City Council

BUDGET HEARINGS FOR 2019 March 26, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. Mr. Vincent called the 2019 Budget Hearing meeting to order for March 26, 2019 and welcomed the special guests. Council Members present: Sandy Gentry, Connie Norman, Jan Bradshaw, Ann Gildow, Joey Osborn, J. Rob Sharrer, Steven Foreman, Mark Baker and President Daniel Vincent. Mr. Roberts was absent. Others in attendance were; Rhonda Heskett, Budget and Finance Director; Jay Bennett, Public Service and Community Development Director; Ashley Miller, Public Service Administrative Secretary; the presenters: Jim Witte, Airport Manager; Jeff Shook, Street and Refuse Superintendent; Paul Mills, Water Department Superintendent; Jeff Johnson, Parks and Cemetery Superintendent; Scott Brown, Sewer Sanitation Superintendent; Bill Rosser, Vehicle Maintenance; Tony Coury, Police Chief; Keane Toney, Public Safety Director; and Susan Culbertson, Clerk of Council. Council President Daniel Vincent opened the Budget Hearings for 2019. We will go ahead and get started. This is a Special Council as a Whole meeting to review the 2019 permanent budget which has already been passed by Council. This is very informative and we appreciate everyone’s time. Council learns a lot and they get questions answered. If there are any issues with the permanent budget Council could go back and revise it, but I doubt that will happen. Airport Manager, Jim Witte Fund #601-pg 21-Airport Fund Fund #615-pg 28-Airport Capital Jim Witte started with what happened last year. •They just finished up a couple major projects some permanent paint on the runway overlay. We had just a basic punch list on the fencing project. •Some new stuff like the State has granted funding for new runway lighting on the crosswind runway. This has gone to bid and has been awarded. It came in under bid so it looks like it is going to be a pretty good project. It should go pretty fast and hopefully, hassle free. •In the fall we will start on a new electrical vault. The one that is there is actually original equipment from the 1940’s. It is extremely dangerous and we are going to replace that so it will be much safer. We think it will get done this year, but it will at least get started. Mr. Vincent: We don’t like hearing dangerous. Mr. Witte: It is called the penalty box. •We are working on an update to the Master Plan, which is a 20 year document for the future development at the airport. It is kind of a long shot, but we are going for a runway extension on the main runway. This is going to take a long time, but it you don’t do anything, nothing ever happens. We are working on that too. 1 •Additional land would need to be acquired to accommodate the extension plus the safety portion. A lot of fill is needed. The tree removal has taken place. Mr. Witte is pleased with his budget. He retracted that- nobody is pleased with their budget. (Laughter broke out) Mr. Witte said it is better than the master plan. Mr. Vincent: Are there any questions from Council? Nothing. Thank you, sir. We appreciate it. Streets, Jeff Shook Fund #202-pg 7-Auto Gas Fund Fund #650-pg 29-Sanitation Operations Fund #652-pg 29-Sanitation Capital Jeff Shook: •A handout of the paving list for this year was distributed and also plans for next year’s paving. •It looks like we are getting another new dump truck which is a major asset. We had a truck that went on the brink this year. •We are getting a new paint striper. The ones we have are over 20 years old. We are starting to replace them too. Hopefully, we will get a lot of painting done this year if the weather holds up for us. Last year was a bad year for us with the weather. We hope to paint Maple Avenue this year and it will be a night job. We will have three crews in the night trying to get that done. The thermoplastic striping once the roughness wears off the asphalt it doesn’t stick very well. The State is coming in a couple of years on Maple. Hopefully we will get some new curb too. Some of the curb needs repaired on Maple. It is in pretty bad shape. The state will pay a big portion of the paving cost for Maple, but the City will have a share of the cost. Ms. Heskett does not remember the City’s share from 2012. •We would like to get some crack sealing done this year. •We want to get some of downtown done too. •The painted stripes usually last about one year. The thermoplastic on heavy traffic roads it would last about six or seven years. The thermoplastic will not stay with the roughness worn off the asphalt. It is best to put the thermoplastic down when it is new. The asphalt is porous and is best to put it down when the pavement is new. It gets rough to see and it would be nice if people would stay off the lines, but that won’t happen. •Materials, supplies, and capital outlay are about double the numbers from last year. Is there something in particular, I hope one new dump truck. Ms. Heskett said the carry over purchase orders in Material and Supplies is the issue. We had carry over purchase orders for rock salt, Larzelere paving, and under Capital Outlay there was carry over purchase order for a spreader, a leaf collector, and a different dump truck than what we are talking about this year. So that is why you see that inflated. Sanitation, Jeff Shook •We bought a new compactor. It is hooked up and we just have to get the electric connected and the new compactor will be in operation. •We bought a roll off from the Sewer Department which is going to be a help to us once we get it going. Our small trucks will be able to dump into the compactor and take one load out to the Page 2 of 30 land fill where we are taking two trips with our small trucks. We will be down to one trip a day with the roll off. •The smaller trucks go around, collect, and dump into the compactor. We will push it into a box and then we will take one load out which will equal two of our small ones to the landfill. This is one driver taking one load per day. We hope for a cost savings. The landfill is outside of Glenford, at Waste Management. The City direct hauls now because they were going to eat us up on the last contract to contract it out. We saved a nice amount on it. We are still making good time on it also. We have the two bigger trucks which really helps us. We have been able to get a full route plus some with the big truck that we have been running now where we would have had to make two runs per small truck that we had. We have been able to take the two big trucks and collect the biggest part of it so it really helped out. •There are some challenges getting the bigger trucks into some locations. There are challenges with all of them. Actually the trucks are only 5 feet longer than the ones we have. We have been bringing the trash out of the alleys. I don’t know if any of you have been driving the alleys, but since we brought the trash cans out; the alleys are a whole lot cleaner. Not only that, but the trucks are just destroying the alleys. Getting them out of there and the weight off the alleys will help us out in the future when we start doing some work in the alleys. That is one of our goals is to get them completely out of the alleys. •Hopefully in the future when we go to the automated system we will be already set up with the street pickups out front. We are hoping to in the future. Mr. Vincent: Is there anything from Council? Mr. Sharrer: First I will touch on the automated thing. I could be long gone by then, but I know that I struggle with that in my neighborhood because I have for example in front of my house it is on street parking. That is the only parking I have. So, the only place for me to put my garbage out is in the alley. That is pretty much the same around my neighborhood and that is St. Louis Avenue and all of those that would have to take their garbage down the big front hill instead of going out the back into the alley could be dangerous. Mr. Shook: There are going to be places that we know we still have to go into the alleys so we can use the small trucks where we will get to some that cannot have on street pickup. Mr. Sharrer: I think that is a great idea and Jay and I have talked about it. Mr. Bennett: You think about Center Drive and how it is wide open. It is perfect. Ridgewood, perfect. We have designed routes that are accessible and are perfect. The Manor, no. Homewood, and we looked at some of those and we know we can’t go there. It is really all we are looking at is more of a hybrid type of a system. Mr. Sharrer: That makes sense. Mr. Shook: We went to Akron and we saw their operation. They have the same thing and they have to deal with it. The biggest part of it was handled by the automated system which made good time, safer, and less injuries. We still have a lot of things for employees to do as far as Page 3 of 30 hauling the trash away, fixing carts, we need somebody to police the recycling, and other things like that. We are looking to keep everybody and expanding out to outside the City limits to anybody that has City water. We would like get them to sign up and we are starting to get quite a few customers outside the City limits. Mr. Bennett: We are getting more commercial accounts. If you think about injuries, it is not only back, but we just had another employee that was stuck by a sharp object. Mr. Shook: We have had several guys stuck with needles. Mr. Bennett: It is a tough job. I think that hybrid system we can continue to explore those opportunities and I think our alleys get better in part where we can. We see employees repurposing, as the injury costs go down on our insurance and those kinds of things. I think long term plans are on sustainability and preserving rates. Mr. Sharrer: My second question was to Rhonda on the $385,000 in contingency where the last two years there were none. Is that for a plan? Ms. Heskett: It is a good projection on rate increases that Council looked over and passed. We have it there now. Mr. Sharrer: So it is extra money to work with in sanitation. Ms. Heskett: Yes, absolutely. Mr. Vincent: Is there anything else from Council? Thank you, sir. We greatly appreciate it; very informative. We appreciate your time. Water Department, Paul Mills Fund #603-pg 23-Water Operating Fund #609-pg 25-Water Capital Rep. Fund #611-pg 26-Water Improve Mr. Vincent: We have the retired, soon to be retired. Mr. Bennett: The short timer. Some people say he has already left. (Laughter broke out) Paul Mills said this is going to be a good year. •We have already replaced two of our dump trucks. We just picked them up from Lucas. Rhonda had in our budget for a couple of new ones, but working with Billy in Vehicle Maintenance and John Smith we saw these two over at Lucas. They are 2012’s. We are getting those two for less than the price of one new one. Billy is going to put a new bed on the third dump truck. So we will have three decent dump trucks going. We are also going to replace three much needed pickup trucks. The dump trucks were 24 years old. We have one of the pickup trucks that is 19 years old. It is going to be good. Page 4 of 30 •Working up on waterline in East Highland still. We have 500 and some feet to go and we will be tying that in together. Hopefully next week we will get the bacteria samples and get it flushed and then we can start the lateral tie in and 33 service lines that we need to hook up. •Last week we did a job up there on Military and we did the tie in on Dresden. Our public notice was a lot of shut down area. One good thing about that was our tie in that we already did down on Linden Avenue to push that water up, we didn’t lose a lot of those people where normally we would have lost them. They stayed in water. So the project is working. By the time we get that all connected together we should be in really good shape up there. •This year we are going to do East Willow and Hilltop. We are going to bore new lines down through there. That is off of East Highland. We are trying to get an easement from a lady in the back that tied in together to make it circulating up there. It looks like it is going to happen. She is working with us. •We had a big water break on Marion. I am sure Susan already got a claim on that. That is only 500 and some feet to replace that line so we are going to throw that in there this year also. So hopefully we won’t have any more claims there because when it breaks there it causes a lot of damage. •There is a tiny one I think it is Frances and we are working with David on that. We are going to try to circulate that too. Mr. Bennett: Because Blue Avenue is coming with paving. We were going to get that little section done at Somers. When that blows up we would like to pave and not have it blow the new pavement up. Mr. Mills: We have $150,000 in our Water Main Replacement so I think that is going to cover pretty much everything. •Our GIS is 80% done. It is coming. It was scheduled for two years and we are ahead of schedule on that so RCAP is going to be there with John on Thursday and when they come down he and John are in that room all day long drawing the lines, so we are getting that part done for our Pioneer Reservoir for our engineer on it so we can move forward on it. •Heritage Water Tower is done. It looks good from out there by the Mall. Have you seen that? Putnam Water Tower they are supposed to be back here in April. They will get the outside painted. The inside is already done. Everything is done on the inside. They just have to do the outside, the ground work, and demolish the old one. I think they are saying around August it should be complete with the ground work and everything. •We are getting two wells cleaned this year. •We are moving on our meter for our web-based service. Mr. Mills: I can’t think of anything else. Are there any questions on anything? Mr. Vincent: Could you expand a little more on the GIS as far as what is being done? Mr. Mills: Yes, it is doing everything. It is doing hydrants, valves, water mains, curb stops; everything is on this GIS system. Mr. Vincent: So that will help as far as the location. Page 5 of 30 Mr. Mills: Our crew leaders are actually already using it on their phones. They can go out and walk right up to that curb box that has already been located. Mr. Vincent: So, no more continuous going out locating and painting to keep track of them? Mr. Mills: Right. Our old maps right now you know you have measurements from one corner of the house to the other corner of the house and you come out to the curb box. We will just be able to go to that address and take our system and walk right up to that curb box. It is going to save a lot. Especially on our turn off days when you have 90 some turnoffs one day and you are trying to locate curb boxes for shut off and everything. Mr. Vincent: So this is like GPS for coordinates to locate and go right to it? Mr. Mills: Yes. Malcolm is working with us on that too. When we are done with RCAP and they are done with their project then Malcolm will be putting in points for us and going on from there. Mr. Vincent: Then this is also useful for locating lines. Mr. Mills: The main lines are not pin pointed yet. When we have a water break that is when we are going to have Malcolm come out when we have it dug up. We are here right now so we know exactly where that line is at the next time we come to it. Mr. Vincent: So you get GPS coordinates each time you open it up to get to the line and keep adding data. Mr. Mills: Each time we open up a hole they are going to get the information. Mr. Vincent: So it will become more fine-tuned and more fine-tuned. Mr. Bennett: This is going from paper copies and in two years we have advanced into engineering capabilities, savings, and it has been quite impressive. Mr. Mills: Michael Kirsch, he retired from the Health Department, and he is the one who is working with RCAP on this and he has been keeping our guys moving. He keeps them hopping. Mr. Bennett: What about the software for the metering between the billing office and the work orders? Mr. Mills: This is the year we are going to be able to, after I think August, we may be able to purchase those meters where if we have trouble getting into the duplexes to pull a meter because of non-payment you can hit the button on the computer and it will shut that meter off. They are a little bit more expensive meters, but we are not going to put the whole city on them. We are just going to put them on our trouble areas. Ones where we are constantly, month after month, we are there trying to get in and get it turned off. Page 6 of 30 Mr. Vincent: So no more trouble with people parking over them so you cannot shut them off? Mr. Mills: If that is one of our trouble things we will put a meter in there and when they are on that list just hit a button and turn them off. Or we can turn them back on when they make a payment. Mr. Vincent: I know that happens a lot. It is incredible. Mr. Bennett: There is desperation as part of that as they are struggling to preserve if they can because they may have kids there and those are all hard things. We recognize that. Mr. Sharrer: I was going to say, with those new meters I know that I had brought up the possibility of again, I am always a guy that it depends on perception and how it is presented. I know I was able to talk to the Muskingum Area Real Estate Investors Association and that was one of the things we talked about. I said as landlords you may want to go down to see if you buy one of these meters and can you get it quicker. Mr. Bennett: Yes, because they are responsible on the back side. Mr. Sharrer: Exactly and so again it is how it is presented and I told them we were about $96 or $98 a piece. I said with the cellular technology we can turn it off at the touch and they were excited about that. So, you may get some landlords and some people that are interested in having those water meters replaced. Mr. Mills: Believe me we got our business where we want them. It will save us a lot of time. •We are also working with Enviro-Flow on our fire flow on our large meter testing and we just had a meeting with them on Monday. Anyway, he is about done with our top ten users and I will tell you what, there is one business that one meter is 20% low. So, they are going to have to replace that meter and their bill is going to go up. It is a good program that Jay got us started on we are going to give him ten more to go to and we are going to get ten more of them this year. It is working out real good. We will get some more revenue on that for sure. •Everything else is going good. The guys are working hard. They are fixing water breaks as they come in. They are staying on top of things. •We are going to get our valves and hydrants stocked back up this year. We have money in there for that. •I appreciate everything the City has done for me. I really have. It has been good, but forty years is long enough. I just wish it was all forty years of PERS. Thirty of it is PERS. You can’t have everything I guess. I remember starting as a senior in high school working weekends at the water plant. It seems like it wasn’t too long ago. I am ready. Mr. Bennett: It is a Civil Service position so we will be going through Civil Service, much like what we have done with Waste Water where you have a classification and certified licenses that you have to have so there is really no testing involved. What we do with the Civil Service Commission is do a structured interview. We have questions, we bring in outside people. For Wastewater we had outside people with Wastewater Operators or Superintendents come in as Page 7 of 30 part of a Technical Team and we will have a management leadership handle the interviews. They are scored. Those go to Civil Service then to make sure they pass by 70% and then they give us a list to choose from. We will be going through that process soon. You will all get an invitation to a retirement party in June and we hope to see you. Paul Mills: We have good people working in the Water Department. There are good supervisors. They know this system and it is very important that you keep people that know your system, because shutting off those valves as we have boundary valves in our system and if you get on one of those and you turn it then you are blowing up the downtown. There is just so much to know. We have good guys, we really do. We are blessed with that. We put good people in there. Mr. Vincent: So, turning the wrong valve could cause a major nightmare? Mr. Mills: Oh, yeah! Absolutely. Mr. Bennett: What was it last summer you started seeing the Fairview Road tank empty? There was warning, warning, warning signals. Where are we losing water? Mr. Mills: That call came in like two in the morning. They don’t call me unless there is something wrong. The operator said Paul we are losing water. I got up and came in and we got all the guys to come in and we just started going around town. We knew it was somewhere. We finally got on a valve and Johnathan got on a valve out there by Sam’s Club and he could hear it roaring and it ended up being behind Hobby Lobby. It broke behind them and I think it was their fire line. Mr. Bennett: Our tank was dropping. They received an invoice and they paid it for the cost of the water. Mr. Mills: I think by the time we got everybody in there it was like six o’clock a.m. when we found it. Everybody was right on it. We knew it was on the north end because of that tank, but we just didn’t know where. I drove up by there, but I didn’t go behind it. I was thinking I was up there probably an hour before we actually found it driving around that area looking. If I had driven behind there I would have seen it. It was flowing into a creek so it wasn’t coming down the road. Mr. Vincent: Nice work. Mr. Sharrer: Yes, I just wanted for my own comfort level and I apologize I keep doing this, but revenue is down by $500,000 compared to last year and expenses up $1.25 million. I hope that is not a trend in the Water Operations Fund. It is going from just over six million to five point five million. Ms. Heskett: Oh, honestly; if you look it is just the water charges. I could possibly have that estimated a little low. That is just as you have heard me say I am a conservative person. Page 8 of 30 Mr. Sharrer: I am good with that as long as… Ms. Heskett: There is nothing foreseen. There is no reason that I have it there other than, like I said, just being conservative. Right now the fund is performing well. You will notice we have contingency that we didn’t have last year. That is just me. Paul Mills: Rhonda has done great with us. We have the money in our budget for the new dump trucks, but we are still trying to save in ways that we can. Maybe something better will come at the end of the year and we can get another pick up. Ms. Heskett: Can I make a comment about that? I just wanted to say that all of our superintendents are such good stewards of the City’s funds and that is a perfect example right there. We had two new dump trucks budgeted, but they went out and they worked with Billy and Vehicle Maintenance and all the superintendents work with him. They all work together very well and a better solution is let’s get two trucks for the price of one. Now if something happens like a water break or something, we have appropriations there we can draw from or like Paul said when it gets closer to the end of the year and re-evaluate the situation and maybe a truck failed or something then we have funds available. I just wanted to throw out a little praise to the superintendents. Paul Mills: I think it is the best thing for us to do. Mr. Bennett: To know Paul, you recall a couple of years ago we aggregated all of our electric. We went out to bid because we can do that. So we aggregated lights, water, and wastewater, all of our power for our facilities in use. We aggregated and we got a great price locked in for five years. That has saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars across the different divisions. Paul continues to turn the pumps off at night because we have enough storage. He can draft that plant that saves us additional money as it cuts the electric bill way down. That is your super superintendent. That is what they do. They are creative. Mr. Vincent: The challenge was losing the county customers we had. We prepared for that with the larger plant and then we lost the county as a large customer. Mr. Bennett: They will be back. Mr. Mills: At one time we were pumping close to seven million gallons a day. We are averaging around four million gallons a day now. Mr. Sharrer: If you get those meters switched out and all of those Mr. Mills: I think new meters in the city the revenue is going to go up. We have some old meters. Mr. Sharrer: 20% on one customer. Page 9 of 30 Mr. Mills: One big customer. It is a big meter. Mrs. Osborn: Just asking and I know you talked about it is a Civil Service position. Do you anticipate down time for his position? Will it be filled? Mr. Bennett: No, we anticipate having someone with him the last couple of weeks. I asked Paul to pick a date so we could proceed. Not that I want him to go, but I have a lot of work to do to get someone hired. Mr. Vincent: Looking long term as far as to pick your brain a little bit looking long term. I know years ago we talked about do we need to extend our well fields further north. Mr. Mills: You know our well fields are in good shape. We are getting two wells cleaned each year. We are staying on top of that. We have twelve good wells. We usually are just pumping about seven of them on the average. Sometimes we use six, but mostly seven wells. As long as we keep them cleaned and rotate that every year I think we are in good shape. Actually we are going to do wells numbered ten and eleven this year. I just got the specs together today for that. Mr. Vincent: We have twelve wells that we use. Mr. Mills: We only use seven at a time. We alternate them. Mr. Vincent: Then the wells that are constantly being pumped off those are not in that count? Mr. Mills: No, no. they are not in that count. These are twelve active wells. There are two that pump off and will not be used for any water supply. Mr. Bennett: We talked about there is one that some work was done and not completed. Mr. Mills: Yes, I don’t know, but Bobby Pletcher started that many, many years ago. I don’t know why they stopped on that well, but that is something we could look into. It sets clear back behind Kidsville. It is not in use as they never finished it for some reason. I don’t know. If we get ahead on money, we can look into it. Right now we have twelve good wells. Mr. Vincent: If needed, we could open this other one up. Is there additional land if need be in the future? Mr. Mills: That is something that would have to be worked out. Mr. Vincent: I was just looking out long term and wanted to pick your brain before you are gone. Mr. Bennett: Let’s get more customers. Mr. Mills: We definitely need that. Page 10 of 30 Mr. Vincent: Is there anything else from Council? Thank you again. We greatly appreciate your years of time and service. Mr. Mills: I am sure we will see each other again before I leave. Thank you. Parks & Cemetery Division, Jeff Johnson Fund #101, Div 3281-pg 2-Parks Fund #101, Div 3961-pg 2-Stadium Fund #602-pg 22-Cemetery Fund #850-pg 39-Cemetery Development Fund #851-pg 39-Cemetery Endow. Mr. Vincent: We appreciate you coming. Is life good? Mr. Jeff Johnson: Thank you and very good. Thanks! Things are going pretty well in parks. •We would love some more people. It is the smallest fund the City has which hurts when we hear from people we would love more amenities and those types of things. It used to be one of the biggest funds: Parks and Recreation. It is a tough decision. It competes with the big dogs like police, fire, and streets. •We augment his work force with a lot of seasonal employees. Mr. Sharrer asked what projects are on the board with parks this year? • The first thing we would like to do is get Riverside softball diamonds back up in condition. There is a significant increase in Capital Outlay for this project. • We need to put a new roof on a structure at Calvert Park. We did a few over the past couple of years. Ms. Gildow asked if Jeff thought every park is used. • His response was no. •What suggestions on how they can be better used for legitimate activities. •Jeff said he rides through the parks every day and I go weeks and weeks without even seeing people in them. You hear we need additional parks here and there and it doesn’t seem like the ones we have are well used. Some of them are very nice. It is unfortunate and maybe if we put a designated area for texting or something they would be used more. Mr. Bennett said Ms. Gildow is absolutely correct. You want kids in parks and I spent quite a bit of time recently with some folks who have a lot of perspective on that thought. You are talking about integrating technology with outdoor spaces to bring them together. There are some wonderful applications of using tech at designated points. Think about trails. What the park district is doing. Having designated places where you have a hotspot where somebody can hop on to visit a Zanesville app for what is going on in Zanesville and interactive use of Zanesville playground equipment. Ms. Gildow said it seems like young people should be outside more. Mr. Foreman said down the road, I am the President of the Park Society, and I would just like to say that moving forward we have a lot of opportunity to partner with the City. We are currently doing three major projects: McIntire Park: the Outdoor Learning Classroom. We have Page 11 of 30 the Westview property that is being secured and we are moving forward actually any moment now we are going to find out if we received the funding we applied for to use on Westview. We have the Joe’s Run Trail. We have some really great things happening. Mr. Foreman provided updates on their projects and fundraising efforts and said they would be interested in partnering with the City on parks and activities. Mrs. Norman said Putnam Hill Park is being utilized and the gazebo has been completely refurbished. A lot of times people have weddings there. They use the shelter. Some of the trees need to be replaced as some of them are old and have been damaged over time. Maybe the Shade Tree Commission could be consulted in reference to the trees on the public property. Mr. Bennett said they could be asked to do an inventory and suggest replacement. The basketball courts are used. Mr. Foreman said they could help with the trees. There were some concerns maybe kids had been on four-wheelers and tore around on it, but it ended up the police were chasing someone and it was straightened up. Mr. Johnson said it happens in a lot of the parks where they get torn up areas. Mrs. Norman suggested they might want to see what they could do to enhance this park. Mr. Bennett said the City is participating with the district with the survey that is going on. He thinks it is critical going forward in the comprehensive plan there is a goal to evaluate partnerships of the City’s existing and future parks. That is a project within that comprehensive plan that needs to have that discussion between any entity and the city. The thing we tried to do is say what are new activities people want to do and will come out to participate in? The dog park is busy. The basketball court that was never used and turned it into pickle ball court and it is used. I think part of that secret is what are people wanting to use them for and let’s strive to find partnerships for investment to make this happen. That is what we have been trying to do. Mr. Foreman said it amazes him about the number of people who have never been to Mission Oaks. I understand it kind of sits back so it is more of a secret in Zanesville. I think McIntire and Westview of his own personal desire and vision is those are prominent properties and I would love to see the City involved with us and kind of moving some of that forward. I know we need new sidewalks around Westview as an example. They are not in good shape at all. If we could get some of those projects together and do those I think they would be great for our community. Some of the heavy lifting has been done, not that there is not more to do. If we could all work within our means and budgets that would be great. It was asked if Chaps Run is still open. Mr. Johnson said the top portion where the playground equipment is, the bottom part is closed on the Ridge Avenue side. Cuddy Dixson is utilized. Every time Mr. Bennett goes there the kids are playing. Fair Oaks gets used a good bit. Goddard Park is used when the lunch program is available. Merrick Park is also utilized. It needs some work done and some equipment is needed. Some of the parks that are not being used are Tucker Park, VFW Park which is minimal, and the Linden Skate Park. Mr. Johnson said they are getting new Section Markers for the cemeteries to help people identify sections. We hope for less rain this year for Memorial Day. It was hard last year and Page 12 of 30 we did all hands on deck to mow and weed-eat to help out. It is extremely important for the cemeteries to look nice. All the superintendents helped. Mr. Johnson said thanks for all of Council‘s help. I appreciate all you do. Mr. Vincent: Please thank your crew, small but mighty. It is good to hear about the teamwork. It is nice for everyone to pull together to get things done. The benefits of that probably exceed just getting certain projects done whether it is snow or parks or cemeteries, but teamwork and getting other jobs helps out. Mr. Bennett: Jeff’s crew also does the entire weed spraying a couple of times a year downtown doing weed control in alleys and places and pits. They also do all the sidewalks on bridges during snow events. Mr. Vincent: Thank you, Jeff. We greatly appreciate you coming in. Sewer Department, Scott Brown Fund #604-pg 24-Sewer Operating Fund #610-pg 26-Sewer Replace Fund #612-pg 27-Sewer System Con Mr. Vincent: We appreciate you coming, sir. How are things going for you? What projects are coming up? Do you have plans to refresh us as I am sure we have heard some of them, but kind of run us through what is going on. Scott Brown: 2018 was a pretty busy year. We had a RFQ for the Linden Avenue Lift Station. Then we selected the engineer. We are in the design phase right now. It is probably going to take the majority of 2019 to design it and then we have an application in with DEFA the Ohio EPA’s Division of Environmental Financial Assistance. So, that project more than likely will break ground very late in 2019 or early spring of 2020. It will be completed most likely in 2020. The rough number on that lift station is about $750,000. To give an example the Y-Bridge lift station was about a $2.5 million dollar project so Linden Avenue is somewhat smaller. That lift station was built about the same time as the waste water plant was built so it was 1959. It is one of our older pieces of sewer infrastructure. It is time to replace it. The Linden Avenue lift station is across the street from Kirkbride’s Marina. There is a little building there at Linden and Military. In 2014 there was a significant upgrade at the plant. Part of that upgrade was to replace the head works, the mechanical bar screen needs to be fixed. That is another project we talked about last fall. We have the application in with OWDA for that so once we get the Notice to Proceed from OWDA we will be able to purchase that equipment. We will also be able to formally bid the labor for that project. Once we have the materials it will take about ten to twelve weeks to arrive on site and then we will be able to break ground on that. Construction for it is significantly shorter than the lift station which is only three to four weeks. I am hoping Page 13 of 30 that by September that project will be done. So, those are two big capital projects we are doing in 2019. Another project we undertook last fall is there are four large aeriation basins at the wastewater plant that were put in around 2005. They hadn’t been cleaned out since they were put into operation. So we took them down. We cleaned out about 125 tons of material from those basins. The majority of it was sand, snail shells, and mostly inorganic materials. Once we put them back in operation we went from using two blowers down to one blower. Each blower has a 250 horsepower electric motor. So we went from using 500 horse power to 250 horse power so if that paints a better picture for you. What that has done is cut the monthly electric bill consistently between $4,000 to $5,000 a month. We spend about $500,000 a year so that was about a 10% reduction right there just by cleaning those out. The other thing we did last year leading into this year, to be perfectly honest, when I started, the appearance of the place I felt rather embarrassed, so I took it upon myself to spend the majority of last year identifying all the areas that needed to be painted and cleaned. So hopefully if you drive by now it looks a lot different than it did a year ago. Mr. Bennett asked if it smells different. Mr. Brown said it does. I was getting to that. We also sent out an RFQ for landscaping. It came back and we put together a five year plan. Obviously, we are not putting a million dollars’ worth of landscaping, but landscaping isn’t something I know a whole lot about so even if we can plant some trees to make the place much more presentable, less industrial, and more friendly. It is a major thoroughfare with the bridge and whether we like it or not it is one of the faces of the City I should say. So, we need to make sure it looks presentable at all times. That is my goal with the facility. Odor, as somebody who works with wastewater, knows a point of contention. I am not a person that is going to say it is a wastewater plant so it is going to smell. It is a point of pride. It shouldn’t smell. Unfortunately, it is a losing battle at times, but there is a continued effort there. We spent last year identifying all the locations within the plant that create odor and systematically attack them with different means. I think we have greatly reduced the odor at the wastewater plant. We have identified the biggest source of odor is the trickling filter. The only way to eliminate the odor is to get rid of the trickling filters. That is sincere and it is something that we will work on as a city from a treatment standpoint to try to eliminate them. Without boring you with lots of technical details, I think we will find with the assistance of our engineer that they are not needed so I think we can do away with them in the future and I think that will make a huge difference as far as the odor goes. Those are some of the things that we are working on at the wastewater plant. Also out in the collection system we have our east-end system. We talked about it last year. It is a ten-year plan. There are about 300 grinder pumps and we are trying to do about 10% a year for ten years to replace them all so that legislation will be coming before you if it hasn’t already. In the very near future we will begin that process to order another round of pumps for that system. We actively worked on that. Page 14 of 30 We have CSO (Combined Sewer Overflows) projects. We are working in multiple phases and attacking from many fronts. We have the CSO elimination portion for 8, 9, 10, 11 and 6. Those are in various stages of design and funding. Then we have our long-term control plan which is a document that we are required to put together to tell the EPA what we are going to do long- term with our collection system including these CSO’s. So, there is a multi-phase process. The second phase of three total phases has already come before Council to start funding that portion. Then the third phase will be to finish that up. When that third phase will start I am not sure. We are just now starting the second phase. Those are some of the really big dollar projects we are working on. Mr. Bennett: Stormwater, very quickly, it is fun to work with fun, creative, and smart people. When you adopted the stormwater increase and now here comes the associated revenue over time because it is now effective and those bills are starting to roll out; but to watch and participate with Malcolm, our GIS person, and Scott, and you bring Chip into that equation and you say okay, our stormwater mapping we had none. How do we do GIS with GPS locations for those facilities? We can submit that two year grant to RCAP. We are on the mind we can knock this thing out a whole different way. Scott is creative, Malcolm is as well and so the solution we came up with is we are going to drive the city with a camera. It will record every catch basin inlet, every manhole, and everything and we can upload that into this system. For about $10,000 they will extract all of those things into a GIS format. Then we go from zero to about 70% really quickly. Then what Scott is going to do is look at camering our stormwater facilities and do GPS locations within those pipes. Within a couple of years you will have a completely GIS mapped system. It is fun to work with creative people. Scott Brown said yes, we honestly have nothing so we are starting from scratch so this with Malcolm, who is a tremendous asset, so I am glad with all the people who were involved with bringing him here, did so because it has continued dividends. We will be able to basically go from nothing to maybe as much as 70% to 80% and now we can go out and actually put eyes on and start to identify what size pipe, what it is made out of, what condition it is in, and all of that stuff. Right now we don’t have any of that information. We are required by the EPA as they have mandated that we do that. Not only do we need to be in compliance with the EPA, but then also for our own knowledge we should really have all of that information. Mr. Bennett said as you are aware an increase in water consumption recording also means an increase in revenue in sewer. So those pumps, we are meter testing, his budget is also going to feel a slight bump in this year’s revenue. The sewer rate is based on the amount of water consumed. As we capture what is actually being utilized on both ends of the equation. Mr. Vincent: I am glad to hear you talking about pride in the plant down there and I think that is pretty neat. I think pride is something good and it can drive us all to do better in many ways. Attacking the odor, that is wonderful. I would say that is probably the biggest complaint all of us are hearing. We haven’t heard it as much now so that is fantastic. Page 15 of 30 Scott Brown: I appreciate that. Thank you. Like I said as a group we have all worked very hard. When I first got there my approach to everybody was if you would be embarrassed to bring your spouse or children here; then why do you want to come here? So let’s clean it up and make it a nice place to be. That has been how we have conducted business at least since I have been here. Mr. Bennett said the wastewater plant was the shortest stop on the tour when Council toured some facilities. Mr. Vincent said as we get that scheduled for this spring for a tour we will include that facility. Mr. Vincent: A look at the numbers. Mr. Sharrer do you have anything? Mr. Sharrer: Obviously the big thing was the $4.8 million dollar loan, but I know what that is so I don’t need to ask. Miss Bradshaw: I just want to say thank you for concentrating on the odor because I get a lot of calls when it starts getting warm normally from the Lake Drive and the lower Putnam areas. You have always been very good about going to their homes and checking on what is going on and when they smell the odor and what is happening when they do. I really appreciate that you checked into that and probably found, or maybe identified the source of that odor. Maybe I won’t get the calls this year. Mr. Brown: Thank you. I appreciate it. Mr. Vincent: That is good to hear. So you are actually going out to homes and inspecting when they are smelling sewer gas odor. Mr. Brown: Yes, obviously, that is our job. If there is a problem, we can’t babysit, but we can certainly make an attempt. If they took the time to actually call us then we should take the time to actually respond. Miss Bradshaw: It makes them feel good when you do that because it makes them feel like somebody listened. I say, I will pass that on and it gets passed on so they are very happy that someone listens. Mr. Vincent: That is great customer service. That is very important. It helps not only with that situation, but I think overall as far as the City it shows we care and we want to provide good service. That is wonderful. I look forward to hearing more about eliminating the trickle filters. You have me intrigued with how we can take part of the system out and it still be fine with the EPA. And help reduce odors and possibly save costs, I assume, plus less maintenance on those trickle filters. Mr. Brown: I would be more than happy, but I don’t think tonight as you would fall asleep if I tried to explain it all, but it is something that is doable. To wrap it all up in a nice short concept, the plant treats and we are able to discharge to the river well below our permitted levels without that treatment. So that should be justification enough to be able to do away with it. With Page 16 of 30 the upgrade we did in 2005 that the City spent a fantastic amount of money and I am glad they did all of that work. It now allows that plant to treat to a very good level and that old technology of the trickling filters is not really needed. At the time I think there were so many things going on they didn’t fight that battle to take them out at that time. They just continued on. Now, we have the benefit of data for 15 years and I think we can show that we can take it out. Mr. Vincent: So the EPA needs you to submit data and information in the request to have it approved? Mr. Brown: It will take an engineer. They are not going to listen to Scott Brown the Superintendent of the Zanesville Wastewater Plant. There is going to have to be somebody or a firm the city hires to put together justification in the language the EPA will understand. Once we do that, I think we will be successful. Mr. Vincent: Is there anything else from Council? Thank you, sir. We greatly appreciate your time. Please pass along our appreciation to your workers, the pride they are sharing, and what they are doing to make things nice for the tour. We will be getting a tour together. Vehicle Maintenance & Equip, Bill Rosser Fund #700-pg 30-Veh & Equip. Maintenance Bill Rosser: Things are going well. Maybe not smooth because we take care of some aging equipment so it gets pretty busy. •We have four vehicle mechanics and one service worker for 684 pieces of equipment. It is a pretty good ratio. Mr. Vincent: We hear a lot of good things. You work a lot of magic to keep things going. Mr. Rosser: It is a very good crew. They are very creative and a very talented bunch. We just hired a new guy in December and he is doing a wonderful job. Mr. Vincent: Do you have more space to keep things in supply? We are working on the building project. Jay and I have been working trying to expand our building a little bit. If you remember we purchased the Frueh property and we are going to switch so the Water Department is going to go there and vacate the rest of the building they are sharing. It is going to reduce the amount of money we spend long term. So we are already looking at how to repurpose the space. As Jeff Shook said earlier we have the larger garbage trucks and they are actually too long now to fit in the front part of the building we use and be able to close the doors. We are in pretty desperate need of something. It is tough in the winter and cold weather trying to work on vehicles. Especially when you get a snow plow truck that blows a hydraulic line and you have salt and water dripping on you. It gets interesting. Page 17 of 30 Budget wise, is there anything big? We have a couple of projects. We have a couple of seasonals per year. They run a lot of parts for us. They sweep and help clean up around the place. Sometimes we get busy and it is nice to have an extra guy just to come to clean up. We are looking to add a set of hoists; we call column hoists to pick up the larger trucks. We talked about so we can get them up off the ground instead of lying underneath of them as it will be easier to service and make repairs. Ladder one is the largest truck we have in the fleet and it weighs 66,000 pounds and these hoists will pick up 74,000 pounds. So we can pick up anything that we have: anything from a police car to the big fire trucks. We are going to try to get a waste oil furnace to cut down on our gas bill a little bit. With all the oil that we generate when we do PM (Preventative Maintenance) Services we used to have to pay to get rid of it and lately we have people who come and they get it and they recycle it so we haven’t been paying. I think we usually do I think between 500 to 700 gallons every three months when they come pick it up. It is quite a bit of oil. With a waste oil furnace, you simply take your oil and put it in the bottom of it and it has a pump and it pumps it up, burns it, and it heats the building. There is a little bit of maintenance required. Every year you have to clean it out because of the soot from the oil but besides from that we should save on our gas bill. We have guys who can do the maintenance. Once the building thing is done, we are going to try to get rid of the mercury vapor lights that are energy sucking lights and get some LED lights. This should cut down on the electric bill a little bit. We have big plans. We will see how it works. So far you have been gracious enough to help us with the budget. It looks like a lot of it is going to happen. It is very much appreciated. He is happy with the budget and he said they will adapt and overcome when needed. Mr. Vincent: Alright, if there is nothing else from Council? Thank you, sir. We appreciate your coming and sharing the information. We do appreciate it. Please thank your guys for us. We hear good stories. Mr. Rosser: Thanks. Mr. Bennett: Next is Ashley. You all know, Ashley, right? She is the Public Service Admin. She is outstanding. I will talk about Ashley very quickly. She has a lot of people coming at her besides the public. Chip’s stuff comes to her. All my stuff comes to her. I give Mindy some on the other side for the Community Development hat, but she does some of that too. Then you have the departments stuff coming up to her. With her coming into City government and not knowing it; and then to come into Public Service and have that entire flurry of activity coming all the time; it doesn’t stop. The nice thing is some things are year to year like grants and things so you kind of get in that flow, but it is different. She is wonderful. Mr. Vincent: Thank you. Community Development, Jay Bennett Fund #300-pg 14-Housing Rehab Fund #303-pg 15-City Redevelopment Page 18 of 30  Fund #304-pg 16-CD Admin. Fund Fund #309-pg 17-US EPA Brownfield Fund #311-pg 17-Revolving Loan Fund #317-pg 18-FY 17/18 Allocation Fund #322-pg 19-FY 17 Critical Inf. Fund #323-pg 19-FY 18 CHIP Fund #324-pg 20-ARC Downtown Wireless Grant The 300 Fund Housing Rehab • There are funds that have been recaptured. People pay off their loans as a result of having a home improvement project and we have to keep track of these and report annually to the state on it. If you see a $15,000 grant matching housing rehab activity, that is in partnership with the county and the CHIP grant fund. We pledge an additional $15,000 out of this recapture money to do some additional work that is kind of a match. It gets you bonus points when you are applying. They say estimate about $37,000 total this year. Fund 303-City Redevelopment There are a couple of encumbrances out of that. The $20,000 is we are working with the three designated historic districts and the downtown groups. We are going through the process to revise our design standards for the historic districts and the downtown. We have participants from each one of the districts on that committee. So the exciting project coming out of that is each district will have some distinct flavor of standards. They are not all the same. You will see those come out for the downtown as well. The $29,000 is the housing survey work. That is the consultant’s fee. Fund 304-CD Administration Fund This is the General Fund. Fund 309-US EPA Brownfield This is the last year for that project for that grant. We have a couple more projects that have come up to be evaluated. We are hopeful that we can get access into Mosaic. We don’t have right of entry to go in and do a Phase II. We only have right of entry to do a Phase I by the South Carolina folks. It is now in limbo. Is there anything we can do to put out information? I know that we have at some point, but so I hear about that constantly. I know everyone does, but I mean I think the important piece is that we cannot just go on to someone’s property and take things or move things or change things. It is no different than anyone of our homes. I think we need to get an education piece out to the community and say it the way it is that we can’t go on a property we don’t own. People don’t understand. They hold us responsible for something we did not do. We were lied to and a situation occurred. A lot of things happened along the way. At the end again we cannot just go onto a property we don’t own. We can’t take the property and we can’t take things off of it. I am worried about the safety aspect of it. I have had someone say to me they wanted to discuss the safety of it and the City’s liability and responsibility. They kind of tied it into a project I once Page 19 of 30 was involved in. It is imperative that soon we circle back around and inform the public with an update on the status of this issue and be blunt. This request should come from the Public Safety Committee. Since it is Code Enforcement that has initiated the actions, thankfully, because they were starting to do the same things on the other property. It was stopped. Under Code Enforcement and Public Safety that would be the vehicle to do an announcement. On the Linden site there is an interested party. So that is moving towards some conclusion, but they have identified the cost to clean it up is much less than what was originally conceived. Now you have a developer/owner who has come to the table wanting to take the next step and get in to clean it up. I think you are going to see that within the summer. The work City Hall has done to file on that property for so many days in a row. That is another thing that needs to be said. Don’t sit there saying we haven’t done anything when we have done something every day. Mr. Bennett thinks the other site strategy since it went to Sheriff’s sale and nobody bid on it. So now the title still sits with the folks in South Carolina. I think the strategy there is to do the receiver discussion we have had on other properties and do the same thing there. Have the receiver have the non-profit file a complaint into court and get access to it and then we can come in and do the Phase II which nothing on that site really scares me. We know there is asbestos. In their ponds we think we will find some lead. It is really not that significant. Then you can break the grant to go in and clean it up. Mr. Vincent: I am back on Phase II on the Mosaic property. Mr. Bennett: We can’t get access. Nobody is available. I think if we use that non-profit receivership as blight into our community down in Lexington area and get the court to assign ownership. There is $365,000 remaining in the grant fund of the original $650,000. A Phase II would cost around $40,000 to $50,000. Then you can draw up the remediation plan. The grant pays for that. It can write the specifications for demolition. They can pay for that. It just can’t pay for any of the cleanup. This grant runs out at the end of this year. We can ask for an extension if we have a project, but we have a couple of small ones, but Mosaic is really a good fit. If there was something somewhere that would come in and say hey, we think we want to assess this, but there is nothing out in the county that has been eligible. It was asked if delinquent real estate taxes trigger any enforcement action that would push the owners to allow any of this. No was the answer. Fund 311-Revolving Loan Fund This is the small old revolving loan fund that you all authorized us to do some architectural stuff up on the 600 block of Main Street. We are still sitting here waiting for the Port Authority to come back on whether they are going to take that project on or not. That money is sitting there. Page 20 of 30 Fund 317-FY 17/18 Allocation This is the second year of that so you are going to see Larzelere paved. You will see the Cliffwood Avenue sidewalks constructed this year and then just doing the rest of the work on that. Those are the two big projects and finishing up with the Health Department for the Community Health Services that was the other project under that grant. Fund 322-FY 17 Critical Infrastructures That is the Mead Street, Ridge, and Brighton Blvd. curb and sidewalk projects. Chip will start designing that this year. That is a two year grant so we have next year to build that as well. It was asked if the brick sidewalks at least on Brighton will they be preserved. Mr. Bennett said they will not be getting into that area as they are going from Ridge heading toward State Street. Fund 323-FY 18 CHIP This is the City and County partnership for housing repair on owner occupied plus then some one-off projects of Zanesville residents and county residents where you come in and I have a roof leaking, a furnace that is not working and is owner occupied. We are doing our first rental rehab out of this grant as well. So, we are working with a landlord who will accept a small amount of money and fix the rent at an affordable level for five years. It has always been owner occupied for a long, long time. I am a believer we cannot turn our back on 60% of our housing stock. So working with local landlords making those investments to bring the quality of the house up and fix some problems. We then sign an agreement. It is a loan that is forgivable over a period of years, but they agree to fix the rent for their tenant for that same term. Mr. Sharrer asked if Mr. Bennett had made his trip to MAREA to speak with the Relator’s Association about the plans and changes the City is making. Their meeting is a conflict with other meetings so Mr. Bennett has not made it yet. Mr. Bennett said the deal with the landlord is only for one at least at this time. If one of our constituents says or we know of somebody that they have a housing repair that they need done, can we send them to see you about this program. Mr. Bennett said yes, but they go to the County to see Sheila Samson as she administers the program. They are the lead and we are the partner by the State design. There is a whole list of things they have to bring with them. It is open now for investment. It is on the County website for Community Development or type in CDBG Muskingum County. The other part of what we are doing with some of our money as this is something I had asked Sheila to put in the application. We are doing some additional house painting. We did five units in 2017 as part of that grant and those are spectacular projects. The neighbors get the benefit of that as well. That project is growing. You will see that over two years. Fund 324-ARC Downtown Wireless Grant Page 21 of 30 We just kind of put that place holder there. We will see everybody in a couple of weeks and talk about a downtown network. What else is going on is Mr. Arnett and Mr. Bennett went down to see some folks in Athens. Dr. Jason Jolly out of the Voinovich. We have asked them to facilitate our opportunity zone discussions. You recall we talked about a Community Development Committee a couple nights back. We have two designated census tracts that are Opportunity Zones as defined by the Great American Tax Project where they restructure the tax. Our tracts are Putnam off of the bridge and it goes all the way down to Alfred Street and I believe it turns and comes up Pine Street. State Street is all of State Street, the exit is included in that Opportunity Zone that goes up on the other side of the high school and comes up turns and hits Maple Avenue and comes down to Linden and comes wrapping back down around Lee Street. That is an Opportunity Zone. So a qualified tax investment of someone, a developer wanting to do a project of their capital gains gets benefit back. We were talking to Dr. Jolly about facilitating our stakeholders group. We are inviting some key stakeholders to convene to look at the two districts and there is representation from both districts that will be on that plus others. What are the projects that we want to incentivize? What are we looking to attract and create the prospectus for both of those zones? Then we advertise it to the country. Columbus is doing very specific targeted investments. If you look at the Columbus opportunity zones, the Continent. They want to see opportunity money dropped in there. So they have picked very targeted projects that are old. I think ours is going to be a little different. I would love to see, and Steve and I have talked about that interchange at State Street. This is a perfect opportunity to put a project there and to incentivize. So, this group will be bringing to the Mayor and this Council their belief on a project in each zone and what they would recommend to Council and also incentivize. The State of Ohio came out and said anybody investing in any Ohio Opportunity Zones they are giving a state tax credit. What do we want to incentivize? What incentive do we want to throw on local money to have somebody come and bring their money? I fully expect there would be a group of people probably in our own community that would want to take advantage of sheltering and forgiving capital gains as well. So, it is not only outside, it is inside as well. That project is front and center besides it is CDBG. I will be writing CDBG grants leading the CAC here very shortly. Are there any questions? Mr. Vincent: No questions, professor. I guess you did a good presentation. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. We appreciate it. Police Department, Tony Coury Fund 201-Police Fund, page 10 Fund 250-Jail Operating Fund, page 11 Fund 820-Mandatory Drug Fines-page 34 Fund 821, State Forfeiture-page 34 Fund 822-Federal Forfeiture-page 34 Fund 823-LLEBG Fund-page 35 Mr. Vincent: We are glad you are here. Thanks for coming. Police Chief Toney Coury Page 22 of 30 I have two and a half years in as Chief of Police. What we have going on at the PD right now is we are just kind of getting in that upswing with the weather changing. •Things we have set in stone are I took possession of two brand new vehicles a couple of weeks ago. We have an outside builder for them out of Mt. Vernon this time due to a delay from City Vehicle Maintenance. We could have two cruisers built and back to us within five to ten days, but it will probably end up being about four weeks because we are still waiting on some stuff we ordered six months ago that is still on back order and the company refuses to take our calls. •A couple of miscellaneous things going on with those cars is some new computer equipment as we switched to Panasonic. We copied what the State Patrol was using with the Panasonic and Toughbooks. I felt like we needed to go with a camera system that also would speak with that computer system well. They have a Panasonic camera. I was a little sticker shocked when we outfitted them as it was about $6,000 a car for a computer and two cameras: one pointed out the front and one that shines on the prisoner. These cameras are for recording our activity. They come on if the car gets to a certain speed or the pitch in the car gets to a certain degree to show us what happened and usually we have about a minute or maybe two minutes feedback. It is recording, but it only goes back in one minute segments. It is amazing how far our cars go in one minute especially when something is happening. We can actually see the violation take place if it was something quick. Normally, if the car quickly accelerates it would kick on. I think the speed is a little in excess of probably 75 mph. We don’t get to that speed very often during the day and afternoon shifts, but midnight shift could because there are not a whole lot of cars. Then if you kick on the lights it automatically kicks on the camera system. The new technology now is if you open the back door it could actually have a trigger to kick on the back seat camera so you can record whatever they are doing in the back seat. You can see it with infrared at night time and see it pretty clear in the day time. •The other big ticket things are LEXIPOL; we are looking at outsourcing our policies and procedures. It is like a risk management group. We are going to sit with these people for 150 hours. It is two hours a day for two days a week. We have a whole panel you might say being six or seven people involved in this and I asked for volunteers from our patrol. We only had three requests to participate. I have myself and two captains. What they do is they send you a blue print of all the policies and procedures and stuff you have that fix the mandate of the State of Ohio. We kind of go through them and look at them and say yes we like them or no we want to tweak here and there. From the training I am currently in they talked a lot about risk management, policies and procedures, and they said if your manual is not 500 pages you are probably shy. Our manual is about 230 pages. It is time to get up to 2019 with the rest of the agencies. •On top of that once we get our policies and procedures in compliance and up-to-date our officers will get a daily reminder or quiz by e-mail. They will need to read a small section and answer a question or two. This comes 365 days a year and does not stop while they are on vacation. They can take it at work or they can take it on their phone or they can wait and take it when they get back to work, but 500 pages are a lot of pages to read and a lot to try to remember. There will be ten to twelve sections on like use of force, pursuits, stuff like that which are highly critical. There are need-to-know sections and they will be tested on these sections yearly. They must know critical information in order to go on the street. It is a great Page 23 of 30 tool for liability. This will cover the City a lot better. We will be able to document if an officer has read a policy and they sign off on it. There is no excuse they can give for violation of that policy because they sign off on the process. Now if violated, we can change their behavior with that documentation. With LEXIPOL they update all the laws as they change, and it happens frequently, the State Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court, it changes a lot. To go in the old way and keep track of that is impossible. They will track those changes and forward them to the Chief automatically. If we get updates we would forward them to the Law Director and let him know what is changing so he can keep abreast of it. •If the Chief writes a general order today; it used to be the Chief would write general orders and they would never get into the policies and procedures because it was yesterday and things become not as important six months down the road as there were today. John Doe that gets hired tomorrow how do we hold him responsible if he has no idea that general order even exists? LEXIPOL will update them right away or the following calendar year. I am not 100% on that, but it does go into our policy as fast as it can go in. Mr. Vincent: If items do need to come to Council it could take some time so the Law Director needs to be involved. Chief Coury said there are already over 250 to 300 agencies already in the state of Ohio. He was not sure of the count. There are a lot of agencies on board here. Cambridge LEXIPOL use of forces it looks a lot like Newark or Hebron because they are all LEXIPOL controlled. If we get a lawsuit or somebody wants to sue us LEXIPOL’s selling point is a lot of attorney’s back down when they find out you are supported by LEXIPOL because they have a team of lawyers that constantly make sure we are up-to-date. To build the cost is about $35,000, but the annual fee will be $15,000. I hope to be able to use some of that training every day toward their annual training they are required to get every year. That will be new so we hope to get that started. I talked with Rhonda last week about our budget and that was one of the questions is where we are going to take that money from and we had some other questions about that contractual line item. Hopefully, we get started about the beginning of May. Mr. Vincent asked if that is all figured out. Ms. Heskett said Tony and I talked last week. We are going to have to revisit that line item in June because this is a new expenditure and when we put the permanent budget in place he wasn’t quite sure where the numbers were going to land as far as the build and the annual fee. So, yes, we can get started, it is in there and ready to go, but I think we will probably have an appropriation change to increase that line item in June or September. Chief Coury said the rest of our stuff was kind of small. I wasn’t asking for a whole lot. We are going to try to get some windows put in the top half of the police department. We did the bottom half two years ago. We still have some work to do at the TR building. Modern is putting in some new windows over there. Hopefully, we can get them to move on over to the police department sometime this year before winter. The temperature control and looks will be better. We will coordinate with what the fire department as they have plans to do the same thing. We did ask for some SRT hearing protection. Basically, the last calendar year we did the new Kevlar Helmets and gas masks which is kind of the third phase of it. It is getting them the Page 24 of 30 hearing protection so when they are all geared up and going in they have these big headphones over their ears and they have a push to talk button conveniently located so they do not have to find a radio. That is the last phase of their equipment request they made for 2018, but they were talked into doing some in 2018 and 2019. The radios are on a different frequency than the rest of the police radios and we believe it is secure. The IT Department and Mark Brown do a lot of the work for us. They are the radio guys. It is a lot clearer and not as many disruptions. They are a noise reducing headphone system and will buffer the loud noises. Mr. Vincent said Council has been concerned about safety equipment and glad the equipment is being updated. Safety vests, bulletproof vests and everything are in pretty good shape for the officers? Chief Coury said our vests are under order and they should arrive the second quarter this year. They have a life expectancy of 5 years and it took some time to get them ordered. The vests will still work that they have. Some of the old vests will go to the fire department and the Chief expressed his concerns they have to realize they are for training and training only because I can’t authorize them to wear an expired vest and go into do an operation with us knowing they are expired. The Chief doesn’t want anything to happen to them and some attorney somewhere would say you knew the vests were expired and you let them wear them anyway. We asked for a detective’s vehicle a new SUV or a pickup truck and we have decided we will take some money from the drug forfeiture money the 821 Fund. With that in mind, Sheriff Lutz has asked if we were interested in a pickup truck he was no longer using. We are interested. The Sheriff has one more payment on it. He is going to talk seriously so if the price is right the Chief will consider it. It is a 2017 GMC Extended Cab pickup truck, full size, with 4 wheel drive. We would have to put a hard shell on the back of it with pull out trays and stuff. In the winter time around here we would probably have a smaller car around for him to take evidence to London, Ohio. There is no sense taking a 4 wheel drive that gets 12 miles to the gallon. I told him he can no longer go to London unless it is an emergency as he can take evidence to Cambridge where BCI comes every Tuesday. It is hard to change their habits. Server issues were asked about and the Chief said we are in okay shape as far as he knows. We have some issues with the new camera systems and all of that stuff because they don’t quite line up and we may have to set them off on another server by themselves. Lisa hasn’t expressed any concerns with me about the server. We are looking to go to Dropbox which I was pushing earlier. So a drop box professional for business we did do some webinars with them. It costs about $250 a year per license. We thought maybe six licenses: myself, the two captains, a couple on the detective bureau, and one in the evidence. We spend about $7,000 a year just in media like thumb drives and discs. Our hopes are that we could get that stuff into the cloud and when the County Prosecutor’s office, or even our prosecutor, or defense attorneys can have a link set up for them to go up and grab it and pull it down themselves. Then Dan Long at the County came up with the idea of if they download it onto their Dropbox then it will assign whoever X,Y, and Z is for the defense a link so they can go up and grab their part of the evidence. Mike Haddox may not go for it, but I don’t know how much more I can do than give it to them on the cloud and say there it is. Do whatever you want to do with it. Murder Page 25 of 30 cases get big binders. He wants two or three of them printed off. Everything we would send would be a PDF file. Mr. Vincent: A little side note to Council then for those of you who do electronic version or reference is the benefit to Council is we would be involved as far as the set up for the Council Packets where Sue now uploads 25 or so segments of the packet to the website or if Council has to download them and put them together or rely on multiple e-mails it will be in one place and you can download it then to your iPads instead of electronically. We are hoping it works out. Ms. Heskett: The end user does not have to have a license in order to read the file. It was asked if anybody has looked into the Google version drive. Chief Coury said yes they did. Dropbox seemed to be a better fit as it seemed more secure. It could be because we wanted to pair up with the County guys. That makes sense. This information is extremely sensitive. Chief Coury said there will be some things that we probably will not put on Dropbox like child crimes or sexual assaults and stuff like that we make sure we don’t put out there. Another question is Mr. Sharrer and Chief Coury had talked about maybe restructuring during negotiations for uniform stuff that you had something with uniforms and uniform allowances that you thought could save the City a bunch of money. Chief Coury said he has three years to work on a program and what we are kind of looking at is every officer gets $1,000 a year. Once you get 4, 5 or 6 years on you pretty much have all of your gear. That $1,000 could be saved I think and used another way. We work with Galls or somebody like that so they would have a Galls account of whatever amount once or twice a year and as they order from that it saves them from paying taxes as they would have a PO number for each account and then whatever is not used comes back to the City. I just don’t see guys using $500 and using all of it. If I say your leather gear looks bad you need to replace it and they don’t have an excuse if we have an account with a company like Galls or another similar company. Tony explained some other functions of the account. Almost everything is regulation except the footwear as people have different needs for their feet. This provides the City with more control of the funds. The employees will save also because they pay sales tax and also taxed as a benefit. The employees also need to be comfortable with their footwear. Chief Coury said they will continue work on the TR building. It is a work in progress. The vinyl floors went in this past weekend. The Chief came down and let Modern in and out a few times. It is really starting to look good from the last time Council toured. Now the vinyl is all finished, the individual offices are all carpeted. Now the next phase is the doors, the two windows out front, and we are getting there. I would think we would be out of there by mid-summer. We took a ten thousand dollar donation. We took in probably $15,000 in donations last year. With that the idea was to put our third K-9 back on the road. After searching for a new dog and the training options it was decided to purchase a good quality dog from southern Ohio so all the trainers could train at the same location and save time and money. When Purina gave us the $10,000 they said wouldn’t it be neat to have this dog named after this grant. I agreed and hoped that a picture of our K-9 ends up in the headquarters of Purina where the money came Page 26 of 30 from and maybe more money down the line that comes our way from Purina because they are happy with us. Training will start probably in the next two weeks. We chose Brandon Hardesty to be the officer after interviews. This dog will be a German shepherd selected as a better fit for Brandon and his family. We are finishing up the lease we discussed with the City for an impound yard. Ward Coffman has drawn up a lease and I am taking it back this week to just have a couple things that David Tarbert wanted out of there and didn’t feel it is any big deal to alter. We are going to lease a new impound yard out on Harris Road which is over off of Sharon Avenue by the Stave Mill. It is the old Lear property or United Tech. It is about 1.67 acres. We can fit a lot of cars in there. The idea now is to still keep our impound yard that we have at the City garage. It is very small, but this one we can actually fix hundreds of cars. Matt Lutz and Chief Coury have had a few meetings. They met last week with tow truck services to go ahead and take everything we tow. When we take everything we tow we charge a daily fee. We charge an impound fee. We charge a daily yard fee. The idea is also to hire a new civilian employee to kind of oversee that and oversee some of our evidence intake. We are gathering so much evidence right now that our two guys, both of them are very senior guys and they cannot keep up. Last year we took in about 4,700 pieces of evidence. That is 1,000 more than the year before. We are running out of space. We have literally put stuff on the floor in a vault that we acquired a few years ago. That is how fast it is coming in. The state is requiring we keep evidence longer so the plan now is we are going to double the space that exists now by utilizing some space in the basement of the TR building. Then the idea for long term storage that is the stuff that we can never throw away is to buy a couple of the 40 foot overseas shipping trailers. If you raise them off the ground about six inches and as long as they can breathe they don’t sweat. They are pest controlled and we can put all that stuff that just sits on shelves in those as it is never coming out of them out there. Homicide stuff never leaves even after the people are dead. We could clear up a lot of stuff with something like that. The location is not determined on where we would locate them. The storage yard will cost about $1,000 a month. I think we can cover that cost just with our parking tickets fines. When the parking ticket charge became more expense for the citizens, but we changed their behavior. We had people parking on the sidewalk and they had alternative parking options. Last year we took in $12,000 in about seven months just in parking tickets. With the fees and tow fees we will be able to pay all of that and I think we will be able to pay maybe 100% of that civilian employee’s salary. It was asked if there will be a substantial increase in the amount of traffic with hundreds of cars being towed in there. Will they be coming off of Sharon Avenue? The Chief said yes. The Chief did not think there would be a large amount of traffic. He said they will probably set up the release times for the afternoon. It is pretty desolate over there. There shouldn’t be any problems. New fencing is being installed and some light poles will be added. We will have to pay a light bill. We will work with Spectrum to have some cameras installed for security that the dispatchers can watch the lot. This will not be a huge expense. If we copycat what the county is doing; we could turn six figures with our own impound lot. We tow about 700 cars a year. We may not tow that many to our lot, but we will tow a large number of cars. Our private companies are pretty much gouging us. There are some reputable ones and there are some Page 27 of 30 out there that really take advantage of you. I sat with the Sheriff last week and his Captain and my Captain and we went out and met with five of the tow companies from the county and the city that we wanted to invite. We expressed our concerns and they expressed theirs. They don’t like the fact that they can only tow for me for $60. There are a couple that are really, really greedy. I get it. That $60 is probably not any good any more. $100 is probably where we should be at. I hear a little bit of rumor now that they are trying to band together and come up with a number. That is what we asked them to do is to come up with a good number that they think is fair. They think $129 for every single tow is fair. That is what they say the ORC has. Then I hear they want an extra $100 to put gloves on, an extra $3 a foot to winch a car. They are trying to jack it up to where it is $300 or $400 a tow. I kind of take a hard stanch to it. I am ready to invite all of them back in and go we don’t like your idea so you are excused and we are going to bring three more in. That will get their attention. I know that I can find one or two tow truck drivers that just want to tow for me. I even expressed my concern of buying our own tow truck. We have some feelers out there for our own to move stuff around for ourselves and to help the City maintenance guys if they have a piece of equipment broke down and they need to go get it. Why pay an outside source when we could go get it ourselves. How many tow truck companies do we have it town? Chief Coury said we have six or seven in town, but we only contract with four. Yeah, dismiss the first batch and bring in the second ones. Chief Coury said some of them are very reputable, the ones we had in that room, but I just don’t think it is fair that they pick up a car on the side of the road and the reason I booted somebody off last month was they charged an 84 year old man $300. They literally backed up to where he slid off the road; put his car up on there on Saturday. The guy said it will be $300 and the old man said I don’t have that kind of money on me, but I do have a credit card. The driver said it is cash only. Well, that tells me that something is wrong. He says well my wife will be here from Cambridge and we will come over to your yard and we will pick it up. He said we don’t release cars at the yard on Saturdays or Sundays. So the old man came back on Monday and they jacked him for another $84 for storage fees. That was the end of it for that company. They just tell me they can’t do business at $60 a tow. The Chief said you can’t do it for $384 either; not with us. We have a contract with them guys. We sat with them in January or February of last year and explained that if we felt they were gouging the citizens that they would be warned or removed. I felt that was unfair, so we removed him. The same company got removed from Newark for the same thing. The handlers of evidence do not have to be police officers. That is why we wanted to hire a civilian to work 4 hours in the tow yard and 4 hours in the evidence center. Also the aftermarket stuff can be stripped from the vehicles that are going to be ours. Then we will sell that at auction. Everybody has a dollar. We just have to figure out how to get it. That is what the county does. They strip these cars and they sell that stuff separately. The Sheriff’s lot did about $115,000 last year. By the time they paid all the tow truck drivers they had $65,000 or so and they were able to pay for their employee. We will have to figure out how to do it because we currently do a lot of business with Gov Deals, but they are taking cars that are $300 to $800 and selling them for $3,000. Our own people are out there trying to buy it and it went for $3,000. Chief Coury said that is all he has on the Police side. I have the Jail side. Page 28 of 30 CITY JAIL UPDATE Chief Coury said really all I have is to update the third floor. We are looking to fix the ceiling. The ceiling in the dorm, the lights, the shower, and the bath. We are kind of shooting for winter of 2019 or early 2020. We want to look at an architect to see exactly how we should do this because drop ceilings do not work very well in the jail. We want to make sure that they are not being able to get up in there and gouge the lights out. We want to make sure that whatever we do is correct. In the winter time we are able to reduce our population. We just won’t house quite as many. We can actually close a whole section off and get that work done and let them keep their tools in there and they don’t have to go through the process of in and out every day carrying stuff. Mr. Vincent: So, it is a security issue, the ceiling needs switched to be safe? Chief Coury said it is. They are hiding stuff up in there. We know that. We have had some good drugs we found in the last quarter of last year and probably this year we found a little bit. It is time to buckle down on that too. Will you take the K-9’s in there to find drugs? The Chief said I don’t know if we have had K-9’s, but we have had shake downs and maybe they had one K-9 in there late last year where we knew they were hiding stuff. The prisoners are scared of the dogs. They don’t mess around when we come in. They usually don’t mess around with the uniformed patrol guys either. They leave them alone. Who builds a jail with a drop ceiling? Chief Coury said it is kind of a bad design. Keane Toney said it is a terrible design. We have one section that is totally blacked out now with no lights. It is very hard to see at nighttime. It is dangerous. It is dangerous for the people staying there and it is dangerous for our staff. Body Cameras We talked with Panasonic about body cameras. We are looking at about $1,000 each. By the time we get the equipment and charging units and all of that stuff I think 20 cameras would be around $24,000 to $27,000. I talked with Lisa that my idea is we need them. I think we need them to protect ourselves from what people are saying and what they say our officers do. It kind of keeps the officers in check and it keeps the citizens in check too when they realize we can see what their complaint is and they can’t necessarily file a false complaint because we can see it. 20 cameras would be the number we are shooting for. 8 at any given time usually on a patrol shift would be out and they wouldn’t be assigned per officer. They would be assigned to a docking station so they could change with the shifts and alternate charging times. When they come back in and they put them in the docking station then that stuff is downloaded or uploaded to the cloud or however we do the server and they take three hours so when the next shift comes in they are now ready and they just keep going back and forth. We do eight and eight and we probably have four on the side for the detectives. So if they were going out and they thought they needed a body camera or they were going to interview somebody it is nice to have a camera with you. There are some legalities to work out and how it all works. How the public records work and what is a public record. How long we need to keep the videos of different things. Maybe keep it 30 days if it not evidence. Keane Toney said this would put us back to LEXIPOL and the advantage of using them because these policies already exist. Chief Coury would like to look into the last quarter of this year to see where we Page 29 of 30 are at in our budget to see if we are not running short somewhere and if we are in good shape then maybe we could purchase body cameras at the end of the year. That is it. Our Citizens Academy is going well. Some of these folks are in it. Rhonda is in it. The Mayor is in it. We have gotten a lot of positive feedback. We have had a few glitches, but we are working on that. It is going well. Mr. Vincent said he highly recommends it. The Chief said some people have said it is the highlight of the week. Mr. Vincent: Thank you everyone. I really appreciate it. It is a long evening, but very valuable. Very informative. We appreciate especially Rhonda being here for the whole evening also. Keane, thank you for coming and spending the evening with us. Thank you, Chief Coury, for coming. We appreciate it. Thank you to Council. Mr. Baker moved to adjourn. It was seconded by Mrs. Osborn. A voice vote was taken with all in favor. None were opposed. Motion carried. Mr. Vincent thanked everyone for coming. We stand adjourned. The meeting adjourned about 7:35 p.m. ___________________________________ ________________________________ Susan Culbertson, Clerk Daniel Vincent, President of Council Page 30 of 30