City Council - Regular Meeting

6.45 p.m. Mr. Ott, will you please call the roll? Member Pierpont?

Here.

Member Orr? Here. Member Weirich? Here. Member Matheny? Here. Member McLeister? Here. Member Pratt? Here. Member Stocker?

Here. Sub and present. Excellent. So at this time, we're going to begin the public hearing and the comment portion for our agenda, and this is on Ordinance 16-2026. Mr. Ott, will you please read the title for the record?

Sure. an ordinance repealing Chapter 1139 Industrial District Regulations and amending various provisions of Chapter 1137 Business District Regulations of the Codified Ordinances of the City of North Canton to update, modify, and clarify the regulations governing the city's business districts.

So this, in essence, is pretty much a complete rewrite. I'd like to throw it to administration. Mr. Ott, anybody that would like to add comments before we start the conversation?

Yeah, I can give you a brief overview of what the zoning text changes do. And I know we'll have it on the council agenda too and can talk a little bit more about that. But essentially, these are text changes to the code section that deals with commercial and industrial uses. Probably the biggest change is we took previous code sections and combined them. So all of our non-main street commercial and industrial uses are here. We've got some new language about data centers. Currently, the zoning code doesn't really address them. As everybody knows, that's a hot topic nowadays. So the zoning text changes that are proposed would prohibit data centers citywide, with the exception of our one industrial district, and they would be a conditional use in that district. We've got a new category in neighborhood business districts that I can explain in greater detail when you're ready for that. Also have some regulations prohibiting cannabis facilities and smoke shops in all of our commercial and industrial districts. So it's kind of a overview of the general changes can definitely get into the specifics of any of those that you're interested in as we have the discussion.

Well, it's time for actually the public comment section of this. So we'd like to hear from those who are here to speak on this. And at this time, we're going to want to have those speaking in favor of Ordinance 16-2026. If you will stand up, walk to the podium, please give your name and your address. So anyone in favor? Seeing none, at this time, is there anyone wishing to speak in opposition to Ordinance 16-2026? Please stand and move the podium, name and address.

Chuck Osborne, 307 Bredesen Street, Southeast North Canton, Ohio. Infants possess a fundamental psychological and biological need for certainty to feel safe, predict threats, and lower anxiety. The proposed creation of a neighborhood business district classification undermines certainty for residential homeowners and erodes the protections the zoning code has traditionally provided to them. I'm here to speak on the proposed creation of a new zoning district to be titled neighborhood business and to be voted on tonight as August 16, 2026. I am unequivocally opposed to this entire concept for a multitude of reasons. People need certainty in their lives. There is a fundamental psychological and biological need for certainty to feel safe, predict threats, and lower anxiety. Land use regulations through zoning code regulations go a long way in providing certainty in people's lives. That certainty for residential property owners suddenly goes away under the proposed neighborhood business district classification. Homeowners could find themselves coming home and finding a neighbor next door or down the street who is seeking a number of property uses outside the current uses currently outlined for residentially zoned neighborhoods. Some of the changes allowed in the transfer from residential district to neighborhood business zoning outlined in this proposal are, for example, a retail establishment, business services, essential services, personal services, studios for instruction, library or museum. Accessory uses that would be allowed are overnight storage of fleet, vehicles, or a parking lot, as well as a myriad of uses not typically expected in a residential zone neighborhood. Do any of these uses feel like you want them in your neighborhood? Looking out your window to your neighbor next door or across the street? I think not. Do any of these uses seem desirable to maintaining a quiet, family-friendly, safe neighborhood? All of these additional uses bring about more traffic, more parking needs, more noise, and the certainty that peace and tranquility once enjoyed will be gone. All of these uses do not bring jobs or added revenue to the City of Northampton. What they do bring is more intrusion into peaceful family neighborhoods. What this proposal also brings is what is termed spot zoning. Spot zoning occurs when a local government gives a small piece of land different rules from the rest of the surrounding neighbors. This change usually helps one property owner, but it often breaks the city's master plan. Force to look closely at these changes to decide if they are fair or illegal. Under the proposed neighborhood business district, every residential property in the city could apply for a zone change to neighborhood business. Could the city's zoning department be overwhelmed with requests for a change from residential zone district to a neighborhood business district? It is not thought that a zone change to a neighborhood business zoning classification in order to add uses not allowed in the district zone residential, such as the sanctuary or Monticello, would not be allowed due to homeowners association agreements. But consequently, the rich are further protected Financially more affluent neighborhoods would be very possibly be protected from the negative impact that a change to a neighborhood zoning, neighborhood business zoning classification brings to other city neighborhoods. This proposed change invites chaos and undermines the very purpose of zoning regulations. It negatively impacts the tranquility of neighborhoods and diminishes certainty for North Canton residents. Please share this poorly workable idea and vote now, ordinance number 16-2026 in this first reading tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Rita Palmer, 307 Fairbanks Street, Canton, 44720.

These are my concerns regarding remissions to chapter 1137 of the business and district regulations as found in ordinance 16, 2026. One, was the public informed in a local newspaper 30 days prior to each of the zoning board's meetings where the new zoning revisions of 1137-01 were to be discussed? If not, Did this omission not violate state law? Two, the new 1137-01 classification, which creates a neighborhood business district, is clearly a way to hide spot zoning, which is also against state law. One must then ask, will it now be okay in North Canton to have a live work unit, such as a bakery, running out of a house on Woodrow Street and perhaps on Chadford Gate? And could we have a lawyer's office on Mississippi Street and perhaps on Pierce Avenue? And a real estate office on McKinley Avenue and another on Braemar Circle as well? In other words, any business anywhere works for all in North Canton. This leads to the next question. Do home owners association agreements, such as those in Monticello and the sanctuary, allow businesses in their residential areas in city? If not, will these HOA agreements have to be restructured to match city regulations? Surely you do not want to treat citizens who live in a $100,000 house differently from those living in a $700,000 house. Three, if the whole city of North Canton becomes a neighborhood business district by adding conditional businesses like banks, photographer studios, sales offices, museums, dance studios, and fleet vehicle parking lots, then how are adjacent residential neighbors truly being protected from, quote, congestion, noise, or other objectionable influences as stated in section 1137.01 intent? Do banks have no daily customers? Dancers, no loud music. Museums, no visitors. And does overnight parking lot storage not require daily moving of many vehicles? The intent of the zoning change is, quote, to promote commercial and industrial development in appropriate and convenient locations. that are sufficient areas for business activities, but protect adjacent residential neighborhoods. This NV zoning change is woefully deficient. Who wants to buy a half million dollar house in an industrial development next to a commercial sales office? Simply put, this zoning change will not work. Please vote it down permanently. Thank you. Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is David Saylor. I live at 211 Cole Avenue, southwest of North King. And I am here to speak in regard to the proposed new zoning district and kind of neighborhood business districts. I live in a neighborhood about 1 1⁄2 blocks from Maine, a square from Canton. I live on one street directly west of St. Paul's Church School. And this is a neighborhood that I would describe as multi-generational neighborhood. That's a neighborhood that's probably 60 years old, maybe 80 years old, even 100 years old. My house alone is now 106 years old. So that's where I'm coming from. And The thesis of my statement here is that my concern, similar to the other two speakers, is that neighborhood business districts will be targeted specifically and exclusively at multi-generational neighborhoods like mine. Neighborhood business districts are incremental and stiff, threatening the cohesiveness and stability of multi-generational neighborhoods. I respectfully ask for the protection of our treasured multi-generational neighborhoods like mine. These neighborhoods are some of the reasons why North Camden is such a desirable place to live. This place for life.

Thank you.

I'm Bob Nichol. My address is 403 Full Avenue Southwest. And I live downstream. I'm a prior speaker and I just wanted to say I kind of agree with what Mr. Osborne was saying regarding uncertainty. And I guess the only way I can express my concerns is to ask some questions. And I know I can't really ask questions to get an answer, but maybe I can express my opinions through the questions that I have. And a number of them have already been brought up. And I think they're really valid points. You know, does this include every city neighborhood? How do you select a well I think the way it was worded was neighborhood business districts create an environment that is conducive to well-located and designed offices. Who determines what's well-located? I mean, does that determine by city council, by whom? What kind of businesses can you locate next door to me on Full Avenue? Could it be a landscaping company? I haven't read all the rules and all the legislation on it, but my concern is, and the uncertainty I have, is what kind of business could end up on our street? There are kids on our street. Where are people going to park? I mean, if you have a business that's located on Main Street and they don't have adequate parking, they aren't allowed to open their business unless they have adequate parking space. Well, how's that going to work? on a residential street. You're going to have cars coming into a business and taking up spaces on the street, creating havoc on the street, kids playing on the street. I don't see it as a very safe option, quite frankly, especially when you don't really have the certainty of what specific kind of businesses can actually be located on your street. And again, does this apply to every neighborhood in the city? or just certain specific well-located streets like Pole Avenue or 5th, 6th, and 7th Street or whatever it might be. I just don't think that most citizens in North Canada live in those communities. They're going to really want that kind of uncertainty in their neighborhood. I also have a consideration, uncertainty on how does that affect my property values. You know, let's say a landscaping company is moving in next door to me and they've got their trucks parked everywhere. Who's going to want to buy my house? I just think that it's there's a lot there that you really have to consider before you pass that legislation. I mentioned bargaining requirements. And really, why is this particular neighborhood business addition really necessary for commerce in North Canton. Is that really important? Is that really going to improve the business district in North Canton? We have buildings all over the city that are not being occupied this time. And you've got the Hooper District, which hopefully, well, something will happen there in the next few years. I think that sounds positive. But I think Allowing businesses in the neighborhoods is not the way to accomplish the city. That's pretty much what I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Melanie J. Wall, 308 Porter Street, North Canton.

We've gathered at this public meeting to review ordinance 16-2026, which would amend the North Canton zoning code to add a new classification, neighborhood business. From reviewing the discussions of this new classification from the April 20 and July 13 council meetings, as well as the June 3 and July planning commission meetings, I've concluded that this would be spot zoning. and this zoning change will apply citywide. What is more troubling, once the parcel is classified as neighborhood business, that parcel remains with that designation in perpetuity. In other words, the zone change goes with the land, not the owner. What are those ramifications for future sale of said parcels? Furthermore, this new classification would greatly intrude on the city's neighborhoods. For most folks, they want a place where they can enjoy their property, have an cohesive unit of neighbors to look after one another. Interspersing the neighborhood business zoning classification with all its potential uses into these city's neighborhoods is unacceptable. Two potential uses are bed and breakfast and retail establishments. North Canton under section 1133.09 allows home occupation for single family and two family parcels. So if a young entrepreneur wants to start a website business, there are regulations in North Canton for home occupations. He or she just needs to know the ordinance rules, some of which are no hiring of any employees, no change in the outside appearance of the dwelling, No excessive noise or fumes. Parking prohibited except in the driveway serving the home. When we talk about why folks move to this community, and we all talk a lot about that, we list the following. Excellent schools, excellent safety courses, beautiful parks, maintained roads, intact neighborhoods. Why is the city wanting to intrude into the city's established neighborhoods? I ask that the zoning classification of neighborhood business be removed from Ordinance 16-2026. Thank you. Thank you.

Can I adjust this down a little bit? Just hold on. I need a stool to stand on. Mr. Mayor? administrators and our awesome council members. I thank you for the opportunity to share a few thoughts. And I was listening to what everybody said. And of course, I understand their concerns. And I think it's the same old story. When you feel insecure about something, you're not sure. Name and address so everybody knows who you are. I know everybody does. Dominic Fonte, 965 Fair Oaks Avenue, Southwest, North Canton, Ohio. I was a former council member for about seven and a half years. And I was very instrumental in pushing the zoning that we have now that's updated compared to what we used to have. And so really, my only concern is to shed a little opportunity for really the council members to understand things that could potentially happen, okay? So this is my understanding of the North Canton Neighborhood Business District, because we did have those five districts before. And so I'm going to just mention a few things first, then we'll talk about the second. Okay. So my understanding is that it can, you know, the district change could be initiated by anybody. Like, for example, the owner of the property could initiate it, right? The lessee could initiate it or the developer. Okay, so one of the things to think about here is like, if I have a property, I'm a business owner, I want to make sure that my tenant can't just go ahead and change zoning that could impact the long view of the property. So that just might be a minor thing. All zoning changes, and I think Melanie might have, or I'm sorry, Melanie Roll said that if it does get changed, you know, that it conveys with the property unless, I mean, just stays with it until whatever, did you say, Melanie? Perpetuity. And I guess that could probably be changed, because I think I read somewhere that could be changed with another, it'd have to come before the board again, or through council, or there's two different ways to do it, planning commission. So, One of the things that I was thinking is that a tenant or a lessee probably shouldn't have the authority to do it without authorization from the owner of the property. Sometimes this lack of communication causes problems. The intent, and I think I read somewhere it said the intent of the NB district is really to serve as a buffer between the higher commercial areas and residential, which is what the whole intent was to begin with. And when you say intent, does that mean that for sure that's what it is? So like, when I think of intent, I think of the five districts from North to South Maine. And I think of just right off of that, you know, the artery right off of it, you know, basically is what I was picturing how it would be not throughout the neighborhoods. Although, you know, whatever the approved businesses are, because, you know, after COVID, a lot of people do their little businesses from home and it's a discreet, not a big deal. But where you get into a little bit of trickiness, and this is basically, in my opinion, what probably most people don't think about. So a lot of people may or may not know, I've been a real estate agent for 39 years, helped over 2,700 families. So I've been through a lot of transactions. And what happens is, is whenever you sell your real estate, and if you think about North Kent, we have 17,600 people that live in our little city, right, roughly, give or take. The growth has been a bit slow, I would say. But do you realize that 51% of our population is older than 45 years old? And are we building a lot of nice schools and doing a lot of nice things for our families and friends and people to come to the area? And what someone mentioned is, is what is great about North Canton community? Well, we know the schools drive a lot of it. Would you agree, anybody? Schools, right? We have the parks, which Kathy, you know, we've been very involved in all that. The trails, the walkability. So that was really when I was thinking about the Hoover District and thinking about all the things that we were hoping for would be a way to, you know, for the population aging out, you know, eventually they need to downsize. So I thought the Hoover District would have been great if we could have got that pulled off. And then that would free up houses for the younger generation. And affordability is a big deal. So, you know, you get these older people moving into these nice one floor apartments or condos or villas. And then you have the younger people have an opportunity. And that's the lifeblood of the business of the city is getting those young people in our communities. And the reason why is because they want to have walkability. They want safety, police, fire, EMS, the safety services. And I know it quite well because I've raised my five children here. And so it's really important to make sure that we're very smart about what we do. And you're right. Paths was the whole reason why this whole district thing got changed in the beginning. because they didn't have enough parking spaces for the square footage. And I was on council at that time, and I talked to the neighbor and got them to lease spaces to get around all the old out-of-date zoning. So that was really the driving force to get this to happen. So moving forward, folks, this is what I would say what we're not thinking about with the unintended consequences. Like, let's just say that the house that I have is $300,000, even though the average isn't the choose. And someone put a small little business in next to it. Not a big deal. Right. But since 70% of the time people have to get financing for their home, what they're not thinking about is. First of all, how many older people have their mortgages paid off? Okay. How many people still have loans or an equity? This everything's sold to the secondary market, Freddie Fannie or Jenny may. Right. the dysfunctional family of how this whole thing goes with real estate. So when you go get a loan to move into a community, they have to have an appraisal. The appraiser's job is to see what the highest and best use of the property is. If there's a change in a subdivision where, in fact, they say, you know what? It looks like there's a commercial one on this side of you and a commercial one two doors down. What is the highest and best use of the property? So now if they deem that it's commercial and they're trying to get a residential loan, guess what? That's not going to happen. So what you want to think about is, is that I would personally like to see it stay in the main commercial districts, make it more friendly and user-friendly for people to do that. And then remember, you know, we've got sidewalks, we want walkability, we want to continue the charm, get that Booger District done or whatever you're going to do and create more opportunities for younger people to move into our communities because those schools need to be filled since we have them all built. So that's basically my take. Financing could be a real problem if there's a makeup change throughout the residential community. So you want to make sure that we keep it residential. And if you do some minor things, but if it starts changing, then I'll change the whole demographics and the 51% of 45 and older, this whole community will die out if you don't get the young blood in there. So thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you.

Jolene Gonzalez, 332 Corbett Street. First of all, thanks for giving us all the opportunity to speak our minds on the topic. A lot of what I wanted to say has already been said. We moved into our home 20 years ago as newlyweds and we really enjoyed North Canton. We intended on having our family here and it didn't quite go as planned, but we've seen our friends expand their families and they constantly talk about the safety and like others said the dependability of their kids playing on the street and we are very blessed to have a neighborhood where we have a lot of children and a lot of young children and they are often out right up until dark playing and having a great time and there's a lot of parents right now that are busy raising their kids and they cannot make it to these meetings maybe like some of the rest of us can and every single one of them that I talk to has expressed a concern about this. They don't want a business moving in next door in a residential area that brings in foot traffic that is gonna question whether their children should be outside playing on their street with their neighbor friends. And unfortunately, I know of a couple instances not in our town where that sort of situation turned into a very devastating occurrence that changed the life of a young child forever. And I just don't want to see something like that happen here. And look, I understand that changes happen. A lot of people are into progress and making us like this town or that town. Honestly, the majority of people I talk to don't want that kind of progress there are so many empty business buildings all over north canton that are just sitting empty and our direct neighborhood we are one of the school neighborhoods that has i'm going to say endured the building of a new school and promises that were made about how this is going to work and how that's going to work. And we get ghosted about just trying to follow through on simple promises that were made to us. And so I should also note, although it's a different type of a zoning situation, we have a situation that directly impacts our property. And for the sake of relationships, we backed off, even though we pursued trying to enforce a zoning situation that is now basically explained as grandfathered in. And we're left with a perpetual battle now should this property be sold and passed on to someone else that's not going to be as considerate as their neighbor. So again, everybody I've talked to is just baffled that this is even part of this plan. That one one owner of my neighbor's property could apply to become a business and the change of hands it's going to carry over to me that is it just boggles my mind as to how anybody thinks that's a good idea and who's going to enforce that we've seen zoning issues not enforced and this is such a greater deal than what we've experienced our narrow streets, our officers, are they gonna be enforcing parking issues now? I mean, people are already upset about parking for people that don't have enough space on their driveways. It's gonna become such an issue in our area if something like this were to happen. And I just truly hope that those involved will consider the quaintness and the safety our home property values that all of us value as taxpayers.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Hi, my name is Susan Meadows. I live at 232 6th Street, Northeast A lot of this reminds me of when we dealt with mixed use. And at that time, I went all over my neighborhood and invited people to come. And I think I had 50 people here who put more and more chairs. I went today just on my street, door to door, talked to some doorbells. A lot of people, of course, weren't working because it's Monday. But I thought I would make the effort. I don't want to have an incident like an excuse like my wonderful neighbors, and I have a wonderful neighborhood, and our driveways are touching. And they have two SUVs and another car. And I'm lucky enough to have a double car garage, so my car can go in there. But not everybody's that lucky. And I know several years ago down the street with a young man who thought it was all right to work on cars, work on the engines, tear off the tires going behind the garage, put the wheels behind the garage and things. And luckily, he moved. So you get into that type of thing in the neighborhood. My neighborhood is wonderful. We have all different age groups. And everybody works in different job types. Like I said, I'm very, very lucky. And so today I thought I would make the effort and go out and try to talk to different people. And like I said, I talked to some doorbells and people on Wendy's bar network. And we're very lucky that a new young couple moved in on our street. And the one house that the lady died. Her house is a little brick house on my street for $163,000. And I'm like, when I bought my house in 97, I think we paid a little over $100,000. And we were getting phone calls constantly. People wanted to buy my house. And I'm not legal, so I'm staying. But anyway, I just wanted to thank everybody for having the meeting and letting us talk. And that this city is the great city it is because of people like you that come here every week, our police department, our fire department. And if I'm missing somebody, I'm sorry. But that's what I have to say. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you.

Anyone else wishing to speak in opposition of Ordinance 16-2026? Final opportunity. Okay. This item will appear on the council agenda. Make a motion to adjourn. Can we get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. We are adjourned. 17th, 2026. The time is 724 in the Senate. Will you please call the roll? We're starting, folks.

Go ahead. Go for it.

Member Pierpont. Yes. Member Ork.

Yes. Member Wyeth. Yes.

Member Matheny. Here. Member McLeister. Here. Member Pratt. Here. Member Stocker.

Here.

Seven present. Excellent. Okay. First item on the amendment is financial property. All right. Thank you very much.

So there's just a four items. This is an ordinance which is going to authorize some appropriations and return expenses and other expenditures for the period beginning June 16th. December 31st, a couple of items that were on here, I'm sure June will elaborate on this, is we had $170,000 going into FIRE for part-time wages, overtime, and the rate of pensions. We have $5,000 in economic development, and this is in regards to some of the America 250 events. And I think our first responders event that's coming up. We also had a $100 donation to the fire department. So anything you want to elaborate on is surely . All right, so with that, I will move that we . Is there a second?

Second. All in favor?

Next item on the agenda, Parks and Recreation. Here's Wyrick.

Okay, so this will be an ordinance establishing Chapter 149 of Parks and Recreation Advisory Board for the City of North Canton. I'm actually really happy to introduce this tonight. North Canton actually had a Parks Board in the past before my time on council, so at least five years ago. And I think reestablishing it now makes sense for a number of reasons. Our residents, as we know, care a whole lot about our parks. We just heard that in the public hearing. And this creates a formal ongoing way to really kind of engage residents into conversations. and elevate their voices. So the board would be an advisory board. So decision-making and funding authority would remain with council, but it gives us another avenue for community input and ideas. And as we begin to discuss some of the options in front of us through the PROS plan and through our new parks administrator, Mike Elkins. Again, the timing's just right to do this. So we're really fortunate that Mike Elkins, who came to us from the City of Green, worked with an active parks board in that community. has first-hand experience with one of these boards and the value that it can bring so with that i will turn it over to you mike and if you'd like to talk a little bit about this we'd appreciate hearing that sure absolutely um you know having a five-member advisory board provides another uh layer if you will another opportunity for public engagement um with the implementation of the gross plan um

The board would be made up, again, of five members that would be qualified electors of the city of North Canton. Three would be appointed by the mayor's office. Two would be appointed by council. The appropriate council member, in this case, would be the chair of the recreation committee on council, which serves as a non-voting member of the Parks Advisory Board. And then members of the administration would also be advisory to to the board as as well, and as this word said Council holds ultimate authority, whether it's a person land accepting donations. Appropriate funds for projects that are recommended by the by the advisory board and the administration initially. This board would meet quarterly. As the Parks and Recreation Department continues to grow, those meetings would increase to perhaps once a month. So that's the general framework of the advisory board. We're kind of excited to bring this on board, no pun intended, for more public engagement. And if you recall, when I first started attending these meetings, public engagement is a priority when it comes to parks because the residents are the ones that use it. We want to hear from them above and beyond the gross plan that is before you as well.

I understand in five-year terms, the initial board is staggered to begin with?

That is correct. It will be a staggered five-year term for the board members.

I had a couple of questions. I like this idea. It's great. As you said, we used to have one. I was racking my brain. I was trying to think when our last parks board ceased existing. That probably would have been, geez, 20 years ago, maybe? No, it was 2018. Yeah. Okay. Okay, well, I guess it's before our time on council, as Ms. Weimer said. And was it five people as well? I believe so. Who were essentially just mirroring what we had done in the past, right? Okay. Good idea.

Any other comments?

No.

If not, I would like to make a motion to move Item 4A to the Council agenda. Is there a second?

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The motion carries. Next on the agenda, Personnel and Safety Committee. Ms. Pierpont.

Okay, this is updating, excuse me, I think it's, I don't have the number, Chapter 373? Thank you. The amending bicycles and motorcycles language, this is really coming after the recent passage of the mobility device language back in July, which to those members of the audience that aren't familiar, that's e-bike type language that we recently did. This particular chapter had a few places in it where we called out some things such as e-bikes as well as some older language. So this will basically update that chapter to remove any sort of conflicting language inconsistencies so that they work together correctly and i think we have this one down for emergency passage once we move it over so that we can get both of those in effect simultaneously and our officers can use them both correctly anything you'd like to add brendan i believe you might have had some couple on the fly changes

Section 3, 73.7, A1, discusses the fit and the fit to the sides. And then in section B, replacing white lines with white reflectors. And then there's a couple references to Any other questions.

Okay. If not, then I would motion to move item 5A. Oh, sorry. My apologies. Legal to have their amendments that they just made. So there's their motion to amend item 5A as presented.

Motion to amend. Is there a second? Okay.

Aye. Opposed? And then there's their motion to move item 5A to the council agenda as amended.

I'll second. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right.

All right. All right. person, honorary person of the city or something of that nature. I think they would pay a small fee to get the sign made and then get a placard or something. Why they're being honored, stuff of that nature. This should have been done years ago. I don't know why we didn't get it.

Okay, so I just want to start with context that this came to us from a community member. It's a very, you know, very good intent to say that some cities do have these honorary streets. It does not change the street name. It just gives it kind of a secondary honorary. So still in all of the auditor records, street records, engineering records, the street would still have its name. So we did some research on it. We looked at what other cities have and You know, we do talk about when we create these two kind of policies, you know, my thing is the four Ps. It takes four Ps. It takes having a policy. But then you have to kind of say, what's the process in this policy? What's the people? How's that going to be carried out? How are we going to do this? Are we going to pay for it? So we go through those. But also one is that would be parameters around it. So I think we internally in the administration department, we were just kind of discussing how we would do this. And, um, it's new something that we haven't done before. So, I think we may have mentioned sort of. Being military, or I think we mentioned, like, any kind of significant contributors to the city. I think saying significant contributors is. Broadly subjective, so we wanted to kind of discuss about maybe starting with military. like military, and there were some other parameters, age 70 or older, deceased, did have to live in the city. But just because it's new and we're starting out, I don't want to be in the position of trying to determine significant contributor one over another and who would pick that and how would we answer that. So if you agree, we started with military. We do like that. We have to get a process in place on how we would do this. There would be an application. We do have a recommendation on a fee based on what other cities have charged. There would be a fee for this. We have some other parameters that it would be for about a 10 year period. Just thinking about a whole lot of things we thought it's a very long street like where, where is this, I mean because you're going to have many intersections over a long street really take the street woodrow right, would it be at every or would it be a segment we did find many. cities have maybe a one block segment one to three is what I was told we can choose that like how many so, then our street department would have to make the signs up and then there's all kinds of other questions. Is it going to be under the street sign? Is it going to be a separate sign? So we have to work through all those. That's the process part of it. So, yeah, just want to get that conversation going and see how you feel and see if, and it's something we can always bring back to council because we don't know how much it's going to take off and we don't want to overwhelm ourselves with it first. So we did think, how did you feel if it was just sort of military significant, you know, just with a military service and then we could add to it later if we feel.

Well, with the military, how I feel, I love our military. But we've had a lot of other people. Most of the military people we would honor are probably dead.

And their family members, that's what this is for. Their family members could apply.

Yeah, but we should honor these people while they're living. I have this argument with the schools all the time. You had your chance. Great, we could start with the military, but I really think anyone who's really contributed And would it be the administration saying yes or no? Or would it be council? There's the question.

And then that's where it's very subjective.

There's a lot of moving parts to this. I do have a concern about it being inundated with this. And then it dilutes the effectiveness of it. I mean, Jamie, your friend that passed away, I think that's a perfect example of why that should exist. But You know, maybe somebody that did volunteer work for eight years might not to be that level. I'm just saying that. So I don't know at what point. Like, are we going to get 30 applications for this? And there's a lot of moving parts of this. So I would just open the conversation to what the goal is. And maybe you open it to everybody, but you limit to a year or something like that. I don't know.

Yeah, so I would love to add to what you were saying, because I got the phone call after the last council meeting, we gave a speech about massive surgery, the U.S. Marine Corps, got a phone call from this resident the day after, and I thought it was a fantastic idea. And I like the idea of, at least initially, I'm totally cool with phasing in, leaving it maybe just with members of our military who have deceased, or maybe, again, I I don't want to get to the point where everything we're doing in council, because I believe the legislation was, it's voted on by at least six members of council. I mean, we have other things to do other than renaming. I mean, how many streets do we have in the city? It could be quite intensive. There you go. I think that it should be a pretty high bar to climb, not somebody who simply has a $200 balance in their checking account. Yeah. So that's kind of my thought on it. I love this idea. In fact, I'll be the first application for the gentleman that I spoke about at the last meeting. I think if anybody's deserving, it's him. I did have some ideas. Actually, I ran this by Liam earlier today. So again, can't say that I love this enough. I would, however, like to maybe eliminate doing it on Main Street. I think Main Street is one road that should stay in Main Street because then kind of as John was saying, do we then get into a debate about who's the best or most worthy person? I think Main Street should be left alone. The other suggestion that I would like to see added to this is, again, thinking of the speech that I gave about Mr. Smith at the last meeting, people might drive by these and who are these people? And I think it'd be fantastic, we really truly are honoring people. There should be an accompanying page on the website, and not a page for every single person, but it should just be honorary street names, a photo, and a brief, like, one paragraph description. I threw out the idea, I don't know that Liam liked it, but I threw out the idea of maybe a QR code at the end. You could be, you know, Bob Smith way, and then a QR code so you can know well maybe that's a bad idea it might be driving isn't it but some way to identify hey you can go to the city web page and look this up so those would be the two changes i would add elimination of mainstream from consideration and an accompanying page on the website i would basically second a lot of what you just said and to even piggyback a little bit we could look at

Um, how to find the length of streets in this, in other words, only certain streets might be eligible. So, in Cleveland, very short streets are eligible for this new designation. So that could work. And, uh, I think it's a, it's a right rightful honor for us to do it, but I think we need to. go slow and make sure that we do it right.

Not get ahead of ourselves. It's a beautiful, beautiful idea. And we thank the person who came forward with it and we'd like to start small and like I said, we can always add on.

Any other comments?

Just one other thing. One thing that we discussed that you might wish to consider too would be, I don't think any of us know the volume of requests that might come in, but we thought it might be worth considering to only accept so many applications at a time, or that way you could kind of have time to phase them in or vet them. I have no idea whether you would get 15 from the get-go or we'd be here 15 years from now and you hadn't gotten 15 yet, but it might just be something to consider because I echo what the mayor said that it is a special and appropriate honorarium for people, but If you have too many, it does tend to dilute the significance of that.

So some cities have done where they may only approve one to three per year. And so then that just sets you on that we will approve no more than X amount per year. And then if somebody applies afterwards, we just say we've filled them for this year, you can try next year. Go on the waiting list.

Yeah, the Hall of Fame comes to mind for me. There's a lot of great players, but not everyone gets in right away. They can always apply, though. So I think that thinking probably makes sense. Unfortunately, putting a number on it just because people run out the streets. Exactly. But yeah, I think that's right.

Like in Canton, they have one of their hometown heroes, and he has probably the worst street named after him. Okay. And they want to know why he doesn't come back. Take a look at the street name. So we have to be careful on that. You know, I'll probably stretch your hand.

Yeah, everybody's like, what are you talking about?

I'll take it back and say there's no bad streets in Northgate.

Not that bad. I think they've had five murders on that street. And he's a federal judge, too. So...

What I'm hearing is maybe administration is going to take this back and dig a little deeper. Workshop it. Workshop it. Maybe it's an application process, an essay process, information process, a ranking process, a point system, a notation.

So would you like to move this to the next committee? Yes. I think so.

It should take longer to do that. Right. Thank you.

And we will think further about the design too. We didn't want to get into the weeds on what color are the signs or where do they go, but from prior experience in places that do this, it is easy for motorists to still get confused about the street name even though you know google isn't supposed to add it but they might or people whichever sign they see first so we will think a little bit about how do we make the signs prominent enough that it honors the person but also doesn't add to driver confusion too certainly don't residents changing their address

Or Amazon packages lost. It's a good project. Yeah.

Let's come up with something that works.

Thank you. Liam, do we need a motion to postpone? So the motion would be to postpone this to the next committee meeting. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Carries. Conclusion of the meeting. I'll make a motion to adjourn. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Okay, Helen, you're two thirds there.

The time is 7.45. Tonight's opening prayer will be delivered by Reverend Paul Scable of Zion United Church of Christ. Father,

We give thanks that we are part of a community, of a state, of a nation. We are active in this entire world. Our prayer is that we will help those who are serving to us on the City Council to be able to feel your presence minds and hearts as they go about the shaping of this community. We give thanks for their service. We respect what they do and ask them to be respectful of others. Please and Let our feelings of thankfulness and hope fill our hearts and minds. May we feel your blessing and prayer. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty to judge. Mr. Ott, let me spell the rules. Member Pierpont. Here.

Member Orr. Still here. Member Lyra. Here. Member Matheny. Here. Member McLeister. Here. Member Pratt. Here. Member Stocker. Here.

Seven present. Okay, changes there. All right. Can I get a motion to approve as presented the minutes from the July 13th, 2026 NOPEC public hearing, the minutes from July 13th, 2026 Committee of the Whole and City Council meetings, and the 2027 Alternative Tax Budgets? I'll make that motion. Is there a second? Second. Ellen Weber?

Aye.

Opposed? Question carried. At this time, Council invites Andrea Lay of the North Canton Public Library to the podium to speak on the library's planned renovations, their temporary move, and changes to the program.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. My name is Andrea Lay. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to give you a quick update on what's happening at the library. because there is, as you may have noticed, a lot of things happening. I will try to keep this brief, both for your sake and for my voice, because my voice and I are currently in disagreement about whether plans to continue functioning. I'm not sure if it's going to work for this event. So anyway, as many of you know, our renovation has been several years in the making. Our library started by enlisting. We surveyed our community. We talked with teachers. And we eventually brought in a design team and retail analytics experts to study how people actually use a building. Not how we think they use it, but what they're really doing once they walk through our doors. And what we heard was remarkably consistent. People love their library. But they also know that the building needs to be loved. So they asked for better accessibility. They asked for more flexible programming and legal space. They asked for easier navigation, more light, more comfortable spaces, more room for children and families. So that's what we've designed. The result will be a building that works much better for the way that people use the library today while preserving the things that they already love about. I also want to emphasize that we haven't rushed into this. The library has spent years preparing financially. We've saved terribly, we've pursued outside funding, and we've worked very hard with our architects, construction manager, board, and financial partners to make sure that we are approaching this responsibly. We tried to bring that same thoughtfulness to what happens during construction, and that's why I'm here tonight. Originally, we plan to remain in the building throughout the winter. But once our construction team was able to really dig into the logistics and the history of our older building, it became clear that relocating temporarily would be safer, faster, and frankly, a lot less miserable for everyone in the staff. So The Main Street Building will close for construction, which is currently expected to continue for December of 2027. Our temporary home will be in the Hall District in the former DBAT space at 339 East Maple Street on the 2nd floor. We'll have many of our regular services there, programming, and most importantly, our people. We're not going anywhere. We're just going down the street for a little while. It will be a short period during the physical week, approximately August 23rd through late September, when services won't be available at either location. We're doing everything that we can to make that transition as soon as possible. Because from the beginning, one of our biggest priorities has been the continuity of service. We're taking a lot with us. Our passports, our notary services, our technology folks, our outreach. our in-motion deliveries to new families and those who are homebound, programming, and plenty more. And some things don't have to be more. Our senior programming will continue at the Pacific Center throughout the renovation. Since we're talking about that tonight, I'd like to give you just a little context about what our senior programming is. Our senior programming really is a partnership between the library and the city, and it's one that we're very proud The city provides the civic center space, and I especially want to thank the city for the curb cuts and the accessibility improvements that were made there in 2020. Those improvements matter. They have helped make the space more accessible and welcoming for the older adults that we serve. Twice a week, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m., our staff fill that space with fitness and wellness programs, educational opportunities, speakers, things, crafts, social activities, and maybe most importantly, opportunities for people to simply meet together. And people come. A lot of people come. We're now averaging more than 600 participants each month, led by our wonderful Amber Aulis, who is our community engagement librarian. From January through July of this year alone, we've had 4,302 participation with a senior program. The library makes a significant investment in making that happen. About $52,000 each year in programming costs and staff time plus benefits. That includes instructors and speakers, supplies and refreshments, and the dedicated time of three library positions. Our staff also work throughout the year to secure donations and additional community support. I don't think the best measure of the program is $15,000. And I don't think it's even that $4,300 of the attendance. I think it's people having somewhere they know they can go twice a week. The friendships they've created there. It's learning something new. It's moving and laughing and talking and knowing that when you walk through those doors, somebody is going to look at you. That's what we're investing in. And that's also why there was never really a question for us about whether these programs would continue during the renovation. Of course they did. They hear so much about the library is going to look different. Some things need to remain wonderfully and reassuringly distant. So I want to thank the city for helping us make that possible and for being our partner in this work. As we head into this next chapter, there's going to be a lot of closed copies over the next year. I hope our community sees the renovation not simply as a construction project, but as an investment in the next century of our city. We're excited. We're a little terrified. We're moving an entire public library, so I think we're allowed to be both, but mostly we're ready. We're grateful for the city's partnership. We are committed to keeping our community connected throughout this process, and we're incredibly excited about what comes next. The building is going to change quite a bit over the next year. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Moving on to the public speaks portion of our agenda, those items that are on the legislative agenda. Mr. Ott, will you please read the preempt?

At this time, members of the public who have signed up to address City Council will be called to do so. Each speaker will be given five minutes. Speakers shall be called in the order they signed up. During this section, comments shall be limited to legislative items appearing on this meeting's agenda. The rules for speaking and speaker's time will appear on the screen. After you have finished speaking, please remain at the podium to answer questions from the officials of the day.

When you come to the podium, please give your name and your address. First on the list is Mr. Osborne.

I'LL PASS.

OKAY.

RE-DIMPLOMENT. SHE'S LEFT. OKAY. NOW LET ME ROLL.

MELANIE J. ROLLS, 0840 STREET NORTHWEST. IN THE LAST WEEK, I CONTACTED ALL SEVEN OF YOU ABOUT THE BUSINESS DISTRICT I believe it's 16-2026. I think you all know my recommendations. I've talked at two council meetings. I've been at two planning committee, one planning committee meeting. Thanks, folks. This seems like it's something that is not needed. There are opportunities for businesses in locations that are already in place. This will disrupt neighborhoods. This will decrease property values and home values when neighborhood business is enacted in the neighborhood. It's just not a good idea. And I ask you to remove that part of the ordinance and table it for exclusion.

It's not a good idea.

Thank you. Thank you. Julie Gonzalez? And Bob Nicholin? I already spoke earlier. Okay. All right. That concludes the speakers for legislation on the agenda.

Okay.

Moving into old business. Lynn, will you please read the title of Board Meeting 16-2026?

It's repealing chapter 1139 industrial district regulations and amending various provisions of chapter 1137 business district regulations for the codified ordinances of the city of North Canton to update modify and clarify the regulations governing the city's business districts This is what we have the public hearing on I know mr. Secondy you talked briefly about some of the changes I'd really like to hit more on the changes knowing that the neighborhood district is

Might be the longer portion of the conversation but to make sure everybody understands that this ordinance covers a lot more than just that safe sure if You're okay with this I can talk a little bit in general about what the whole ordinance includes but I appreciate all the residents coming out and I'll definitely address the neighborhood business district portion and And my hope there is to give you a little bit more of a sense of the thought process behind it, some context on it, what it is and what it isn't. But like I mentioned before, the overall context of this, it's a text change. So it's important to point out, and I'm probably going to say this two or three times, there's no map changes to the zoning map, and we're not actually creating physically any zoning districts as part of this. So although It is a text change, and one of those changes is the creation of a category called neighborhood business district, which we'll talk more about in a second. There will not be at the end of this process, even if council approves this, something called neighborhood business district on the map. So that would be a whole other process to create those if and when city council felt the need to do that in any given case. But I'll talk a lot more about that. I mentioned briefly the data centers. I just wanted to reiterate that a little bit more. As I mentioned before, hot topic of conversation. We wanted to address it here. The impetus for this whole thing is to consolidate and rewrite all of our commercial and industrial zoning regulations. When I say rewrite, many of them are what they were before. So they weren't changed wholesale, but we thought this is a current issue, we wanted to address it. So this code does explicitly prohibit data centers everywhere in the city, except for our one limited industrial district, which is where Diebold is there. And then even there, if someone were to propose one, it would require a conditional use. So I feel pretty good about that. That's up to you, whether you all agree, but I think that's a reasonable approach. for that topic in our city. And I will say we may have mentioned this at previous meetings, but it's not that there's no possibility that the data center could come here. It's also important to point out there's data centers with a small D and a small C and data centers with a big D and a big C. That's kind of my tongue-in-cheek way of saying really large or really small or in between. But we just, the nature of North Canton isn't such that we have 600 acres of vacant land available for these massive data centers. So I don't want to imply it's not any sort of a concern, but I think the way we approach it makes sense for a community of our scale. One other thing I'll mention that was a new change We had always prohibited cannabis facilities, but we also have regulations on smoke and vape shops, and that is included in these new commercial regulations. We do believe that if City Council feels like these are a good approach to regulating those facilities, we probably will come back in the future and propose similar changes on Main Street, because currently Main Street doesn't really have much in the way of regulation of smoke shops. I would probably argue that might actually be a more important area of the city to think about those types of facilities. So stay tuned on that. So that brings me to the main topic of conversation from the interest, I think, of the people in this room, which is the neighborhood business district. One, I guess, important piece of context, and it was alluded to a little bit is Our zoning code with commercial uses, it's in some ways, we have a sledgehammer, which is these general business districts or the main street districts. They allow a lot of high intensity retail uses. Think about Meijer or Washington Square. And we go kind of right from that to residential. And so one of the ideas behind proposing the neighborhood businesses and it was mentioned briefly is to have the possibility of some sort of a transitional zone between high intensity retail and commercial development and other zones in the city, whether they're residential or institutional or parks and so forth. Another thing I wanted to add on that is I've been a professional urban planner, public administrator for 29 and a half years. I, as a planner, would never recommend doing a one-off neighborhood business district. If somebody petitions city council for their stray residential property in their residential neighborhood and said, I want this to be a neighborhood business district, I would probably be up at that podium if you let me opposing it. So another thing I wanted to mention for context is typically these are more appropriate districts for some sort of an arterial or collector street. So East Maple Street or Apple Grove or Schneider or some of the other, you know, collector arterial streets. Again, I don't think they would be an appropriate type of district to place in the middle of a solely residential neighborhood. They really are more intended. And I think people could argue back because there are sometimes unintended consequences, but the intent would be that they would remain along arterial or collector streets. And that would be my professional recommendation if you chose to approve this. Two other things. I'll reiterate again, right now, there are no neighborhood business districts. If you approve this tax change, there will be a category in the zoning codes called neighborhood business district. There will not be 1 neighborhood business district on that map. So some of the concerns of residents had understandably will or questions. Will the whole city be. A neighborhood business district. No, in fact, right now, none of the city will be a neighborhood business district. Now. I would say, and you all know this better than me. If at the end of all this discussion in these hearings, you feel like neighborhood business district. doesn't make sense as a zoning category, then by all means, I would say, take it out of the proposed changes. But we do feel like it is a valuable tool to have in the toolbox, that it is something that represents, again, some sort of a transition of having a mire versus having some sort of a bed and breakfast for some sort of a professional service business I hear what the residents are saying about main street. I mean, it is true. We have, um, a lot of commercial activity along main street and opportunities, um, for more in my conceptualization. I mean, I think if we, if we were to ever get a petition for neighborhood business district, it's probably gonna be something where I don't think it makes a lot of sense for us to have more than maybe one or two of them, in my opinion. SO I JUST WANTED TO COMMUNICATE THAT, THAT, YES, COUNCILS CAN CHANGE, ADMINISTRATIONS CAN CHANGE, BUT I WOULD ENVISION IT AS JUST BEING SOMETHING THAT IN, YOU KNOW, SELECT PARTS OF THE CITY, MAYBE WHERE EAST MAPLE STREET TRANSITIONS FROM MAIN STREET OVER INTO NEIGHBORHOODS OR ON PORTAGE STREET OR JUST THOSE KINDS OF AREAS, I CAN SEE IT POTENTIALLY MAKING SENSE. AGAIN, AND THAT'S IF SOMEONE PETITIONS to create it. And again, I'll reiterate, I would never recommend that you approve a neighborhood business district that's one house or one house in the middle of a residential neighborhood. I don't think that would be appropriate. I think with that, hopefully that gives you a little bit more context on it. Where our heads were at when we came up with it, we did try to think it through. It was, again, intended as something that maybe gives us a little bit more of a nuanced type of business district that is much smaller in intensity than Washington Square or Maine and Apple Grove, but more than obviously a residential neighborhood.

Thank you.

I would add to it, first, thank you, Jason, very thorough. Aren't we lucky to have Jason and three decades of experience in urban planning, the city of North Canton now. JUST FOR FULL UNDERSTANDING OF THIS WAS THE PURPOSE, YOU KNOW, AND WHERE WE CAME FROM WITH THIS IS JUST WAS TO PROPOSE AN OPTION, JUST AN OPTION, LIKE HE SAID, IN THE ZONING CODE FOR LOWER INTENSITY COMMERCIAL DISTRICT TO SERVE SORT OF AS A BUFFER THAT WAS COMPATIBLE WITH NEARBY RESIDENTIAL. IT'S INTENT, AGAIN, JUST TO SEE WHERE IT WAS COMING FROM, WAS TO PROTECT RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS BY CONTROLLING, AGAIN, THE INTENSITY OF THE COMMERCIAL development on their edges and it being a lower usage as opposed to the more permissible gbb and gba and so um again like like like you said i echo a lot of what he said just want to make sure people understood the intent of what we came uh with uh giving an option you know we should have options available in the zoning code and I really I understand I feel the same way people say here we love our community we love North Canton we love our neighborhoods it sounded intended to disrupt that at all but you know development will happen it just will happen and this was just another tool in the zoning code to again serve as a transitional buffer between the residential neighborhoods that are on the edge so that was the intent

Would you like to add anything there?

I think I'd just reiterate that it's creating a category. It's not creating a specific place. It's not committing to a map. It was part of our 2023 master plan. So I invite you to revisit that. And it was unanimously given back to us from the Planning Commission without comment. So I do want to reiterate, it is not spot zoning. The zone doesn't exist. so there are a lot of falsities that are being perpetuated here um i invite you to revisit it and and listen to what jason said because that's a great recap it's a category only right now that's it anything that goes back is going to go again to the planning commission correct yeah that's actually and then approved by you specifically for any specific spots

That is what I briefly raised my hand for because you and Catherine just reminded me there was one other thing I wanted to add, and that was more for the benefit of everyone here just on the process. So this again, this is a text change. It creates a thing called neighborhood business district as an option in order for there to ever be a neighborhood business district. I just wanted to briefly outline what the process is so that that would take a request to the administration either from the administration or from city council or from a property owner to rezone one or more properties. That would require rezoning obviously in a map amendment. So amending our map at that point, it really would be similar to the processes before us tonight. It would come to city council, it would be kicked over to the planning commission to review and comment on it would come back for a public hearing just like we had this evening. And then it would ultimately be up to city council for an up or down vote. It can't be passed on emergency. And so any one zoning district of this category, each and every one would have to come through the exact process that this zoning tax change is coming through planning commission and that city council one final thing i forgot to mention or might have forgotten to mention every single use in that neighborhood business district that isn't single family residential is a conditional use so that we added that as one with based on some comments from that we received at the planning commission meeting from some council members some residents we added that as an additional safeguard that any given use whether it's a bed and breakfast or a a law office or an accounting office or whatever it might be, that would have to come for specific conditional use approval, that planning commission. So there, you probably hear what I'm saying that there are a lot of processes embedded in this and Hopefully that's somewhat reassuring to people that on a whim, something just can't be easily rezoned in this category and end up with a use that's not compatible with our neighbors.

I believe we added that.

Who would be grandfathered into this?

No one, because it doesn't exist.

Even like the current bed and breakfasts? and Airbnb.

They will retain their existing zoning. Yeah, when I say no one, I mean no one under this new district. So like Liam just thought at, if they're in whatever zoning district they're in, they're grandfathered within the context of that zoning. Say they're in Main Street Center, and that's not a good example because it isn't allowed use. But if they were somewhere where it wasn't allowed, they're grandfathered in. until it would change.

And then why did you keep it like, so I start up a neighborhood business and pass everything. And maybe, and then I sell my house. Why did you keep it? It should go back to where it was before.

If I understand your question, I think there are two different concepts. So one was mentioned earlier in the public hearing where we have some regulations on home businesses. They're currently already on the books. That is... That we think of.

I mean, there's hundreds of home businesses in down here.

Right, right. But I just wanted to communicate that there's a process for regulating that, and that is more pertaining to that specific owner in that business. The neighborhood business district, it's an actual, if we ever implemented one and changed the map, like all zoning... categories, zones, it is, you know, it's a geographic feature on the map and it would stay in place until city council decided to change it. So just like any of our other zoning, Main Street North or our multifamily apartment zoning, you know, it doesn't change unless city council changes it.

I just think we're a little early with all the things that, you know, we have a middle school, what we put there, we have, you know,

orchard hill stuff of that nature i just think you're a little bit early on this so are you are you john because i had a question that came up in there so you mentioned spot zoning it was brought up earlier in the meeting i would like to hear from legal does this in any way qualify as spot zoning by enhancing an individual property's value no

Okay, this spot zoning is when you zone one particular parcel in a manner that is completely inconsistent with all the parcels. I also want to highlight it's also, it's not actually illegal. It's just frowned upon. It's bad family practice. So it would be like an instance where you can have an entire residential area and smack down in the middle that you decide something should be in the industrial zone. That would be spot zoning because it's wildly inconsistent with the nature of the zoning around it. All this legislation does is create a zoning category that doesn't rezone any actual properties. So in order for something to be spot zoned, you'd actually have to rezone a property inconsistent with the area around it. And this legislation absolutely does not do that.

If somebody were to then want that neighborhood, are they asking for spot zoning? Probably not. And again, that would have to go through a process.

And if it was something that reached the status of spot zoning, that would probably be something that the finding commission would reject, or the county would use and reject if the neighborhood business destination was completely incompatible with the surrounding zoning characteristics. probably not be a good land use. This just gives us the option to even consider this as a zoning category at all. Any of these zones would still have to go through that entire process, which is like, you know, it's intentionally meant to be a rigorous evaluation of the land use.

Questions?

I'll go first. Yes. I appreciate everyone coming and I appreciate the phone calls I've received and the conversations I've had. And something that I'm just wondering is I keep hearing that this is a buffer zone. The intent, meaning the intent over and over and over is to basically create this buffer zone close to Maple and Main or on the arterial, which is arterial or collector streets. Is that what you said, Jason? Yeah. So I'm just wondering... I feel like it would be far more reassuring to our community if that was part of the code. Is that something that we could say that if we were going to have a neighborhood business for someone to apply, they would have to be next to a GBB or a GBA or the main street districts. So it really does serve as a buffer since we keep using that word, the buffer between, or is that?

Oh, something to the effect of adjacent to nearby existing commercial use. Yeah, maybe. I think I hear what you're saying, that have some somewhat prescriptive text in this text amendment that would say neighborhood business district shall be, or something to that effect, located. I think that is something that might make a lot of sense. sense, especially if there are concerns about how will this be applied in the future by future administrations or future councils. I would maybe just caution I think it would probably make more sense to do that about the type of street it's located on. We could even name, I mean, if you wanted to get specific enough, we could name the streets and you could decide, no, Schneider's no good, but East Hill is okay. I'm just making that up. I'm not recommending it, but I would be a little more cautious about maybe being too prescriptive about where it's located next to, not because that's not a good idea in the sense that we like we've said many times we wanted to be a transitional zone but land uses can change or zoning categories can change and we might not be able to accurately account for every single transition between one zone and another in the city but you can also have language that kind of maybe isn't a shall but should consider or something like that you know a neighborhood business district for example, should border at least on one side of it, existing commercial zone. I think personally, that would be a pretty reasonable requirement. That way it would keep us from ever, not that I would recommend this anyway, but from putting one with residential on all sides. So it definitely something I think if council feels that's important, it's certainly worth considering.

Can I ask if it's related to Hearst? Okay. So in this idea of buffers and about the idea that Member Weirich is talking about, that maybe it's adjacent to GDP. Currently, the way things sit right now, are there any restrictions in business zoning on where within business zoning any business can be located? In other words, does it have to be within the central part of that zone or could it be right to the edge? could that edge potentially border a residential zoning area?

Yeah, that's a great question. And it absolutely could be anywhere. Now, when I say anywhere with the caveat that there are all sorts of zoning rules on the setbacks and the placement of the buildings, but you're right. If it's a large, say, general business B zone, it could be on the very edge of the zone. That could be a single family house. It could be in the middle. It could be anywhere in between. And almost by definition in any city, you're gonna have, it's inevitable that you'll have a spot where commercial zoning ends and residential zoning begins.

So, yeah. I'm sorry. Okay, that's all right. I kind of want to bring something up in dovetailing to what she said as well. And I'm trying to think of exactly how I word this here or how I want to word this. So we've talked a lot about buffer zones. If there is not a business there now, is that not a buffer zone already? And I guess an example I'll give is Melanie and I have talked about this a number of times. And I don't know if you know where she lives. She lives in a wonderful house on Portage. And she can see a business district around her house. But she currently has what I would consider to be a buffer zone in namely several houses going towards that business district. If we erode away at that, which is potentially what this neighborhood business district would be, maybe the house next to her or the house two houses down becomes a daycare or becomes you name it. Is that not eroding away at the buffer zone?

I think your question kind of gets at this is where the maybe a lot of philosophical discussions about city planning come in. Some people, and I don't think there's a right or wrong to this, it's just we live in a very diverse society with a lot of diverse viewpoints on what's the preferable living option. So some residents with all the justification in the world value being away from commercial development. They feel like I'll get in my car and drive to it if I need to get to it. Other residents might value more being able to walk to the retail or even living right next door to it. So I think when you're thinking about districts like this and whether to create one, it's kind of gauging each community and each neighborhood and the context. And it doesn't make sense because I think to your question, Councilman McLeister, Yeah, I think a lot of residents understandably want to have some sort of a residential buffer before they get to commercial activity, but be close enough, like in your example, to walk to it. Whereas other people, they might want to live in an apartment building with a dry cleaner next door or something like that. So it's, in my opinion, it's about creating opportunities to maybe have transitionary zones, but respecting the desires of the community to have different sorts of buffers between residential and commercial development.

So to take to your point there, where people may choose where they want to live, maybe I want to live next to the dry cleaners, as you suggested. Mellie and her husband have lived in that house for quite a few years, and they could have made that decision when they moved to North Canton years ago that they wanted to live next to that business district. And while they are close, there is a buffer there, but now we're not giving them that choice by, again, I just don't see, I feel like this is a solution looking for a problem. I've talked to a number of different residents, some of them are here, and I've talked to more than the folks who just came tonight, and I haven't found a single person who's in favor of this, and I think, I might have heard you say a moment ago something about listening to the residents. I mean, I like to think that I'm listening to the residents. So I, for one, I thank you guys for the work that you put in on this. I think the other elements about, you know, the data centers, marijuana dispensaries, I think that's great language in there. But I'd like to see this neighborhood business district remove.

If I could add just one thought to what you said. whether there's a neighborhood business district zone or not that's ultimately up to council but that the scenario you outlined that won't go away i mean when we have commercial zones in our zoning code um for example the main street business districts zone in the future could someone could propose expanding it or someone could propose creating a gb or general business So that's not to argue, that's not to say one way or the other whether we should have neighborhood business districts. Maybe the conclusion ultimately is that we shouldn't. But I just wanted to communicate that that problem you're describing doesn't necessarily ever go away in discussions about zoning. And one reason why we thought the tool might make sense is right now for someone to propose a new business district, the only recourse they have is to propose a general business district. And so if you take, I don't know, I'm gonna use a real world example, a property like Field Press. So there's been a lot of discussion over the years. It's kind of a square peg in a round hole. And is there a way to maybe have it be more of a commercial use, but not too commercial to protect the neighborhood, or I'm not proposing that it should be a neighborhood business. I don't think neighborhood business district would make sense there, but I'm just trying to explain that there is some wisdom of having transitionary zones that are not one thing or the other, because if you did use the example of field crest and someone wanted to create a business there, the only option they would have is to request GBA or GBB. And if it, went away someday or sold someday, somebody could put a giant needle there, which would be a good argument to never allow. I would never recommend to you put that zoning category there. But I just wanted to illustrate that we wanted to try to find a category that, yes, it'll allow a bed and breakfast or a dentist's office. No, it won't allow a grocery store or a more intensive commercial. Like you guys said, maybe ultimately... You come down on the side that this is premature, it's not the right tool, but that was the thought process behind it.

I'll just add to it, to what you said. And again, we are not in any way trying to compel or lobby for this legislation. We're just trying to give you the options. And Jamie, you said it seemed like a solution to a problem, but we talked a lot about it being more of like our thought process was better to have and not need than to need and not have. So that's where we said in a situation like Jason just explained, we wouldn't have any other recourse to provide that buffer zone for the residential area.

And I can appreciate that. And I was thinking for a property the size of Fieldcrest. I mean, I was on planning commission. We actually looked at it was going to be the Fieldcrest Historic District. So I'm not necessarily concerned about a situation where you have a 70-acre parcel of land. I think there could be other solutions for them. But My concern lies with my constituents who came here and spoke this evening. So I appreciate your comments.

Yes. I don't doubt. I hear everything that the administration is saying. You know, I think everything they had. They had a reason for pretending it and good intentions.

But my concern is

know basically ultimately comes down to like jason you were saying uh business next to a house kind of as it is right potentially the way things are written this basically by adding this g or by adding this nb provision it increases the likelihood of a business next to a house and therefore i look at it more as i do i feel like it's changing the rules of the game uh mid game um and nickel i think he spoke out about something along those lines as well and i i just think that we have enough areas on mainstream like he mentioned that are already empty. We already have some vacant spots. I'd like to see those areas filled first. We're still trying to fill those spaces. So I think pushing it further into the neighborhoods, or at least creating the option. I just don't think it makes sense.

I just wanted to say we have been throwing this back and forth between Council and the Planning Commission, which is a good thing, which means we've had a lot of discussion about it. It's kind of evolved since the beginning, right? It came to us in a little bit of a different format, but it's in current state initially. The district was going to be permitted use for those few land use categories, which meant it was not going to go to the committees and back to us. So we all spoke and said, you know, that doesn't really sit well with us. Let's go ahead and make sure that the people do have a voice in that process. So we sent it back to planning commission at that last meeting. A lot of our council members were present. And we had a resident, Ms. Roll spoke, and she indicated that she was not comfortable with the district. Myself and another council person also publicly spoke and said the same thing. We felt like it should probably be removed at this point in time. And I think we had one council member in support of it. This continues to evolve. Like many people here, I've had several people contact me, some who are not here tonight, and give really great dialogue about why this bothers them, why it concerns them. And I think the one thing I keep hearing the theme throughout all this is about certainty. And I guess where I'm going with this is it went to the planning committee earlier in July And everybody unanimously at that committee still passed it along back to us in its current state. There's no certainty that when residents show up at those meetings and they speak, that the changes that they are asking for will actually be heard or be made. And so to me, there is a lot of uncertainty with this additional district. I'm also hearing this argument for the buffer or the stop gap. And I think I also would label that as a control. And so if the concern is that the general business district has so many land use categories that are automatically permitted, why could we not take that existing zoning code and update it first and make some of those either conditional or add a condition into that language that says if for that particular application that property butts up to residential, it now becomes conditional. I'm not sure what our allowances and limitations are there, but to me before writing in a new district that brings so much uncertainty to council and people, I think that we got to look at the existing. Can we not add an additional control to that? That also helps prevent the same thing that we're saying this would do. I've heard from enough people. The people really showed out tonight. They did the job I was hoping they would do. They really did share their thoughts. And I think that's the whole point of a public hearing. I am fully supportive at this point in time of removing the neighborhood business district language from this particular ordinance. Everything else that's in there, I'm perfectly comfortable with.

Um, I did have a couple of things I wanted to add a couple of points of clarity to some statements that both Catherine and Jason made. Um, so 1. The, there are several areas in the city presently actually in all 4 awards, uh, where GBA or GBB do a, but directly to residential lots. that could potentially be served by this change in a very positive manner just because the scale of business would decrease of what would be allowed in the neighborhood business with that being a conditional that sets those two distinct processes one to rezone and two to receive that conditional use and both of those would involve a notification of all residents within 200 feet and let's say 200 feet that's not a large area that might be two homes on either side

and the homes maybe across the street and behind.

In an adjacent R50 district, for example, it would be based on that frontage, probably four homes in every direction.

If you take a look at Cole Avenue, I know that area, and you're not getting everyone in the neighborhood to vote or hearing that.

And then the same thing, it does exist elsewhere in the city, so I just wanted to add a little point of clarity for that. on that these are, you know, several months processes to get everything done. It doesn't just pop up overnight.

I again want to highlight, again, I appreciate the work you put in. I appreciate the conversation we had today. But I again want to highlight, yes, in all four wards, there is a situation where a business district butts up against a residential district. And yes, it might be a hard delineation. It might be a hard change. but you're not gonna make that change any better by going further into the neighborhoods with businesses, however low impact they may be. So I just, I fail to understand the thought that this is a buffer. I'm sorry. I would like to offer up a motion.

Before you make your motion, can I just say one comment? So I am pro-business, I am a small business owner, multiple small businesses, and i hear a lot of fear and i trust our administration i trust our volunteers on the planning commission our volunteers on the zoning board and every member on this board here to always want to do what's best for north canton and as each one of these items for a zoning change to neighborhood business a planning commission meeting to get a conditional use that everybody involved is going to make the best decision. And to Katherine's point, to have a tool for when it's needed is probably the best avenue. So I just want to comment slightly. Everybody here

wants the absolute best for the city of North Canton. And I think it's important that we all try to remember that. Some comments were made that I can't understand how somebody could be possibly in favor of this. I've never met, I've not talked to anybody that's in favor of this. I think we all want the right thing, the best thing for North Canton. We just might have possibly different opinions about that. There were a lot of very eloquent speakers tonight, and they all spoke about things that were, well, they spoke about generalities. They spoke about narrow streets. Well, actually, they spoke very specifically. They spoke about their narrow streets or their shared driveways or how close their house is to their next-door neighbor. And they were applying a very specific example of their neighborhood to the entire city. And I guess I would point out, much as what President Matheny just did, that the role of the Planning Commission, and I have attended those Planning Commission meetings, they pay a lot of attention to what they do. They take their jobs, their roles, their volunteer roles very seriously. And I think we do too. And I would just point out that we put guardrails on to basically prevent somebody or one person making a sweetheart deal with a family member or a friend. We put guardrails on there. So I obviously appreciate everything that people are saying, and I think I can count and know where this is all going. But I just want to also just point out that I think there are reasonable people who can have a reasonable discussion and have reasonable differences of point of view. And then lastly, I do want to just say that I did some research on spot zoning after a conversation that I had last night. And spot zoning is not automatically illegal. But it is when it is propitious and arbitrary. And the fact that it's across all areas of the city, frankly, makes it not illegal. Now, if we reject it for other reasons, then that's fine. But it's, but it's, this is inspiring. I think our law director pointed that out very helpful.

As a former chairman of the Planning Commission, I just want to point out that I am the absolute most receptive gentleman. I served with several of them. But I think we use the term Jeff Garber, it is the position of council to provide the direction and the ordinances and the guardrails within which they operate and so i think that is nothing more than what we're doing right here um so with that um i would make a motion to pass ordinance 16 2026 within a venue to remove neighborhood business district so by point of order i think we have to make the amendment first so the motion would be to

strike all mention of neighborhood business district?

I would make an amendment that we strike all mention of the neighborhood business district. That's my motion. Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nay. So we had roll call. Roll call vote? Yeah. Okay. So the amendment is to remove neighborhood business from the ordinance. Will you do a roll call vote? Yep. Member Pierpont? Aye.

Can we please restate the end?

So the motion on the floor is to strike all mention of neighborhood business from ordinance 16-2026. And take it out.

In favor would be to remove. Against would be to keep it in. Correct. So I'll start.

Member Pierpont?

Yes, I am in favor.

Member Warren? I'm in favor. Member Weirich?

No.

Member Matheny? No. Member McLeister? Yes. Member Pratt? Yes. Member Stocker? No.

Four in favor. Motion passes to remove Enby from Ordinance 16-2026. Can I get a motion to adopt the first reading of Ordinance 16-2026 as amended? So moved. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. All right. Moving on. 8D. Resolution 32-2026.

Resolution in support of accepting the 2026 Parks, Recreation, and Open Space as Master Plan. Since when?

Okay, so this is the second reading of the resolution to accept the Parks, Recreation, and Open Spaces Master Plan. Over the break, administration and our consultants have made several updates in response to questions and concerns raised by council, including additional language regarding the recreation complex, the Arrowhead Golf and Events Center, additional stakeholder information in the offensive, and clarification about the methodology OF THE COMMUNITY FEEDBACK THAT WAS COLLECTED. I REALLY APPRECIATE ALL OF THE WORK THAT WENT INTO THAT. YOU GUYS WERE WORKING HARD OVER BREAK. I THINK WE WORKED AS WELL. I DO APPRECIATE THAT. SO WE'VE HAD A GREAT DEAL OF DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS PLAN. SO UNLESS THERE ARE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE REVISIONS, I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING FURTHER. PRESIDENT LEPILEE?

ADMINISTRATION HAVE ANYTHING TO ADD, MAYOR?

I THINK WE COVERED ALL THE changes adequately?

I just did have a question. I had sent an email to Mike. I think that the changes that were put in were kind of a little bit different than how I remember them, and I'm just curious if those changes that I threw out there would be incorporated. I mean, obviously not tonight, but are we meeting the floor with them as I suggested, or no?

Yeah, the changes in the post plan would reflect placement of the objections regarding arrowhead mover under each section for each respective part. The table in Appendices C, it referenced the percentage of resident versus non-resident participants in the survey that was moved to the executive summary. So that chart will appear twice in the plan. Executive summary will remain in the appendices. Stakeholders were also included. in the updated plan as well. In a reference to the current lease agreement that we have with North Kent Little League for the Cooper Recreation Complex was inserted under the Cooper Rec Complex recommendation. So all of those are being added to the plan and when it's received, I'll send it off to all of you.

When did we send it back? Did we send it back to them last week, I heard? It was Friday, I think.

Yeah, well, yeah, it was a back and forth.

Okay. We were on break for three, four weeks. Why couldn't it have been sent sooner?

The problem is we have seven people of counsel that view the master plan all differently. So when we make one change that's acceptable to everybody, it is a moving target.

But why would it be sent on Friday or Thursday? That's why.

I received it, Mr. Orr. I received it yesterday. last week and then i had additional uh comments from council so i can tell you that i had actually sent it two or three weeks ago okay to the consultant okay and it took them some time and then i sent it back out to you all and then i had additional feedback so it was a back and forth between myself you all are talking plus

He was very quick to respond to my particular request for an additional remark in there, and so I appreciate that, and I understood that would not be present tonight. Do we think that we'll have it back by the third reading?

You will, yes.

Okay. All right.

Perfect.

I also want to thank Mike. We had a wonderful conversation on Saturday on the Portico at the Main Street Festival, so thank you for the additional clarification in that conversation. Thanks.

Okay, correct.

Sorry.

Okay.

Where are we?

Sorry, everybody. Sorry.

I would love to make a motion. Thank you. I would like to make a motion to adopt the second reading of ordinance resolution 32. Thank you. 32-2026. That's right here.

I will second that. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. Moving on to new business. The motion to suspend the Council Rule 23 to allow for consideration of all items from the preceding Committee of the Whole. Motion. Can I get a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Lynn, will you please read the title of Ordinance 38

And ordinance authorizing appropriations for current expenses and other expenditures for the period beginning January 1st, 2026 and ending December 31st, 2026. Mr. McLeister.

All right. You spoke about this. It seemed about like three hours ago. I know it wasn't that long ago. I'm quite confident that you've had no changes. Okay. With that, that's it for you. I'll make a motion.

Motion to adopt the first reading of ordinance 38-2026. Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. I need a motion to suspend the rules of council requiring three readings.

Motion.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Is there a motion to adopt 38-2026 under suspension of the rules?

So moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Martin carries. All right. Ordinance 39-2026. The draw. Will you please read the title?

An ordinance establishing Chapter 149, Parks and Recreation Advisory Board of the Codified Ordinances of the City of North Canton, thereby establishing the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board for the City of North Canton. Ms. Weidman.

Okay. So we just discussed this in committee. Anyone have

I'd like to add one thing real quick. So if anybody listening out there tonight has an interest in being a part of the advisory board, contact one of us because we're looking for people that are willing to fight for everything that they want in the park system. So we invite you to apply.

Will we use our online application process like we do? They should fill out the normal board. We'll put a notification out with some sort of a deadline to apply.

So once the board's actually created, I'll add that in the open field so people can fill out. Perfect. In the meantime, before that goes up, just because the code's not established yet, if somebody reaches out to you, put that on your list. And then once that's updated, have them apply. Thank you.

I'll make a motion to adopt the first reading of Ordinance 39-2026. Second.

Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Ordinance 40-2026. Mr. Hunt, will you please read the title?

An ordinance amending Chapter 373, Bicycles and Motorcycles, are the codified ordinances of the City of North Canton to update provisions of the chapter and correct inconsistencies with the newly established regulations and declaring the same to be an emergency. Ms. Pierpont.

So again, this is just correcting a few inconsistencies, bringing it a little bit more closely related to the new Chapter 372 with e-bike language. And really, that's just all that it is.

Is there a motion to adopt the first reading of 14-2026? So moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. I will make the motion to suspend the rules of council requiring three readings. Can I get a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion is moved. And finally, can I get a motion to adopt 40-2026 under suspension of the rules?

Motion to adopt.

Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion carries. Okay. We're going to skip 9D. We've sent that back for more work. Recognition of public for topic under city authority.

Please read the preamble. At this time, members of the public who have signed up to address city council will be called to do so. Each speaker will be given five minutes. Speakers shall be called in the order they signed up. During this section, comments shall be limited to items reasonably under the city's authority. The rules for speaking and speaker's time will appear on the screen. After you have finished speaking, please remain at the podium to answer questions from the officials at the dais.

When you go to the podium, please state your name and your address. First on the list is Helen Norris.

Helen Norris at 1216 Valley Drive. Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Good evening, City Council. Good evening, audience. And good evening, senior citizens. And the reason that I'm here this evening is to talk about our senior citizen project. And it's a very wonderful program. I just wanted to say that I started my journey with our excellent one Canton Public Library around 1979. And that is the correct date. And I have fond memories participating in Mommy and Me, Clicker to Big Red Dog, Legos and trains. I also attended other activities as the years have passed, leading me to our fabulous senior citizen program. Just a few things I have learned is all the big haunted houses, the big places that they are, Hoover District and all over. And I've also learned from a security officer at a bank ways not to get scammed and the many fraud situations in our world today affecting senior citizens. I have learned where and when to get help and how to manage obstacles facing senior citizens. I've learned about free physical therapy from Walsh College. I've learned about memory loss research, pain management. I learned about all of our brave SWAT team and their bravery. I learned how to declutter through different stages of our lives, which is really important. And I learned that grief is just not a death. And you might wonder how I learned all of these unique things. The loving and caring senior citizen director at our North Canton library, her name is Amber Olis. And she chose these learning opportunities for the senior citizens in our community. And Amber also likes to make sure that we're fed. We had a lot of complex and one of my favorites. And what a surprise, by the time Amber had for us, a big old burger bar from Red Robin's with all of the trimmings. The trimmings were a nail in itself. It was very, very elaborate. Another was an elegant cheese tasting experience by a fabulous retired director of pathology from Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland. And she owns the tea shop now. And I can tell you how interesting was her story. Very. Going from a pathologist, a retired pathologist, to tea smoking. The samples were fabulous. She just loved our Amber, saying how Amber thought we seniors might be interested to know how cheese is made. We are so blessed and our senior citizen center always greeted with a warm cup of coffee, tea, wonderful snacks, and you will find wonderful, warm seniors engaging with each other, lots of laughter and happiness radiating in the environment that Amber has created for us. In this environment, We share parts of our lives, stories about raising our families, lots of friends, and just celebrating the golden face of our journey at this time. All of these experiences are provided to the senior citizens free from the North Canton Library and the creative program that Director Amber Olis worked hard to provide and obtain for us. And we warmly thank you. And in closing, I just want to say something. I have met many, many, many people during my journey, all types. Some are heroes, but you know what I've learned? Heroes are wonderful, but if you are lucky, you will see a glimmer or a shine like a diamond radiating from a person, just a little bit more special. And we have that shine and glimmer like a diamond in our senior director from 19th and I did. And her name is Amber. And I'm not saying nothing else. I just want you to know that it's the best if you ever have an opportunity You would have a wonderful time just to come and watch or eat or see the joy that has created for senior citizens. Because sometimes it's not really easy to be a senior citizen because you get sad or lonely. You're not there.

Thank you so much for speaking.

Thank you.

I have a question. I have a question.

What's the age range?

Yes, can I go?

No, I mean, listen, you have your birth and birth.

It's joyous. It's joyous. And people, who are the ages? Any age you want to come. Are you ready? If you want to see something, it's this pathology baby. I mean, she was just a incredible, smart, articulate, and for her to say, you know what, the difference, she says, all you have to do is have some liquid and some chemicals for the pathology. She was related to that. Two, she's making, you have liquid and some chemicals and find whey or whatever, whatever. Delicious. Amazing.

Oh, and here's some.

Thank you so much. I can hear your passion. That'd be a burger bar.

Next on the list is Gary Bowman. That's funny.

25% of the residents of the city are senior citizens. We need to look to the future when that percentage increases. And I want to say thank you to the library for stepping up and running the current program. some changes to consider for when this percentage increases. A designated building for the senior program protects the current EMS building. Put the program under the Parks and Recreation. Expand the program for more than eight hours per week. And expand the activities offered. And I used to want to say, I do not attend the program because I still work.

Thank you. Next up is Pat Patterson.

Hi, everybody.

Hi.

Pat Patterson, 1754 Street, Cuyahoga Falls. I'm going to be very brief. Every, well, this year has been about every month. We do a community walk here in the city. And this particular one coming up is on Sunday coming up, the 23rd. I almost had to get my toes out. 23rd, 8 a.m., we will be meeting at the Hoover Recreational Complex, the ball fields. around East Maple Street. We're going to go back. We're going to go onto the Hoover Trail. We're going to walk along there. Go back down around where the Starbucks is. Come across East Maple. Go back to the recreational area. Have some sacks. Have some fellowship. The whole thing is just getting people together. Talking about whatever. Jeff's a regular attendee. Matt's a regular attendee. Catherine's come out once or twice. So everybody's invited. There's no dues. There's no fees. It's all free. The food's even free. So 8 a.m., recreational area over at Hoover Park, right there at the parking lot of the baseball field. Doug Wechter joins us a lot of times, too. Really cool. Romy, you said food.

Are we talking burger bars?

I was just going to say that to you. You know what? I don't remember getting that. I'm going to get off my soapbox here. Last month, we had a $40 dozen of donuts.

And then, was that after the walk or before?

It was very short. Those balloon donuts?

Oh, yeah. Thank you all for coming out.

This was a good turnout.

It was a good debate.

I understand the hesitation and what is going through everybody's mind on the business district. I do encourage people to dispute the falsities that do go around because it's not spot zoning. I mean, it's very clearly not. So I do get a little upset when things like that get perpetuated. But yeah, that's okay. It was a good debate. And yeah. If we're not ready for it, we're not ready for it. That's why you guys make the decisions that you make. So I'm just glad that you guys had a good conversation about it. This weekend, we had a wonderful Main Street Festival. Great weather, good turnout. I had a great time. I hope everybody did, too. Appreciate the feedback on the PROS plan, and I think we're at that level where it looks like everything's going to be agreeable and a plan that Mike is willing to, able to work on and use successfully to obtain us grants for future parks. I'm really excited about the advisory committee for the parks as well. So thank you for bringing that back and managing that. And again, anybody interested, please reach out. There's a lot of things to fight for for the parks coming up. So I'm looking forward to getting that going. I think that's all I have. I was going to tell you that I had a presentation, but I know you just don't want to hear that right now. But yeah, thank you all for coming tonight.

Thanks, man.

Thank you for having us. Please come and join us.

I'll be there for the burger party. Okay, I'll make it brief since we're after the nine o'clock hour here.

I sent counsel to update sort of operational things, but since we have so many people here, I have three numbers, nine, seven, 11. Nine, we have hired nine new hires over the past couple of weeks. I just wanted to say, you know, with our fire EMS and dispatching emergency services, we supplement with a lot of part-time people. So we hired six new hires. people in fire and two dispatchers part-time. And then we did have one full-time person we hired in the street department. So we recruited, interviewed, and onboarded nine new people, welcomed them all to the city. I'm not going to mention all the names. Seven is the number of new businesses that have opened or relocated recently. I thought I'd mention that. If you're driving around town, you'll see up in the old Dairy Queen in North Main, Foley's Vietnamese restaurant. Southern Charm Eatery is going in the old Wendy's on North Main. There's a new therapeutic massage in the professional building at 1206 North Main. Time to dance. Dance studio. Been North Canton for over 20 years on the South Main Inn. Decided to relocate up to the North Main Inn. They're also in the 1206 building. Going in there in progress is another pizza place. Chachaco's Pizza is coming in. And right near that is Domino's in progress. The old CFP Bank. And then Maples down by Claremont, they're a new dog breeding business at 825 East Maples. So that's, you know, a lot going on. That's seven new businesses. And then 11 is Arrowhead, well number 11. Many of you heard we're putting in a well in Arrowhead, and so the Ohio EPA has the Officially approved that, and we're just awaiting some electrical components. And once we get that in, then we're going to have that getting up and operational. And I plan to have our water distribution, superintendent, water, street superintendent, tab Martinez to come in a future council meeting to give you more update on that. And a few other things in the water world. So this thank you to everybody for coming out tonight. And I agree, the Main Street Festival, we pulled off the weather. We didn't know if we would, but we did. And it was a great day on Saturday. Thank you.

Thank you to the chamber as well, because they did an awesome job.

I'll be brief as well. I really appreciated the presentation from the library tonight. It's a great resource for the community. And I'm very confident that it will be worth the wait to have that renovated facility and And I appreciate everything they do. And I wanted to thank everybody else who came out and all of you for that's probably one of the most civil discussions of a land use topic I've ever been involved with. So that was very good. Appreciate it. Akron wasn't that civil? I've got some scars.

Thank you.

If you've ever been to the Civic Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the morning, early afternoon, yes, there's a number of seniors here. Very active, very, very active group. So many thanks to the library for providing that service to our senior citizens. We'll be starting conceptual design work for Rotary Park, the improvements. We did receive a $50,000 gift from the state of Ohio capital fund. So we're moving forward with some concept designs for Rotary Park. On the heels of that, I'm actually on Catherine forwarded to me another grant opportunity that Jennifer and myself will be working on submitting a grant application for Rotary Park as well. And then we're looking at maybe a playground replacement at West Park. So we're working on certain applications right now. It's a big, big story.

Excellent. Thank you.

Welcome back, everybody. And while you were on break, we started a budget. My favorite time of the year. We always start that August 1st. So the departments have added their budgets in to OpenVote. We are still making that platform. And we have department meetings. We started last week. We'll go through this week. And we'll compile everything. And we'll finish the finance board. set the priorities and see what fits in the puzzle and try. And then we have council budget meeting separate. And then we'll come to council as a whole document.

I will now read an excerpt from War and Peace.

No, nothing too major. I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Annie Wendt, who was our summer intern. She's a rising senior at Kent State. She was with us from May until the early, I think, first week of August. She helped me a lot with some of the stuff we've discussed tonight and a few other things that have already gone to council, most notably the e-bike regulations. She was instrumental in helping me do all the research for that and get those regulations off the ground along with the police department. so i just wanted to give her a quick shout out thank her for her time here and i'm sure she's not watching but invite her to again not be a stranger i love hearing from all the interns they like coming back every now and again i see them excellent oh and i'm a super cool boss and i'll be looking for interns in the next couple months once we return to city hall so if you know a college kid that would like to be an intern send them my way perfect all right let's move on to council reports mr ward will you start us off

I'd be glad to.

I want to thank everyone who came out, especially my fourth ward people back there. I want to thank everyone who called me this week. We do listen. The other, by some of the residents calling me this week, one of the things we need to do desperately on our roads, okay, Oh, you got the curb and then you got about two feet. And not so much on Main Street or East or West Maple. There is so much green stuff, Ken. Some vegetation. You might notice it on your roads. Can we get someone from the street department to put some chemicals down or what have you? Because I don't think the street sweeper can sweep it up. I've seen the street sweeper out in the I've seen both of them, and they're doing a good job. But really, this vegetation that's growing, it's even going across this street. You know what I mean? We really need to...

Call in where that is as a work order for us so that we can send it out.

Well, it's on every street.

I don't care what... At this time of year.

Every street in every ward has it. So I would, you know, put a... If they could spend a half an hour, or not a half an hour, half a day... in each ward during the week, we could get this taken care of. We also have a new resident in the fourth ward. I got a groundhog living underneath my step, probably about this big.

Did you send him over? Okay.

But other than that, they're happy. They're happy about our city.

Yeah, this weekend, despite all the weather we had last week, rain, clouds, more rain, it's nice to be able to get a drink to a full day at the Main Street Festival.

I just wanted to shout out to our building department in the city. He was quite pleased with how the city had treated him as a new business up in the Meyer Plaza. I know that a lot of this process is going to be exhausting and the fact that

This guy's experience was so good.

There's no way that happened without a good team. So I just wanted to thank those guys that helped them out there. Probably pretty much all of last year. So thanks to them for that. Also just wanted to mention the senior programming. I think it's very important. Hopefully all of us will someday and hopefully those programs are there. Good for them to just have the support of each other and still be involved in the community. Also, as a former North Canton fireman myself, I just wanted to call out Robert Birch who passed away after 25 years being a volunteer for the city of North Canton's fire department. He's also a 10-year school employee. He lived a long life, born in 1937, and was very dedicated to the city. And I just wanted to acknowledge him and his service and condolences to his family. And thanks for everyone who came out tonight and spoke. Whenever we get any influx of cars in the parking lot,

It is exciting because representing people and listening to people is what, you know, I feel that we're called absolutely to do. And so if you guys come in, it really gets home.

And I appreciate you guys sitting through three meetings and hearing us out. And I also wanted to acknowledge Dr. G. Marko with the Little League. I know he didn't speak tonight, but his presence is here, and I feel it. not because he was my dentist forever, but he was also the brand of Little League when I was there. And I appreciate his involvement today. And I just wanted to thank him for all the service there and going forward. That's all. Thanks. Okay.

I just want to thank everyone that came out tonight. I would say to actively participate in civic activism in a very positive way. A lot of you spoke to me throughout the week as well as others up here. And then you reached out to your neighbors and you told them about things and you got them here. And I think that's just an excellent example of what we want to see at these meetings. So thank you for doing that. You didn't name them, Catherine, but I will since I chair personnel and safety services. Here's all the folks that we just swore into our safety services in the last month or so. Renee Hively, part-time dispatcher. Bob Paglino, Jr., part-time EMS. Justin Hedlund, part-time EMS. Abigail Zamata, am I saying it right? Part-time dispatcher. Issa Soto, part-time EMS. Peyton Barnes, part-time EMS. Miranda Ball, part-time EMS. And Cohen Marzilli, part-time EMS. And I would just say congratulations and thank you to their families as well. for giving us their loved ones. They're so supportive. You go to the swearing-in, you can see how happy they are for them. A lot of them have family who also serve in that same capacity. It truly is a family tradition for them. And then I'll welcome Nathan Upperman, as mentioned, to our Streets and Sewer department. So we've got more swearing-ins coming, I think, as soon as Monday. Thank you. Good stuff. Main Street Festival, real quick. Yes, thank you to the Chamber of Commerce, to the city workers, our safety services. Everybody was out all day, even the night before. Those are some long hours. Thankfully, the weather was fantastic. And I got to talk to a lot of folks, too. As Andy said, the gentleman that approached us, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, Andy. I think he said he has that particular company in maybe 19 different communities. and said that ours was just the best to work with. I mean, it was a big number when he said that to me. So I think that's important to stress. On the senior programming, thank you to everyone that spoke today. I think it's great that we have the services provided through the library. So thank you for that. I think it's also, we've had some great suggestions on how we can additionally grow on that. We're going to have a lot of opportunity to do that with things that are changing, our Parks Department and a lot of things in the near future. So a great balance of both there. And then here's the most important part about my update tonight. The moms of North Canton are already talking about this. This year, Halloween falls on a Saturday. And so whatever the ball is that we need to get rolling, I'm going to formally propose at some point we move Halloween trick-or-treat to a Saturday instead of a Sunday. There you go.

There we go. That's what matters to folks.

Mr. Stocker, thank you. Thank you to everyone who came tonight to witness democracy in action. It's not a spectator sport. It's obviously very important. I really appreciate the people that took the time to speak. It's not always the easiest thing. It's sometimes a little bit challenging, but it takes a little bit of courage to do it. So I appreciate it. Specifically, I would like to thank a couple of folks that are here tonight for their role. As well as Mr. Osborne, I think he might have left, but I had very vigorous discussions, one in person, one over text message. And we didn't see things quite exactly the same way, but I have the utmost respect for both of them because of the way that they kind of expressed their points of view and the opinion. And I think that we'll probably have ongoing conversations that are very productive about other things. So I appreciate that. As far as the Main Street Festival, I was very honored to take part of an information table with a couple of council colleagues, as well as some members of the administration. It was a lot of fun. I was there for a few hours, and I appreciated it. Due to a prearranged schedule conflict, I was not able to stay for the concert, but I heard it was amazing. And I know that there were a lot of comments and suggestions about, God, wouldn't it be great to have an empathy or something along those lines? And I think that's an interesting idea, of course. But as we evaluate all of our current facilities and plan for future ones, I think it's probably very important that we listen to the voices of all of our stakeholders, not just some. Obviously, this is the North Canton Main Street Festival, and the majority of folks that were here were North Canton residents. But we attracted people from all over the area, all over the county. So we appreciate everything you have to finish. So thanks to the Chamber, 720 Market, city employees, everybody. And then lastly, well, actually, I want to point out there was a sad day in my household last Saturday. A 67-year-old silver maple tree had to come down. And that's sad, but there is a bit of a no pun intended silver lining in the silver maple. It was diseased and it was dying. And I knew that it was going to have to come out. But upon the inspection of one Benjamin Ickes, who works for the city of North Canton, we got an arborist out there and it accelerated our process. And so... I bring that up because, unfortunately, there was an incident that occurred several years ago here in North Canton in our Grove neighborhood. And very unfortunately, this past weekend, there was an incident that occurred on Route 3rd. So don't bring that up to be morbid, but please, as a concerned resident, take a look at your trees. They are very aging in this community, unfortunately. And if somebody tells you that it's a disease of dying, you should probably listen and take care of it. As I was witnessing the top hat coming off, the ants came pouring out. And yeah, very quickly, very excited about the parks mission, the group of folks that are hoping to be joining us soon, very excited to move forward with the first plan.

So thank you for all that. Thank you, Mr. Stoner. Ms. Weirich.

All right, so yeah, we had my favorite day of the year, the Main Street Festival this past weekend. I've served on that committee for, I don't even know how long, but just would love to thank the Chamber for all of their work and for the directors and the container there for pulling it all together. I want to give extra thanks to Matt Gerber from our Parks Department who was there like all day doing all of the things. just an amazing guy and great staff so lots of great people coming together to make that event happen um also really excited about the parks advisory board um moving forward with that i did want to mention that this wednesday august 19th at 6 30 there is a canton symphony orchestra concert there's summer serenades at the north canton civic center and then Kind of coordinated along with that start marks will be at price park for their discovery day program from 6 to 8 PM. And then I didn't want to touch on the neighborhood businesses just a bit because I also had conversations with people. I deeply respect and they were good conversations and. I certainly understood the hesitation with the way that that zoning change was currently written. I would have liked to have explored maybe putting some guardrails in place, changing things, putting some edits in for a second reading, but also happy to move forward with that. But I just wanted to say that I was not in favor of it as written.

Thank you. Mr. McLeister. All right, I just have a couple things to touch on here. First and foremost, I mean, I think just about everybody has said something about the Main Street Festival, but frankly, it's one of my favorite events of the year. So I can't go without saying thank you to all involved as well. So certainly thank you to the Chamber of Commerce. Thank you to folks with the 720 Market. Thanks to the vendors. I had a great time sitting here with my following, Mr. Stocker, despite the fact it was raining while we were out there engaging with citizens. But it was a great way to spend a Saturday. So thank you to all involved. Also, I'd like to take the opportunity to thank everybody who came and spoke this evening. So the folks who talked about the library. Again, I'm really excited to hear that they have a burger bar and a cheeseburger. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for the residents who, including Miriam, I've had member of conversations with you. Thank you for those who are passionate about senior programming. Also want to thank those who talked about the neighborhood business district. And, you know, I'm happy to talk with anybody, especially in my residence, who would like to reach out, talk about any topic. And so that dovetails into my third point here is on September 15th, I think I shared before the break, I will be hosting a board one meeting. And the time and location has been set That will be here at the North Kansas Civic Center over the ballroom at 6pm. So let's talk about what is and what is not a word one meeting. So a word one meeting is not a political stump speech. Heck, it's not even going to be a speech at all. And it's really truly, quite frankly, it's not necessarily indebted for folks who live in rooms two, three, or four. It is simply a way for me as the Ward 1 Council Representative to engage with residents of Ward 1. So it's true to where it is. If you live in Ward 1, I hope you'll stop out and see us at 6 o'clock in the ballroom. If you can't make it, I'm always accessible. Give me a call. Send me an email. Thank you very much.

So before we adjourn, I want to thank Andrea Legg for her presentation tonight on the North Camden Public Library's planned renovations, their temporary location, and the continuation of programming. The library continues to be one of the true anchors of this community. We're grateful she took time to update us. I know she told me she needed to get home tomorrow's first day of school for her son, so I did appreciate her taking her time to come this evening. I also want to recognize everyone who spoke with us during a recognition of public safety. That kind of civic participation is exactly what keeps this council accountable to the people that we serve. Tonight, we move forward on the first reading of Ordinance 16-2026 as amended, updating our business district regulations in a lot of different areas. We also advance Resolution 32-2026 in accepting the PRO's master plan. another milestone for us. And I think it's going to be a great for us going forward and for our new parks department. Coming off our four-week summer break, there's clearly a lot of work in front of us. And with 2027 budget season now underway, I'd ask my colleagues to stay engaged as those discussions ramp up in the coming weeks. It's going to be a busy stretch ahead, but I'm confident this council is up to it. Thank you all for being here tonight. And I certainly expect everyone to be here at our next meeting. Enjoy to the meeting calendar. August 24th, we will have a city council meeting. August 31st, we will have a committee of the whole meeting. We will have no meeting on September 7th. I missed anything. I can make a motion to adjourn. Can I get a second? All in favor? Aye.