannot do that on our own. The state controls that. We need to have documentation of why we wanna do it. Alderman Verhassel. Thank you, Your Honor. I agree with Alderman Radke on his concerns with Walmart being moving out here in the middle of November. I just wonder, I mean, no matter who goes into Walmart in the next two months, nobody's gonna be as big of a draw as Walmart is, so the effect on the traffic pattern, I think it's just gonna be so significant that we should wait until Walmart finds its new home. I don't, honestly, I don't think that's gonna make much difference because the problem is at 23.  It may, you know, even a thousand trips a day is not gonna make a lot of impact on that corridor. It's not gonna, holding off, I don't think it's gonna change anything as I'm trying to say. I think it's something that needs to be taken care of. We get complaints almost every day they're in my office or at the service building on the timing of the signals out there. Alderman Radke, second time. Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Holton, one other thing. When are you looking at doing this study? As soon as we're authorized, probably it'll be a midweek. I'm gonna vote no on this. The reasoning being, and that's the only question I had there is because right now, traffic patterns in Taylor Drive are extremely screwed up, including 23 and everything. I mean, I myself personally avoid using highway or Taylor Drive, I'll go 14th Street to get across town. But we've got Taylor Drive and Washington having it ripped up. Traffic patterns right now aren't going in normal directions. Why would we wanna spend this kind of money at this point in time when traffic is not moving at a proper pace for the city? Wal-Mart will be done. End of October, that project will be finished up. We wanna hit it before the Thanksgiving period when you have all the shopping out there. You don't design for the highest traffic by the end of the day. So it would be done sometime near the end of October and Wal-Mart's completed or nearly completed down there back to normal and before Thanksgiving. Well, my concern is though traffic patterns, it's gonna take a while for traffic to start switching back to the way things normally go. For example, when I have to work at Deer Trace Plaza right now, I think Indiana had to let the county trunk aid to avoid that area. And eventually we'll get back to using Taylor and Washington but people aren't gonna just jump right back in there. And my concern is we're jumping the gun a little bit here and we should hold back.  So I think they'll get back in there as soon as they can, in my opinion. Solomon Meyer, one more. Thank you, Your Honor. I just wanna express that I feel this is a lot of money also but I do trust our department head, Tom Houlton. He has the expertise and he gets the complaints and I believe we shouldn't move forward on this. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Houlton. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, yes, aye. Thank you. Hannah. Aye. Kittleson. Aye. Cleonis. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Radke. No. Ryan. Yes, thank you. Sushia. Aye. Vanderweel. Aye. Verhastelt. No. Boran. Aye. And Burr. Aye. 11 ayes, two noes and one abstention. Motion carries, 1340 through 1343, lies over. 13, oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Hold on. Well, we'll hold off on it to be referred. Number 20, I think. I'm sorry, Alderman Boran, which one was it, sir? 1320. 1320. We're going back to 1320.  Alderman Boran. Thank you, Your Honor. When I read this document over this morning, I had a question that maybe one of the older persons or one of the department heads can answer for me. On page one, month 831.06, under revenues, under parts, $2,609.16, and then down under cost of sales, $2,609.16. My first question is, when we're talking about parts, there are those boat parts that are being sold on there or what exactly is that? And my second question is, if we're selling parts down there, it appears that we're selling them at cost because the revenues are $2,609.16 and the cost of sales is also $2,609.16. So if somebody could answer those two questions I'd appreciate it before we lie it over. Paulette, are you able to do that? Tom, are you able to do that? Could we get those answers for you? It's going to lie over anyway. Can we get those answers for you, please? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Bourne. Alderman Groff, do you want to comment on that too, sir? I was just going to say, we will be discussing this at our next meeting. We didn't have a September meeting, therefore we didn't discuss this balance sheet. Okay. So at our next Marina Committee meeting, we will be discussing it. Okay. Thank you. Alderman Groff, do you want this then referred to the Marine and Harbor rather than lie over? Yes. Okay. 1320, refer to Marina Committee. Please make that notation. And we will get those answers for you, Alderman Bourne. Thank you. 1344 through 1346 to be referred. Report of Committee 7, 1347 by law and licensing, recommended denying beverage operators license number 7222 based on her record of violations related to the license activity and her habitual violation of the law. Alderman Ratke. Thank you, Your Honor. I would make a motion if the report of committee be accepted and adopted. Second. Motion is second. Under discussion. Under discussion is Rachel Cockwitosh here this evening. She's not here this evening, Your Honor. Thank you, Alderman Ratke. Any more discussion? There being none, please call the roll. Groff. Aye. Hannah. Aye. Kittleson. Aye. Clowness. Aye. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Verhassell. Aye. Boren. Aye. Enberg. Aye. 14 ayes. Motion carries. Report of Committees 8, 1348 by finance, recommended transferring appropriations in the 206 budget. Alderman Groff. Thank you, Your Honor. I would move that the RC be accepted and adopted and the resolution be put upon its passage. Motion is second. Under discussion. There being none, please call the roll. Hannah. Aye. Kittleson. Aye. Clowness. Aye. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Ratke. Aye. Ryan. Aye. Sushia. Aye. Vanderwheel. Aye. Verhassell. Aye. Boren. Aye. Berg. Aye. And Groff. Aye. 14 ayes. Motion carries. 1349 by Public Works, recommended closing the Armory Effective January 8, 2007. That's for suspension of the rules. And ask that the resolution be put upon its passage. Motion is second. Put the resolution upon its passage. But I will ask, was there any objection to that suspension at all? None, okay. And also the RC be accepted and filed. Any discussion? There being none, please call the roll. Kittleson. Aye. Clowness. Aye. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Vanderwheel. Aye. Verhassell. Aye. Boren. Aye. Berg. Aye. Groff. Aye. And Hannah. Aye. 14 ayes. Motion carries. Report of Committee 9, 1350 by Finance, recommended amending general ordinance number 14-02-03 so as to provide for the allocation of a portion of the cable franchise fund revenues to the Meet Public Library Fund Alderman Groff. I would move that the RC be accepted and adopted and the general ordinance be put upon its passage. Motion in second. Under discussion. There being none, please call the roll. Clowness. Aye. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Radke. Aye. Ryan. Aye. Susha. No. Vanderwheel. Aye. Verhassell. Aye. Boren. Aye. Berg. John Kittleson. Aye. 12 ayes. Two noes. Motion carries. Ordinances introduced 10, 1351, lies over. 1352 through 1355 to be referred. Matters laid over 11, 1235, resolution number 1230607 by Alderman Groff. Hannah. Clowness. Susha and Boren. Authorizing a transfer of appropriations in the O6 budget. Alderman Groff. Thank you, your honor. I would move that the resolution be put upon its passage. Second. Motion and second. Under discussion. There being none, please call the roll. Manny. Aye. Meyer. Aye. Montemayor. Aye. Radke. Aye. Ryan. Aye. Susha. Aye. Vanderwheel. Aye. Verhassell. Aye. Boren. Aye. Berg. Aye. Groff. Aye. Hannah. Other matters authorized by law. 1356 will be referred to committee of the whole. 1357, a resolution by Alderman Boren. Berg, Serda, Davis, Groff, Hannah, Kittleson. Well, I don't know how to just say the whole council, right? Right. Authorizing the appropriate city officials to accept the donation by the environmental park trust of Cheboygan County of the William A. Hason Pavilion addition to the ecology center at the Elwood A. H. May Environmental Park. Alderman Boren. I'm sorry. I hit my light on the mistake. Okay. Alderman Groff, just a resolution to put the motion upon its passage. Thank you, Your Honor. I would move that. We put the resolution upon its passage. Motion to second to put the resolution upon its passage. Any discussion? There being none, please call the roll. Manny. That's two and a half first. Did I? Okay, let's try Meyer. Meyer. Hi. Montemayor. Hi. Radke. Hi. Ryan. Hi. Sushia. Hi. Vanderwheel. Hi. Verhassel. Hi. Boren. Hi. Berg. Hi. Groff. Hi. Hannah. Hi. Kittleson. Hi. Plioness. Hi. And Manny. Hi. Celeri and grievances regarding reviewed management rights on their union contract. Allerman Sushia. Thank you, Your Honor. I move that the report of committee be accepted and adopted. Second. Motion and second. Under discussion. Thank you, Your Honor. Under the management rights, there wasn't an attachment, but I did hand one out before the meeting. And since you probably didn't have time to digest all of it, I would like to just read a portion of it to you and then make a few comments. If you want to start with the second paragraph, it says the union recognizes the city's right to manage its affairs and direct its workforce. Furthermore, the city has all the customary and usual rights, powers, functions, and authority of management, including but not limited to the right to decide the number and location of its facilities, work and services to be performed, amount of supervision necessary, methods, means, and number of personnel needed, the amount and quality of work, and the right to change existing methods, utilize temporary and part-time employees, or purchase the services of others. If you go down to the bottom of that section, the very last one sentence paragraph says, the union pledges cooperation in accomplishing the above. There has been, I think, a little bit of a misunderstanding in regards to the role of city employees and also the role of alderman. When we become alderman, we have less than 15 minutes of training, and I think that we need to clarify what we do and the separation between employees and the alderman. We make decisions, we set policies. They come to work and they do their job. When you read on in the contract, and no, granted, we have six contracts and they're all a little bit different, but the gist of it are pretty much the same from one contract to the next. And it seems that there is an agreeance in regards to the grievance procedure. Both the union and the city would like to see grievances handled in a very timely manner, and there is a process that's outlined for city union employees to follow if they have a grievance. First, what they would do is they file a complaint with their supervisor, and if the supervisor doesn't handle it quickly within a couple of days, then they can file a formal document with human resources and also with their union representative. And then if that doesn't progress the way they want in a couple of days, then they have the option of going to mediation and arbitration with their grievance. But what's interesting, if you look at the bottom of this page underneath the section, Grievance and Arbitration Procedures, item B, it says item exempt from processing under the grievance and arbitration procedure include the following. There is only one item listed, the creation or elimination of jobs. And this to me is very important. And the reason being is because at the last council meeting it started with Alderman approaching me when I was outside and it continued as I walked to my desk. Several older people received phone calls that day during the day relating to a transfer on the table of organization. All we were going to do was transfer a position from the computer department to the mayor's department. But we were not even allowed to talk about it because I believe our management rights were infringed upon without us even realizing it because during the day there was a city union employee that called several older people. And her concern was that if we did this her job would change and she wasn't happy. So we needed to send this whole issue back to committee and I don't think it's right that the wheels of government come to a screeching halt every time a city employee isn't happy with the decision that we are about to make. And this has a lot to do with why I bring this up. I was told by another city employee that I did not have their permission to make such a change. And I think we have to respect some of the work that salary and grievance is doing because we have listened to all the department heads. We've been listening to what they do. We've asked them lots of questions. We're looking at making some suggestions to the table of organization. I think it is possible to reach a 0% increase in the tax rate because we have it pretty heavy up at the top. We're not going to be cutting the worker bees.  We need police officers on the street but do we need so much management up at the top of the table of organization? And these are the issues that we're going to be discussing and I think that I'm asking for cooperation from city employees to let the alderman do their job. If you have something you'd like to share I'd be open to some positive suggestions for a change. And maybe if you have some good ideas funnel it up through your supervisor and hopefully they will channel it to the right department if it's a good idea we need to start implementing it. I think answers often come from within an organization and it would be wonderful if employees would step up with some positive suggestions on how to make us run more efficiently. And I was told this numerous times when I worked full time outside the home that life is too short. And if you truly are that miserable and unhappy with your job perhaps you should look for greener pastures. And I always laughed when I heard that. It didn't have much meaning to me until one day when I had a life changing event and suddenly I realized how important my family was. And what kept running through my head was that phrase I had always heard at the annual meeting that if you're not happy with your position if you're not happy with what you're doing here at the city we're not keeping anybody here. Life is short. Happiness is important. And I would encourage unhappy city employees if you are that truly miserable that perhaps you need to start looking in the paper and see what else is out there because we don't wanna keep anybody here against their will. They're welcome to go whenever they want. And with that said I just hope that it's a little bit clearer now for everybody in this room in regards to what the role we have. We might be faced with making some tough decisions about rearranging the table of organization. And I would ask that if people have questions about what Salary and Grievance is doing that Alderman come to our committee meetings and the public can come. You know employees if they wanna come we hold it over the lunch hour. So we welcome everybody to come to those meetings and if anybody's got questions about what the committee is doing please feel free to give one of us a call and give us some suggestions. I mean we're open to ideas. Thank you. Thank you, Alderman Susha. Alderman Graf. Thank you, Your Honor. After going through this and reading this several times and wondering what was exactly gonna happen I'm certainly glad we got this and I would like to see that all the department heads get this off also because they are, the department heads are the management for the city. And if you read paragraph three and in this management rights it says it is further recognized that the responsibility of management of the city for the selection and direction of its workforce including the right to hire, suspend or discharge for cause, assign promoter, transfer to determine the amount of overtime to be worked to relieve employees from duty because of lack of work for other reasons vested exclusively in the city the union recognizes the exclusive right of the city to establish reasonable rules and regulations. And this is gonna become very important if not in 2007 for sure in 2008. And our departments have to realize that they have management rights and something to back it up. Thank you, Alderman Graf. Alderman, want to my honor. Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you, Alderman Susha for bringing this to us as Alderman Graf said. The department heads certainly give us valuable information and I think Alderman Graf is right that they'll want to see this also. And at the end of the day we the council have to make those tough, rough decisions. Thanks. Thank you, Alderman. Alderman Ryan. Thank you, Your Honor. First, I think that the whole council should recognize that the morale of a lot of city employees is at a low right now. I don't think we have any city employees that don't want their jobs. I don't think we have any city employees that don't like their jobs that would rather be elsewhere or they wouldn't be here. This management rights brief here, basically, the issue that we're speaking of is I take it the IT information technician for the city. Is that correct? There was one example. Okay. I don't think that this issue was a union, non-union issue. I believe it was something different where we were taking an employee from one department and putting him in another department and to take the information technologies person from the IT department and put them under the mayor's control right now in the city. I don't think, number one, the pay grades did not save any money. If it's a money-saving move, I don't think we accomplished anything in doing that. I believe that is the cause of this coming out. I don't believe it's a union, non-union issue or an infraction by the union. I believe it is an issue of a information technologies person going from his place of employment right now in the union and being changed to a different department. And I believe that's the issue. Thank you, Your Honor. Thank you. One final comment before we call the vote there. I really don't believe that anyone is trying to say we should not work with the unions, we should not cooperate, that somebody or someone is doing something wrong. I have a tremendous amount of respect for unions. I know their value. I have friends who are union members. But I think the message is more embedded in the perception that people have of the council and the city. And that is that for the longest time you hear unions control the city, unions call the shots. And that perception is so deeply embedded that people have started to believe it. And I just want to clarify for you, you are the ones that get elected. You are the ones that may not get re-elected. Union members or employees see aldermans come and go. They see mayors come and go. They don't get elected. They don't have to be accountable to the people. You do. So it's that perception that you need to deal with. And I think what Alderman Sushi is trying to address tonight is just simply showing you where the answer is. The answer is in the contract that everyone signed, that everyone agreed to abide by, that we are supposed to honor. That's where the struggle is going to lie. And this is what I talked to you earlier about. The minute you try to make a change, you're gonna have 30 people jump up and say, don't do that, don't do that. You're going to have to arm yourself with the correct information and the political will to say, I'm sorry, that's not your job. That's my job. I'll take care of it. If people feel that you made the wrong choice, they can deal with you in election time. But you're going to have to distinguish between your role as an elected official and the role of our employees and how they connect to the city government as represented employees. That's all I think from what I gather that you're trying to say. Turn to McLean. Just, I agree with everything that's been said here. However, put things in perspective, pulled out the statute, the municipal employment relations statute, it's 11170. And it defines corrective bargaining. And in the definition, it indicates that municipal employers shall not be required to bargain on subjects reserved to management and direction of the governmental unit. And that's what we're talking about, management rights. And you have the right to make certain decisions contractually and just under common law and the general rules of bargaining. But the statute goes on, except in so far as the manner of exercise of such functions affects the wages, hours and conditions of employment of the municipal employees and a collective bargaining unit. So it's a two sides of the coin. You have the right to make certain management decisions, but the statute requires that there be bargaining as to the effects on the collective bargaining unit members. So to say that you can just unilaterally make the change, yes you can, but there are impacts to bargaining unit members in doing that. You've got a duty under the statute to collectively bargain that. Now perhaps in the contract, if there's provisions on layoffs or transfers that have already been negotiated, that's, you've already agreed to your obligation to negotiate the impact of the decision. But just a caveat that it's not a total one-way street. Thank you. I'm a social and we'll call it over. Thank you, Your Honor. Just to clarify, like an example of what you're talking about, I would assume would be that if we, let's say we eliminated a union position, just took it off the table of organization. That person would have bumping power to take a different job on the table of organization. And ultimately what most likely would happen is the lowest person on the totem pole would be laid off. Is that in a sense what you're saying is that it is our responsibility to work with them to make sure that the proper bumping order is followed. Correct? Exactly. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Uscha. President Burke. Yes, thank you, Your Honor. One comment, I think there's the letter of the law which has been defined in black and white. And I think there's also the spirit of the law and involves some fairness and parity if we are going to discuss matters like this. I believe we are all well-served if we can do so under the light of day to have it an open session, to invite those folks who may be affected in the hope that we can establish some rapport and level of peace and harmony. If this is a good idea, I think it's wise for us to debate that if you would in the light of the public rather than in a private committee. Thank you. Thank you, President Burke. 1358. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries. 1359 has been added to your amended agenda. Please refer to that. 1359, a resolution by Alderman Groff authorizing the Mayor to sign application for grant funding from Walmart. Alderman Groff. Thank you, Your Honor. I ask for suspension of the rules, please. Is there any objection? Please proceed. Then I would move that the resolution be put upon its passage. Motion second. Under discussion. Alderman Vanderwill. Thank you, Your Honor. Just because when I see grant funding and Walmart together, could we just have an explanation of what's going to happen with this resolution? Sure. Excuse me. The deadline for signing this and accepting the grant that Walmart will be giving the city is tomorrow. And that's the reason for suspension and so forth. And Walmart has offered the city of Shiboy in the opportunity to apply $7,000 of a grant towards city playground equipment and an additional $5,000 for me public library literacy program. And it's a free will offering. There's no strings attached or anything to it. And Walmart needs the mayor to sign it tomorrow in order for us to accept it. Alderman Hanna. Thank you, Your Honor. This is a situation where no matter where you fall out in your opinion of Walmart, I think it's in the city's best interest that we accept and negotiate grants such as this that are offered to us. Walmart is a fact of life in our community and I think we need to optimize that. Good point. Thank you, Alderman Hanna. Okay, we will call the roll. Montemayorn. Aye. Recky. Aye. Ryan. Sushia. Aye. Vanderweal. Aye. Rehassle. Aye. Warren. Aye. Burr. Cut. Is that an aye? Yep. Okay, thanks. Graf. Aye. Hanna. Aye. Kittleson. Aye. 13 ayes. Motion carries. Other matters? Attorney McLean. Thank you, Your Honor. 13-60 is an aroh by the city clerk submitting an application for a private well permit from Richard J. Stefani, 1050 Riverdale Avenue. That lies over. 13-61 is an aroh by the city clerk submitting a communication from Carter-Paulis regarding the stormwater fee, rip off of taxpayers and stating that the Shboyton County taxpayers' alliances recommends that the fee be abolished. And that will be referred to finance and public works. 13-62 is an aroh by the city clerk submitting a communication from Mary Zerafanetis stating that the city should not tie up the South Pier district and waste the taxpayers of Shboyton's time with bringing the USS Edson to Shboyton. That will be referred to Marina and Harbor Committee. 13-63 is an aroh by the director of planning and development submitting an agreement between the city of Shboyton and Wisconsin Naval Ship Association, Inc. for birthing of the USS Edson and the Shboyton Harbor. That will be referred to Marina and Harbor Committee. 13-64 is an aroh by the finance director, Treasurer submitting the municipal court finance report as submitted to the state treasurer and a statement of municipal court revenues and expenditures as of August 31, 2006. And that will be referred to the municipal court advisory committee. Excuse me. Hogman-Born. Your Honor, I would also like to see a document of the 13-63 also referred to the committee of the whole because I think after the Marina and Harbor Committee is true because I think there's going to be quite a bit of discussion needed on this. It will be done. It's 13-63 Marina and Harbor Committee and Committee of the Whole Hall of Murratki. Motion. Is there a second to adjourn? Second. All those in favor say aye. Any opposed? Stand adjourned.


Okay Welcome back to this afternoon's session. I have a short announcement concerning a change, slight change in the program. Shasha Tupali had a problem with his flight, so he's not able to be in for today's talk at 5 p.m. You'll be arriving tonight in Trieste, so we have moved his talk sometime later in the week. So for today the session ends at 5 p.m. From that time on you will be free to roam everywhere around in the city and I will give you details how to reach the city center, how to get back and what to do in the next break. And now I leave the floor to Dario. Okay, hi, my name is Dario Floriano. We'll be chairing this afternoon's session. The first speaker is Marco D'Origo and I don't think I need to introduce him. Okay, so very nice to be here today to talk about Beyond Pure Self-Organization Robo's Worms. Basically what I want to do today is to give a short overview of research that we have been doing in the last 15 years on purely self-organized Robo's Worms and then conclude with some recent research on going beyond this pure self-organization approach because of what I believe are some problems that we had when using pure self-organization. Okay, so the problem we are interested in is how to control a large number of relatively simple robots that cooperate to perform a given task and that are robust to failure and such that the system in a way so that the system is scalable so that if you want to perform more work, you just add more robots. And the way you control such a large number of robots, well, there are basically two main possible philosophies. One is centralized control. The other one is decentralized control of self-organization. The first one, you might be tempted to use it because we have a lot of experience on how to build the software for centralized systems but there are a few problems and one very important problem that is there is a single point of failure so your system is not that robust to failures. On the other side, when you use self-organization, there is no centralized controller. There are local interactions between the components of the system, local communication and so what is good in this approach that is coherent with our goals in small robotics but we have a problem that is what is called the micro-macro problem because what we want is to program a swarm or a large group of robots but what we can do in practice is to program the single robot. So the problem is how do you program this single robot so that you get the swarm level behavior that you want. So swarm robotics is exactly the science and engineering, the studies how to design, build and control swarms of cooperating robots so that using self-organization principles and in a robot swarm, we have the robots that are relatively simple, there are many of them and they are relatively simple and incapable and they need to cooperate to perform a task that you give them. So if they do not cooperate, I don't call it swarm robotics. So if you have a bunch of robots, each one is doing things independent of each other but there are just many robots. So I approximately already said this but why do we want the swarm robotic systems is because we all could be able to have a robotic system made of many simple parts that can do the same things that were much more complex robots could do and have additional desirable properties like fault tolerance, scalability, parallelism that would be difficult to have in a more complex single robot. Additionally, the op is that they can be cheaper since usually the cost of an artifact grows more than linearly with its complexity. Having many simple robots might be a cheaper way to go. So in these last 15 years, we have built a number of robots to do experiments in small robotics. In particular, we have built S-bots, N-bots, high-bots, foot-bots, which I will present very briefly. The S-bot is what you see here is a robot that is capable of grasping other robots. This is the main characterizing feature. It has grippers that allow the robot to attach to other similar robots and so they can perform, they can cooperate physically, not only logically. The robot is 12 centimeters, 700 grams and has a number of capacities. It can communicate with other robots using light, using sounds, it has cameras and so on. And they, as I said, can attach to each other using the gripper and the motors are strong enough so that they can lift another robot. So this robot can be used to, when they cooperate, they can do things that they cannot do alone. For example, you see they cooperate to move on a rock terrain to pass over a rock by using these flexible grippers to attach to each other. Here you see the same robots attach to each other that managed to pass over a step and here you see a number of 20 of these robots that grasp a child and pull it on the ground. So the child was augmented with a red bar so the robots could use their sensors to see the child and then they formed four structures which we call swarm bots and they retreat the child. Okay, so how do we program a robot swarm? So the basic paradigm that has been followed in the great majority of the cases, there are always exceptions, but this is the standard way to go, is we use a behavior-based architecture. So if we define a certain number of behaviors that the robots should have and then we either write or use some machine learning techniques to learn these behaviors and then we test, we place the behaviors in formal controllers on the robots, but we first test the behaviors in simulation and once we are happy with the results, so there are cycles until we are happy with the results and then once we are happy we move to test with the real robots, which are the real test. If it works we are happy and otherwise we recycle. And to give you an example about these works, I will discuss briefly a search retrieval task that we perform with a swarm of these S-bots, the robots that I've shown before. So these robots have a local sensing so they can see robots that are close by, they are capable as I've shown before of physical cooperation and they are controlled by stochastic rules and they should cooperate to search a retriever and heavy object, heavy means that more than one robot is needed to move it around, in particular case three robots at least are needed. So what we do is we give a robot rules. So robots can be in different states like they can be free, they can belong to a virtual chain, I will explain in a moment that they can be retrieving an object. In each of these states they have simple rules like if I see nothing explore and so on that are applied with certain probabilities. In this particular case so the way we proceeded to define this rule is the following. So what you see is the object to be retrieved, the goal, the object that should be retrieved to these gray circles here are the robots and each robot has this sensing distance. So at the beginning of the experiment the robots start to move around in the environment randomly and when they happen to see the blue color which is the goal the rule says that they can belong to the first element element of a virtual chain and take a particular color for example green. And then the process is repeated and so when another robot arrives at the sensing distance from the green can stop and become the second element of the virtual chain and so on. Obviously I am here showing only one of these virtual chains that could be other moving in other directions. When a robot is alone at the end of a virtual chain with a certain probability it will give up and the virtual chain will be destroyed, the old robots will be free again. And once one chain happens to be long enough in the right direction so that the last robot in the chain see the red, the chain is frozen and is used by other robots to find and retrieve the object. So this informal algorithm can be then written in a formal way using a probability finance state machine that you see here and then downloaded on the virtual robot in a simulation environment. So here is the object, the goal locations are and these are the objects to be retrieved and what you see here is the algorithm that I explained before. So the robots are creating these virtual chains all the time and at some point one of the chains finds the object like here and then the other robots follow the chain and go grasp the red object and retrieve it. Okay so this was a simulation and when we got here we were confident enough that the algorithm was well conceived and then we could go to the real robots experiment and what you now in the next slide that we show the a movie of an experiment with the real robots which by the way was performed by Roderich Cross that is here in the audience when he was a PhD student. What I would like you to serve in the video that I'm going to show is that all the robots have the same control system and that they dynamically take up different roles and they form different teams. Okay so there will be robots that are exploring the environment, robots that are belonging to the chain, robots that retrieve and they can join and leave this team dynamically during the experiment. So this is the arena where we are in the experiment, this is the object, go location, the robots placed randomly and so they start. So there is a lot of since the movements and the the application that moves are probabilistic probabilistic there is kind of confusion going on. So this for example you see the here this chain was built up to a point and then was destroyed again here this will happen this at some point that these robots will give up and the and the robots become again free. And then as now these robots have built a chain that connects to the other objects and the other robots that are exploring they don't know and so they are just exploring trying to extend the chain but when they see the red object one of their rules say grasp it and so the robots grasp it and then start to pull but the object is heavy so they don't manage to pull until there are at least three of them. And then at some point in this experiment the robots did something stupid because their sensing is very bad so they don't see very well and they can see things that are not there or make error so at this point these robots are going away and the other robots that are building trying to build chains they fill the gap so that the robot were able to start again to retrieve the object. So after this experiment we tried to go ahead and do something similar but now more complicated working with an heterogeneous swarm with so different type of robots that cooperate and in three dimensions. So we built this heterogeneous swarm that we call the Swarmanoid that was composed of three type of robots the footbots the n-bots and the i-bots they are specialised and so I show them in here briefly so the footbot is a robot the name reminds a little bit of its function is a robot very similar to the previous one just better engineered it still has a gripper but is made in a way that is easier for the robot to grasp another and its main function in our experiments was to transport other robots these robots here and these robots here are called the n-bots these are robots that cannot move around they need to be transported but they have a gripper so that they can grasp objects and they can climb some kind of structures like you see and finally the i-bots which we use in the swarm as the robot that had the better vision capability that was helping the other robots in their exploration of the space so as before we built we brought the controllers using a base of base approach and then we tested the resulting system in a virtual simulated environment that you see here where these red uh these are the model of the flying robot and what you see here are the models of the other two the footbots and n-bots so basically we let the highbot explore the environment and when once they find the object uh they help the robot on the ground to reach the location of the object and then the climbing robots retrieve it so i go directly to show you the video with experiments with the real robot swarm anoid is a heterogeneous robotic swarm made up of three types of robot the handbot is designed to manipulate objects the handbot can also climb but needs help from other robots to move around the footbot is a wheeled robot with a gripper using its gripper a footbot can form physical connections with other footbots or with the handbot the i-bot can fly and rapidly explore large areas it can attach to the ceiling and provide environmental information to the other robots in this film the swarm anoid is deployed to find and then retrieve a book here the swarm anoid has already partially explored its environment as the i-bots search successive i-bots attach to the ceiling forming a connected network once an i-bot has found the book the knowledge propagates back to the deployment area the handbot then requests transport assistance from the footbots using the i-bot network the footbots form a ground-based chain linking the deployment area to the book the composite footbot handbot entity then follows this ground-based chain a second handbot prepares for transport the first footbot handbot entity has rotated and aligns with the bookshelf while climbing the handbot supports its weight with a cord attached to the ceiling actuated fans give the handbot control over its angle of rotation around the vertical axes swarm anoid is a parallel distributed system okay parallel um so from these two experiments and many others that we run I don't have the time to show now uh well we learn first the one that we saw before the one with the s-bots was the first example of self-organized robot team formation to be proposed and then we found that it was not only very difficult to obtain but it was not so easy to generalize to more complex task or the approach that we were following I mean and it was not so easy to generalize the same approach to perform more difficult task and that the system was not so robust to failures as one could hope for example when you build these chains of robots if one of the robots breaks down then it is in the way of the other robots okay so the it becomes difficult to to find a solution to this um also it is very difficult to interact with a swarm uh exactly because it is completely self-organized you don't have a someone to talk to if you want to tell something to the swarm like giving a comment so before I go to the next part of the talk I need I want to uh thanks all these colleagues the image a little bit dark but there are many well-known people here uh some of them are also here in this audience and uh the many PhD students that collaborated to this uh work um okay so I was saying because I I somehow eat the limit what I think was the limit of self-organization maybe I was not good enough but uh at some point I said okay it seems that using a pure self-organization approach might be too difficult to develop a robot swarm that do something useful I started to think what could be done next and um going beyond these pure self-organization was what I did recently by designing what I call the robots with mergeable nervous system so the idea was to introduce some elements of a centralization in the organization of a robot swarm trying not to lose the good parts of self-organization okay so um this is some initial work so I'm not there yet but uh just to give you the idea what is the direction so we call a robot nervous system basically the CPU and all the connection between the CPU and sensor and actuators okay and so in the graphics that I show you in drawings I show here the red is a robotic unit and when there is a white circle on the center it becomes also the brain of that particular robot okay so obviously here there is only one robot one there is one brain then what happens when you have two autonomous robots so you have two robots each one with its brain but then you want them to connect with each other and when they connect to each other one of the two robots sees authority to the other one okay so basically it's like um I give my hand to someone else and by giving the hand one of the two brains sees control to the other one so that we now are a single uh being so in this composite robot there is one brain and the and this brain has knowledge about the previous one so basically if you have a more complex structures like here we have six robots are attached to each other with one brain to every year this brain has knowledge about the body structure and the nervous system of all the body that is all the other robots that are attached to it and this second robot here has knowledge about everything that is attached to it so since it's a tree structure uh this one will have knowledge about this one and so when you have two of these uh merge vulnerable system enabled robots and they connect to each other so since there are two msc enabled robots they have each a brain and each brain has knowledge about this body when they attach to each other so this this robot here was attached to this one this robot is seeing authority to the other one and this brain automatically gets knowledge about all the body okay so why is this interesting because in this way we can give the robots uh interesting capacities while retaining the capability of letting them work as a self-organized system when they are independent of each other so for example we can tell robots to form particular morphologies so if it's working yeah one robot is given the common to start in particular morphologies and he knows about the structure of his body it calls for other robots to attach and they can self-assemble in many different ways and it's very easy to implement even more interestingly you can have the merger robot act as a single entity so for example consider a problem in which you have robots that are reacting to external stimulus and this green light by pointing and the retracting so they point to the stimulus into the stimulus is too close they move back so when they are independent of each other they just do this then they are given the common to self-assemble in bigger robots and now the things it becomes for a purely self-organized system would be much more complex because how do you know which robot is the closest one how do you coordinate the movement of the world entity to move away from the stimulus but since I showed this in the video since they are touching to each other and have this nervous system this become feasible so these are the robots this is a stimulus here okay so now the stimulus exit and the robots are given the instruction to form two mns robots with these two brains and now the and then the stimulus reappears and you will see that the stimulus when it reappears let well the robots are capable of pointing to the stimulus with the part of the body that is the closest one now the stimulus is a way again the robots are given the common to attach to each other they become a single robot and again when the stimulus reappears it is the robots is capable of to perform the pointer retract behavior if it is as if it was a single entity so another interesting thing that you can do with sorry yeah and other things that you can do with with robots that have this mergeable system is to let them self here so we have run an experiment in which one of one one of these robots with a brain here is broken in different parts and then it can readjust let's say can self here okay so this is the video of the experiments in the first experiment we basically we kill the brain so the robots attached to each other and now we kill the brain so the robots that are attached to the brain they realize that the brain is broken they detach they form three new robots each one with its own brain and then they reattach to each other and two of them see the authority and so the robots is basically again in the very similar situation as before we've excited the broken part similarly here we have a composite robot where one of the components is broken the brain realizes moves away and then two robots cold and the system gets repaired finally what you can do is if you have an heterogeneous system where you have robots that are specialized for different tasks and they need to cooperate with different configuration depending on the tasks they are given they could they can self assemble and create bigger robots with the right components this is a very simple example in which one robot here would like to retrieve a brick here but he has no grasping capability so when it goes there it realizes that the brick is there but he has no grasping capability he calls for another robot that has the gripper but it would not be powerful enough to remove the object they attach to each other and they move away okay so this is uh some work that we have recently published in natural communication with these three guys here that are my ex phd student and francesco and data that you probably know so what we are doing now we are trying to understand how these uh in part centralized uh the architecture can be instead of being programed as we need the year can be the results of self-organizing processes so for the moment what we have done here is to put to create the infrastructure that make possible to do these type of experiments and now the next step is to understand whether we can get these centralized hierarchies architecture uh emerge through the interaction of the robots with the environment we also intend to extend the paradigm to swarm of robots that do not physically interact with each other so you could imagine that the same kind of mergeable nervous system approach uh is used to control a swarm of robots that are just logically interdependent with each other okay so last slide uh okay obvious for time reason i was able only to present as more part of the things that we did we do in our lab we also have activities and collective decision making robot swarms in stig merge based as one construction and recently we have worked on the use of blockchain based as smart contracts to try to make robot swarm more secure and all the automatic synthesis of robot swarm behaviors so it seems i will be in the coming days if you are interested in any of these subjects you are welcome to come and see me and we can discuss uh any of them um okay so finally just a little bit of advertising there is a journal most of you are aware but for those that are not uh that is called swarm intelligence is now in 12th year so it's very well going so you are invited to submit your papers there and if you're interested there is the ants 2018 conference on swarm intelligence in Rome next october thank you