City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you to the administration that's here. We have ACM Bailey. Thank you so much. Director Croner. and we have Jeremy Seabom from the Solicitor's Office. It's always great to have the lawyers around. All right, and with that, we will start with public comment. I understand, I think we have about nine people, so I'm gonna call your name, and please come up. We have three seats available, so go ahead and fill those up. We will start with Larry Falcon, John Menninger, and Brian Spittel. Please come up if I called your name to the dais. Thank you. And you'll have two minutes to address the committee.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Larry Falcon. I'm a retired city employee, a resident of Pleasant Ridge, and a member of Sierra Club Miami Group's Executive Committee. I wanted to first express support for the Building Energy Benchmarking Ordinance that's on your agenda today. But the main item that I want to address today is stormwater. Like a lot of people, I had damage to my property in last week's storm. I had a retaining wall collapse that is in the process of being repaired. But we've known this was coming for a long time, and it will come again. We know that extreme storms have intensified over the last 20 years. MSD's 2022 sustainability report says extreme storms have already intensified more than 40%, and that trend will continue. So the quickest, cheapest response is to put a price on stormwater, to motivate landowners to hold stormwater where it falls. And the way to do that is with an impervious surface charge. MSD has proposed one, but they want to take eight years to do it. We would like to see that significantly accelerated. So I'm encouraging you to amend today's resolution to add one more sentence. to move that within 60 days the administration and MSD develop and submit a revised Targeted Impervious Surface Charge Implementation Plan that significantly accelerates implementation. And so if you would add that to today's resolution, it would be a much stronger response to the flooding situation that recently occurred. I appreciate your support.

Thank you. Next up is John Menninger.

Morning. There we go. Thank you all for having this today and allowing for public comment. My name is John Minninger. I am representing the Hyde Park Neighborhood Council today. First of all, we'd like to acknowledge, you know, the council, city staff, public services, you know, first responders for your assistance after the flooding event from July 17th. Your support is appreciated and still needed. Additionally, we'd also like to recognize that we understand that the July 17th event was an extraordinary event. It was some estimates of a one in a thousand year rainfall event. We're not suggesting that infrastructure should be able to handle that alone. However, it was not the first time that our areas have flooded, and in fact, it flooded three days afterwards as well, as I'm sure most of you know. In fact, we have reported flooding in a survey received from our residents on June 18th, July 17th, and July 21st of this year alone, along with numerous events that have occurred in the last 10 years. We've heard from our community of repeated sewer backups, basement flooding, street flooding, manholes surcharging, you know, throughout the neighborhood. You know, we would like the conversation, you know, to move to a proactive approach to handling this. We understand that while these extreme events may not be able to be handled, there should be a plan towards a resilient system that can handle things that exceed a design event. And moving forward, we'd like to request that there be a comprehensive study about root causes of flooding within our neighborhood and identifying potential solutions to the issues and problems if you have any questions we have a full survey that we can also distribute to you all that has about 200 residents have already responded to that and we can make that available to you and we look forward to working with you just to stay on when i press it

Thank you. Brian Spittler, thank you for being here.

On now? Okay, great, thank you. Good morning, Chair Owens and members of the committee. My name is Brian Spittler. I'm the president of the Mount Lookout Community Council. Mount Lookout has been raising the alarm about stormwater and sewer flooding for more than seven years. We flagged inadequate drainage as new development went in and warned that our aging sewers couldn't keep up. This is not new. Our neighborhood flooded in 2016, 2021, 2024, and now again in 2026. July 17th and 21st show just how urgent it has become. Last night we held a community town hall Four council members joined us, along with 76 members of the public. In the two weeks since the storms, more than 70 residents and businesses answered our flood survey. The picture is stark. The overwhelming majority say it floods here with nearly every major storm. Residents reported sewage backup into finished basements, cars totaled in garages, and losses from a few hundred dollars to more than $50,000. SOME BUSINESSES HAVE BEEN HIT FIVE TIMES AND RECEIVED NO CITY SUPPORT. OUR NEIGHBORHOOD BUSINESSES LIKE THE CHRISTERLEY IS STILL CLOSED. WE WANT TO BE PART OF A SOLUTION. WE SUGGEST A PROBLEM SOLVING CONSORTIUM OF THE CITY MSD STORM WATER UTILITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD COMMUNITIES LIKE HYDE PARK. WE BELIEVE THIS EFFORT SHOULD NOT YIELD TO THE SAME OLD THINKING. After a decade of flooding, it's time to move from studying the problem to solving it with new ideas like lessening the load on our system. Much of the groundwork is already laid. The city's own 2026 stormwater study identified the fixes and attached the cost to each of our neighborhoods. Four of them, sorry.

That's okay. Thank you. All right, next we have Bob Hyland, Max Zernan, and Marie Kocosing. Sorry, sorry. All right, welcome.

Thank you chair and members of the committee. My name is Bob Hyland. I'm a professor of environmental studies at the University of Cincinnati speaking today on my own behalf. I'm going to forego what I prepared and just say that the motion you had before you to use green infrastructure to try and mitigate some of the stormwater runoff is a good idea that I could support. But it's at its root a little disingenuous if you're doing that with your one hand while not calling for an environmental impact statement on a doubling of the interstate that runs through our city. which will double the impervious footprint of that highway and also increase greenhouse gas emissions, which are driving these sort of rainfall events. It's just disingenuous policy. Similarly, our park board is comprised of real estate developers and billionaire commercial property owners who routinely remove urban forest and install impermeable surface and gray infrastructure in our urban green spaces. So it's a little silly to be spending city resources to install green infrastructure where it doesn't exist when you have a park board that's removing green infrastructure providing ecosystem services already at further cost to the city so again glad that you're looking at green infrastructure solutions to try and mitigate the terrible flooding that we've seen and we're gonna see more of, but if you really wanna get at the root causes, as some of the other speakers have already mentioned, then you need to demand an environmental impact statement on the highway expansion through our city, because greenhouse gas emissions are the anthropogenic source that's driving these sorts of rainfall events, and they're only gonna increase. It's a pivotal moment, we're colliding with climate change, you have some power to make a difference, please do so, thank you.

Thank you. Max Zernan.

Good morning, Madam Chairman, members of the committee. I'm here today to speak about the impact that my family has experienced and members of our neighborhood in the Hyde Park, Arcadia Place Street. For many of us, what happened on July 17th is not the first time we've been hit in 2016, 2021, 2024, and again twice in July. and really the impact is felt so many ways it's not just the personal property you know vehicles my family's lost three vehicles in the last five years it's people having to redo their basements not once not twice not three times and we are not unique uh people throughout the city are all feeling this and the concerns i think that a lot of us have are really threefold one is the planning before these weather events happen, just to make sure that members of the community are on notice and can prepare themselves. But two, it's also the support after the fact. In our case, we really didn't see anybody come out until a week or so after the flooding. Somebody from MSD did come out and confirm that there was a sewer backup. But again, by the time assistance comes or the calls come for cleanup, It's usually 7, 10 days after the fact. That just has to be quicker. I think the other problem is a communication problem. If there is a long-term vision or plan for fixing these issues, that has to be communicated to members of the communities. I think that has not been done adequately to date. In addition, for areas throughout the city that keep getting hit by these weather events, I think there must be an attempt to find shorter term solution for areas that get hit over and over again. And then finally, living in one of these areas that keeps getting hit, the communications that are put out in the press are really troubling. You know, calling something a thousand year storm over and over again and saying there's nothing that could have been done is not productive.

Thank you. Marie, welcome. Yes, good morning. I'm representing the Miami group of the Sierra Club, and I brought a little visual aid this morning to, I think, bring the issue really to the point. This is the stormwater that comes into people's houses and into our sewers is not clean water. It goes into the storm sewers, it combines with sewage, and that's why people have sewage in basements. 1,500 calls were reported by the inquirer to MSD, and those are not just clean water that people have to clean out of their basement. Mr. Jeffries, I think, put it more eloquently than I could when he was standing there at the Hyde Park restaurant that got flooded and said, look, look, the water is rushing off the parking lot of the school there in Hyde Park. That is an impervious surface fee, and this is what the Sierra Club IS SUPPORTING. WE ARE SUPPORTING AN IMPERVIOUS SURFACE FEE THAT WOULD CHARGE, ALLOW PEOPLE TO RETAIN THE WATER, THE STORM WATER THAT COMES ONTO THEIR PROPERTIES IN MANY DIFFERENT WAYS AND CHARGE THEM A FEE FOR THAT. THAT WATER, STORM WATER OR WHATEVER YOU CALL IT, IS A CHARGE THAT MSD HAS TO PAY TO TREAT THAT PARKING, TO TREAT THAT We would like to, I'm supporting the proposal, the addition, the amendment that Mr. Falcon said about the impervious surface fee project, which has been presented here to this body, I'm sure, and MSD has proposed a pilot project for surface fee charges. And we would like that amendment to be added to this resolution. Everybody should pay. not just the residential people who currently pay for a stormwater fee on their bill, but other impervious surface fee owners do not. So please add this pilot project to this amendment. Thank you.

Thank you. We will have Kathleen, who lives on, I believe, Kilgore Avenue, Ailey, Jacob Bailey, and Chris Heckman. Welcome, Kathleen.

Thank you for having me. I've lived in Oakland for 25 years, never had any problems with water until six years ago. I flooded six times. The first time was two feet water in my basement. It was just totally destroyed. They recommend that I cut off my gutters and redirect my water flow and have my pipes cleaned out on a regular basis. which I've done both those things. The second time, I flooded the liner, came away from the main sewer line, blocked the flow of water. After that, I put in a French drain. The third time, there was all this debris in my drain, so I built up my concrete wall to prevent it because I thought it was coming from my yard. The last two times, which were the most recent floods, I stood outside the whole time it rained, cleaned out that drain every 15 minutes. The water from the street is pouring down my driveway. bringing all this mud and trash and everything. If I wasn't there, the water would have been right back in there. So I maintain my gutters twice a year. I get my pipes blown out. I've done everything that I can possibly think of to help with this. Thank you. And so that's what I've done, and this is what I'd like the city to do. Number one, MSD quote, look around you, ma'am. These sewers were not built for this. I live five doors down from Hyde Park Plaza. We've got Cambridge Arms. We've got the condos that were built within the last 20 years. They weren't meant for this. They were meant for your neighborhood. They can't handle this. So I would like the sewers, as everybody's talked about, replaced. Number two, I'd like the city to come out and build up that thing so that stuff goes down to the sewer and not comes down my driveway. My other neighbor has a driveway just like mine which goes down. We flood a third of our driveway filled up with water. Four feet of water you're going through to try and get to that grain and clean it out. And I agree with them about the concrete force. They've got to start putting more money in. And a novel idea may be all the people that are building all these properties, maybe they could pay MSD to come out and put in new sewers around the properties where they're building in.

Thank you, Kathleen. Jacob.

Hi. Thank you for the time to speak. I've been a resident of Hyde Park for about eight weeks now. And in that eight weeks, I have lost something like $15,000 worth of property, including a car. It was a big move for my family to we've lived in four different states now. This is the first time we moved with kids and it was a big move for us and I'm getting emotional because I really thought that moving here I was helping my family get a life with more opportunity for more chances to do cool things. We're close to the zoo and I was really excited about it and the amount of loss that we've had has not just been money but also security. My kids can't go play in our backyard because it's contaminated with human waste. It's been two weeks since the flooding. We still haven't had anyone out to clean up the waste. Our neighbors still have broken glass that came out of the sewer in their backyard. This is not just an issue of some businesses that can't keep insurance. These are communities that are suffering. I've been here eight weeks. There are people who've been here for a decade and been going through this. And this is the kind of thing that if action is not taken, and I'm not talking about 20 years from now, I'm talking about before my kids are done with school, this is the kind of thing that can kill a neighborhood. If people start moving out, the people that can afford to sell their properties at a loss will, property values will plummet, businesses will leave. That's how you start a death spiral on a community. And the Eastside is a vibrant community that has been one of the center points of Cincinnati life. for over 100 years, and if we just let that die on the vine, I think that is a condemnation of our urban planning, and I think it shows a serious misdirection of resources. Thank you. Thank you, Jacob.

Chris.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak, and I want to share my support of the building energy benchmarking ordinance that you're reviewing. Most of the energy from Cincinnati comes from buildings. Sorry, greenhouse gas emissions. And we need to do a better job of having people invest in their own buildings and reduce that energy use and where that energy's coming from. And regarding the flooding, I started a chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby over a decade ago And I go to Washington every year for a conference to try and meet with members face to face. In 2017, I reached out to try and share some of the costs that were associated with the flooding that had happened the year before in Norwood. And Mr. Gerald Checo, who was the head of MSD at the time, he sent me an email outlining some of his cost estimates, back of that napkin kind of things. And he ended up with some very large numbers. And I know that everyone in this room is paying the costs of climate change, or a lot of people are. and to get people to agree on something that we know is coming down the pipeline to pay for infrastructure that will avoid everything that just happened. I know that everyone here doesn't want to be paying $5,000, $7,000 every year to be paying for that infrastructure. He estimated $30 billion. That was 2016. That was 100-year flood. That was pre-pandemic. So we need to do this in a managed way. We need to be forward looking.

Thank you, Chris. I think for now our last public comment is from Jean Hall.

Good morning, city council members. My name is Jean Howard. I am a resident for Evanston. I've been advocating for my neighbors as well as other streets in Evanston. I was here two years ago with the same situation. I've been coming here. I've been going to commissioner's office. There's not been any help. My neighbors as well as myself are having recurrent issues every time it rains. My property is damaged. My backyard haven't been back there 10 years since the flood in 2016. of August. Now it's kind of funny that June and July, the 17th of this year, floods keep happening and every time my sister across the street just cleaned up her basement, couldn't get no help from the city, they denied me and her as they told us first, we are approved because the pipes backed up. However, the city of Cincinnati is trying to do a little help. The problem is, and city council members, please help us. These pipes underground are broken. There are cracks throughout the city of Cincinnati. That's what's causing the city to flood. I had a test done on my street. This is clay. That means the clay underground has, this is from the geotechnical engineers, there are pipes underground that are allowing the water to come 10 feet, 40 feet underground in front of my house, nothing but clay. They explained to me that this clay has to have had some cracked pipes underground for the clay that builds the earth to destroy the earth, to push the earth away. This is really soft clay. This should be solid rock. This should be solid rock. But because it's not, it's mush, and it's pushing the earth. It's pushing the pipes.

Thank you, Jean. Thank you. I want to thank everyone who made public comment today and certainly if you feel so inspired to address this body, feel free to get a white card over here from Lisa and she will help you fill that out. So again, I want to thank everyone for being here this morning, my colleagues, the administration, the community. Today we will focus on a major weather event that afflicted our city just two weeks ago. On July 17th, many of our eastern neighbors were struck by massive amounts of rain that resulted in local flash flooding in those neighborhoods. And so to every resident, business owner, and property owner, we have real work ahead of us, and something has to change. The stress, the toll, and the financial cost are unbearable. A few days later, on July 21st, many of the same properties that were hit on the 17th received more backups in their basements and flooding on their streets. And so I want to acknowledge the members of this committee who have gone out, met with businesses, met with residents. and in some instances were in knee-deep water. So we certainly engaged, and we will continue to do so. I made my way through Hyde Park Square along with my staff to see the after effects of the storm right there at POEM and NECO, all challenged with being closed, not having business, paying employees to come and clean, where Patty's Popcorn had just put a sign in the window saying they were closed due to flooding. And if you were on their first floor, you wouldn't think anything of it, but going into their basement where the majority of inventory is, you see the effects. Later in the week, I walked around to Mount Lookout in the community with, in the business district with Community Council President Brian Spittler. I met the owner of Zips Cafe, an institution for really getting a good burger in our city. And he told me that Mike, that he has lost upward of $60,000 from the effects of the storm. Lost revenue from business being closed. Again, damages and things that are coming out of pocket. Again, recovery efforts, and that's not the only business that is experiencing impact. In fact, I talked to the owner of VV, Italian, and again, they were doing their own assessments and upwards of $70,000. And that is in addition to the residents that are paying out of pocket. Later in this committee, I will ask questions on behalf of the members of Oakley, of Pleasant Ridge, and Hyde Park. who graciously shared their concerns, their questions, their comments about this ongoing issue. And so I thank you for activating independently and really getting serious along with us about this issue. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you for sharing the pain. Thank you for sharing the cost. And before we go any further, I want to thank city departments that are a part of the immediate rescue efforts across the city and every city department that is now focused on our collective recovery efforts. Your heroic acts we could not have done without you in getting through this. So our fire and police, we thank you and again every other department. From first responders again to customer service agents, many of our 6,000 civil servants have worked around the clock for our residents and are continuing to do so after this event. And as we prepare to welcome the administration to this committee, I want to end with this. These incidents are horrific. They hurt our residents. They hurt our businesses in very terrible ways. However, as much as we would like to come up with a solution today, we know that's not possible because this is an ongoing effort. And the reality is we must focus on not only short-term solutions, but also be relentless. on how we tackle the climate crisis that's here. It's about resilience. This also means having vision and foresight to allocate funds now to accelerate capital improvement plans for MSD and our infrastructure, even if it happens after those of us on this dais are not here. because our residents will feel the lasting effects. And that is what is most important, improving the quality of life for all of our residents in Cincinnati. So with that, we will proceed to our agenda. I know what my colleague needs to leave early, and so we will go to item number four, a motion from Council Member Albee.

THANK YOU, CHAIR. AND APOLOGIES. I'M GOING TO BE JOINING THE VICE MAYOR AS WE SWEAR IN SOME NEW CITIZENS HERE. SO WE HAVE TO RUN FOR THAT. BEFORE I DO, I JUST WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR COMING OUT AND PROVIDING PUBLIC COMMENT ABOUT THE FLOOD. MYSELF, COUNCILMEMBER NOLAN, COUNCILMEMBER JEFFRIES, AND THE VICE MAYOR. NOT LOOK OUT LAST NIGHT, SO THANK YOU FOR THAT OPPORTUNITY. SO I'M SORRY, WE'RE GOING TO CHANGE TOPICS FOR A SPLIT MOMENT. WE'LL COME BACK TO THE CONVERSATION AT THE FLOOD. SO THIS MOTION BEFORE US, AND I'D LIKE TO THANK MY CO-SPONSORS, COUNCIL MEMBERS WALSH, OWENS, AND KRAMERDING. is to talk about street paving. So I know myself and others, as we looked at the budget this year, we said, hey, how do we maximize the number of streets we can pave and pave them quickly? But for us to be able to have an informed answer to that, we need to be, you know, honest and transparent about what are the costs, what are the challenges of supply chain and otherwise that is driving some of what we're seeing. So this request for report is really asking the administration to do a deep dive into those repair costs, what it looks like to invest in preventative road maintenance, how we can also provide better overviews of the timeline. The city administration does amazing work trying to coordinate so that when we do repave a road, we're trying to do all the work at once. That's come up in terms of MSD as well. these last few weeks. So what does that timeline look like for a road to be paved? And are there innovative and cost-effective roadway preservation and rehabilitation techniques that we can use? Are there ways we can learn from what other cities are doing around the country where we can pave more roads faster? This also has a request to follow up on a motion my team submitted last year in September 2025 asking about preventative road maintenance, specifically in that report that was provided by the administration. It stated that the city currently spends of its budget for street rehab about 10% of the budget on preventative and recommended possibly increasing that to 20%. So we are following up on that recommendation to understand how can we even prevent the potholes before they form. I also want to say that to me, this is about transparency, clearly communicating, and for us, as policymakers having a really good handle on what it takes to pave a road. This is something, you know, I think we've heard various estimates from a single mile can cost $750,000 to a million dollars to pave. So let's have an honest conversation about that. But this is also an opportunity for the administration to come and brag about some innovations they've done recently with our pothole repairing trucks that are out there, and other, I know, improvements that have been made to the procurement process to really get the dollars out the door. So that's the motion, and thank you for allowing me to introduce this at the top of the agenda.

Certainly. And any co-sponsors, do you want to add anything? Mr. Walsh, Mr. Crammerding, who's not here?

Mr. Walsh.

All right. No, thank you, Councilmember Albee. I think it's very timely when we think about infrastructure improvements. impervious surface, I think how we address complete streets and certainly how we think about green infrastructure as we think about how we leverage CINCI on-track dollars. So thank you for offering this motion. Without any further objection, we will put this on for passage for full council. All right. With that, we are going to go to our presentations. And we will start with, and I don't know if everyone wants to come up together, but we have Assistant Chief Flagler from Cincinnati Fire Department. We have Director Ali Croner from the Office of Environment and Sustainability. We have Director Christie from Metropolitan SOAR District. We have Deputy Director Jason Fleming of Greater Cincinnati Water Works and Assistant City Manager Kathy Bailey. Thank you all for being here today.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I am Assistant City Manager Kathy Bailey. To the chair and council members, we are here today. A number of departments represented here to give you an update. from the events that occurred July 17th and the 21st. We have a lot of information to speak to you about certainly what we know with the events as well as the response, recovery after that. We have some information about short-term, long-term solutions that we're certainly exploring. But I think a big part of what we're here is to really understand the questions that a number of council members have. and to get guidance on some direction that you will also give us regarding everything that we need to do moving forward. So with that, we have the departments that are here. Certainly, Assistant Chief Flagler will walk through the majority of the presentation with others chiming in as they go through it. Thank you.

Good morning. Thank you. Good morning to the committee. Good morning to everyone. I am Ali Kroner, Director of the Office of Environment and Sustainability. My remarks this morning will touch on the trends and shifts in weather patterns that we are observing. I will say before that, that numbers can feel detached from the lived experience of people who have experienced catastrophe. We are dealing with trees down in our yard. I know that pales in comparison to what some of the folks shared this morning. I don't want to take anything away from that in sharing the numbers. The numbers do help us understand the magnitude of what we've experienced and shapes the conversation around where we go from here as we plan and strategize. May we advance the slide, please? There are three primary trends I'd like to share. When we look at the records of rainfall over the last century, in Cincinnati, we see about 40 to 45 inches of rainfall annually. Over that 100 years, we've seen about a quarter inch of increase in total rain volume, which is not much. It's negligible. The real difference we're seeing is in rainfall intensity, so the speed at which rain falls. This is a chart from Climate Central, which shows over the last half century a 10% increase at the rate at which rain is falling. You see it at your own home, the gutters are overwhelmed, the downspouts are overwhelmed, that translates into the sewers overwhelmed, and we love our hills, but the hills then too send water downhill and compound flooding. Next slide, please. The other primary difference we're seeing is a localization of rainfall. Many of us can probably remember the storms that would roll across the region, slowly blanket us all and soak us all. The storms today seem to be hovering in specific locations, specific parts of our city. This map that MSD shared of rainfall on July 17th, you can see the bright red spot that hovered over Hyde Park, Madisonville, Oakley, Kennedy Heights, others. Five to six inches of rainfall. You look at the blue, that's about a half inch of rainfall. So where we used to see this broadly distributed, it's now pouring buckets in specific pockets of our city. Those buckets, those locations are hard to predict. So it makes planning for this type of storm that much harder. Next slide, please. The world is getting warmer. Cincinnati is getting warmer. We also experience what is called the urban heat island effect. So our urban core is hotter than the larger region. And with heat, you see evaporation and concentrations of water in the atmosphere. So for every one degree of warming, we're seeing about a 4% increase in the water content of the air. That is essentially fuel for these storms. It's more for the storm to work with and it continues to soak up that water and dump it back down. So these three factors together shape our future. I think if you look at how our infrastructures build, our buildings are constructed, we build with the expectation that the future resembles the past. And when we talk about 100-year storm events, or 1,000-year storm events, climate scientists are looking historically at averages and anticipating the probability of those storm events. Now, as we've heard this morning, we're experiencing multiple 100-year storm events, perhaps even 1,000-year storm events in the span of 5 to 10 years. From a statistical perspective, that is highly, highly improbable if there's not been some systemic shift in the underlying systems. So I think we have to recognize that these are very serious departures from how things have operated in the past, and we'll have to be very intentional and strategic in our adaptation strategies to prepare for the future. With that, I will pass it to Assistant Chief Flagler.

Good morning, members of the committee, Madam Chair. We're going to share a lot of information as already been told to you that about not only our response but the recovery place that we are right now as a community and looking towards what we call our disaster management cycle. So in emergency management our The way we organize our business is things that we want to be doing after a disaster, but also things that we want to be doing before the disaster. The city is always in one of these four modes. We want to respond to an emergency when it occurs. We want to recover afterwards. We want to mitigate, meaning we want to lessen the effects of future incidents of this type. And then we want to prepare, meaning we're prepared for whatever incident might happen. So we're going to walk through this particular event looking through the lens of this disaster management cycle. Just to give you a little bit of technical information about the flash flood events themselves, we know that July 17th was a unique day in the city of Cincinnati. We had rain that started to fall at about 3 p.m., 3.30 p.m. By 5.18 p.m., the National Weather Service had issued a flood advisory, and they followed that up right away with a flash flood warning at 5.30. We teach our responders that flash flood incidents are true emergencies, and they threaten lives and property immediately when they're issued. Not long after that, at 5.44 p.m., the Weather Service upgraded the flash flood to something called a considerable event. That's very rare in our part of the world. And that kicks off the emergency alert system, like you would hear for a tornado or even an Amber Alert, that thing that wakes up your phone. It's going to communicate that to everyone in the region. The flash flood warning and advisory, those would trigger our Cincy Alert system. So if you're subscribing to Cincy Alert, you would have gotten a little bit of advance notice, but the Weather Service considerable flood warning meant that the community was advised that this was a significant event. That flash flood warning stayed in place and was extended that night at 8 o'clock, and we stayed in a flash flood warning until almost 3 a.m., which is extremely rare just based on the amount of rain that fell. The Weather Service historical folks have told us that the most rain to ever fall in 24 hours at Lunkin Airport, which is a National Weather Service monitoring station, is 4.73 inches that fell on March 9th of 1964. This particular event, the closest storm gauge to Oakley, measured 5.07 inches of rain in two hours. significant amount of precipitation, a disastrous amount of precipitation fell on that day. The Weather Service tells us that there is a 0.2% chance of an event like that happening anywhere in their warning region, which is most of the state of Ohio, in a year, just as a little bit of perspective there. The key neighborhoods affected were, of course, Oakley and Hyde Park, Pleasant Ridge, Madisonville, Kennedy Heights, and Evanston, but we know there were events that occurred throughout the city also that were directly related to this heavy rainfall. When we look at the flash flooding for this particular event and really for a lot of events around heavy precipitation, we see flooding that can occur through multiple modes. In this case, we had three different ways that we saw damage to homes and businesses in the community. The first way is through overland flooding. So we think of overland flooding as the flooding that is from an intense downpour. It's the water that's rushing across the ground, across the streets. It's coming into buildings via windows or doors or openings. It's coming from the top level. We think we had about 200 properties in the city that were directly heavily damaged by that waterfall by itself. In addition to that, we also are contending with sewer backup. So a sewer backup occurs when rainwater enters the sanitary sewer system and causes wastewater to back up into homes. This particular event overwhelmed the sewer system capacity due to that extraordinary volume of rainfall. Not because the sewage in the system was overloaded, it was the water that came in on top of it. Extreme storms can exceed the design capacity of any sewer system even when the system is operating as designed. In areas where there is combined stormwater conveyance, meaning that our stormwater and our sanitary sewers run together, large rainfall events can increase flows and that contributes to those backups. In this particular incident, we know that there were more than 1,900 investigations started by Metropolitan Sewer District and 1,207 of them have been attributed to a sewer backup in one form or another. When the MSD investigates these claims or reports of sewer backups, they always err on the side of taking responsibility. So that is reflected in those numbers, and Director Christie will give us a lot more information on that here in a little bit. The other issue that we had at this event was an infrastructure failure. We had a floodgate on the Duck Creek on Madison Road that had a mechanical failure. That failure allowed water to enter the nearby neighborhoods. We believe 40 properties and 48 individual owners have been identified as affected by that. Extensive repairs and restoration are going to be needed in those areas. The response to this incident was all hands. This was all city agencies. This was a very difficult event, but we had a great city team operating together in those immediate moments. And our focus, of course, is on saving lives. And life safety is our initial mission and that response part of this incident of this type. So we always, all emergencies in the city start with the Emergency Communications Center. They received a massive increase in number of 911 calls almost immediately. The individual call takers should be commended for their efforts on listening to citizens, routing resources. They did a tremendous job. A lot of coordination. We instituted several of our emergency systems in the Emergency Communications Center that night, allowing the calls to be prioritized and routed correctly so that every 911 call received a response from public safety officials. They also maintained communications throughout the incident, making sure that our radio system was solid, we could communicate with each other, And then as the incident began to transition from that rescue phase to the recovery phase, began growing out their 311 systems, increasing the ability to provide information to citizens about resources that are available to them. The Cincinnati Fire Department played a key role in the response early on in the incident. We were dispatched to hundreds of calls during that timeframe of this flash flood. We believe about 165 of them are what we considered threats to public safety and immediate response was required during that evening timeframe. We conducted, we believe, 48 civilian rescues from vehicles or buildings. We were able to establish a unified command post at our District 4 headquarters, which is in Oakley on Marburg Avenue. So we had our command center was right where the incidents were occurring. We wanted to be right with the residents that were in need of our help. We coordinated mutual aid resources, so as big as our city is, as big as our fire department is, we required the assistance of outside agencies to bring us some additional water rescue and search capacity that we were able to execute to get into all the neighborhoods that night. Our goal was to search every neighborhood that was impacted before nightfall, and we were successful in accomplishing that mission. The Cincinnati Police Department is always on the street, always in the field, and they provided a lot of very valuable assistance to citizens. They assisted immediately in evacuations. They too get the radio calls just like the firefighters do. They were able to provide that security and traffic control around affected areas. A lot of times we always think of traffic control around being for the public safety, but these were instances where people were driving into flood waters and so It was a true life safety mission when they were conducting that traffic safety component. In addition, they also participated in unified command. The District 2 commander, Captain Wilson, was in the command post with the firefighters, so we had a very unified front, meaning that we were dividing the needs of all the incidents among police and fire. Police was able to call in resources from across the city. They spooled up the CDRT team who was working. They repurposed them on missions of making sure that the community was safe. Our emergency management division is part of the fire department, but we like to think that we are the ones that just help coordinate all of the city efforts around high profile incidents and events. So in this case, the emergency operations center was activated immediately. They were online within an hour of this event beginning. They maintain citywide situational awareness, meaning trying to share as much information with the Unified Command Post, with other citizens. They also want to make sure that any resource requests that were coming in, they were able to route appropriately. They helped us obtain resources from other jurisdictions and things like that. They also helped the damage assessment planning phase, meaning getting us ready to go and see the full impact of this incident. And then they're always coordinating with state, federal, and local partners. The Emergency Operations Center also activated our joint information system, meaning that our public information officers were joined together, being able to share information. And the EOC was the location of the first public comments from city officials that evening. So that was a good help, I think, in sharing at least what we knew at the moment. Our objective in this response phase was to be as coordinated as possible. So all of our city agencies were highly engaged. I talked about a few of them. We'll talk more about MSD and building inspections component of this, but it was the idea that we wanted to make sure that all city agencies had the exact same information that we were trying to communicate to all the people who were in the field and protecting the public. We are looking at the timeline of this event at around, this was on Friday, on Saturday morning, as we begin to take full stock of this incident, we entered this recovery phase. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about how we shifted our response from immediate life safety needs to the recovery of the community.

Thank you, and good morning, Madam Chair and members of the committee. I'm Diana Christie, Director of MSD, So I'm just going to go through the recovery and response actions of MSD during the July 17th and the following storm. As Chief Flagler explained, you know, our role here is responding to sewer backups. Sewer backup, you know, is when we have the backup of wastewater into a home or business. Sometimes this can be due to clogs or breaks in the sewer system. But in an event like this, what we were seeing, of course, was, as he described, just so much rainwater getting into the sewer system and into our combined system that it really was beyond anything that our system can convey. And what that causes is both backing up wastewater through the plumbing in somebody's home and also surcharging of our sewer system in the streets. This is where you sometimes see manholes where the, you know, the water is coming out of those manholes and getting into, mixing with the flooding that has already fallen and on the streets and can get into homes or businesses that way as well. So MSD has a sewer backup program that has, you know, an immediate response component in addition to assistance that is provided to eligible property owners So the first thing in an event like this, obviously, you know, we were alerted and involved in the immediate response during the event itself and immediately had crews being dispatched because we were getting an intake of calls Friday evening. Typically, you know, and we have a lot of information that we try to get out to the community about our sewer backup program so that people know how to contact us. know how to call us or to report online, and that is available 24-7. And because the sooner that we know that there is a possible sewer backup, we want to get out there and investigate. As you have all heard, no doubt by now, we had nearly 2,000 calls over the course of a little over a week, but, you know, hundreds coming in immediately following the event. So we were... you know, even with all crews working around the clock, taking in the reports of the sewer backups and dispatching crews to go out and investigate, we definitely, you know, struggled to keep up with that volume. Therefore, we extended the time of our reporting, which under the sewer backup program, we typically, and this is per the requirements of the program, need individuals to report sewer backup within 48 hours to be eligible for our services. We did extend that well beyond 48 hours. In fact, it was a little over a week that we were still receiving calls from both the July 17th and 21st events. So, again, we've, you know, shared those, that total we received previously, but this was over a period of days following the July 17th and 21st event. that we were getting calls and reports online of sewer backups and investigating all of those. Our investigation process, typically we are sending a crew out to each property, given the volume and the need to respond as quickly as possible. We did make decisions where we were mostly evaluating the performance of the sewer system the public system by inspecting in the streets, inspecting in the public manholes. And as soon as we saw signs of surcharge that were evident, given either, you know, obvious flooding from the manholes or we have float level indicators or flies in our sewer system, we were making decisions for an entire street or an entire segment. So many property owners, you know, we did not need to go to their home. We did not go into the home. because we were able to say that given the surcharge that was evident in the system that that area you know if they reported to us then they were approved for the next phase of our process and that phase is the cleaning that is provided those cleaning services are contracted services MSD needs to schedule those so we are then contacting property owners and residents directly to set them up for a cleaning service to come in. Again, given the volume of reports and then the number of approved properties for cleaning, which was a little over 1,200, we recognized that that took longer. We weren't able to get all cleanings done within a matter of days, but we were following up and trying to get those scheduled as quickly as possible. The final thing I do want to point out about our process, so at that point, we were, you know, over the immediate week or two, we're getting the reports, we're investigating, and then we're trying to schedule cleaning. The next step is that customers are given information about filing a damage claim through the SBU program. They have two years from the time of the incident to file a damage claim under our program, and that is reviewed and processed under the program to provide reimbursement for eligible damages. So we really are not in the claims process yet. We are starting to get some of those in, but for MSD, again, our response is really focused on those intake of those calls and getting those investigations complete so that we can get cleaning done as quickly as possible.

Thank you.

Good morning, committee members, Madam Chair, Jason Fleming, Deputy Director of the Greater Cincinnati Water Works here on behalf of the Stormwater Management Utility. I wanted to share, as AC Flagler had mentioned, a recovery process. And it really is broken into two groups. The first one really affects the entire area that was impacted by this event, or actually really the two events on the 17th and the 21st. Being proactive and going out after that and inspecting every single one of our inlets in those communities to ensure that they're in working order, that they don't need to be cleaned as a result of the flood or for any other reason. That added up to around 9,300 inlets that we're inspecting. So far, we've completed roughly 60% of those. We expect to finish the rest of those within the next five to seven days. That's around the clock. We're working on the weekends doing that. We've got, and I'd like to express our thanks to the Department of Public Services who is assisting us, as well as the staff who have been repurposed to perform this task that is not normally part of their job. committed to getting all of those inspected and from the inspection we found approximately two percent of those inlets that required some sort of maintenance cleaning of debris that had entered those inlets during the flood events and we're working on completing those cleanings by the end of next week. With respect to the customer assistance this is the second portion of what we're working on which is specifically to the failure of the flood gate at Duck Creek and Madison Road. We estimated that 40 properties were directly impacted, and that included a total of 48 other owners or tenants. In some cases, we had an owner and a tenant that were affected, so a total of 48. We've completed the initial outreach to all 48 of those and offered direct assistance. And what I mean by that is we are engaged with contractors making repairs for these residents rather than them having to go out and do it themselves and then file a claim after the fact. That includes temporary housing, replacement of appliances, cleaning. Garage doors was a big one. We have a lot of damaged garage doors. We also have a dedicated representative at the Water Works that is assigned to answer questions and intake a lot of those calls and then route them to their appropriate place for assistance. In some cases, that's SMU. In other cases, it might be MSD, depending on the particulars of their case. We also had several employees in the area, not city employees, but employees of businesses that were affected that may not be owners or residents, but had their car, had their personal property at their location of work. During this event, we're also assisting them and providing them the process to file a claim for reimbursement. On top of the customer assistance associated with the Duck Creek, we've also been out on site at Duck Creek with several different folks, checking, fixing, and testing that gate so this does not happen again. We brought in experts from outside of the city. We have our own staff, consulted with the Army Corps of Engineers, as well as several of our engineering consultants that do work with us to assist us with this process. The gate is currently in the operation mode that it's supposed to be in, which is automatic. We've tested that. We're testing that three times per week. We're going to test the closing of the gate every two weeks, which is a full closure that obviously will need to be coordinated with the Department of Transportation and Engineering for a road closure and assistance from CPD. with the plan moving forward to ensure that this does not happen again. Excuse me.

Sorry, can you repeat everything you just said? Sure. Every two weeks. Go, start there.

On the, on the, on the Duck Creek gate, we have returned the gate to its normal operating mode in automatic. We expect it to operate that way. We've tested it multiple times. We will be testing it three times per week moving forward, along with a complete closure of the gate once every two weeks. So far, those tests have been successful. that we've run over the last two weeks. With that, we have had staff out there during events where we expect or during times when we're expecting rainfall to ensure that that gate is operating as it should, and that's 24-7 around the clock. We'll continue that until we have improved our level of confidence with the gate that that's no longer required. That's all I have. Thank you.

We're going to continue kind of going through the recovery phase. These are obviously the two key components of that phase, but there are some other pieces that we just want to give you some information about. There were other city departments that are heavily involved in our recovery phase right now. Certainly our Department of Public Services, as Director Fleming indicated, is still heavily involved and invested in helping our neighbors recover. We call them the everyday department for a reason. They have been every day out in the field making sure that our residents have what they need. So been clearing debris from the roadways in the immediate phases, providing some roadway repairs to get the roadways reopened, but also making sure that trash collection is accelerated. They place dumpsters in key neighborhoods so that residents could immediately get storm debris out of their homes and in these boxes and away from their yard. They've also accelerating the collection of those large items that were left out our buildings and inspection department always plays a key role in disaster recovery for us because they conduct the damage assessment in the community so this is very helpful to us because we have a trained professional group that is going out and conducting these assessments in most communities this is done by volunteers and it's somewhat ad hoc our damage assessment here is much more comprehensive. It also provides especially tenants with the ability to go to their landlords with specific information on the kinds of work that needs to be done to make the building safe. They provide very good documentation that stands the test of time when we are seeking assistance from outside groups like the federal government. So just a little bit of information on this damage assessment process. The damage assessments are complete in the city of Cincinnati. They have been submitted to FEMA by the state of Ohio, which will go to FEMA for a look. Our preliminary information is that the type of damage in this instance does not meet the federal guideline, the federal threshold for assistance. So damage assessment, in my opinion, is somewhat of a misnomer because it sounds like we're saying that nobody's homes were affected. And we know that's absolutely not true. We heard from many citizens today. We've been in the neighborhoods, in the communities, and we know that homes and businesses have been absolutely ravaged by this event. And so we try to clarify what it means when we see the numbers that will come out. A little bit later today, Hamilton County is going to release their damage assessment numbers, and it's going to say that 101 business or 101 damage assessment inspections were completed. And of those, only eight were major damage. And so that sounds like we didn't have any impacts or we had a very minimal event, and we know that's not true. Those numbers reflect the inspections that were pulled out of what the building department did that met FEMA thresholds for damage, which are much lower and much different because they are almost on a global scale. Every U.S. state and territory has the same standards. And so it's slightly different for how we're doing that here. Our real impact, we know, is far higher with thousands of properties affected. The sewer backup numbers combined with the damage assessment that we sent to the state is our real, much more accurate picture of the impact on our neighborhoods and communities. So when you see those numbers, just know that the sewer backup information, the Water Works information, and this information should be compiled together to give you a more accurate picture. So we knew going in that disaster eligibility was unlikely. We do believe there are other programs available. We're continuing to work with the state of Ohio and Hamilton County on providing assistance through those funds as best we can. Following the work that we're doing now, we're continuing to coordinate with other outside agencies. We're trying to make sure that in the Emergency Management Division, as the recovery phase goes on, that we're able to continue to share information. Recovery is a long-term process, especially after floods. We know water in your home is just such a hard thing to deal with. Cleanup is hard to deal with. It's just insidious. So we know this is a long-term mission for the city. The Emergency Management Agency is trying our best to make sure that we stay connected and coordinated throughout this entire process. In addition, we're working with nonprofits, NGOs, to connect them with citizens who are directly in need of assistance. We have conducted neighborhood damage assessments the weekend following the event. We were in the community with some of our key volunteer groups. The few days after the event, some other volunteer groups were directly in those impacted neighborhoods. We get some questions around why this event. We have seen in the past, like when we have river flooding, we have a much more concentrated effort with volunteer groups. And this particular incident, we had a different look of that. One of the reasons is that this event was more widespread. It was also a much shorter notice emergency. River flooding, we have some time to prepare, notify residents, evacuate. This event happened obviously in a flash, and so we did not have that ability. So we've been working on the back end to try to connect individual residents with the volunteer groups that can assist them. The American Red Cross has been very helpful in that. We issued their number through our public information the morning after this incident, and they received numerous calls. They've been providing different levels of assistance to residents. We also know that we have other volunteer groups like Team Rubicon, Masters of Disasters, and a few others that are continuing to be in the neighborhood. We were contacted this morning about groups wanting to do even more. So our role now is to connect the residents in need with those volunteer groups to try to make sure that Everybody that has a need that they can't fulfill on their own is assisted as best we can. We know this is not enough. We know we're not doing enough in this case. We're doing everything that we can do. We're trying to connect those groups with the citizens in need, but we know we need to continue to be aggressive in reaching out to our citizens about that. So just as kind of a checklist, the damage assessments, building inspections, the roadway restoration, sewer investigations are largely complete. We know our community assistance is ongoing and the mitigation planning is constant and it's also underway. I want to swing over a little bit to mitigation and preparedness just looking at some of those big picture pieces. We know we've already learned a lot of hard lessons from this incident. We are glad to say that our emergency services are well trained. They're prepared to respond. We saw some very heroic acts by some of our responders in the field and they did a great job and we feel very good about that. We feel good about the relationships that we have with established partners that got the initial set of resources out. We know that those things are, those are our positives. We also know that we want to make sure that we continue to have investment and oversight of the stormwater management utility to continue the positive work that they do every day. And then we are always looking for those potential improvements that are going to require these big picture and big ideas that take a lot of collaboration, not only here in the city, but with our regional partners. So in looking at some of those big picture mitigation pieces, the Green Cincinnati Plan has been a great blueprint in us being able to see the future, seeing what a vibrant city looks like that is safe and able to better withstand the onslaught of the change of our weather patterns that we've seen in history. We want to continue that resilience planning. We need to grow there. We know stormwater infrastructure improvements have been long discussed and are everyday work of the city agencies around building continues to grow we just want to grow with that and we want as we understand more to share more we always want our elected officials to know what we know and to be able to think about those long-term investments we know floodgate evaluation and modernization across our entire flood control system is something that needs to be modernized we are especially when we look at riverine flooding we know our floodgates are old They're serviceable, they work great, but we know there's other technologies out there that could probably help us be more efficient. And then we want to make sure that we are continuing to coordinate amongst all of our city agencies. We want the community to know that all 6,000 plus city employees are standing for them and we're here to serve them. In terms of preparedness, we are continually working to prepare as a city for future events one of the best things that we have going for us is that we are the welcome mat for the region and we have so many great events our great events constantly help us prepare for emergencies because we must coordinate to plan and implement those events we use those same tactics to plan and prepare for large-scale emergencies so you're going to see a continuation of those emergency planning and exercises we're going to strengthen our written plans but then we're going to test them Our weather monitoring and situational awareness, we want to make sure is available to every citizen. We always tell everyone you can sign up for alerts. All you have to do is text CINCYALERT, all one word, to 77295, and you'll be signed up to start that process to receive those weather alerts. We want to make sure that we're working well across all our state and federal partners. And one thing that we want to make sure that we're doing better than we are now is public preparedness and communication. We've already had some great dialogue with the State Emergency Management Agency and Hamilton County Emergency Management about how we can better inform our citizens on being prepared for emergencies. And obviously we want to continue to grow. These lessons learned are very serious to us and we want to make sure that we are taking care of our citizens well. So we think we want to highlight the strong coordinated response that we've had thus far. We want to continue to collaborate in this recovery that we know is ongoing and is painful, and we want to make sure that we communicate the need to invest in that future resilience for the citizens. Thank you.

So to the chair and council members, you've certainly heard a lot of information here today. We know that we have some immediate steps that we're working on. You've heard a number of them today. You've heard stormwater speak about the monitoring of the inlets, the cleaning, the inspections that they're doing, that they found some that need repair, but they're also doing a lot of cleaning. We focused in a number of neighborhoods first that were heavily hit from the events on the 17th and the 21st. And then we're going to move out to other areas in the city. We know we need to revisit some studies that we have that have been done for stormwater. We've looked at some of those studies. We've done certain things from those studies. We need to revisit them and look at priorities, have newer priorities, and then move quickly with a sense of urgency to then implement what we decide are the priorities. We definitely need to do that. We need to continue, as Director Christie said, with the SBU program. We know we have a number of damage claims coming forward. Stormwater slash Water Works knows that they'll have damage claims likely from the area along Duck Creek. We need to revisit the Duck Creek floodgate. We certainly have it working now, but we know that we need to replace some parts of it. And so we need to know what that looks like and how quickly we can do that with some contracts and getting people in here. So we have a number of things. We've also put forward a relief program to assist residents that have been impacted in these areas. So there's moving parts right now, short term, but longer term, you know, what can we do? How can we look at our capital and figure out the projects that we need to move forward on? How can we collectively do that from various departments? Those are the things that we know we need to focus on quickly and then move to action now versus many years down the road. And so that's a big part of how we're focusing in administration, and we'll continue to do so and bring those projects and initiatives forward to council.

I want to thank every department here today making this presentation. I think it was very thorough. You actually answered some questions along the way. So that's how I know we are certainly on the same page here. So now it's about the accountability of how we continue to move forward. So I know we all have questions. We'll probably have questions as we continue to hear responses back. But let's try to keep this brief and to the point because this is not the only conversation that we'll have. So I will start with this update on preparedness and response. I am happy to hear that you are already thinking about communication to the public, all of these pieces that need to have some attention. And so, I would love to get an update, that update, really through now. We should have a consistent update on our plans moving forward. And Director Bailey, from the administration's perspective, would love to see, in addition to how council responds, but crystallizing what some of these top priorities are. in terms of a report or something, just understanding where we all are together. I will start with, let's just start and go back to climate and understanding the opportunities for green infrastructure investments in our future. And so it is also related to a motion that is on the agenda that we want to look through what, How might we look at this in the future? And so, Director Croner, again, from everything from, yes, the impervious surface conversation that will happen more at the county, but we certainly want the county to know that we are echoing the response of our residents, that we have to look at new ways of how we pay for things and conservation pricing and all of that, bioswells, rain gardens. I'm also trying to encapsulate some questions from the community as well, so I know folks were asking specifically about those things. Green infrastructure. Director Croner?

I'm not sure I actually heard the question in that comment, but yes, I think green infrastructure is a critical part of our forward-looking strategy. MSD's already made huge investments in green infrastructure solutions at Lick Run and along the West Fork Creek. Our urban forestry department has planted more than 85,000 street trees which help capture and store storm water. We will soon be rolling out our biochar soil amendment which will enhance the soil's ability to absorb water, among other solutions. But I think we also need to recognize that we can't entirely solve this with green infrastructure. It will need to be a combination of solutions outlined today. Green infrastructure might be, there might be options on the table for near-term solutions with green infrastructure, and we will certainly dive into that in the report you're requesting.

Thank you. Um, Director Christie, how do we look at the prioritization of some of these longer-term capital improvements that if we were to really have a plan in place right now, allocate resources, have a strategy, what might that look like?

Yes, well, as we talk about allocating resources, I think first we need to step back and say, you know, what are the solutions and, you know, who needs to be part of those solutions in our region? And, of course, MSD's service area is larger than just the city of Cincinnati, but the investments that need to be made, you know, these are regional investments in both the, you know, sewer system, the MSD system, but also a stormwater system, and therefore, really, it's going to take ADDITIONAL COLLABORATION. THESE AREN'T SOLUTIONS THAT MSD CAN DELIVER ON ITS OWN. WHEN IT COMES TO MSD PROJECTS AND ACTIONS THAT WE'RE TAKING, YOU KNOW, WE CERTAINLY HAVE A VERY LARGE CAPITAL PROGRAM AND WE ARE VERY CONSCIOUS OF AND RECOGNIZE THE COST OF THAT ON OUR RATE PAYERS. SO WE DO NEED TO BE LOOKING LONG TERM AND WHAT WE CAN AFFORD. uh, building that into a program over time. Uh, currently, MSD's, uh, capital program, um, really is, um, built around a 10-year program for our consent decree that is $1.1 billion. Uh, so we are, you know, already committed at that level of funding to, um, pretty significant improvements that, you know, unfortunately those projects are not aimed at, at sewer backups. They are not aimed at, the localized flooding that we're seeing in both this massive storm and in other rain events that aren't even so massive. So those solutions need to be, you know, a number of different entities working together, including, you know, MSD, including our other public agencies, and also our private partners. So we at MSD, we have a number of initiatives, a number of things we've been doing over the last, a few years and even very recently, making some changes in how we approach development, how we review and approve development to really bring those private resources to the table to start being part of the solution.

Great segue. So let's talk about development because a lot of the community has that same question. When we think about new development in the city, it's certainly a question of mine. And so how might, and this might be where someone else jumps in, but how might we be looking at a coordinated site review to understand how developers can mitigate future impacts on the infrastructure?

Like, I can start with our part of it, because it is, you know, there is a coordinated site review, as you said, for the city development projects. We are a part of that process. And in terms of You know, the typical review that MSD does, generally most of the city we're talking about are combined sewer area. So the needs and the rules that apply to developers do come to MSD versus SMU because it's really the impact on the combined sewer system that dictates the requirements. So in very recent months, really in the last year or two, We have looked at our existing program for reviewing and requiring detention and enhanced that essentially by a program where we're really looking more strategically at the areas that are impacted by sewer backups and making sure that any development in an area that we've identified as an area that has been impacted by sewer backups, we're requiring, labeled those as sensitive areas or critical capacity areas. And so we are requiring two times the detention as to what we previously require. So that's really taking a more you know just direct approach at where are these areas where you know we're not talking about the combined sewer overflows that are getting into our streams. We're talking about the sewer backups that are happening and what can we do with our developers to make sure that we're not putting more strain on the system when we have developers coming in. So that's one area where we've made some changes recently. And we have a comparable strategic approach in the separated system where any development coming into that area in an area where we have SBUs that have been repeated problems that we are requiring basically applying our credit program and we're requiring developers to get five times the stormwater out of the system and that they will put on the system. So it's a very robust and direct strategic initiative in our existing review process for development focused on these areas where we have known sewer backups.

And we feel confident that that is enough or do we need to go further?

I mean, I think enough is one of the biggest challenges here, right? So what can we solve? And what are we able to address through any of these changes? Every little bit is going to help, so looking for more. But we do feel confident that in the combined sewer area in particular, that we are requiring something that will ensure that we are not making things any worse. And certainly we think we are actually going to improve the situation by these new requirements. We're always looking for even more. So there may be opportunities when there is a development taking place where we can partner and find solutions that actually help beyond just the impact of that development by making perhaps connections from the public system onto those properties. So this is really where we're going next and we've been kind of building up this program over the last six months to a year with additional resources.

Thank you. Is there anyone else that wanted to add to that? Coordinated site review? City? Okay. I may ask one more question and then open it up to my colleagues and maybe to, is there anyone here from public health? I would like to know what our public health response might be, and this could be something that we follow up on. But I do think, you know, in some of the comments that residents have mentioned, as we heard, you know, feces in backyards and, you know, sewer water going down the street, what is the public health response as well that we should be thinking about? I'll go back to Director Christie and then I'll open it up for questions from my colleagues, and certainly there are a lot more questions, but how immediate do we respond in getting equipment out to the street? The floaters, the things that you talked about in terms of making the initial assessment, I guess, when we're looking at these events. How quickly do we get equipment out there?

Well, typically in these events, we're really just dispatching crews that the type of equipment they have is really just to lift up the manholes and observe the conditions. We have existing we call them flies in the manholes. These aren't things that we're bringing in. So it is it's not our large trucks unless there is an incident where we need you know a back truck to clean something out. But that's in these you know flooding responses that's typically not the equipment we're sending out. But in response to how quickly you know our goal typically is to respond within four hours of a reported sewer backup. We did not meet that. That is, you know, clear and we understand that. We had up to 20 two-person crews working, you know, that weekend and throughout the following week, you know, pretty much using all the daylight they could to get out as quickly as possible. Okay.

I will open it up to Vice Chair Ryan James. All right.

Thank you all so much for sharing some time with us. I'm sure that you're still in the early stages of questioning here, so thank you for sticking around with us. I appreciate your time. Just at a high level, this event has been so traumatic and so troubling for our residents, and my thoughts and prayers to everyone who's been impacted by this crisis and You know, climate change is real and it is here, and I hope this is a sobering wake-up call for anyone who's challenging that premise. But I will say that, you know, there's, I could ask you hundreds of questions about our climate resilient infrastructure, where we can take this from here, but I will say that because of the urgency and the timeliness of this matter, I want to focus my questions on crisis response here. First and foremost, do we know how many folks were directly impacted from the Duck Creek gate failure?

Yes, 48 property owners slash residents. So there's eight properties that are rentals. So we have 40 properties and an additional eight people in front of that who are rental residents. And then some employees from businesses, like I had mentioned earlier, that had their vehicles or items in their car that were damaged. We expect that to be somewhere around 10 to 15 more.

And Deputy Director Fleming, I know you've had to answer this question a few different times, but if you just walk me through, why did the gate fail?

Sure. So the gate is intended to operate when the water level in the Duck Creek reaches a certain elevation. And when that happens, we have sensors out there that initiate the gate to close. There's multiple pieces to that process. There's the sensors on the river. There's the railroad arms that come down to block traffic. to make sure that nobody runs into the gate when it closes. When those close, then the gate is able to automatically close all the way across. Several items in that process from the start to finish of causing the gate to close malfunctioned. So it included the railroad arms, did not operate as they were intended. Those actually broke some time ago, and they were chained up. And unknowing to us, that prevented the gate from closing. In addition to that, there was mechanical failures within the gate, which were sensors that ensure that it's moving in the track. They were not working. That creates a fault and prevents the gate from closing. One of the sensors on the creek was not performing the way it should be. So there were several things wrong with it. We can't really point to one reason, but there were multiple.

And so right now, keeping the gate manned 24-7 should be a sufficient response if we were to face more floods or a similar crisis.

That's our intent, yes, is having somebody there right now. Now, we have made those repairs to the components that were broken, and we have tested it in automatic mode, and at this time, it would operate with nobody there. We're putting somebody there anyway just to make sure. This can't happen again. Thank you.

So currently, I know the mayor has allocated $1 million for crisis relief. I know that tomorrow city council is likely to pass another million dollars in crisis relief. I know that we are running these dollars or likely be running these dollars through the architecture of the SBA program, correct? Small business assistance programs. That I don't know. Is anyone here?

To the chair, to the council member, the relief program will be run through the Department of Opportunity and Resident Services, so through DOORS. The relief program will run there.

Do we have any type of understanding of, I mean, how many, just the volume of calls we've gotten so far? Is there an application out? I mean, where are we?

Yes, so we are currently finalizing the application. We have started to notify some residents. Using some information that we have from the sewer backup program, we are partnered with Greater Cincinnati Water Works and their call center to take calls as well for us to do the intake process. That has started. So we have that number that has been put out through a press release. We continue to do more of that. We will do more of that after tomorrow, and we'll continue doing that. So we've seen, I believe yesterday the number was 67. calls that have come in since Friday to the call center at Waterworks.

Okay. I know those folks weren't able to fill out a formal application, so I know it's too early to have any type of modeling. But an answer that I'll be looking for, I mean, if this $2 million is sufficient to meet the needs of our residents. So please walk arm in arm with us as you establish the scope of who you're serving, who's being prioritized. Please keep us in the room for those conversations. Yes. Last couple questions here. Is anyone here representing public services? I just had a few questions regarding the trash pickup. Director Bailey, should those be directed to you?

You can take a stab. They report to me. I might not have all the answers, but I'll try.

It's okay. I know you wear many hats here. Just if, you know, you don't have to get too into the weeds here, but I just want an understanding of, you know, many of our residents have called our offices, have even called us on the street. as we've been doing things like community engagement, have come to our offices just framing this crisis response, or the waste removal as slow or waiting weeks until the trucks can get to their neighborhood or outside of their houses. Do we have, I mean, just what are we throwing at the wall? What does the process look like? Why are we, and I know the volume is profound here, but what are we throwing at the wall currently?

Yes, to the chair, to the council member, we were slow. We know that, we recognize that. There were a couple things. Probably the first one was that we had just lost a member of our team. And so we had a number of employees who were not at work. They were home processing, grieving, going through that. And so that then, we had to readjust our schedules when we got out there. We had limited trucks and dumpsters to go to certain areas. We were slow in partnering with others to bring dumpsters. Again, I think there were a number of missteps that we had there. We certainly apologize for that. We certainly know we need to do better and plan better for that moving forward. But we did get people out. It was a little later certainly in some areas than what our residents expected and deserved. And we know we need to improve upon that and have more of a plan moving forward. But there were a number of things, mainly just really the loss of our team member that kind of put things different for us. And we didn't have as many resources available to really act in the way that we likely should have and want to for our community.

Completely understood. And my curiosity leads me to think that we could work with the private sector or some of our nonprofit crisis response partners. Assistant Chief Flagler, you brought up that some of our major events kind of pressure test our internal systems and our collaboration amongst departments. which is a good thing when we talk about exploring relationships with organizations like the Red Cross and some of those organizations that you listed. It seems like we need a proactive plan that when crises like this happen, that we're ahead of it and not playing catch-up here. So thank you for the time that you put into this. So, cool. That's all my questions for right now. Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it.

All right, I know my other colleagues have questions. I also want to remind folks that we do have a 12 o'clock committee that happens, and we still have legislative items. So if you can be very brief, and I'm thinking one to two questions, and I know you have more than that because I do as well, but we are going to make sure we get community responses back to the administration by way of making sure this communication is in the public record. and that they have an opportunity to respond to not only the public's questions, but our remaining questions as well. So with that, I will go to, and again, one to two questions, please, Mr. Jeffries.

Yeah, first of all, I do want to thank the administration, and especially all the city workers who were out there during recovery. I mean, people were putting in long hours, so thank you for that. I do also want to recognize the frustration of a lot of people. First, I hate the term thousand-year storm. When it happens in 2016, 21, 24, 26, people are experiencing it. I think it just feels tone deaf, so I would just ask all of us collectively. I think it's a national thing that people use, but I think we shouldn't talk about it. If people are experiencing it every year for the last 10 years, every other year, It's not, it doesn't feel that way. So I do think we need to, out of here, have very clear, concrete solutions. And these are obviously big problems, but I think we need to think big. I do appreciate the fact that sounds like, even the maps, like it is hugely surgical on where this is happening. And so I think the solutions need to be surgical. And it sounds like, Director Christie, we've identified the core areas, which I think is great. And there's obviously no one silver bullet, but we're dealing with different flash floods. That's different. All of our planning has not been against, you know, four to six inches of rain coming down in an hour or two. So we need to think differently about that. I do think we need to think differently and glad to hear that we're thinking about in development, how do we think about larger detention basins? I'm going to come back with a question on that. I think we need to do the same in areas like Mount Lookout. How do we think, do we convert portion of the square having an underground detention with parking? How do we think really big to have true solutions and then quickly convert impervious surfaces to pervious? Hyde Park School, great example. That could be done and can certainly mitigate. you know, capture more water upstream? Do we look in parks, on park, other? How can we capture more water? I think the solution has to be not just MSD waterworks. It has to have CPS, it has to have parks, it has to have all these other and I think that's going to require different thinking and a longer term. The other is just making sure that we are cleaning the clogged sewers on the streets. Who's responsible for that? What are we doing? These are all not silver bullet issues. So in the interest of time, I will go to a couple questions. first director chrissy i know you you mentioned actually just recently just now that we are now requiring 2x larger detention basins for new development and so i wanted to make sure that i understood because this is totally new to me it's the first time i think any of us have heard that and it would require 5x more storm water out of the system so just elaborate on what that REQUIREMENT IS, HOW LONG HAVE WE BEEN DOING IT, HOW THAT APPLIES, WHAT KIND OF PROJECTS THAT APPLIES TO.

YES. SO JUST TO CLARIFY, THERE IS AN EXISTING PROGRAM THAT WE HAVE, RULE THAT WE HAVE, THAT REQUIRES DETENTION FOR ANY NEW DEVELOPMENT. AND THAT RULE HAS NOT CHANGED. IT'S OUR DETENTION REQUIREMENT. IT'S RULE 303 FOR MSD RULES. And in that rule, we can require additional detention in sensitive areas. So what we have recently done is to identify these areas where we've identified what we would call SBU hotspots, there's a couple other names for them, but areas where we know we have capacity-related sewer backups. And we've created those as sensitive areas or critical capacity areas so that we can require additional detention. So this is not for all new development. This is in the combined area where we have these identified hotspots, if you will. And in those, if there's a development project, our requirement will generally be two times the size of detention, along with controlled flow, controlled orifice control, in terms of keeping the stormwater in the detention long enough for the system to regain capacity. So that is, again, it's something that we've done, you know, more just on a case-by-case basis in the past because we have that ability if it's a sensitive area. But we've most recently put more definition around that and identified these as critical capacity areas so that those are the ones that were requiring this additional detention.

Okay, a lot more questions, but understand the sensitivity.

There's obviously a lot there we could talk about.

That is one we should dig a lot deeper in and have a whole bunch of questions around. Duck Creek floodgate, why were you testing it only manual when we're only operating it automatic? You know, I think we should revisit the Madison Road bridge discussion, you know, which, you know, so those are some of my separate questions that I'll submit. But my last one, this is only allowed two, kind of cheated there, is around inspecting water, sewer, like street water. Like how often are they getting cleaned and cleaning it? How often are we cleaning the street sewer water basins that are on the street that we all see when there's rain, it goes down? Who's in charge of it? Are we focused more on high flood areas in particular? Again, I know this is not a silver bullet. It might only solve a little bit of the problem, but I think each one of these are incrementally, you know, one plus one equals three kind of thing. Um, you know, so who is in charge of that? How often do we do it? Um, and at some point we'd love to see a plan on, I don't know what department that falls under.

Uh, Councilmember Jeffries, yes, it's multiple groups that perform that work, both SMU as well as the Department of Public Services partner in street sweeping, inlet cleaning and inspection. Um, our metric for the year is 15,000 per year where we inspect them. So I think I shared earlier that we're doing 9,300 of them in three weeks. We're bringing a lot of extra resources in as a response to the flooding event to make sure that we get eyes on everything. But in the past, I'm not saying that that's going to be what we're doing in the future. It's been 15,000 a year has been our goal to do those inspections. And that's been done by both Department of Public Services staff as well as staff from SMU.

And how often are they cleaned? How often are we cleaning those?

I don't know what 15,000 is.

What context is that? 15,000 out of how many?

So I don't have the data in the past of how many that we've inspected that required a cleaning. I can tell you what we've done thus far since last Tuesday on the 17th. We've inspected about 6,000 of them and had to clean around 2% of that. Most of them were clean, but we found 2% of them that required us to clean them. Thank you. I'll submit others.

Thank you. All right. Friends, colleagues, it's 1143, so we've got to keep moving here. In order to make us feel more productive, Lisa, we're going to file item number one, which was the presentation from the administration. We're going to keep moving here and get to these items as well. Mr. Walsh.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Back in 2018, I owned a property in Clifton and it was on a hill and I remember distinctly it was a December night when the hill next door broke off and went in the middle of the street. There is a level of trauma that comes from these type of events as a homeowner or a renter where you don't feel safe, you don't feel secure, you wonder what can be done, As I look around this room at those who've come out to speak with us today, the people that have talked to us over the last several weeks, I feel a unique sense of empathy because I know what it feels like to not feel safe in your own home and to be frustrated that it's mother nature and the answer is like, well, there's nothing that can be done. I can't imagine, for those who came down here today to listen, how frustrated they are right now. after two hours of this presentation, because this presentation to me sounded, and I'm not criticizing you guys on this one, I just need to be clear, this sounded like we were so worried we were gonna get blamed, we didn't wanna talk about the real issue here. So let's be clear. Your response, what you guys are doing, is perfectly in line with what the city needs, and we appreciate everything you and the city employees have done. We can't predict weather and we can't stop rain from happening. Nobody's at fault. It's not an individual problem. Climate change is real. 20 years ago, we embarked on this major MSD project. 20 years later, climate change has only gotten worse. The way the city was designed 100 years ago is not the way the city needs to operate and react today. And when I look at what we're talking about, some of these answers to be, I just, I feel like we are, it's like we're just trying to react to an event that happened in July. Hyde Park got flooded three times this summer alone. Last year, we sat in this chamber while Hyde Park residents came to talk about the Hyde Park development and they cited flooding issues as a reason that we shouldn't do the Hyde Park development. The month before that, Council Member Albee and I went out and met with those residents and they showed us videos that looked exactly like the videos I saw with the flooding. Mr. Spittler, sitting over there, he and I have had many conversations about the flooding issues in Mount Lookout. Last year, Zips identified that they were at risk of losing their insurance because of flooding issues that were ongoing in the Mount Lookout business district. Edwards Street, or Edwards Road, was closed down last year to do work to try to make flooding not a bigger problem. Mount Lookout has dealt with how many different MSD projects that are going on. At some point, I mean, if you're one of these residents, they're saying it's happening over and over and over. So let's just pull this out to the high level. The answer to this problem is going to cost us billions of dollars and decades to repair. Nobody in this room is naive to that. The longer we continue to not want to say that part out loud, the longer it's going to take to solve the problem. And it's only going to continue to get worse. Climate change is going to continue to get worse. Hills are going to continue to exist. So I don't have a question. And I don't want anybody to respond to what I just said. I want the next steps for the next time you guys come here to answer from a high level, big strategy, how are we going to finally start solving it? Because it's going to take years. It's going to take billions of dollars to solve this problem. Let's stop pretending like that's not what the answer is going to be. And we can start looking at solutions then. But it's time that we stop nitpicking the little things that happened. You guys responded. Emergencies happened, and I'm really proud of the reaction that you guys did. But we've got to actually get really, really proactive now. And that's what I want to see coming out of this going forward. I don't want to talk about what happened in July because this is an ongoing issue. So that's my challenge. I'm going to yield it back to you now, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. And I think we're all in agreement in where we need to go from here. So I will go to the next legislative item that is about action, because that is what we are here to do as well. I will get to you, Mr. Nolan. I didn't forget about you. So we're going to go to item number... Got a lot of paper up here, so bear with me. Item number four. Yeah. And this is offered by myself and Councilmember Walsh. Thank you, Mr. Walsh, for leading on this. I'll let you go ahead and talk about it, and then I have some amendments that I'd like to add.

Well, real quick, everything I just said is what this motion is. We need to be looking big picture at how we move forward. That's going to mean we bring all the city agencies appropriately to the table. Also means outside experts. Let's start doing that. Let's start having the conversation and let's start moving forward. I think we say 120 days to get this implemented, but, like, that's the objective of this motion. And, Councilmember, I know you have some adjustments. I support full-heartedly.

Yep. Thank you. So, with that, I would add to this motion, how can we use CINCI on-track dollars to help leverage stormwater management? What we're talking about in this motion is looking at, yes, green infrastructure, but we're expanding that, but we're also asking a watershed-based flood mitigation planning approach. and then a flood resilience task force to identify risk and recommend solutions. I recognize that the task force part is something that does require, not just in the city, but with our regional partners as well. So I'd imagine that will be a work in progress. But the idea that we are, again, getting around the table and finding what the solutions need to be. So there's that amendment. The second amendment is adding language from our partners at the Sierra Club. Again, be it further move that within 60 days, the administration and MSD develop and submit a revised targeted impervious surface charge implementation plan that significantly accelerates implementation. I think we're all very interested in hearing more about that.

Madam Chair, just for clarification. Yes. It's my understanding you were just referring to item number four of the motion.

That is correct.

Earlier in the meeting, you already referred that to council.

Oh, sorry. Not item number four, item number six.

OK. And so on item number six, are you proposing amendments to this motion? Yes. OK. So you would first need to propose the amendment and then have a second for that amendment. OK. And then vote on approving the amendment to that motion.

So there were two amendments. So can I now ask for a second?

So you need to deal with the first amendment first. Okay. Have a second for that, a roll call vote on approving that amendment, discuss it if necessary, and then deal with the second amendment.

All right, great. So the first amendment is how can we use Essentia OnTrack dollars to help stormwater management. Do I have a second?

Second.

And a roll call vote? Sorry, might be doing your job, Lisa.

Chair Owens?

Yes.

Sorry, Vice Chair James?

Yes.

Council Member Jeffries?

Yes.

Council Member Walsh?

Yes.

Council Member?

Is Nolan?

Nolan? No.

All right, thank you. All right, and so for the second amendment, be it further move that within 60 days the administration and MSD develop and submit a revised targeted impervious service charge IMPLEMENTATION PLAN THAT SIGNIFICANTLY ACCELERATES IMPLEMENTATION. DO I HAVE A SECOND?

SECOND. OKAY.

CHAIR OWENS? YES. CO-CHAIR JAMES? YES. COUNCILMEMBER JEFFRIES? YES. COUNCILMEMBER WALSH?

YES.

ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE MOVED THAT ON FOR PASSAGE TO FULL COUNSEL. NOW, MR. NOLAN, I WILL GO TO YOU. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

Thank you. Yeah, I just want to build on what some of my colleagues have said. We've lost some of our administration, unfortunately. I think for me, communication is key. We have police officers and firefighters that show up at community council meetings, and they share their personal cell phone information. We know where these floods are happening repeatedly. The gentleman from Arcadia indicated that it took more than a week to get in touch with the city. We are in a people business, but sometimes we feel like a faceless organization. We have to do a better job of communicating. I know a number of us were at Mount Lookout Community Council last night, but nobody from the administration was there. There should be somebody, we know where these things are happening, there should be somebody from the administration there on a regular basis, communicating what work is being done, how our constituents can get in touch with folks at the city when they need help, and helping everyone understand what the long-term plan is for communicating on these. I know from our discussion last night, we talked about some of the development regulations around stormwater retention and what that means for a new development. But what about for an individual residence? What about when someone tears down a smaller home and builds a larger home or paves a patio? Are we taking into consideration the stormwater situation there? And for personal residence, like mine, an inspector required me to tie my downspout into the combined sewer system. I was daylighting onto my yard where the rainwater would go, and now I'm just adding to the problem. And I think those are local conversations that we can have if someone is present in those situations to talk to. I agree with what's been said today. I think we need to do a better job of communicating that. I think showing up at community councils is an opportunity to do that. It doesn't have to be every month, but it should be on a regular cadence where folks are getting updates and they have a face and they have a phone number or an email address, somebody that they can reach out to and talk to when these situations occur.

Thank you, Mr. Nolan. Yeah, 100% agree. I think in this preparedness, like everybody left. In this preparedness, we need to make sure that there is a robust community response as well. You know, this is the moment where we have to think back, what did we learn from the pandemic? And how do we institutionalize that in our current practices? And so with that, and that includes, you know, wraparound support and all the services and streamlining. With that, we're going to move on to another agenda item. Again, as we're talking about climate, the existential threat, the threat that it is here, what we are doing to reduce our emissions but build resilience. And so one of those things is looking at building emissions where if we look at 45% of where they're coming from, It is a small number of very large buildings. So while we won't have the opportunity to get to the benchmarking ordinance today, we will hold that for our next meeting. But a part of that approach is being able to, one, assess what is the usage. The administration, thank you, you did rounds of public sessions with stakeholders. large building owners at the Chamber of Commerce, and we had good discussion that came out of that. That is captured in this report of what the key takeaways are. One of those key takeaways is making sure we are establishing a technical assistance group that will help to support how we are looking at usage. This is about a partnership. This is not about being punitive. This is about being successful and being responsible and what Cincinnati's plan is for climate action. Again, the Green Cincinnati Plan is our roadmap. And so we are continuing to do all of the things. That is what item number five is about, is the establishment of this technical assistance group. And again, we'll get to item number three in September. Without objection, we will go ahead and put that on for passage. Item number three, we will put to September. And that also includes item.

So, for item three, Madam Chair, I'd recommend that you make a motion to hold that item. Yes.

Okay. I motion that we hold item number three to our next meeting, which will be scheduled in September. Second.

Chair Owens? Yes. Co-Chair James? Yes. Councilmember Jeffries? Yes. Councilmember Walsh?

Yes.

And then for item number two, that would also be the presentation that goes along with that. So can we just move that to, do I need to?

That will be another motion to hold, so just.

Okay, motion to hold item number two, which is the presentation.

Second.

Thank you.

Chair Owens? Yes. Co-chair James? Yes. Council, Councilmember Jeffries? Yes. Councilmember Walsh?

Yes.

It's 1157. I am so proud of us. We have had a really robust conversation. This is not the only, not the last. We are in this together. We know that we need to respond and we are serious about that. Continue to reach out to our offices. We are here to work with you and we understand that you have thoughts and solutions as well. So while we continue to strengthen the system and democracy, it is the components to build that capacity. And so we're here to be solution-oriented. So we thank you for your time today. We thank you for your advocacy, and we'll see you in September. With that, we are adjourned.

Music.