City Council Regular Meeting

VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 1. CALL TO ORDER. President of Council Kilway called the Virtual Regular Council meeting of Thursday, October 8, 2020 to order at 7:00 p.m. This is a virtual meeting due to the State of Emergency. 2. SILENT PRAYER: PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: 3. ROLL CALL: Mr. Bollas, Mr. Carano, Mr. Donovan, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak – present. Also present were Mayor Kline, Dir. of Public Service Rorar, Dir. of Administration Cooper, Dir. of Economic Development Springer, Dir. of Finance Gilbride, Dir. of Law Raber and Clerk of Council Burton. Mrs. Allman was excused. 4. MINUTES: 9-24-20 Virtual Regular Council Meeting minutes. Mr. Sisak moved for the adoption of the 9-24-20 minutes. Seconded Mr. Donovan. Voice vote 6-0. The 9-24-20 Virtual Regular Council Meeting minutes were adopted by a vote of 6-0. 5. FINANCIAL REPORTS: • Fire & EMS Fund Transfer in the amount of $175,000 to Council on 9-30-20. • Street Maintenance & Repair Transfer in the amount of $105,000 to Council on 9-30-20. • Bond Retirement Transfer in the amount of $160,000 to Council on 9-30-20. • Appropriation Report, Fund Report and Revenue Report for the period ending 9-30-20 to Council on 10-6-20. • September Financial Reports to Council on 10-6-20. • Tallmadge Recreation Center Profit and Loss Report for the period ending 9-30-20 to Council on 10-6-20. • Income Tax Comparisons for the period ending 9-30-20 to Council on 10-6- 20. • Revenue Comparisons for the period ending 9-30-20 to Council on 10-6-20. • Consolidated Investment Portfolio for the period ending 9-30-20 to Council on 10-6-20. Mr. Sisak moved to accept the Financial Reports submitted by Dir. of Finance Gilbride. Seconded Mr. Donovan. Voice vote 6-0. The Financial Reports submitted by Dir. of Finance Gilbride were accepted by a vote of 6-0. 6. PUBLIC HEARINGS: None. 7. COMMUNITY INPUT: Pres. of Council: We have asked the community, since our meetings are virtual, that if there is anything that they would like to discuss or have discussed during the Council meetings for them to contact our Council Clerk either by e-mail or phone call and submit something in writing and we would read it, but as of 4:00 this afternoon, we had not received any so we will continue with the meeting. 8. ANNOUNCEMENTS: None. 9. AGENDA ADDITIONS: None. 10. REFERRALS OF FIRST READING ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS: a. The following shall be referred to the Finance Committee: • Ord. 62-2020 • Ord. 63-2020 • Ord. 64-2020 • Ord. 65-2020 • Ord. 66-2020 b. The following shall be referred to the Planning & Zoning Committee: None. c. The following shall be referred to the Personnel Committee: None. d. The following shall be referred to the Community Issues Committee: • Res. 11-2020 • Res. 12-2020 e. The following shall be referred to the Safety Committee: None. f. The following shall be referred to the Public Service Committee: • Ord. 67-2020 11. REPORTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS: MAYOR, DIR. OF PUBLIC SERVICE, DIR. OF ADMINISTRATION, DIR. OF ECONOMIC DEV., DIR. OF FINANCE AND DIR. OF LAW. Mayor: Thank you Madame Chair. I will be very brief tonight. You received the reports from the Police Department and Fire Department. If you have any questions, please feel free to give us a call. October 29th is Halloween night. We will be putting a post out tomorrow with all the guidelines set forth by the CDC and the Governor’s Office for keeping safe during the pandemic or that night and so I look forward to seeing that. Andrea will get those out.  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mayor (Cont’d.) On October 31st, which is Saturday night, the movie, “Hotel Transylvania” will be shown at 7:00 p.m. at the Tallmadge High School. That is a movie that is being put on by the Rec Center in lieu of not doing the Street Dance, and everyone will maintain social distancing in your cars, and you will tune into a radio station. The budget: we are just about complete with the budget. I know we have a couple questions that we received from Council this week and Carol is getting back to us on a couple of items on that. The schedule; well, you will receive the Budget at the next Council meeting and then a Budget Work Session on, if this is OK with Craig Sisak, on November 4, 2020, which is a Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. That would be a virtual meeting at this point. So, Mr. Sisak, as the Finance Chair, I would like to bring you in next week to go over that and give you the layout of the budget and present it like we did last year before it actually hits Council floor, so if you have time next week, it would be nice if I could get you in here. Ord. 65-2020; there is one for Andrea for the rehab; the demolition of the houses on Southwest Avenue. We did receive a grant for the demo; Ord. 65-2020; and when that comes up tonight, I would ask for your 1st Reading adoption. That is a 50/50 grant for the demo of those parcels. There was a question tonight of when we are coming back to the Council chambers for in-person meetings. We are working on that detail. The issue is trying to maintain the social distancing. We have four Council meetings left in the year. The State still has the order in of no more than ten persons, but we are essential so I think we could possibly get Council back in here, but how do we deal with the public? We are even considering; could we move it over to the Community Center and set up a sound system over there. So, we are working on that and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Other than that, that is the end of my report. Dir. of Pub. Service: Good evening. For the month of September, well, before I start the month of September, let’s go to the next slide. We will start with the leaf season. Due to Covid, we are going to change things up. We are not going to bring in the seasonal workers because of the issues with social distancing. We cannot be riding three people in the cab and we can’t do that because of the Covid. Usually we have six (6) trucks out; but because we are doing it all in-house, we are going to only run with four (4) trucks and you can see the pickup dates in the sections there and so you have four sections and each one is going to get two pickup dates. You can see we are not starting any later than normal. It is always the first week in November, but you can see we are going to stretch that all the way up to the new year if everything goes well. A couple points there at the bottom. Have your leaves raked out by 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning the week of your pickup. So not block any of the fire hydrants and mailboxes, culverts and catch basins. Then one rule that we are really going to enforce because we only have half of the manpower is once we pass . . . all our trucks have GPS on them, you can’t call in and say that we missed you. Pretty much, you didn’t have your leaves out and so you will just have to wait for the next go around. So, I will field any questions at this time from Council before we go to the next slide. Moving on, in Zoning, we actually had a pretty good month with permits. That is usually what we get in the summer months. We had 72 permits; 40 which were the zoning certificates so that is for decks and things like that. Code update; the formal draft is scheduled to be delivered next week. We will have a review with the Boards and Commissions as well as City Council and after that, public input and so we are getting real close on the Code update. Cemetery; we had two full burials for the month and we did complete all 32 monument foundations that were finished. Keep in mind that we skipped spring because of Covid and we put them all off until the fall and actually it worked out real well because in the spring when we do the foundations, it is usually wet and this time it worked out great and we got all of them done. Moving on, the Rec Center; expanded hours are, and keep in mind, that now we are open Monday through Friday at 6:00 a.m. and we are not shutting down at lunchtime. We are open full time from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. I extended the hours on Saturday; we are still not open on Sunday’s. However, the childcare is open at 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. daily and we did open one basketball court and soccer field for the members and family use. Memberships at the Rec Center is down by about 500 from last year. The visits are up about 200 from last month, but they are down about 15,000 from last year. The average is 176 and that is up about 15 folks from last month, so we are getting there. 2  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Dir. of Pub. Service (Cont’d.) We are gearing up for the winter and fall programming which includes, you can see the Community All-Star Basketball League registration is October 14th and the indoor soccer league starts on October 23rd. As the Mayor mentioned about the Halloween Moonlight Drive-up Movie is October 31st and that is Hotel Transylvania” and that will be in the high school parking lot and so we appreciate the high school working with us on that. Maca Pool; finally, the accessory structures are done. On the left is the before and on the right is the after picture and so we wanted some fun colors so that ship had some better colors and also another exciting thing is we have a great parks sign out there and if you look left all of those signs tell you that all of the pools are going to be switched over to this nicer sign. We are going to start doing these in all the parks. That is the way the sign looks. It has all of the basic rules there and then if you look down there at the bottom; the bar code gives you a full list and you can scan that right on your phone and it pops up. Every rule for our parks is there and so just a better way to do it. Like I said, the totem pole sign is going up at all the parks and it is just a cleaner look and I have to commend the group of managers; we have Jessica as well las Mike Weigand; he is the Street Superintendent and they put a lot of thought on how to update those parks and it shows every summer. Hats off to them for coming up with this. Moving on to the Living Tree; on the left you can see the Living Tree and that is at Tallmadge Circle Planning scene there; that was developed by a landscape architect and we actually have 27 trees and we have 8 to go and so we will get those in next week. Those trees were planted in the Circle. That included removal, if you look at the plan on the left, see all those trees that are not colored; the white ones, those are trees that are set to be removed for several reasons; they are not in the right place, they have got disease; they have bad structure to them; they have been hit by cars and things like that and so those are trees we removed. In the Street Department, you can see they are busy with 5 tons of street sweepings were removed and three culverts were replaced and one catch basin was installed and 750 feet of lineal ditch was done; 13 tons of asphalt were done; those were for potholes and miscellaneous repairs. 11,000 feet of crack sealing was done, and it involved ten streets. We always talk about what training that is going on, and street sweeper training was done for street improvement. Davey Resource came in an gave us a whole day class on tree pruning. That is two years now that we have had that class and so we are doing better. The picture on the right is one of the 32 cemetery foundations being done and the next slide you have new equipment. We actually have a true brine truck. Mayor: Mike, let me just stop you here for a second. You skipped over the Drug- Free Workplace. The training that we did in-house that HR put together that with the outside agency just so Council knows that that was recorded and we had a little over 100 of our employees attend that from the Managers training to the regular employees. Hats off to Jill’s Department for putting that drug-free workplace together. If you want to view it, it is available to anyone. Dir. of Pub. Service: It is mandatory for employees that are Managers to do that annually. Brine truck; the first one in the City. We have actually had some tanks before, but they weren’t set up for brine. You can see that; I want to note that someone asked about the safety with that gallonage; you know it is 1,500 gallons sloshing around in there and it has baffle balls in it and I don’t know if anybody knows what baffle balls are, but that stops the liquid from sloshing around and pushing that truck forward or backwards as it is sloshing, so it is the same truck. It is a great piece, and I am pretty excited to get that thing going. I do want to emphasize salt brine is going to be used in that truck this year. The next slide is Utilities and again, I know the Mayor cringes, but we had zero water breaks and zero sewer backups. So, I want you to note that there were 8 water breaks for the year so far and in 2019 we had 22. We are trying something new down there; a new phone root control is being used. You can see it over there on the left; it is going down in a manhole. What this is is it eliminates roots; we get a lot of tree roots that grow in and that ends up blocking up our system; cracks in the pipes and even some separation where these tree roots come in and it actually eliminate the roots three feet outside of the pipes and it has a two-year warranty on it and so we will see how that works and that will hopefully work with eliminating more backups and also we have new manhole risers and we will get to that on the next slide, but before you 3  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Dir. of Pub. Service (Cont’d.) change the slides; training; backflow training is very important, and it prevents backflows; the back-drafting of the outside water sources from intermixing with our drinking water and we had a two-day training online relocating. You hook up a line and it sends off a small signal below ground and you can follow that pipe for a good half mile and so it is a good tool to have and we finally got that and we are going to use that more. The next slide; it shows these risers and what is important about these is that the old risers were concrete and were very heavy and very stiff as you can imagine and so if you are on a grade, it is very difficult. These are all recycled rubber and you can actually shave these to the grade of the road and so you can flip them in and out to get the grade right so you can set these manholes better and it is something new and we will see how it works, but it is pretty exciting because you don’t even need a piece of equipment to lift those risers on there where before you had to. So, those are a couple of new things there and that is it for my report, unless there are any questions. Mr. Carano: Once again, I want to commend you because you are so forward looking and it seems pretty apparent that you are really on the cutting edge of doing things for the City like that and the amount that you give us is much appreciated. Dir. of Pub. Service: Thank you for that. Mr. Carano: The second thing is that I was looking at Howe Road again and are we; do we stripe that road? Does Tallmadge pay for striping that road? Dir. of Pub. Service: Yes. That was restriped probably in May. Mr. Carano: So how often do they stripe it? Dir. of Pub. Service: Annually. Mr. Carano: Well, I mean I have been over probably down to Exchange Street between Arlington and the underpass at Route 8 there and that road is wider and so it doesn’t quite compare to Howe Road, but they have done something to put bike lanes in and I don’t particularly like the way that they have the parking; you would have to see it, but I don’t know, for the safety of the people crossing at the Freedom Trail plus just the speed that people do on Howe Road going up and down is in fact if there was a center turn lane and two lanes; one on each side . . . I don’t know if one lane would be enough to cut into two to make a bike path, but if that were the case, it would pretty much give quite a few people in that part of Tallmadge to get to the Freedom Trail if they wanted to get on their bikes rather than go and drive and park. Of course, in the future, Mayor, I’m not sure about this, if the East Avenue Corridor is going to include bike lanes; if they have room for it or whatever, but if that were done, there are two and there would be quite the number of people who could be pedaling. Say if they wanted to pedal down to the Circle and get a bite to eat or something, or to pedal over to the Freedom Trail. What I am thinking is, I’m thinking for in the future, like Tallmadge 2040, and looking ahead sort of that way or something so that we do these things now for the future and it’s not like I am presenting anything new, but if we do Howe Road in the future Mike; would we be able to look at it a different way of striping it? If there was one lane people would slow down possibly. That is just a suggestion; I don’t know if it is possible. Dir. of Pub. Service: We can have an engineer take a look at that and see if there is anything, we can do in the future with striping it. I know there is discussion of putting that thing on a road diet and so it is going to get narrowed down to three lanes in the future, but we can have an engineer take a look and see if they can come up with something that would be safe to restripe it somehow. Mr. Carano: Thank you very much. Pres. of Council: Mr. Rorar, I had something real quick for you too. So, you are talking about the street sweepers and eliminating debris going into the storm sewers and so forth, but in some of the older neighborhoods the storm water is right on the edge of the streets and then it goes down into a big storm basin. I have noticed, especially in my neighborhood that there is a lot of vegetation growing out of them. Is that something else that we need to look at. Dir. of Pub. Service: Yup. We will send a crew in there and take a look at them. Pres. of Council: I didn’t know if you had something that you would do that throughout the whole City on a schedule or anything like that, but I have noticed a lot of trees growing out them lately. Dir. of Pub. Service: Yeah. It was a bad year for them, but yeah, we can go through and look at the neighborhood. Pres. of Council: Thank you. Dir. of Administration: Good evening everyone. I have no formal report this evening, but I will be happy to answer any questions if anybody has any. 4  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mr. Carano: I was wondering about the benefits; have you seen benefits from the high speed fiber optic coming not only in terms of speed, but I think it is going to be money saving from what we talked about. Has that worked out the way we thought it would? Dir. of Administration: The short answer is yes so far. What he is speaking of is that our service provider for internet access for the City; the City’s facilities, was changed in the middle of the year around July; the beginning of July, and now we are using Fairlawn Gig which is not too far away in Fairlawn and it has faster speed and a little bit of savings particularly in the longer term. So, the answer is yes. Mr. Carano: Is it possible, I don’t know, but is there any chance of us working with Fairlawn Gig to expand throughout the community or is that something that is still being thought of? Dir. of Administration: Yes; the answer is yes. There is a lot of planning and investigation and exploration that needs to be done in order to determine the feasibility and we just recently got a report back that basically it gives us a map of what the City would look like and a cost estimate to put fiber in everybody’s home and every business in the City. So, we just received that and so we are examining that, and we are going to be talking about that over the next weeks. Mr. Carano: Thank you very much for your work on that. I really appreciate it. I think it is something that I think would be very good for Tallmadge. Dir. of Administration: It would be great. Thank you very much. Dir. of Econ. Development: Good evening. So, we continue to be busy and we are engaging with our business community as well as our real estate community. In the month of September, we had the opportunity to meet with Steere Engineering, Cardinal Hardware II, Glazing Systems, which is one of the businesses located in the JEDD, East End Welding as well as SGB USA. Of these five different businesses, this represents about 321 employees working for the City and many of these are manufacturing businesses, but again, just building that relationship and seeing how we can continue to work together with our businesses in Tallmadge. The next slide, I just want to talk briefly about what will be a third round for the Summit County Small Busines Emergency Grant Program. If you recall, small businesses within Tallmadge took advantage of both Round 1 as well as Round 2 and over $300,000 came back into our community and benefited 76 small businesses. Through CARES Act Funding there is going to be a third round. I think we have done a pretty good job of getting the word out. I know the Tallmadge Chamber has been pushing the contents as has Andrea, through the City. The deadline was yesterday, however, we just received notice earlier today that the Tallmadge Chamber is going to push this off for another week and so we are encouraging the small businesses to please make application and pursue the grant funding. It covers expenses anywhere from payroll to health benefits, mortgage, utilities, and things of that nature so please take advantage if you haven’t already. If you know a small business that may need some support, please encourage them to pursue this and tomorrow I would be happy to answer any questions if you would just want to put them in touch with me and I would be happy to walk them through this. On to the next slide, we had the opportunity for a ribbon-cutting earlier this week with Leppo. You know Leppo recently completed an 18,000 square foot expansion on West Avenue and so that was a really exciting moment. You can see the Mayor was pretty excited; he jumped on a tractor and I think he lost the keys and couldn’t take it outside, but it is an exciting project for Leppo. I am really pleased to see that project being completed. In addition, Menards just recently opened their retail store, and it is located in the Brimfield Town JEDD and earlier this week they have opened their stores to retail sales. Summa Health, located just next door to City Hall, is also opening. They are now accepting patients. Just a friendly reminder, if you don’t have it on your calendar already, Trident Restoration is a new business located in the City. They will have a ribbon-cutting this coming Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. so you are certainly all welcome to join us. The next slide is, moving back out to the Portage County area, still within the City of Tallmadge, DuraMed continues to make progress on their 20,000 square foot expansion. Again, this is about a $1.5 million expansion. This picture was just taken yesterday and so the footers have been poured and they are moving forward with this project and again, it is going to be a great addition to that area. 5  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Dir. of Econ. Development (Cont’d.) The next and last slide, I believe, we brought a little bit of information to Council last time we met and I just wanted to follow up that we were successful in leasing out 29 Northeast Avenue and this is one of the CIC Tallmadge Grow properties and we entered into a 5-year lease agreement with Baylor Services, which is a growing Tallmadge business located on West Avenue and so we are happy to see them sign this lease and they will be moving in here shortly and this building that was previously empty will now be occupied and so that is a good thing for the community. That concludes my report, and I would be happy to answer any questions. Dir. of Finance: Thank you. Everybody received the September financial reports. As I stated in there I did post and spend all of the CARES Act money that we received through September. However, as all things change, I may have to revisit some of the Paid Administrative Leave that was charged to the grant. There is some additional guidance coming out that I need to relook at the dates of those and make sure that we don’t run ourselves in danger of being asked to repay the money. So, you may see some changes to that coming forward, but I will keep Council up to date on that. I do have Ord. 66-2020 that I would request for 1st Reading adoption and we can talk about that when it comes up. End of report. Dir. of Law: Thank you. Good evening. I will just take this opportunity to remind everyone that we are doing a drug take-back day on Saturday, October 24th at the Tallmadge Police Department from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. That is an opportunity for everyone to get rid of any unused prescriptions or over the counter drugs in a safe way that doesn’t get them dumped into our sewer system or water system and protects them from getting in the wrong hands. So, we highly encourage our residents to take advantage of the program. They don’t have to get out of their car; we will be practicing social distancing and masking, but they can dispose of their drugs that day safely and also a reminder that we do have a box in the lobby of the Police Department that they can use at any time; 24/7 so they can always utilize that as well. Thank you. End of report. 12. REPORTS OF STANDING COMMITTEES OF COUNCIL OF THE WHOLE: a. COMMUNITY ISSUES Dennis Loughry, Chair Jonathon Bollas, Vice Chair Rebecca Allman • Res. 11-2020 – (1st Reading) – A resolution by City Council of the City of Tallmadge, Ohio affirming that Tallmadge is a welcoming community that respects the innate dignity of all people and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Loughry: I call the Community Issues Committee to order; myself and Mr. Bollas are here this evening. Mrs. Allman has been excused. We have Res. 11-2020, and it is a resolution by City Council of the City of Tallmadge affirming that Tallmadge is a welcoming community that respects the innate dignity of all people and providing for immediate enactment. So, the sponsor of this resolution is Mr. Carano. Mr. Carano; do you have anything to say at this time regarding this ordinance? Hearing none; Jonathon; do you have . . . Mr. Carano: I’m sorry; I had my speaker off and I was speaking. Sorry. The tradition of Jindal, Christian, Muslim; that is through culture, which those three religions were born out of, was one of being the welcoming of strangers sort of built into their culture and I am somewhat familiar with some aspects of that and I know Tallmadge and many cities across the country have put forth similar resolutions like this and Tallmadge is open and welcoming and this is just sort of a stamp of who we are as a community and I don’t know that without any getting out somehow to the public; I think it is kind of important that we be a kind of a community that, in a changing world, is going to be everchanging in terms of demographics even now within our community, we have different religious groups; maybe they don’t have their place of worship here, such as synagogues or Hindu temples or anything that I am aware of or mosques, but as the future changes I think I must emphasize that that is the kind of community we are that we welcome people from all cultures, religious backgrounds, sexual orientation or whatever. I think this would be good for Tallmadge to do that and so that is basically why I put this resolution forth. Mr. Loughry: Thank you. Mr. Bollas do you have anything? Mr. Bollas: I was going to recommend that we have a 2nd Reading on this resolution 11-2020 and just wanted to also call out that I do feel our community is a welcoming community and I would just like to further explore this resolution. 6  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mr. Loughry: Thank you. Anybody else on Council have anything at this time on Res. 11-2020? No one responded. Administration: No one responded. Hearing none; the recommendation is 2-0 to give this a 2nd Reading at our next Council meeting. • Res. 12-2020 – (1st Reading) – A resolution by City Council of the City of Tallmadge, Ohio requiring all opening prayer at Tallmadge City Council meetings be silent and providing for immediate enactment. Next, we have Res. 12-2020 at 1st Reading which is a resolution by the City Council of the City of Tallmadge requiring all opening prayer at Tallmadge City Council meetings be silent and providing for immediate enactment. Again, the sponsor of this resolution is Mr. Carano. Mr. Carano; do you have anything at this time for this resolution? Mr. Carano: Yes, the wording would have been better if it were silent reflection because prayer itself has connotations, but it is sort of in spirit of the previous one. At all our meetings that we have had where there is someone who has prayer; it has always been a Christian and I think our community is coming to be more diverse and so I am not against silent reflection or prayer, whatever you want to call it at a meeting, but I just thought if it were silent it would be more accommodating to people of different faiths. I myself, somewhat am a Buddhist; an atheistic type of religion and you know I was just thinking that if we had somebody who came weekly to our community and gave the prayer all the time or we had a Hindu; would we think differently about this; you know; we might. So, the only point for this was that it would be so that everyone can, according to their own convictions in faith or if they don’t have faith; whatever; they could . . . wouldn’t put one permanent over another. That’s all; that was the purpose of that. Mr. Loughry: Thank you. Mr. Bollas; do you have anything? Mr. Bollas: Yeah, in reviewing, it is my understanding that clergy had always visited and given the opening prayer in person before the pandemic and then we had switched over to silent prayer as a part of the virtual meetings, but I personally think we should resume the in-person clergy once we resume in-person meetings. Mr. Loughry: Does anybody have anything else at this time for this resolution? Mr. Carano: We didn’t always have someone give the in-person prayer. There were times; there is a clergyman in the community that finds other people do it I think, and there were many empty dates that there wasn’t someone giving the prayer. Pres. of Council: I just wanted to clarify a little bit that the list of clergy that do the prayer for us at Council; they are all part of the Tallmadge Ministerial Association which is a group of all of the church leaders in Tallmadge that come together to just do good for our whole community and so they are the ones who schedule which pastor or clergy that come to our Council and they work with our Council Clerk and they make the list. Now, sometimes something happens and the person that is scheduled cannot come, so that is when we have the silent prayer when we are doing the meetings in person. So that is the history on that just to get that out there and personally I think we should continue having them come. I do not want to stop prayer. If we are not doing the type of prayer that you want to do, you can have your own prayer silently. But I think we need to continue to keep doing this as well. Mr. Loughry: Anybody else on Council have anything? No one responded. Anybody on the Administration have any comments at this time? No one responded. Mr. Bollas, you know, this is just 1st Reading and I already have had five different conversations on this resolution today. Word travels fast on an ordinance or resolution like this and so it would be my request that we just give this a 2nd Reading. Are you OK with that? Mr. Bollas: Yes, I would agree to go to 2nd Reading. Mr. Loughry: I would ask, Mrs. Kilway, so the recommendation is 2-0 to let it go to 2nd Reading, but I would suggest that we look at the way we presently allow the community to communicate with us because I’m sure there is going to be several clergy that may want to talk to us in person as opposed to being asked in an e-mail. So just think about that. So, with that, I will close committee. Pres. of Council: Thank you very much Mr. Loughry. b. SAFETY Jonathon Bollas, Chair Michael Carano, Vice Chair Craig Sisak No legislation at this time. 7  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mr. Bollas: Thank you. I call the Safety Committee to order; myself, Councilman Carano and Councilman Sisak are present. We have no legislation at this time. Does anybody on the committee or Administration have anything for the Safety Committee this evening? Mr. Carano: I sent an e-mail to everybody that had some information and I don’t expect anybody to do anything at this time; I don’t think there is the will to do it, but I am suggesting that in the future when things calm down across the country, that the article that I sent, and I don’t know who read it; I hope people read it; it just shows that in different countries there are different ways that policing is done. It is not an objection to our police force whatsoever, it is just thinking that if we open mindedly look at if there are things that we could do as a community and as Council to make policing better like for the Tallmadge 2040 for the future in ways that changes such as having people who are trained in conflict resolution show up to houses rather than police with guns to handle certain situations and that kind of thing. Or which I know many people here don’t agree with, but the police in the schools and that type thing like that. It seems like, and I’m not afraid to discuss things and I am not afraid if the people disagree with me; that doesn’t bother me; what kind of bothers me is if people don’t want to discuss it; they don’t want to; that is what Council people do especially with things like this, so, and frankly I am not going to be around for the future to see if anything gets done this way; my hope would be that Council would look into it and maybe having a community group be a part of these kinds of discussions to see if there are things that we can do to insure that we don’t have future problems in the City of Tallmadge. Thank you. Mr. Bollas: Thank you Mr. Carano. On that note, I have scheduled a meeting and a tour with the Police Chief for tomorrow and I also wanted to take a moment to thank the Chief and Deputy Fire Chief who allowed us to take a tour of the Fire Stations and I just wanted to call out that they are very excited for the upcoming project and we learned a lot about their challenges and I learned a lot more about how the department operates and I am just very thankful that they took the time to do that and I had a really good chance to really get to know our staff better. But, on the Police side of the operation, I will have that meeting tomorrow and again thank you for your feedback and I wanted to call out one other question that I had; were there any updates specific to the fire station architecture or the Part-time Firefighters Association negotiations? Mayor: Yes, thank you for asking because I was just going to, when you asked for the Administration, to give you an update on the fire station architect. We are in the final stages as I stated before, we started with 24 architects submitting requests for qualifications and we interviewed eight and now we are down to five to get proposals for the cost estimates for the architectural design and construction drawings and those are due by October 23rd and then the first meeting in November, I hope to have the legislation to be able to enter into contract with an architectural firm to move forward with that design. So, it is moving along very well. The committee has done a great job doing that. Tough decisions; I could probably have picked probably any one of the of the 24 architects, but you have to only use one for the process that we are going through so it has worked out very well. Part-time Firefighters negotiations; we are still in negotiations. We have had two meetings and we do have another one scheduled for I think next Wednesday. Mr. Bollas: Thank you for that update; I appreciate it. Mr. Loughry: Mr. Bollas, I had two things. One is; I had; we had a resident on Munroe I believe it was Tuesday, that almost got hit getting their mail; elderly; senior; one of our seniors, and she fell down and basically a car was speeding through the school zone and scared her. So anyway, I sent an e-mail to Chief Williams and Chief Williams got right on it and so I would advise everyone to slow down especially in a school zone. So that is one and then the second; I looked at the reports that the Mayor sent us and I noticed on the Fire Department that it seems like, on our EMS calls especially, since we have so many assisted living facilities, that we are transporting now more than we used to. It just appeared to me that way anyway. So, I just wanted to make sure that we don’t have any issues since we are transporting more and when we have a squad leave; we still always have backup in the City. I want to make sure that . . . I know that the Mayor and others have watched that, but it just seems like we are transporting more, and I guess that is my point. Mayor: The problem with, you are referring to the nursing homes or the assisted living that we are transporting out of? Mr. Loughry: Well, I just saw EMS calls and then I saw a comment that EMS transports and so I assumed that those were from those facilities. 8  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mayor: We don’t have ambulances anymore to transport. They just don’t go into the other facilities like they used to, but we do keep an eye on that and we do have two squads and a lot of back-to-back calls if you noticed on the reports and then you do also have our neighboring communities that help us just like we help them. Actually, they are there right now on a call over in Mogadore. Mr. Loughry: OK, thank you very much. Mr. Sisak: I did notice that we; it looks like we had transported to a couple rather distant emergency rooms and wanted to know if there is cost differential when we bill out for transporting to say; Akron General, Cleveland Clinic North or University Hospital and Portage Medical Center. Mayor: It is a formula on the run report and do the mileage on that and so . . . Mr. Sisak: So, we just have a flat rating? Mayor: That depends on whether it is Medicare, Medicaid or . . . no, it is not just a flat rate; it is a scheduled rate, but primarily if you saw that report, probably 75% of the time it is to somewhere in the Summa system, or Akron City Hospital. We like going to the Kent facility because it is just right up the road. Mr. Sisak: Kent is not open anymore I don’t think. Mayor: No, they closed. When they do open back up that was a nice facility. Akron General; we go to a lot downtown. Mr. Sisak: It is just something that you would think that you would want to get people back in service sooner versus taking them 20 miles and passing a couple of emergency rooms along the way. So, alright. Thank you. Mr. Bollas: Thank you again to the Mayor for providing those reports. The last thing I wanted to call out was we followed the legal guidelines by the Dir. of Law for the Firefighter’s tour and then I will do the same for the Police Department tour. No more than three. We did not have more than three. Mayor: Thank you. Mr. Sisak: I close committee. c. PUBLIC SERVICE Rebecca Allman, Chair Dennis Loughry, Vice Chair James Donovan • Ord. 67-2020 (1st Reading) – Amending Section 351.99 of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Tallmadge to enhance penalties and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Loughry: I call the Public Service Committee to order; Mrs. Allman is excused and myself and Mr. Donovan are present. We have Ord. 67-2020 at 1st Reading amending Section 351.99 of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Tallmadge to enhance penalties and providing for immediate enactment. Anybody from the Administration like to speak to this ordinance? Dir. of Law: This ordinance is just updating our parking penalty fines. They have not been updated in a significant period of time and there is a tracked version and you will see if you were to actually be fined; it would be $5 and I think since we probably spend that on a cup of coffee and that is not much of a penalty to people so just as a deterrent I just need to update this and go to $25 and then the other one was $10 so just again, making that a little bit of an increase; the $100 remains and that changes base on how long it takes to pay. Failure to pay would eventually have the offense issued a citation in Stow Municipal Court. We are not changing any of that. Then we are changing the handicap penalties which started at $50 previously. So, this is in line with surrounding communities and since we have kind of . . . we do not; I just want to be clear; we do not go around issuing parking citations regularly. When I spoke to the Chief, he said last year there were fewer than 10 citations. It is just something that if we get complaints and we need to take some action, again we just wanted to have some deterrent effect other than the $5. So, we are just looking to update that. Councilperson Sisak has been involved in those discussions and I don’t know if you have anything to add with regard to that, but again the main idea is to have people comply with the parking code. Mr. Loughry: Mr. Donovan? Mr. Donovan: No. Mr. Loughry: Mrs. Raber; you do not need this adopted this evening; do you? You just want to give it a 1st Reading? Dir. of Law: That’s fine. Mr. Loughry: Are you OK with that Mr. Donovan? 9  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mr. Donovan: Absolutely. Mr. Sisak: Mr. Loughry, I started looking at this going back several months ago when we revoked parking in proximity to mailboxes and things like that and I just want to look at the Code in its entirety. We looked at it kind of front to back and back to front amongst myself, the Mayor, Mrs. Raber, the Police Chief and this was kind of like the best approach to modify the monetary fines versus really tinkering too much with the Code itself and overnight parking versus 2 hour, versus 8 hours, versus 12 hours; so again, the enforcement is minimal it appears based on complaints and so if there is an issue, hopefully this again, like Mrs. Raber said, will deter people from the bad behavior. Mr. Loughry: The recommendation is 2-0 to let this go to 2nd Reading. Anything else for Public Service? No one responded. I will close committee. d. PERSONNEL Michael Carano, Chair Rebecca Allman, Vice Chair Jonathon Bollas No legislation at this time. Mr. Carano: I call the Personnel Committee to order; Becky Allman is excused, and Jonathon Bollas is present. We don’t have anything before us today. Jonathon: do you have anything? Mr. Bollas: I just wanted to add in terms of personnel; when we had a chance to tour the fire station, we got to better understand some challenges around the recruiting and I just wanted to see both within committee and also on the Administration that we just explore different avenues in recruiting and retaining firefighters now and in the future so that they have less need to pick up additional hours and overtime and additional shifts and things like that and so it was very interesting to me just to see what avenues are available and what opportunities are available whether that is career fairs or different school visits and things like that just to continue to express an interest to those who wish to enter that field. Mayor: So, for the Part-time Firefighters, and that is probably what you are referring to, because the Full-time; the retention is they are long-time employees unless they actually move out of the area to Columbus or so and we have lost very few Full-time Firemen to different departments, but the Part-time Firefighters; they love coming to Tallmadge and it is pretty easy to get those employees. People only leave us if it just becomes too much work for them because they are working so many shifts on their full-time jobs. Civil Service vets those and we always have a list and that list seems to have worked pretty well, but a lot of times with the part-time; if they are not full-time with other departments, they will work here part-time and then when a full-time job comes up somewhere, they typically take that opportunity because that is their ultimate goal. Mr. Bollas: Thank you for that clarification; I was referring to the part-time. Mr. Carano: Thank you Mayor Kline and Mr. Bollas. Is there anyone else on Council have anything? No one responded. Alright; anyone else on the Administration? Hearing none; I close committee. e. FINANCE Craig Sisak, Chair James Donovan, Vice Chair Michael Carano • Ord. 62-2020 (1st Reading) – Finance – Setting tap-in fees and meter rates for installation of water and sewer lines, private fireline fees and fire hydrant meter and backflow assemblies deposits for the City of Tallmadge and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak: I call the Finance Committee to order; myself, Mr. Donovan and Mr. Carano are present. We have Ord. 62-2020 at 1st Reading and it is setting tap-in fees and meter rates for installation of water and sewer lines, private fireline fees and fire hydrant meter and backflow assemblies deposits for the City of Tallmadge and providing for immediate enactment. Does anybody have any input from the Administration? Mayor: Mr. Rorar, do you want to talk, or do you want me to? Dir. of Pub. Service: Yes, I will jump in. Councilman, we hired a consultant back in 2018 to do a rate study and they came back and looked at our existing tap-in fees and they made these recommendations to increase one of the areas where we were lacking and mostly that is the tap-in fees. They made this recommendation to update them. Mr. Sisak: What was our tap-in fee like $100 or something? 10  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Dir. of Pub. Service: Back in 2015 they were $1,800 for 5/8” and then $2,500 for all the rest of the meters sizes. The sewer tap-in fee was $60, and they did a comparison and we looked at some of the surrounding communities as well and these numbers and they are within reason. Mr. Sisak: OK. Would you like this at 1st Reading? Mayor: No. Mr. Sisak: OK; so, we will just leave this at 1st Reading. • Ord. 63-2020 – (1st Reading) – Finance – Authorizing the Mayor to enter into an agreement with Trident Restoration, LLC for a New Jobs Program Grant pursuant to T.C.O. 160.05 and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak: Next we also have Ord. 63-2020 at 1st Reading, and it is authorizing the Mayor to enter into an agreement with Trident Restoration, LLC for a New Jobs Program Grant pursuant to T.C.O. 160.05 and providing for immediate enactment. Mayor: This is the new business out there . . . Matt do you want to talk about this at all? We don’t need this tonight either. We would only ask for 1st Reading. Dir of Econ. Development: Yes, that is correct. This is a new business at 225 South Thomas and by year’s end they anticipate having 30 full-time employees and 7 part- time employees with an annual payroll of about $1.5 million. So, they would meet the threshold for the New Jobs Program and as the Mayor indicated; it’s not imperative that this be approved this evening. So, we can go to 2nd Reading; that’s fine. Mr. Sisak: Sounds good, so we will give that a 1st Reading. Mr. Loughry: Mr. Sisak, I have a question for Matt and maybe Mollie regarding Covid and if working remotely continues, and I think it will to some degree going forward; how will we track whether that money is being earned in the City of Tallmadge and taxes are being paid to the City of Tallmadge and keeping track of that abatement? Dir. of Finance: If taxes are being earned in Tallmadge, then they have to pay them to Tallmadge, so they would still have to submit all of those earnings the same way, so it is the employer’s responsibility to keep track of where their employees are working. Now when I do those, I do review the accounts and I can see if refunds are being issued against that withholding account claiming to work out of the City. Usually I don’t pay those New Jobs Programs out until July or August and so by that time, any refunds that would have been applied for by an employee that worked there through RITA would be requested in the account. But it is the employer’s responsibility to report where their employees are working. Mr. Loughry: Thank you for being on top of that as always. Thanks. Mayor: Dennis if I may, or maybe Craig, just to briefly talk about that. We have been dealing with this issue since the pandemic actually started. We are under the State of Emergency from the State of Ohio and the law that requires an employee who is working more than 20 days at a certain location; that is where their taxes would go to. It is not in effect at this time; that is being challenged in the courts and we don’t know how they are going to rule. But, currently if you are working from home and you are working in Tallmadge and the taxes may, in the future, be all for Tallmadge or if you are working at your business such as this new company and they are working remotely in Akron or somewhere besides that then that tax would go to that. It is being challenged right now so we don’t know how that is going to end up at the end of the day. Mr. Loughry: Thank you. Mr. Sisak: Any more questions? No one responded. Seeing none, we will move on. • Ord. 64-2020 – (1st Reading) – Finance - Amending and supplementing Ord. 91-2019 to amend rates, charges, and fees for all recreational facilities and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak: Ord. 64-2020 and it is amending and supplementing Ord 91-2019 to amend rates, charges, and fees for all recreational facilities and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Rorar; do you have any comment on this? Dir. of Pub. Service: Yes. We just noticed the last couple tournaments we probably needed to add this tournament fee. We are looking at $50 for two fields per day fee and $150 for three fields per day. Cuyahoga Falls has a $20 for a field all day and then Bath Township has a $25.00 per tournament fee per field for each day. What ended up happening is that we potentially ended up having some overtime callouts on a tournament and we need to recoup some of that money and in addition we have personnel out there throughout the whole tournament pulling trash and cleaning restrooms. So, it is a tournament fee to recoup some of the money that we are spending. Are there any questions at this time? 11  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mr. Loughry: This is not so much tied to the grid; it is tied more to a comment that I made at our last Council meeting in that I wish that the Comp Board or Mr. Rorar, actually as the Service Director would have some latitude to make financial decisions on the fly instead of having to come back to Council for every little thing on the grid, but I understand how we got to where we are, but you know, I just think that they need some latitude to operate within that department. That is just my opinion. Dir. of Law: Mr. Loughry, I appreciate what you are saying, but just to be clearer; we actually have two different; we have a programming grid and the Council grid and so we did, you know, at one point in time we had every single fee coming to Council and then for the reason that you are stating, to be expeditious and not have Council have to have legislation because we are changing the paint by numbers class here or whatever that is, that is probably a bad example, but every little thing . . . so we did change it so we don’t have to have to come back to Council for everything and at that time Council still did want to kind of maintain control over the bigger ticket items and I think you know, the pricing structure on things like how much memberships are going to be and those sorts of things and we can certainly take a look at it again and maybe it is time to amend it but that will take some time and reflection to kind of see what Council is kind of interested in in keeping in front of them and what things the Recreation Department can potentially have and for that programming; we do have a check and balance in going to the Rec Board and so it has to be vetted through that and then it gets signed off on by multiple parties in the Administration so that there is a check and balance on that as well so we can certainly take a look at that and I’m sure the Recreation Department would be happy to have some more flexibility built into the system. Mr. Loughry: Thank you very much. Mr. Sisak: Alright, so we will leave that at 1st Reading. • Ord. 65-2020 – (1st Reading) – Finance – Authorizing the Mayor to receive funding from the Summit County Land Reutilization Corporation Community Development Matching Grant Fund for the demolition of the structures deemed blighted at 16 and 22 Southwest Avenue and authorizing the Mayor to enter into all necessary agreements pursuant to the Tallmadge Demolition Program; appropriating funds and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak: We also have Ord. 65-2020 authorizing the Mayor to receive funding from the Summit County Land Reutilization Corporation Community Development Matching Grant Fund for the demolition of the structures deemed blighted at 16 and 22 Southwest Avenue and authorizing the Mayor to enter into all necessary agreements pursuant to the Tallmadge Demolition Program; appropriating funds and providing for immediate enactment. Mayor; would you like to speak to this? Maybe not, so it looks like we have the two parcels 16 and 22 Southwest Avenue. Do we currently own those parcels in the CIC? Dir. of Finance: The City owns those parcels. Mr. Sisak: So, they are not in the CIC? Dir. of Finance: Right. They were until they were vacated and then they reverted back to the City. Pres. of Council: It looks like the Mayor is having technical issues right now. Dir. of Finance: We received half of the cost of those two buildings from the land bank. Mr. Sisak: So, it looks like it will be like $30,000 for the demolition and we will get half? Dir. of Finance: $23,800. Mr. Sisak: I think the Mayor asked to have this approved tonight probably so we can get into moving along so we can get them demolished and the land cleared probably by snowfall or sometime at the first of the year. Dir. of Finance: Yes, and I think there are some deadlines. Mayor: Yes, I just walked over to Carol; my computer just went oops and I’m out, but I do see the ordinance that is up here and so that is the ordinance that we did receive a grant; $11,000 and I will try to scroll up to that; a matching grant and we had $15,000 in our current budget for the demolition and these structures are beyond repair. The foundations are falling apart, and it is just time to clean that up. Mr. Sisak: When did we acquire these properties; it has been a couple of years hasn’t it? Mayor: Yeah it has been three or four. Dir. of Law: It has been like fourish. Mr. Sisak: Then what is the plan after demolition; are you going to try to sell . . .? Mayor: Just to vacate the area and be able to open that up for redevelopment. 12  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mr. Sisak: But it probably won’t be development by the City; a private individual or company? Mayor: I would like to see a private partnership with a developer that would come in there to redevelop that area. Mr. Sisak: I just remember having discussions for the potential for that property and kind of that whole area there and I didn’t know if we were still in that same thought pattern or if it had kind of changed. Mayor: Yeah, well when we were trying to get some of the other properties on West Avenue which we were not able to obtain, but then we have a couple of other parcels there that the property owners are asking us to take them and then also the A&W is up for sale and we have talked to, when Rita was here, and Matt hasn’t gotten too much involved in this one yet, but we are trying to get the developer to take over and look at the bigger picture and we have some land that we can sell to that developer for redevelopment; it would be a good start. Mr. Sisak: OK, that’s fine, I just wanted to know what kind of track we were heading on. So, committee; what are your thoughts on this? Mr. Donovan: I think we are ready for adoption. Mr. Carano: Yeah, the same for me. Mr. Sisak: We will recommend 3-0 to adopt Ord. 65-2020 at 1st Reading. • Ord. 66-2020 – (1st Reading) – Finance – Appropriating additional amounts and reducing appropriations and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak: We have Ord. 66-2020 at 1st Reading appropriating additional amounts and reducing appropriations and providing for immediate enactment. Mrs. Gilbride, would you like to comment? Dir. of Finance: Yes, just that we had additional salaries that we needed due to Covid and we were required to give more frequent cleaning in our park’s restrooms and keep those safe for our residents and so that department was in need of additional appropriations to cover those salaries. I did reduce the salaries at the Recreation Center because we re-purposed those employees from the Recreation Center and so there is really no net increase in budgeted expenditures; it’s just the repurposing of those employees from the Recreation Center. Mr. Sisak: Yeah, Mr. Donovan, Mr. Carano; any questions for the Finance Director? Mr. Donovan: I’m OK with 1st Reading adoption. Mr. Carano: I second. Mr. Sisak: Any questions from Council? No one responded. Hearing none, we will make a recommendation on 1st Reading adoption of Ord. 66-2020 at this time. Is there anything else to come before the Finance Committee? Pres. of Council: Mr. Sisak, I just had one thing real quick and this is in reference to the budget and it is in reference to Council’s budget. Councilman Loughry has made some recommendations for our immediate budget items and I thought maybe we should all discuss these together on the record because I don’t think we need to put these in, but I think maybe we should have a quick discussion and see if this is something that the rest of Council seems to think that we need to have. So, Mr. Loughry is asking for $10,000 to $25,000 for Education and Training for Council members. Mr. Loughry; do you want to explain why you think we need that much for training for the Council members when our line item budget for Education & Training; we have $1,000 in our budget and in the course of this year we have only used $195 and it was mostly for Councilman training and training for our Clerks and that is all that that has been used for, so do you want to explain why you think we need that much so that we can discuss this? Mr. Loughry: The request was not just for education and training. It was for education, training and travel, contractual services, consulting fees and it was just to give us a line item that if we felt we needed to do something during the course of the year and bringing in a consultant that is picked by Council to look at something and if the Councilperson wanted to go to a training that would require some travel, the dollar amount was just a number to plug in to have discussion. Years ago, all departments would put in a number in education and training and actually education and training were really encouraged, and I believe they still are. Obviously, Mr. Rorar lets us know more than the other departments do about what is going on. I just think that Council should have a discretionary account that we could use to spend on things that we feel would help us do our jobs better. The amount of money that Council wants to put in there can be discussed. 13  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Pres. of Council: Council members; do you have any discussion on this? Just to let you guys know too; we do have a line item for contractual services and most of those are insurance for Council members; we have liability insurance for that and there are also contracts for the recorder, maintenance on equipment and then any time that we have to fill out for bids for certain things and we have to put it in the paper and that goes under contractuals and we do have a line item; last year it was at $17,000 for the year and I think we are going to up that to $19,000 just to make sure that we are covered just because we are getting pretty close to that and costs are rising. So, we do have a line item for contractuals, and if you would like to put a little more on that if you are thinking that you want to do a study that would be where we would put it. Mollie, if you think I am incorrect on that; just join in on that. Dir. of Finance: No, I don’t think anything that you said that is incorrect, but I guess I just want to also kind of let you know; you know, Council has opportunity to amend the budget at any time and so if Council decided they wanted to do a study that wasn’t in the current budget, you have that authority to request the legislation and get that appropriation. So, it is clearly is up to you because you are the appropriating authority, but it just doesn’t have to be put in the budget just in case. You could actually, you know, if something comes up there is the opportunity to make those adjustments to the budget. Mayor: If I may, the contractual services for the Service Director and the Mayor’s office; someone asked for streetlights down this road and Mr. Rorar takes it out of his contractuals but if Council wants to add some money to contractuals, I really don’t have a problem with that. Jill and I and Mollie were trying to put the budget together when they said $1,000 for just training; that is when we asked Carol what it was for and it is your budget obviously; it is my budget to put together and try to balance it and when you see the budget; we are not balanced but we are definitely eating into fund balances but hearing what Dennis is saying, if you want to add dollars to contractuals for some more training, we are putting the budget together and we are going to present it and we are going to have the budget hearings and then if you want to tweak it or add something or take something from here to there, then it is definitely your right to do that. Mr. Loughry: In fairness, for as long as I have been around, I don’t ever remember a Councilperson requesting to go on a trip or to do anything, but I do know that there are Councils in communities that we abut and they join professional organizations and they do travel to seminars you know; Akron specifically; those Council folks travel all around the country. I guess that makes them do their job better; I don’t know, but I just thought that we should have something in our budget if a Councilperson wanted to do something like that. But, if the rest of Council doesn’t believe it is necessary . . . Mr. Sisak: Well, we have only heard from you, Dennis and so I would like to open it up to the rest of Council about what your thoughts and feelings are. Speak now or forever hold your peace on this since the budget is being put together. Pres. of Council: That was what I was getting at and why I wanted to talk about this during the committee to get everyone’s opinion. Mr. Bollas: I just wanted to add briefly that I expressed an interest in the new Council training in Columbus and due to Covid-19 I was unable to attend in person, but they did provide some training recordings and in the future I would love to attend an event like that just to learn more. You would definitely learn and retain more with in-person learning; that is just my opinion. I was really looking forward to that just to learn more about the responsibilities of Council as I look forward to taking advantage of that in the future. Thank you. Mr. Sisak: Thank you Mr. Bollas. Pres. of Council: Mr. Donovan, do you have anything to say in reference to this? Mr. Donovan: Unless there is a specific need, I don’t know if just putting money in an account; I mean, you know what goes on with that; if it is there it gets spent on something. I don’t have an issue of us putting money in for a trip or need for something to appropriate it, but I don’t necessarily think just to have a “just in case” account. Pres. of Council: Well, and that was part of my thought process too is why are we going to put money into our budget that might not get used and then it just highjacks that money from the rest of the budget where it could go to help the citizens to help with the services that we provide. So that’s where my problem is with any of this, but if you want to add some more to contractuals or if you want to just wait and if something comes up then we can re-appropriate and that is why we need to talk. Mr. Donovan: So, we are not spending what is there now; correct? Pres. of Council: Correct. Mr. Donovan: So, I guess I don’t need to increase something we are not using now. 14  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mayor: Just so you also know, Dennis asked for some other items in different departments and we all thought that was a good idea in a couple of different areas and we will hit some of those highlights and so we do have some of the funds that he was requesting in other departments. Mr. Sisak: As far as personally, if we have some line items and we have some latitude to use some of the money outside of the given contractuals that we put ads in the paper and we keep up with the recording devices and we pay this person and that person for whatever; I am OK with what it is and then knowing if something comes up then we just re-appropriate it and move forward. Mr. Carano: I agree with Mr. Sisak. If something comes up, we can appropriate the money for it. Typically, I would imagine, if there is some conference or something coming up that would be important and it is not just a spur of the moment thing, and there would be Council meetings in between where something could be taken care of. Mr. Sisak: Well thanks for bringing that up Carol; I appreciate that. Pres. of Council: Sure, no problem and like the Mayor said, there were a couple other things that Mr. Loughry had asked for and they are being addressed and taken care of and we can discuss those further when we do the budget work session. Mr. Sisak: Yeah, and then the 11-4-2020 Work Session; is that date good for the work session at 6:00 p.m.? Mayor: Does anybody want to go earlier? Pres. of Council: That’s fine. Mr. Loughry: What time did Mr. Sisak say? Mayor: He said 6:00 p.m. Mr. Sisak: I said 6:00 p.m. and somebody said earlier; it really doesn’t matter. Mr. Loughry: I could always go earlier. Mr. Bollas: This is open to all of Council? Pres. of Council: Oh yes. Mr. Sisak: It is kind of mandatory Jonathon. Mr. Bollas: I was referring to the first Finance Committee meeting; I thought; I must have misheard that. Mr. Sisak: It is a budget work session for Council where they present the 2021 Budget and give us the highlights and lowlights and everything in between. Mayor: So we will go over the schedule and Council will request legislation and it will have a 1st Reading on October 22nd with the Work Session on November 4th and 2nd Reading will be on November 12th and the final budget changes will be done by December 2nd and the public hearing and 3rd Reading adoption will be on December 10th. December 10th is the last Council meeting of the year typically. Pres. of Council: If we need another one, we can always schedule another one. Mayor: Yup. Absolutely. Mr. Bollas: I can be flexible; anytime. Mr. Carano: I can. Mr. Sisak: 5:30 p.m. then? Pres. of Council: That’s fine. Mr. Sisak: We will do 5:30 p.m. on the 4th of November. Is there anything else to come before Finance this evening? Hearing nothing, I will go ahead and close committee. f. PLANNING & ZONING James Donovan, Chair Craig Sisak, Vice Chair Dennis Loughry • Ord. 59-2020 – Amended – (2nd Reading) – Planning & Zoning – P&Z Rec. Approval 3-0 with Conditions Amending and supplementing Ord. 20-2020 for conditional zoning to provide for outdoor patio and sale of alcoholic beverages at 137 East Avenue, Suite 30. Mr. Donovan: I call the Planning & Zoning Committee to order; myself, Mr. Sisak and Mr. Loughry are present. We have Ord. 59-2020 amending and supplementing Ord. 20-2020 for conditional zoning to provide for outdoor patio sale of alcoholic beverages at 137 East Avenue. Mayor: I was just going to say this is for Oscar’s Dining; the breakfast place in the plaza there for outdoor dining and so by doing an amendment it is at 2nd Reading. Mr. Donovan: I have not heard anything really from anybody on this. I was kind of surprised, but . . . 15  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 Mayor: This was at Planning & Zoning and they had their public hearing at Planning & Zoning, and they made the recommendations, and they made the motion . . . Mr. Donovan: I don’t mean at Planning & Zoning, I mean from the public. Dir. of Law: I would just like to clarify on this ordinance; they already are in operation and they already have fine dining and they already are serving of alcoholic beverages; this is just expanding that for on the patio. Mr. Donovan: We have to give it a 3rd Reading anyways. Dir. of Law: Actually, if you could amend it tonight. Mr. Donovan: OK, so I would recommend amending. Dir. of Law: Thank you. Mr. Sisak: I agree. Mr. Loughry: I agree. Mr. Donovan: So, we are recommending 3-0 to amend 59-2020. Is there anything else to come before Planning & Zoning this evening? No one responded. Mr. Loughry: Mr. Donovan, I just want to update Council; Mrs. Hussing and I believe Mrs. Raber have been working on where accessory buildings can be located permanently on a residential property and I had a couple different complaints regarding structures that are in the front yards of residences and so Mrs. Hussing has been working on that and I just appreciate her efforts and Mrs. Raber. Mr. Donovan: I’m not really sure what that was all about. We already have ordinances for that. Mr. Loughry: Apparently not because some residents were not happy with where a couple different structures were located and apparently today you can put them in your front yard. Dir. of Law: The answer is; it depends. It just depends on what the structure is and how big the structure is so it depends. We are just trying to clean that up as we move forward so that is more inclusive when we do our Code rewrite. Mr. Donovan: I remember an incident in the past where somebody wanted a garage in the front yard and it was; you know, it had to go through a lot of grief to get that in other words so . . . Dir. of Law: So, again, that is probably a larger size structure and so some of the smaller structures are more of the issue. Mr. Donovan: OK. Thank you. Is there anything else for Planning & Zoning? No one responded. I will close committee. Thank you. 13. REPORTS OF SPECIAL COMMITTEES: None. 14. THIRD READINGS OF RESOLUTIONS AND ORDINANCES: None. 15. SECOND READINGS OF RESOLUTIONS AND ORDINANCES: a. Ord. 59-2020 – Amended – (2nd Reading) – Planning & Zoning – P&Z Rec. Approval 3-0 with Conditions. Amending and supplementing Ord. 20-2020 for conditional zoning to provide for outdoor patio and sale of alcoholic beverages at 137 East Avenue, Suite 30. Mr. Donovan moved for the amendment of Ord. 59-2020. Seconded Mr. Sisak. Roll Call: Mr. Bollas, Mr. Carano, Mr. Donovan, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak – unanimous. Ord. 59-2020 is amended by a vote of 6-0 and will remain at 2nd Reading. 16. FIRST READINGS OF RESOLUTIONS AND ORDINANCES: a. Ord. 62-2020 (1st Reading) – Finance – Setting tap-in fees and meter rates for installation of water and sewer lines, private fireline fees and fire hydrant meter and backflow assemblies deposits for the City of Tallmadge and providing for immediate enactment. Pres. of Council: Ord. 62-2020 is at 1st Reading and will remain before the Finance Committee. b. Ord. 63-2020 (1st Reading) – Finance – Authorizing the Mayor to enter into an agreement with Trident Restoration, LLC for a New Jobs Program Grant pursuant to T.C.O. 160.05 and providing for immediate enactment. Pres. of Council: Ord. 63-2020 is at 1st Reading and will remain before the Finance Committee. c. Ord. 64-2020 – (1st Reading) – Finance – Amending and supplementing Ord. 91-2019 to amend rates, charges, and fees for all recreational facilities and providing for immediate enactment. Pres. of Council: Ord. 64-2020 is at 1st Reading and will remain before the Finance Committee. 16  VIRTUAL REGULAR MEETING in Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 8, 20 16. FIRST READINGS OF RESOLUTIONS AND ORDINANCES Cont’d.) d. Ord. 65-2020 (1st Reading) – Finance – Authorizing the Mayor to receive funding from the Summit County Land Reutilization Corporation Community Development Matching Grant Fund for the demolition of the structures deemed blighted at 16 and 22 Southwest Avenue and authorizing the Mayor to enter into all necessary agreements pursuant to the Tallmadge Demolition Program; appropriating funds and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak moved for the adoption of Ord. 65-2020. Seconded Mr. Loughry. Roll Call: Mr. Carano, Mr. Donovan, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mr. Bollas – unanimous. Ord. 65-2020 is adopted by a vote of 6-0 e. Ord. 66-2020 – (1st Reading) – Finance – Appropriating additional amounts and reducing appropriations and providing for immediate enactment. Mr. Sisak moved for the adoption of Ord. 66-2020. Seconded Mr. Donovan. Roll Call: Mr. Donovan, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mr. Bollas, Mr. Carano – unanimous. Ord. 66-2020 is adopted by a vote of 6-0. f. Ord. 67-2020 – (1st Reading) – Public Service – Amending Section 351.99 of the Codified Ordinances of the City of Tallmadge to enhance penalties and providing for immediate enactment. Pres. of Council: Ord. 67-2020 is at 1st Reading and will remain before the Public Service Committee. g. Res. 11-2020 (1ST Reading) – Community Issues – A resolution by City Council of the City of Tallmadge, Ohio affirming that Tallmadge is a welcoming community that respects the innate dignity of all people and providing for immediate enactment. Pres. of Council: Res. 11-2020 is at 1st Reading and will remain before the Community Issues Committee. h. Res. 12-2020 – (1st Reading) – Community Issues – A resolution by City Council of the City of Tallmadge, Ohio requiring all opening prayer at Tallmadge City Council meetings be silent and providing for immediate enactment. Pres. of Council: Res. 12-2020 is at 1st Reading and will remain before the Community Issues Committee. 17. ADJOURNMENT: Mr. Donovan moved to adjourn. Seconded Mr. Carano. Voice vote 6-0. The Virtual Regular Council meeting adjourned at 8:40 p.m. sb Adopted: _______________________________ _________________________________ Susan E. Burton, Clerk of Council Carol A. Kilway, President of Council 17