City Council - Special Meeting

Okay, welcome to the special Cleveland Heights City Council meeting. It is Monday, June 22nd at 5 p.m. And I guess I'll call the roll. Sarah Stone?

Here.

Jessica Cohen?

Here.

Craig Cobb? Here. Tony Cuda is here. Vice President Larson? Here. Councilman Joe DeWitt Foy? Here. And Councilman Jim Posh is on Zoom. Here. Actually, you're on team. Okay, so the meeting is called to order. Our first order of business is communications from the mayor.

Thank you, Mr. President. I have no comments right now.

All righty, thank you. The next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna flip around five and six and we'll do a public confirmation hearing for the HR director nominee, Christina Halstead. Ms. Halstead, are you there? I am, yes. All right. Mayor, would you like to do the introduction?

Thank you, Mr. President. It's my pleasure to introduce Christina Halstead for consideration as Cleveland Heights Human Resources Director. Christina currently serves as HR Manager for the City of Columbus's Department of Public Safety, In that role and throughout her career, she has built hands-on experience across virtually all facets of human resources, labor relations and contract compliance, employee discipline and grievance proceedings, FMLA and performance evaluation, and the list goes on. Christina holds a master in the study of law Ohio State University with a concentration in employment law and a master of public administration from Franklin University with a concentration in human resource management. She's also a credentialed professional in human resources, PHR, and a member of the National Public Employee Labor Relations Association, reflecting both her formal expertise and her ongoing commitment to best practices in public sector labor relations. Christina's combination of municipal experience, legal and administrative education, professional certification, and a labor relations expertise make her exceptionally well qualified to lead Cleveland Heights Human Resources Department. I'm pleased to present her for your consideration.

All right. Thank you, Mayor. Before we go into questions, I want to say that this situation comes about because we did amend our charter in November. Council believed that it was very important to establish an actual HR department with a director at that level. And with 400 plus full-time employees and over a hundred seasonal employees, we thought that this was very appropriate. And previously this job was divided up between the finance director. Well, actually was given to the finance director and we know the finance director has plenty on his plate. So Christina, would you like to speak first? Would be welcome to hear you from you or we can go to questions.

Sure. I think that Mayor Petras did a wonderful job in his introduction. So he took a lot of the words out of my mouth when it comes to what I was going to say as an introduction for myself. So I would welcome the questions that you have. Sure. Who would like to start?

Well, I guess I'll go first. Thank you for interviewing with us. I'm Councilman Craig Cobb. What was it about this job that drew your interest? Absolutely.

I, as Mayor Petras mentioned, I am the HR manager for the City of Columbus and the next step for me would be a directorship role. What drew me to the City of Cleveland Heights was the diversity of the community and its employees. along with the size of the city as well. The city of Columbus as a whole is large. It's the 14th largest city, and we have roughly 9,000 to 10,000 employees. I don't serve all of them, but working in the Department of Public Safety, my division specifically has 182 personnel, but I am pulled often to assist with the Division of Fire and Division of Police, excuse me, which have roughly 2,500 and 1,700 employees, respectively. And while that has given me a robust experience in labor and employee relations and all matters of HR, really, I prefer the scale of a smaller municipality and Cleveland Heights Their size is very similar to the Division of Support Services. I feel as if I can have a greater impact on the employees that I serve because I am a talker and a communicator. and I prefer to meet employees at their level and spend some time understanding their roles and what their pain points are and what our opportunities and challenges are for their respective sections and for the HR department in assisting them. So that is what drew me to this role with Cleveland Heights.

How many employees do you currently supervise? And then if you would tell us, how would you characterize your management style?

Yeah, I currently supervise two human resource analysts. They are the equivalent of what an HR journalist is. My management style is, at first, I am more hands-on and in the weeds, so to speak, ensuring that they understand what their roles and responsibilities entail. And once myself and the employee start to gain the confidence and knowing the job, then it switches to more of a trust but verify. I want my staff to know that I trust them and their ability to perform the job competently and efficiently. But I also want to make sure that we're compliant in the federal, state, local laws and the city's regulations.

Have you had an opportunity to speak to any of the employees that you would be supervising here in Cleveland Heights?

I have, yes. During the interview process, both the first time and the second time, because I interviewed twice for this role, I met April Harrison, had a chance to speak with her and understand how she prefers to be managed. And I also have corresponded via email with the HR generalist as well.

Okay, I'll pass it on to someone else. Yes, Jessica.

Hi, I'm Councilwoman Jessica Cohen. Nice to meet you. My question is around what I think is going to be quite a bit of work to stand up an HR department since we haven't had one. I would presume that you stepped into a role at the City of Columbus that already was established and an HR department that was established. So as you're thinking about coming into this role, What are you concerned about? What are you excited about? Just talk about how you're going to move us forward by building this new structure for us.

Yeah, really what excites me is building that structure. I'm very passionate about creating positive work environments and the foundation of that is having these HR processes in place, such as a structured performance evaluation process and review system. Having that open line of communication, not only between HR and the employees, but management as well. and really making sure that employees understand how their role fits in with the city and what their expectations are. As far as the challenges go, as you mentioned, the city of Columbus already has these processes established and because we are such a large organization, we're a little decentralized when it comes to some of our systems, our HR systems. So for example, we have our own compensation department that handles the performance evaluation system. But on the flip side of that, although they wrote the system and the manual that were to follow, it's left on the HR departments within the individual departments to carry out the performance management system and the compensation equity. So I think that that would be the biggest challenge is keeping that in-house, but I'm confident that my experience in managing these systems from a division level is going to help tremendously.

Thank you so much. I'll pass it.

Actually, if you don't mind, I'd like to follow up on your question, Councilwoman Cohen. talk, could you just talk a little bit in detail about establishing performance objectives and then an evaluation system? I take it you have something in place in the public safety department and because I know that's a big reason why we as council members wanted to have a director level position, I mean, this would be for 400 employees and how do you get started?

Yeah, that is the most challenging aspect of creating a performance management system from the ground up is how do you get started? As I mentioned, I think that my foundational knowledge and the system that we have in place at the city of Columbus is going to help. With performance management systems, that is arguably one of the most critical aspects in maintaining that positive work culture and creating a stable retention rate. If employees don't understand what is expected of them, it's unfair for us to expect them to complete their role as it's directed. They need to know what their goals are, what their areas of improvement are, and where they're doing well in. So in creating an effective performance management system, what I have seen work is The city of Cleveland Heights has, I believe, 180-day probationary period. At the city of Columbus, it's a year long. So when scaling it down to 180 days, the probationary period itself is the most critical time for a new employee. We need to make sure that they're set up for success. And therefore, I think that there needs to be periodic touch points. I would suggest that they be at, for example, the first 30 days to set those to reinforce those expectations and then maybe at 90 days, 120 days, and then the final probationary period. They may seem excessive, but employees, we want to make sure that they're successful in their role. And to ensure that, we need to ensure that management is giving that periodic feedback. And by having that structured performance evaluation, we will... it will ensure that they get that feedback.

Well, let me just follow, let me just follow up on one thing that you just said. Are you comfortable? I mean, if you think it's a better policy to have a year, I mean, there's okay. There are some policies in place here, but are you comfortable going to the mayor or the city administrator and saying, you know, actually, I don't think that's a very good policy because I mean, we don't have, you know, we haven't had a director in place. So, I mean, what I wanna, you know, you can tell what I wanna hear is that you would be comfortable doing that.

Yes, yeah, that's an understandable concern. And yes, I would be. I like to approach it from a collaborative standpoint and giving what my opinion is and thoughts are succinctly so that Mayor Petras understands what my concerns are and having that dialogue to find a better way to structure some sort of policy.

Well, thank you for that Councilman Stone.

Hi, I'm Sarah Stone, council person. I'm just going to return to the recruitment side. You know, cities across the United States have had trouble in recruiting police officers and other safety officers. Cleveland Heights has had its own history of sometimes not being fully staffed. I wondered if you, on the recruitment side in the city of Columbus, have any strategies that have been successful for you in having a robust police department?

Yes, working in public safety, your struggles are not unique. We have the same struggles here. So what we have done, I'll first speak upon the Division of Support Services because we handle recruitment for the 911 emergency call center. We have tailored our recruitment strategy to gain interest while with the youth. So in career centers, we would start going in and having conversations with law enforcement, programs and creating that talent pipeline, helping them understand what it means to be a police officer or firefighter or for us, 911 emergency call taker or dispatcher. Going into the community and helping bridge that, for lack of a better way to describe it, distrust in public safety personnel. And by doing that, you also create that talent pipeline, always having those conversations to help employees and the potential employees feel comfortable. We've also previously contracted with a third-party vendor called All Star Talent, which I wouldn't necessarily bring in as a priority because it's dependent on the budgetary constraints. But that has also helped tremendously because they have helped us with social media, targeted ads, and creating forums for the community to come in and ask questions, have hiring discussions, and also just It just helps to get our name out there. Again, I wouldn't want that to be our first priority. The priority, in my opinion, should be creating those talent pipelines through employment fairs and career voc ed educational schools. But those are all potential ideas to consider.

Councilman Posh?

uh yes it's nice to meet you my name is jim posh i'm a city councilman uh city council person possibly um so the the one thing that's concerning on your resume is you have a columbus address and although i love columbus it's going to be pretty hard i think to do your job while you're in columbus but maybe not i mean do you plan on moving to cleveland heights

Yes, that is a fair question to answer. Yes, I am. I'm actually from Northeast Ohio. And while Columbus has been a great home to me the past 10 years, me and my husband are ready to come home. So we will be moving up. I will be up in the Cleveland area as of July 4th weekends. I will not be completing this role from Columbus.

That sounds good. That's a wonderful answer. And I hope in your places to look, Cleveland Heights will be on your list. But we understand there's other communities and family needs and everything like that. But it would be really great if you were local. Thank you.

Vice President?

I'm Ms. Halstead, I'm Gail Larson, Vice President of the Council. It's nice to meet you. I wanna go back to the evaluation system because it's extremely important to us to have that in place since we found out they don't have one here. What resources and training, because it will require training of supervisors, will you encourage the mayor to use as a basis for implementing a performance management evaluation system? There must be software out there, but is there software out there that directors can tap into for some online training so they can implement this system in your name as a director of HR, but you can confidently feel that they are going to administer the performance evaluation system the way that you would like it done?

Yeah, that is something that I would need to explore as far as third-party training. I would feel comfortable and eventually I would hope that my team would feel comfortable in having these training sessions with management. I actually prefer that idea because that way management can get their questions answered in real time. but I do agree that having some sort of third party training is also helpful.

I think especially since it's another skill that a director should have if they're writing evaluations and judging performance throughout the year. So it's not an easy thing to do as a supervisor, but with your help, I think we'll get there. I'd also like to know, you are certified as a professional in human resources. Why was it important for you to achieve this certification?

I feel that I'm a lifetime learner and you should never stop learning because then you're just going to hinder yourself. The world of H.R. changes constantly like a flip of a coin. And you're doing yourself and really the employees that you serve a disservice if you choose to just stop. So in addition to getting that PHR certification, Mayor Petras mentioned that I'm a member of the National Public Employee Labor Relations Association and I have regularly went to the trainings that they have partnered or they put on to continuously improve my knowledge. Thank you very much.

Councilman DeWitt-Foy.

Hi, thanks for joining. My name's Joe DeWitt Foy. You alluded to part of this earlier, but I just want to expand on it. I think Cleveland Heights, it's safe to say, is in a transition period and with a new administration, several new members of council, trying to build on the culture that does exist, but to improve and expand on that. So you talked about having clear expectations and regular feedback there. what other aspects of building a positive workplace culture would you be hoping to bring to Cleveland Heights, both to make it a more attractive place for recruits, but also just a better place to work for employees?

I think that there's value in including your employees in decision-making processes. Not so much when it comes to the final decision, but getting their input. We have a quality of working life committee that has Sorry, let me start over. The Quality of Working Life Committee is consisted of both management, HR, and some members of our division. They bring concerns that employees have to the table, we discuss it, we figure if there's any way to improve the work life there. So it can be something as little as, can we get the chairs cleaned in our 911 emergency center? to something as large as employees are noticing an uptick in employees marking off for overtime, which is therefore causing a strain on their fellow co-workers who have to stay for that overtime that the other employee did not. stay for. That has helped employees feel valued. It also helps them understand what goes into the decision-making process. It's not just a matter of we don't want to do it that way, so we're not going to. They see the fact that we have to look at the policies procedures whether it's going to be a liability for the city we've had that happen when we were planning our family fun day and we were just we were trying to figure out if we could have a dunk tank used there. So I think that that is one aspect that I would like to see implemented at some point. On the topic of the Family Fun Day, I think that it is also helpful to have those employee recognition programs. At the Franklin County Community-Based Correctional Facility, every year we celebrated Public Employee Appreciation Week. It was a 24-7 unit, so we put extra care to ensure that employees on all shifts were getting the same care and recognition, despite the fact that they're on an opposite shift as us. So I think that if employees see you taking the time to recognize them and meet them where they're at, it improves the retention and it makes people want to stay.

Great, thank you.

I just want to question back to, I know we've been talking a lot about evaluations. You described the probationary period and the importance on onboarding new employees. But as you implement your employee evaluation system, there are also those existing employees. I've been in the... circumstances sometimes where those situations are hard to correct when there are ingrained practices or other issues that affect an employee's performance. And I just wonder if you would describe what you might do in a situation where the manager and an employee are struggling a little bit to make progress in rectifying an employee's performance.

Yeah, unfortunately or fortunately, however you want to look at it, I'm no stranger to those instances. I am a firm believer in performance improvement plans and the effect that they have on improving an employee's performance. at the first sign that an employee is not meeting their expectations. And really, if I can go back a little bit with performance evaluations in particular, it's important to develop development standards for the employee, which are just goals and areas of improvement for the next writing period. That's your foundation for evaluating the employee. And if the employee is not meeting those goals and expectations, that's when the conversations need to start happening between the employee and their manager. the employee is still not improving after periodic supervisor meetings that are documented, then that's when the performance improvement plan should be enacted. The performance improvement plans, they have a negative connotation to them that I have committed a lot of work into breaking that stigma. employees feel that or believe that it is just a tool to discipline them out of their employments. But that is not how this should be viewed. It's not just expectations on the employee. It's also expectations on the manager to ensure that they are giving the employee all the resources that's necessary to make sure that they are successful.

Let me follow up on that. How much time do you believe in giving an employee to adhere to performance standards, improve their attendance, improve their attitude, improve how they deal with the public. How much time do you believe is reasonable to give an employee to meet those expectations? And if they're not, are you able to have the hard conversation with the department head and that employee?

Yeah, I'm actually going to work backwards if that's okay and answer the last question first. So I have had to have those difficult conversations. I've actually been at the table telling an employee that they did not meet the expectations of their performance improvement plan and therefore we unfortunately need to terminate your employment. No one feels good giving that conversation, but sometimes it is necessary because it ends up costing the employer more long term to keep that employee who is not performing as expected, as opposed to finding a different person to backfill their position. As far as a timeline that I would give an employee to improve, I would say that that is dependent on the situation. You don't want to give somebody 60 days, for example, to improve upon something that is performance-based and it's unrealistic to improve in that time frame. Now, attendance, that's different. With attendance, I think that shorter time frame is necessary because especially if the employee has had habitual tardiness or they have exhausted all of their paid leave time, you know that pattern and likely whether that pattern is going to continue or not. So I truly believe that it's just dependent on the situation.

And what's your view on employees that are on their cell phones or surfing the net at their desk when they should be doing work for the city?

I think that that is unacceptable. While I think that it's unrealistic to think that employees are going to be working 100% of the time. And I say that because studies have shown that in order to have a comfortable work environment or an environment that's not overwhelming to an employee, you should follow the 75-25 rule where 75% of their time is taken up with their responsibilities and 25% is downtime. But when it comes to that downtime, there is always something work-related to do. And that is what the expectation is. Now, if you are on your phone because you have a child that is sick or something that is personal that needs handled right then, that is fine. But employees should not be allowed to just be on their phones.

Sorry, I'm sounding like a boomer that I am.

Where are you on work from home versus working in the office?

Do you mean personally or when thinking about employees in general? Professionally. I have never worked from home, except for the off times when we had a level three snow emergency, for example, this year. I personally don't like it because I have everything that I need in my office and I don't have that at home. So I feel like I'm less productive when I'm working at home. So personally, I would not want to work

But what about employees that ask for that? You know, some flexibility, I'm not saying, you know, totally work from home, but some type of split between, do you, have you like, seen any research or do you have any experience where you've seen, you've been able to see the difference between the productivity of somebody who works from home versus the work they do in the office?

Yeah, I think that that is a value-added policy because it provides that flexibility to employees. While I don't necessarily agree with a 100% work-from-home policy, I also understand that life happens and sometimes employees may need to stay home but may be able to work from home, for example, if they're getting a water heater replaced or something like that. So I think that that is something to consider, but I don't think that it should be a 100% remote work. Okay, any other questions?

Is there anybody who would like to ask any questions in executive session? Okay, hearing none. Ms. Halstead, thank you very much for your time. We really appreciate it. And we're scheduled to vote on Friday. So again, thank you. Anything else you wanna leave us with? I don't wanna necessarily have the last word.

No, I just want to thank you, Council, for this opportunity to speak with you and talk to you a little bit more about my background and for Mayor Petras and City Administrator Reese for having the confidence and my knowledge and competency to effectively execute this role. So thank you so much. Sure.

But one last question I just thought of. Who would you be reporting to?

the city administrator.

Okay, very good. All right. With that, I'll say goodbye and thank you. And you'll hear from us on Friday. All right.

You all have a great night.

Thank you.

You too.

Thank you.

Mr. President, when we go back in the committee of the hall, there is a period for an executive session.

Yes.

I'd like to discuss her situation when we do have that.

That would be fine. And appropriate.

Yes. Mr. President, if I could, am I remembering that earlier you swapped the executive session and the public confirmation hearing on this agenda? So I think that we now have the opportunity to go into executive session if you want it.

Understood. But what I think we're going to do is just wait until we go into committee at all. Thank you, Mayor. All right, so we do have some legislation. So we'll start with, let me put my glasses on here. All right, I think I'll pass this off to the Vice President. So we have first readings for consideration for adoption tonight, just one.

Ordinance number 129-2026, an ordinance amending the city's housing and business maintenance codes by enacting new subsection 1347.03 of the city's codified ordinances and repealing in their entirety sections 1351.34 and 1369.16 of the city of Cleveland Heights, Ohio's codified ordinances, repealing ordinance 126-2026 and declaring the necessity that this legislation become immediately effective as an emergency measure.

So moved. All right, we have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Okay, very good. Any discussion? Okay, so this just, the big change is the whereas clause number five. So this would be repealing what we did on the 15th of June. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? All right, that motion passes on to first readings only.

Mr. President, if I might just, it does repeal what was done on the 15th with regard to these sections and makes those changes now separately and immediately effective.

Thank you for the clarification. All right, two for first reading only.

Resolution number 127-2026, resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into professional services agreement with RFC contracting LLC for owners representative services for the Cumberland pool facility modernization and rehabilitation project and declaring the necessity of this legislation become immediately effective as an emergency measure. So moved.

Well, this is first reading only. However, you know, since we don't really, you know, have this in committee of the whole, if anybody has any questions about this.

Or I could speak to it.

No, now would be the time.

Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. So we received, as the legislation says, six responses to the proposal that we put out. And we had interviews with three finalists and follow-up interviews with them. We also checked references for each of the three. And there is another piece of legislation that would create, that's a budget amendment for this, which is 300,000. This specific legislation, which would authorize and direct the mayor to enter into an agreement with RFC is for 132,000. There are some additional services that we may choose to opt for. So for example, Concord Township, they chose to have someone on site every single day. Whereas right now that is not currently factored in here. We may potentially choose some of these services, but we still anticipate that it will be substantially below the 300,000 of that budget amendment. We also, in looking at RFC, were really pleased to see that they have done multiple projects in the city of Strongsville. That city has repeatedly hired them. They did the upgraded library in the city of Shaker Heights, and they are currently finishing a pool in Fairview Park. That relevant experience made them the firm that we decided to go with.

Very good.

I would like to bring to, I've already sent this to our clerk Ballester. There are two typos in the legislation and it's a numeric. It's doesn't affect the wording, but it talks about the narrative is $132,820 and zero $100. The actual numeric is 132,082. So I've asked her to fix that before we vote on it. Just to bring that to your attention.

Mr. President, normally we see the contracts and the scope of work when we approve a contract. Is that coming before we read this for adoption?

I mean, I think that it's sort of like chicken and the egg. This legislation is authorizing and directing us to negotiate and sign an agreement. And so sometimes we're at a point where we have an agreement that's in process, but we're moving pretty quickly here. And so we recently made the decision to go with RFC and put them in touch with the law department so that the law department could negotiate a contract or I'm sorry, could draft a contract with them.

So I don't know that that'll be ready by Friday, but I think that it may be that the proposal or some additional information could be provided. And I do think that we'll be likely using an AIA form as the template for the contract.

We can pass along the proposal. I provide that to the clerk and could send it out to all councilmen.

I think that would be helpful. I mean, obviously there was, there's an agreement on what the scope of services are because there's an amount that we're being asked to approve. So to have more information behind that would be helpful.

And again, we may choose to go with some additional services as we work on that agreement, but we could certainly provide the proposal.

That would be helpful.

Thank you. I would like to know if that agreement or the contract, the professional services contract will include a timeframe for when the work will start and when you anticipate it will end.

Yes, and we were very clear with all of the folks who we spoke with that we have a particular timeline in mind and they're certainly aware of that.

Well, I wanna make sure that we have what council needs before we vote. So Councilwoman Cohen, What do you need to see?

I would like to see the proposal that has, I presume, a number on it in terms of what the cost is for the services and the scope of services that they're offering. And then if, for example, if they're offering $300,000 of work, if the administration can indicate what is meant to be included and what services are meant to be included in the amount that we've been asked to approve. it doesn't have to be in any sort of formal contract, but just some communication that we have. I don't think I saw it in that.

So whenever finance was working on the budget amendment, we were looking at proposals that had a wide range of numbers. So there's the 320, I'm sorry, 332,000 on the lower end. The one proposal was like 650,000. And so I think that finance chose the 300,000 because it seemed that most of them were within that range and we had not yet selected one. And so we still think that it's appropriate to go with the $300,000 because we may add additional services, but I anticipate that it will be substantially below the $300,000.

And just to be precise, what I meant was not the budget adjustment number, was the number in this piece of legislation, the 182. Right.

So we can provide that proposal that details that. And then as we draft the contract, we could share those proposals, or I'm sorry, those drafts with you.

Thank you.

And the timeline, no problem there?

Start date, end date? Yes, I think that we're comfortable with that.

Okay, very good. Want to read the next one?

Yes. Resolution number 128-2026, a resolution appointing Helen Hertz, Linda Strayefsky, Corey Clark, India Birdsong Terry, and William Fadel as members of the Municipal Property Development and Disposition Committee of the City of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

All right, and then we have three second readings that we are gonna vote on.

Can I just say a point of order, Mr. President? This particular piece of legislation, perhaps the law director could help us. Is this meant to be adopted on Friday or is this meant to be at our- July 6th. July 6th.

No, I'm asking July 6th.

Yeah, that's what I'm asking, which meaning?

You're asking about 128? Eight.

Yeah, the MDCPP, yeah.

Yes. I think it's council's discretionary determination on when they would make those appointments.

And this is not an emergency. So, I mean, I have no problem with July 6th.

Well, the reason I was asking is because we had a conversation. We're a little off kilter with committee. We're doing legislation in this meeting. We have another meeting on Friday. Then we have another meeting on Monday. So we did have a conversation at the last committee of the whole regarding one of my concern with this legislation. And I think we've come to a good conclusion on how we can... I'm sorry, am I getting these two mixed up? Okay, right. Oh, that is for today. Oh, this is the appointment versus the...

This is the appointments to the one that will be finalized whenever that's voted upon.

Okay, but is that one... My computer's battery is lost, so I can't... That's second reading. That's next. That's the next one. Okay, so let's... Then that's fine. Then we do not have... Then I will save this for the next. And I'm going to plug in my computer while...

Just on the point of this piece of legislation, I had worked with the clerk that it is anticipated to be on Friday's agenda. First reading tonight, second reading on Friday. But as the law director said, there's no rush in this. There's no emergency. So if you choose to do it on the sixth, it would be fine as well. But that was her intent, the clerk, to have it on for Friday.

And when you say it, you're talking about 128. 128, correct. Yes. Okay, all right, well.

I'm good now, yes. I will save what I was gonna say for the next piece of legislation.

All right, so on, so Bec, I'm sorry, did you read 120?

Ordinance number 120-2026, an ordinance to amend certain subparagraphs of ordinance number 241-2025 and subsequent amending ordinances relating to appropriations and other expenditures of the city of Cleveland Heights, Ohio for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2026, and declaring the necessity that this legislation become immediately effective as an emergency measure. And I heard Councilwoman Cohen thinking that she might wanna amend this particular piece of legislation.

Yes, so as a reminder, this is two pieces to it. One is the owner's rep for the Cumberland pool project. And the second piece was the street sweeper that public works there's associated legislation. with I had raised some questions about the street sweeper. In response to those questions at Committee of the Whole, my understanding of what the response was was that this was going to be an additional street sweeper, a fourth one in addition to the three we have. And my question was whether that was really necessary and if we could use these funds for something else. The director of public works who was not available at the committee of the whole meeting followed up with me after that to say that this is actually a replacement of one of the three street sweepers. It is needed and the funding needs to be, this needs to be wrapped up by July 1st for the matching fund opportunity, or I'm sorry, not the matching fund opportunity, the...

Community cost share.

Yeah, the community cost share. Thank you. So with that, I'm okay. My concern about buying equipment that is a surplus and not a need has been alleviated. And I'd be happy to revert back to the original form of the legislation that had both budget amendments in it, if the rest of council is amenable. And the law director will be happy to guide us through how we do that.

Well, so I don't have the original piece of legislation in front of me, and this one has been modified both in the memo and I believe in the exhibit to remove the appropriation for purposes of the street sweeper purchase. So we would have to substitute the one that was read last week for the one that is in the packet for this evening.

Can we hear that be a motion? Or we could just have it on Friday because we talked already with Director Hanna about making sure, because there are two other pieces of legislation that are critical to this purchase as well. So we can make sure that that budget adjustment is done on the 26th, correct? Yeah.

I think that works with all the- As long as the administration is okay with that, I know that they were concerned about getting this passed. So, okay.

All right. So in that case, we're just going to,

You've read it, right?

It's been read into the record. We'll move on to 124.

Are we voting on it?

Voting on the current amount. Correct. You just suggested that we wait until Friday to consolidate the street sweeper.

Oh, but we have, that would be a separate piece, a new piece of legislation. That's what I was thinking.

I thought you were talking about consolidating. I think, I think,

which is easy.

The budget amendment could wait until Friday and then the third reading that we don't create more work for the law department.

Yeah.

That keeps everything then being adopted at the same time. And it'll be more straightforward. I think.

So I'll put that in my email to clerk Ballester when I send it to her, that that's what we're doing is we're consolidating. And in the number on the legislation will be ordinance one 20.

I'm not sure that we're consolidating. We're in essence having a third reading so that we can go back to what was first read.

The original version.

Right.

Yes.

That's accurate, but it sounds.

Yeah, I'm okay with that. All right. All right. So we're not voting. Okay. Next one. Ordinance 124-2026. An ordinance amending ordinance number 13-2019 as amended previously by ordinance number 11-2022 and ordinance number 195-2023 to reduce the number of directors on the board of directors of the Cleveland Heights Community Improvement Corporation to include only the mayor. President of the council and the director of the city's department of planning development, authorizing the mayor to file appropriate amended articles of incorporation and declaring the necessity of this legislation become immediately effective as an emergency measure.

All right, do we have a motion? So moved. All right, it's been motioned and seconded. I just wanna ask, is this the legislation that we were, I'm asking the mayor, I guess, that we were going to divide up the appointments between, or that's the 125?

So we decided that going forward, rather than closing the CIC, it would make more sense for it to stay open. We would make it the annual disclosure, but it would not have... any activity in it. And so this is in essence, right-sizing the organization so that we can do that annual disclosure without there being additional activity in there.

All right. So maybe my question was for the next piece of legislation. Okay. And I'll hold it until then. So it's been motioned and seconded. Is there any other discussion?

I have a point of, I'd like to say something about it. Sure. President. So there's some really great people on the CIC. And I do know that this sort of morphs into 125 the next thing we're going to read. But I want to make sure that everybody understands this. to demote those folks and dilute their authority. I mean, they're really great people. They've done a lot of great work for the city. And I like how this is transitioning. I think it's best for the city. And I just didn't want anybody to think that we had some great people on this and now we're just sort of kicking them off to the side. And I don't feel like that's happening.

Thank you. And with that, all in favor And that motion passes.

Ordinance number 125-2026. An ordinance establishing a municipal property development and disposition committee and prescribing its composition, purpose, powers, duties, and procedures, and declaring the necessity that this legislation become immediately effective as an emergency measure. Thank you.

I can make a motion or I can just provide some additional explanation on this piece of legislation.

Why don't you do both?

Okay. On the amendment. Yeah. Okay. So moved.

Section six, you said?

Well, section six, yeah. Okay, well, before I move, I will go back. This is what happens when we have an extra council meeting in between council meetings. I had raised the concern at the Committee of the Whole meeting that we are changing the structure of this and creating a Citizens Advisory Board without a council. presence, which in the structure that the administration explained and made sense, we do have the council president on the CIC, but that's now defunct, and we are appointing these members, so we do have a role, but my concern was primarily that the administration, if it wasn't the collaborative administration we have right now, but rather a more adversarial relationship, that they might use this advisory committee in lieu of informing council about the disposition of municipal property. So after our discussion of Committee of the Whole and Director Zamp's suggestions at the Committee of the Whole how we might approach this, I worked with the administration and our outside counsel to craft an amendment to this piece of legislation, which you'll see in Section 6 in what the law department, the law director just gave us the amended version. And I'll read it out for the record and for the public. But The section six is the section that says that this committee, the committee is advisory only and have no independent authority to bind the city, et cetera, et cetera. And the amended language is furthermore, it is not the intention of the city that every disposition of real property be subject to review and advice of the committee. And the city may proceed with the disposition of any particular piece of real property in in accordance with its charter, codified ordinances and applicable statutory provisions without review and advice from the committee. However, in the event the committee is consulted prior to the disposition of any particular piece of real property, the mayor or his designee shall advise council of such intended action prior to convening the committee for review and advice pursuant to this resolution. So in my mind, this preserves the administration's obligation to keep council informed when they are going to be utilizing this committee. And so there's not a workaround to have this committee play the role that council is meant to play when it comes to advising on real property and municipal disposition of municipal real property. So if this is, I guess I'll ask the law director for guidance on whether I can move to adopt the amended version of this or if I need to move for the amendment itself.

So I think the most straightforward approach I think is to, for reasons I'm gonna mention in a moment, to move to amend. The document in front of you is denoted already as amended 622-26, but I believe that there was a change also discussed in terms of the number of appointments, which is perhaps what you were getting at, Mr. President. Not the number, the- The maker of- Yeah. the appointments to being made by the mayor, subject to confirmation by council or not? It was a division. Right, we were going to divide them.

So two by the mayor and then three by council. With the understanding that all of the folks who would be initially appointed are those currently on the CIC.

Which is the prior piece that we read earlier, right? 128. So the piece that's currently before you does not have a change in section two, which is composition and appointment of members. So you could make it, you could have a motion to amend it, or we could prepare this in clean form and you could act on it on Friday, since you're going to be back at this in any event.

Friday, I think Friday, then we'll have a clean piece of legislation.

Yeah. Right. So now we have, to kind of competing. Yeah, I see that.

Thank you. All right, let's do that. Just one clarifying question on that. Yeah, sure. So is this, does this only come into effect if the committee is advising the administration on the disposition of a city owned property? It's listed there, it's written as any particular piece of real property. And my understanding is like the CIC, one of the roles was to advise on disposing of city-owned property, but also could be consulted for sort of broader development projects or situations. So this would just be if the city is potentially going to sell or dispose of a city owned property before consulting with this committee council would need to be notified.

Advising with respect to the disposition of city owned real property, but in section five at the top of. The third page, it says that in fulfilling its purposes, the committee may, and it goes through a couple of activities. And one of those is identify and recommend priorities and opportunities for redevelopment assemblage, interim use housing, commercial or public uses and other loss and other lawful dispositions strategies. But assemblage would suggest that there's a role that could include some of the general economic development or land use role.

Right. So are we requiring that council be notified anytime this body meets or.

All of their meetings would be public. So you would be notified that the public would be notified. And so council could be notified in each of those instances as well. Okay.

I'm just, I'm wondering if this poses, um, on the administration to sort of figure out exactly when this requirement will be met or be needed and then send counsel an email before the committee is meeting if the committee is meeting regularly without that requirement coming into effect.

So I think that some of that is the purpose of the section six amendment. which says that it's not the, you know, for purposes of clarification, it's not the intention that every disposition of real property be subject to review and advice from the committee and the city may proceed with disposing of a particular piece in accordance with charter codified ordinances and other applicable law without review and advice from the committee. But if the committee is consulted, then the mayor or designee shall advise council of such intended action.

I think that this was a good faith effort to try to keep the experience of the members of the CIC in city hall. And so it could be the case that we just don't take their advice, but I thought that this would be a good way that we could keep that here. Again, as I shared during our last council meeting, we can't dispose of property without city council unnecessary and that this creates a burden. But if this is something that would help council to feel comfortable, you know, we talk with folks regularly for advice on different things. If this is something that council thinks would be helpful, I'm happy to include it. But again, I don't think that it's necessary.

Mr. President, just in response to Councilman DeWitt's voice, I mean, this is only at minimum meeting semi-annually. And the language is, I mean, again, this is not meant to be an ongoing advisory for every single transaction. The goal of the amendment, as I had asked, you know, the group that we were discussing it over email was to ensure that with a more adversarial administration that this group could not be used as a workaround to advise on property without council being aware of it. So it's not meant to be administrative burden as much as it is to be a check on that they, and I'm not saying that the people that we are intending to appoint would wanna serve in that role either, but the mayor and council can appoint now this, or will be able to appoint this five person advisory board and they can consult them without this amendment, without our knowledge. And that's all, I mean, I really don't see it as burdensome as opposed, I mean, this is the natural course of informing us about municipal property. In the way we function currently, I don't see as a burdensome because to the mayor's point, they let us know about when there's gonna be a disposition of municipal property. This is more a check on an administration that is not communicating with council in the way that it should be.

Okay, all right, with that, I'm gonna ask if there's any old business or any new business. And if not, I'm gonna adjourn this meeting at 6.05 and we're gonna go into the executive conference room for a committee of the whole. All right. Welcome to the Cleveland Heights City Council Committee of the Whole meeting. It is Monday, June 22nd at 614. I guess I'll call the roll. Tony Kuda, I'm here. John Larson here. Ray Cobb here. Jared McFoy here.

Sarah Stone here. Jessica Cohen here.

Jim Posh not here.

No, you're here. You're just in Las Vegas. Okay. Okay. So we have a legislative review here. We have three pieces of legislation that we're just going to discuss today. The first one is 121.26, a resolution authorizing the mayor to enter into a community cost share agreement with Northeastern Regional Sewer District. Any discussion here? Yes, please.

I would like to propose that we consider, look at both of these, 122 and 121 at the same time. Sure. and is justifiable and it is funded. So I would like to move forward to Friday for vote.

Any other discussion? I concur.

Well, I'll just mention for those who are watching this meeting and may have not watched the preceding council meeting where we discussed the street sweeper question, is that the director of public works, director Klingscale did respond to my questions on this, that it's not an additional piece of equipment. It's meant to replace one of our three street sweepers and the cost sharing agreement needs to be all of this needs to be done by July 1st to take advantage of that agreement. So I concur with my colleagues, and I just want to close the loop on that for those who are only watching one meeting at a time.

Very good. Everybody okay with voting on Friday?

As we discussed in our previous meeting, That 120-2026 will be the original that had both the owner's rep for the pool and this particular piece of equipment on it. So I'll make sure that Eddie has that information so we can see it on Friday.

All right. So that's 121 and 122. And then Ordinance 123, an ordinance declaring improvements to parcel is the Alcazar, exempting the improvements to such parcel from real estate property taxation for a period of 30 years. All right. Any questions on this or discussion?

Can I just process the question? Because we discussed this at the last committee of the whole meeting.

Yes.

But was that a reading or an agenda item? Because it's listed here as first reading. So I

So this should be denoted. Well, it is still on second reading though. You're just discussing it tonight. Sorry, it's still on first reading. You're only discussing it tonight.

This is an opportunity if we want to discuss it more with the intent to pass it on July 6th or Friday.

I mean, July 6th would be fine. Is there any?

Yes. Am I mistaken? Wasn't this item something you wanted to talk about on the finance committee?

We have these wonderful spreadsheets from Assistant Director Anderson. I want to get clarification. The first 10 years at 100% tax abatement, the dollars that are in that column, do they exchange hands at all or does the developer keep those dollars?

Assistant Director Anderson would know that.

Would you like me to email him so that I can get that before we vote?

I may be able to answer that.

Yeah, I would.

Hi, Rico Petro from Independence, Ohio. So by right, in the event that you spend a certain threshold to renovate your property in Cleveland Heights, you are offered tax abatement. That abatement, on the newly assessed value of the property. So there's no abatement on what the existing taxes are. So for that 10-year period, if the county assesses the property at $10 million, as an example, or whatever we have in the spreadsheet, that money is not traded, Hans. That money is just shown as an amount we do not need to pay. So it's not in the form of any rebate or anything like that. So it is not paid by the developer and reimbursed.

And for the record, you are the owner of the property.

That's correct.

So it won't go into the TIF fund then?

That's correct. So the TIF that we have requested is post the abatement period that offers us a rebate at that time. So then the money will be paid and a portion of it will come back to the developer to offset some of our investment into them.

And the money that goes to the school district, according to this spreadsheet, would stay with the school district. They don't have any responsibility to reimburse you for anything, right?

That's correct. So we thought it was good business not to touch any of the proceeds that would go to the schools.

Much appreciated. Believe me. And I would just like to know which department monitors the TIF funds when we do have a developer's TIF fund established? Is that finance? talking to each other sounds good. All right. Thank you.

Thank you. I just want to make a comment about some of the projections and I'm in favor of this. I'm voting for it, but we often get these projections on the amount of income tax that is going to be collected by the city. And it's my belief that these income tax projections tend to be on the high side. So for example, for top of the hill, there are a significant number of AS WELL. SO JUST KEEP IN MIND THAT WHEN WE GET THESE NUMBERS, VERY SUNNY, THEY SHOULD BE CLOUDY.

OR A LITTLE OVERCAST.

I WANT TO MAKE A PROCESS POINT HERE THAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT INFORMATION THAT WE RECEIVE FROM ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ANDERSON, WHICH IS NOT IN THE that we have for Committee of the Whole, which means it's not posted publicly. And I would like to ask in the future that what is provided to us that we're discussing Committee of the Whole, and I've asked this before, is posted publicly because we're discussing documents that the public doesn't have access to right now. And it would also be helpful, I'm not sure why Assistant Director Anderson isn't here today, but it would be helpful for some reason, the appropriate person, and I will reference the street sweeper scenario, like if we can get not the head of time where we can ask questions in advance or the right director at the right meetings.

And one way we can do that is in our Thursday meetings with the law director and the mayor's usually there, certainly city administrator Reese is there, that we should say who we need specifically. that that's coming forward.

Yeah. That sounds like a really good idea so that we can make sure that the staff members who you'll need will be present. And as always, the clerk of council is always welcome to include public documents in the packet that she puts together.

And again, not for the administration. I'm asking for us that I want to make sure that more is posted.

Like if we're going to be discussing something, but that's a decision of the clerk of council and not of the administration.

But I want to say, have that caveat that, Anytime, we're not the last word on who needs to be there. I mean, if one of you all thinks somebody needs to be there that maybe we didn't, by all means, reach out, just copy me. No problem.

And not to belabor the point, I just think getting the, since we don't have, as president and vice, you know, you set the agendas with the clerk, we don't have visibility in that agenda until... but everything is posted, so it's hard for us.

Well, no, no, no. Eddie's been sending it out the day we... I don't think we got any.

There's been one. Oh, yeah. There's been one. I don't think we got anything. We did not. Okay, good, thank you. I'm making sure that I'm not...

There was one... Wait, let me... For our regular meetings, okay, I don't want to make it all inclusive, but for our first and third Monday meetings, when we meet... On the Thursday, sorry about all this, but when we meet on the Thursday after the meeting, the clerk has been sending you for at least a couple rounds all the agenda items summarized that comes out of that meeting. Now, I'm not going to say that there might not be something added in between the time we meet and the time the packet comes out. That does

That has been helpful. I think also committee of the whole, if we're discussing this from last week, it could be helpful to have the same thing for committee as a whole because we don't have visibility into everybody.

And to be honest, I didn't realize when we went to this new format that we were really doing legislation on these days. I mean, that was not the... It's a convenience to do it.

Yes, and I think it provides us with more flexibility and allows the administration to pass things more quickly, if need be, because we can do everything because we're all together. So there's a lot of benefits, but just to keep things moving and not having to worry about amending or emailing questions in between, you know, and it's growing pains. I just think we can continue to improve the processes as we go.

Yeah. Thank you for that. Any other questions about 123? I have one. Oh, please.

Did you consider, did you discuss with the school district whether they would be amenable to any sort of, or did you, you said you thought it was good business to not?

As a developer, we feel like we just don't touch money for schools. The funding is limited as it is. We just feel like there are certain dollars money that goes to the school sacred.

And then how does this, it's about a 30-70 split, but from the not touching the schools, how would this compare to some of the other deals that you've done in the last five years, maybe in the city of Cleveland or other nearby municipalities?

abatement policies. The city of Cleveland, for instance, has a longer 100% abatement period that can go for 15 years.

And then they'll work with you on a TIF afterwards.

But, you know, in this situation, and what's unique about this property is just the age of the property and the complexity of redeveloping a 120 year old building.

Um, just for Oh, did you have something else?

Oh, yes. If you're going to add anything. Cassie Slansky. I'm with Project Management Consultants. So, yeah, this is common within the city of Cleveland. I know it was mentioned as well. So, once that abatement expires and you have a back-end TIF that comes in, it is pretty standard to do a non-school TIF or a development project like that to go towards the pilots.

Excellent. And, Director Hanna, would you mind just stating... WHEN IT'S MANDATORY THAT DEVELOPMENT DEAL CONSULTS WITH THE SCHOOL DISTRICT, AND WHEN IT ISN'T, OR I DON'T KNOW, IS THAT MORE OF A DIRECTOR ZAMP QUESTION?

YEAH, THERE'S TWO STRUCTURES. THERE'S WHAT WE CALL THE NON-SCHOOL TIF AND THE SCHOOL-RELATED TIF, AND IT'S REALLY JUST PART OF THAT CONVERSATION THAT HAPPENS BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND CITY TO SEE HOW MUCH YOU WANT TO GET THE SCHOOLS INVOLVED BECAUSE THAT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT LEVEL OF COMPLEXITY. IT CAN INCREASE THE AMOUNT, OBVIOUSLY, BUT TYPICALLY THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM AND I THINK PROBABLY THE CITY WANTS TO KEEP THE SCHOOLS WHOLE AND IF IT CAN WORK, IF THE DEAL CAN WORK, THEN THAT'S USUALLY THE FUTURE.

BUT THE REQUIREMENT WITH THE SCHOOLS, IF THEY'RE BEING KEPT COMPLETELY WHOLE, IS ESSENTIALLY A NOTICE

And when is the consent mandatory?

When they're not being kept whole.

Okay.

So if there's a contribution, and we can provide some more detailed information under Chapter 5709, but essentially when they are being kept whole, then there's a requirement that they're made aware, but it's not a consent requirement.

All right. The only... I guess it is a question. I am a little bit concerned about the ability, Mr. Petro, of the 10% rent increase a year. So in other words, the rent could go up 30%. That would be, to me, exorbitant. I mean, the COLA is, you know, it's usually 3%. I don't know what it's going to be this year because... I mean, I know this is an odd year with the gas crisis and so forth. But I would be more comfortable if it was 5% a year so that this three-year period could be capped at 15% because 30%, to me, in three years would be an exorbitant. RENT INCREASE. I'M NOT SAYING YOU'RE GOING TO DO THIS. I'M NOT EVEN ASKING YOU WHAT YOUR INTENTIONS ARE. BUT TO ME, IT WOULD DEFEAT, IF IT WERE 30%, IT WOULD DEFEAT THE PURPOSE OF PUTTING THIS IN THE CONTRACT BECAUSE 30% WOULD BE, AGAIN, IN THREE YEARS, IN MY VIEW, AN EXORBITANT RENT INCREASE.

I understand your concern for the residents that have been there prior to when we purchased.

Oh, four years or more, right? That's what we.

So I guess I would steel man your comment to say, first of all, is what you're talking about is a cost of living increase year to year, correct?

What I'm saying is it's so much more than the cost of living that it could be detrimental to the current tenants who have an expectation that they could live there at least three more, afford to live there at least three more years.

So in that situation, or 4% or 5% a year, right? I think from our position, when we're putting a cap on this, we think that is the subsidy because we're doing five times the improvement to what we paid for the property. So it's almost like we bought the building five times for five times more money. So we're paying five times more to renovate it, but only asking to be able to increase the rent 30% over a three-year period. from our perspective as well, what I call them, there's five or six lifers that are in the building. They've been there. One of them has been there for 12 years. We as owners of the building have not increased their rent substantially since they've been there, since we've owned the property. So what the city is asking in exchange for this TIF is if we cap it beyond the amount that we're recommending, We're almost being penalized for being good stewards to the occupants that have been there for a long period of time and somewhat taking care of them. We're also asking for a modest increase. I mean, when you're talking 10% a year, some of these tenants are paying $500 a month. There is not another location. I mean, open up Zillow or apartments.com. There's not another place in Cleveland Heights that's $500 a month. So we're already offering them a savings. And at 10% a year, that means the rent's going up $50 a month to go into a unit where we're spending over $100,000 to renovate that space.

I know my concern was not based on your stewardship today. It was just that this is affordable housing for some people. And I mean, I think when people are looking at apartments, that 30% might be the reason they're not moving there. I mean, that's- I agree with you.

I'm in agreement with you, Mike. My only argument would be if I've already kept their apartment at $500 in a $1,000 unit, and now I'm going to put all this money in. And for a TIF, you're asking me, to not move the apartment up from 500 to $650 a month when market rates 1,000. Is that really fair? Is that the goal for this TIF? Or is it to make improvements so that for the next generation, this can be a contributing address to the Cedar Fairmont District? I'm empathetic to the five or six people that are lifers, but we're already... literally offering them apartment. If you can show me an apartment for $650 in anywhere in Cleveland Heights, I'll gladly be open to what you're talking about. But I think at a minimum council, if they are going to put a governor on what we can charge in rent, you have to show me another apartment in the entire city that meets your merits.

I understand. That's why I wanted to discuss it or bring it up. I certainly understand your point. Yeah.

So, well, for the Cleveland market right now, even in the absence of any significant investment. So, you know, we're talking about a 10% increase after this investment when Cleveland broadly, I think, has seen certainly individual investments year-to-year increases.

So that feels like a relative compromise.

I think it does speak to the need, the struggle of housing right now and the need to do everything we can on the supply side and the cost side to get more units and more affordable units online. But I wouldn't want to punish the developer

So quick question. I'm on the website right now. I'm sorry, Jim. And so on the website is studio apartments, $925 a month, one bedroom is $1,400, and the two bedroom, two bath is $2,800. Are these the rents for the renovated units?

So the tenants that are in the building that are the lifers that we're considering, if their rent was $500 or $600 because they were friends with Rita Motlack or Kirk Motlack, I just didn't increase their rent. I knew they were dealing with construction. I tried to be a good steward. And now at some point in time, I'm being penalized for being, you know, because there's a lot of people that just didn't want to leave. And I'm fine with that. But there has to be an end to that. what I can offer to them. I mean, you're looking at the website, the lifers are between 500 and $800 a month. And I, I specifically, because they were there 12 years, eight years, seven years, I just didn't want to push them out. I mean, Rita Montlack's one of them and she doesn't even live there. She uses an art place to go paint. You know, I mean, do I let her, does she fall into the category because she was there and for her art studio. I don't wanna get in the weeds on these type of things, but I think that in the past, I've seen where cities work with developers And our goal to be able to do that is THAT'S GOING UP NOW. THESE ARE ALL WHATEVER THE MARKET WILL BE. I HOPE IT'S $3 A FOOT. IT COULD BE $2. IT'S SOMEWHERE IN THAT RANGE. WE'RE GOING TO BE PUTTING 100 PLUS UNITS ON THE MARKET. OUR LAST UNIT WILL LEASE FOR MORE THAN OUR We will target empty nesters. We will target people that work at the eds and meds and university circle, people that can take advantage of being able to walk to pick up a cup of coffee and groceries in the Cedar Fairmont neighborhood.

We'll go to Councilman Posh now. Just so you know, I just intend on discussing every piece of legislation, including yours, and this is not about punishment. It's just about let's just get everything Here are all the points of view. I gave a point of view. I'm not declaring it a C point. Go ahead, Councilor Posh.

Thank you, President Kuda. I don't feel comfortable, Council, taking a stand on this issue.

I mean, I think there are specific issues that are really the role of the developer and not the role of Council. in our properties, and this is one area of town that I think you have a building that has been, I don't want to say, well, let's just say it's dated, and getting it updated so it is competitive, driving property values up in that area of town, I think that's healthy. And I also think that the developer was very generous in not taking risks It could have been a possibility here. I'm thankful for that. I think it needs to be recognized. But I don't feel comfortable with the way this conversation is going. That's just my feeling.

Just understand, it's in the legislation. So I'm uncomfortable with the idea of not discussing something that's actually in the legislation.

Yeah, I'm not sure I would have wanted to see it in the legislation, although I'm supportive of it.

Fair enough. Anything else on this? Because we have a pretty robust agenda here. All right. So we're going to move away from legislation. Just a point of clarification.

July 6th is okay for this as opposed to the 26th meeting.

July 6th is our next regular meeting. Right.

So with regard to whether that's okay, I would defer to the bill. Does that timeline work?

Is that okay? Yes. All right. Thank you. So item number three on the agenda. So I was talking to Vice President Larson. I thought it might be a good idea to schedule some time individually with members, just kind of a check-in, you know, at I'M NOT SAYING TO SCHEDULE ANYTHING NOW, BUT I WANTED TO THROW THAT OUT TO YOU. WHEN ADDIE GETS BACK, LET HER KNOW IF THERE'S ANY

with just you, you and President Larson?

Right.

Both.

Yes. Any questions about that? All right. So municipal services, the tree canopy, I see Deanna's here. Is there something else you want to talk about first?

No, I'm absolutely going to hand it over to Deanna Fisher. She's done all the work and she's ready to make this presentation. We're all excited about it. Yeah.

Are you able to see the presentation, Jim?

Yeah, it looks great.

So I'm excited to talk about trees and our urban forestry master plan. And so I'm going to just give a little context and talk about the climate action and resilience plan that the city adopted in 2025. And so you might be aware that there are 28 strategies in that plan and 154 actions, and they are in these seven categories. And the natural areas and land use category is where you'll find information about the tree canopy and specifically 7.2, which is nurture a healthy tree canopy. And actually in the plan, I pulled this. was at that point looking to develop an urban forest disaster plan. And that it would include an inventory of existing trees and analysis of the health of our canopy. And if you look at any of the other categories within the plan, you will see that there are things that touch on our tree canopy. And in fact, you can make an argument that almost all seven categories really touch This is a map from our Cleveland Heights master plan that was adopted back in 2017. And it shows our tree canopy. And you can see the chart here with the latest figures that we have from 2025 of our tree canopy shown over time and also compared to neighboring cities and the county as a whole. And what you can see very clearly is that our tree canopy has declined dramatically. 30 to 40% is generally what urban foresters say is a good benchmark for urban areas, and we are now below that 30%, or 26.7%. And as you can see, it's true throughout the county. It's not just us, but it is concerning. Here are a couple of charts from our climate action plan. As you know, we did a vulnerability assessment And so we looked at things like the urban heat island effect. And what that is, is when there is less tree coverage and there's more pavement, the temperatures are actually hotter than they are elsewhere in the community. So if you look at this map and you see the dark areas, those are where we have the highest urban heat island effect. And not surprisingly, the largest area is where we are right now, right here in Severance. We've got another map. Here's the lack of tree canopy. So again, anything that is dark on this map is where there is a lack of tree canopy. Again, Severance and kind of the center of the city is where you are seeing that lack. So there are a lot of risks to our tree canopy currently. As we saw in the previous slide, we're now down to 26.7%, which is below the ideal. So despite the fact that we are continuing to plant trees, our canopy is continuing to decline. And that's due because of development or really redevelopment in our case, for the most part, but also age and disease.

Can I interject a question? So when we do plant trees, do they count as part of the tree canopy?

Well, they do. Of course, when we're planting trees, in order for them to show up on satellite, they need to get a little larger. And so you plant the biggest tree that you can at the time, but it does take time for those to really develop into the tree canopy that we need.

Understood. So it is possible that new trees don't register in part of the canopy?

Not right away. Yeah, absolutely. And of course, we know that with down on people and property. And I just learned this fact recently that our USDA plant hardiness zone has gone up. We are now in zone six, which means that our climate here is hotter than it was just a few years ago.

Thank you. A climate study that was done, did that what of the tree canopy is healthy versus diseased, or it was just counting trees?

It was really just a broad analysis, so we didn't get into that level of detail, and actually we'll talk about that a little bit.

One question before we move on.

The decrease since 2014, those things have always sort of been an issue.

of time but that seems like a very dramatic decrease in the last 12 years are there any insights that you can pull from from this that you know stand out over the last 12 years versus you know the history of Cleveland Heights well we really need to do a deeper analysis to find out if there are any very specific causes but overall our tree canopy a lot of trees were planted in the So they are getting old.

We've sort of been on borrow time for a while, not making the investments in the tree canopy, and we're starting to see that precipitous decline.

That's right. And also because of the change in climate, we have more diseases than we've had in the past, different diseases that our trees that are native to this area are not resistant to. Obviously, there are lots of benefits to the tree canopy. I like this quote. I was at Tree City USA awards ceremony a couple weeks ago with our city forester and David Burke, who is the vice president of science and conservation at Holden Forest and Gardens, says, shade trees make the wait for the bus feel shorter. And so we all know what the benefits of our tree canopy are. There's the greenhouse gas emissions goals that we have, but they produce shade. They help reduce storm water stress. And they help clean the air and make our neighborhoods more beautiful and enhance our quality of life. So we know the benefits of our tree canopy. We have worked with Power of Clean Future Ohio, and they are a nonprofit statewide organization that assists municipal governments with various sustainability issues. And they've done a tree canopy assessment for us. Actually, they're in the process of just finalizing it at this point. And they have recommended that we do an urban forestry master plan. the climate action and resiliency plan. So that is why I'm here for you today to talk about actually doing an urban forestry master plan. So they are working on a tree canopy assessment, and this chart here differentiates between that and what the next step is, which is doing the master plan. So whereas the tree canopy assessment gives us that assessment that says, hey, there's a problem here, your tree canopy is declining, the master plan will dig deeper and give us what are the specific problems? Now, PCFO has been working on this assessment since last fall, since before I joined the city, and they are almost complete with it. The urban forestry master plan process will take longer. It'll take about a year or potentially longer than that because there is community engagement involved. They want to do a... also doing a survey of our tree canopy. So we've got data, we need to ground truth it. We've got information by census tract, but that's not enough. We need to get a finer grain detail and we need to know what the health of our tree canopy is as well. So coming back to There we go. Okay. So we want to do a tree canopy inventory, and then we want to do the urban forestry master plan. We need to update that inventory. We have an inventory that was done, but we really need to ground truth it and make sure that we've got these specifics. We need to know where they're located, what the species is, what the diameter of those trees are, and what their health is. And then we need to create this long-term plan that hopefully will give us that we can implement. Are these trees on private property as well as public property? It's everything? This is really, it's really public property that we're talking about here. And there might be some strategies to assess what's going on on private properties, but primarily we'd be focusing on the tree lawns and our public parks and properties assessment. So as I mentioned, a lot of detail in this, but it really would give us the detail that we need to be able to manage this long-term and would be able to integrate the various functions, various departments within our government as well, and make sure that we've got enough staffing and enough budget to accomplish this.

Just to follow up on Councilwoman Stone's, I think it's a great question because some of the complications that we have with treaties are trees on private property. And I'm just from living here, but also seeing the tickets that come in, you know, this tree on my neighbor's lawn is dead. Will the city come and cut it down so it doesn't fall on my property? Like what is, what is the city's responsibility to deal with diseased dead trees to avoid what maybe in the storm, right? Then this, we may not say we need staff for that because that's not our responsibility, but if that tree falls down and it falls across the road, then of course it's our responsibility as a city to clear the road. So how are you thinking of balancing all of this in a way that truly accounts for the needs across the city?

I think that's one of the reasons why they're advocating for a lot of public engagement in this because that trees aren't a nice to have, but they're really a necessity and that they're valuable. They have value and we need to take care of them. And what are some of the issues that trees are having and what can people do themselves on their own property to do that as well? Because you're right, we're not going to be able to achieve all of our goals just by looking at public property. We need to consider private property as well. We can't, as a city, be responsible for what's happening folks and give them the tools that they need.

Well, I mean, I guess the question, sorry, just one follow-up to that. One, if the community engagement, I'd like us to be open to potential changes in policy. If we're hearing that one of the biggest problems we have, our residents have huge hundred-year-old dead disease trees on their property, and they can't afford either to get them cut down or et cetera. Like these, I want to be open to not necessarily just educating the public on what we do now, but looking at the problem and what we could do. Knowing that it needs budget.

Yes. This is exactly what I was going to mention. And it is, you know, I don't know if we can cite homeowners if they have a dead tree because it could fall on a neighbor's property. But so I think it's a policy that we need to look at, but also it's a policy from a utility work perspective.

I recall when Tanisha Briley was our city manager, they took out a significant number of large, I believe at the time, healthy trees to put gas lines in. And they were thrilled that we were able to get replacement trees, but we're getting trees with like maybe a two inch caliper tree, a teeny tree.

put all those trees in we got the money to do it um we may want to look at our policies and how we work with our utilities and unrelated but even how they patch the roads when when they're done doing their work um I think it's all combined but it's something that the administration may want to consider so do we have an existing tree inventory that we're working on or would this

Thanks. I would like to follow up on what you're talking about and wondering, directors, I'm just left. It seems like as we're reviewing code, that we should be looking at these entities and these parts in the ordinance where possibly we could make sure that there is more awareness. That's what Dan talked about is building the awareness that we do have responsibility to our neighbors when we have a dead tree on our property. And I do know that for point of sale, if you have a dead tree on your property, it has to come down when that transfer is taking place. I'm not seeing the specific language in the ordinances here, but I think that that is something we can look at as we move through the court.

And just on the other side of things, I know other municipalities across the country have taken a much more protective approach and regulations around when you can and cannot remove a tree. I'd be open to thinking about it, but I think we are so over-regulated on what homeowners can and cannot do that, you know, striking a balance there is also important because if you do want to expand your home, you shouldn't have to build five different boards, including a tree removal board or something like that.

So just another, you know, I think that's unique to us, another consideration as well. All right, so next steps. We want to get an RFP out to do the tree inventory and the master plan. Funding is allocated in the 2026 budget for this process. We'd like to do the first reading on June 26th and the second reading on July 6th. Have it considered for adoption there. Then if that were approved, then we would hire a consultant to conduct the And then one more thing, the Climate and Environmental Sustainability Committee has recommended that we form a tree commission. And so that is a recommendation that would require separate legislation for consideration. There's not as much urgency to that. The reason why I wanted to bring this before you now is because we do have the funds in this year's budget.

Director Hanna, do we have legislation for this project, RFP, for Friday? Do you have that legislation on the agenda already, or is it forthcoming from? I don't think so, but I can double check.

I'm thinking that you don't have it.

That will have to be something you'll talk to Director Hanna about. Please, thank you.

Can I ask a question? Is the cost for this going to be under 50 and is it something council actually has to approve?

It's likely going to be more than 50.

Okay.

That was my, my question wasn't as strategic as that. I was curious what you're expecting it to be. How much is budgeted and how much do you expect it to come under?

Yeah. I mean, I think that we're hoping that it will be about 125, 130 at the most.

The master plan that the city did 10 years ago, is there a starting point for any work that was done then for this?

I just found that one map in there. I think there was just a mention of it. Okay. So there wasn't much information other than what you said earlier. So I wanted to put together my last slide, just a little bit of a timeline in terms of what we're thinking. We're hoping that if we do form a tree commission, that we'll be able to do that by the end of this year, so that they'd be able to start work next year. Earth month, a number of activities happen during that month, but one of the things that happens is Arbor Day. And that's a significant event because our Tree City USA, which is through the Arbor Day Foundation, it was 50 years ago today that that program was created. And Cleveland Heights this year achieved our 48th year of foundation. of getting the Tree City USA designation in 2027. That means that if we continue on this path, we'll have achieved 49 years. And by 2028, we'll have achieved 50 years. In addition to Cleveland Heights achieving 50 years in 2028, the City of University Heights will also achieve 50 years in 2028. And so a couple years ago when I was at the Tree City USA Awards, we raised our hands and said we would be happy to host the event for the recognition ceremony for Tree City USA in 2028. And we are, in fact, on the agenda. I confirmed that a couple weeks ago when I was at the Tree City USA award ceremony. So the two cities will be co-hosting those awards together with John Carroll University, which also is a Tree City campus and has an arboretum. So we will be planning for that in the next couple of years. And the City of University of Cleveland Heights has also achieved a growth award for seven years. We did not achieve it last year, but we would like to get back on that path so that we will have achieved our ninth growth award also in 2028 by the time that we... host the Tree City USA Awards. So I wanted to let you know about that. We're excited about it. It's a great honor to showcase the work that's being done here in our city. And if we can get our master plan completed long before that, then we may even have some progress to show with all of the other cities that participate in these awards.

Sorry, I have a question. Two quick things. One is, can you send us the commission's recommendation, the Sustainability Climate Environmental Sustainability Committee recommendation from last year for the commission? To create the commission? Yeah, because that was last year that.

Or when they haven't finished it, it's still in the works. Yes, they are still working on it. We did talk about it in our last meeting.

Okay. And then the second question, have you worked with or connected with Heights Street people?

I did. In fact, I had a conversation with them today that we had scheduled because I also want to get them involved in the planning for Treason USA. Okay.

But depending on how the commission or but there might be a role that they can formally play in this process. I know that they they have some sort of sense of what the tree canopy looks like. And I've seen that.

They do a lot of good work. And in order to get points that we would need for our reward, I think it would make a lot of sense for us to work with them because they are already doing so much.

Anything else?

Thank you. Thank you, Deanna. Thank you so much.

Thank you. All right. Moving on to the finance, would you like to join us at the table? Good evening, everyone.

Good evening. Later, maybe about after five, I believe.

It was just a formula correction. 528.

Thank you. You're welcome.

All right. I'm going to go ahead and get started if that's okay. All right. Starting at page two. It's just the high-level analysis of the financials. But I'm actually going to get started on page three. Moving to page three. For May, our cash balance started out at, well, beginning of the year, started at $91.9 million. Our year-to-date revenue as of May is 47.4 million, which is a 3.8 million favorable variance. Our expenditures are at 44.9 million, which are down 1.5 million compared to prior year, last year. We have open encumbrances of 24.1 million. which leaves us an unaccompanied balance of $70.2 million. On page four, it gives more detail on what makes up the all-fund variances. Looking at, I'll start with the intergovernment contract. We are at $3.8 million, which is a $1.8 million variance compared to last year. Last year, we were at $1.9. In the government contract category, this is primarily made up of 1.2 million of any or as the member community infrastructure program. It's a reimbursable cost sharing agreement related to reduced stormwater backup. This is in the Department of Public Works. We also have 665,000 in community development block grant. This is a true of a prior year. I believe it was 25. And lastly, in the inter-government contract, we have about 264,000 in NERSD regional stormwater management program. This is also with public works. So we did get an increase in funding and our inter-government contracts and grants category of 1.8 million. Next, charges and services. We received 8.5 million, which is up about 1.3 million compared to last year. This consists of $743,000 in utility collection fees. Nothing in particular stands out. We received about $320,000 in landfill collection fees and $424,000 in sewer collection fees, as well as there was an additional $324,000 in this category for CDBG-led abatement. That's offsetting expenses. This was something we've been discussing all year.

Tiffany, does that mean that the collections, I thought I remember hearing a few months back that we're going to start to go and try to get more of the utilities that were, the payments have not been paid. Or is that just regular collections because of people are paying their bills on time? So use the word collections. Can you just define that for me, please?

Sure. So in this account, the collection fees that we received from the deposits that we received, and it can come from both businesses as well as from landowners, what Rayshawn and I were looking at is just making sure, is it timing? Is it additional? Nothing really stuck out. However, we are taking additional steps to look into it further to see if there is more to it and maybe it's just not captured in the deposits that hit the general ledger.

And so what we did was Tiffany and I looked at just the detail, the general ledger detail year over year, and nothing stuck out. I did reach out to utilities just to get a sense of whether or not we had some additional assessments that came in through the county. And so we're still kind of looking at that to gauge exactly and pinpoint what the driver is behind the increase. So more to come on that. Not complaining, but it's nice. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Well, thank you. I think that's important because for a few reasons. One is that we're thinking long-term about the sewer. So if this is money that we're not spending, then maybe we need to put it somewhere for future sewer needs. But the other, and we're also looking at, I think at some point we're supposed to be presented with the sewer rate increase. Well, the analysis is being done. The analysis, right? The analysis. And so I think this is going to be a question for the analysis. Like how does, if something is happening where we're receiving more money than we have in the past, how does that factor into the recommendations moving forward?

It didn't look to be in terms of just normal collections. I'm thinking it might be assessments, but we're still digging into, you know, kind of unraveling some of the detail to figure that out.

Next, looking at our state levied share taxes. Again, this is the adult cannabis tax that we were receiving. It started in July, so it's part year. We've received a lump sum amount. I'm going to go ahead and skip down to our unfavorable variances. Under fines and forfeitures, we received 421,000, 422,000 in May compared to 550 compared to last year. This is due to a decrease in criminal fines and cost collections in the court department.

Question. Sure. Have we had a conversation with the judge about that? We have not. And I recall that there was previously do if we had a discussion with the judge about what steps, if any, he's taking or we should be taking to try and make some collections on that. It was in excess of, I want to say, $2 million. No, but we can certainly have a conversation with the judge.

We'll have a conversation with him. I mean, it's the first time I've heard that.

The first time it's

But yeah, we could certainly have a conversation. And we're going to be tracking, obviously, in a perfect world, the fines equal the court costs as long as the clerk costs. We're tracking that to make sure. In other places where I've worked, we've had conversation with the judge about that. You need to up something because we're in the negative. But yeah, we could certainly take a look at all that.

certain expenses or does that help?

No, that comes into the general fund for all users.

Okay, thank you.

But you'll see sometimes and I'm sure anybody who's an attorney knows a lot of times they will lower the fine and keep the cost. And the defendant figures, oh, that's a good deal for me. Well, yeah, but it's lower in our fines, but they get the core costs. So they will argue that's their money. That's not ours. Oh, I know.

You're having a holistic discussion.

No question. I get it.

What do you mean by that? It's their money and not ours. I mean, I know we're separate entities, but how, what's the difference between.

There's so many ways that we could go with this conversation. I mean, A municipal court is not a legal entity in the form of they can't enter into contracts. They cannot. All the furniture that's there is owned by the city. If they up and move tomorrow, we could keep all that furniture, even though in theory they probably bought it through appropriations that you pass. I've experienced this in Cuyahoga Falls when the Cuyahoga Falls Municipal Court moved to Stowe. But they have the ability to create additional court costs. And one of the things, and I don't know the history here, but one of the things that they did in Cuyahoga Falls is they created a special court cost for special projects where the judge could decide, I could use it on this project. I want to upgrade all my audio and video. I could use a special project for that. But other than the fact that you guys approved the appropriations, that's about as far as it goes.

That was very helpful.

Thank you. All right.

And lastly, our interest earnings. We have about $1.2 million compared to about $1.9 million. Again, this is Fed rate cuts as well as a decrease in our related bonds.

It's nice to see the revenue. Can I ask a question real quick? Sure. I was expecting those interest numbers to fall as we let go more of the ARPA money. You know, maybe in a future meeting, I'd just be curious to see if there's an anomaly there. I mean, I know it is less and has been dropping.

No, because the two areas where we are in interest is in Starr, Ohio, as well as investments that we do through Fifth Third Securities. And it is a strong belief that at a given point this year, the feds will lower at least once, if not twice, before the end of the year. And we have been shifting money from Starr which is more short term in nature by what they could invest in and sticking more into more longer terms within the fifth, third securities. So when that cut does occur, the interest rates that we currently have at start will drop like a rock. But we will have the protection on the latter approach on how we buy securities through Fifth Third Securities. So the number is dropping and Tiffany is completely 100% correct. It's due to the fact that we have less funds due to the spend down of ARPA. But it's going down slower than you would necessarily anticipate as I have shifted over a more aggressive amount of money over to fifth third to get longer yields down the road.

So isn't that money collateralized, though? So if there's a major loss, we don't get hurt by it? Correct.

That's why when we buy CDs, we only buy $250,000 CDs because that's the maximum limit. But if you're buying federal instruments and you're buying T-bills, et cetera, that's 100% guaranteed and you're not limited to that $250,000. Okay. Thanks.

All right. No further questions. I'm going to move to the expenditures. For expenditures, capital, we're at $6.6 million compared to $11 million last year. This is all ARPA-related funds, the reason for the decrease. Personal services, same thing as last month. This is driven by labor-related expenditures. Department of Public Works, we remember the local 860 pay increase, as well as added staff. fire department added staff, community relations added staff, planning added staff, police added staff.

So all personnel related.

Lastly, other than personnel services, that increased by 1.4 million. Last year, we were at 12 million. This year, we're at 13.45 million. This has to do with the 750-part synagogue grant. $290,000 CDBG for the lead abatement, which is offset in revenue. $250,000 for the Park Synagogue building permit fees that were paid in air, which is also offset in revenue. And $189,000 in liability insurance vehicles were added as well as rates increased. So any questions on revenue and expenses for the all funds? for our cash balance. Our revenue, we brought in $29.9 million. It's a $304,000 difference compared to May of 2025. Our expenditures are $26.1 million compared to $23 million, which is an increase of $3 million. Our open encumbrances are $5 million, which leaves us an unencumbered balance of $21.2 million. moving to page six so we can discuss some of the variances included looking at our fees license and permits um we had 1.4 million this year compared to 988 000 last year again with the majority of this is the 250 000 the park synagogue building permit fees that were paid in error, which is offset in, oh, wait, no, I'm on the right way. Okay, and it's offset in expenses. Also, $153,000. A lot of these comments are similar to what was in all funds, $150,000 in building service permit fees, state levy share taxes, $1.2 million compared to $889,000 last year. The adult cannabis tax revenue that we received, municipal income is up about $250,000 compared to last year. Going down to... Questions?

Sure. On the adult use cannabis, so I believe it was in January we received...

Going back to July of 24, from when it initially started, have we received any like the next installment or when do we anticipate receiving?

So now we're receiving it monthly.

Okay, we are. Yeah.

Moving further down to fines and forfeitures, our revenue decreased here by about $129,000. We're at $422,000 this year compared to $551,000 last year. This is the courts. This is what we discussed earlier in the criminal fines and costs. The intergovernment grant contract, we're down $781,000. $755,000 we received this year compared to $936,000. This is actually due to we received last year this time $102,000 lump sum of a workers' comp refund that we didn't get this year, as well as the police department received last year $100,000 in continuing professional training funds that we did not Any questions on the revenue before I move to expenditures? Other than personal services, our expenditures for May were $7.7 million compared to $6.1 million last year. We're up about $1.5 million. same reasoning, the $750,000 Park Senegal grant, the $250,000 permit fees paid in air, which was offset revenue, the liability insurance. Also, we received, I'm sorry, not received, but $140,000 of the out-of-county fee settlement agreement posted in May and $112,000 of election-related expenses, which are just Operation Personal services increased by $1.3 million, driven by labor-related expenditures, the same categories as it was with law funds, public works, fire department, police department, and community relations. And lastly, capitals. OUR CAPITAL INCREASED BY 221,000 IN THE GENERAL FUND COMPARED TO LAST YEAR. WE WERE AT ABOUT 42,000 LAST YEAR. WE'RE AT ABOUT 263,000 THIS YEAR. 74,000 IN COMPUTERS FOR THE ID DEPARTMENT, WHICH IS IN THE BUDGET BOOK. 40,000 OF OUR ANNUAL MICROSOFT 365 ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION. $40,000 in fire suppression system for five garbage trucks. This is in public works. And lastly, $52,000 in replacement mobile data terminals for the police crew first. And that is all that I have for expenditures. Any questions or comments?

Well, the trajectory of the personal services thing over the past four years is significant. And I think that's something we're going to have to talk about, you know, during the budget process, you know, as to what's sustainable and, you know, what levels we need, because just looking at the past few

At one point, we were talking about getting some forecasts done.

And I know you guys in the finance department are spending a lot of time doing catch up. But do you think we'll be able to get some multi-year forecasts in time for the budget hearings in November that sort of like address what? like that in a long, long time. But I recognize the fact getting that work done and getting that done. I kind of look at we're still in a distressed situation when it comes to getting everything in order. I know things are, I know bills are getting paid. We have plenty of money in the bank. But just all the neglect that has happened citywide from the prior administration that you guys were cleaning up. I mean, do you think some analysis work done at some point. I didn't think, frankly, we've had it this year.

Is there a way that we can get something this year in time for the budget? That would be the ultimate goal, but I will submit to you, it will not address the question of personnel services because the jump for this year at the 18 million compared to the 16th That is 100, a lot of that, well, other than the COLA that was given to everybody, that is driven on the fact that the labor union received a $4 an hour increase that didn't happen until later in 25, that was made retro, But it's not reflected through May 25. But it is reflected in 26 numbers because it's in place. But also, next year, police and fire are up for union negotiations. And we will be submitting a budget for police and fire with a 0% increase. Because if we put in a number, that becomes the starting point in union negotiations. So if we say hypothetically we put in 3%, that becomes the low number that police and fire look for. I've done union negotiations for years. Ideally, also, I want to work to get labor contracts on a calendar year basis because we budget on a calendar year basis. I suspect why it's April because way back when, the city probably used to do a temporary budget. So you had temporary to the end of March, and then you started with the whole year in April. That's why our medical contracts... or start on April 1st. I prefer to have those numbers known in place. I prefer to have all three unions on the same cycle instead of labor being a year ahead of the other two. That's going to take time, but for budget purposes going forward, and I did it same place in the places I work. When the union contract expired, I kept the numbers at zero. I knew and we all knew that it was going to be more than that. But by keeping it at zero, you don't have a starting point. Well, you budgeted three. Let's start with three. And it only goes up from there. So it's a tactic. So it won't help on personnel. We could certainly look at it because we're going to look at things differently and how we've looked at personnel in the past. We're going to look at it by department, by individuals within those departments. And when we budget for a replacement, I'll always budget that the health care will be family coverage. And if it's somebody who's young and new and they don't have a family and they're single coverage, I'll know instantaneously I've got a savings because I built family coverage in. But I will know that going forward and we could do internal projections. But in my budget documents, I wouldn't be building an automatic race. I'll have the numbers on the side where I can do side calculations on it, but I will not build it into the budget document because, like I said, it'll become the starting point.

Okay.

Can I just ask a follow-up? Do you feel on the flip side, on the revenue side, is there a way to begin to just imagine what those numbers will, you know, how our numbers might be changing? Oh, sure.

I mean, the revenue will be much easier.

I mean, just to have that piece as a guideline for us to know what we have to spend or what we anticipate.

Absolutely. I've done that.

Probably will help you in your negotiations as well.

You've got property taxes, you've got your sex NEO, and you've got your tri-NEOs. Income tax, I budget conservatively. I would never want to budget more than a half percent increase. And we get 2%, and okay, so that's additional revenue. If I budget 2% and we get half percent, now we're in the hole. And that's historically how I've always budgeted income tax. But I will have a lot of the other numbers that will amount to a significant amount for every single line item.

And we're seeing, you know, you've done a good job, I think, of reporting the arc of the ARPA money, you know, going up and now coming down. But we don't know where the next two years are leading us on that. that train of our unencumbered.

That was such a huge anomaly with $38 million coming in.

Are we going to see the funds continue to drop or do you have a floor where you're saying this is where the norm is going to be?

I'll get back to you on that.

Let's kind of get close to wrapping this up because of what we have coming next.

Where are we at? I'm done. Unless there was any questions.

She wrapped it up just like you said, sir.

I am looking forward to June's reports because it will be mid-year and at that point you talked about being able to put some budget figures in for us so we can see the comparisons. I'm looking forward to June 30. Thank you.

The finance team, thank you so much for getting timely, good information, readable

And Ms. Ware is posting it on the website after our meetings like this.

And when we get a no, it's... We'll say everybody, right? I'm not sure that you're the one that talked about it.

But we, as humans, have created a situation in our urban environments that's making our population grow like crazy.

And that's sort of the crux of the problem. I circulated the documents for tonight. Part of it is just to kind of to catch some people up that sort of weren't part of our initial conversations on council, because we've had some new people come in, three of you specifically. We have a city administrator, finally, that has been very helpful and engaged in the conversations we've been having with ODNR and USDA, and talking to our other neighboring cities that are doing this. What I think might make sense is just to kind of give everybody a little bit of an update on what's happened over the last two weeks or so and where we're at, and then circle back at this document because it may change everybody's feeling on what we feel like we're comfortable talking about right now. We are still waiting for ODNR to put together a deer management survey.

Our deer management plan, when drafted, is going to be a five-year plan that sort of details what the city's obligations are for deer management.

It talks about estimates.

It makes recommendations as far as reducing the population because the population isn't going down if you have to be realistic. or are we at a point where we think we need to make a decision? But that's all going to be in the plan. And we kind of thought we'd have it in our hands by now, but we don't. But we should have it any day. And when we get that, I will share that with every member of council.

The administration and Gail and myself will be meeting

two organizations that help Shaker and Beachwood and South Euclid with their deer management, just to get an idea of how they work with each other.

We're not making any decisions, but just to get a sense of, okay, well, how does it work? What's the process? You know, what are the benefits? What are the negatives? And all this is going to kind of culminate for a public hearing that we hope to have scheduled at the end of July, the first part of August. And this is where we'll have Cleveland Metro Parks come in and give us sort of a historical analysis, science-based on what's happened in our urban areas with deer, how at one point they were essentially extinct in the state of Ohio and now they're not. This is the same presentation that we had on April, I think, 29th, 2025 that was very well attended that our residents can find on YouTube.

We're gonna have ODNR talk about the year management plan that they would like to recommend that the city adopts.

And then we're gonna have public comment. And we've left room for essentially an hour of public comment, people coming to us, telling us what they think. And then at that point, there's probably gonna have to be some decision that we're gonna have to make with the administration on what we want to do and how we want to do it. Anything that we do, it'll essentially be in the year 2027. So it'll be a budget item for 2027. If we do choose a sterilization or if we choose culling or a combination or one or the other, that would likely happen in early 27 because that is when it is best to deal with deer management.

So do you guys have any questions or thoughts?

Jim?

Yes, please go ahead.

I thank you for writing up the summation for us because it really captures what's happened in the last couple of weeks for us, right? In terms of understanding what the various sister cities are doing in our next door neighborhoods. State Administrator Reese had asked if he could speak for a few minutes because he's been very involved in this process. So, he's right here at the table.

Sure. Thank you, Vice President Larson, members of council. I just wanted to say a couple of things. It's been a pleasure working closely with Council Members Posh, Vice President Larson. We've also... in concert with what Council Member Paz summarized as we've put out some public service announcements on the harmful effects of feeding deer. And I think what's really important to emphasize is many of our suburban municipalities that surround Cleveland Heights are already engaging in the deer management program. So what we're looking at doing and considering here could be a regional approach to address the challenge here. And so I really wanted to emphasize that. And we have some upcoming meetings that involve the cities of Shaker Heights, Beachwood, and South Euclid. Yeah, just thanks for letting me be a part of it. And as Council Member Poff said, we're looking at a public hearing in the next month, month and a half. And this is something that we would potentially look to include in our 2027 budget. Okay, thank you.

I just wonder, yes, thank you also to both of you for this summation. It's very helpful. You know, as people think about Dear Man, scary, a little, you know, a lot of unanswered questions. I wonder if as part of your public hearing, you could have South Uke would come, because it seems like they have a long-standing deer management program. Is that correct? Is that right? South Euclid or Beachwood? What I'm suggesting is that you bring somebody from the city to say, here's how this has worked for us over the last four years. Here's how we handled the difficulties of, you know, calling deer and whether it made a difference or not, just as a way to sort of help manage public understanding of the process.

So we can do that. And it's a great idea to,

we will have ODNR there at the meeting.

And the way this works is a city can't do any kind of deer management without it being, I don't want to say governed, but approved by ODNR.

So they know exactly what's going on because they're sort of setting the rules. And they would be giving us rules on how we would be conducting this. We'd be getting a license from So Jeff Westerfield will be present, and he'll be able to answer all those questions. From an optics perspective, we can look at inviting the cities, too. But, I mean, Jeff's going to have the same kind of information that Shaker, South Euclid, and University Heights would have. But, yeah, I mean, we can look at that.

But we'll definitely have the answers there, whether they can attend or not.

So just thinking through the timeline, I'm wondering if this would certainly be included in the budget, but are there contracts or any legislation that we're envisioning needing to be passed or enacted prior to, you know, just going through with the budget?

Not that I'm aware of, but maybe, you know, certainly Council Members Posh and and Larson have more history on this than I do.

We have to budget. We have to get the money. We have to fund it, right? That would be the first step is funding whatever we decide to do. And we'll base it, the numbers that we'll, the numbers that we select for the budget process, based on what the plan is that Jeff Westerfeld's been promising us. So that's going to be a data analysis that, so we're out there saying, well, We might wanna call 30 or 40 deer this year. This is what it's gonna cost us. So we need to have that funding amount in place before we sign those contracts. But we are talking to people that do this for a living to get their advice in terms of what we should be expecting, both just the mechanisms of a contract, right? What are their requirements when they come into our city? What do they do for public safety? You know, what can we expect in terms of communicating with the neighbors in the city, et cetera?

All of that conversation will be wrapped up in essentially a budget item versus a standalone piece of legislation.

Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, I mean, we, the meetings that I think, okay, certainly, I mean, I think anybody that's listening, I mean, there's no decisions have been made here. I mean, we haven't looked at the contract. We've been just talking to our neighboring partner cities. When I say partners, just neighboring cities.

But we would likely join a consortium with either Shaker, Beachwood, or South Euclid. I mean, this is a regional issue. And I think we're going to have to figure out which one it's going to be. I feel uncomfortable as a council member making that recommendation. will be at the table, and I think we're represented by Michael Reese here. I mean, we're gonna be having these meetings, but I think the administration's gonna say, I would feel really comfortable working with Beachwood and Shaker on this, and we feel very comfortable with South Euclid. The way I understand the Shaker-Beachwood project works is everything runs through Shaker, and from a fiscal perspective, Shakers believe. And they don't necessarily care about the number of deer, for example.

They sterilize our call in an individual city, but they look at it from the combination of the two cities because they look at this as a regional issue. So logistically, as far as contracts go, I think that's something that we're going to know a whole lot more this month.

And I think by the time we have our public hearing, we'll have more information. I also think that somewhere along the line, we'll wanna bring this back to council leadership to determine how they wanna handle it. I mean, we may be agreeing in principle to do something with a neighboring city, and I'm not sure, we may not have something passed in a budget, but I think we may wanna make sure that we've got a consensus

amongst council to proceed with this, just as far as a planning perspective, but I don't know. On the budgeting part that Councilman DeWitt-Foy asked about, I see that sterilization is about three times more than culling. at like two budgets. And the other thing is, if we're not going to do sterilization, obviously we can't work with South Euclid because that's what they do, right?

Well, they have two separate contracts, don't they, Jim? One for the

South Euclid uses a USDA, the federal agency, for their calling. The city of Cleveland Heights will be meeting with them, and I think in the next two weeks, if I'm correct. And then there's another vendor that deals with Shaker and Beachwood, and we'll be meeting with that vendor also in the next two weeks.

But in that case of South Euclid, or not even just South Euclid, the... The standard operating procedure is you do culling, and then later on, if you're going to do sterilization, you do that later.

You don't do it first, correct? That is typically what we have found in the neighboring cities. In northeastern Ohio, the only cities that do sterilization are Shaker Beachwood and South Duke. And I think I would have safely to say the entire state of Ohio does not do sterilization. It's not very effective to bring down the size of your hurts. But I don't think, I mean, we haven't had this conversation, but I will tell you from my research, I don't think

take to do in future years.

I just wanted to add two quick things. One is that I'm hoping, and I think Vice President Larson, you alluded to this, that ODNR comes with information on the public safety piece and what to expect, maybe even how to talk to kids. I mean, just whatever might be related and where this is going to be taking place so there's a better understanding for residents. The other thing I want to say is that we've heard in council meetings public comment about the animal control issues as a result of the deer population. And I want to suggest that as we go into the 2027 budget hearings that we see this as right-sizing the ship or fixing the mess or whatever we want to call it. This is something that has not been taken care of both on the animal control side and the deer side. I would love to throw as much money as possible at snow plows, but I feel like this is clearly a systemic city issue that if we don't get control of right now and come at it from two angles of both controlling the deer population and animal control.

I'm not sure who knows, but it's about 70,000, and it doesn't include, it's really narrow. So my point is, for not a lot more. I mean, I don't think it'd be twice as much or anything like that. Some more. We could get into the ballpark. And then the question is, do we want to do it in any kind of partnership?

Looking at this. Yes, this is clearly an issue that has been left to fester without addressing. And again, I don't want us to be at the point where we are penny wise, pound foolish, right?

Well, it's not only festering, it's growing uncontrollably at this point. The population, it's like compound interest, it's growing 30% a year. If this was addressed... three, four years ago, we would be in a situation where we're not calling as many deers that we may need to call. And, you know, I think the issue here is there's no interest, I mean, nobody's talking about eradicating the deer. I mean, we're not, we're just trying to control the population so it's sustainable for, you know,

sustainable for our city.

I mean, I was told by at the time, I think that the vice president of the Holton Arboretum, who used to live in Cleveland Heights, that was in charge of either sustainability or properties or something, but they referred to our city as being deforested.

And there's areas in our city that, you know, there are no trees growing because of the deer. And I'm not trying to say which is more important. But, I mean, there has to be a sustainable balance. I mean, our deer have no predators. Back in the day, they did, and the population was more stable. And I think this is where the city and the council are gonna hear an expert, essentially the Metro Parks, that are very, very much attuned to this. They're trying to protect the Metro Parks everything that's in the Metro Parks, you know, balance sustainability. And there's a very, very good, it's about a 45-minute presentation that kind of goes over all these specifics. And anybody in advance can review that by, you know, looking at the first part of the public hearing that's on YouTube, the 4-29-25 public hearing that we held.

You mentioned City Administrator Reece made of the regionalism. When you sit in this meeting with all of these cities that are doing deer management and University Heights and Cleveland Heights are not, it doesn't feel right. I mean, that's kind of a vague statement, but it's an emotional statement. We are contributing to the problem and not doing anything about resolving it. So it felt really good, the meeting that we went to last week, the three of us. that we are concerned and serious about falling through. I would like to talk about the PSAs that have been in the newspaper or in our newsletter lately. People have asked me, don't we have an ordinance to keep people from feeding the deer? Yes and no. You can look at City Ordinance 551.013, Definition of Nuisance. And it talks about any conditions that are found and declared to be conducive to harboring mice and rats. I'm jumping through it and not reading the whole thing. Conditions conducive to harboring mice and rats shall include but not be limited to feeding of wild animals, which includes deer, birds, or other wildlife other than in suitable containers for food elevated at least 36 inches above the ground level or any other manner which attracts or may attract rodents. I BELIEVE THAT NEEDS REVISION AND SPECIFICITY. BECAUSE 36 INCHES ABOVE THE GROUND, ANY DEER, UNLESS IT'S A BABY, A BABY IS FALLING. BUT THERE'S ANOTHER ISSUE THAT WE CAN REVIEW WHEN WE LOOK AT THE CODES. SO THAT'S JUST AN FYI. THAT'S ALL.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

not for dear but just a question for council councilman posh um i did um get asked by residents in the noble neighborhood if that we could express to the police on july 4th the need for them to patrol the area for people shooting into the air not only fireworks but actual live ammunition into the air can i ask you to follow up with the police chief on that and see if he has any feedback for us in advance of July 4th, or the administration, but I wasn't sure if we wanted to.

Yeah, I'm not sure that's, I mean, we have the leaders of our administration present. I mean, are Mike Reese, Bear Petras, do you feel comfortable with one of us in council having that conversation with our police chief?

Yeah, I'm fine with you having that conversation, or I could reach out to him and copy you if you are just interested in getting an answer. If you want to have a deeper conversation, you're always welcome to talk with him.

And we're doing a PSA.

Yeah, we are going to do a PSA regarding fireworks and related noise. Okay.

So firing firearms in the air is also, you may want to include that in the PSA?

Yes, we plan to.

Okay, well, I think that addresses the issue. And I think that's a perfect solution. And Councilman Pecone, I'm really glad you brought that up. I don't think about shooting a gun up in the air, but it's scary.

I didn't know it was a thing until resident.

It is definitely a thing. It's a thing. And just so you know, it comes up every year.

I mean, the fireworks, I know.

No, I'm saying shooting a gun in the air comes up every year. We've talked about, what's that shot spot? Tell me. Shot spot. Shot spot. We've talked about, you know, and there's, I don't know if we don't, we really don't have time to get into that now, but I can tell you that the administration, I mean, maybe not. I mean, I know this is their first year, but administrative officials have discussed this every year. And it's unfortunately, unfortunately, A DIFFICULT PROBLEM TO SOLVE, BUT I'M GLAD WE'RE AT LEAST DOING SOME AWARENESS ABOUT ILLEGALITY AND, YOU KNOW, THAT PEOPLE WILL BE PUNISHED IF THEY, YOU KNOW, IT'S A CRIME. IT'S SIMPLE. SO WE NEED TO MOVE ON TO ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES. IS THERE ANYTHING BEFORE WE GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION THAT YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT? NO, THERE IS NOT.

I'D LIKE TO MAKE A MOTION THAT WE GO INTO EXECUTIVE SESSION TO DISCUSS THE APPOINTMENT OF A PUBLIC OFFICIAL.

SO MOVED.

SECOND. ANY DISCUSSION? ALL RIGHT. I'LL CALL THE MOTION. VICE PRESIDENT LARSON.

AYE.

COUNCILMAN COBB. AYE. COUNCILMAN DEWITT-FOY. YES. COUNCIL LONDON-STONE.

AYE.

COUNCILMAN COBB.

AYE.

AND TONY CUDA SAYS AYE.

Okay. All right, we're back from executive session.

And I see letter B on here is finish review of chapter 11. We won't be doing that today, will we? We should be able to finish, right?

We only have 10 more provisions left.

That seems like.

I'm overly enthused. All right, well, 111.19 is required numbers of copies of proposed legislation. Do you have anything?

No, not for that.

This is really for the law director, so why don't we make a note that they'll let us know if they'd like to see some changes. How legislation is, the number of copies, I don't know why.

Is that state? Is that what we're saying? I'm sorry, I didn't hear. Copies, number of copies. So we're on section 111 of the, you know. Of the codifieds? Yeah. Okay.

It's all ordinances. It's the reference.

Like I said, I didn't hear the question. Yeah, it was about copy, number of copies. I think that's. Copies for. Of legislation required. Oh. I mean. That's got to be a state requirement, right? That's not something you do locally.

Well, I mean, it could be a matter of local self-government that would be up to a charter municipality. That being said, I'd have to look to see what the charter requires. If it's a charter requirement, we're stuck with it. The ordinance dates from 1950. Okay.

Yeah, and I will say we'll have to put in gender neutral or, you know, because it says his office for the clerk, but let's leave that to the law department to opine on if that's okay.

It was updated in 21 with Ordinance 153, but yeah. And Addie should have input on that as well, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. But there's generally not a problem with that. It's easiest to do it with a sort of like a saving clause that says, you know, all pronouns. quantity, you know, things like that, that listed in this chapter shall be deemed to be, shall be interpreted to be gender neutral, et cetera. But either way.

So the next one is reading of ordinance and suspension of rules. I think this is pretty standard, unless there was some interest in making a change. We're out of two meetings, unless the requirements for such reading have been dispensed with by a vote of at least five members. Shall not apply to an emergency measure. Greg, is there anything?

No, there has been, and I don't know, someone has raised the issue of should we be doing three readings versus two?

The bill had an answer for that. Do you remember what it was? why we went to two readings instead of three, or why two readings is acceptable instead of three?

I don't know, except that it also falls under that power of local I would dance appropriately.

I think if we went to three, we'd end up with a lot of special meetings.

Six weeks. And I think whenever we've had any issues that have required a lot of public comment, we have extended it and not calling on about. So I'm good with leaving it at two.

Me too. THIS PUBLIC APPROVEMENT Clause AT THE END OF THAT?

WHERE ARE WE AT?

20. WHERE THERE IS A SERIES OF ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS REQUIRED TO PROVIDE FOR ANY PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT.

I'M NOT SURE THAT WE'VE EVER REALLY UTILIZED THIS PROVISION.

I'm going to put in a note saying the law department needs to tell us what this is and if they have a recommendation for me. We would like an example. Yeah.

Something out of our past history where it might have been applied and wasn't. Maybe this is about assessments or changes in the taxes.

Well, we did that. We just did that. We did two readings on both of those.

One particular example could be if you're doing something like a design-build-build contract. And you were authorizing a public improvement, but then there were separate contracts, like if the city was... I guess I misspoke, but if we were doing a public improvement piecemeal, so we were getting approval for a new... administrative building you get approval for the project but that could be broken down into constituent components of design and then bidding out individual uh parts of the project then maybe going out for a owner's rep and there are basically so long as there are component parts you don't have to do two full readings for each part you can It just, it streamlines the process because there was already council approval for the project as a whole at the top.

Makes sense. The swimming pool could be an example.

It could be. I don't know if there's anything in mind with respect to whether that will be a design build or a design bid build, but I would imagine that the increased popularity of those contractual structures is the reason why we haven't seen this much lately, because nowadays so much of everything is design build, design bid build. There are these more one-stop shop approaches where Most, virtually everything of what you need council approval for is getting approved in that first legislation.

Including the raising of money, because that's what's also mentioned in here.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Are we on to voting? Yeah. Obviously, we can vote now.

The... You know, with...

The unique thing about this provision is that you can only take a recusal from voting if you have a conflict of interest or financial interest in the matter. Otherwise, your recusal counts as an affirmative vote. I'm not in favor of changing that. Is that considered to be an abstention?

That's right.

If you try to abstain.

You don't want to make a decision one way or the other and then... end up voting yes because you abstained.

But I do think that you, you know, if you're here at a meeting and it's a tough issue, you're elected to make tough decisions and there's some circumstances you need to go on the record with what you're going to do. I don't know if anyone else has a different...

LEGISLATURES IN CONGRESS DO THAT ALL THE TIME.

SOME PEOPLE INDUCT SOME MEETINGS TO AVOID VOTING ONTS OF STUFF. I'M NOT MENTIONING ANY NAMES.

BUT IS PRESENT, DOES THAT MEAN IN THE ROOM OR CAN THAT MEAN?

IT MEANS COUNTED AS PRESENT FOR THE PURPOSES OF A QUORUM.

OKAY. NEXT ON 22, SHALL BE SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT AND OTHER PRESIDING OFFICER AND BY THE CLERK. THAT'S PRETTY STRAIGHTFORWARD. 23, method and manner of giving public notice. But this was such tiny print.

I don't know why this is. The publication rules are changed. It was updated in 24, that's right.

Yeah, to include publication by website as an acceptable means of notice.

Yeah, we might have to modify this to our new standards.

Well, I... It didn't get on the priority list for this year, but one of my overall goals was to look at the notice requirements across the code, which might come up in planning. Because printing in the paper, that got fixed, but also proximity notice, this is different.

Okay, so you know a lot. Yes.

So I think maybe we can leave this for now and they'll electronic notice required, I think. Okay, Robert. Yeah, good. Moving on. Robert's Rules of Order. Yeah, that's fine. Amendments of Rules. This might have to be just cleaned up with whatever changes we made further up, which I don't have the headspace to calculate.

I mean, you know, the five-member, the supermaturity thing, I mean, that would be

Sorry, it's these rules. Robert's rules. No, no, like the 111, right? Oh, is that your reading?

Yes. It's a little weird to say these rules. The way it is, yes, requires five members.

Ordinance 111.

Yeah, I think that's, using a pronoun there is not a good idea.

No.

And that would include council adopting any rules for our own self-government.

I'M GOING TO PUT IN THE NOTES AND LET THE LAW DEPARTMENT DRAFT IT.

YEAH.

BECAUSE YOU'RE WORKING ON SOMETHING RIGHT NOW. YEAH. HOW DID YOU SAY IT? COUNCIL RULES.

WELL, IT'S ALSO SO IF WE WANTED, WE NEVER WERE ABLE TO We haven't had any council rules since 2020, 2019. Okay. And they expired at the end of that year.

It was leading up to 2021. So it was probably 2020 or 2021. And they did. There was a sunset. Yes.

And that was designed to address some campaigning issues that were going on.

Okay. Next, dispensation of rules. That's what we do when we suspend the rules. That's five members. We do it for usually just the monthly. I can't say we've abused that at all for the monthly.

Do you want to specify these rules and make that a specific piece of word or just leave it as a pronoun?

Let's pick a uniform.

about 27.

Just as these rules section 111 is subject to over any other overriding.

Why is this more than the majority?

I mean, all of a sudden now we're not talking about five. No, there may be some provisions in the city charter that require a supermajority.

Yes, there are. There are at least one or two.

That wording is usually used, like, well, what if there's six people is four? Well, four wouldn't be a supermajority because, I mean, I don't know why people would change that terminology.

There's no reason to.

There's no reason. No, I don't see any reason.

Leave it as is. that's pretty straightforward.

Modified in 22 because we needed to.

Yeah.