City Council Regular Meeting

COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 1. Call to Order: Pres. of Council: It is Thursday, April 24, 2025, and this is our regularly scheduled 7:00 p.m. Council meeting. We will start things off with our opening prayer led by Pastor Andy Alberts with the Tallmadge Lutheran Church followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Pastor Andy is not here so we will call for a brief moment of silence and then we will conduct the Pledge of Allegiance. 2. Opening Prayer: Silent prayer. Pledge of Allegiance: 3. Roll Call: Mr. Bollas, Mrs. Cipa, Mrs. Epstein, Mrs. Gutman, Mr. Pavlik, Mr. Roy, Mr. Rubino – present. 4. Correcting and Adopting Previous Meeting Minutes: 4-10-25 Council Meeting Minutes Mr. Pavlik: I will make a motion to approve the minutes. Seconded Mrs. Cipa. Roll Call: Mrs. Cipa, Mrs. Epstein, Mrs. Gutman, Mr. Pavlik, Mr. Roy, Mr. Rubino, Mr. Bollas – unanimous. The 4-10-25 Council meeting minutes were adopted by a vote of 7-0. 5. Financial Reports: 6. Public Hearings: Planning & Zoning At 3rd Reading P.H. ON 4-24-25 @ 7:01 p.m. Ord. 2025-44–Exhibit A – Tracked Exhibit A – P&Z Rec. Approval 5-0 Amending and supplementing Sections 1104.06 “Accessory & Temporary Use Table” and 1104. 08N “Outdoor Storage of Vehicles and Equip- ment” of the Tallmadge Codified Ordinances. Sponsor: Mayor Kilway Pres. of Council: I will turn it over to Councilwoman Gutman to open our Planning & Zoning public hearing this evening. Mrs. Gutman: I call Planning & Zoning Committee to order. We have before us Ord. 2025-44. The ordinance was read into record. It is now 7:02 p.m. and I will open the public hearing for Ord. 2025-44. Is there anyone who would like to speak in favor or Ord. 2025-44? If so, please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record. No one responded. Is there anyone who would like to speak against Ord. 2025-44? No one responded. Is there anyone who would like to speak in favor of Ord. 2025-44? No one responded. Is there anyone who would like to speak against Ord. 2025-44? No one responded. Third and final time, is there anyone who would like to speak in favor of or against Ord. 2025-44? No one responded. It is now 7:03 p.m. and I will close the public hearing for Ord. 2025-44. I will open it up to comments from the Administration and Council. Would anyone like to speak on this ordinance? Mayor: Yes, Mrs. Gutman. This is at 3rd Reading. We have had some discussions about it as well. Planning & Zoning has recommended approval of this 5-0. This is in response basically to being business friendly. There are some businesses already utilizing these for storage and we recognize the value in that. If you have any other specific questions, we do have Helene Hussing here today and she is the guru. She can answer more detailed discussion on that if you have any specific questions, but I do believe it is a very good ordinance and again being business friendly and giving more options for our businesses to be able to store their merchandise or raw materials and keeping it out of site in a controlled area. Mrs. Gutman: Thank you. I appreciate that. I don’t have specific questions. I appreciate that we are responsive to business while also maintaining appearance standards as well. Does anyone on Council want to comment or have any questions? Mr. Bollas: Thank you. Just a quick question, did this originate from a current business approaching the City about the current zoning language in this? 1  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 Mayor: No. We just realized that it is a need and it is something that would be beneficial to many people. We did notice there are a couple of businesses that are currently already using it, so it is now going to make it permitted for them. No business had come to us and asked about it. Mr. Bollas: Would there be . . . do you foresee there being any adverse reaction or effect on either the residents or other businesses with this? Mayor: I don’t foresee any. Mrs. Hussing, did you have anything else you would like to add? Ass’t. Dir. of Pub. Service: Certainly. So that is why we wrote the regulations as they are. They have some regulations to protect the residents or even the residential use that is in the Industrial zone. So, as you know, there are quite a few residences that are on Industrially zoned properties and so we have made those types of regulations to protect them with setbacks and buffering areas. Mrs. Gutman: Thank you. Anyone else? Seeing no further comments, can I have a motion to approve Ord. 2025-44? Mr. Pavlik: I will make a motion to adopt Ord. 2025-44. Seconded Mrs. Epstein. Roll Call: Mrs. Epstein, Mrs. Gutman, Mr. Pavlik, Mr. Roy, Mr. Rubino, Mr. Bollas, Mrs. Cipa – unanimous. Ord. 2025-44 is adopted by a vote of 7-0. Mrs. Gutman: Is there anything else to come before Planning & Zoning this evening? Hearing none, I will close committee. 7. Community Input: Pres. of Council: This is an opportunity for anybody in the audience who wants to speak on an item that is not on the agenda this evening. You may do so. Just state your name and address and you will have 2 minutes to speak. Otherwise, if you want to speak on an item that is on the agenda, we will ask you to do so when we open those committees. 8. Agenda Additions: None. Pres. of Council: First we will kick things off with a presentation of a Certificate of Appreciation to Agnes Moran from our Ward 1 Councilman, Ted Roy. • Certificate of Appreciation to Agnes Moran from Ward 1 Councilman Ted Roy. Mr. Roy: Thank you. I want to welcome everybody to tonight’s Council meeting. Tonight, the appreciation award is going to go to Agnes Moran. She was born on April 27, 1936, in Akron, Ohio. She married her husband, John, and they moved to Tallmadge, and they were married for 66 years. They had 6 children: two girls and four boys. She has 20 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren and 3 more on the way. Since this is baseball season and Tallmadge is going to have their Little League parade on Sunday, I thought she would be the perfect recipient to get this award because she was one of the first, actually I think she was the first softball coach that took on softball and helped create softball where the Tallmadge Little League is today. We know that Tallmadge is a baseball town, and Tallmadge is also a softball town and has been for many, many years. She put her heart and soul into coaching. She got her daughters involved in coaching and she took Tallmadge Little League with her oldest daughter in the All Stars and took them to the first All Star Baseball Tournaments. She also took her other daughter and took that All Star Team to the World Series as well like the boys have been. She helped coach at St. V. She would actually coach and watch children, the Bumpas kids would sit in the dugout eating lunch and she would coach the kids. So, she is an outstanding citizen, which we have many of, but tonight I think she deserves a round of applause for all her dedication and putting it back into the City of Tallmadge and put it back into the youth which is something very special to her. I’m sure if she had the chance, she would probably coach again because it is something that she loves to do. At this time, I would like to honor her with a Certificate of Appreciation for all of the years of service she has given to the City and to the children of Tallmadge. So, Agnes, can you come up please? So, on behalf of the City of Tallmadge we are going to give you this appreciation award for all of your hard work, even though you love doing it, it really isn’t work is it? 2  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 Mrs. Moran: No. Mr. Roy: It is people like you that are outstanding in this community and we appreciate everything that you have done. For that, we thank you very much. Mrs. Moran: I love doing it. I would do it all over again if I could, but I won’t be able to do that anymore except with my grandchildren. We had a lot of fun doing it and I was pleased to be the first one to get it going because I didn’t know that much about it either when I started. We had a good time altogether. We were traveling there for the All Stars so that was something different for all of us to go. I enjoyed doing everything I did. Pres. of Council: Next we have the introduction of our new Economic Developer. Mr. Ignazzitto. • Introduction of our new Economic Developer, Samantha Poole. Dir. of Administration: It is my privilege to introduce and welcome Samantha Poole to the City of Tallmadge as our new Economic Developer. Samantha brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in business development, client success and strategic communications. She most recently served as Senior Director of Business Development for Foundever, a global customer service company where she led revenue generation, client onboarding and market growth. Prior to that she held several leadership roles, key leadership roles, with InfoCision Management Corporation in Akron, Ohio. Samantha has lived in both Portage and Summit counties for most of her life and she is excited to bring her local knowledge and passion for development to the City of Tallmadge. Her servant leadership approach and proven ability to build strong partnerships will be a tremendous asset to our ongoing economic development. Just kind of on the side, Samantha started this past Monday, and she has really hit the ground running and probably sprinting. She has jumped into meetings and engagements with more on the calendar for next week. There is a rumor circulating that we sent her out to our first off-site meeting entirely on her own. Well, that makes for a great dramatic origin story but let me clarify, she did in fact meet up with our inSITE folks and they attended the meeting together. So, we technically didn’t abandon her, we just handed her off to our partner. Samantha actually does have a couple of updates and an introduction, so, Samantha. Dir. of Economic Development: Thank you Joe for the kind words and the warm welcome and also to the entire City of Tallmadge building here. The team has been wonderful, and I am thrilled to be here. I am grateful for the opportunity to jump right in these first few days. I am now wrapping up my official fourth day. Yesterday I was fortunate to attend the Annual Ohio Economic Forum which was onsite at the University of Akron. The topic was the AI Revolution. This was a good forum as Joe mentioned to meet and greet in person with other local economists as well as getting key insights from the keynote speaker who we were fortunate to hear from Dr. Kimbrough who is the Chief Economist at Linkedin Corporation and the panelists including folks from University Hospitals and Team NEO and then today the Mayor and I attended the quarterly Portage Development Board meeting where I was pleased to meet many key leaders including the President of the Portage Development Board, Brad Ehrhart and in the process of setting many one-on-ones to follow up with the key business leaders and contacts. So, I look forward to collaborating with all of you and to drive vitality for the economic development of Tallmadge. 9. Reports of Administrative Officers: a. Mayor/Dir. of Pub. Safety: • Thank you very much. Just made a couple significant Fire Department events over the last week. On Saturday, April 19th the Fire Department was dispatched to the intersection of East Avenue and Parker Lane for a reported house fire. This was actually the third active call so there were already 2 teams that were out and so this was the third one and so it had to be reported from Station 2 and the firefighters got there very timely and they 3  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 Mayor (Cont’d.) were able to knock the fire down and keep it from spreading too much of the home but there was some damage throughout the house; smoke damage but luckily there was no one home at the time so there were no injuries. We want to thank our mutual aid, Mogadore, Munroe Falls, Greentown and Kent that came and helped out with the fire. Just incidentally just to let everyone know, we always get mutual aid response from them so that was a great collaboration as well. • On April 23rd at about 11:30 a.m. the Fire Department responded to a reported residential structure fire on Treat Blvd. Two engines and a medic unit were dispatched. A Shift crew was able to have water on the fire within 9 minutes from the time of dispatch. The fire was successfully contained to the basement and one side of the exterior of the structure. Mutual aid was also provided by Mogadore, Brimfield, and Kent Fire Departments. They assisted with extinguishing and overhauling operations and again no injuries were reported. We want to extend our sincere thank you to the Tallmadge Police Department for securing the scene and maintaining and managing traffic. • Also, other events that are going on within the City, the City of Tallmadge is going to host the electronic recycling event on May 3rd from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Rec Center. Community members can come and drop off any old or unwanted electronics. For any more information please follow the City on social media or go to our website for any updates. • These last couple weeks I attended the Jarrett Fleet Services open house on April 17th where they show cased their new expansion facility upgrades and their existing business that is in the Tallmadge/Brimfield JEDD. It was a great expansion. They have more than doubled their size. They were doing all the maintenance and all of the repairs of trailers in a very, very small area and they were able to expand their repair area to about 4 times the size of what they were currently using so they are able to increase their business and be a more vital business in our JEDD. • I also attended the Tallmadge Easter Egg Scramble at the Tallmadge Rec Center last Saturday. It was a great event as always. I love seeing all of the people coming to our Rec Center. There were hundreds of families there. I want to thank Jessica Simons and her staff for facilitating such a great community event. It is always great especially when the little kids come running up to you and they go, thank you Mayor for giving us all the Easter candy. It was wonderful. • Just some updates from the Mayor’s Association. We do have monthly meetings. We received a legislative update from Tim Cosgrove, he is a lobbyist who works with some of our partners, and he just gave us a basic rundown of where we are at with the State budget right now and what to expect. There are a lot of moving parts with that so if anyone wants a one-on-one at any point in time, I will gladly sit down and try to hash it through with you. So, the State budget for the 2026/2027 year is in the hands of the Senate right now. • Also, the Mayor’s Association had a presentation from NOPEC with an explanation of why Ohio’s electric rates rising. It all comes down to the capacity auction. So, in June of 2024, PJM Interconnection, which manages the electric grid for 13 states including Ohio, held a capacity auction that resulted in dramatically higher capacity prices. So that means higher electric bills for all electric companies in Ohio and those other 12 states that PJM services. Typically, what they are telling me is they are supposed to have these auctions every 2 years. They waited for 3 years to have this auction, and the auction usually generates what the rate is going to be, and it is usually around $20 per kwh. Well, the rate that came out of this auction was $300 kwh. It is an 800% increase in capacity prices. So, what this means to our average household means electricity costs could go up about 4  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 Mayor (Cont’d.) 10 to 15% which is around 2¢ more per kwh. The City of Tallmadge has no control over any of this. OK. The State of Ohio doesn’t even have control over it. It is all in the hands of PJM Interconnection so all we can do is help our residents to help them understand what they can do to offset some of these cost increases by keeping devices unplugged, use ceiling fans for cooling; anything that you can do to decrease your energy usage. Some of the things that they had said was that every time you use Chat GPT it uses more energy than when you turn a light on. So, just being conscious of all the energy that you use to help keep your energy costs down. So that was very interesting information that I think we received at our Mayor’s Association meeting. • I also attended the 100 days of Impact by ArtsNow. It was an afternoon with elected leaders. The Summit County elected officials were invited to join other leaders from the arts, culture and environmental sectors for an opportunity to strengthen our relationships and explore shared priorities in engagement. I felt this was a very important connection because as many of you know I do have a desire to form an arts council to work with the City of Tallmadge. I know I have talked with Mary in the past and with Jessica as well. This is something that I do want to get together with Council’s help. There are 3 different ways we can do it, and it is very complicated, but we need to come together and try to figure out how we can get more art within our community. I would love to have some art in some of our public places. I think it would be a breath of fresh air. So, more to come on that. • The Tallmadge Little League Annual Parade and opening ceremonies are going to take place this Sunday at 5:00 p.m. In conjunction with the parade the Tallmadge Little League is going to host the 50th Anniversary celebration at the Ritchie Memorial Shelter House. The Circle will be closed at 4:00 p.m. and will reopen after the parade. • Another reminder that the 157th Memorial Day events including the parade and service is going to be held on May 26th and all elected officials are invited to participate in the parade. We do start lining up at 9:00 a.m. and the parade begins at 10:00 a.m. Following the parade will be the Memorial Day ceremony that will take place at 10:00 a.m. b. Director of Administration: Good evening and thank you again. I just have a brief update. We continue preparation for fact finding for the FOP and IAFF. We will have the FOP’s fact finding on May 5 th here at City Hall and then on May 13th for the IAFF. We expect bringing the ordinance back to Council. Right now, it is slated for the second meeting in June. We will update you if we can move that forward. Usually, it takes at least 30 days we are told before we will get a fact finder’s report back. Then we are interviewing . . . we continue to interview for the combined Civil Service /Department of Administration Administrative Assistant. Miss Tish Rowland, the Administrative Assistant for the Mayor, is temporarily filling those roles and we hope to fill this position very soon. Pending your questions that concludes my report tonight. c. Director of Public Service: Ass’t. Dir. of Public Service: I don’t really have anything to share except the Mayor asked me to just address the fire hydrant flushing. Rob Neiheiser, the Utilities Superintendent, and Shane Knicely, the Ass’t. Superintendent have been working hard to get those all flushed. Now I am sure you have seen the water spewing out and that is all according to plan. You will notice . . . residents may notice a fluctuation in water pressure and even some with no water. That is all temporary and should have only been a couple of minutes. If there is discoloration, residents should run their water from the lowest faucet in their building or house, or their business and I always urge everybody to just follow City of Tallmadge on the social media sites and check the website for any updates. That’s truly it, so thank you. 5  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 e. Director of Finance: Thank you. I have nothing to report this evening. f. Ass’t. Director of Law: Thank you very much. The only reminder I have is that we are taking . . . we are participating in the Drug Take Back this Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. That is occurring at the Tallmadge Police Department and that is an opportunity for the public to turn in any prescriptions medications that haven’t been used and also over the counter. Just a reminder to everyone that there is a receptacle in the Tallmadge Police Department lobby. So, at any time you can turn in any prescriptions or over the counter drugs. I have nothing further. 10. Reports of Standing Committees of Council of the Whole: a. PLANNING AND ZONING Mary Gutman, Chair Jessica Epstein, Vice Chair The Planning & Zoning Committee deals with land use, zoning, conditional uses, planning, economic and community development, and public property. Mrs. Gutman: I call the Planning & Zoning Committee to order. We have nothing additional before us this evening. Does anyone have anything for Planning & Zoning? OK, seeing nothing, then I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. b. FINANCE Donald Pavlik, Chair Christine Cipa, Vice Chair The Finance Committee deals with budget, appropriations, reappropriations, bonds, franchises, investments, and expenditures. Mr. Pavlik: I call the Finance Committee to order. There are currently no items to present tonight. Are there any questions from Council of the Whole? Hearing none, I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. c. PERSONNEL Christine Cipa, Chair Donald Pavlik, Vice Chair The Personnel Committee deals with personnel, labor relations, insurance claims, Rules of Council and State Statutes. Ord. 2024-75 – TABLED until 6-26-25. Ord. 2024-76 – TABLED until 6-26-25. Ord. 2024-77 – TABLED until 6-26-25. Mrs. Cipa: I call the Personnel Committee to order. We have 3 ordinances. Ord. 2024-75 has been tabled until 6-26-25. Ord. 2024-76 is tabled also until 6-26-25. Ord. 2024-77 which is also tabled until 6-26-25. Are there any additional items for Personnel? Hearing none, I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. d. SAFETY Nicholas Rubino, Chair Ted Roy, Vice Chair 6  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 The Safety Committee deals with disaster services, communications, fire, and para- medics, police and health. i. Second Readings of Ordinances and Resolutions. Ord. 2025-48 – Exhibit A - Tracked Exhibit A – Amending Sections 705.03 “Alarm User Responsibility” and 705.99 “Penalty” of the Tallmadge Codified Ordinances and providing for immediate enactment. Sponsor: Mayor Kilway Mr. Rubino: I call the Safety Committee to order. We currently have one ordinance at 2 nd Reading and that is Ord. 2025-48. The ordinance was read into the record. The sponsor is Mayor Kilway. Are there any comments by the sponsor? Mayor: I do not have any additional comments other than what we discussed at the last meeting. We do have Captain Eichler here that can answer any questions you may have or give an update if he would like to. Captain Eichler of the Tallmadge Police Department. I wanted to just come in today to be able to give you some context on the reason that this came up and why we are asking for the changes today. Our current ordinance that sits on the books has been on the books since 2011. Our Chief’s secretary was the one that monitored the alarms and sent out our warning letters and did the fines. Since she went away, that stopped for a brief time. Up until about 18 months ago, we started having a couple of businesses that we started having an inordinate amount of alarms at that really started to pull our resources to the point of we thought it was detrimental to the City so we started to address those with the current ordinance. Just to give you some perspective of that, in 2024 we had 811 total alarms. Those consisted of commercial, residential, commercial fire and residential fire alarms. 2/3’s of those are commercial burglar alarms which obviously the Police Department handles. One of the businesses had 158 or those alarms and so it is around 28% of our total alarms. So, noticing that this was a problem, we sent a warning letter to them advising them on our ordinance and what the potential fines could be. I spoke with them over the phone, and they said they would try to get this mitigated and that did not happen. So, under our current ordinance, you are allowed 4 false alarms in a 6-month period. Any over that we can bill $25 per alarm and so after 6 months, we billed them, and they were well over . . . I cannot remember the exact amount, but the final part of our current ordinance says we cannot bill more than $500. So, we billed them for $500. The second half of the year they were well over $500 within a month or two and we billed them a second time and they sent us a check and didn’t even blink at it and the problem continues. So, we looked at the first quarter of 2025, and we have had 149 total commercial burglary alarms. This one company has had 58 of those. So, to put that into context a little bit, the second highest company in 2025 has 11. So, we have a very select few businesses that we are trying to address to try to lower these alarms, so we are not running out there all the time and leaving the City with only 1 officer. I say that because it is on the very edge of town. So, what we are proposing is just to give a little more leverage and let this ordinance have a little more teeth in the fact of we are asking . . . we have lowered the number of false alarms to 3 and that we could bill these companies every 30 days without a cap and it is $50 for every alarm. So, what that would mean is when we originally could bill $500 every 6 months, that one company we could start to bill around $900 a month which I think is going to head up a little more of an impact. That is the reason we are doing it. I checked to see how many residences this would impact as far as false alarms go. In 2024, there would only be 3. The highest one residence that we had had 9 false alarms and like I said before, we try to mitigate these before it comes to a fine situation. We send out a warning letter and we reach out in person. Our goal is not to fine these folks; it is to try to fix the problem so that it helps both sides. So, then the next highest, I believe, was 4. Any questions? Pres. of Council: First, I just want to say thank you for your detailed report and coming here 7  COUNCIL MEETING Council Chambers 7:00 p.m. April 24, 2025 Pres. of Council (Cont’d.) tonight, and presenting. In terms of reaching out, you know if there are multiple occurrences, when we reach out we do try to offer like root cause of the issue and then suggest maybe mitigation to that. Like is it caused by the same issue repeatedly or is that something different like an animal or you know . . . Captain Eichler: As you can imagine, alarms can vary from anything from door alarms to . . . most businesses have motion detectors and motion-activated cameras that are monitored by security companies and every time those go off, the security company calls us. The problem is that they are calling us even for . . . they will say that it looks like a garbage truck going around the building and so I try to reach out to them over the phone and we have sent warning letters as I stated and I am not getting a callback and I feel like those are very simple ways to cut down on the number of alarms that we are responding to. So, yes, we do try to do a root cause analysis. Mr. Rubino: Are there any other questions? Alright, thank you, Captain. If there are no other questions, we are going to move this to 3rd Reading. Does anybody have any other items or questions for the Safety Committee? Hearing none, I will close committee. ii. Additional Items: None. e. COMMUNITY ISSUES Ted Roy, Chair Mary Gutman, Vice Chair The Community Issues Committee deals with Parks and Recreation, civic affairs, and liaison between Council and the Recreation Board and intergovernmental affairs. Mr. Roy: I call the Community Issues Committee to order. We have no legislation before us this evening. Is there anything for Community Issues this evening? Hearing none, I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. f. PUBLIC SERVICE Jessica Epstein, Chair Nicholas Rubino, Vice Chair The Public Service Committee deals with streets, highways, sidewalks, buildings, and improvements: water, sewer, electricity, gas, energy resources, recycling, waste, and trash. Mrs. Epstein: I call the Public Service Committee to order. We don’t have any legislation this evening. Are there any additional items from Council as a whole? OK, hearing none, I will close committee. i. Additional Items: None. 11. Reports of Special Committees: a. Council Operations Committee i. Additional Items: None. 12. Announcements: I just want to echo the Mayor’s announcement that the Little League Parade is this weekend celebrating the 50th Memorial Celebration. It starts on Sunday at 5:00 p.m. 13. Adjournment: Mr. Pavlik moved to adjourn. Seconded Mr. Rubino. Roll Call: Mrs. Gutman, Mr. Pavlik, Mr. Roy, Mr. Rubino, Mr. Bollas, Mrs. Cipa, Mrs. Epstein – unanimous. The Council meeting of 4-24-25 is adjourned at 7:38 p.m. sb Adopted: ___________________ ___________________________________ ______________________________________ Susan E. Burton, Clerk of Council Jonathon D. Bollas, President of Council 8