City Council - Regular Meeting

Welcome to Athens City Council. This evening we will be meeting in council committees. The meeting will be called to order by the city council president who will then pass discussion over to a respective committee. The chair of the committee will introduce the discussion topics and provide an overview of the issues at hand. If needed, members of the administration will offer brief statements to provide further context. We will then welcome input from the community. Any citizens who wish to speak will be asked to state their name and address both verbally and on the signin sheet located at the podium. Individuals will be given one opportunity to share their thoughts and the committee chair will have the authority to limit each speaker to three minutes. Once all citizens have had the opportunity to speak within the 15minute time period allotted for total public participation on each topic, the public comment portion will be closed. Council committee members will then continue their deliberations. There may be additional questions directed to the administration during this time. When the discussion on the topic concludes, the chair will indicate whether legislation will be introduced at the next regular session of council and move on to the next item on the agenda or adjourn the committee if their work is complete. The next committee chair will then call their committee to order, proceeding in the same manner as before. Once all committees have adjourned, city council will conclude for the evening. Hey.

Good evening and welcome to Athens City Council. Today is Monday, February 23rd and my name is Micah McCary. I'm serving as president and tonight we are in committees. Before we officially begin, I have an announcement to make. Council members received an invitation from the Athens City School Superintendent to attend a coffee with the superintendent and treasurer at Gordon at Morrison Gordon Elementary School this Wednesday, February 25th, 2026 to discuss the issues of recent property tax reform legislation and how that might impact the district's finances. I would like to clarify that this is a meeting that the council and mayor have been invited to, but this is not an official council meeting, not a public meeting where council members will be acting as a panel panel or as special presenters. And with that, I will turn us over to the official business of this evening's meeting, beginning with a special presentation from the pedestrian accessibility and bicycle task force for their annual report seen by the committee of the whole. So, with that, I would like to thank this uh important task force for their time and allow them to begin their 15-minute presentation.

All right. Uh thank you very much. Thanks for having us here tonight. Uh I'm Rob Delich, a member of the pedestrian accessibility and bicycle task force for the for city council. Uh serves it's positioned underneath the transportation committee uh Beth's committee of uh city council. And um also welcome uh thanks for the administration for being here tonight. Um and I hope you uh do get something out of this presentation and again it's nice to see the city council cares enough about this issue to have us come here and talk to you. Thanks for the taking the time. Your time is valuable we know. So um uh with me today is going to be uh our student representative well a student representative from the committee um Libby Bulanda. So, I'll introduce her at the moment. We switch we're going to switch out here in a bit. Uh, but I'm going to start things off. Uh, so the pedestrian accessibility and bicycle task force mission statement is about promoting walking and biking as part of a transportation system and providing leadership and expertise to city council and city staff. So, basically an advisory role is the key here. We don't have any official duties like uh commission some of the commissions do where they vote on official thing like the board of zoning appeals for example or the planning commission. We don't do those kind of things. We're advising and so we're here to advise you and advise the administration. So our work does align though with broad city goals around improving public safety, transportation choice, sustainability, and quality of life. So the task force is created in August of 2023 by resolution of city council and we had our first meeting in October 2023. Um all our positions are appointed by the president of council. And so that initially is what happened with the initial members. Then we added some members and then those eventually were

confirmed by the uh president of city council Sam Cwle just last uh fall. Um that's the current process and our bylaw has been updated to reflect that. So um we recommend potential new members and then the president of council is the one that decides if that that's the person that should be appointed and then makes an announcement here. uh we do have one vacancy and so that's a student representative has graduated and so we are uh going to be selecting someone recommending someone soon to that uh to that position which very likely could be Libby who will be speaking here shortly. Um so this slide mentions a few guiding documents not going to get into details there but these are the kind of things that the city uses to guide them in transportation decisions for the city. We're also of course leveraging these and some of us have been involved with developing some of these like the Athens pedestrian accessibility plan in 2023 was developed by the ad hoc committee. Several of the members from that group are involved with this task force as well. Um and that document is very detailed and has a lot of information u to glean and the city administration has been using it to help them prioritize some of the work they've been doing too. [sighs] So I have a section here about state of the city when it comes to transportation and multimmodal transportation, right? So not just not not like a mayoral speech here, but um we've the city has done a lot of work this year, this past year in 2025 to improve the pedestrian and essentially the pedestrian and accessibility uh of our city. Uh the curb ramp project which is just phase one potentially of that uh was federally funded. There were 150 new or replaced curb ramps in the city uh which is a huge number. 195 new tactile grids. So

they also retrofitted some some curb ramps that weren't accessible or ADA compliant because they didn't have tactile grids uh and added those to them. also added seven new high visibility mark crosswalks and replaced almost a mile of sidewalk in the city. That's a lot of work that got done this this past year. There's still some details there. Like there's more crosswalks I think to to mark that didn't get done at the end of the year because the weather turned rather quickly. Um but uh a lot of work got good work got done. Uh another project, the Stimson Bridge project added a shared use path and it's already open to use which is just fantastic. I think the administration's already been hearing good feedback about that too of people that are using it and thanking the administration for uh making that available. It's really made a difference in their commutes into into the city as pedestrians and bicyclists. Uh and it added 770 ft of shared use path. So bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure both. And we'll talk more about that in a little bit. Um, the other thing that the the committee and the city worked together on was a uh there was a curb ramp extension across from Littlefish, sorry, Village Bakery. I was just in a meeting with the Little Fish staff today, so that's what I'm anyway. Uh, so across from the Village Bakery at Watt Street, there's a rapid flashing beacon that you can hit the button and it turns on. But there was still issues with people um not seeing cars yielding when they were in the street and such. And so uh the previous city engineer built a curb extension there to try and help make improve visibility and make it so that maybe the yield rates would increase. And um this task force saw an opportunity to put in a street mural. And so we worked with the city. the city provided the uh microrant to fund it and we went out and and worked on that and

uh you've seen many of you probably seen the results the salmon on the street there across from the village bakery. So, one metric I'd like to talk about is next on the slide is this is a brief version of it and I want to read a little more here. Um, is US census data over the last 10 years or more has been very consistent in showing that about 30% of Athens workers walk to work. And that's workers, not students we're talking about. It might be students going to work, but it's not students going to school. So, that's a commuter walk commuter rate. It's the third highest in the country behind Ithaca and College Park. Yeah. College Station, Penn State essentially in Pennsylvania, whatever town that is. Um so that's huge. And but if you also try and figure in the students uh both U students and um school students going to middle school and East Elementary walk into school too as well as other people doing other trips walking. Plenty of people especially from my neighborhood walk to the village bakery, walk to the grocery store, etc. And that happens all over the city. Um so the real walking share if you sort of try and adjust for that based based on some other data comes to about 50% of daily trips. So in other words, Athens functions as a majority walking city. Almost no place in the country can say that even New York City is 15% of people walk daily or something like that. Daily trips u 15% of daily trips are people walking. Um, so that's huge. So we have a lot of people here that are walking and it's not just the students clearly. So this means that pedestrian safety is not a niche concern here. It's a fundamental to how our city operates. If walking is not safe and comfortable, we

are not fully meeting the needs of our community. So um, I'm going to there's another list here right below that are some concerns, some things we're a little concerned about in the past year. So, there was a lot of great stuff that happened, but there were also a few things that we have concerns about. I'll go into more detail about these towards the end of the presentation. Um, so we'll get back to those items. So, I want to introduce Libby now. So, um, Libby is a student at Ohio University. She's a junior in environmental studies and, uh, she really did a lot of work helping me put this presentation together. So feel free to come on up Libby here and take over.

Hi everyone. Um so yeah, I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the big projects we've had from this past year um in 2025. So as mentioned earlier um there was a beautifification project at the curb extension um on East State Street. So we commissioned a sort of public contest for a local artist to do a mural um at the curb extension. Um, and something important to note is that for the poll for the artist, over a thousand people responded. So, we got pretty good [laughter] response rate. Um, and ultimately a piece called the migration was selected. So, we've got um, you know, a nice mural of some salmon out there on East State Street and there was a ribbon cutting ceremony with like 3540 people who showed up. So, it was a very nice event. Um, another big thing from this year was um the bicycle parking ordinance that is still kind of in progress, something we're working on, but bike parking right now in Athens is not super adequate and there aren't a lot of existing guidelines on what good bike parking looks like. Um, and so the task force has been working on developing some guidelines on what our bike parking should look like and how it can be the most effective and also limits on things like how long you could store your bike and things like that. So working with the city planner, the code office, the uh police chief, things like that to develop an ordinance. So we've been working on that and we continue to work on that in 2026. So um another thing is um Athens public transit um did a bus stop audit um using the space concept which is safety, proximity, accessibility, connection and ease as a way to analyze how um you know the quality of our curtain bus stops. Um 77 stops we audited and um about 64% of those had a sidewalk connection. And something else to note is that ridership has actually been up in 2025 over 2024 about 10%. So that's some pretty good news. Um, another big thing from this year is we formed a new subcommittee um

in intersections and crossing subcommittee to sort of analyze safety at intersections around the city, especially intersections that um residents have sort of brought up concerns about about feeling unsafe in these places. Um, so we started an audit of the West Washington, Schaefer and Bayard um, intersection um because that one has definitely been of concern for some residents and so we're working on proposing some potential safety improvements at that intersection just to make pedestrians feel a little bit safer. Um, and then there are some other intersections that we plan to work on. Um yeah, Stimson, Carpenter, East State Street, West State and South Congress, Carpenter and North Congress, and East State and Eden are some of the ones we're looking at right now. Um and then some other things related to sort of our data. Um we've been doing continuous updates of open street mat data data about Athens like city-owned uh bike and pedestrian infrastructure. um and keeping that up to date on what we have. Um and that's particularly helpful because annually the people for bikes organization does a rating of the traffic stress for um cities around the country for uh pedestrians and bic bicyclists. Um and so that open street map data helps keep our rating accurate. Um and then there was also some work on data of um crashes with bike and pedestrians in Athens. The task force did some data compiling that crash data through 2024 um to make sure that data was accurate. Um and we included the graph here um through 2024 to show you sort of some of those trends. Um but as you can see around 2020 2021 during the CO 19 pandemic there was definitely a decrease in um bike and pedestrian crashes. Um but it has rose again in the city of Athens back up to sort of pre- pandemic levels. And so, you know, the concern is well, you know, how can we get those crashes down and, you know,

where are the safety concerns that we need to look at? Um, and then we did some some work to develop some new metrics as well, which I'm going to hand over to Rob so he can talk more about that, but all right.

Thanks. So, um, you all had hard copies of the report I put on your desk. Um, I hope that helps. I don't usually like to use paper for things, but I figured it might be good for you to have a hard copy you can look at. Um, I did send around the electronic copy and we'll be sending it out publicly too shortly, but I haven't uh haven't made a public uh distribution yet. Um, and it'll go up on the web page for download. The task force has a web page on the city's website. So, I'm just going to focus on 10 of the metrics. If you look at that report, the first five pages is basically the main part of the report and the met these 10 metrics are in that section. They're in a little different order than you'll see in this presentation, but they're all there. Um, there's an appendex that's nine pages long that is more metrics. So, I'm a data geek, right? And I think it's a little excessive probably, but there's a lot of information. Um, they're from many different sources. Some of those are for complete streets. Uh, there were metrics developed for complete streets. And so this is keeping track of what those metrics are for complete streets and um sustainability committee has some metrics that are relevant and I've included those and try and keep track of yeartoear for those as well which also helps them. Um but let's focus on the 10 key metrics here for now. Um you can dig into that data if you want to and if you have questions about it feel free to ping me or ask me about it. Um so for the key metrics um the first couple on this list on the slide here are new pedestrian infrastructure improvements. So literally where there's where there wasn't something before now there's a pedestrian infrastructure improvement in place. And the one example we have that this year is the Stimson Bridge. So and it's going to count a couple times here. You'll notice that coming back a couple times. It counts in a couple of categories because it's not just pedestrian infrastructure. but it's also bicycle infrastructure. Um, so that's a great improvement and

it's good to see that. And so we're using green and red arrows and uh uh in the report we use I think blue arrows sideways for when there wasn't really a change this year. It's a like a minus sign here or flat. You'll see in a second. Uh updated pedestrian infrastructure improvements. Uh so that's where there was already something there but it's been fixed or improved. And in this case, this was almost a mile um of this was from the curb ramp project. There were also some other places. We had a few landlords do some improvements. Uh a contractor for Columbia Gas did a bunch of sidewalk improvements after they tore them up when doing new new uh improving uh gas lines, replacing gas lines. uh but about a mile total alto together this year which is two and a half percent replacement rate over about about 40 miles of of sidewalk in the city. So it's a 40-year replacement rate which for life of sidewalk is not too bad. So if we could keep this pace up we we'd be on a good schedule to have sidewalks replaced every 40 years which is nice. I'll say last year it was even a little higher. It was a 33year replacement rate. There was 3% I think it was last year. Um, so there's been a lot of really good work the city's been accomplishing here and it's good to see that. Um, new bike lanes, shared use paths. Notice the Simpson Bridge path gets mentioned here again because it's bicycle infrastructure. Um, the one thing to note here, and I'll maybe talk more about it at the end, is there was a bike lane on Mil Street that was removed as part of the paving repaving this year. I don't know how many of how many on council had noticed that missing. A couple. Just a couple. Not one. That's interesting. So, you might not get over there very much because it's sort of the student neighborhood, right? Um I'm there most every days on a bike and I think a couple of the task force members are over there regularly, too. Um and it's uh it's disappointing to see that,

but there's some reasons for it. We'll talk more about um the non-motorized transportation plan from 2010. We're tracking how many of the improvements in that plan have been accomplished and it's 15 to almost 16 years ago now that it was uh it was created and the the city's made pretty good progress on about half of those. Um one new one this year that was accomplished was the Simpson Bridge shared use path that checked a box on that on that plan. So that's nice to see. Uh there are three more improvements that are scheduled for next year and off the top of my head I probably can't tell you what they are but anyway there's three more that are planned. One is the Columbus Road shared use path. It's construction is about to start this spring. Um that will be checking another box from this plan from 15 16 years ago. [sighs] And then I mentioned again here the Mil Street bike lane was uh removed. That's why there's a red arrow here. Um here's where there was essentially no change is the gray bar. Um signalized pedestrian crossings, nothing really, no big projects, nothing really added new signalization and so there was no changes here. Um but we have 31 intersections with pedestrian signals with 70 uh crosswalks that had pedestrian signals on them. Uh bus stops with sidewalk connections. So there was in 2024 there was a bus stop audit that was done by uh Athens public transit folks. Uh actually Ben Ze, former council member led that effort. And then there was another effort this year that Ben coordinated with an intern who's a council or task force member to do a a better uh analysis of the bus stops. And so the number here I say 60% is unchanged. It was 80% of the report last year. The reason the numbers are

different is because this year it looks specifically at this number is specifically about where the bus stop is on a street. 64% of those have a connection to the street. Um that could probably improve, but it hasn't really changed in recent years. Um so seeing some improvement to our bus stops is a good thing. I think an important metric to keep here. Um curbs at intersections with tactile grids. This is really getting at an accessibility issue, right? So, it's a I think a good metric for accessibility. Um, tons of improvement here with the curb ramp project. So, 75% of curb ramps now in the city um have have tactile grids on them. That's a big a big improvement. It was 60% previously. Big step in the right direction. Definitely good to see that work done. um benches, meaning for benches for people to sit on, along pedestrian corridors, which don't have to be along streets in this case. And in fact, all four of these installed where parks department installed them. I think one are on the west side and three on the east side or something like that. One might have been a memorial bench. Um street trees, there were 15 planted this year along city streets, which is more than last year. I think there were four last year. um Arbor Day committee worked with the city and uh did a lot of good work. Um and a couple of these were replaced at near a bus stop, too, which is another nice metric. Um sections of city sidewalks with steps, no change on this. Last year, there were two that were um sort of eliminated or at least bypassed and made accessible because there was a new shared juice path on Union Street. So, uh, this year there's still 11 sections of steps on sidewalks in the city, which would be good eventually to get rid of all those, right? It'll take some effort and some good engineering probably in many cases, too. [sighs]

So, um, this last slide is where I sort of summarize some of the concerns we have this year. A couple of these have been mentioned, but one to mention here is removal of West State Street on street parking. So, this was during the um Herald Street and Union Street projects. Uh the city removed parking so that it was just a little less of an issue for traffic cutting through there to avoid the construction at Union Street and it was supposed to be temporary. Um we did task force last year about this time last year wrote a letter to um the administration asking for the parking to be put back since it was supposed to be temporary and Andy Stone, Director Stone confirmed that and he confirmed that they planned to put it back in place but it has never happened. So why is this a concern? Um we've heard a bunch of complaints. In fact, my first experience riding on the street um on my bicycle, it was the first time I ever felt unsafe on the street a and this was just after the parking was removed. So, traffic speeds have increased. And there's a letter that maybe I should forward to city council. I don't know if I provided to council, probably not. Um that looked at data from street light, which is a uh company. We have a ODOT has a license for local local municipalities and organizations to to mine this data. It's cell phone data that's aggregated and you can look see traffic speeds, traffic volumes, all these kind of details about your city streets, which is pretty cool data. And I could show before and after that there was a like a 5 mile hour increase in the average speed in the road. So, um, significant issues for people walking and biking on that road. And this is we're talking about a connection major connection between the neighborhood and state west street park

and the bikeway. So removal of the bike uh Mil Street bike lane. Um the reason it was removed is because technically it's supposed to be 5t wide according to engineering manuals and it was about four feet or maybe three and 1/2 ft was what they had left. Um, and it even though it was installed 14 years ago, it wasn't really up to standards and reapplying that, they didn't feel like that was something they should do. Let me say that the Federal Highway Administration says that if you apply bike lanes to a road, studies have shown on average a 22% redu reduction in crashes for people biking, walking, and cars. So just crashes total reduces by 22%. So even if there's never a cyclist on the road, it still makes the road safer for people. Um if you were to instead if you couldn't put a bike lane there, stripe a shoulder that's two or three feet wide, which is exactly what could have happened here, that shows a 15 to 17% reduction in crash rates. Yet, unfortunately, Andy Stone, the city administration, decided that um or didn't even think of those options, I think, is maybe the problem, and they didn't consult with us. Would like to see that in the future uh before they make a decision like this. The problem is the striping went in, slid over a couple feet so that there's no way to put the bike lane back in without tearing out the striping down in the middle of the road and completely redoing it, which is a big expense that is just too expensive to try and to do at this point. So, no real solution to fix this, but it's certainly the road is not safer now [clears throat] than it was. And it's, you know, it's a lot of students there. Um, and there are a fair number of crashes on Mil Street, um, that have involved pedestrians and bicyclists over the years.

Um, crash rates reported to ODOT by the city police department. Um, I've talked to the police chief a little bit about this. We have yet to really figure out what's going on, but about half of the bicycle and pedestrian crashes that are happening in the city are not being reported and not showing up in the ODOT database. We still don't know exactly why. We don't know what's happening. Um so less than half in the last six years um are actually being reported to ODOT. So when a contractor working for the city on a new big project is looking at data, they go to that database and they look for crash rates and they try and figure out what safety measures should be applied. Studies ODOT does and also statistics they use to justify projects use that data and the data half of it's missing. That's just crazy. I don't know if it's just bike ped data or if it's all crash data. I don't know what's going on there. But there's certainly a significant issue that needs to be worked on and I'd like to focus on it this year. I hope. And then complete streets policy. Um was passed in city council in 2020. Um so far when it comes to repaving projects, which is sort of the lowhanging fruit um for complete streets, when the road's being repaved, it's really easy to restripe it differently, and you have to pay for the paint anyway, so it doesn't cost anything to do that. You could easily add a bike lane or a shoulder um or strike bumpouts. There's lots of things you can do that could make the road safer at really no cost if you do that. So far, the administration has yet to do that at all with any prepaving project. In fact, unfortunately, the repaving projects have taken away the bike lane and also three crosswalks that were painted on Shannon are gone as a result of the repaving project, too. Do you can you give us a sense of how um more many

more minutes because we're over time on your presentation? Um we'll need to go to questions and answers. That's fine. I think um I had one more statement and I was done. So Okay. Please. Thank you. Uh would you like to get that? When you're having fun. Yeah, absolutely. And we appreciate the detail. Was there anything you wanted to add to these concerns before we switch to question and answer? No, I think that's it. Okay. uh then committee of the whole uh we would have an opportunity to address the task force with any questions or comments. Thank you.

Um I really like the way that you and and your fellow committee member there highlighted the um all the improvements to curbs. Have you heard from members of the disability commission uh or dis just uh citizens who who deal with disabilities if that has helped them?

I don't think any specific examples but the disabilities commission really appreciates the work and definitely has witnessed and seen that it's been a significant improvement. Yes. So there they have a subcommittee uh on accessibility and and uh advocacy that also talks about some of these same kind of issues and we've been talking about this there in that committee as well as the full disabilities commission at times too. So it's definitely been coming up and they definitely appreciate the the big improvements that have been made. Yes.

Thank you. I had a similar question recognizing that there is some intentional overlap between the task force and the commission on disabilities including having a task force member who's a commission on disabilities member and I was hoping you could just comment on what might appear as redundancy or overlap in focuses with accessibility but you're approaching this work in a different datadriven kind of way and I'm just wondering if you have thoughts on uh improved collaboration or if you think things are working well between those two bodies right now.

Well, I serve on the uh subcommittee. Um I've been attending the disabilities commission meetings as well recently. I hadn't attended them for a while. Um but I've been asked to sort of re-engage there and they've been interested in having me there. Um so me myself also Stephanie Hunter who's here in the room, she also serves on both committees. And then Michelle Han who you mentioned is our representative from the disabilities commission. She serves on both committees as well. So we have three individuals at least that have overlap which is good. Um there's sort of different missions there. We do have accessibility in our name and you can see our metrics. We're trying to pay attention to accessibility but we are more focused on pedestrians specifically and then also bicycle with bicycling is something that the commission is not concerned about at all. Right. Um so there's overlap for sure in some places and we are working together. In fact, we're talking about doing a joint meeting uh two maybe twice a year um to meet with city city administration to save them having to come to two different meetings for example and then it gives us an opportunity to cross fertilize as well. So okay

we're working on that for this year. So do that in June or July for the first time. Wonderful. Yeah. Uh other council members who might have questions or comments? Member Wood. Yeah. Thank you Rob. Thank you, Lily. Um, if I recall right, Rob, you yourself were involved in a in a bike accident uh not that long ago. I remember you telling us. Um, so a couple of follow-up questions with this data. Uh, is your own accident in this data? Yes.

Uh, has it did it migrate to ODOT? Uh, what classification was it? And and were there things that became sort of more real after that experience? Things that sort of um stand out that that you would have changed or do differently? Yeah. How how did that inform your advocacy?

So my crash was not reported to ODOT and it was on Mil Street actually. Um my son also had a crash on campus uh which wasn't reported to ODOT by OU either. Uh interestingly. So there's definitely data gaps happening. Um the rest of your question.

Oh, I was just curious with um where it fell on the scale of was that classified as minor major and how has that changed? Mine would have been like possible injury, I think. Uh I didn't get in the ambulance to go to the hospital since my wife was able to quickly get there and she took me instead. Um I did a CT scan and things like that. Um injuries were recoverable obviously and took physical therapy, but there there are definitely injuries, but I think it would have been reported and I haven't can't remember from the police report as a possible injury is the category they would have used. So if you look at the report, you can see some details about that and it lists those kind of categories. It would have been the second lowest one essentially.

Member Cleller.

Um member Wood's question brings another one to my mind. Do you mind if I ask how you hope to find out about more of the bike crashes? Where are you going to get access to the people who have had crashes? Well, the police chief is interested in the issue and he even brought in the the captain and um the records analyst analyst administrator records administrator I think it may be her title uh to talk about a little bit but we need to sit down and go through okay here's here's the reports here's the ones that you gave me that came from an inquiry in my my request but that weren't in the database from at ODOT okay figure out why these did they get submitted to ODOT? Did they get rejected by ODOT? What happened? We just don't know yet because it's it's detailed work to go one by one through them and try and figure out what happened. Um there's about 30 reports, 30 35 crashes that didn't get reported over the last six years. And so probably starting with the newer ones, the more recent ones make sense. But that's some work we have to figure out how to accomplish. And that's one reason it hasn't been hasn't been done. I've known about this as an issue potentially for several years now and p you know been compiling the data but it's it's something that's going to take some work to figure out what's going on.

Before we move to the administration and then the public for comment I would just like to thank the commission for your your task force for the extremely detailed work looking across metrics from the variety of plans our city has. I know that that's um that's a longitudinal task and it can be challenging. So, we appreciate you thinking of complete streets and our comprehensive plan and we hope that you'll stay engaged in letting us know um kind of how how we're doing from year to year. For the administration, does the mayor have comment or question? I do not. Members of the public. Not seeing any questions. We will thank the task force for their time and we'll continue with the council meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Next, we have the planning and development committee. Um we will have that chaired by member Alan Swink and joined by Megan Almeida, Paul Isherwood and Jessica Thomas. All other council members may leave the dis and member Swink you have the floor. All right. Planning development tonight. Three uh three items. um not an extensive uh agenda. Uh the first item uh concerns a title 49 request to allow installation of of an elevator vestibule that extends 6.2 ft into the city's rideway at 32 West Carpenter. Uh this is the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center. Um, Megan, here's one for you. And Mike, if you could pass There's one for you and pass one down to Jessica and um and Paul. Uh, as you're looking at this diagram, uh, you're basically, if you were to drop down into it, you're standing in the middle of Carpenter Street between Mount Zion and um, Brony's across the street. Uh, you see the building. Just to the left of the building is um that would be North Congress Street. When the original designs were done for this um elevator, which is required because the restrooms are in the basement and access to other floors, this is a building that's well over a hundred years old and we're trying to bring it up to speed so that anyone and everyone can come to it. Um there was an elevator shaft put in and if you look very closely uh near the upper leftand corner you can see what looks like an elevator shaft. Not that little square

to the left that's dark black but the elevator shaft. And the original plan was where you see that opening would be the elevator door. So someone walking down the sidewalk could get to that elevator door, push the button, go up or down. When the elevator people came out and really take started taking a look at this uh they realized several things. That is the northwest corner of the building. Weather in Athens comes from the west and with a elevator there exposed to the elements every 6 to9 months they'd be shutting this thing down. Just the moisture and the sun and the you know so on and so forth. uh the gentleman who came out said, "You know, this just isn't going to work. We're going to be out here trying to fix this thing more than we are going to um keep it open." Now, some people may say, "Oh, wait a minute. You have elevators in the parking garage. They're out in the open." Well, they're under roof and they're somewhat protected. So, to protect that door to the elevator to make it functional 365 days a year, uh it was decided that a vestibule, a protected vestibule with a door would need to be constructed. And the size of that vestibule is 6'2 by 6' 10 in. The proposed vestibule mule I should say. And the reason it's that size is when you start talking about ADA laws and wheelchairs, there needs to be a what they call a spinning area and it needs to be approximately the size of what you have there. In other words, this vestibule has been designed uh to accommodate ADA requirements but not to be 12 by 12. In adding that vestibule, this is where we get into the part where this comes before city council. It that vestibule, the proposed vestibule would extend 6 feet 2 in into the city rightway.

So 6'2 in from the edge of the vestibule to the cutout cuz we've approved this either last year, the year before where people can drive around the corner, go into that little cutout, drop passengers off without obstructing traffic on Congress Street from the edge of the vestibule to the edge of the cutout is 4T 1 in 49 in ADA requirement for a sidewalk for a wheelchair [clears throat] to be able to pass is 3 feet. So, we're good there in terms of being able to pass. And again, the restricted area of 3 feet is only 6' 10 in long. [clears throat] This is a little unusual. We have had other requests come before city council for use of the city rightway. Uh but we've never had one extend this far into it. And we've never had one extend this far into it at ground level. We've had extensions up above awnings and things of that nature. You remember, for those of you who've been around a while, the old greenery used to have those steel beams that came way out. There was actually when when uh when Joel Sheckchman and um and Terry Anderson took over and turned into the blue gator, you could actually sit up there. It was like a little porch enclosed. They extend way out. But again, it was not at ground level. Did not impede traffic. It was 10 12 feet up in the air. So that is the request um to extend into the city rideway uh 6.2 ft or or 6'2 in I'm sorry 6'2 in the passageway would be 4.1 in. So that's the background on it. A little longer than normal but wanted to paint the picture of what was being asked. So our normal course of action would be to consult first with the administration the mayor open it up to the public and then come back to this body for discussion. So with that Mr. Mayor, extend that for your comment or

additions or deletions.

Just just a an open comment. You know, I certainly appreciate the need for protecting the elevator on this particular project. Um my only concern is this would set precedence for being able to build that far out into the public rightway. Um and therefore I think council needs to be cognizant of that. Um it could look like anything in the future um on Court Street or elsewhere in the uptown area or in the city of Athens period. So just that's my one thought on this. Um it's a great project. Of course, I'm 100% behind the Mount Zion Black Cultural Center and the the rebirth of Mount Zion Church, but this could have certainly have second order effects depending on how this plays out. [clears throat]

Asking that question. Yes, sir. Mr. Premier, uh, if you wouldn't mind, do you have any thoughts based on maybe your experiences with other cities through the National League of Cities when it comes to these kind of rightaway uses uh, that this large setting precedent? Have you seen that, uh, end up causing trouble for other cities?

I have not. I have not. Um, as a matter of fact, this is the first time in my tenure that this topic has come up. Um, other than as council member Swank indicated, I was on council when we were discussing what to do with the 11oot I-beams after the greenery was being rehabbed into apartments. Um, and [clears throat] having that conversation, but again, that's aerial. We're talking, you know, 10 feet above ground. It wasn't impeding pedestrian passageway or building into the city's rightway. This is this is different when it's at grade. Thank you. Members of the public.

Hello all. I'm Stephanie Hunter 204 Place. Um I have a quick question because I'm trying to follow along where there's some sort of pullover place and exactly where we are on Mount Zion here because I want to know exactly where we're talking about. Is this the west side or the north side? be the west side. West side. Okay. So, we're talking where there's currently like a bush on Google Maps. Do you want to see the map? Well, there's nothing there. Yeah, there's nothing there now. It's it's it's all been torn up and under construction. That's Yeah, there's the cutway. There's the elevator shaft. That's the best.

I see.

Okay. All right. So, it's stuff that isn't even pictured anymore. Um, I suppose my only comment would be that on uh what is it called? Simpson Avenue. They found um good ways to make the driveways take the be relatively flat and then had most of the ramp be at almost the curb area, therefore allowing a uh 5 foot wide sidewalk. And I don't see why that couldn't be done here if there is an ADA concern.

Thank you.

Any other members of the public? Yeah, Rob Delich, 124 Morris Avenue here in the city. Um, just sort of similar following on to Stephanie's concern. It this looks like it pinches the sidewalk pretty good based on the drawing. Certainly reroutes around it. I don't think that's as much of an issue. Uh, I think making sure that the sidewalk is of minimum [snorts] adequate width is pretty important here. And so I can't tell exactly from the diagram how wide it is, but um there is plenty of road width. Maybe it could be worked with, but this this is a bit of an encroachment. Um but again, this is a wonderful project and I think we should try and work with them to to make this work. Um I just don't know if this is a perfect proposal or not. So, it'd be good to look at this closely and try and make sure we know exactly what we're getting into, how much it's going to impede the sidewalk, and if it impedes accessibility. Obviously, it improves accessibility in the building. Um, but does it impede accessibility getting around the building at this location? It it could. It's hard to tell from the drawing.

So, I just want to make sure council considers those kind of things and maybe we'll help advise if we can get better a better look at the details here. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Um, I'm so sorry. You've already gone one time. Cool. Email me. Thank you. Anybody else from the members of the public? Okay. One more. Oh, sorry. No, he's leaving. Oh, gotcha. Okay. All right. M Thomas saw your hand first.

Um, do you happen to recall from when we did the bumpout or the the drop off? Do they have a an idea yet of the angle of that or or do you think it'll be is it supposed to be similar to College Street at the Methodist church [snorts] where it's fairly sidewalk level and adjacent? Yes. Okay. So, that would really kind of extend the sidewalk then over to that too. Yeah. From uh from the uh vestibule to that point which I would consider the street is 4.1 ft.

Okay. So, you know, it's more than enough for the ADA 3-foot requirement for a and again, the distance from where the sidewalk would be impeded on one side to where it opens up on the other is 6 feet 10 in. Yeah. Go ahead. Is the I'm assuming since we have have all of this that the uh elevator shaft is already there.

Yes. Yeah. So, will you see where the vest vestibule is? uh if you're moving uh toward the building, that's where the elevator shaft is. And I went up there uh last week and looked at and also talked to the uh the contact from the engineering firm, Jennifer McAdam, and walked through this um very very very clearly step by step by step whatifs. One of the whatifs I proposed was moving the cutoff south um which would uh which would keep that much wider there even though it still would be 6'2 in out. Problem with moving it south coming around that corner from Carpenter to boom. It was just considered uh [clears throat] um a traffic safety issue. This gives you a little more time to get around and then work your way in.

Yes. Go ahead. Yeah. Floor is yours. [laughter] Um, yeah. I think where it is makes sense because that's going to be close to the elevator. Yeah. Close to the elevator. It's not going to have another curb and with that bump out there. It's not Well, it's not a bump out. It's going to be like a flattened drop off area. There won't be an a curb. Whereas, if it was regular sidewalk, there'd be a curb. Um. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead, Paul.

I'm just thinking of our presentation earlier. One of the things to highlight the where the presence of crosswalks and the art project that was there could could we ask to see that that very short area that 49 in is I don't know what the if there's code related to that that that would be you know a bright color so that if you're a pedestrian or a bicyclist or something along that area you're very aware that it's narrowing and so that you're much more aware that you're also close to potentially this cars pulling into get let people out so that if you are walking or biking there that you take caution with that you're you know I think something like that could be done to make this um safe and and I assume and my question is the um elevator shaft is already there so this is trying to fix a problem that it's not a case of well we could move the elevator

right yeah when people think of elevators most people think elevator inside a building this isn't even a consideration but an elevator exposed to a west facing winds and rain and so on and so forth. Not to mention, and I hate to say this, an elevator exposed to the public in the night and lots of traffic. Who knows what's going to what going to happen? Um, Megan, anything to share with us? Your thoughts on this? Not the not anything lot of everybody's hit on a lot of my thoughts, so no nothing new to mention right now. Okay.

I have one one more question. Yes, sir. How critical and again I'm new to this project. So, you know, I think this previously came up to cancel the cut. How critical is the cutaway? So, is there a scenario where you you might have to sacrifice part of the cutaway in order to make sure that the vestibule is with is is in a safer location. Is that something that for this project would be I mean I understand the value of the cutaway because as we said you're right next to the elevator particularly from an accessibility standpoint. You don't want to have to park you know further down Congress Street to be able to get um access to the to [snorts] the elevator shaft. But is is that something that that they've considered?

Well, you know, Paul, that's a really good point, but um let's forget the cutaway alto together and let's say it's a perfectly straight

line. The issue before us today is whether or not to grant the rightway use of 6'2 in. Um, and the mayor made the point about precedent. Um, I I I go both ways on precedent. I I tend to look at things on an individual basis. Um, and um, I have two children. I have five grandchildren. And I've heard, well, you let soand so do it. Well, I paint a picture that that was a different set of circumstances. [snorts] Personally, I I'm comfortable taking the heat for president. However, even though we might grant this, the entity that catches the criticism is not us, but it's the administration. You let so and so do it. Because generally the general public can't distinguish one from the other. Um, so my only concern about this is the issue that the mayor raised, but uh, personally I um, I'm fact being a former history teacher, I'm factoring in the value of the institution. And in this particular case, I kind of lean on that knowing full well we may get somebody saying, you know what, I want I only I don't want 6'2 inches. I only want 5'8, but give it to me because you gave them 6'2. So I throw that out for your consideration. Any other comments about and I'm not cutting this off by any means but um

I guess the question at this point in time is there another comments do we have uh uh a motion to move this on to council for further discussion where all seven members can weigh in? So moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Any other discussion? Call for a vote. Then all in favor of moving this forward and again let me say this before we do this. Just because council and committee votes to move something forward is no indication of anyone or any group's individual support of that. This just moves it through the legislative process where all seven members of council can then consider it and weigh in. All those in favor signify by saying I

opposed like sign. Okay. Uh we will advance this for consideration at the next regular session of council uh which is uh next Monday. Second item on the agenda is really very simple and if you'll indulge me, I'm just going to read very briefly what we're talking about here. This is an ordinance accepting the petition for annexation of approximately 1.175 acres owned by White Athens Property LLC on Theater Lane. I'm going to read four whereases just to give us an idea what we're doing. Whereas a petition for annexation of approximately 1.175 acres was filed by White Athens Property LLC. And whereas the board of commissioners of Athens County has released said acreage for annexation of the city of Athens. And whereas 60 days from the date of filing have now lapsed in accordance with section 709.04 of the Ohio Revised Code. And whereas per ordinance 10225, the city has agreed to provide all municipal services so on and so forth to this area. This is what we have to go through to annex some something involves the city. It city council advises the county commissioner. We're now to the point of accepting the petition for annexation. Mr. Mayor, anything you would like to add to that?

Nothing other than I certainly support the annexation of this. Members of the public, members of the committee, could I hear a motion to uh advance this to next Monday's city council regular session of council? So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor signify by saying I. I.

All those opposed, same sign. Okay. We have two items on next week's agenda. All right. Item number three on our agenda. Last item of planning development, the liquor permit. We have a request uh or not request, we um the uh folks that own uh 14 Station Street, the old Uncorked have applied for a D3A permit, which would allow the sale of beer and wine and liquor till 2:30 in the morning. Right now they're D1 and D2 allows them to do it till 2:00 a.m. Um, liquor permit matters uh by our assignment of topics for council comes before planning and development. And what we're talking about today is whether or not we feel that we need to call for a public hearing on this uh um from the Bureau of Liquor Control. So that's the background. Mr. Mayor, anything to add to that? Um, no, I'm not adding anything to it other than, you know, this, it's so interesting when you look at the Department of Commerce, liquor control, and the the I don't want to call them quotas. the number of permissible permits D1's, twos, threes, D5s, which is, you know, serving wine, beer, and spirits and and also being able to purchase and and for off- premises use. Um, you know, the I can say that oftent times the um there are availability of D1's, twos, and threes that are out there. um where they haven't all been purchased. You know, D5s are always a premium and they're rare to to to come

by. I know we're not talking about that, but you know, for a D3A, um I personally don't have an issue with it. Um I will share with council that I have been through one hearing here in Athens in council chambers with the Chipotle request for a liquor permit. And at the time council um decided to challenge it and um it's it's the Ohio Department of Commerce liquor control and it didn't go in the favor of of those who wanted the hearing and it ended up being a reality at the end of the day with that liquor permit. So just giving you some historical context of my lived experience of of kind of going through this process. I was mayor at the time. Um, not a council member, but you know this.

Thank you. It's Department of Commerce. Yeah. members of the public, Rob 124 Morris Avenue. Um, we I think we already talked about a permit, one of the D1, D2, D3 permits that moved from somewhere else to this location a few months ago, I think, right? Does anybody remember what that that was? Yeah, they had uh um we had two things going at the same time. We had a TX permit for

Siam Thai. Yeah. Is that right, Ty? Yes, I am Tai. And the original permit for this was uh D1 D2. They had since obtained a D3. Now they're asking for a D3A, which would allow them to serve uh beverage alcohol until 2:30 in the morning. So the D1 D2, did that come from another location in town? No. No. It was a transfer right there. Uh Uncorked. Oh, it was right from Uncorked. But I thought there was something like from Seoul or some other place that they moved another permit from. Was that the D3? that they had applied for and received a D3. Okay. And now they're applying for a D3A. Wow. All right. Thanks.

I think the other transfer was from Village Bakery to Yeah, Village Bakery to the bicycle shop was another we had three going at the same time. Uh, anybody else from the community? members of the uh committee thoughts on do we need a hearing, do we not need a hearing, one way or the other? I don't think we need a hearing. Um but I just looked up we transferred this from Boozy Bubbles on 18 South Court down. Yeah, we did. It was in October. I was thinking the same thing. Okay. Um yeah, I don't think we need a hearing. Is Boozy Bubbles 14 South Court? Uh 18. 18. Okay. And this goes to 14.

Mhm. Okay. So, their current license allows them to stay open until 2 till 1:00. Till 1:00. And this would be till 2:30. This to be 2:30. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think we'll go very far with hearing if we tried. Yeah. It seems Megan, this is in ward one. We obviously probably need to hear your thoughts on this. This is in your ward. Sure. Um, I mean, I guess I don't really understand, this is maybe where I'm new, the value in other than maybe keeping a business open makes more money from 1:00 they would be open till, but they want to push it to 2:30. Yes, ma'am.

I mean, that I walk that area a lot. Um, and I'm kind of wondering how the neighbors with all the uh folks that live over there, how they would feel about more activity cuz it really is quieter over there. Um, I was just thinking along the lines of that. I don't know if that matters for this, but that's where my mind went. Um,

well, I went down there today and uh I end up talking with the owner who lives in Columbus and [clears throat] that was one of my issues from the front door of this place to the station street apartments is basically a Joe Burough long touchdown pass. It's close and um I don't know how I say this um those apartments have been there forever and to get to that place um because it is carry out too and after Seaman's closes that'll probably be the only place on that side of town where you could drive in and pick up stuff and carry it out. Yeah.

Um the only re and and and Jessica I agree with you 100%. The only reason I could think of a hearing would be to give the opportunity for those in the residential area to express any comments or concerns. This is a little different than a bar on Court Street, which is in a bar zone. This literally faces uh um what do you call it? Housing. So, if I remember right, we don't have to do anything until March the 12th. Megan, this is your ward. Your thoughts on maybe talking to some of your constituents and their thoughts and whether or not we need to have a hearing or not. Okay?

Because we don't have to take a vote one way or another tonight advances. So, mayor was first, then Paul, then Jessica. It goes boom boom boom. Um, I really appreciate the conversation about the housing that's right across on Station Street right there. But again, for a little historical context, some of you remember that that site housed the oak room for a long time and then it became Athens Uncorked. Um, so this isn't this isn't anything new other than to the students who live in the condominiums or housing across the street, but uh because likely they weren't there when it was the oak room back in the day.

Yeah, that that's interesting. And one of the reasons I visited and I asked the folks, "Do you serve food?" They serve no food. This is strictly a bar. I think it'll change though. I think they're going to work towards eventually serving food. The person I talked to, but again, that that could be changing. So, I saw Paul's hand, then I saw Jessica's hand. So, just a quick do two things. One, do we go through the three readings on this or is it just one vote in just one vote on a hearing? Yeah. So I mean if this goes to full uh committee there is an opportunity for outside of a hearing for people from those we don't have necessarily have to have a hearing people from the apartments could come to council yes and voice their concerns to members of council that way

you know without Debbie here and without Lisa here I I couldn't give you a definitive answer on process normally this comes as the communication I'm flying blind yeah yeah

and then the other qu I mean I I was you know as I looked at this I was much more leaned towards a likelihood of a hearing that there was no necessarily any specific issue with doing that. But I thought that they closed much earlier than they did. And if this is not that much later and as the mayor points out that this has long been a establishment that has served alcohol late into the evening, into the night, will it fundamentally change what's happening there? I I'm not sure that a public hearing for that, but I would certainly as we don't have to move do anything till March 12th, if we get feedback between now and then from people in that those residents around that area that they there are strong concerns about this, there is an opportunity for us, can we at that point then say we feel we need a hearing? What we would have to do is Megan, if you're going to get some feedback from the neighborhood, have that for us next week because next week is a business meeting of council. And at the business meeting council, we'd have to say whether we wanted a hearing or not. The following week is the 9th, which is a um committee night. And I think you two won't be here,

so we can't meet. So, we need it by next week. Okay. How quickly can is it I'm just trying to wrap my brain around like reaching out. I'm not certain I can reach out in less than a week to the folks over. Are you saying just strictly the apartments and the condominiums that are over there to uh do outreach to Alan? That that's where I would start. Yeah. I mean those would be the people most affected because you're on the back side of that building. Nothing on Union Street. I mean you have that you have the old station. You have the field. Yeah, but it's your ward, you know. That's certainly not gonna

Yeah. I'm just thinking there's a lot of students over there and it's a lot of absentness, I think, during the day and I don't know how it would look going at night. Okay. Yeah. [laughter] Trying to interact with people. Yeah. Mr. Mayor. Yeah. Just a friendly suggestion. Um, Trembley Enterprise is, I think, still [snorts] the owner of those apartments across the street. their office, their their Athens office is in the train depot itself and maybe go in and and meeting with the current manager and ask the question, can you push something out to your tenants? Um, and then see if they can get a response back. Um, yeah, that would be quick and easy.

It would be so much more efficient rather than Sure. like going door to door. [laughter] Yeah. side of the table. The office manager over at the rental is do you know of any direct contact right now or maybe we can talk later. Thank you. Yeah, Jessica, um I had the same thought as the mayor did that that was [cough] for so long. Not that I don't think any of the kids here now would remember that. [laughter] Um I remember that. Are they a carry out also or is it only only Yeah, this would be for carry out too.

Carry out also. Okay. Um, I'm fine with yeah, waiting till next week and if people want a hearing, I'm never opposed to people coming in to be able to speak. I think Lisa will probably tell us we have to have a legal reason. I think she said that last time, but either way, if we decide next week and yeah, more people maybe [clears throat] hear it now and want to come in next week, too. That's another opportunity.

Okay. So, we'll look forward to some feedback next week and uh communications and [snorts] go from there. All right, Paul, that concludes planning development. You're up. So, we now have city and safety services chaired by Paul Isherwood, joined by Megan Almeida, Alan Swink, and Michael Wood. Um, well, got to give Michael chance to get up here. So, city and safety services committee, we have a quick change to the agenda. The second item on the agenda, uh, the city police department and county sheriff's office memorandum of understanding is not being considered this evening. And so, that's moving off the agenda. And so, I will start with the top of the agenda, which is uh the water service outside the corporate limits uh rock riffle. Um this is an item comes result a property owner uh outside the corporation asking for water service and um [clears throat] this is uh not an uncommon uh request uh and that when outside the corporation if a property owner at his own expense has laid down an extended mains and water pipes that's from the Ohio Revised Code and if the legislative authority approves the municipality may provide the water um And uh this is a property on uh Rock Rifle. I know I have the address here.

8860 8860 Rock Rifle. And um uh there's not really a lot more to it than that other than uh the city is happy to extend this to uh first uh Mr. Mayor, do you have anything you want to add to this? No. No. Uh, members of the public. Okay. Members of the committee, Mr. Swank, member Swank,

when Paul sent this stuff to us on Thursday, um, there was a letter from the applicant and the applicant cited two properties, one on either side that currently have this. So, I uh called the building utilities office and reality only one had it. But I also found out that there are three other properties up there. So there are a total of four properties on Rock Riffle Road where we're already doing this. So this makes, you know, makes perfect sense.

Yes. And and just for complete transparency, my understanding is that the owner, Mr. Funk, has discussed the possibility of um those other properties perhaps um seeking access to city water at some point in the future. But that that is an undertaking that my understanding from director Stone would possibly be talking about a conversation about annexation. But this connection would not require that. Could I ask a question of the mayor? Please do. I would assume these folks are probably on leaks water right now. Possibly.

Okay. If they are, are there some payment things we have to do? I remember we had something last year where there was it was a sizable amount of money which we'd eventually recoup when we would have these as permanent customers but there was aitional addition an initial cost for doing this. There is um well there there has been um there certainly was for 68256 um annexation with the WA Cooper project um to where uh we had to we had to create an agreement between the city of Athens and Leaks. Now it was interesting because there currently were no customers um in the 68256 annexation for water cooper. So therefore, Lax was not supplying any water to anyone, although it was in their um their region within their territory, quote unquote. So, we did strike an agreement with them. Um I'd have to double check to see if this would be similar to that. I I don't have an answer for you.

Just from the context of Mr. Funk's letter he's has done obviously some exploration about what his water options would be and he says and I quote the next closest water provided Lax another quarter mile up Rock Rifle which again I mean I don't that doesn't it's not definitive but it suggests that he's not currently connected to Leak so if you weren't Leak and you weren't the city would you a well come from so I'll tell you what I have the four addresses at home I I in a apparently left them. I will email you those four addresses and perhaps you can take so that way you don't have to chase them down. I'll have an answer by tomorrow morning. Okay, great. Thank you. You said the address is 8860. Yeah, it's I mean

or maybe 86. I'm just four numbers off the top of my head. It's in it could be 8680 8666 Rock Rifle Road for clarification. Okay. 8,666. Uh any other members of committee? Any questions? Is is this related to the uh [snorts] is this related to the the uh development housing project that uh David's trying to No, that that's out west of town. The other side, right? Yeah. It's a weird spot.

That's a backup wall. Yeah. Yeah. Can I uh get a motion to move this to full council next week? So move. A second. Second. Can I call for a vote? All those in favor of moving this to full council next week say indicate by saying I. I.

Okay. So moved. Um okay. The next item on the agenda is um easement and vacation university estates water tower ingress and egress. Um, [snorts] so this is a water tower owned by the city uh up at University Estates. Currently, we have an easement uh that allows uh us to access that and the city wants to vacate that easement and use a new easement path to the water tower. Um, and this agreement would simply be the city council approving the agreement that has already been struck between the owner of the land and Mr. Garrett Carr and the city. And I got an update from um director Stone uh this morning. So when this was first plotted around 20 years ago, the city had an easement granted as part of that plot for the water tower. Um however, where the original developer built the driveway was not in that easement. Now that the property around the tower is potentially going to have homes built, this action will vacate the original easement that the previous owner granted to the city. So this is essentially just making updating the easement and giving better access to this. So um with that being said, any input on this?

Well said. No. Uh members of the public, members of the committee. Move to advance. Can I get a second? Second. Okay. Uh all those in favor of moving this to full council next week indicate by saying I okay is eyes happy.

Uh the last item on our agenda is back to water softening salt. Um but this is a different water softening salt. [clears throat] Uh last year there was an overspend of last year's uh softening salt budget of $26,783.71. And so this is a request for a um to amend last year's authorizations for essentially for auditing purposes. Um Mr. Mayor, anyone want to add? As you said, it's for auditing purposes. Members of the public, members of the committee,

can I get some a motion to move this to full committee next week? So move. Can I get a second? Second. Okay. All those in favor of moving this to full committee, full council next week, please indicate by saying I. I. And the eyes have it. And that concludes city and safety services. Thank you, Chair Isherwood. We will now move on to finance and personnel committee. And that's chaired by council member Jessica Thomas and joined by Beth Claudefelder, John Staser, and Michael Wood. [laughter]

Hello. All right, we've got three items on our agenda tonight. Um the first two are going to take just a little bit of explaining and background and then the last one's just another then now. Uh the first item is creating a property assessed clean energy fund. Um the the current situation on this is that this is called P this is for some income that will be coming in from the county being collected by the county. [snorts] Uh PACE funding. This is when uh I guess several years ago, three years ago, the low stroke building had the opportunity to create a uh environmental special improvement district in Athens. uh we went through all the approval process of that to allow them to do do that to get their board and everything. Um by letting them do that, what that means is that they had an had a uh opportunity to secure third party funding to finance qualifying projects within their building that would uh increase energy efficiency and renewable energy. So they did that. Um, and the way that the PACE funding works is you get your third party uh financer, however you you work that out. You figure out your terms of mortgage basically or however many years that goes through and then they put a special assessment on their own property taxes. So, they will pay those annually to the county who collects the money. um they pass it then on to the city and then we pay the financer for that property. So what we are doing here is we need to create a uh separate fund and a separate account for this that is a custodial fund which just means that we're going to take the money in from

the county for the lowest build building company and then we are going to pay it directly out to the company which is the PH Athens LLC um also known as Peach Tree Group. Uh this is basically a pass through account that just moves this money from their their collection of their special assessment to their their financer. Um it's a just a pretty it's a state process. It's just something we have to do this way for the state. Um, I think some of the clarifications on this, you know, and I can answer any questions once we get through just a little bit of the background is just as a reminder that, you know, we went through the ACID, there was a lot of miscommunication, misinformation. This does not affect property taxes at all. This is not a property tax that the county is giving up and this is nothing that the city is giving up. Um, if you go to the auditor's page, you can see the taxes on a property. You can see all the all the taxes where the breakdown of the taxes are. If you go below that, you'll see special assessments and this is where they have chosen to have the money fronted for their project and pay it back as a loan over however many years they've set up. And you'll see that amount down there. They're figuring out the exact amount right now. Um, but that's the money that we will be putting into this fund and then paying right back out. So, after saying all of that, this will, if we can get this forward to uh regular session next week, it will need a suspension as it takes 30 days, hopefully faster, for the state to approve this fund and the money from a from the county could be coming in sometime in the next month. Um, depending on, you know, how their taxes are going and everything. I think that's really everything on that. Uh, I just want to open this up then to questions and comments from the administration and the public and then any uh committee questions. Anything

from the mayor?

I think you summed it up well. I mean it again this is just creating an account with the city as a pass through to where they are able to take advantage of of this process. if I'm not mistaken, um some of the energy efficiency improvements in a very very old building were a energy efficient HVAC system. Um and the uh improvements in their elevator in that building, which again opened up the opportunity for energy efficiencies with that. Uh, and there may be a couple other items that they took advantage of, but PACE PACE financing is is it's nothing new. It's been around for a long long time when it comes to improvements. Um, in my time on the NOAC board, um, you know, NOPEC, Northeast, Northern Ohio Public Energy Council, uh, of which council member Swank is a board member, um, has a program, a PACE financing program, um, to do just a this exact thing for businesses that want to take advantage of um a way that they can lower their costs with building improvements.

Treasure, the only thing I want to throw in there, the auditor isn't here, but she definitely want me to just member Thomas already said this, but we want to reiterate this is dollar for dollar. There are zero city dollars that go out of this, right? It's just they pay us. If they pay us $1,000, we turn around and write the check to somebody else for $1,000. Zero city dollars of our money goes into this. So, I think the auditor wanted me to just specify that. Uh, members of the public. All right. Members of the committee better, is it possible that setting up this pass through system for the lostro building will make it easier if other local businesses also choose to pursue pace funding and make their businesses more energy efficient.

Yes. Yeah. And that's a good clarification is with the EID now they're you know once they're established and they have a board anybody within the city can be a part of that uh which is an environmental special improvement district. Um yeah and similarly um could you remind me please how widely would this pace um area if you will extend in the city? I have to look back at some of the ordinances. I think it's the city li it would just be city limits. Okay commercial only. It's not just uptown. No no commercial. Okay.

Any other questions? All right, then we can move on to the next item. Um, the next item is reinstatement of Athens city code title 15 uh taxes. The quick background on this is that in the fall we repealed title 15 because title 17 came out. There was some miscommunication that title 17 was a replacement for title 15 because of the date change in it. Um, and it's been noted by our income tax department that that it is actually an in addition to, not a replacement. Um, just to clarify between the two, title 15 deals with tax filers for anything prior to 2016 and title 17 deals with tax filers post 2016, 2016 and and current. Um, there's some other differences. They basically did not combine 17 and 15 to make it one big bill. So, it's two different two different uh codes and title 15 had some other provisions in it that were not incorporated into 17 which is why we need to keep them both [clears throat] or needed to keep them both. Um the income tax department was very kind to send some just examples of ways in which this could why it needs to be kept or reinstated and that's if anyone has their uh returns amended. You can go back 10 years to amend your tax returns. Um there are people who may not have ever filed their taxes and should have been doing it prior to 2016. Um if you have any cases of fraud um tax evasion or failure to failure to fire file um you would you would need to be able to have this in place to have any enforcement of tax rules and to be able to collect to collect those taxes. Um and it's generally recommended that you keep title 15 or any title on for 20

years. Um any comments from elected officials from the public? All right, members of the committee. All right, member Clyde Potter. In terms of the the nitty-gritty of reinstating this, is this just a matter of amending city code or where is this change made? We would have to reintroduce title 15 and the U law director and uh clerk are working on that. Okay.

So, moving on, we have some then and nows that will be up next week. Uh just three this time. Uh, one for Rumkey Consolidated uh, just the monthly trash. Member Thomas clarificate. Aren't we supposed to be voting on these? Oh my gosh. Yes. [laughter] Thank you. Member Stacer. I kind of just got on a roll and was and surprised how quickly they were going. Um, can I have a motion to move the PACE funding creation? So moved. Second. All in favor? I. I. Right. Uh, and then can I have a motion to move the reinstate Athens city code title 15 forward? So moved. Yeah. Second. Second. All in favor? I.

All right. Thank you for that catch. Once I get on a roll, I'm just going. Um, so the then announced next week will be for the monthly garbage fees. uh go to it IT group which is just our IT service and Axion uh enterprise which is the body cameras for the police. Uh any comments or questions from elected officials on that? Nope. Anything from the public and committee member?

I'm just curious the amount for Rumkey Consolidated uh Corporation. Is that a monthly fee? That's a big number. I think so. I forgot to clarify that with the with the deputy auditor today, but that is it is that was the best guess. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. [laughter] All right. Any other questions? Go ahead. The second one, the go to go to it group or go to it group. It um how long does that payment cover? Is that annual? Is it monthly? The other two designate and that one doesn't. that one. I'd have to look, but I can ask. I can check it and ask. All right. Thank you.

Is that just for like we've done so much uh in the last like three months around here. And I think that's just the if I'm thinking this correctly, that's just the bill for all the things that we've done in the past months. We've upgraded um well, I mean, you all sold the emails, all the stuff that Lucas was working on. So, with all those upgrades and stuff, that's I'm pretty sure that's just the bill for what we had done over that time as opposed to an ongoing as opposed to an ongoing. Okay. Thank you. All right. Yeah. And I'll double check that, but yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. All right. Well, any other questions? Uh, that ends finance and personnel. You didn't vote that. I didn't vote that one before. I'm sorry. Eventually, it's going to become a habit. Uh, can I have a motion to move these forward? So, moved. All in favor?

Hi. I'll second it. Yes. [laughter] Second. Shenanigans out in the uh That's okay. If we could just repeat that vote one more time. Okay. Can I have a can I have a motion to move this forward? So moved and a second. Second. All in favor? I I I All right. Now that concludes finance and personnel. And with that, council is adjourned at 8:29. Nine.