City Council Regular Meeting

COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 1. CALL TO ORDER. President of Council Loughry called the Council meeting of Thursday, October 13, 2022, to order at 7:00 p.m. 2. Opening Prayer & Pledge of Allegiance: Prayer: Pastor Phil Anderson, Bethel Church of Tallmadge. Pledge of Allegiance: Mayor Kline. 2. Roll Call: Mrs. Allman, Mr. Bollas, Mr. Bozic, Mrs. Gutman, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak – present. Pres. of Council: I would ask Council that under Planning & Zoning, Ord. 2022-76 will be moved from Planning & Zoning to Public Service. 4. Correcting and Adopting the Previous Meeting Minutes: 9-22-22 Council Meeting Minutes Mr. Sisak moved to approve the 9-22-22 Council meeting minutes. Seconded Mrs. Kilway. Roll Call: Mr. Bollas, Mr. Bozic, Mrs. Gutman, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mrs. Allman – unanimous. The 9-22-22 Council meeting minutes were adopted by a vote of 7-0. 5. Financial Reports: • Fire & EMS Fund Transfer in the amount of $130,000, Street Maintenance & Repair In the amount of $200,000 and Bond Retirement in the amount of $75,000 to Council on 9-30-22, • Appropriation Report, Fund Report and Revenue Report for the period ending 9-30-22 to Council on 10-2-22. • September Financial Reports to Council on 10-2-22. • Tallmadge Recreation Center Profit and Loss Report for the period ending 9-30-22 to Council on 10-2-22. • Income Tax Comparisons for the period ending 9-30-22 to Council on 10-2-22. • Revenue Comparisons for the period ending 9-30-22 to Council on 10-2-22. Income Tax by Source Report for September to Council on 10-2-22. • Consolidated Investment Portfolio for the period ending 9-30-22 to Council on 10-2-22. Mr. Sisak moved to accept the Financial Reports as presented. Seconded Mr. Bozic. Roll Call: Mr. Bozic, Mrs. Gutman, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mrs. Allman, Mr. Bollas – unanimous. The Financial Reports have been accepted by a vote of 7-0. 6. Public Hearings: None. 7. Community Input: Pres. of Council: This is the part of the meeting when anybody can come and address City Council for a period of two minutes typically. If it were a public hearing, that would be hard and fast. I do have some latitude in that. I was aware of the group coming today and so for some cohesiveness, in their presentation, we will expand that time limit somewhat. If you would, if Mr. Walsh would like to present first because the next thing could take a while. Mr. Dennis Walsh, 588 Washburn Road. The issue that is happening in my neighborhood is a situation that could happen to anybody who lives in a nice neighborhood in the City of Tallmadge. You have a nice home; the house across the street just sold for $350,000. All of a sudden a new neighbor moves in and he has a nice concrete driveway and he is excavating his whole yard. He is bringing in 20 to 30 tons of gravel and the next thing you know he has got two double-axle trailers with excavation equipment parked on it, cement mixers, one sat outside the garage for a whole year. All he has to do to get by the zoning regulations is to say that he is doing a little remodeling on the back of his house. He is going to do a brick at a time for a month for the next 30 years so he can run his construction business there without having to take it to an Industrial zoned part of town like on Newton Steet and that is basically the issue. So, what I recommend is new tighter regulations in zoning to protect residential properties and better enforcement of the ones that we have and the installation of a restrictive timeline to get your project done. I was raised in the construction business and you could build a house in four months. Why does a remodeling 1  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mr. Walsh (Cont’d.) project go over one year? When the City sends an inspector out, he says, oh, I’m not done yet. That’s all I have to say. Pres. of Council: Mr. Walsh, I can tell you that I know that Mrs. Hussing and our Planning & Zoning Department is aware of the address you made reference to. Mr. Sisak: Can we get a status update on that address tomorrow please? Dir. of Law: I can give that to you right now. I can tell you that we have investigated other complaints and they have not been able to be substantiated and we are currently investigating the new one and with regard to our Code, we did in the amended Zoning Code; we were able to put restrictions on the timeline for things that had permits pulled, but it is very challenging for projects that you don’t have to have a permit pulled for so there are a lot of home improvements that people can make that you don’t have to have like a building code permit or a zoning permit and so that kind of the territory we are in right now, but we will take those suggestions into consideration and see if there are any other municipalities that might have addressed that concern. Pres. of Council: Is there anyone else who would like to speak to Council on something that is not on the agenda? Nicki Zwolinski, 189 Blessing Drive. I am the secretary of Tallmadge Little League. I am here representing the Tallmadge Little League Board in the Tallmadge Little League community. She then read a letter regarding the incident on September 21st nine of their board members along with Officer Ickes were in the Gionino’s Training Facility as gunshots began firing outside of the building. She went on to explain the concerns of the Little League Board with regard to this incident. There was discussion between Council, the Administration and Little League regarding this issue. Mr. Sisak: So, thanks to the Little League Board for not just reaching out to me personally, as a friend and a confidant and as a Councilperson in the City of Tallmadge. I didn’t get a call until about noon the next day to let me know what happened. So, 22 days has passed since we have had this incident. I have talked to most of you, I coach football with half of you and my kids are friends with your kids and I am just not really sure how or why it has taken 22 days to get a statement out about this significant incident. I have a lot of questions and I have shared them with a lot of folks that I have talked to personally. So, I am going to ask some of these questions on the record. That night did we set up an incident command post in the Police Station? Chief Williams: No. Mr. Sisak: So, I was kind of directing it to the Director of Public Safety; did you respond Mr. Cooper? Dir. of Public Safety: I did not. Mr. Sisak: You did not; OK. I have very little faith in you as a Director of Public Safety. That is why I voted against the position to begin with and it is quite evident now to me that I was correct in voting against establishing that position so you could be slid over from the Director of Administration. Thank you. Mr. Bozic: Thank you Craig for those comments and it is difficult to talk about this and it is hard and for the Little League to come up and talk about it. The conversations I have had in the last 22 days with some of you and to have to sit back almost and make excuses for the Administration. I can’t even put into words how that makes me feel and how that makes us look not only on a personal thing, not even just as a Councilman, but as a City. How that makes us look as a City when we cannot even acknowledge the fact that it even happened. When I called and I talked to the Law Director and her response was, what more did they want us to say. I’m at a loss. For there not to be any statement whatsoever by the Administration . . . let me go back, the Police Chief, I commend you for actually posting it on the Facebook page. But there is one thing about this, the City; did they share that? No, they did not. It is like we are trying to not acknowledge that it happened. To do that you are basically telling the people that were there either resident or non- resident it doesn’t matter; it didn’t happen and we are not going to talk about it so it didn’t happen. I appreciate the fact that you made a statement tonight. 22 days late; 21 days late. Speaking 2  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mr. Bozic (Cont’d.) unpopular or inconvenient truths about a situation and making decisions our City needed and wanted and they deserved. It is essential to helping heal our community and doing those sort of things is part of being an effective leader. Our City and especially our Police Department and our Little League; we deserve so much better than what we got. I will echo what Mr. Sisak said in relation to our Public Safety. We had zero response and we had zero statements and outreach from the Administration. I never got a single call from anybody in the Administration. The only person that I talked to were the people that I had to call and speak with. I will leave you with that. Mrs. Kilway: Yes, I would just like to say that I have lived in Tallmadge my whole life as many of you guys have too and I just want to thank the Tallmadge Little League Board and everybody who was involved in stepping up and doing what you do for this community. It was a horrific thing that had happened and as you know, this doesn’t happen in Tallmadge. I am very sorry of the way it was communicated and I apologize for that and I just want to thank you for your service to our community and to our children especially. Mrs. Gutman: I’ll echo Mrs. Kilway in saying thank you for your service to the community and that I do apologize for my own lack of outreach. I don’t think I realized right away exactly the gravity of exactly where u were involved in it and I think there is a lack of polished response in one hand and maybe we don’t want to be a City that has a polished response to these incidents because that would have meant that we would have done this before a lot of times and we haven’t. So, we are learning as we go and that is not an excuse. I’m new to this job and I have made a lot of mistakes this year and this is one of them. I wish last week that I had reached out to all of you and I am sorry I didn’t. I hate to hear the political grandstanding tonight because I think anyone in this room also could have stood up at that meeting and made a statement and nobody did. I would like to move forward as a community and grow stronger together. We had a good meeting tonight about the steps we are taking moving forward with security, with changing our policies and things we can do to keep the community safe while making our facilities accessible to our community and so I would just like to keep the focus on healing and I am so glad to hear that you are getting counseling and I hope that there are resources that the City can offer that we do that and keep the focus on that and moving forward and look in that direction for the future. Thank you. Mr. Bollas: Thank you. I just wanted to echo the sentiments that we have heard here tonight and say that I am very sorry on behalf of Council and the Administration. My daughter, being in Coach Pitch and just seeing what happened and what occurred and I keep replaying it in my head if there had been an event and again I just want to echo one thing that there is a budget workshop coming up and we have had a lot of discussions with Parks and Recreation on recommendations to improve the safety of this community in the Parks and Rec. They have been very receptive with our feedback and I look forward to that discussion and the ideas that we are discussing for next year. Pres. of Council: Anybody else? I think as transparent and open as you can be in this type of meeting. I think this was very healthy. I think it was late, but I think tonight was healthy and as Mrs. Gutman said, we did have a meeting prior to this one to talk about changes in the rental policy at all of our facilities. So, my goal has always been to work within the system to try to bring about resolutions and change. We can’t undo what happened but we can fix the way we do things going forward and that does not diminish the hurt that you all felt and continue to feel by lack of response and again I think the Mayor said that he was sorry for that and I take him at his word. I always have. That doesn’t mean that there still isn’t some hurt out there, but going forward, we are going to try and the Police Department is doing everything they can in conjunction with other departments on this investigation and we are going to do whatever we can legislatively to try to minimize the fact to keep this from hopefully not being as easy to happen again in the future. Again, remember, it could be a disgruntled ex-spouse that drives by a baby shower, but we are just going to do the best we can. That’s all l can promise you. 8. Agenda Additions: 3  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Pres. of council: This is the part of the meeting where we would have a City department give us a short presentation. We have none this evening. 9. Reports of Administrative Officers: a. Mayor/Dir. of Administration: Thank you Mr. Chairman. • I will start off with Gene Riggen’s calling hours. Gene Riggens was a big builder here in town called Riggens and Hayes Builders. Gene worked for us in the Zoning Department. • My second note was the other sad one that the Reverend brought up tonight and that was Trevond Walker. Unfortunately a young person from the City of Tallmadge passed away and so out thoughts and prayers go out to his family on behalf of the Administration and Council. • On the Summit DD the transfer to the City of Tallmadge happened last week and so we are the key holders of that facility. Trying to figure out what is going to go on out there with the property in the back, the challenger field in the back now belongs to the City of Tallmadge and so we are looking at all different kinds of different avenues. Still looking at contractors coming in where you have pricing just about completed for bringing that building back if we were to keep it as it is today what that would cost. It is heading north of $5 million. We have not heard back from the State grant for the demo of that that we applied for. • The budget. In preparation for the next Tuesday’s meeting at 5:30 p.m. I have a working copy for all of you and I put it on your desk tonight. That is a working copy. It is not the final draft. That one does have some side notes on it for any major changes. • The Pet Parade was last Sunday and I have a couple of pictures. I thought it went very well. Sandy from the Fire Department did a great job organizing our First Pet Parade. You can see the two Chiefs there with their pets and then walking down the Freedom Trail, but probably more important is what happened that day. • While everyone was at the Community Center and all the Fire Department; every squad every fire truck was at the Community Center and there was a call for service at the Middle School baseball field. It came across as a 17 year old who was unresponsive and they were performing CPR. You should have seen our parking lot empty out extremely fast and they made it up there, but if it wasn’t for bystanders CPR and an AED that was at the old football stadium or the Middle School football stadium by the time the squad got there they had already shocked with the AED and the 17 year old by the time our squad got him to Children’s Hospital said that he wanted to go back because he wanted to finish his game. Everybody needs to know CPR and everybody has to have accessibility to an AED. • Verizon, as Council asked last time about the issues that are going on with Verizon. The good news is that Verizon did an update on quite a few of the towers. The bad news is that the upgrade made it worse. They told us they were going to try to get the tower done before the end of the year and now it is moved back to the first quarter of next year, so the end of May. • The Cost Containment Committee made a recommendation to the Administration which was me, for health care for next year with a rate increase of 4.04%. Our Jefferson Health Care Plan has really been very fruitful for the City. • Larry Bagnoli at the football stadium tomorrow night. The stadium will be named after Larry. They are hoping to take Larry out to the middle of the field on a golf cart and unveil the sign that says Bagnoli Football Stadium. • The Fire Station 2 update. The doors are still not here. The bifold doors are down in North Carolina. The problem with the bifold doors is that the glass in the doors are coming out of the Tampa, Florida area and we all know what happened down in Florida with the hurricanes and so I said ship the doors and then ship the glass up here and let the contractor install the glass on site. Those doors are supposed to be here by the middle of next week and the glass sometime by the end of the month. Our goal is to move the firemen 4  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mayor (Cont’d.) by the middle of November now. The delivery date for the generator is December 15th. You can’t the fire station without a generator. So we are going to put a temporary generator along the side of the building tying into the system to be able to get the guys to move into that. End of report. Mrs. Kilway: In reference to the fire station, to me this seems like an obvious question; there are a number of glass companies around here. Can we get one of them to make the glass that is needed. Mayor: It comes as part of the door. The door is manufactured in North Carolina. Mrs. Kilway: And they can’t give us credit for that part of the door and get the glass made around here. Mayor: This glass is made locally. Locally cannot get the arch glasses. Mrs. Kilway: We will go back to the Mr. Bagnoli event, they are also asking all former Tallmadge Football players that have had Mr. Bagnoli as part of the team to show up at the game and I guess they are going to go down the field with him. Then the Summit DD site since we now have the keys, can we maybe get Council to go through it. Mayor: Call me anytime or Mr. Rorar. Mr. Bozic: On October 4th I had asked for documents relating to the demolition of the Summit DD building and whether or not we needed documents that were quotes or estimates of any kind for the demo of that building. Have we located those documents? Mayor: No. It was a verbal quote from Butcher and Son, that is the quote that we used. I don’t know if you have the new one. So we have asked that to be solidified in writing so we would have that. But we applied for $1 million and the verbal quote when I walked through with Matt Springer was about $700,000 for the building and we put the additional money for the asbestos abatement. That is what we applied for. b. Dir. of Public Safety: Just two quick things. • First update on the Fire Chief interviews. We have picked a date but have yet to hear back from the two panels and as soon as we do that I will notify Council immediately of who will be on those panels. It is going to be in the first two weeks in November hopefully. • Also I want to make sure you will join me in congratulating Sergeant Pat Fairhurst for being named the U.S. Marshal’s Susan Graves Part-time Officer of the Year for his role in the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitives Task Force. There were numerous nominees from Northeast Ohio and actually other Federal agencies, but he is going to be presented this award at a ceremony at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame on November 10 th at 1:00 p.m. Just another great example of our officers doing exceptional work in the community and making not only the department but the City shine. That is the end of my report. Mr. Bollas: Is Council able to be provided the makeup of the panels? Dir. of Public Safety: Yes, you don’t mean the names, you just mean the organizations? Mr. Bollas: The names and organizations. Is that able to be provided? Dir. of Public Safety: The names will be provided with the organizations as soon as they confirm them. I just don’t want to include anyone who can’t make it or doesn’t want to make it for all those dates. Mr. Bozic: The last Council meeting I believe you were not here, but we had asked the question about the pubic panel for this meeting and I believe it was stated by Mayor Kline and Law Director Raber that the meeting is not open to the public even though it is a public meeting or a public panel I should say, so I would like to get some clarification on that because in going back through the minutes I believe it was even stated that the public is welcome. Dir. of Public Safety: So, it is a stakeholder panel. It will be representatives from across the community that will participate in the interview. It is a job interview. The public is not invited to a job interview. 5  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mr. Bozic: I would agree with that, however I am just seeking some kind of . . . Mayor: The clarification is me calling it not a public meeting but a stakeholders meeting. I apologize for calling it a public meeting. Mr. Bozic: It’s not . . . Dr. Cooper also called it public meeting and said the public is welcome there. So, the confusion comes from that. Mayor: Our fault. Mr. Bollas: Just for clarification and working through the steps from Civil Service, there was a meeting entitled a Meet and Greet and then that became a Meet and Greet that was a part of the public panel which then added to the confusion; my confusion. c. Dir. of Public Service: Good evening. • Leaf Season Program – I think we are going to have to start this a little early judging by the way the leaves are falling and the way the leaves are changing colors. I will probably put out a new schedule. Remember you can always bag your leaves and put them out with the trash. • This Sunday coming up we are closing down the ramp off of the Circle to 91 or South Avenue. The reason why is that there is a catch basin there that has dropped significantly and the ideal grade should be a ½” to 1” off of the asphalt and that one is down about 4” in the front which has been causing some issues for motorists. • Rec Center – We are having some staffing issues there. We are not being able to hire and we are not being able to keep the staff there and so we may make some modifications to our hours. We may also make some modifications to our programs that we are offering. • Howe Road Park entrance that is probably about 90% complete. A great job. We moved the entrance to the top of that knob so visibility was better and we repaved the parking lot and we did some landscaping and with that being done, they are going to be opening up that park and so we are going to change up the concept plan that we have done with the architect. That grass field behind that curb is where the dog park was supposed to go. I am not in love with that idea, that should really be enhanced with a shelter or something and so we are going to have something that enhances that and so the dog park we are probably going to move somewhere else. • Ord. 2022-76 on stormwater management. It’s at 1st Reading. I am asking for that to be increased. The reason why is because we have had increases in our programs if you look at some of the numbers there. Everything has gone up. The important thing about stormwater is the EPA tells you that it is clean water going back into our rivers and lakes but the big thing is about protecting our infrastructure. Mrs. Kilway: I know you are a tree guy and so is it in the anticipation that the existing trees that are on there are so old and are going to eventually in the next couple years be taken down because of their age? Dir. of Pub. Service: No, it was just that those trees that are old could come down. d. Dir. of Finance: Thank you. Everyone received my written reports. I had just a couple things to point out. Our income tax as of September is still doing fine however, I did just attend a conference last week and get some economic updates and so I do think we will be seeing in the next year or so some potential downturn in that area just with the potential of a recessionary economy coming forward. So, as you will see at the Budget Hearings, while I am optimistic that we are going to keep some of that, there will be some definitely for next year’s revenue estimate some consideration of the economy moving forward. Finally just another item to point out, I did indicate at the end of my report that a potential for some salary re-appropriations; I am looking at that. We will have one more pay in October and then I will have that available to Council at the November meeting and if 6  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Dir. of Finance (Cont’d.) anybody has any questions, I will be glad to answer those. e. Dir. of Law: Thank you. I have been working in cooperation with our SRO Quillen ad SRO Dornack and the school district including the PTA at the elementary school and administration and the leader of the student council at the Middle School with regard to Red Ribbon Week. Red Ribbon Week is a national drug, alcohol and tobacco prevention program. It is one of the longest running programs that tries to keep our community and our students informed of making good choices, healthy choices and not getting into any kind of illicit drug use. So we are looking forward to having a push for the whole community and we are going to be doing another video and I forwarded to all of Council the opportunity if you have a few minutes to record something quick and send it to Officer Quillen; he is going to try to do a promotional video to encourage our entire community to wear red and be cognizant of Red Ribbon Week on Monday, October 24th and we will be encouraging our business community to participate in the conclusionary video and we will take pictures and video snip-its from people throughout the community throughout the week and he is going to try to put one together for the end of the week as well to again show the support for the students and kids as well. Both the school district and City facilities will have kind of recognition of that visibly throughout that week. At the end of that week is our October Drug Take Back on Saturday, October 29th from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Tallmadge Police Department and people are encouraged to get rid of any prescription drugs that they may have. They can just come to the Police Department and you don’t have to get out of the car; you just drop it off right there and it is really important to keep people’s cabinets free of controlled substances. Thank you. End of report Mr. Bozic: You mentioned Red Ribbon Week; where do we stand as a City in relation to enforcement of our drug laws whether it be possession, trafficking, cultivating . . . can you give us a report on how many, I would assume it would be misdemeanor offense that you would handle, but how many of those do you handle in any given year. Let’s just say for the last five years. Dir. of Law: So, I can give you statistics once we started using Matrix which was probably 2020 we were able to start tracking that. I think I can run a report that indicates what the nature of the charge was and so I will explore the possibility of doing that and provide you with a report of what those statistics are. Mr. Bozic: Within that, do you classify whether it is the type of drug? Dir. of Law: So typically, misdemeanor offenses would be typically marijuana related offenses or minor misdemeanors. There has been a change with the legalization of marijuana that came along and there is a change with BCI not accepting and doing some of the testing that they used to and so there is that with regard to the possession of marijuana charges and then with regard to aggravated drug charges, which is for the most part, everything else, occasionally you can have some controlled substances; sometimes those get classified as a misdemeanor level still if it is a misuse type of situation but normally that is going to be a felony charge and that would go to the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office. Mr. Bozic: I do have one additional question. You mentioned that the BCI cut down or doesn’t do the testing as much, so what do we do in that situation? Dir. of Law: So, it is more challenging to prosecute but we have done that and still do that and with legalization it has just become more challenging all the way around. Mr. Bozic: Do we have another alternative for testing? Dir. of Law: There are not many opportunities for that. Mr. Bozic: What are the opportunities? Dir. of Law: I prefer not to get into that sort of law enforcement type discussion on the floor, but I would be happy to talk about it with you. Mr. Bozic: Yeah. If you could get me that information. 7  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mayor: Mr. Bozic, the Police Reports that I send out, I don’t send them out anymore, the Police Department sends out the monthly reports of all of the arrests; what style of arrest and I did not see the last one, I don’t know if you guys did receive that, but you should have all of that information already that you were asking for earlier. 10. Reports of Standing Committees of Council of the Whole: a. Planning and Zoning Carol Kilway, Chair Rebecca Allman, Vice Chair The Planning & Zoning Committee deals with land use, zoning, conditional uses, planning, economic and community development, and public property. i. Second Readings of Ordinances and Resolutions A. Ord. 2022-72 – Accepting the dedication of streets within the Tallmadge Reserve Phase V Subdivision for public purposes; setting performance and maintenance guarantees therefore and providing for immediate enactment. Sponsor: Dir. of Public Service Rorar Mrs. Kilway: I call the Planning & Zoning Committee to order. We have Ord. 2022-72. The ordinance was read into the record. I think we are ready to adopt this. Pres. of Council: I would move to adopt. Seconded Mr. Sisak. Roll Call: Mrs. Gutman, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mrs. Allman, Mr. Bollas, Mr. Bozic – unanimous. Ord. 2022-72 is adopted by a vote of 7-0. Mayor: At Planning & Zoning, and I don’t think it has been submitted yet, but the part of the new Zoning Code allows the developer to come in and do a preliminary talk about a project before they actually submit the project. So the developer for East Avenue, we will call it the Bierce property, is planning on submitting a plan as a preliminary talk; it is a concept meeting of some sort and Council would be there. I mean you are welcome to attend. Mrs. Kilway: Is he going to do it at the Council meeting or Planning & Zoning? Mayor: No, it is at Planning & Zoning. Mrs. Kilway: OK. Seeing there is nothing else, I will close committee. ii. Additional Items: None. b. Finance Craig Sisak, Chair Jonathon Bollas, Vice Chair The Finance Committee deals with budget, appropriations, and reappropriations, bonds, franchises, investments, and expenditures. i. Second Readings of Ordinances and Resolutions A. Resolution 2022-4 – Exhibit A – Accepting the amounts and rates as determined by the Summit County Budget Commission and authorizing the necessary tax levies; certifying them to the County Fiscal Officer and providing for immediate enactment. Sponsor: Dir. of Finance Gilbride Mr. Sisak: I would like to call Finance to order. We have Res. 2022-4 at 2nd Reading. The resolution was read into the record. Mr. Loughry: I move for the adoption of Res. 2022-4. Seconded Mrs. Kilway. Roll Call: Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mrs. Allman, Mr. Bollas, Mr. Bozic, Mrs. Gutman – unanimous. Res 2022-4 is adopted by a vote of 7-0. ii. First Readings of Ordinances and Resolutions 8  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 A. Ord. 2022-75 - Exhibit A – Expressing intent to sell unneeded, obsolete, or unfit lawn equipment, trailer, dump truck beds by Govdeals.com in calendar year 2022 and providing for immediate enactment. Sponsor: Dir. of Public Service Rorar Mr. Sisak: Next we have Ord. 2022-75. The ordinance was read into the record. Mr. Loughry: I move for the adoption of Ord. 2022-75. Seconded Mrs. Kilway. Roll Call: Mr. Loughry, Mr. Sisak, Mrs. Allman, Mr. Bollas, Mr. Bozic, Mrs. Gutman, Mrs. Kilway – unanimous. Ord. 2022-75 is adopted by a vote of 7-0. iii. Additional Items: None. Mr. Sisak: Is there anything else to come before Finance? Seeing none, I will go ahead and close committee. c. Personnel Jonathon Bollas, Chair Adam Bozic, Vice Chair The Personnel Committee deals with personnel, labor relations, insurance claims, Rules of Council and State Statutes. Mr. Bollas: I call the Personnel Committee to order. We are all present this evening. We have no legislation or additional items this evening. Does anyone have any questions or discussion for Personnel? I did have one question myself before I close committee. So, I am just trying to track the various studies that we are going through currently. So we have the Police Organizational Effectiveness Assessment, we have the Compensation Study and then we have the Fire Chief’s Association Consulting Service Organization Evaluation. In tracking those various milestones in terms of an action plan and in terms of how to improve operations; just in terms of a personnel perspective, can you give just a brief update on each of those and where they are at in terms of personnel and again, not specific to the Fire Chief’s interview process. Dir. of Public Safety: In regard to the Fire Study, you know that was completed some time ago. Maybe two years ago now. As part of that we had a plan that we put together after we prioritized those particular recommendations. I get a monthly report from the Fire Department and when necessary we have a discussion about progress made on those various items as per request by Council we added estimated deadlines so there are times when those should be completed. Sometimes those have changed but I am happy to say that probably 3/4 or 2/3 or so of those are completed or well underway; those that can be. With regard to the Police study, we delivered to you the Phase I report of that this week maybe or last week. I am meeting with the Police Department leadership to develop a plan based on the recommendations from that where we will similarly prioritize and address and they did include because we requested it, deadlines or how long it would take to accomplish each of those goals. We are going to prioritize those recommendations and we are going to determine which ones we want to accomplish. We might rule some out. Then we are going to work on making progress on each of those. With regard to the Compensation Study, it is currently underway. It is our hope that it would be . . . we would get recommendations from the consultants by the end of the year but they have had some challenges in getting information back from comparable municipalities. Everybody is not responding very quickly and so we are doing our best to encourage them to make progress so we don’t have any recommendations from them at this time. When we do, what we plan to do in the City is to develop a plan and how to in grade that into our various compensation ordinances and of course, we will involve Council when that discussion begins. Mr. Bollas: Thank you very much. I just wanted to thank the Mayor for the copy of the budget study that we are going to go through in the coming weeks. I just had one ask if it 9  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mr. Bollas (Cont’d.) is fair; could we just call out from 2021 to 2022 and then forecast it for 2023? It may be in here already. Just what we plan to spend or have spent already on consulting services for those studies. I know this is a working copy with notes and may already be in here. Dir. of Finance: Those numbers are going to be buried in line items There is not a specific line item in the budget for a consulting study. So, if you would like those figures; those will have to be provided in a special report. Those would not be specified in the budget to know what has been exactly spent. Mr. Bollas: If we could have those by the workshop; that would be helpful just to understand what we are going to incur next year and in years to come if there are future studies being considered and again I appreciate it. Anything else for Personnel? Hearing none, I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. d. Community Issues Mary Gutman, Chair Carol Kilway, Vice Chair The Community Issues Committee deals with Parks and Recreation, civic affairs, and liaison between Council and the Recreation Board and intergovernmental affairs. Mrs. Gutman: I call Community Issues to order. We have no legislation before us. I will highlight some of our Halloween activities that are coming up. • Parks and Rec Halloween Moonlight Movie Night on Saturday, October 22, 2022. There is a costume parade at 6:30 p.m. with Hotel Transylvania 2 immediately following in the parking lot. • Trick or Treat is as usual, Thursday, October 27th from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. I know it has been discussed why we have it on Thursday. It’s just always been Thursday and I was asked if we could have a discussion about should it be another day and so I would like to say that as the Chair of Community Issues Committee that I think we can talk about should it be another day heading into 2023 and have a discussion of whether this is what we should do as a community and so moving forward, at least we can have a discussion. Mayor: First of all about that date, I mean I have been here 65 years and it has always been on that Thursday, but we also used to have back here in the parking lot behind the old Middle School the big festival that went on there with the Street Dance and then we moved it up to the Rec Center and it was nice to have it on that Thursday night. We don’t have that anymore. So maybe . . . should we go to the actual Halloween day. Pres. of Council: To Mrs. Gutman’s point, I have heard young parents say that they really feel rushed to get home from work and get the costumes on their kids and have the candy ready. Mayor: We have what you see up there on the screen and I failed to mention that during my report, thank goodness I was till out of town, but I got there after that event so I didn’t have to put my face in that pie. The same guy wins it every year. Hats off to the Rec Center. Terry Low from our Service Department is also a Fair Board member and you know Mr. Crites is not feeling very well right now and so Terry is one who knows how to drive that ancient tractor that only Lee knew how to drive, so Terry was driving kids around the hay fields all afternoon. So, thanks to Terry. Mrs. Gutman: If there is nothing further, then I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. 10  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 e. Safety Adam Bozic, Chair Craig Sisak, Vice Chair The Safety Committee deals with disaster services, communications, fire, and para- medics, police, and health. i. First Readings of Ordinances and Resolutions A. Ordinance 2022-77 – Exhibit – Exhibit A Tracked – Amending Part Fifteen-Fire Prevention Code and providing for immediate enactment. Sponsor: Dir. of Administration & Safety Cooper Mr. Bozic: I open the Safety Committee. We have Ord. 2022-77 at 1st Reading. The ordinance was read into the record. Dir. of Pub. Safety: This particular ordinance is a long overdue update of our fire related ordinances what we refer to as our Fire Code. As you may know there is a State Fire Code that is updated fairly regularly at least every 5 years by law and the changes over the last two or three iterations of that have not been incorporated into our local ordinances and so we found it necessary to update our local ordinances to match not only the State Law but also given the recent changes to fireworks law that we instituted last summer and some other issues that are just incompatible with current law. Mr. Bollas: Is it a fair ask if this goes to 2nd Reading? Mayor: Three readings. Dir. of Pub. Safety: Can I add one thing. It is important to know that there are a lot of things crossed out in this and the reason for that is that even without this ordinance, certified safety inspectors are allowed and actually encouraged and required to enforce the State Fire Code. So, it doesn’t mean that the laws don’t apply, it means that the State Law will be enforced in the City of Tallmadge when we remove something from this ordinance. ii. Additional Items: None. Mr. Bozic: Any other input for the Safety Committee at this time? I will bring up that we did have a chance to receive the Organization Effectiveness Assessment Phase I Report last week and there is a lot of material there; a lot to go over and then we did receive a Phase I draft as well last night, so I think there is a lot to go over in that and I think to give it its due justice we need to continue reviewing it and have a really good lengthy discussion about this in either the upcoming meetings or potentially a special meeting as well. I know we are getting close to the end of the year but I think this particular topic is important enough to maybe require a special meeting as well. Mayor: We are open to that. Mr. Bozic: Any other input before I close committee? Mr. Bollas: I know the administration does its best to get us legislation if it needs to be recommended for adoption at 1st Reading. I know the agreed upon deadline as best possible was 2:00 p.m. that Tuesday before the meeting. So we had two full days to do our due diligence to study the legislation and ask questions and to consider what is best for our constituents. I understand nothing is perfect and life happens and we do our best so I am just bringing that up because I have seen several this past few months that I think questions could be reduced if we do our best to adhere to that. I understand it is not always possible. Pres. of Council: So, that is noted Mr. Bollas, but I would say that as many times as not, that that is an internal issue with us and not an external issue from the administration. Mayor: Mr. Chairman, keep in mind that we very seldom ever ask for 1st Reading adoption because I know better and I know your thought process. We just adopted one at 1st Reading and we never requested it. So, it is as Mr. Loughry said, I will let you know ahead of time if I need something for emergency purposes. And again, a lot of it is housekeeping 11  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers @ 7:00 p.m. October 13, 2022 Mayor (Cont’d,) like we just did tonight for the excess equipment. It doesn’t need to go three readings, but . . . and I understand; thanks for cleaning it off the docket. Pres. of Council: The internal relationship that our clerks have with the administration is very healthy. I mean we are trying to do our best, all of us, to get it to us by Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Bozic: Anyone else for the Safety Committee? Hearing none, I will close committee. f. Public Service Rebecca Allman, Chair Mary Gutman, Vice Chair The Public Service Committee deals with streets, highways, sidewalks, buildings, and improvements: water, sewer, electricity, gas, energy resources, recycle, waste, and trash. i. First Readings of Ordinances and Resolutions A. Ordinance 2022-76 – Exhibit A – Exhibit A Tracked – Amending Chapter 927 Stormwater Management Utility and providing for immediate enactment. Sponsor: Dir. of Pub. Service Rorar Mrs. Allman: I call Public Service to order. We have at 1st Reading Ord. 2022-76 – Exhibit A - Exhibit A Tracked. The ordinance was read into the record. Dir. of Pub. Service: Definitely three readings on this. Mrs. Kilway: I just wanted to say that I know we are going to give this three readings but I thoroughly looked through this earlier and it has been 15 years since we have changed our rates on it and I think it is a good healthy way in order to beef up that fund and be able to do the repairs we need like you had stated. Our infrastructure is old and there are a lot of things that are going to start breaking here real soon. Additional Items: None. Mrs. Allman: Any other discussion? Hearing none, I will close committee. 11. Reports of Special Committees: a. Council Operations Committee i. Additional Items: None. 12. Announcements: • Budget Work Session on Tuesday, October 18th @ 5:30 p.m. This will be live-streamed. • Naming of the High School stadium. • Council meeting scheduled for Thursday, October 27th has been changed to Wednesday, October 26th because of Halloween. 13. Adjournment: Mrs. Kilway: I move to adjourn. Seconded Mrs. Allman. Roll Call: Mr. Sisak, Mrs. Allman, Mr. Bollas, Mr. Bozic, Mrs. Gutman, Mrs. Kilway, Mr. Loughry – unanimous. The Council meeting of 10-13-22 adjourned at 8:34 p.m. sb Adopted: ______________________________________ ______________________________________ Susan E. Burton, Clerk of Council Dennis K. Loughry, President of Council 12