City Council - Regular Meeting

Good evening and welcome to Athens City Council. Today is Monday the 14th and we are in special session. The special session was called for the second readings of Ordinances 085-26 and Ordinance 86-26. Ordinance 85-26 was introduced by Council Member Thomas for second reading, and it's an ordinance amending the 2026 Appropriation Ordinance 120-25 and authorizing inter-fund transfers to the medical fund as part of the insurance funding cost associated with Ordinance 12-26, the City's 2026 Employee Retirement Incentive Program. Council Member Thomas.

Thank you. If you recall, we talked about this in committee and first reading. And this is when we did the early retirement incentive program. The $30,000 payout that some employees could choose was meant to come directly from their various departments and instead was pulled from the medical fund. And this is reimbursing all of that basically and pulling these back from where they should have come from and putting them back into the medical fund. You can see all the transfers and the various amounts from each one representing an employee. And then there is a $157,121.96 transfer appropriation and then immediate transfer in the internal service fund. That is funds that were meant to go into 866 and instead were placed into 865 earlier in the year. And first, I'd like to ask for a suspension on this tonight so that we can get the money back into the medical fund.

So moved. Second.

Any discussion on the suspension? Member Swank?

Yeah, my question would be for the auditor. I apologize, I was at a NOPEC board meeting last week and couldn't be here. It's my understanding from what Member Thomas just said that we're basically moving, and correct me if I'm wrong please, that we're basically moving money into the right places that it needs to be. That's correct.

When we did the retirement plan, We originally took the money out of the medical fund because we had no, we had to designate a fund on that ordinance, right? And we had no idea who was going to retire. So we didn't know what other where that money actually might come from. Once we determine who retired, then we can say, now we need to repay that medical fund by if somebody retired from water and sewer, then it would come from water and sewer and go back into the medical fund. So, again, this just replenishes the money that was used for the retirement program. And then the other, you know, appropriation, there's member Thomas said, it's literally just. We accidentally put money in 865 that was supposed to be in 866. We just went wrong.

Yeah. So in other words, we're just moving funds around. We're not having to pay any bills at this time. Absolutely not. So with those two answers, I fail to understand why we need to rush this through and suspend the rules. Normally when we suspend rules to vote on something, it's because of then and now. Had plenty of those this year. Or that we have a bill that we perhaps didn't know about that needs to be paid. Or there's a grant that we need to meet a deadline. But in this case, we're just talking about moving money out of one pocket into another. So I really don't see any need to suspend the rules for this.

I would just add that we discussed it in committee and discussed it last week, so the rest of us were here. Also, the medical fund is very low, and it needs the money.

Yeah, it does. It's not that... It's not that we aren't able to pay bills, but we need to get the medical fund healthy. We have bills that are still coming in, and we need to make sure the medical fund has the money in it. We do this every year around this time of year. We've got to make sure the next ordinance is the same issue, and we need to make sure the medical fund is healthy to finish out the rest of the year.

Well, the last report we got, which was the July close, showed $1,250 in the medical fund, which is very consistent with what we've finished months of this entire year. So again, we're not paying any bills today. This habit of... Point of order.

This is just supposed to be a discussion on the suspension, not the actual ordinance, correct?

Yes, that's what I'm discussing. The reason for the suspension and the point I'm trying to make. This habit of calling special sessions, this habit of putting finance committee meetings before... regular sessions of council, is starting to wear on the public. It appears that we are rushing things through. And I'll simply state again, if we had a bill to pay, we had a grant deadline to meet, or we had a bill from a long time ago that needed pay, I'd be the first to raise my hand and vote to suspend the rules. But we're just moving money from one pocket to the other today. No bills, no creditors, no nothing. And... I think it's just a bad habit that we're getting into, rushing these things through.

Again, I'm just going to state that the medical fund needs the funds. It absolutely needs these funds back in it. The month of August saw a lot of bills. We haven't closed out the month of August yet, and we saw a lot of bills come in. Chair Thomas, you still have the floor.

Sorry, I forgot I was the chair. I would just clarify that ORC dictates that ordinances are read three times not that they are read every two weeks three times as we run our meetings every city is different and this is how we do ours typically but we are still reading most of these things three times this one we're going to read two times and have a committee on it You know, some things just move faster. We were gone for six weeks this summer, not the usual four. And so things get diverted and pushed, and that's just what happens sometimes. But I don't really see another way around this.

I would just add to the other issue with the medical fund is it's just not predictable. We've said this over the years, Auditor Hecht said it over the years, and I'm going to repeat it too. It's just not predictable. You do not know, we have no information as to who's going to a doctor or for what reason until we see the bill. When the bill comes in, then we know. And sometimes the bills are low, and unfortunately in August the bills were high.

Yeah, I feel like, I mean, I agree to a certain extent with Member Swank that, you know, obviously there's a process and we should follow it and we shouldn't be suspending just for things that don't have real rationales to it. This to me does, though. We don't meet you know, this is a special session to get this done. We had a really robust conversation last week about the need to do this. We would have suspended last week and passed this last week. We had a good, I think, very frank conversation about the need to do that last week, and we would have done it then. I'm comfortable that we should not suspend things Just because we want to follow a process when there are things that the city needs to do. As a council, we typically only meet twice a month. We're not a full time council, and so sometimes we have to accept that suspending the rules to get things done. But I feel comfortable that we have given this due consideration and that with the bills coming in from August that the auditor mentions, this is a prudent use of our authority to suspend the rules.

Sure, Thomas, you still have the floor.

Member Wood? Yeah. I hate agreeing with Alan. As we know, we are not normally allied on things. I also really dislike this. If it had come up last week, I would have voted against it.

We did discuss it last week.

May I?

Yeah.

Thank you. If we had had a vote last week about bringing it forward and bumping it, I think it would be an easy no because it would be the first the public had heard of it and the first time they could have had feedback. Yeah, I think also just generally voicing discontent about having all these special sessions just because we can. We've talked about it a couple of times. Yeah, I'm unhappy with this process.

I think I would just like to get a commitment then next summer that we go through the very end of June. Because we stopped on the 15th of June this year, and we could have had more meetings and fit more things in. But instead, we were off for six weeks, and that backs up offices that are still working, but we're not here. These things come in all through July and get paid out, and it's not realistic for us to expect the entire city to sit and wait for us to be gone for six weeks. So I just think we need to be thinking ahead next year if we can take the vote tonight and see where it goes. But next summer, then, we need to anticipate looking at the calendar going all the way through the end of June.

We have a motion and a second for the suspension. I'll continue to have it in your hands, Member Thomas.

All those in favor of suspending? Aye. All those opposed?

Nay.

All right. See what happens. Moving on to...

Member Thomas, would you just mind clarifying? Oh, I'm sorry.

That was just on the suspension. You're right. Well, I guess the second reading, then we don't have anything else to add.

Right. So we only had five in favor and two opposed. And for our suspension of the rules, we would have needed to have six. But I will hand things back to you, Member Thomas.

All right. Next is just a second reading that we want to be sure just to get a reading in. There's no changes to this. 86-26 is an ordinance amending the 2026 appropriation, ordinance 120-25 and authorizing inter-fund transfers. And as we discussed in committee last week, the top portion is going to be for various wages that look like they're going to be short for the year. And the second portion are transfers from already appropriated funds and already budgeted funds to go into the medical fund. To bolster that to get through the end of the year as we did last year on the dates of 1110 and 1117 for 750,000 last year out of the direct general fund. This instead moves it from various departments that have excess in their budgets currently. I would move to suspend the rules on 86-26. Second. Discussion? All those in favor? Aye.

Aye.

Those opposed?

Nay.

The rules have been suspended. Do we have any additional questions on 86-26? From members of council? Anything from the administration? Auditor's office? And members of the public? All right, seeing none. I move to adopt 86-26. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? 86-26 has been adopted. And that ends special session.

Thank you, Member Thomas. We will now move into committee meetings at 7.13 p.m. And we are officially adjourned from our special session. We're now in the committee meetings of Athens City Council for Monday, September 14th, 2026. We have a quorum with all council members present. and council will first be meeting as committee of the whole. We will then transition to planning and development, then to finance and personnel, and finally to city and safety services in the order shown on tonight's agenda. Beginning with committee of the whole, we have first a presentation from our county treasurer, Taylor Sappington. We would welcome you to approach the podium and we would appreciate hearing about your work.

Well, good evening, folks. My name is Taylor Sappington, although I think we've all met, so you already knew that. I'm really proud to be your county treasurer for a number of reasons. But before I say that, first, thank you to the president, mayor, the auditor's office, everyone in attendance for having me. I served for four years on Nelsonville City Council and six as Nelsonville City Auditor. So if you ever have thankless days of public service, please let me be the first to say thank you, because I understand it all too well. But it's worthy work, and I think you already know that, but I think it's worth saying it today. and most days. So I wanted to talk about a couple of things. Hopefully I can make it brief. If an elected official says brief, they might be lying to you. I hope to not lie to you today. And there's a couple of reasons I'm doing this. I'm going across to all the jurisdictions in the county, every township, every village, both cities, and eventually, hopefully, every county agency. I left out the school districts. I'm going to the school districts as well. Do I have a time limit?

I want to make sure I'm aware. If you can try and keep us within 15 minutes, that'd be ideal. Easy, okay. Thanks.

I didn't know if I was on a three minute rule. You're okay.

Okay.

Push the button. And the reason being is a couple reasons. First, just the public reason, the public servant reason of getting out there, learning what our cities, villages, townships, school districts are working on. So that we can be better stewards, but importantly too, the treasurer's office collects property taxes on all of these jurisdictions as behalf. And then we turn the money over to you, so we take all the heat, and then you guys get cash in the end. And it's really important that we understand both sides of this transaction, the mayor's made, not as much cash as you'd like, right? So if the camera couldn't pick up that face, but it was a good one, Mr. Mayor. It's a good relationship to understand because we do a lot of hard work on the front end. You guys do a lot of work before us and after us. But we're actually really working together. And often the localities and the county offices feel like extremely separate entities in different silos pulling different directions. And I just want to be the first to say, if somebody hasn't said recently, that we're actually pulling the same direction and working together and that I'm here to learn and then talk about a few issues that I hope are helpful to your folks. So this may not sound like city council territory per se, but you'd be shocked how many of these meetings I talk at. And then somebody immediately calls, sometimes an email that evening, but often a call the next day saying, I didn't realize this program existed. or my son's behind on their property taxes, or whatever the issue may be. So I just wanted to say, because property taxes is one of the most important realms of funding government in Ohio with so much disinformation that it's important to get to the basics. In Athens County, we offer a payment plan for any taxpayer or property owner who's behind. That's any property owner. There used to be a $50 fee to enter into a payment plan in Athens County. It was something I nixed because I felt a little— Well, I had a lot of feelings about somebody who's like $4,000 behind on their taxes, and then for the privilege of giving you their tax money, I say I need $50 first. It felt a little bit like a toll, and it was an unnecessary one. So I took that down. The other things payment plans do and people don't realize is that penalties and interest in Ohio are actually quite steep. The county doesn't set that. The state legislature sets that. And so if you're behind on your taxes, you're making monthly payments, you're probably falling behind if you're not, meaning if you're already behind, because the penalties and interest compared to credit cards, unfortunately, if you're close with any state legislators, maybe talk to them about that. But when you enter into a payment plan, it stops penalties and interest. So that's a really important reason to get into a payment plan. All you got to do is like make contact, sign a piece of paper saying I'm entering a payment plan. and make that payment each month, and your penalties and interest stop. That's a benefit that you can't get anywhere else for your property taxes other than the treasurer's office. And so I would like to make sure to mention that. I almost get a payment plan out of every single one of these meetings, so I'm super glad you guys record and televise. So if you're behind on your taxes, please call. or email, stop in. We don't have a fax. We'll look for smoke signals or on the third floor. But we really want to get involved, get people in a payment plan if they're behind. If you've never been behind or you are not behind on your taxes, we have a free escrow program. So if you hate writing Taylor Sappington on like a $4,000 check, at the end of the year, I understand. We have an escrow program. For no charge to you, you can pay monthly to the treasurer's office. We will actually draft it from your bank account. And we will do that every single month. And then you'll get a tax bill, same as everybody else, but it'll show whether you're behind or you're ahead And you either pay that difference or let it roll into the next half. So we do offer an escrow program if you don't have escrow at your house and it costs you nothing. It again is just a signature and then handing over some kind of verified bank account information. And we'll draft it from your account each month for free. We are past second half. So some of this is like less important. We have online payments. There's been some changes in how the post office runs things. Those aren't as important today on my notes here from most of these meetings. I will say there are some other programs that the city specifically can take advantage of. And that is like one of them is the treasurer's office is tasked with investing the county's tax dollars effectively and efficiently. The state allows that to mean loaning out to the jurisdictions that we work on behalf of. So I'll use Canaan Township since it's nearby. Canaan Township is really good about coming to the treasurer's office every time they need a piece of equipment, getting a low interest loan, and then paying the interest to the county instead of to say Chase Bank, no offense to Chase or some other bank not based in Ohio. cities often qualify for things like OPWC, OWDA at low interest rates. But if you ever have a program where you're like, can't quite find a good loan or good funding source for this that would pay for it in whole, just know that the county can offer like, It's got to be a high enough interest rate that an attorney will sign off on it. So the attorney, the county's bond counsel, has to sign off and say, this is a market interest rate. So market right now is actually kind of high, but in the 3% to 4% range, if we can get bond counsel to sign off on it. I just wanted to throw out a number that this is something we can do regularly. with, you know, obviously some heads up, uh, but it takes several months to get this process going. And of course you guys have to know what you'd like to invest in. But some townships are like really good. We have like three or four entities that are like every time their loans paid, they're like, I've got another dump truck I want. We have some entities, it seems like my predecessor and their predecessor has brought some of this information before like, um, up in my hometown, and we never really took advantage of it. So I wanted to just make sure there was awareness. The treasurer's office collects your property taxes for you folks, but also can invest in a project should you have the need. And then, let's see, lastly, I just wanted to say one of the things we're working hardest on maybe impacts Athens City the least. But I still want to talk about it. Because Athens City, your auditor or treasurer could answer this question much better than I could. But the property tax payments in the city generally are a much smaller portion of your budget than some of our jurisdictions. Some of our jurisdictions, it's like 80, 90%. of the money they're working with as property tax dollars. The city's in a much more fortunate position than that. I'm not sure what the percentage is, but I'll let him tell you if you ever need to know that. That said, Athens does have property tax charges issued on its property owners. And we collect on your behalf. One of the things when I came into office, I noticed was that our delinquent tax amounts in the county were higher than many of our peers. And there could be a lot of reasons for that. Athens is not the richest county in the state. We're not like Delaware County, exploding with growth with 10,000 new residents every year. The economy's not great. There's just a ton of reasons that there could be. But my job is not to worry about any of those things. My job is to try and collect on your behalf. So we've focused on this pretty heavily since I took office, including adding new staff to the office, trying to do things like removing the fees and barriers to payment plans so folks could get caught up. So when I started, Athens City had $676,000 in delinquent tax amounts on your property owners. It doesn't all go to the city. That's just the properties in your jurisdiction. Excuse me. As of a few weeks ago, we reduced that amount to 184,000 over the first year. So it's one of the most successful jurisdictions in the county. That's a 72% reduction. The average in the county is 46.8%. In terms of your total budget, it's not a life changer for you. I wish I could say the treasurer's office fixed all of your financial problems you've ever had for the next generation. But this is government, that's never going to happen. But we've done one small part, and we're happy to have played that part. We're happy to have worked with homeowners. I don't believe we foreclosed on a single property within the city limits, so those collection amounts were purely. working with property owners to get caught up on payments through payment plans or full payoffs. And I think that's most of my main points. I wanted to come and talk about some of those programs. Are there questions I could answer from the council or administration on what the treasurer's office can do?

We do have just about five minutes left, so we'll start with the administration, then we'll go to the public, and then to members of the committee of the whole. Do we have any of our elected officials who are already at the dais who have questions or comments? Mayor Patterson.

I have one, and you can probably keep this to a minute or less, but also mention the work that you do with the land bank. In full disclosure, I'm on the land bank board, so just get that out there. The great work that's been happening throughout the county with tax-delinquent, chronically delinquent properties or abandoned or sometimes homes gifted to the land bank to repurpose or to completely demo them.

Yes. So that's really great, because that was on my list, and I didn't mention it, so thank you for the prompt. And he didn't see the list. So I've just recently become chair of the land bank in the last couple months. One of the things that I'm asking the board, the mayor and I have discussed, is... The next logical, the land bank is really good at getting its hands on problem properties and then demolishing those properties and creating space for something where there was space for nothing before. In fact, it's recognized in the state as one of the best at that. And so I really stand on broad, tall shoulders. And so you know how the phrase goes, like somebody crawls so the next person can walk and that person walks so the next person can run. I see myself in that role as the chair now where I imagine the next logical conclusion for the land bank is we take land that's problem property through the tax foreclosure process where these folks have been passed away for multiple generations on every case. We take down the property because it's terrible. It's a nuisance. There may be drugs in there. There may be crime. Who knows? And then there's space for somebody else to do something. But as I mentioned for all the same reasons before that there's tax delinquency, investable funds, maybe population and demographic changes, economic changes. There's not mass sums of funds with our population to then just build massive properties all the time and all these properties that we demolish. And so the next logical conclusion is, to me, is if the land bank's really good at all these spokes on the wheel, the last spoke would seem to be to put a roof there and a person there, that the land bank would take uninhabitable land and leave it inhabited and in a community. In fact, that it's in its name, the name of the Land Bank is Neighborhood Revitalization Corporation. And so if we're going to truly revitalize our neighborhoods in this county, that could use some backup. We as a board, I'm asking to begin working on housing proposals across the county. We're actually watching Athens cities very closely. And so I'm hopeful you're extremely successful because we would like to benefit from some of the same funding sources. that Athens City is going to be with the Welcome Home Ohio program. And so we've done some great work in places like Gloucester, places like Chansey, Nelsonville, but one of the other things the Mayor and I have talked about is I've visited around the state in places like Lucas County, Muskingum County, Zanesville, Chillicothe, where the land bank works extremely closely with its county seat. And so while they're working on things like housing in areas where you can put houses, you're working with your economic engine of the county to say, how can we help get land in the hands of people or organizations or companies so that that economic seat can continue to be the economic engine of that county. It's like the chronic problem of small counties in Ohio. You have typically one strong engine and then dispersed population across the county. And so the land bank can help bridge some of those things. In fact, a lot of those things if we do it really well. And so this is all like really... This is high level discussion and strategy, so I don't come today with a specific project proposal. I hope we do soon, right? But the two things that I really want, I hope, the spokes that get added to the land bank wheel are that we work harder to generate housing in the county, generate economic activity in the county seat, which of course is you guys, you folks. and make those things work together for all of the county to benefit. So thank you. We've got lots going on currently, of course, too. We're applying for the last round of BDSR and teardowns before the state really revolutionizes that program and makes it much harder. So we're hoping to get in that last round. If Athens City has any proposals, we would happily take if the administration ever has any. Please do submit proposals to the executive director. or myself because we would like to include all the properties we could but after that it's where do we go from here and i think a time of transition is the perfect time to say we're really great at these first steps these things that take down places that in some cases in many cases are dangerous to our communities across the county but my hope is is that by working together and all pulling in the same direction we can actually say we took down the dangers and in its wake we left neighborhoods and communities.

Perfect, right at 15 minutes. And we still have an opportunity to hear from the treasurer, or the city auditor, or the city safety service director, as other elected officials. Any comments or questions from any of you? Okay, yes.

I'll just clarify to what Taylor was saying. Last, just to give the numbers, last year in 2025, we did receive property tax from the county of about $1.2 million. But in comparison, our city income tax brings in, last year, almost $18 million. So you can see it's a much lower amount. And then I would add on to that for everybody watching at home, too, to understand that when you look at your property tax bill, that literally only about 4% of that bill comes to the city. That's right. We do not collect all your property taxes. That's been a huge thing over the last few years, that everybody believes the city is taking all their property taxes. We only receive about 4% of that bill when you pay it. So those are just the numbers that you were mentioning. I just wanted to make sure we clarify those.

Yeah, thank you. In Athens school, or at least in most of the district, it's 60% school district. It hangs around 58, 59 in a few corners, but it's around 60. Thank you for having me.

If you could just stay there for one moment, we just want to check for public comment. And then members of council, do we have any members of the public who'd like to ask a question or share a comment about the county treasurer's presentation? All right, seeing none, members of the committee of the whole, any questions or comments? Members, flank.

I want to go back to the land bank. About a month ago, I had the opportunity to spend two hours in the car with Chief Pyle, I mean Director Pyle, former Police Chief Pyle, and we drove all around town. And we saw, shall we say, more than a few places that in my mind, and I don't know that much about the land bank, seem to be land bank properties. Cliff Notes version, if you're that old. What's the process? For in a municipality such as Athens, as opposed to in the county, to start the process to perhaps get rid of that home if it's uninhabitable? Let me stop there. What's the process?

Yeah, and just so I understand, it would be properties currently privately owned. Yes, sir. But they're like, they seem qualified for the land bank process.

Dilapidated, maybe even abandoned.

Yeah. So the easiest process would be coming with the BDSR demolition grant application. Offering or deadline I want to call it so that deadline for that last round is in October So I know the executive director is sending out notice. I believe it's this week to all the jurisdictions for hey Do you have areas that are not on our radar? That should be included in this grant demolition application. The nice thing about this, this is the last round of this, but you can actually work to demolish properties that are still privately owned. So the owner usually does have to sign off on it if they can be found. But we can also go through the process of tax foreclosure to try and get those if they've been long gone. So that program actually offers us two ways to get to demolition. maintaining private ownership and also getting it to the land bank through tax foreclosure. But then the state pays for the demolition in full, 100%. So that's like the hatchet approach, meaning that's like it's coming down because it's that bad. The slower kind of scalpel approach is that it be brought to the board's attention first through myself or to Aaron, the executive director, And we basically start evaluating, okay, if teardown and green space is not the plan, it's kind of like the low-hanging fruit, what is the plan? What do the locals want? What's the neighborhood? Is there a neighborhood strategy? And that's where we start finding, are there funding sources for, say, building a house or a multi... multi-use kind of like housing on top commercial at the bottom or maybe the city has need of a park or parking or something like that there's usually an instigation and then a need expressed and we take the information to start finding okay so how can we get there typically it's through tax foreclosure But not always. Sometimes these property owners, they're out of state. They find out that the locals have started to express interest in this location, and they say, just please take it off my hands. They might be elderly in another state or something, or maybe just don't have the money.

So following chain of command, as we have identified these properties, I would take it we should work through the city administration, and then they take it from there to you. That's usually best. Okay, good.

We usually work closest with mayors, and if they have it, code enforcement. Code enforcement usually is extremely knowledgeable in every detail. And you reminded me, actually, with Director Pyle, I actually misspoke earlier. I said we accomplished the- I half misspoke. I'm going to give myself half credit here. I said we accomplished these tax collections without a single foreclosure in the city. There was a foreclosure. It did not close. It closed after this data was produced a few weeks ago. But it was up on, I'm going to forget the streets, where the rock fell. Yeah, up on where the rock fell. There was an abandoned parcel. It used to be a rental owned by 4FS, out of state investment, I believe. Very behind. Anyway, it sold at share of sale last week to the owners who lost their house, I believe, and they'd like to rebuild there.

Thank you. Do we have any other members of Committee of the Whole? We've moved on from public comment at this point, but if you have something very important.

Where does the county commission come in on this? Aren't they part of the land bank? Aren't they the ones that make the decision on land banks?

The commissioner's office? Yes. So we have two members on the board who are county commissioners by state law. But it is not the commissioner's office directly who makes the decisions.

They're very involved.

Correct. I haven't heard that mentioned at all. Yeah, but the board does have the final authority.

Yeah, but I'm saying there's a lot of input that goes into doing this. You're not the tax department. You're looking for the money more than anything.

Yes. Treasurer Sappington, could you summarize this since we won't be able to hear anything that's not directly in your mic?

Yeah, I'm sorry. The question just was how influential the county commissioners were. They're two members of the board and obviously very influential. I'm the chair, another statutory member. We have the mayor here of Athens and the mayor of Gloucester all serve on the board. But the final authority with the land bank is the board.

Thank you very much. And we thank you for taking the time. I know you brought some handouts. If you wouldn't mind leaving those with us, we'd appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. Thank you. Can I email you guys, Electra? I didn't bring enough. And so I'll leave this for the public, if that's okay. That's fine.

And if you get the Electra to our clerk, that'd be terrific. All right. Thank you, folks. Have a good meeting. Thank you very much. We'll continue to our second topic on the agenda for Committee of the Whole, our Tenko Street Light Update. And this is an opportunity for us to learn what options are being explored regarding our city's street light system, including the possibility of city ownership on street lights currently owned by AEP. And I will turn things over to the Mayor's Administration to provide updates.

Sure. Thank you, President McCary. So something that I think that's key tonight as we prep this video, we talked about doing a Zoom presentation, but rather than try to have a back and forth, we decided on just having a video from Jason Tanko, who is the consultant that we hired a number of months ago to help us with this initiative. And we talked several months ago about this. While Ryan and Scott are teeing this up, we talked several months ago about our initiative to attempt to purchase the streetlights from American Electric Power. American Electric Power, after a couple of requests, have basically said, no, go pound sand. So we're really looking at our other options. And one option that we want to talk about is municipalization of our electric system. This presentation that Jason is going to give to you by video is primarily about that. While the Streetlight Initiative is kind of ancillary to that, it's about municipalization. There are about 80 communities in Ohio—I think he makes reference to it in here—that actually have municipalized electric and basically moving on from having AEP as our electric utility provider in the city of Athens. So with that, if they have that ready to go, we can do that. And then I'll take questions at the end, ones that I can't answer. I'm going to—Jason's watching tonight, so he'll have answers ready and back to you, of course, with it. Great.

Good evening, City Council for the City of Athens, Ohio. My name is Jason Tanko, and I am CEO of Tanko Lighting, and we're going to be presenting tonight. Can we turn the volume up? We can't hear it. Coverage of changes in policy around street light and electric municipalization. So first, a little bit about us, our company. We've been working with you guys for some time. We're in generally, we're a municipal street lighting consultant, but we work just a ton of the utility space. We've worked with 14 municipal utilities across the country, and these are ones where the city is. It's also its own electric utility. But broadly, we've worked with just an enormous amount, 55 investor-owned utilities across These are investor-owned, similar to AEP, which currently serves the city of Athens. And we have numerous projects, over 300 coast-to-coast nationwide. We do this work all over the country. So first off, what is a municipal utility? It's an organization that provides essential everyday services to the public. And that could be a for-profit company. A lot of them are actually municipal. But it is just simply put, these are services and things that we essentially cannot live without. So as it is right now, the city of Athens is well into the utility space. You can read this list here. It includes street lighting as well as even parking, but you guys are very much a municipal utility. In terms of American Electric Power, they provide an electric utility as well as a street lighting utility to the city. So street lighting is shared. Some lights are owned and maintained by the city of Athens, but some lights are owned and maintained by AEP through their street lighting utility. So as it is, there's no franchise agreement with American Electric Power. Their costs are high. They charge a lot for what they have to offer. But AEP really has been tough at times. They've been a little slow and challenging with the Uptown project. And they were also very expensive, just difficult to work with. at times. And these next two points kind of show the reason why. AEP, their focus really is shareholder return. They're paying back those who have invested and making sure that they get their money back through the shares. That's their focus. But for the city of Athens, it's a customer service focus. They just have two different concerns, and it's always better because Athens is just much more focused on happy citizenry. So the city has, and it currently is operating under this municipal code, the authority to municipal corporation may erect, in this case, electric works. Again, you guys are already well inside the utility space, but Ohio State law revised code absolutely provides for what it is that we're discussing tonight. And what's fortunate about what it is that we're discussing is you're in really good company. There are 80 plus municipally owned and operated city electric utilities across Ohio. That's a great sisterhood to turn to in terms of resources and sharing good information back and forth, as well as there's 25 electric cooperatives. So these are not necessarily municipally owned. relate to a single entity but they cover in many cases rural area but it is a non-profit or sometimes called a rural electric uh type of utility and there's actually one uh close by buckeye rural electric co-op is an example of that that's that's nearby the city here So what would this look like for the city of Athens? Nothing much would really change dramatically right off the get-go. We do feel this would be phased in over time. It would likely start with new construction as new developments are going in, new construction, even around commercial, that those meters and those services would start to be turned over to the city to be providing the electric service. The electric grid would be slowly developed and made over time, but likely in, through the development paid for through those developments. So as new construction is going in, that actually pays for the expansion of the electric grid. And another fortunate side of what it is that we're proposing is this is fully outsourced. The city of Athens does not have to get directly into this and have its own electric crews and trucks and equipment. The vision with this is that the city could turn to somebody who's already in the utility space, somebody who's either another electric co-op or potentially another municipal city who could operate the system in its entirety. They would cover all the equipment, the poles, all the material, city of athens could continue to do what it does best which is staying on top of the municipal billing as well as the customer service aspects have everything done by a third party that is responsible to and accountable to the city of athens So one of two recommendations. This is currently under Title V code within the city, which would be to start a new chapter. This would be for electric utility. The idea here is to start with the humble beginning of just a dollar per fixture being charged per month. beginning at some date to be assigned, and this money would start to fund towards future use in the utility. And as new services and as things come in, this would be adjusted, but essentially starting to create a sense of independence away from AEP. And ultimately, we think that this would result in lower costs for those who would be charged and billed through the City of Athens Electric Utility. Second recommendation would be to start a streetlight utility, also through Title V of the public utilities code with the city. This would be 5.09. With this, the model would be to look at total streetlight costs for a calendar year. This would be even lighting that AEP provides and the city, and essentially dividing up those costs among the accounts billed to city residences and businesses. So this would be a beginning of... trying to have more of a direct relationship in terms of what people are paying for and the street lighting. And this has the hidden, or I should say the benefit of, this is now we're going to be removing the lighting, which is currently on the general fund. We'll move it into a centralized phone account. So that is the presentation for tonight. If there are any questions, Andy will be available and will be forwarding any of those to us. I really appreciate your time and have a great night. Thank you.

Opportunities for comments from the public and then we'll come back to committee the whole anything from you director stone Hey, I think Jason sums it up pretty well I mean the key thing here is we really want to look look hard at municipalization of our electric system and that's not something that you can just Not to make a bad pun, flip a switch and turn it on, but we would probably have to do it in pieces. We'd have to say, okay, this area of the city, we're going to go and turn over and have a municipal electric provision for transmission or for distribution, ultimately. This area of the city, we're going to do next. Oftentimes, you try to start with new developments and you just say, sorry, AP, you're not going to provide service here because we have a municipal system. And then we would gradually switch over. So really, that's what we want to look at right now. Like I mentioned earlier, the AAP wasn't interested in selling their streetlight system to us. And so this is really the next step in our effort to try to provide better and safer and better value services to our citizens.

Let me check for any clarifying questions before we move.

I'm curious, Director Stone, what would be the relationship if we did this with our SOPEC electric aggregation?

Yeah, thank you for the question, Member Klapfelter. It's important to note that SOPEC does aggregating for generation. So I am not proposing, nor is Jason proposing, that Athens generate its own electricity. And then create a build a power plant here. It's not on the table, right? So you still have to buy electricity that's being generated somewhere in fact AEP, Ohio Buys energy from the market And then transmits it and distributes it to to us. So so yeah, it would it's a completely separate endeavor Thank you for that point of clarification another particular.

Yeah, that's a great great point You beat me to it there Distribution and transmission, that part of the bill is what we're talking about taking over here. Correct. And not holding you any figures, but right now distribution and transmission is X. If we were to do this over time. X minus what?

You have to look at everybody's individual utility bill, and unfortunately it fluctuates based on how much you use. I think we had a discussion actually by email, you and I, member Swank, related to the wastewater plant and how it will fluctuate from month to month, how much percentage goes to transmission and distribution. But I think it's safe to say 50% of your bill is for transmission and distribution.

Oh, yeah. I guess what I was getting at, let's say you're using 1,000 kilowatts a month, which is pretty much average. Okay. And right now it's costing you $50, just for sake of example. I'm not saying it is, but it's $50. If we were to do something like this, what could the citizens expect? It might fall to $45, $43, $40 free. No, no, no.

It wouldn't be free.

That's what our guys advertise down at Pike County, free electric.

So, you know, right now, I think the negotiated rate for transmission—I'm sorry, for generation that SOPEC has through July of next year is—I think it's July of next year or July of 28. I have to go back and look. It's roughly $0.09 or $0.089 per kilowatt hour. And then I think you got another about that much in transmission and distribution on I would say that second half of the bill, so back to your $50 example, if you've got a $50 electric bill and half of it's going to generation and half of it's going to transmission and distribution, that $25 half, you probably, you know, I would think we could get down, you know, since we don't have a profit that we're attempting to take, I think we could get down to, you know, $20, you know, $15. So cut it 20 to, probably 20 to 30%. We're with elected officials right now.

Mayor Patterson.

I just want to add to that, because it did come up in the slide deck that you saw, is that, you know, starting with new construction. You know, with the eight new homes that will be at the end of Hudson Street, with the, we're getting closer and closer with the ridges redevelopment. You know, the ridges could be looped into that if it truly does come to fruition to where it's, 700 units up there, or whatever the number of units are. Having something like that, it's possible that we could actually even go back and look at Wood's Edge, but that project might be too far along to consider that one. But there will be new builds up there as well, to where if this were to go into place, every one of these newer developments or redevelopments that are going to have electric sold to those. That's on the one side, but it's the transmission side. Your question is great, Council Member Swank, because I've been thinking about that too. Since half the cost of your electric bill is the transmission distribution, and we were to take over something like this, you're going to see, I think, a decent reduction. There's certainly going to be a reduction, a C reduction, in what that electric bill looks like on the municipal utility.

And what you would do is you'd start small, right? So a very good example right now is at the West 8th Street Park and the West 8th Street complex that the city has down there. So the water treatment plants, the service garage, street garage and the bus garage and then all the electricity at the park. The city currently purchases that electricity high voltage, so it's what's called primary metered. The city pays a lower rate to American Electric Power because we're not paying for those distribution charges down there, nor are we paying for the maintenance of the transformer that drops the high voltage electricity because the city owns the transformer for that. That would probably be a pretty good model for another one of these locations, like say, for instance, the new community authority in the ridges. We buy the high voltage electricity and then the city or the municipal utility, whoever it is, if we were to outsource that, would then own the transformer and the distribution lines to move the electric there. So it would be kind of a hybrid situation. Not like, for instance, what Gloucester does, right? Gloucester is the nearest community to us that has a municipal system. Gloucester buys their electricity at the village limit, and then they manage the transformers in the city and then the distribution system and the metering in the city, or in the village, rather.

I'll check for clarifying questions.

Okay.

If we were to do this, what impact would it have on the city's workforce?

I would not want to grow our workforce for this. I would want to find somebody who can run it, basically, and run it not for profit, basically. So a cooperative or a nonprofit company. There are companies out there that do this. I don't think we want to grow the workforce because I don't know that we want to get into the business of, you know, we've got some very gifted electrical workers, but they're not high-tension linemen.

We're on elected officials. Do we have anything from the treasurer or auditor on this? And members of the public, if anyone would like to speak on this topic, this informational topic, please approach the podium. You can introduce yourself, let us know your name, and if you're representing an organization or just yourself and your address, and then you'll have three minutes.

Hi, I'm Rob Delich. I live on Morris Avenue here in the city, and I'm just representing myself. Couple comments first. When I moved here from Virginia, Northern Virginia, back there I was in an electric cooperative and it was a non-profit. And we still get rebate, money back from that cooperative over ten years later, about ten years later. So we were there for 20 years and established ourselves. And because it was a non-profit, if there was excess money at the end of the year, they wrote checks to all their customers. And so we'd often get like a $75 check at the end of the year. So in other words, I've had a really good experience in a very expensive market in Northern Virginia, and I think that this kind of approach could be good for Athens and seems to make sense from my experience. The other thing I was clarifying, or would like clarification about, is the street light utility. It sounds like the proposal now is to have a utility fee that would be just for the currently city-owned street lamps and not the EEP ones. Is that the situation? I didn't get that detail in the presentation.

Is that a question you can respond to Director Stone at this point?

Could you repeat the question? So the question is, the street light utility proposed idea that was on the slides and talked about by Tanko. Is that now just covering the cost of the city's street lamps that they already own and not any AEP since AEP has said they won't sell them at this point? That would just be a more limited street light utility? Is that the approach that's currently being considered? I can speak to that. It could be.

It could be. This is just a rehash of Mr. Tanko's recommendation that we made earlier and that we talked about earlier when we employed them, which ultimately was to try to shift costs away from the general fund to a street light utility. There are some benefits to doing that and that it takes pressure off the general fund, number one. Number two, it's a distinct cost that we know how much it is, the electricity that we pay for to American Electric Power. It could be for all of it. I think it's roughly $160,000 a year right now. I had to go back and validate that, but it could be for just the city-owned portion, which is about a third of those lights. One of the major benefits, I think, and I think we talked about this when we talked about it earlier, is right now there's about 130 utility counts that Ohio University pays, and they would be paying for those streetlights. We get a lot of lighting requests from Ohio University, so I think that's not a, whereas right now, the general fund is what's paying for that. But it would be another utility cost that are on folks bills, so that's a consideration certainly.

Thank you for that question. Anything else, Mr. Lake? That will do, thank you. All right, any other members of the public who'd like to ask a question or share a comment on this agenda topic? We'll close public input and move back to Committee of the Whole. If we have any council members who'd like to share any questions or comments, Member Wood?

Yeah, uh, 1, I think this is a great idea. Uh. We've seen the effects of privatization of of public goods, uh, play out across the country and they've been, um. As as noted a, uh, higher cost and lower return, um, that slides mentioned the, uh, issues of town and those things. So I'm, I'm hugely in favor of, um. Taking ownership of our public goods, I think that's a great move across the board. I think I would actually prefer it be internal as opposed to outsourced because another good union job in Athens would be a net positive. Good jobs are hard to come by and it'd be great to have another one here, but can't have everything. My question was kind of piggybacking on what Beth said. Will this negatively affect the other programs we have with AEP around the solar panels? Solar's on the mind because I sent you the email this morning asking about how we fund that. Could that change that relationship with AEP at all? Or are we... rock solid on that, and that would not be shaken.

Thank you for the question, everyone. I think it's important to draw the distinction between AEP Ohio and AEP Energy. Those are two different companies. When you look at your utility bill, the aggregated electric purchase that SOPAC has negotiated for us happens to be with AEP Energy. It possibly could be with a different supplier in the future, but in recent times, that has been the entity that we've bought, and because we have an entirely—in Athens, if you subscribe or if you choose and you don't opt out and you get your electricity through that aggregation process, we have an entirely green product, and so you get your thing once a year that says— You know, this is where it's sourced from wind power wherever but that's a different company than AEP, Ohio And so what we're talking about in this case would be taking away or we're moving away from The AEP Ohio as the transmission and distribution or at least the distribution provider in a portion of the city With the goal eventually of getting to the entire city, but obviously that would be on down on the road Hopefully that answer your question. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. I also wanted to say really really quickly. This is one of the things we heard about. City planner Megan Jennings, who we're going to hear from later, held a community listening session at Highland Park in my neighborhood. And it was one of those things that people brought up, wanting the streetlights to be fixed or repaired. And it's one of the things that people think we own that we don't necessarily. And so, yeah, again, I just think this is a great idea. Thank you for bringing it. Thank you for doing it.

Other members of the Committee of the Whole, questions or comments on the presentation? Member Swank.

Yeah, several things here. The current SOPAC rate is 11.262 for the City of Athens. That said, will people who have opted out of that still be able to shop on the open market with this system? Yes. Okay, good, good. Second question, and this is the big one for me. I live over on Townsend, and the utilities on the far east side run behind the houses. They don't run on the street. Consequently, that area is known as Squirrel Alley. Squirrels and the pop, and you're without electricity. Right now, AEP, and I'm not sitting up here advocating for AEP, but right now AEP has a rather robust repair crew. So when things like that happen, generally those things, at least in residential, if it's not a big storm, are fixed within an hour, hour and a half. If we were to go to something like this and we don't have the maintenance staff inside, What are we looking at? A day, a two-day? With so many people working remote today, when the lights go out, they don't care if the light's out in their kitchen. They don't care if the light's out in their bathroom. But they do care about it if they don't have electricity to run their Internet. And that can be crippling. So in terms of maintenance of this, you talk about we may outsource it. Who would we outsource it to and what kind of response could we look forward to to fix the problems?

I'd like to give you an answer, but I don't have one because we've not gotten to that level of detail yet. If I walk out of here today and the sense that I got from this body was this is a terrible idea, we don't even want to consider it, then we wouldn't do that additional resource. But this idea isn't all the way developed yet. But, you know, not unlike what we expect when we have a water outage, like our guys don't go home until the water's back on. You know, there would be a similar response or expectation of whoever it was that was doing that maintenance should we have a municipal system.

Okay. And the last thing is we're talking about two different issues here. I don't want to speak for my fellow council members, but I'm very, very comfortable with the first one because we can see a reduction in our electric bill, and if we can be assured of reliable maintenance, that's great. Could we separate the two, though, if these both required ordinances that we could do our own electric and then talk about the streetlight funds in another ordinance? Yes.

Okay.

Member Stizer.

You might not have an answer to this question at this point, but do you have any idea of what the timeline might be if we decide to move forward with this? Like when the first sort of switchover would be, and you know it's kind of phased, but do you have any idea?

No, I don't. We'd have to have utility, right, established, even if it had nothing to do, right? But you'd have to pass an ordinance that says we are creating this electric utility, and then... I would say, you know, the first attempt or the first effort to do this would be on a new development somewhere. We'd have to decide which one, you know, certainly something from, you know, as opposed to a redevelopment in a portion of the city where there's already owned distribution lines and that sort of thing in that area. That might not be the right spot. Probably like a blank slate location in the city would be the best place. And there's a few of those around, you know, that we'd like to see some development occur. And that probably would be when we would start it. So it's hard to say definitively on this date, but that would be the strategy that I would incorporate if we didn't.

Thank you.

Do we have any other questions or comments from members of the Committee of the Whole on this topic at this time? Checking then with administration as far as process, it's my understanding that this would typically be under city and safety services, but we're discussing as committee of the whole tonight for the sake of information sharing and having our guests' presentation. But we don't at this time have pending legislation, so at this point, would you just be planning on updating us as to whether the administration is interested in moving forward with this? And do you need any action from us tonight?

No action needed tonight.

All right. We'll conclude Committee of the Whole at 8.05 p.m. Thanks, everyone. We'll now move on to our Planning and Development Committee, if I'm not mistaken.

Yep, we're first up. We have four of them tonight. And for this first part, I would ask if all members of council would stay at the dais. We're going to have a presentation by Planner Jennings. Looks like from the big screen here, it'd be a better view from up here than looking from behind. So without further ado, what we're going to talk about first is neighborhood corridor overlay zone, a recommendation from the Planning Commission. And I'm about to call you director. Planner Janice. I also call her former neighbor. He used to live right next door. Megan, the floor is all yours. Go ahead, please.

Thank you. So again, my name's Megan Jennings. I'm the Athens City Planner. Been here for just two and a half years. As you can hear, I'm starting to lose my voice, so I apologize for not really being able to project this evening, so I hope you can hear me okay.

If you would just tilt the mic just a little closer to you, you'll be great. Thanks.

Is that better? Yes. Okay, thank you. So because I'm losing my voice, I'll try to keep this presentation short. But first, because of the voice issue, I'm just going to review kind of the... overarching goals and general information in order to allow time for more questions. So the neighborhood corridor overlay zone was a project that the planning department started last year in 2025. We held our first public meeting at the new fire station headquarters in February of 2025. worked through the year with our consultants to process all of the public input that we received and then came back in the fall with a proposed draft language and then had another public open house for that review. So the Planning Commission approved the language that's before you today back in January of this year. And so I'm thankful that it's moving forward in front of this body now. So first, I wanted to kind of give a visionary statement for what we were dreaming of for this overlay zone. We wanted to acknowledge that our Neighborhoods are unique and deserve development that enhances their character, promotes local services, and then also improves walkability. And so our goal with this neighborhood corridor overlay zone is that it will create distinct neighborhood districts which provide walkable amenities like shopping, dining, social opportunities, as well as recreational and entertainment uses. while also prioritizing pedestrian-oriented development and multimodal mobility. First, what is a neighborhood corridor? They simply connect surrounding neighborhoods and they serve as centers for small businesses, offices, restaurants, public spaces, and generally they do kind of connect our neighborhoods not just to the commercial corridors but also to other neighborhoods. Next question is, what is an overlay zone? Athens actually has two existing overlay zones. Our two existing ones are the wellhead protection area, and the uptown historic district. The overlay zones are, they float above the base zoning districts and they establish additional standards in order to meet specific community goals. And overlay zones do not remove or replace the underlying zoning districts. So for example, with the wellhead protection area as an overlay zone, It limits types of land uses that can threaten our water source here in Athens and the uptown historic district provides a little bit more guidance or establishes higher standards for development in our uptown area in order to preserve its character and history. Generally, overlay zones are created to protect community amenities and add those additional standards in order to meet community goals. So what could this look like here in Athens? The neighborhood corridor overlay zone prioritizes characteristics of Athens that we know and we love. Walkable, small and local businesses. that is our main goal for this overlay zone. And why is it right for Athens? Pedestrian-oriented development is really key to the success of our neighborhoods and our community, and they enhance and revitalize, I think, and there's a great opportunity for that here in Athens with our existing commercial corridors. So how did we get here? What was our process? We did host community input. I alluded to it earlier. In the beginning of 2025, we hosted and kick off public open house and we also hosted stakeholder sessions where we met with 10 different organizations or individuals that currently operate or have operated in this type of neighborhood corridor format. And we also pushed out a community survey online and had paper copies, I believe, at our public open house. I kind of summarized the process before. Once we got a draft of the language together, we did host a second public open house. for the public to review what we were proposing and give us feedback. And then all of that public input that we collected, we compiled into a public engagement summary report, which we made available online and also presented to the Planning Commission in September of last year. And that report summarizes the major themes and topics that the community shared with us would be their goals for their neighborhood corridors. And on this slide, I also wanted to mention the Stimson Avenue corridor plan. This was a document that was done back in 2023. The Stimson Avenue corridor plan originally recommended a custom overlay zone specifically for Stimson Avenue. The plan itself derived the recommendations based on an economic analysis of both development and land use opportunities and standards along Stimson Avenue. We did not do a copy paste of what the Stimson Avenue corridor plan recommended. Instead, we took inspiration from that plan. And we saw a need to include similar types of neighborhood scale walkable commercial corridors all around town. And so we transformed that into what we're presenting today, the neighborhood corridor overlay zone. In total, through our public input efforts, we collected a total of around 425 total comments which are available. We have a summary report which goes through the major themes, but we do also have a published data report which is the huge Excel sheet of every single comment and how we categorized it. That's also available online if you're interested. But the major themes that we heard from the public was massive support for small and local businesses, and especially trying to find more opportunities for those businesses to find a home in Athens. We also heard from the public that they really would like to see an improvement in sidewalks and also increase general coverage as well as just general width to address some comfort concerns with sidewalks. And the public also shared a desire to have comfortable, useful public spaces incorporated into our commercial corridors. creating places for them to gather and kind of create community along those corridors. So how did we take what we heard and assemble it into the language you have today? First, I did want to address that we're doing this kind of in a two-phased approach. Phase one, which is what we're doing now, is focusing on just approving the language. And while phase two will be looking at approving the boundaries for where these overlay zones can occur in Athens. Excuse me. Upon approval of phase one or the language that's before you today, we will then move forward with phase two and we'll host public open houses in order to review proposed boundaries future neighborhood corridor overlay zones. These next two slides kind of generalize some key parts of the proposed language. First, the language that we proposed will ensure that neighborhood compatible commercial land uses are allowed in the overlay zone areas. It will also prioritize mixed use buildings, which just means ground floor commercial with residential uses up above if residential or mixed use building is developed. And then we also made sure the language addresses pedestrian oriented design by addressing concerns about accessibility and comfort. Building orientation and how that creates an environment for a pedestrian as well as vehicular use area regulations. Basically any part of a site where a vehicle can drive these The language includes some requirements for where that can be located in order to ensure a safe pedestrian environment. We also heard from the community that reducing some vehicle parking would be helpful for the redevelopment of maybe some of our existing sites on these commercial corridors. And also we heard a desire for better bicycle parking. to address some of the multimodal mobility concerns on our neighborhood corridors. The proposed language also includes pedestrian-oriented building design specific language. For example, requiring ground floor large windows, enhancing a front entry so that as a pedestrian you know where the front of a business is, Also, reducing long blank walls, which are kind of barriers for a pedestrian on commercial corridors. And we also found a way to incentivize projections or canopies and balconies along these corridors, which help create a more welcoming environment for a pedestrian as well. Also included in our language, we are encouraging outdoor dining and We do have a requirement for open space for very large developments. Any development that's over 10,000 square feet would have required open space. And so that that doesn't just end up being a patch of grass that's just mowed. We also have requirements for amenities to be provided in order to make sure that that open space is useful and comfortable for pedestrians. I do have, because I know this is all new language, so the way that it's formatted is just all capital red letters in bold. I do have extra copies of the language that's black text and also sentence case, if that would be helpful for visually understanding what the proposed language is. I do have extra copies of that version of the proposed language. This last slide is just a boiled down timeline. I kind of touched on it throughout the presentation, but I did want to include a specific slide at the end of my presentation. At this time, I'd be happy to answer any questions you all have about the language. Yes.

So even though this is a committee meeting of just four people, much like we did with Treasurer Sappington, certainly entertain any questions from any members of council since we're all sitting up here also in recognition of the time and effort you put into this, not to mention having to work through the voice thing. So thank you for that. But any members of councils? Remember what I think your hand was up?

Yeah, what I wrote to Alan there. I don't think we've seen the proposed language.

The only people who have seen the original proposed language were the four members of the committee. We send that out, but she has copies. Megan, could you also send that to Clerk Walker in electronic form and she can distribute to all members of council? Because this is a potentially big undertaking for the city of Athens, even though it's coming through planning and development. This involves potentially the whole city, so I think everyone needs to be up to date on what is being proposed here.

Sounds good. I'm sorry, Council Member Wood. I do have a copy of the Planning Commission approved language on the city website. If you are curious tonight and don't want to wait for my email tomorrow.

Another question?

I just wanted to also say thank you for the really thorough presentation. I think this is a vital project and as well obviously shepherding it for over a year and 18 months is an awesome undertaking. So yeah, thank you.

Okay, let's just work our way down. Beth, go ahead please.

Yeah, I would also like to thank you for your hard work on this, Megan. And I really like some of the priorities that have been identified, making places walkable and friendly to pedestrians and having more small businesses. I mean, all of that sounds fantastic. And I really like the thing you said maybe most recently about requiring open space if some big entity is going to come in, so that there's still something we would have in common, even if there's some big business. I'm just curious if it would make sense to just try to add one more goal to make things more energy efficient as this is happening, because we certainly need that. We're already, according to Mayor Patterson, we're already the most energy efficient city in the state, but we still have room for improvement. And if it would be possible to piggyback that goal on these excellent goals you've identified, that would be another win.

Member Thomas?

Yeah, I was just going to comment that having watched this process that a reminder just that these overlay zones, this language is fairly broad and encompassing so that it doesn't have to be constantly amended. But that these would only be applied where the boundaries are found of overlays and not city wide. So these are very specific and will be very intentional about where they're chosen to be used. That's correct. And I appreciate all your work too. I've been following.

Yeah, to that point, in terms of ordinances, this moves forward, we would pass an ordinance establishing an overlay zone. And then phase two, as Megan mentioned, would be looking at specific spots.

Yeah, I was just going to add, I think this is, It has been such a well thought out process with a lot of public involvement. And it's great to get this language out to people and to have you here tonight to talk about it. I do think that one of the things that we do want to see more development in the city. and focus on local small businesses is the way to do that. I think that's the kind of community we want here in Athens. And I think when the members of the community, if they go to the website and they look at the proposed language, they'll see that it's been very well thought out, the nature of the kind of development based on community feedback. And again, just to reiterate, I think that the process by doing this, by getting this language in place, First, without thinking, so if you live in the Stimson area or you live in a number of the different potential corridors that we would have in the city, read through this and imagine what this might mean for development in that community. It's not specifically tied to any of those, but I can imagine how it would apply in a number of different places. And I think this is a very, very effective approach to amending and altering our code to deliver more effective um uh development in the way that we would like to see it happen and thanks for coming tonight and your voice held up it was great hey if you uh put my patterson first yes please um to to counselor claudia's point um this type of an overlay

Mayor Patterson, can you move a little closer to your mic, please?

This type of an overlay Or these overlays in the city of Athens basically are creating you know 10-minute neighborhoods to where people can literally walk to the amenities that they are in need of. Uh, the other thing is, and to your point about, we're not the most energy efficient. We are, we have the lowest carbon emissions, you know, close, um, in the state of Ohio, um, and among the lowest in the nation, but that's because of making things more walkable, you know? So again, this augments that if we can get below five metric tons, you know, per capita, um, which is what we're at right now is 5.2, I believe, you know, um, it would, Something like this would go a long way with rethinking these overlays and the neighborhood walkability of a corridor such as Stimson Avenue or, I don't know, Central Avenue on the west side. There's a lot that we can do, you know, because I've heard a lot of people interested in seeing a place like, say, Frank's Bait Shop turning back into a sundry again to make it a walkable neighborhood. Siemens isn't that far away, but it's not as close as something like Frank's Bait Shop. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for these overlay zones and doing it smartly to where we do become a much more neighborhood-centric in some ways because people don't have to drive all the way across town to get some of the things they need. They can find things more local. It would certainly encourage development to create storefronts and shops in places that used to exist and they don't anymore, and I'd like to see them come back.

I'm curious, as either you, Planner Jennings, or Mayor Patterson think about this, would you anticipate that we will try to make one of these happen at a time, or we'll approve this and then there could be several happening all at once?

I think that we're going to have to start planning as phase two is finding out, okay, what are the boundaries for said area? Stimson Avenue has been explored a lot under this concept. I think that that could certainly... be explored first, but I also think we can look at multiple sites at the same time. I don't think there's anything that prohibits. I don't think we have to prove something in one area to then go ahead and, okay, well, now we've proven it here. We can do it over here. I also think that the new community authority is going to be exactly that. It'll have interesting amenities within the Kirkbride building that currently don't exist, aside from housing. I mean, there can be shops inside the Kirkbride building at the end of the day. Okay.

Yes, yes, yes director stone. This is just a dovetail a little bit on on you know, the approach that the planner has taken and really the planning commission has taken with this. And so I've learned, since I've been in this role of service agency director, I've learned a ton about zoning that I really didn't appreciate before. And, you know, what zoning is, is a city's ability to regulate how people live or a community. It doesn't have to be a city. It can be a township if you're in other parts of the state. How a... how people live closely together and function together, right? That's what zoning is. So you can do this stuff here, you can do this stuff here, you can do this stuff here. When you change your zoning to achieve certain goals, it's got to be a combination of carrots and sticks. Historically, Athens has taken the stick approach. which has said, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this. If you do this, you have to give us this and this and this and this on top of it, right? And so what ends up happening is people go, ah, I can't build anything in Athens. And so what she's done, as we've looked at this and we've heard from the public, we said, we want development... that looks this way and serves these purposes and actually have relaxed a couple of the underlying zone requirements in order to achieve the goals of what we're getting. So that's the carrot side. while at the same time the stick side is, hey, you've got to build this too if you're going to build in this area. And so zoning is a whole exercise in thinking about what you want in combined with what the market will bear in a particular area. We all say we want little quaint shops, and then we buy all our stuff on Amazon and have it come straight to our house. And don't go to the quaint shops to buy anything. And so the key is, how do you anticipate the future, anticipate you know, what people will actually go to and what we think we want, and then how can you create conditions to try to get to that. And, you know, a tremendous amount of effort between her and then the members of the public that participated in this to try to get to that for this effort. And then we'll slap it on a couple places in the city, and we'll see what comes out ultimately in the future. So thank you for allowing me the opportunity to talk about zoning in that regard.

Any members of the public before we come back to council?

Rob Delich, I live on Morris Avenue here in the city, just speaking for myself. I really just want to commend the city and the city administration on their efforts on this. There was a lot of great input with some of those meetings. What I see is that a lot of what's in this corridor overlay zone are things that were in the comprehensive plan already. It's taking what was already said we should be doing and doing it. It's a big step in the right direction. We're working on a new comp plan and updating it, but the old comp plan had a lot of good things in it that really haven't been implemented. This takes a lot of those ideas and does something with them. Making things better for small businesses is a great idea, more pedestrian-oriented like Uptown is and trying to continue that idea throughout the city and other places. is a great idea too, so I just want to commend the city for that and endorse this effort. And encourage to see when we can start applying it around the city too, so thanks. Okay, thank you.

Any other members of the public? Just to share your name and address and- Lynn DeBelljack, I live on Morris Avenue.

I've been here since 1964. I remember when the police chief lived on Oak Street. The major problem in this town are vehicles. When I came here in 64, nobody brought a car. In order to live in outside housing, you had to be married or in the military. So cars, I haven't heard the word university mentioned. But the university has basically taken over the town. They can't tell people not to bring their cars. So until you solve the car problem, all this has kind of been going on for 20 years. When my dad came down here in 1967, I had a house on East State Street. My dad was on the front porch, and he said, I came out, he says, is there a muffler shop in this town? I said, on Court Street. Cars going on Court Street 50 miles an hour. It's so noisy up there that you can't even really concentrate. Plus, big trucks come into town. So my point being that all this has been going on for a long time. Now, my idea, since it's coal mining, Athens is on the top of the hill. My idea was to get the miners to tunnel under the city. And park all the cars underneath, and then you go up into like Tony's. But the point is, you're talking pedestrian. And until you really get a hold of the vehicle problem, this is all, it's the big problem. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other members of the public this evening? Back to the members of the committee now. Yes.

I just want to go over what Rob said. As we are going to start working on the new comprehensive plan, I feel like this is, looking at zoning for the next 30 years and saying, what do we want development to be in the city? How do we want businesses and communities to live together? And how do we want to see that development happen in an intentional way that is not just based on an outside idea or because a big entity or corporation has come in and they're going to provide jobs and we're supporting that. This is what the community have told us they want the community to look like for the next 25, 30 years. And so we're now looking at this ordinance, we're putting that in place, and obviously the next stage will be where do we do that? And so I think this is a really, really smart way to go about that.

Any other members of the committee? Just to echo what Director Stone said, he used the A word, Amazon. Yes, we have heard loud and clear that this is what the public wants. But there are two factors here. What the market will provide businesses and what the market consumers will support. Athens is a very small town. You've heard me say this before. 141 kids in one of our upcoming graduating classes at Athens High School. 141. We want this, but we're going to have to support it. And that means more than once a year. So next steps, because this is a zoning change, we will need to have a public hearing. We need to give 30 days notice for that. 30 days from today, the next meeting up would be October the 19th. October the 19th. Today's the 14th. Yeah, October 19th is a regular scheduled meeting. We have public hearings on the 1st and 3rd by our rules, so we would have that public hearing on the 19th. That would give us plenty of time then if we need to have any further discussion and go through the three-reading process and wrap this up before Christmas break. So, that said, before we let you go, anything else you would like to say, Leonard Jennings?

One thing about the vehicle conversation is our current style of commercial development kind of requires you to have a car in order to get to the majority of our commercial uses. And so the goal of this overlay zone is to bring commercial uses closer to the neighborhood so that we can reduce our vehicle trips per capita and have closer access to commercial uses. Other than that, I'll also say, excuse me, I'll leave my paper copies here for anyone in the public or, of course, any member of council who would like a paper copy over a digital one. I'll just set them here with Taylor Sappington's report as well.

Great, well thank you for coming tonight, and you certainly don't have to stay through the rest of the meeting if you'd like to go home.

I'll check in.

But you're welcome to. Yeah, I'll stay. Okay, so members of the, yes.

Can I ask Planner Jennings one more question? Yeah, please. You can stand it with your voice, Megan. You're already taking on a big endeavor with the next comprehensive plan. How are you going to do both of these?

Thankfully, this one, I've already got a year and a half under my belt, and we're in the end. So the comp plan, thankfully, is the next year and a half. And so it's just, I'm managing other projects as well, the Welcome Home Ohio project, the city's ADA transition plan. It's my job. Okay, thank you.

So the four members of the committee, do I hear objection to scheduling the public required public hearing on October the 19th? Hearing none, Clerk Walker, if you could file that with the paper of general circulation, we'll be good to go. And folks who aren't members of the committee, you can adjourn to the audience and we'll finish these next three topics. Okay, the next one. We've been talking about this for some time, and that is the annexation of the Children's Services property off of East State Street, off of Utah. Ryan, if you could, would you pop up the slide, please? This, too, came through the Planning Commission. Mayor Patterson and Director Stone are both members of that commission. What you're looking at there is 33, the yellow road, 33, leaving East State Street, headed towards the plains. To the left would be... The near east side and to the right would be the far east side. What is red in color is zoned B3, business three. And what is yellow in color is zoned R1. The segment just to the right of East of 33 is the area in question, what we're talking about this evening. That property currently resides, belongs to the county. That is county property, which we are annexing into the city. The southern part, the red, is B3. That's Children's Services part. And we thought, or the Planning Commission thought, I'm sorry, the Planning Commission thought that the upper half should be zoned R1, which would be consistent with all of the property just to the right of that and then to the southeast of that. All of that is the far east side. There are nine streets that run north and south there. Right now, in that new proposed R1 area, it's just land. There are no homes or anything like that. But it is a possible place for future expansion of residents in the city of Athens. So the recommendation before us this evening is to do the bottom part, B3, where Children's Services is located, bringing that into the city. Roughly 100 employees who, starting January 1st, will be sending their income tax money to our treasurer and auditor. And then the top part being R1 for future and potential development. Director Stone, anything that I've left out or Mayor Patterson that you'd like to add to that?

No, you summed it up really well.

Members of the community. Members of the committee.

This is a former resident of the Far East side, and I know that little R1 plot because I've hiked there. This makes sense.

Okay, do I hear any objection to bringing this forth for first? We have the language, yes, for first reading at the next regular scheduled meeting of council. Hearing none, we'll put that on the agenda. Okay, the next item, Welcome Home Ohio, project 382. We've all been talking about this for some time, and most people that I've talked to, if not all people, are very excited about it. What we have before us tonight is a proposal for a TIF, which would be a 75% over 10-year TIF. Essentially, the money collected from this would be about $350,000 over the 10 years. and that money will then be used to help pay for the water line that we'll need to put in. On Hudson Avenue now, we have a two-inch water line. That's about it. And I think Director Stone said it best, and I hope I'm paraphrasing him correctly, that he could not with a clear conscience put in eight new homes without sufficient fire protection. And I would agree with that 100%. This will allow us to replace that two-inch line with a line we will be able to provide fire protection, not only for those eight new homes, but all of those people in that block of Hudson. Right now, I think we're running out. If we have a fire, we have to run hoses from Lincoln, and it's a long way from Lincoln down to the end of Hudson. So the proposal is to declare this a TIF. Again, 10 years, 75% of the property tax. The people in those houses will still pay what they would pay in property taxes. It's just that the money, 75% of it, would go into this fund as opposed to all of those entities that collect property tax. Joint Vocational School, Athens City Schools, and Taylor could tell us who the other ones were. Mayor Patterson.

I'm glad you brought that up, Council Member Swank, because if you think about it, There is no property tax revenue being generated by 93 Hudson, which is the space that the city owned. And then with the addition of the American Red Cross land to make this a suitable site for building eight new homes. The other thing to keep in mind, that remaining 25%, as you indicated, that's going to be distributed out to all the other entities, the school district, others that will receive that remaining 25. That remaining 25 is going to be more than it is right now anyway. It's going to be more than the fact that there is no property tax coming from those parcels. So it'll be win-win for everybody at the end of the day, for us with being able to increase that infrastructure that you indicated. There was a structure fire down on Hudson a long time ago to where they did have to drag hoses all the way from Lincoln to get to that particular house. So there will be a fire hydrant down there with this project at the end of Hudson. So that'll certainly be an improvement from what currently exists. But this will really augment and make this project so much more workable for everybody at the end of the day.

Since this is a matter that's going to involve money, Mr. Auditor, Mr. Treasurer, anything you'd like to add?

No, straightforward.

Okay, members of the community? Members of the committee?

I just want to make sure that people are aware that this isn't changing the property tax that people are on those properties with paying. This is just a smart way to, in order for the city to redirect some of those funds to recuperate the benefit that those properties are getting from the work that the city's doing. So it's not, they're not getting a better deal, they're not getting a worse deal. Their taxes will be the same based on the property valuation of their house. It's just a smart way to be able to finance. This important improvement that not only adds to the public safety of their properties, but also of that whole broader community. And just like if people are watching this and make sure there's not a misconception that they're getting a great deal or they're paying more or they're paying less. That's not changing that at all. It's just a way in which we're going to use those tax revenues.

Yeah, I think your word redirect was spot on there. One request I would have, even though they don't have to vote on this or anything, last week Superintendent of City Schools Chad Springer was here and one of the things we were talking about is civility. But assuming that we move this forward tonight, I would make the request that the administration contact the superintendent and or treasurer of the Athens City Schools to make sure they're aware of this and any comment they may have on that.

That is a requirement of this type of TIF. Right. You're absolutely right. Okay. And I will personally reach out to... Superintendent Springer.

Yeah. Well, he was here and talked about civilian. That'd be a civil thing to do. So, thank you very much. So, do I hear any objection to moving this forward for first reading? Let me ask Director Stone, will we have language by next week?

We might not. Okay. Because it's complicated legislation. If you remember back to the Woods Edge legislation, it's just necessarily complicated. And so, it's taking a little while to draft. That might not be ready next week. Hopefully, we can get it as quickly as possible. Okay.

So do I hear any objection to bringing this forward at the first available time? meeting that we have the language. Okay, very good. We'll put that in limbo until we hear the legal part of it. All right, last item on the thing. Comprehensive Plan Review Advisory Commission. This is in our city code. We need to appoint some people today. What the code says is that the committee needs to be convened. It's made up of three citizens of the city of Athens, which council appoints, It's also made up of a business person. Also involves, and most of these are designated, two people from the neighborhood associations. At this point in time, the two organized ones are the, although... There are some others that are starting to meet. The Westside Neighborhood Association and the Far Eastside Neighborhood Association. Also, OU needs to designate an individual. City Council needs to designate an individual. The county planner and the city planner, by virtue of their position, are on it. And then there's one other one, an appointee of the mayor or the mayor if he chooses to attend the meetings. So, three names that we're looking at tonight are from the—what we don't have represented right now is the Near East Side, the South Side, and the Near North Side. The Near North Side, the name of the individual applied is Natalie Hunter, Natalie Hunter Whitman. Many of you may know her. Her sister serves on the committee with Rob, the pedestrian committee. Natalie's Athens native, Athens high grad, went away to college, Emory, and has come back and chosen to make this her home. And she works for Ohio University. On the south side, Erin Leatherwood has expressed interest in this. Many of you remember Erin from the conversations that we had when we were looking at the Pomeroy Road development. And then from the Near East side, Mark Weinberg, founding dean of the Voinovich School, who brings a wealth of planning and research to the committee. In fact, when I need something that I don't know about, I ask Mark. When we had the hydrology problem and the flooding and all that, I asked Mark. And he put me in touch with Natalie Daniels-Cruz, a real wealth of knowledge. So those are the three people. Oh, and then the business person, a longtime resident of Athens, a major property owner, and a small business owner, Kim Kelly. So I guess we'll go to the administration first.

I'm fine with your list of people.

Okay. Members of the community. Members of the committee. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm just curious how many people we had apply.

We had ten people apply. And some of the people that applied were in areas that, for example, give you three here in particular. We had three people apply from, or two people apply from the west side, and the west side neighborhood association appointed their individual. From the Near East side, we had four people apply. We had one individual apply who doesn't live in the city. The code says that the three appointed citizens have to be residents of the city. And then we had a person apply whose boss was actually the person that Ohio University appointed, which made for kind of an interesting situation.

You said they all have to be in the city?

The three citizen members do, yes, the three citizen members do, yeah.

Okay.

Okay, nothing but the community. Any objections to bringing these names forward to our next regular session of council?

No.

Nope. Okay, and that wraps- Mayor Patterson. I'm sorry.

I don't recall, does my- Appointment need to be ratified by council or do I just appoint in that person? No, it's your appointee Hopefully by the next council meeting when you do vote to ratify these individuals I'll be able to announce who okay And one thing Megan failed to mention she will be intimately involved in this project, too So add that to her list.

All right that concludes planning and development

Thank you, Chair Swank. We will now move on to Finance and Personnel, chaired by member Jessica Thomas and joined by council members Beth Cloudfelder, John Stazer, and Michael Wood. Council members who are not assigned to this committee may leave the dais. And Chair Thomas, you may begin when you're ready.

Thank you. As I said in the notes that I sent out, if you recall last October-ish, We took the old Columbus Road fire station headquarters and moved to attempt to lease that property out to any interested parties. Director Stone has said that they've spent the last yearish trying to find leases and have not found anyone that's really interested or able. So we are looking to instead sell the building. So what we would need to discuss is the repealing and amending of ordinance 9025 and repealing the leasing of Columbus Road fire station, changing that to authorizing the service safe director to sell the former fire station headquarters. And as I mentioned in notes, Director Stone has suggested adding requirements in what would be section two in the ordinance that would say that we would not sell the building for any less than one-third of the county auditor's approved value. The current approved value is $453,000 and so that would put the minimum sale price for the absolute lowest at $150,000.

Anything else you'd like to add, Director Stone?

I would like to mention something that I'll turn it over to Director Stone. I better lean forward. The amount that we are looking at having as the floor in terms of the sale, the $150,000. The city of Athens has so few economic development levers that we can pull to help with economic development in our community. As a matter of fact, we have very, very few that we can use. To renovate that building is going to take a fair amount of money for someone to invest into that building, to bring it up to whatever it is they may want to use that building for. We've been approached by individuals who wanted three-phase power going into it. That's really expensive to do, and so we weren't willing to go down that path to just do that. But to have that floor price being $150,000 for a building that's going to have some challenges to it is actually, in my belief, and again, it's going to be to the highest bidder. So we could have people who come in and bid way more than that for that building if they really want it. But it does show in good faith that we do want to see that building redeveloped into something commercially. It's a... Zone B3, I believe, when we did the rezoning in that corridor. So for us to be able to have that as the floor amount for someone to bid on, I think it's going to certainly add to its attractive nature to have that become something that does get developed as opposed to sitting there for a longer period of time fallow and with nobody interested in purchasing that building if we were to sit there and ask even the auditor's appraised value. I feel like that would potentially prohibit potential interested buyers. Go ahead, Amy. Sure.

So I think that the law director has worked with the clerk to prepare two pieces of legislation, ultimately. And something I'd like you to consider is both of them, actually. One piece of legislation is for the municipality, for the city to sell the property. And so that follows a very specific process established in the Ohio Revised Code that talks about advertising for five five consecutive weeks in the paper of widest circularization and taking the highest and best bid in a sealed bid process. And so we saw that as being a fair way, given that we've had a few interested parties approach the city and say, hey, we're interested in doing something here if we could buy it, as opposed to selecting someone and say, okay, we want that person versus another one. If that fails—and we know that the attempt to lease the property already failed—I would like you to consider transferring it to the Athens Community Improvement Corporation. That's the second piece of legislation, basically. The Community Improvements Corporation can divest of property by a one-on-one negotiation with an entity versus having to do the sealed bid process. So, you know, my commitment to you is we would try the sealed bid process first to make a fair and equitable shot across the public so that anyone can go and submit. If nobody submits at that point, we would seek to try to find someone who would be willing to do it if they could have more of a negotiation. And then at such time that we think we've got a good use, we would then transfer it to the Community Improvement Corporation, allow the Community Improvement Corporation to divest directly with that individual. So that's my request to you is to look at both of those pieces of legislation. Thank you.

Anything from the auditor's office? And members of the public? All right. And members of the committee? Member Stacer and then...

Okay, I just... I have my timeline question again. What would this take?

How long? Yeah, so for the sale, I mean, you have your process, right? And so certainly we can't transfer title prior to council authorizing the transfer of title. But then also the Ohio Revised Code requires that five-week advertisement period. Now, I believe I can overlap those some, and then we would just basically retract it if council chose not to approve No, I'm at the end. So that would buy a little bit of time But you know, my goal would be to divest of this property certainly before the end of the calendar year Yeah

I think it would be great to have a business in there soon. We've just been talking about the walkability and having more walkable things. At dinner, I was talking to my wife about having something in the fire station would be great. And she was saying the thing that she's most jealous of the near east side folks is they can walk across to all these amenities right there. And near north side is kind of the one spot that doesn't really have that. and so it will be really great to have something in that building. Point of clarity on the language, what we have here says minimum of one year and up to six years lease.

That's just the old ordinance that would have to be reworked. I just wanted to make sure people knew what we had before.

Great. My question There is just what we would replace it with as far as time commitment? Or would we strike it?

You're looking at the old ordinance that has the lease agreement language in it, correct? Yeah, that's what we have right now. You're going to get a whole different ordinance that's going to speak to selling the property and the city divesting of that.

Got it.

Any other questions? All right. And are there any objections to moving this forward? All right. Seeing none, that ends finance and personnel.

Thank you, Chair Jessica Thomas. We'll now move on to safety services, chaired by Paul Isherwood, joined by members Megan Almeida, Alan Swank, and Michael Wood. Council members who are not assigned to this committee may leave the dais. And Chair Isherwood, you may begin when you're ready.

Hi, yes, so we have one item on our agenda tonight, ACC Title 29, Chapter 29.34, Sanitary Condition. Doesn't really give you a lot of understanding of what this is about. Essentially, this is an ordinance to allow the city to order solid waste cleanups on private property, similar to what the city already does with noxious weeds, sort of a mowing requirement. This is allowed for an Ohio law, but the city has never passed legislation to make it official. So I had a very good meeting today with Director Pyle talking about what the issue is. This is a scenario where you would have a property in which you would have a buildup of solid waste. We can talk about what the definition, I know Member Swank had a question about what the definition of solid waste was, and the city issues citation after citation to the residents of that property, and yet the issue never becomes dealt with. This would allow the city to order the cleanup, basically to hire, contract out, someone to come and clean up that solid waste, remove it because it's become a public hindrance. As the draft ordinance suggests, this would be after a fifth citation and that the cost of that would then be passed on to the property owner through tax lien. At this point, turn it over to the administration if you have anything you want to-

It's a really good tool that we use for MOE right now as a mechanism to do that. In general, you have two types of properties that fall into this batch. You've got the party houses that don't clean up after a party, and then you go and issue them a violation, and then that fine gets put on their water bill if they don't pay it. It increases for every subsequent one, but in some cases, it can go on for a very long time. Then you have the derelict properties that maybe aren't the party house, but it's something where maybe people just ... for whatever reason, put their bags of trash out into their backyard and set out on the street and it grows over time and weeds clean up. So it's really kind of two different types of properties. And this is a tool that we can use then to get the problem solved, especially when it's a public health issue, because we're really talking about garbage here. A broken lawnmower is one thing, but a bag of kitchen trash or a number of bags of kitchen trash is a whole other thing and can draw vermin and such. And so this is a tool to solve the problem and then pass the cost on versus the series of fines that we've been doing as a way to gain compliance. That's all I have. Thanks.

Sure. Auditor, treasurer, anything you want to... Members of the public? Members of the committee? Member Swank?

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a couple hours with Director Pyle driving around the city pointing out... What was the word he used? You used derelict. What I would consider derelict properties. I don't know if that's correct grammar or not, but that's what they were, and that's what they are. And I gave Member Isherwood a whole series of questions for Director Pyle today, and he answered all of those in great detail. My concern is, does this go far enough? Does this go far enough? And I'm going to give you two examples. Ryan, if we could have that first picture. That pile of shingles has been sitting in that yard for not one year, not two years, I don't know how many years. It's right in the middle of the city. It's not a student property. It's not a rental. We often say, oh, it's just the rentals. It's just the student properties. This is a derelict property. And this doesn't really address that. Next one, Ryan. That's some kind of leftover material from the redo of an indoor swimming pool that has been sitting in that yard for over a year. Now, neither of those attract rats or raccoons or other vermin, but they're absolute eyesores. I'm going to defer to Director Stone because of his knowledge of code and the co-director, but is there a way that we can incorporate this sort of thing? I also have pictures of tires and... Unfortunately, the city got shot down last year when we tried to address a blighted property. And the ruling was that it was not out of character with the rest of the neighborhood. That is a direct quote. It was not out of character with the rest of the neighborhood. How would you like to live in that neighborhood and maintain your house like you ladies do? Yeah, talk about a slap in the face. So I'm not sure this goes far enough. It's certainly a step in the right direction. But do we need to address that sort of thing that I showed in the slides by redoing our blight ordinance? Or is it better to expand this? I don't really care one way or the other. I just want the stuff cleaned up.

Sure, I'll take a stab. My request would be that you move this forward and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So this will give us a tool that we don't have now. And then go into definitions of solid waste specifically and perhaps expand the definition of solid waste to construction debris, which is functionally what we're talking about. here that currently isn't covered in the solid waste definition and then perhaps incorporated into it. Then we could also use this tool for that, but I'd like to get this moving forward and then get into that as a separate but parallel initiative.

That makes perfect sense.

Thank you very much. I appreciate you showing those slides. I'm surprised you didn't show the slide with a ladder up against that first house.

That ladder is gone. That ladder is laying in the grass.

I have no idea how it got there. I agree with Director Stone. I think we take a two-pronged approach with this in that we move this piece of legislation forward, but we do address the derelict housing issue.

I agree. I had a resident tell me something the other day. This is what they said. Can't Athens still be funky? Whatever that is. But still have some sparkle and shine. And man, did that resonate. So thank you, Director Stone and Mayor Patterson. That's fine. That's fantastic.

Any other members of the committee? I just want to add a couple of things that the co-director told me today. This is very much about dealing with an issue that the Code Office does regularly come across, that they are aware of properties where this is an issue, and they feel powerless to affect the change that community members would like to see when this issue— Neighbors of houses where this happens say, why can't you do anything? And they right now are doing everything they are allowed to do within current code ordinance. And so if the goal is to be able for the city, if a resident of a property is not willing to clean up what has been identified as a solid waste issue. Or is more willing to just pay the citations rather than dealing with it. This would allow the city to end, we would end up with the result that we have that. solid waste removed and dealt with to the benefit of the public. The other issue that they would also—you know, there are five warnings, and we've had the questions like, is that too many? Part of the issue that the co-director wanted to make clear was that the law requires five citations, not warnings, that those tickets do escalate each time. So each week they would go back and there would be another. So it would increase, the fifth ticket would be up to $175. So it's not a nothing cost. But the other issue that the director wants to say, they would want to try and work with the residents of that property. Instead of going in on the first or second time in a punitive case to give them the opportunity and the time to deal with the issue and avoid the use of this. This is not an ordinance that the code enforcement would like to see using multiple times a month. This is something that in egregious situations where the outcome that we would like to see as a community is not happening, that they would then have the tools to be able to do that. And so I said that I know that I would- I would make that clear. So, yes, Member Swank.

You mentioned the fifth citation is 175. These are cumulative. When you add them all up, it's $625. That's real money. That's real money. It's not 25 the first time and then we forget about that or whatever. Yeah, 625, you get to five. And you get to five. Come on, folks.

We have people that just let it ride.

I got more money than I do. Anyway, I just wanted to point out it was $600,000 when you had them all up.

Yeah, and this isn't about raising revenue. It isn't about any of those things. It is about dealing with the problem that we have and giving the code office the ability to do that. So do we see any objection to moving this forward to first reading at our next meeting? Okay, that concludes City and Safety Services. Thank you, Member Sherwood.

We're just concluding committees for the night, which means we don't have an opportunity for members of the public to speak on other items not covered on the agenda. But if we have folks here who are here to speak, I will be around for a few minutes, and we will be adjourned tonight at 9.08. Thanks.