City Council - Regular Meeting

Order of the be of committee of the full meeting March 16th, 2026. Time is 7 p.m. will you read the role? Member here. Member or member Wyrick here. Member Mini here. Member Mlester here. Member Pratt here. Member Stalker here. Six present. Thank you. And we'll need a motion to excuse member or I'll make the motion to excuse John or I will second that. All in favor?

I post excused. Okay. First item on tonight's agenda is community econom economic development. This first one is a proposed legislation to approve the continuation. It's important. This is a continuation of the community reinvestment areas tax incentive agreement between the city of North Canton and property located at 1303 to 1305 North Main Street based on the recommendations of the North K community reinvestment area Housing Council following its review on February 24th. This legislation must be enacted before March 31st deadline to allow the city to submit its required CRA report to the Ohio Department of Development. We als this ordinance also directs that a copy be sent to the Ohio Development Services Agency.

So once again, this is a continuation. Is this our last year for this? Is this 10 or 12? 12. This is the 12th year. This is the final year of this particular residential tax appearance.

Okay. And this is going to be I believe on an emergency reason being is timing wise. So information including stuff from the auditor didn't get to the city until about the what 17th of February in time for the 24th meeting by of the CRA. They did their approval. It went to legal for them to do their review. So it didn't make our previous committee meeting. It's making this one. Unfortunately, it has to be passed in order to get to the Ohio Department of Development by March 31st. Thus, the single meeting and passing on emergency. Again, it's the 12th year and the final year of the amendment.

Is there any questions council in administration? Anybody want to add to

just that the c the housing council met and on that housing council new is Jeff Stalker and Christina Wyrick is on the housing council and uh the board's being run by Trisha now. Trisha. Okay. Um, and we we talked about, you know, this shouldn't just be a a board that just meets once a year to approve something that's on it, but being more of an active board to consider like, let's look at our CRA. Let's look at what's working or more importantly, maybe what's not working. If you have, how did you say it, Jason? If you have uh, you know, like an incentive program that no one's taking advantage of, like maybe it's not so incentivizing, you know. So, you know, we might need to look at it and look at what's best that we can do, you know, because it there is a goal here to, you know, have um, you know, an incentive for, you know, uh, people to want to seek a CRA and we really, other than this one, I think only in the history, we've only had one other. So, is it working? So, we're going to kind of explore those options. We talked about maybe even remember we talked about from the community bringing someone on you know maybe someone with a real estate background would be good and having you know uh some real good dialogue. I think our first meeting we set is in May.

Interested to hear what comes from that then. Okay. I will make the motion to move 3A to council agenda. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Oppos? Motion carries. Next, finance and property committee, Mr. Claster.

All right. So, item number 4A is going to be uh serving two purposes. So, one would be to create a revenue fund for NOC grant fund, which we'll be discussing uh for the next item, but then also some um authorizing some appropriations for current expenses and other expenditures. This will be for the January 1st through December 31st 26 time frame. I don't know. Did either of you choose to have the benefit of having you guys here uh care to elaborate on anything? I'd love to.

Okay. So, we try to keep the budget as true as possible all the way through the year. We have appropri appropriation amendments come to council when we either have new programs or new new monies. In this case, we're going to have both. So, we're having new revenues come in of$1,123,850. Part of that, as you know, is when we receive grants, we it's tripled. We advance the money, we spend the money, we get the grant back. So, you'll see it tripled in a lot of different places. Um general fund, we have some vacant registration fees. We have the $294,000 um grant from last year to owe KY Department of Development for Price Park. We should be receiving that and we did receive last week a portion of that 294,000. So, we're increasing our revenue to that. Um, we also have uh to receive another 294,000 in the grant fund because we're receiving the money. So, we're receiving the money, we're repaying the general fund. So, apologize for the tripling of all the grants, but that's just the accounting method that needs to happen. Then on the appropriation side, we have a list. Okay. in the general fund, but we had a retirement. Brian Hill, as everybody is aware, retired last Friday and so that was not news to that we had in October when we cut the budget. So the reorganization, I know we have been discussing at different, you know, times during the year about what we will do when somebody with 44 and a half years retires from the city and so we are splitting that position. He was parks, he was also water distribution. So we will now have a person in charge of parks. we will have a person in helping at the water plant as an operations manager and the superintendent at the water plan is taking over some of those duties. So, we're re we're reorganizing some of those positions. Um, in the North Canton G agreement at Arrowhead,

we are obligated to provide $50,000 in operating funds if they need it. We don't budget for it until we know they need it. Well, they need it. So, we'd have to add that to the budget. They always repay that before the end of the year. So, that'll be coming back to the city. Um the $27,445 is the NOET grant award and it's actually based on number of uh NOET customers. So in electric and gas so that that's how they come up with the allocation amount. It has to be something that we um energy efficient. So Jim has been submitting uh receiving quotes and submitting those and which is a big reason for the emergency on the next one. Um the the quotes of March 24th. So that's why we wanted to make sure we can secure those those folks in the overtime in the street department. Um they've used for their overtime budget because the roads in the winter have been bad and so we want to make sure if they are needing to work some overtime for the rest of this year. They need we need to have some budget in the payroll line items to pay them that. Um so that's $8,600. Also in the transportation the street fund um for the streets reaper we are going to rent one because ours likes to be in the shop and it's not working well even when it's not. Um so we have one that we can rent for two and a half months in the spring and then a month and a half in the fall. One in the fall will actually be the one that we'll be looking to purchase in next year's budget. We'll probably split that over 26 27 or 27 and 28 budget over two years because it's an expensive piece of equipment. um they are going to give us a 45% credit on our rental towards the new fund. So, it's really not money wasted if it's going towards our purchase. So, that would be great. Also, in the street department, the wind, the high winds um couple weeks ago, month ago, uh created a tear in our salt dome. I don't know if you can see right in the

middle. You can see the the pole up. Um it's $34,250 to have that repaired. The insurance will reimburse us 20,800. So again, we have to pay for it all, but we will get some of that back. Um, no pet grant, there's the two other pieces. We are spending the money and in that energy efficient will be the street lighting. I'm sorry, not street lighting, replacing lighting with LED light at the parks garage, the um service center and price park. So those that those are the three projects that will be funded with that grant. And then we'll when we get the money, we'll return the advance fund um in the water and the sewer fun. We're asking for money for rate consultation review. This is the year that we will bring rates back to council. So, we have experts in that area. They will review the spreadsheets that we've maintained since they last did it in 2019. Um, so it will just be an update. We have a maximum in there. I'm not sure we'll hit that, but we won't go. I promise you that. Perfect. And then as far as the self- insurance fund, we've transitioned to the uh Summit County group, but we still have some claims that we have to pay out that are still coming in from last year. Have so much time to send those through. So that's the $100,000 we're adding for claims in the insurance fund. So total preparations 868,200.

Thank you very much for that great explanation. Any other thoughts or uh questions? Then I move that we add item 4 A to the agenda. Second. All in favor? I opposed. All right. Item 4 P. I had a long description of the grant award uh ready to to share, but Gina stole my thunder. So, uh was it 27,48? Is that what it was? Um $445. $445. $25.

There you go. For um the purpose of uh some some green and energy efficient lighting in some of our facilities. So um this is where we created the account before. This is actually having the mayor to um or authorizing the mayor to enter into this agreement. So I don't know if there's anything more we need to discuss about this. And uh if you just want to know where the energy efficient lighting is, it will be at the park garage, at the service garage, and down at dogwood park. I mean down at Price Park. Thank you. Any other thoughts? I move that we add item 4B to the council agenda. Second. All in favor?

I All right. And lastly is item 4 C and something that has been on our radar for a while. It's uh the purchase of a 2026 Workin W60RI milling machine uh and the corresponding equipment that goes along with it. This was in our 2026 budget. This is just simply uh we have or are locking in the financing of and my sheet I think I left on my counter at home. Oh no, right here it is. It was I thought I had it. It was 5 or excuse me 4.9% interest and this would be uh funded through Huntington Capital Corporation. So and we are the emergency is because uh the interest rate is locked into where we want. So make sure we uh get there before any additions or questions and I move that we move this forward. Second. All in favor?

I opposed. Motion carried. Personnel and safety. Okay. This proposed ordinance, I believe, makes two updates to uh chapter 155, which was personnel regulations. Um I think we're handling a couple different things here. So, Catherine, feel free to correct me if I get any of this wrong. Full-time parks development administrator role. And then we're going to retitle the role of superintendent operations manager to be more related to streets and sewer calling it services. Right. We we also have just water superintendent which is including a water treatment plant and water distribution. Okay. All under one person and the other one is service.

So we'll break it down to the two things. So on the new role for the full-time parks development administrator position. I know that we anticipate to be tasked with various things coming out of our parks master plan here in the near future um and that this person can also um head up some of the other projects that are kind of being juggled by administration today. Um so I'll give you a chance to speak on that role.

Thanks Holly. So this new position is not simply just adding staff. This is about adding capacity, direction and long-term value to our North Canton Park system. Um you know we as you all know are have undertaken you approved and we are well you know underway in fact it's supposed to be done by the end of the month with the city's first and ever parks master plan a strategic plan which is supposed to be a 10-year guiding document uh for our park system and so far I mean it's we have had several meetings with the consultants we've received results on some of the community focus groups and the surveys and our community has made it very clear that they value their parks recreational amenities their quality quality of life. They have suggestions whether that's adding new facilities or adding adding park programming. Um having that master plan will help to you know streamline and create you know the priorities for future capital opportunities and we need to have um you know a dedicated staff member really that is leading our parks more strategically and not just from a maintenance level. You know, I asked the question and I might have been a little harsh on Brian Hill who just retired. When we did Dogwood Park in 2022, one of the things we were successful with winning the grant, I mean, winning the um state of Ohio award was you have to write about your project. And I had said in it, we had no new park development for 20 years. The last project he did, capital park improvement project he did, other than just maintaining anything, keeping it from breaking and cutting grass was something at Price in O2. So then to go till 2022, I didn't understand. I was just like, why? Well, we didn't have capacity. You know, you we basically just had a park staff that could just do maintenance. But I think it's been a community priority to say that we want more than that. Everybody looks outside of our area and says, you know, they have this, they have that, how do they have it? So one of the key things um in this

position will be to not um so much you know it's add you know I know people are worried about you know the the cost in the general fund right because that is where this is funding is coming from the general fund but it's it's hopefully to bring in grants and scholarship I mean sponsorships and seek out through ODNR and through the capital budget and through nature works and different places where there is a lot of funding opportunity available to the city to hopefully sort of reduce the reliance on the general fund. Right now, everything from parks has to come out of the general fund. We don't have, you know, anyone really dedicated to be able to look at alternative funding sources for the things that the community would like to see. So, it brings strategic leadership. It aligns all of the the tenure, like I said, that's supposed to be a 10-year guiding document, that master plan. um you know it aligns that uh like I said we're looking for grant someone with grant writing experience um someone with project development experience the position will be housed in administration so um it is different than the parks maintenance positions which are out of the park garage so it's different um and you know it's just really a different vision that we have that we want to align with not just parks master plan but also the city the city's master plan. So that is what the position is. We have a job description for it. It's quite lengthy. Um you know the plan will be to recruit someone who has experience in these areas and bring additional capacity and value to our park system in north.

Any questions on that? Any questions? Okay. That will the noises. No, please go ahead. I was just going to bring up um I see the need and the value behind it. I I struggle with the emergency. I think I'd like to allow a little more time for the public to uh to weigh in on it.

Yeah, I don't have any problem with that. The only uh thing is it just sets it back. You know, it sets back the time frame rather than being able to get it. It's going to take some time. You have to post the position and you have to interview and people have to have time to, you know, give their time. Um, so we were sort of trying to align this with when the master plan plan is completed, we kind of get someone in place. Uh, so it does slow down that process to go through all the readings. Um, I mean I mean they have one one opportunity to come in. There's not like they won't have Yeah, they won't have any opportunity to speak on. If it goes next week, they'd have, you know, opportunity for one.

We could always maybe put it on without an emergency. Maybe we get absolutely nobody coming and speaking on it next week, which could likely be the case, and then we could always add the emergency back. Yeah. Oh, okay. I mean, that's that's a thought as well, but I guess I just struggle. I mean, we we've had some meeting cancellations here recently, and this could have been discussed a couple weeks ago. I mean, we we knew this was coming. So, I just I just dislike the optics of everything's on an emergency.

You do not have to pass on first reading just because it's on emergency. You can we can leave the language as is. Um so all the emergency measure allows it to do is take immediate effect upon passage. Um you are under no obligation to suspend the rules requiring three readings. You may give it all three readings, give it two readings. Uh anywhere within that uh just allows it to take emergency or immediate effect upon passage. Uh if you took that clause out, we would be 30 days beyond passage. So I think I did the math with the council meeting schedule. If you took emergency out of the language, uh, the last reading would be April 27th, which means you couldn't put it, you know, actually post the job until 30 days after that, which puts us well into June. Um, but leaving the emergency in there and even if you gave it two or three readings, it would take immediate effect when you pass it.

Okay. Thanks for thanks for explaining that. I'd like to have the time to see what the master plan comes up with just so that I can digest the material and know make sure that we're making need-based decisions based on what we hired them to do as well. I was going to say the same thing. Um, when will we see the plan again? By the end of this month. End of this month. End of this month. Okay. So, that's good. So, to your point, if we left it as it was and then we see the plan, we can continue with it

as intended. Um, but I too would like to see it and just be able to talk to it, talk to the constituents and explain the need for it after seeing the plan myself. And then, um, I think that's really the only concern I had. I I definitely think it's probably going to be needed. I just think I'd be all better about it once I saw the plan. We talked earlier today, too, about, you know, could I start to recruit, put it out there, get feelers? I mean because the approval is saying that you know you're going to approve the position the salary and um you know as long as I obviously as long as I didn't hire anybody but if you wanted if I wanted to start but I don't know if I'd want to do that

because I don't know what if that's a good look for us. I mean I feel like it's a supportive position and I feel like the community has heard us talking about it for quite a while. Great participation in the survey and the community engagement regarding parks. A lot of big decisions. this community knows there's a lot of big decisions that need to be made with regards to our park system and so I think and we've talked before about Brian retiring like Gina said this would have all been discussed in budget had he given us like a date that he was going to retire but he didn't and so we didn't have that um so we do know that it is you know we had a body that was working in the parks department that left us so we do need that backfill to that but this is adding additional capacity to make it a broader position not just a maintenance role but more of strategic position. So, I felt like on one hand, people kind of know and maybe I could get the recruiting started, but I don't want to do that. I don't think it's a good look that if if for some shot it didn't go through, that's not a good look that, you know, people were interested, maybe sent resumes, and then if it didn't go through, that wouldn't be good.

Well, I think it's also prudent to probably wait until we get this parks master plan back. We don't know entirely what it's going to say, right? We I mean, we've had steering committee who it's it's not new to us. Yeah. Who does know the steering committee knows? It it does happen as far as we've been Yeah. part of putting it together. Oh, so you guys are steering what the outcome of the report's going to be or No, they just they report to us where they are like in the survey results and so far like there did an assessment and inventory of everything we have everything the community has said they wanted kind of high level and then they'll put it together more uh comprehensive for a presentation but they've given us some high level right you know

and I want to be clear I'm I'm not against it I just am not there at this very moment I think maybe this is a cart before a horse I like the idea that Liam mentioned where we can we don't have to suspend the rule the readings. We can still have the readings even if it's an emergency only allows it to go into effect after we approve it. It doesn't have to wait 30 days. I would definitely to thank Liam for clarifying what that means. I think that a lot of us were probably under the misconception that emergency meant suspend automatically meant suspending the rules. And I appreciate the fact that that does not necessarily mean that. Yeah,

that just simply means that it takes effect immediately upon passage, which I think Katherine is a very important point. We don't want to wait longer than we have to. But I also agree with Jaime's point and other points that the public needs an opportunity to hear.

Absolutely. We're involving the public so much when it comes to parks and wrecks. And I want to say because you said the cart before the horse. I think it's really important to note we spent, you know, we approved and and engaged with consultants and spent money to have a master plan and that master plan is the cart and this position really is the horse. I don't want a master plan to come back and on the shelf with dust because it'll have great things in it, but our maintenance department does not have the capacity to enact strategic plans and seek funding and grants and neither does administration. I mean, I tried to do the best I could in a deputy role and I did what I did for Dogwood and it was it isn't easy to manage every department in the city and then also try to run a park department. that's not the title of, you know, my job. And so that's making a dedicated title for that type of work to go forward into exploring what the park system can be. And that's inclusive of revenue streaming and recreation programming and many things that are coming out um which will be in the master plan. So

I think it sounds like the position is definitely probably going to be needed. I think we're all supportive of that. I think having the information out with the public, not just within committees here or in council public has full access to that information. Whatever presentation is going to be made to us, they're going to have access to that. It will be more supported then probably by the public. Okay. Um but I was going to ask like what's the fallout for you if we delay that? So Liam, yes, thank you for explaining that because I don't want you going into May and dealing with that by any means. So, I think that was helpful and I'm comfortable with that approach as well. And I think council can make the decision too to suspend the rules after the second reading. Yes. If the community

No, I think you know, Mr. McClester was correct. Let's see if anyone comes in. Let's give them that opportunity. I just don't want to silence that. I just don't want to suspend the rules on the first reading. Yeah. As far as the grant writing too, uh, with the Mayan grant that we got recently, I think we have a lot of in-house T because I think I don't Was it Jennifer that wrote that grant? Yeah, correct. And then when you write it, there's a lot more work after you receive it. So, she will be dedicated to that. Okay.

You know, and making sure that we're meeting with ODNR and then following all that the core requirement on that. Yeah. Yes sir. Uh if I could just maybe build on what Katherine said briefly too and to give her a shout out. I mean she has been our de facto um parks planner um low these many years and has done a great job. But I think implicit in what she was saying too is the the thought that th this would be somebody who wakes up every morning and thinks about strategically developing our parks. And we have great people who wake up every day and do think about our parks, including a lot of people in this room. Um, but specifically our maintenance staff, but like like Katherine mentioned earlier, their their role is to maintain what we have, which is an incredibly important role because we don't have well-maintained parks. It's hard to make a case for expanding them. But given some of the things we have talked about strategically and you'll see more when the draft master plan comes out, there are a lot of big strategic decisions before the city about um you know our parks, our pool, our golf course um where we want to go in the future and and we do feel like it is important to have some you know professional that's dedicated to helping advise us and also yourselves on those types of decisions.

I agree. Yeah, one other just note you just brought up to my mind is that oversight over our management agreements over some of our park facilities right now, our municipal golf course and everything up there, swimming pool, pickle ball, and then also our municipal pool and also the civic center. Um it it's again it's difficult to be able to have that much time to get in to do the oversight and again the maintenance area of operations, they're not doing that. So there does need to be there's kind of a gap there. I think that having someone again dedicated to kind of really um you know reviewing that contract, having more frequent presence around that with the management agree operators and the management agreements. Um we have the meetings, we talk the budget numbers with them, but we can't be boots on the ground as much and that's another opportunity in this role. And of course also a big one of the bigger things is uh obviously if we're looking at the situation with the pool and down the road and what do we do and funding and if somebody has to run a levy campaign on that that's a lot of time too. So there's just a lot of things in that that area.

Could a city run that levy campaign? We could it would be spread it would be spread around there you know not really one it would be the same that that we did speaking I don't think uh well it's providing the information to the people that run the levy and we've we've got a history right like the materials we've seen before that yeah somebody has to pull that all together so this is there any more on the particular uh the new position I'll move on to the other part of the chair

uh I just wanted to speak on the timing So, I did pull up the council calendar just so I could be factual about it. So, next week is the 23rd. Uh, so that would be the first reading. Your second reading would be April 13th and then the third reading would be the 27th. Um, like we discussed, I think the 27th might be a little late, but you're still welcome to do it and it pass immediate effect. Or you could do it on the 13th and I feel like that might split the difference if you see what the public perception is on how many people come to speak. Either one is fine.

Okay. Thank you. Um the other part of this uh ordinance contains those updates in the the bi-weekly rate schedule. So I see there's three red lines. We're going to call them. That one was under the superintendent position and we are changing the streets and sanitary sewers language to the word service. Um you've got the addition of the new parks development administrator role in there. And then the same thing under the operations manager. Um updating streets and sanitary sewer to just service. Anything more you'd like to say on that, Catherine? Gina, so we I I was understanding we wanted to hire the operations manager at the water plant. In fact, at 329.

Oh, I'm sorry. That's right. I just internally we posted that position. So, that was what Tad Martinez was. He was the operations manager at the water treatment plant. He has moved into the superintendent role. So, we internally posted the operations manager and promoted an an internal operator at the water plant into that position and we made that effective date 329.

I would say if we if if this doesn't pass on first reading by emergency next week, I would also like to amend the appropriations to just pull the parks development person and the budget for that person out and run those concurring. But the rest of these if they could pass. Does that make sense? The others are just title changes, but it it allows us to fill that operation manager position of department. Sia, what would the process be to pull that out? I would have to amend it. I would just bring you amended one. Would we have a second one then? Yes.

Okay. So yeah, there'd have to be a separate piece for specifically the parks one and we'd bring that up for the next committee or we could put it in on the 23rd without a committee report because we discussed it today. Yep. Which it would be a whole separate piece of legislation. It would just be suspending the rules requiring a committee report and we can put those on as two standalone issues. Does it make sense to everybody? Yes. Yeah. Again, we didn't uh know what budget or we would have, you know, known all of this. We would have put an operations manager at the water treatment plant if we would have known the operations manager was going to have to move up because somebody was moving out. So the timing Yeah. Okay.

Um if you would like we can do that now as well. Um so you could make the motion to amend to remove everything from this one specifically. uh she'd have to amend the uh appropriations on the floor next week or we can just wait till next week, bring the separate legislation up and do it from there. Whichever one all of you decide. Pure person, perhap I don't know. What do you think? Um I don't have a strong opinion either way. That sounds we can always just wait till next week and

yeah, I'm thinking let's not today. Let's wait and see if we need to do that. Would you agree? Yeah. Is everyone comfortable with that? Have it ready to separate. Okay. Next meeting. Then we can amend if we get to that point where we want to continue to vote. Then we can and then we can bring that up as without a committee report because we're discussing that that could be a possibility in terms of timing. We don't want to slow down the operation side of it, but we all agree we want to have a conversation about the parks, right? Superintendent. It's clear if you you discussed it tonight and if you make that separation at the first meeting it to the public I believe that would be a lot we will go ahead and get those things all prepped internally and we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

That would be fair. Appreciate that. Okay. Anything else for discussion? And if not is there a motion to move item 5A to the council agenda? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? I opposed motion carries. Okay. Here we are. I'll make a motion to adjurnn.