Village Council - Regular Meeting

That's crazy. One trip. One trip, exactly. .

It wasn't as long as I thought

all right thank you for being here in this special not special meeting extra meeting for village council on July 13th to cover the July 6th meeting we will start with a prayer from Pastor Steve and a pledge of allegiance well we thank you for your love and your grace and

we continue to pray for the village of Hicksville that we come to know you in a real personal way, that we realize that you are the creator God, that we realize that you are love and grace. Lord, continue to open up our eyes to your truth each and every day. Lord, we just thank you. We just praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Roll call. Thank you for being here tonight. We have approval of the June 15th minutes and also the July 6th quick meeting minutes. Second. Second.

approval bills list in your packet sure were you ever able to get that breakdown

Second.

Roll call. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you for that.

Boards and commissions, do we have any boards and commissions on that in the past couple weeks? I don't believe so. Council committee reports, I don't believe we have any of those either. So we are up to Corey's report.

The only thing I have on additional to my report was a recommendation for hire. The guy's name is Michael Boyd. I hire him within our water department.

We interviewed him quite a while ago.

He does already have a class A CBL, which he doesn't actually need a class A. But to bring him on as a grade two laborer at 2327, and I was going to inform you guys that Brayton Fogle, I was moving him to a grade one. um to a grade one labor i'm sorry grade two is a 2183 and then the grade one is 23 27. we've been off we've been one guy in the water department destroyed for probably going on three months and a half months so it's kind of a struggle okay i will go forward with the recommendation for hiring

Second. Roll call. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

One more thing. Just wanted to go over with you guys. As everybody knows, the roof down there on the building, a good portion of it came apart during a windstorm or a thunderstorm a while back.

And the insurance company and the contractors have been going back and forth on what they feel needs to be done.

Currently, if they just do the repair on there, the patch would be 60 feet by 25 feet, and all it's gonna cost us is $1,000, just our deductible. In order to replace the entire roof, which is, I don't know how old, it is 147 feet long, 52 feet wide. Insurance company will pay came back to the number of $87,860. So our portion for the village, since they don't want to cover the whole thing, our portion of the village would be $25,250 to get all new roof put on that building down there. I wanted this to talk to you guys and see what your thoughts were on either replacing the entire roof or to just do a patch. And we do have other locations that leak once in a while.

Did you get more than one estimate for that?

Cotterman and Company, I see, was the name that was on there.

Yeah, they were the lower one.

The other one was like $124,000 to do the whole gross intent.

Was Richland out of the fines? I think it was out of the fines. Yeah, out of the fines. No, they weren't in on us. The Cotterman's who we brought over. That's who did the school when we had an hail damage. The Cotterman?

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Did the other company ever give you an estimate for our room? I don't think so. We've never received one either.

Just for that repair up there? Where it's leaking. There's three spots.

Yeah.

If they did do the repair back here, it was like $1,400 to do a good section of this old grub on this building.

Because we've got the ones in the office and they're going to help you all. Yeah.

Outside wall. I'll touch base with John tomorrow. He's got it around. Send it over. We have a lot of old stuff.

Well, what's your thoughts? 1,000 to repair or 25,000 to replace?

If we do the repair of 1,000, we're responsible for the whole replacement later on, right? The patch will take a one year warranty on the patch.

Just because the rest of it is fairly old.

I don't know. I can't have any idea how old that roof is.

I'm guessing it's every bit of 30 years old.

budget-wise money this this would have to come out of capital for this year capital project which on your funding in there but i didn't want to go ahead and say well let's just go ahead and replace the whole thing and i brought it up to you guys so our version again that we'd have to pay 25 000 25 250 would be our portion the overall project is 87 860. I'm assuming that's going to come with a lot better warranty. I don't know what the warranty is, but I know the patch is only one year.

You know the roof more than I do. What would you do?

Preferably the whole thing. We have

clear on the back end of it we have areas that leak so the chimney is fell apart um all we really need is just a food pipe sticking up that's it for the water heater but with this damage every time it rains you know the bathroom is pretty rough shape and then the zoning office is in really really rough shape now you need a motion forward is it just

I think we should replace it. You're not going to get this kind of deal down the road, especially with an insurance payment.

What's that replace?

All right, we are to the solicitor's report. Cheryl's going to have to read.

Thank you, Cheryl.

Appreciate it. And if you have questions. Yeah.

Before we read the first one, I don't know if you guys want to address what the situation is with this agreement with the CIC that We thought we had, but we didn't. We kind of had to redo it.

I actually think we do have it.

We do it now.

It was back in the probably late 60s, 70s. So we thought if there's a lot of activity in Hicksville, that would probably be best that we make sure we have it all updated. So Mark prepared a resolution, sent that to Avery. that should be in your packet. And then Donnie, who's representing the village, just said that it'd be best practice to also have an agreement. So that agreement was in there. Mark reviewed it. It's just a standard agreement.

It defines what we've been doing.

What we've been doing for years, decades. But it's pretty standard. Do you guys have any questions?

But with this, and we were talking tonight, can we just read it as an irregular? Does it have to be an emergency due to the situation we have with the properties?

Well, to use the CIC as a pass-through, the CIC has to be designated as its agent under the Ohio Revised Code for certain purposes. That's one of the things we've been working on. There's two parts of the code. but residential only fits under one of the two. And we're not sure that the, I mean, the one that would have been drafted back in the 1970s, I'm not sure if it, I don't know what it said, because it's been lost to time.

But he's asking, if they're allowed to pass it by emergency because we've got Jefferson South Holdings that's wanting to start moving.

If it's not an emergency, isn't there a referendum period before it takes effect?

30 days.

Yeah. So I guess that's a question for, I don't know what the recent discussions have been with,

developers but if you don't want to wait 30 days then an emergency passage would be helpful and i know they've both been wanting um but we have to read their legislation also correct the following confirmation on the 20th and the the need for housing in hicksville is getting to a critical point um we have um an unannounced couple unannounced projects that will be announced here soon so that's just going to reiterate the the need that we have so and then getting to understand the housing um development side of things it's like they only have a certain window that they can do certain things so they're hoping to to get into that window at the end of this year to start moving dirt and getting things laid out sure

So I said we can leave it as is and read it three times and or we can pass it. We'll have the other resolutions next on the 20th and read all three of them again and then pass them probably as an emergency on the next meeting.

First reading of ordinance 2026-07 by caption only designating the Community Improvement Corporation or CIC of Defiance County as the agent for the village of Hicksville and authorizing and approving the execution of an agreement and plan for industrial commercial distribution and research development with the CIC of Defiance County. And we have first reading of Ordinance 2026-08 by Caption Only, amending Section 141.16 of the Codified Ordinances of the Village of Picksville, establishing current charges for the rescue company's service. And if you noticed on there, it was for the non-transport and mileage. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. for a second and final reading of resolution 2026-21 by caption only for the village of Hicksville to enter into a contract and fencing contract in LLC for the Columbia Hattery Water Main Replacement Project and Aquarium.

Next, we have department heads. I know Bruce is not able to be here tonight. He had a class.

Hopefully tomorrow we will have a new car.

I didn't know if that needed to be discussed now or if you're going to wait and discuss it at finance and bring it back up. He plans on going live August 5th.

We've talked about it a lot and he never pulls the trigger on it.

And it's like, let's get this done. But we need a resolution. We can't just move everyone to salary. Yeah, you would have to do that too. Yes, and we'd have to discuss how that will fit into his budget. So, like, August 5th feels a little... That's why I made a meeting. Yeah. Like, on here it didn't reference a meeting, which is why we had actually discussed whether or not there would be a meeting. I've done all of the numbers for him. I just let him do them. Okay.

Well, we won't have a resolution, though, for much longer. I'm kind of confused. Are they going on salary or are they staying on with that?

My idea was salary so that they still don't try to get overtime. Because although they would still be eligible for overtime because they are non-sense,

Well, because I didn't think they were on salary. I thought they were on hourly. But now they're on salary?

Well, they're hourly now.

If they go on the 12th, and if you're hourly, it's week to week. Your overtime is based on one week. And if you are on salary, it's the pay period. It's the two-week period. Because one week, you're going to have 48 hours, or 44, I forgot how he has it. And the other one, they're going to have less than 40 to make their hours for the pay period. And so instead of paying them overtime, you do the salary in which I've done all the numbers on it. He's been absolutely, finally good with overtime. It went, here's his overtime, and it just crashed. He didn't gradually do it.

Which is amazing. So I guess is there a need to still go to 12-hour shifts? Yeah, that's a good question. Even if it's for coverage. So did their overtime plummet but also were not covered? Is that what you're saying?

For the last two pays, we've had one hour of overtime, you said.

Yeah, each one.

But they had one 12-hour day.

and pay are two different things. Well, that's what I asked. And the overtime plummet, but we're not having coverage. Is that what we've sacrificed? He still has a coverage problem. And this will address that.

Well, I'm thinking he'd probably need him present. Yeah. I don't know. Because if somebody that's on salary doesn't show up for their shift, how's that helping? Sorry.

They're going to pay for when they're not here.

Well, I know, but you're going to need bodies then to fill in for that 12-hour shift because you're going to have bodies.

Because you're paying whoever is doing that hour is getting paid. Yeah, I know.

And now you're paying the same. But we'll have the body to cover that shift.

I'm not on the body now. But you said they're not getting paid if they don't show up to their shift, but I've always understood the salary. You get paid whether you're there or not, whether you work 10 hours that week or you work 70. You can also write up. Is that part of this? That would be. Yeah. See, and I really would like to know that, because this does not describe it. This just says it started by this. It's a five-day meeting. Yeah.

Well, 45 minutes would be enough. Yeah.

Well, I don't know for you, Kent.

I've told you twice. Yeah, but it went from salary to hourly back to salary. That's one thing that... And... When we hired Scott... salary, you tried to convince him. I was just going to say, I thought he was done going to salary.

And now you're going to have everybody's salary. Down the road, you complain about, well, you know, it's not worth it for what I get paid because of all the extra rent. I'm like, we should have went hourly. That's why I said it was like, hey, go. Yeah, still going to have the two runs a day or, you know, more.

There's no incentive. Yeah.

That is my fear. People won't.

Yeah. Yeah. How did you base their new salary? You see, I'm one of them. And I make an X number of dollars an hour, whatever. How did you come up with my salary for the year, and are they going to be happy with that?

Well, they say they are.

Well, I've heard a lot of things in the past.

Okay, okay, let's just say Ken's salary, and he works his four 12 hours in one week, and he works his three 12 hours another week, and he gets paid, let's just say, $60,000 a year, and then all of a sudden they need a second run. But their salary, if they need a second squadron and can't respond, is he going to get paid any extra?

Cause he's salaried outside of their schedule.

So Corey's salary and he gets called in at nighttime for a water main break. He doesn't, we don't pay any extra overtime for her salary. I don't get it either. You, you, you cover extra meetings and stuff. Your salary, do you get paid any extra? I'm just trying to figure out what's the difference. They have no incentive to come on that second run because they're already getting paid a flat amount. They're not going to get paid any extra.

Well, I'm trying to fix the problem, but it's difficult. You can't make people come to work. You can't make volunteers come to work. All you can do is pay them decently. We do. And I don't know how else to do it.

Well, I'm disagreeing, but I guess I thought him increasing his numbers was going to help us. I mean, that's what has been stated all along, to get more volunteers. And we're paying for these volunteers. We pay for their background checks and their drug screens. We pay for all of this, and then they're not doing runs for us. I don't know how just turning people into salary is going to encourage anyone to pick up extra shifts. Those shifts are still available. The way that I explained it to Ken, if you remember, is that if you have a job, and y'all have jobs, that's your job, how you take care of your family, pay your bills.

That's how you live. If you're a volunteer over here, that's extra. Yeah, you get paid for it. But it's not something that you depend on to live. If you hire a full-time person, it's their job. That's what they depend on. Pay their rent, their light bill, feed their kids. It's a job. They will be here. That's their job.

I think he had problems before with some.

Those people get kicked out.

Will this cover Saturdays and Sundays? The one that lasted several years. Will this cover Saturdays and Sundays as well? Yes. Okay, so this is seven days a week around the clock. Yes. Okay.

Do you have Saturdays and Sunday 12-hour shifts?

No, well, I think that's where the volunteers come in. It's covered.

So you don't have to ask Drew to cover stuff. Yes. He's on like a 12-hour shift.

Right, but he's not full-time. That's those volunteers.

Sorry, I'm confused. How many full-time do we have?

Five, six? We have five right now.

And they're going to be able to cover Sunday, a week, 12-hour shifts? Yeah. Who else is he using? The park drivers. And if they're not filling in now, who's going to fill in?

Yeah, so I guess that's what I want to ask. I still think for sure.

People. Maybe I'm missing something. I'm getting old.

From what he explained to me here this last couple days, he said with this extra, we got six full timers, okay, it's going to fill in some of the gaps for the shift route. And then the remaining part timers that are running, that are running, he's going to put them in the slots that need to be filled in. From my understanding, he's letting people pick what hours they want to run, and I said, you need to fill in those hours and have them run. So you fill in all your gaps every two weeks, and everybody's got shifts to run and times to run, part-timers, and you've got your full-timers all filled in.

So what he wants to do is to have the volunteers, or part-time, however you want to say it, to choose what works for them. It's like, I'm always off on Wednesdays at my other job. I can always do Wednesday. If he has people who will make a commitment, because right now, they don't. He doesn't make them, but he's gotta make them. Make a commitment to the department. I will be here every Wednesday.

Plus it's a holiday. That's how it is.

Or it's my birthday or somebody's family. How long are those shifts? They will be whenever he needs them to be. So we can still have summer gaps in coverage.

But he's trying to alleviate that through this new schedule.

We have some that can only be weekends. And so they do 24 hours on weekends.

As Cheryl was saying, with the structure of what they're looking at, is it going to change the payroll, increase the payment? If you can do it this way and keep it consistent with runs and reduce overtime, but keep the payroll the same.

Okay, if I'm salary and I'm making overtime, and you put me on, or if I'm hourly and you put me on overtime, and I'm going to make maybe less now on salary, am I going to be happy? No. And are these full-timers going to work weekends, 12-hour shifts? They have to. They want Monday through Friday, 8 to 4 now.

Well, we're not doing that.

Well, when I say we, I think we're thinking different than... Well, he said when he started his staff, he's got six people who are ready to roll with it.

Like Ken's saying, let's just say a lot of years ago, we had John Elwood and Bob Meyer. How much overtime did they get a year? Nope. They, they, let's just say they made 40,000 a year, but for five, six years in a row, they made 50,000 because they made $10,000 of overtime. So they went on like every run, every time they went off. And now you're going to say, you got to go to 12 hour shifts and we're going to, you're going to be salary that we're going to pay for me. My person that's used to making 50s and I'm going to be happy. I worked in factories for a lot of years before working out of school. Hourly people worked every Saturday or worked every time they offered overtime because they wanted the money for their families to take care of stuff. But you get used to that, too, and you take it away from them. That's not going to set well.

The biggest thing I've seen in 12-hour shifts is, one, it's very hard on you. I don't know too many people, at least in the law enforcement side of the 12 hours, not too many people like. because of the night shift, you know, it's long. But then theirs will be a little bit different because they're not gonna be able to stay as busy and they'll be able to sleep during the nighttime, you know. But when you're on days off, okay, and you get that second or third squadron of the day, are they going to respond? Okay, and then if they do respond, again, they're salary, that's all they're getting is that salary line, you know. The other thing, if you want to eliminate the overtime, which when I first took over up here, you go to the federal standard for first responders that includes fire, MS, police, where you don't have to pay overtime until you reach the 86th hour. All right. And then in a 20 day rotation, um, As long as you have not worked over 171 hours, I think it is. All right. And that's only when overtime would be required. Okay. We went to getting paid over 40 because the EMS was getting paid for over 40 hours overtime. My guys were not. You know, so... There's options there, too, if that's what you're trying to eliminate in overtime.

I know I'm the bad guy, but if we've got 20-some people on the payroll, how could we need overtime?

Well, I'd be curious what the numbers look like. I'm curious what finance says after they look over it.

I mean, most fire EMS, that's what they do. They work the 12-hour shifts, and they go, I don't know if he's going 48 on, 48 off, and then 36 on and 36 off, I'm assuming, which is pretty standard in the fire EMS world is what they work. I just don't know how they do the overtime. if they're strictly salary. If you'll get people to show up and be telling them, your salary, that's what it is. That's what I do, that's what Corey does.

And it's like, that's what we agreed to. You agreed to, that's what I agreed to.

That's what I do.

Otherwise, I didn't know there's an option. It's like, I don't want to do this.

I'm coming to council.

Or someone else can do this. part of my job.

But you got hired like that. All these individuals got hired a different way.

And now you're trying to make that change.

This is a new day. We could have a whole job shift too and have nobody.

We'll have to deal with that. We also have this in-house worker.

And yes, it's been approved.

Does this make it easier for you or not?

Oh, no, no, it's easier for me. Trust me on this.

Does this reduce overtime or reduce payroll? It should. It should reduce payroll.

It should with human nature. It's like if you worked well and you have little kids, and they all have little kids, they want to go home to their family. They do not want somebody calling in who is, you know, flaky saying, I don't feel like coming in. Can you just wait, stay more hours for me? They're going to say no. You need to just come in and go to work. That needs to be the mindset over there. Like right now, it's like, I don't want to do it. So they don't show up. It's like, no, that's not it. They have to change how they do stuff. And it should have happened a long time ago.

Well, Bruce and Cheryl bring a plan together. Do they have a meeting scheduled with Fire EMS coming up or? He's gone through finance on it.

They weren't going through anybody.

So paying them salary, because they're going to have to get a raise, is going to not go over what they'd be making an hour plus all the overtime.

Well, I'm just saying. Right.

If it's not changing at all, then... Just put in a salary number.

And then you compare that to what they made last year, and eventually they are all taking a pay cut.

That is my fear. And the whole time they were getting that money, they were getting yelled at constantly. No overtime, no overtime.

They're also doing us a service I personally would rather pay overtime knowing that my family member right now could collapse and someone can go get them I think that we have to look at this from a bunch of different angles I know I don't like paying the overtime either which is why I thought boosting those numbers and getting more people through those classes was going to help I thought that was the way of eliminating overtime not cutting people's wages, they don't make great wages anyways, and then asking them to stay in a box?

I wouldn't do what they do for a living for that price. If they want to go to a city and join a full-time department, that's a different story. We're Hicksville. They make good money for this part of Northwest Ohio.

They're seeing the same acuity of care and health problems as people in Fort Wayne. Right. So someone having a heart attack in Fort Wayne, their person's going to get paid more than someone who's having a heart attack here in Hicksville. Yet they're both dealing with the exact same health issues. That's because you have to have the mindset that this is your department. I get that. I just don't want these people to leave because We're forcing them into a number that they weren't prepared for or not.

Sounds like they're on board. Well, yeah, I mean, Bruce has been talking to everybody. He wouldn't be going down the throat if he was going to have the department store.

Every chair would be full. Yeah.

Might not one day. I think Bruce has done a fantastic job. I think our department with numbers have done a fantastic job. He's got a lot of people running. a lot of people on board is who's running and who's picking up the extra hours. I think that's the kicker. I mean, I think they want to be a part of the department, but it's time to, okay, if you're part of the department, you've got to run. And the ones that run, get on the schedule.

And the ones that don't run, don't be in the department.

Right?

I'm getting a PR for that. It doesn't work anymore. You have to actually do the work. Or if you want to leave, leave. But you have to just say it.

But I think our department's strong right now.

And it can be stronger as long as we're based on the same page and everybody's helping everybody in the community.

But Bruce and his department and Cheryl have been working on this for quite some time. I think they want to try to bring it to fruition and show consistency across scheduling, financing,

and coverage, which is fine, but you know, we have to say he's going to go along and spend the light with this. We haven't even approved it yet.

The money part is not going to be a factor because on every hour that you go on a round number, you're just sitting over there to get paid the same.

Budgetary wise, no, but are you able to pay somebody a different rate than what our pay scale ordinance states? We said everyone's pay scale.

I did this for like a week to get all their numbers just right. I know, but we vote on that.

We vote on those. The pay scale for every individual employee in the whole village. They have a certain pay scale. You can't pay them a different scale, can you? Until we approve it. I know, but we got to approve it.

Right. And as we voted on when it's amended, of course.

And it might be three readings. Although that won't get done by August 5th.

Well, then he'll have to move it back one day.

Well, you've got to see numbers first.

The last thing I'll say on this, I'm not opposed to I see numbers, whatever. But if we move ahead with this, I don't ever want to have any of them come to council at night. Look what you guys did to us. This wasn't our idea. I get tired of being a bad guy for Supposedly, they're all on board with this, so we give it the blessing. I don't want to hear any gripes.

This will be a good thing for the department, which means it's a good thing for the village.

Yes, but...

If it's being proposed by the MS chief, it's his shot.

We should trust what he's saying, I think, and go with it.

And if he's set up with everybody in their own boardroom, that's fine. It's just what his goal is. Is he trying to eliminate overtime? What is the main goal?

I absolutely support it.

I just don't want there to be gaps of coverage and I don't want people to not get paid what they're used to.

We're in you, everybody, you know? So, but it works.

Thank you, Cheryl. We're going to have 19 empty slots in a week on the schedule.

So we're going to write their name, make a commitment. That's all we're asking. If you're going to be here and you're going to be a hipster EMT, make a commitment. Sorry, are you saying you don't let employees tell you what they're doing?

Bingo. Well, then that goes back to your department head. Or Bruce is the teacher. Well. I'm trying to bring him up right.

You have any questions about the fund status or cash summary, let me know. At least so far this year, we have brought in more than we've spent. I have the June income tax and utility collections. April has been working very hard with income tax. And her numbers show it. And she just got back from the three-day Ohio municipal leave training that they have every year in July. She enjoyed that. I put in the June revolving loan report and ST, not ST, Stoet Industries paid theirs off.

except the first one and the last one.

Well, I forgot to change it. They're all current.

As of June of this year, or it says April, yeah, that was that April payment that somehow all of them got. They're still never shown up. They were all in an envelope together from Army Valley that they delivered to me. I never got the April at all. And so it took a while for those two to make up their mind April payment, everybody's current. And so it's paid off. And if anybody knows of a business who wants to get a loan with a very low interest, they have plenty of money.

In fact, they encourage us. We need to find a loan, right?

$653,000. And that's all you can use it for.

Or anything else for Cheryl

Well, again, I thank everybody for making a special meeting tonight that we couldn't do on the 6th. I hope everyone had a good 4th of July celebration. I know America still celebrates the 250th this year, so. At the Eagles, no, I'm sorry. Not the Eagles, at the Eagles, isn't it? The Boy Scout Chicken Barbecue, and isn't a bike rally or something going on on that day? True Blue. True Blue. Saturday. This coming Saturday. At the Eagles, there's doing chicken and other kinds of food down there. Helps our local Cub Scouts, the Eagles, and different organizations here in the community. And after that, I wish everybody a happy week, and we'll see you on the 20th. Anybody have any questions about this Columbia Headroom project?

That's why I made the argument today. I didn't know if anybody had any questions about it. I guess they're worried that we're paid for with a half million dollar grant. I'll explain it.