City Council - workshop

It is 07:30. We're gonna go ahead and get started. I'd like to call this meeting to order. This is a duly noticed workshop meeting of Hudson City Council held in accordance with the Sunshine Laws of the State of Ohio section 121.22 in the City of Hudson Charter, Article three section 3.02 for Tuesday, 02/10/2026. It is 07:30PM. And since this is a workshop meeting per ordinance two two zero point zero three one titled workshop meetings and item C, would now like to turn the meeting over to council president Byrd, so as to continue through the remaining workshop agenda items. Council President Byrd, the floor and workshop meeting is yours. Alright, thank

you mayor. Next is number two correspondence and council comments. Anybody has any comments to share? Get my attention. Yes, Amanda.

I was at Planning Commission last night and there was discussion around density comparisons with peer communities as a helpful discussion just to compare some of our different zones and zoning areas with the types of densities that those communities have with ours. Good discussion around their corridors and their, core areas of their cities with some comparisons of communities who are being very kind of thoughtful about increasing density in very key areas like those corridors in those downtown areas. There was also a discussion about District 11, the area near Joann's. The Planning Commission had some other things they would like change with District 11 that we'll see. They also talked about the Planning Commission establish subpoena power should they need it.

And we had a resident came to advocate for disrespectful dialogue between the Planning Commission and the applicant and that's it.

So Thursday night I was able to attend the HGTV's production of our Explorers wrestling match that was of interest to me just as a former wrestler. It was really impressive all the work they do there. That evening I was able to meet Nick Zaklanovich. He was working the slow motion replay for the event as he has for many, many years. And I'd just like to extend my condolences to Nick and his family.

Unfortunately he passed away this weekend, so that was my first time meeting him and unfortunately my only time meeting him. Him and his family have been long time volunteers and members of many boards and committees here in Hudson, a long history of public service and it's a sad loss. Last night, I was able to visit the park board for the first time as council liaison. There was a presentation by Piper's Quay. They were talking about a very generous grant they got from the Hudson Garden Club of $27,000.

This will be used for a sensory garden in the inclusive playground. Details about the layout of the garden, the types of plants, etcetera were presented. The board was able to ask some questions, good discussion. They moved to approve the garden with you know finer details to be ironed out. The park board also discussed a number of items, the golf simulators for one doing very well both in turnouts and financial you know financially, so hearing nothing but good things about the simulators.

Discussion about Hudson Parks branded merchandise now that the city owns the visitor center, discussion about, I believe they have a poster at the printer now, so they're starting to pilot some ideas of Hudson Park branded merch. There was also some discussion around the two of the trails

that have

been long being worked on with two kind of very expensive pinch points. One I think we've discussed before being the Barlow Road Railroad spur, the sidewalk over that kind of preventing the connection from the Barlow Park over to the Summit Park there and the other one being the Prospect Bridge being the Valley View Trail through Hunting Hollow there. Just kind of general discussion around unfortunately the expense of the projects might prevent or at least delay for quite some time the completion of those trails. Finally, the board did approve going to competitive bid for six of the 12 pickleball courts utilizing the funds raised by the pickleball community. No plans to contribute Park Board funds now or in the future.

Oh and one more point, the engineering plan will be available for the public hearing with the residents in regard to the improvements to Middleton Park. So it was a very eventful but productive meeting.

Thank you, Council President Byrd. Just one quick thing for me, just a reminder that random acts of kindness here in Hudson will start this Saturday, February 14 on Valentine's Day. So there should be a lot of love in the air regardless, right? And that's gonna run through Saturday, February 21. The visitor center here will also have some items to be handing out and use as a hub for anyone who's walking around. I believe the weather is supposed to be sunny and 46 on Saturday. So I will be walking around as I usually do to visit some of the businesses around town and helping to spread some random acts of kindness. So just a reminder to the public, thank you.

I'd just like to thank Kevin Powell for my tour of the public works facility today, very interesting, amazing amount of work done that's being done there, maintaining all the vehicles, keeping them running, big huge heavy pipes and machines and stuff, crazy. But I saw firsthand the space and the importance of us getting a new public work facility because the current space just as we need more to provide better space for the workers, for the machines, the vehicles. There's really not a locker room. There's really not a good break. All sorts of things that this public, new public workspace will bring to us.

So thank you Kevin for that. All right. Comments? Okay, moving on. 3A26-ten, Environmental Awareness Committee discussion for 2026 priorities.

All right, thank you City Council and Council President for inviting us today to provide the presentation for the Environmental Awareness Committee. I am Doctor. Jos Fortiz, the chair of the Environmental Awareness Committee and this is the Vice Chair, Alex Salinian, who's here to assist me today and we have a number of our members in the audience here to show support as well. We're going to start out with the discussion of our, not goals, but our annual report and then we'll lead in session of the goals. So I'll turn it over to Alex.

I

assume that most of the discussion will be on the goals, I'm going go kind of fast on the annual report. We kind of had an ambitious year in terms of putting a lot of goals and a lot of metrics, and we feel like we met a lot of them. The largest disappointment was the rain associated with Earth Day and having to move it, and we didn't get a large attendance from that event. So we had to cancel, like, the EV car show, which we tried to reschedule for the summer, but then also was rained out.

So that

was a point of the report. But on the bright side, our environmental education campaign, we produced a lot of content. Mick Justine on the committee did a great job with a lot of slides and documents and different ideas we could do we could use.

CD. Yeah. So it's the

Yeah.

Then I guess go to gold two. And for environmental engagement, we had a pretty good showing with the pumpkins for the planet and the composting. The holiday lights also was a big, collected a lot of material from that. Plant management. So this was a big effort.

Jack McCabe, who's here in the audience, he put a lot of effort into getting a framework, so we had one by, like, May, which finding all the stakeholders like the Friends of Hudson Parks and Tinker's Creek and different organizations within the city. So it was, like, late last year, we started more routine subcommittee meetings with them, and they're they're they've been meeting up until now and we're still going. So hoping to kind of finish that collection of best management practices that we have within the city as a way to share it within other organizations in the city or the city itself or the schools or other neighboring communities because there's nothing really like this regional. For one instance, the good work that the city is doing at the Ellsworth Golf Course in terms of how they're using the land and they got the Audubon certification, so we'd really like to see other things like that in other places in the city where we just have turf that's fully underutilized for biodiversity and habitat. And then goal four, if you go to the next page, advise city council.

So we tried to work according to the comprehensive plan on the zoning code. So we produced a bunch of recommendations for how the land development code could be updated. We worked with the public, Hudson Public Power in terms of how the new facility could be more, you know, more green and then what was the third one? Oh, increase, access to recycling. So that's kind of a Suzanne on the committee has been working a lot on that because there are some issues with the cardboard recycling in the city and the vendors, like they've merged or turned over and we were having some troubles managing that, but it would be a real big loss to the city to lose that drop off bin of cardboard.

Think that's a good summary.

Great. If anyone has any questions about our annual report, we're happy to answer those and then we'll move on to our goals.

Laura, toward the recovery facility and recycling, what did you learn?

Yeah, that was a really interesting day. So there were a number of us that were able to make that trip and it was eye opening. So one of the things that was really interesting about that facility is they've recently installed the glass cracker, which is a big deal, right? So this is a device that allows them to crack glass that's included in the waste stream. And so that allows them to sort it and waste it and recycle it, excuse me, without causing problems for the system.

So what they explained was the typical load coming into their facility has about 30% contamination and they're able to get that from 30% contamination down to about 5%, which is considered the point that they're looking for. If they have situations where trucks come in that are a little bit dirtier than they'd anticipate, they can determine that through spot checks and then we'll work with communities and the haulers in order to try and provide additional educational materials so that they can rectify that situation. We also asked about how often they change the materials that are in their recycling stream because that's been a concern here. We'd like to put more information about what can and can't be recycled on the EAC website, but we've been told that we can't because it just changes too rapidly. What we were told actually countered that, right?

And so they said that they very rarely change what they recycle on their list and maybe once a year they'll make updates to that. And so that's something that I think we should consider carefully when making decisions on how to move forward with that. The area that causes the most challenge for them is plastic, right? So specifically the plastic film, so plastic bags and so on. It's really important that when you put together your recycles that you not put them in a plastic bag and then put them into your container.

The container is just fine. And if we do that and instead bring plastic film to Giant Eagle or some other source to get it recycled that will keep everything running smoothly. So all in all, was very impressive to see they used LED cameras in order to identify the different materials that were on the stream and then jets of air in order to redirect it to different parts of the recycling system. So very sophisticated machine learning tools to make those identifications as well. So it's great that we have that kind of a facility that's operating here in Northeast Ohio and they said that their operational metric was about 80% uptime, which I thought was quite good and it goes down for maintenance or if there are jams and so on.

A few years ago when Kate was still on counsel, there was a video and I haven't looked at it in a long time, has it been updated?

That's a great question and we have talked about that during the discussion. Margaux is about trying to make more videos like that or updating them in order to make sure that we're providing the city and the city residents with the most up to date information. Along those lines, some of the things that we were thinking about was it would be good to visit some of the other recycling facilities in the area to find out what they're doing and to talk to them about what their plans are for updating. So it's unclear that all of the facilities in the area have a glass cracker that allows them to do single stream recycling glass, which has previously been an issue.

Thank you.

Thank you. Great job.

Yeah, think just one note on that, since it's waste management's management's facility, all of their Northeast Ohio refuse goes through there, but I think all the other haulers like Republic and Kimball, they use these reworks facility. We're trying to track that down exactly.

Sam?

I think just a few points, the recycling, maybe putting that out in an e newsletter because I know I'm personally always looking for, you know, what to recycle. I know in the magazine, we just have the reworks, you know, update of when that's out in Stow. But I don't know if this is relevant to your your guys' annual report, but I'm just for my own knowledge. Do you guys look at, you know, as far as, like, recycling waste in the city, are there spots where you feel like we could do better in open public areas where near downtown that you think we are lacking? Just was curious if that is relevant to you guys as a board only because I know like in the summer especially it gets so crowded and kind of busy and I noticed that is kind of an issue.

Yeah, we have been conducting for many years the Keep America Beautiful campaign and do rides around the city over specific routes in order to determine how clean the streets are in the area. I think this is a really timely topic to discuss. So my understanding is that AA previously had the contract for waste pickup in the city. And now that AA has been bought out or taken over by Republic, it's probably worth exploring and looking at the ways in which they're planning to manage that route to ensure it does remain up to the standards and capabilities of the city and so on. So I think that's a very good point.

Yeah, just echo the comments about I think this that your visit and what you found out is different than a lot of us sort of thought about and that I think if you can get that information out about that it is happening better than we thought and all the information about the contamination and maybe that's something that comes through the maybe the haulers in their in our bill that we get every time. There's a reference that we can see every once in a while and then anything you guys could do online would be great as well.

Those are really great points and we're certainly gonna talk about that during the goals for this year. So you're right on topic.

You might be talking about this later. I'm curious about the suggestions you have for the land development code and I know those got kind of put on hold. Are you planning to kind of bring those back up again or revisit those?

Yes, we do want to continue working on that. That will be one of our goals for the year and just to add to what was mentioned earlier, the work that we did on the comprehensive plan was in response to the comments that came from the committee. So there were a number of points where the committee said, we think that these are topics that the EAC can contribute to. And so in preparation for that, we organized a memo that we directed staff to send to City Council to discuss those issues. I'm not sure if that memo made it to City Council because it was submitted around the time of the election. So if that was the case, we can certainly revisit that and make sure that you have access to that material.

It's in the meeting agenda, there's like the fourth attachment, which is like a collection of all the kind of documents we've produced and it's in, I think it's the first one actually. So you can look at that

And we're certainly happy to respond to any of the comments that you might have in response to that memo. Excellent points. So I really like the suggestions on generating some material to get to the city regarding posts that can be put out online or material that we can send out through the newsletter and so on. And that's a really nice segue into our first goal, which is the environmental education campaign. And so on that first goal for 2026, we have three different sub topics to revise the EAC webpage with updated information to make sure that the links on it are up to date and working properly.

We also felt that it was important to develop a weather readiness campaign given complexity of abrupt weather changes that we've had in recent months. And in addition to that, we wanted to develop a recycling campaign and that will take on several aspects. You'll see that it's threaded throughout the goal. So part of that is ensuring that we're recycling plastics, metal and cardboard and paper effectively trying to address that challenge that was brought up during our annual report. And the metrics that we're going to use for that are educational posts.

So in this past year, number of educational posts that we got out was a little bit less than in previous years, although the engagement was higher, which was very good. We're hoping to get out one educational post a month to try and make sure that it's top of mind for folks. We'll look at the number of interactions on the educational post and try to complete one school educational program working in conjunction with the high school students or elementary age students in the area.

And one thing about the weather readiness information, I know the city already has a lot of this in, like, their disaster preparedness information, but I, you know, I think people would be interested to know ahead of time where to look for information and kind of, you know, what can they do on their own to get ahead of it?

I was gonna say that it's not easily accessible, that information and I know Chief Barnes that you have a plan, but if you ask me right now how would I get to it, I have no idea. So, I think we need to get more of that education out to the community to be able to find it.

We can certainly look to that kind of stuff, that kind of question and consider that when we're working on the EAC website revision. One thing that would be helpful from City Council in terms of guidance is where on the city website you would like to see information related to the environment and so on. So in the past when we've asked to put materials on, we've been told that the appropriate place was the EAC website within the agendas for the various minutes and so on. The challenge for that is that can get buried several links down and may not be in a place where it's easily accessible. So guidance from City Council in terms of where you would like to see material showing up on the city webpage would be very helpful.

Tom, where would you suggest where it would be more accessible on Let's Talk Hudson or a specific site on the website? I don't think it should be buried in the agenda notes. It should be very accessible to people.

We have our main page, which is the updates for the city today, so we can put it there, but I'd have to talk to the communication department just because I don't know the technical logistics of how that all works, but I'm sure it's doable because we put stuff up every day, so it shouldn't be a problem. But is this something Joe that would be long term? That would be my first question, would it be months?

Yeah, it may be the kind of thing that we put up something there for quick top of mind stuff that will rotate off.

Or something like did you know and then it could take take you to the main page which would have more detail, things like that. Yeah, we can

certainly sit down and talk to those details because there might be some things that we would want to be easily accessible and long term visible and other things that we just want to be a did you know or current events kind of.

I just looked, there is a button on the front page titled Trash and Recycling. So if we wanted to beat that up, if you just click on that, it takes you right there. It's mainly geared toward trash pickup, but we can certainly beef up that page with some educational component to it.

That's great.

All right, that brings us to our environmental engagement, which is the second of the four goals. And there are a couple of things that are interesting that have happened recently. So the city of Stowe has just developed a Stowe Environmental Commission and so there was a suggestion that it would be interesting to engage with them to find out what's happening regionally and so that we can reach economy of scale, not duplicate effort and get best practices across cities. There's a lot of interest on the committee to work on trying to reduce food waste and so specifically integrate a mission to reduce food waste by keeping it out of landfills and not wasting usable food, working with residents and businesses to achieve this mission and Ms. Suzanne Kim has been really the spearhead for that effort doing some really good work with local restaurants and the farmers market and so on.

And we want to hold a number of community workshops and we've provided some examples of what they might be. We previously done a Bee House, Build a Bee House workshop with Tinkers Creek. There are suggestions to have a how to or fix it workshop where people can bring in their items that are broken for assistance to get them fixed or to learn how to fix them. We'll continue doing our very popular rain barrel workshop and we wanted to explore ways to try to expand the reach of that by urging folks to pre order the barrels and pay for them ahead of time so that that was not a limitation on it. We wanted to talk about energy generation, energy efficient appliances in a number of ways and to continue to promote the Green Home Certification Program.

An idea that came up along those topics was to hold Green Home Tours in the same way that the city holds the garden tours. I'm now on the land use subcommittee and have made contact with folks from the garden club there when we told them about the work that we've been doing in sustainability at home, they were really fascinated and excited about it. To give you an idea on that, in my own home, I've been transitioning the house from mixed gas and electric to closer to full electric. We've cut our emissions by 87% and are now saving about $500 a year on our utilities for just the gas and electric for the home. If we add in the savings from my EV, it goes up to about $750 a year.

So switching from fossil fuels is a way to save money, particularly in time of rising energy costs at the moment. We want to increase our Keeping America Beautiful efforts. We'll complete the annual community appearance index surveys each year, hold a community litter pickups. We can do that in collaboration with folks that we worked on for many years. We want to continue supporting EA's, the city staff in planning and implementation of the Earth Day celebration.

There was quite a bit of discussion during our meetings about how we might re envision our Earth Day activities. The challenges that we faced in recent years when we moved what used to be the fall green on the green event to Earth Day was inclement weather, right? So what we found out is the region is very wet in the spring months and it's getting wetter as the planet warms due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. And so what we're thinking of doing along those lines is to split up the event and hold the recycling event on Earth Day. This year we're gonna partner with the who is going to be handing out trees, sapling trees for folks to plant.

That can be a wonderful event. We'll have a table there to talk to folks that come by, but then move the vendor fair activities back to the fall for green on the ground. And we want to work closely with the city to make sure that we can do that in an effective way. So one of the concerns that we heard was that staff was concerned that the turnout from that event was relatively small compared to the larger events that are done in the city. Now of course the larger events that are done in the city are things like the Veterans Day Parade, the Memorial Day Parade and fourth of July, all of which are federal holidays.

And so comparing an event that we do that is local, it doesn't fall on a federal holiday. It's a little hard to compare apples to oranges. But we're cognizant of the need to make effective use of city staff time. We also will support the staff in planning and implementing the Pumpkins for the Planet composting event, which takes place October to December. And we did very well with that event this past year.

The amount of material that was diverted from landfills was way up relative to the year before. So we will plan to keep track of the number of events that we're doing and the results of the community litter index and so on as metrics for success in those particular areas and of course, the number of participants who take place in the community workshops that we're organizing.

Mike? An idea I had for Green on the Green was trying to get more of the young people involved and having some kind of program where different grades might compete with how many come and that they could earn some kind of prize or to have a scavenger hunt and get something afterwards, but something to make it really kind of interesting and to let the school know about it and to advertise it. I think if we made a big push, we could get a lot of people there in the fall. Or, you know, an idea that different classes could come up with ideas for, to make the earth better or greener or whatever, and then you could choose which was the best class and they earned something, I don't know, but that kind of thing would get it really interested in the community in general. And I know it sounds funny, a scavenger hunt, but we had one the day that we had the cemetery open near Western Reserve Academy, and people loved it.

They went around and they looked at the different headstones and the names and they had to figure out how many Baldwins there were and things like that. So, it is something to get people really engaged. That one, they didn't earn anything, but if they even earned a little Hudson merch, if they'd get so many on the thing, it would be a really great way to engage the community and the kids especially.

Those are wonderful ideas. Bring some whimsy and fun to the event and get families involved, that's what it's all about. Wonderful. We'll continue with the planning and implementation of the Holiday Lights Recycling Program, working with city staff. What we have been doing is distributing the bins and then collecting materials from the bins, the lights from them that has worked very effectively throughout the years.

And that brings us to our third goal, which is a land management and stewardship goal. This has been a project which will be carried over from the prior year. It's not uncommon for us to have projects that span more than one year because of the complexity involved within the Green Home Certification Program took two years to develop. The land management and stewardship program is excellent in my opinion. Jack McCabe who is a leading expert in this area has put together a team of individuals from around the community that will bring together a knowledge base that's really I think going to make lasting impact in the city.

And I think it's a potential model for how we can interact with the various commissions and organizations in town for the betterment of Hudson. And so we're in the process of developing a set of best management practices. We're going to work with the communications department and other stakeholders to promote best management practices to use in public residential, commercial and industrial landscapes throughout the city. We heard comment earlier in the meeting about the grants that the Garden Club gives to beautify the city. And they've reminded us that that capability is something that we could try and build into this whole process.

So I think that the opportunities for synergy there are really great. And so completion of this best set of management practices will be one of the metrics and then keeping track of the number of interactions and outreach efforts that are conducted as part of this. And for our fourth goal, we wanted to explicitly include information about some of the ways in which we can provide advice Council. So that is one of the principal responsibilities of our committee. And so it's important that this be outlined here.

And of course, we certainly want to hear from City Council what you would like to have us work on. So this shouldn't be seen as an exhaustive list, but rather as suggestions and a request for input. But we would like to continue our work on evaluating plan to identify potential areas where the EAC can contribute and where we've already been recognized and asked to provide input. Work with the city and planning commission on suggested revisions to CH-twelve oh seven of the land development code and we've prepared an EAC memo with those suggestions and awaiting a discussion on that to be held with City Council. We want to provide expertise on the impact of storm water and ecosystem services and wetlands conservation in the projects that the city is working on and that's a topic that we selected based on input that we heard from the council retreat, which we thought to us and we appreciate that.

We want to participate in staff meetings where appropriate and requested such as the engineering stormwater review. I'm happy to say that we have already been invited to participate in the capital improvements meeting and do plan that we can advise the EAC about the projects that are coming in, make sure that we can provide advice as needed. We want to advise HPP on the DER solar interconnect policy with respect to HP 15 changes that are coming down the road. And we think that it's really important that the EAC provide input with respect to the energy portfolio considerations such as cost of energy and emissions and the potential for exploration of energy aggregation services. So this is timely for a number of reasons.

There is currently a very large backlog in new transmission and generation projects that are taking place in the PJM interconnect that services Hudson and Ohio. So right now the queue for new capacity to be put in place in PJM is about eight years long, right? For comparison to build out a solar power plant takes about eighteen to twenty seven months, right? So because of decisions that have been made, we're at a situation where we have inadequate power that's being provided to communities in the PJM area. And as a result of that, our rates have hiked significantly.

And so the city needs to, in my opinion, consider some of the ways that they can work and explore how to try and address that issue. So one of the ways to address that might be to encourage the development of rooftop or community solar in our area. If people are able to put in their own solar systems, then that reduces the load for everyone else and will have a positive impact on pricing. One of the things for HPP to consider along these lines is what is the city policy on solar, right? We tell people how big a system they can have and so on.

But do we factor in how many systems are going to be added to the city when making decisions about how much energy to purchase and so on. So those are the kinds of things that I think would be helpful for the city to consider. And as I've shown from my own personal example, transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables is a very effective way to reduce the energy cost and emissions, right? As a climate scientist, I think that it's important that we reduce emissions, but we have to do things in ways that are economically responsible. And I think that I've demonstrated with the work that I've done and that others have shown on larger scale that we can in fact use renewable energy as a means of reducing both cost and emissions.

And that has a positive impact on all of us. So there are excess deaths that happen each year because of poor air quality. And so when we remove vehicles that are generating toxic fumes from our community, we improve the air quality for everyone. Often it's our children that are most exposed to this because they're riding on large diesel vehicles, for example, that have higher emissions. And so maybe it's time to talk to our school board or the school busing companies and find out what they're thinking about in terms of long term strategies.

That also may provide a means of helping to address our larger scale energy question, right. So currently the city of Hudson is locked into a contract to purchase coal from the Prairie State Energy Campus. Well, there's a law in Illinois that will close down that energy facility, which provides 40% of our electricity by 2045 at the latest and potentially as early as 2033, if they cannot cut their emissions by 50%. If they do cut their emissions by 50%, that will potentially result in a large rate hike either through the need to put in carbon capture and storage, which is costly or by turning off one of their generators and reducing their capacity. So all of these things should be taken into consideration when making decisions about what energy mix we purchase for the years to come.

In addition to that, this past year, we were unable to secure an opt in energy aggregation contract for gas. And so as a result of that, everybody has to just do their own thing and look up their own costs for getting energy. That may work well for some of us, but it's probably worth looking into other options for potential aggregation so that we can get economy of scale working in our favor to try and reduce the cost of electricity and gas in the community. And that affects all of the residents in the city. So about 80% of our residents get their power from HPP, which is wonderful.

But 20% of us, myself included, get our energy from FirstEnergy. And so maybe it's worth exploring aggregation for the folks on FirstEnergy that don't have the advantage of being able to use Hudson Public Power. In addition to that, another topic that came up was Downtown Pedestrian Traffic Signals. And so there was a proposition to investigate and propose improvements for pedestrian priority in those signals. And of course, as I said earlier, we're happy to advise counsel on any other topics that they think are timely or important that we may not have included left.

Thank you very much. Patricia?

Two things, On some of your workshops that you present, I would suggest that you do them in conjunction with the League of Women Voters Energy Group because they have a track record and could do them well with you. And the second is, well actually there are three, is I didn't hear you say anything about suggesting that we do a greenhouse gas assessment. That came up a number of years ago and counsel was not for it, but I know I am personally for it so that we can at least have a baseline. Maybe maybe we're doing okay. I don't know.

But it would be helpful to know because then maybe we can do more things like try to get more electric vehicles with our city, whether it's a school or the city themselves, and also work more on this solar interconnectedness, and that's it. Thank you.

Doctor. Goetz, that's a very good point to bring up. I was getting at that through the point D1 cost of energy and emissions, elaborate on that. We did discuss this as a committee. While all of the points that we put in here were approved by the EAC, there was some discussion, there was at least one member who thought that that was not a useful opportunity or activity to be involved in.

There was another who felt that it was important to make sure that anything we did was very cost effective. But the majority of the EAC five members did feel that it was very important that we consider a greenhouse gas inventory. I would expand that to say that it's important for us to do an energy audit and greenhouse gas inventory because the two go hand in hand. There are many cities that have done work like this in Ohio. All of the major cities in Ohio pretty much have action plans to address this.

Cincinnati all have climate action plans. The University of Miami in Ohio, climate action plan that has saved them over $100,000,000 since 2010. So the savings certainly do add up in doing those things. Some ways that we could take advantage of this would be, as mentioned to start thinking about transitioning city vehicles, certainly non essential city vehicles from gas to electric as they're replaced. That will certainly save money.

One of the things that would be helpful to do that or to make that happen would be to incorporate chargers into the mix so that there are dedicated chargers that are available for the city to make use of. About two years ago, Kent State University invested in electric chargers And at the time that they did it, there was some hesitancy among some of the staff of the university maintenance thinking that the vehicles would run out of charge or they wouldn't be powerful enough or whatever. Now I'm told that the folks fight over who gets to drive the electric vehicles because they're so effective at what they do.

Yes. So anybody else have any comments or questions?

I have one question. So I guess doctor Gets and the rest of city council, would you like to see that, you know, something about the greenhouse gas inventory more directly listed on our goals? Or, like, how involved because it's not really a big thing for the EAC to do. It would be more on city staff. So like how involved would you want us to be

in that kind of process? Yeah. Guess we would need more more information about costs, benefits, what other places have done to and from it.

I was just gonna say thank you for everything you presented. I love the focus on affordability, lowering energy bills, thinking about our energy portfolio especially as we go forward here in Ohio, I think is gonna be top of mind. I love the regional approach and working with other commissions and just want to appreciate your work and thank you for what you presented and I'm a big fan of all the goals. I think it's great.

And I guess I would just encourage you working with Dan to, this is a lot like little font and if you're gonna kind of communicate this to the public and come back to us and give us updates, if you can slim this down into these are the top two in this category, top three or whatever, that would be very helpful for us to, also prioritize some of these because you might not be able to get all these done in one year. What is your priority, what's really important?

And I would like to learn more about what an energy audit is for the city. To give us that information would be helpful. I know for three or four years ago, a greenhouse gas assessment was around $5,000 It probably is more now, but that's still a relatively small amount.

And Doctor. Bird will be happy to come and give regular updates to the City council and focus on some subsets of this.

Yeah, there is a lot here, but I think there's a big diversity of ability of different skills on the committee. So usually it's like one person is kind of doing something. So with seven people, kind of, you know, one person's working on the education campaign, one's on the land development code. So we can kind of handle a large diverse group of environmental needs.

Yeah, we're ready to go. One of the questions we asked was whether folks felt like they were overtaxed and no one volunteered that that was the case. Thank you so much for your time.

You very much.

Okay, next is 3B26-eleven final phases for the birdsong art project in three sixty five day Kindness Rock Garden. And I think Mayor Anzavino is gonna kick this off.

Yes, there's a two page memo that was attached to the agenda. I'd reminded counsel that that was out there after we finalized the agenda late last week. Hopefully everybody's had a time to at least look at that a little bit. I'll give a little bit of quick background. The Birdsong project started in July 2022.

Most people on council were not here at that time. That was the project, Adriana who's here today through Door to Art and her staff, they hung about 150 small birds, they're about the size of a small football. Those went through the Clock Tower Gazebo and South Romana Street Green and those were up for that summer. A lot of local artists and residents helped paint those. So it was a project to bring awareness to the mission of the Birdsong Project.

The following year, Melody, which is the larger bird, which is about maybe six feet tall, Adriana, roughly, that is on the Parklane Green and has been there since 2023. It was extended by this council twice. Those if people don't know and haven't seen that, there's two by two tiles that cover that bird, Melody. We had a naming contest, Melody was chosen. And the unique thing about all those tiles is those tiles were painted by residents in this community.

A lot of children came to the Hudson Mart, I believe in 2022 and painted those. Door to heart put those together and assembled those on Melody. So it's brought a lot of community engagement to Hudson. It's hopefully brought a lot of additional foot traffic, which is then spilled over to the businesses in our local economy. So that was extended and in 2024, we added three planters that are around Melody and those have kindness rocks in them, if you will.

So it's a fitting that we're talking about this now, the Grand Amex of Kindness Week is starting this coming Saturday as well. And students from Seton and the Hudson Middle School have painted those initially and we dedicated those that kindness rock garden. The students have since continued to work with me to paint more rocks because they seem to get dispersed quite frequently, it's popular I guess. Put some blank ones in there trying to get people to take them and paint them and bring them back, but the kids in the community have loved that. Door to Art has had some of their artists during their Thursday open art sessions supply some of those as well.

I know the weather has been bad, I have two buckets of rocks from the middle schoolers at Hudson Middle School and I will say, I'll give a shout out to those kids, 11, 12, 13, 14 year olds are amazing artists. So some of the rocks that they have painted are quite artistic and quite nice. So we added that. So we've added something every year and extended that project. Two quick things on page one of the memo, Adriana and Dortuart and her staff have expanded the Birdsong project to Italy.

They went over there for a trip and so they have actually brought an example. So this is a two d metal bird. It's the same shape as the three d birds that were hanging in the trees, but artists over there in Italy have painted a lot of these and they're hanging, Adriana correct me if I'm wrong, but there's an old magnolia tree there outside of Rome, Italy where those birds are hanging and it's all tying back to the city of Hudson and the Birdsong Project. Just this past week, I have given the same kit to our sister city that these are gonna go over to Landsberg, Germany. They're going to do the same thing, they're going hang these birds over there and send us some pictures and tie this art project back in between Hudson and our sister city.

And if you are not aware of the Hudson, Longsburg sister city's motto, it is connecting cities, connecting people. So that's exactly what this spin off part of this project is going to do. So with that, door to Art and Adriana would like to get to a final phase of this project. And one quick reminder, when the 150 smaller birds that were hanging from the trees left Hudson, they have traveled around the local area. They were down hanging in the Akron Art Museum, they've been to the Summit County Library, they've been in Downtown Cuyahoga Falls and they are currently or will soon be at the Botanical Gardens up in Cleveland.

So they have traveled around. So again, Adriana and Dorituart want to kind of put the final phases to this project. So part of the first request is to bring them back to Hudson where it all started and on page two, the request is then through July 15 through October 15 to have the discussion with counsel if they would be willing to allow a smaller subset of the three d small birds to get reinstalled in the trees on the Park Lane Green, is around Melody, so it would be contained to just that one green and essentially end out the project with those three months this summer, again, July 15 through October 15. And then the second part of the discussion with counsel is in regards to Melody, the larger six foot bird that's on the Park Lane Green in the Rock Garden, door to art and Adriana would like to donate that piece of public art to the city. So the discussion request here tonight is, is the city of Hudson willing to accept that donation piece?

And if that is favorable, then the request is, does Melody stay where she is or is there another appropriate place within the city to house Melody if the city so wishes to accept that donation. So that's the project in a big nutshell. The financial impact of the city is nearly zero. Adriana and Dorituart and his staff have done everything. They would hang the birds again if council so chooses to allow that to happen.

They would take them down, they would return the green back to its normal state. They've worked with the arborist the last time. So everything worked really well. There was no disruption, no issues and essentially no cost to the city. And again, the return on the investment is the sense of community that all of this has brought, not just the expansion with Birdsong project and starting here in Hudson going international to Rome and our sister city, Landsberg, but I've seen it.

I've seen the kids and the visitors come down when we had the birds hanging in the trees. I've seen it to this day when families and kids are visiting Melody out on the Park Lane Green and using the Kindness Rock Garden. So it really does bring a sense of community and I think it is a great piece of public art. So that is the request for discussion tonight. Again, I'll summarize that.

Is council willing to allow the birds, a smaller set to come back to the Park Lane Green for a final stop? And then is the city willing to accept Melody as a donation from door to art and then determine where the most appropriate final resting place I guess would be for Melody and that bird if the city chose to do that. So that's a discussion. Adriana is here. If anybody has questions for her, she Adriana, why don't you come up and sit just in case.

So Before we go, I just wanna make sure you don't have a conflict mayor because I thought that that city in Italy is Anzabino.

No, that's my heritage a little bit further east.

So I have a question. Can we keep all 150 of the little birds? Mean, why? Don't know. It's for you to keep

all the birds. We've been trying to find a place to put them. We asked the library because they have all that space, all that ceiling for them, but we haven't found a spot where they could can be. They can be outside for quite a while. When they were here, they were here for a year, took them down. We didn't there wasn't like a mark on them and we didn't lose one of them. Like nobody climbed a tree or tried to take them or anything like that. It was really amazing. So that's why I think it's really fun for them to come back and hang in the tree for a little while. But we would love for there to be a permanent home for them.

They have increased in number. So every time we move them, we add birds. So like they go to Cuyahoga Falls, 10 Cuyahoga Falls artists. So now they're hitting 200. So they're a pretty big flock.

It wouldn't hurt the trees, right? No. No, so and there's no upkeep, right? So don't know why we just don't keep all 200 of them.

There is one that I would like back. We have

Painted talked about almost the first one off the presses.

Can it be spread

out across our various parks?

Sure.

Like find these birds here and

there? I

think they can. I think it probably just be we just have to be careful where so that they're not such a secluded place that somebody could take them or get hurt trying to take one.

One other thing some of us have talked about is we think it would be nice to have an art commission here in Hudson so that more of these type of projects could be looked at not only with people like you, but the garden club and whatever. So that's something at least I would hope we would think about down the road.

Sam, thank you for modeling the way by raising your hand. Go ahead.

I love Melody. I think it'd be cool to have the birds back for the America two fifty and you know '50 for Gazebo, so I think it'd be awesome to be back here this year.

Amanda.

I love it. I love what you've done. I love the spirit of it and it's a great project. So that's it. It's great. Thank you.

So it's so great to hear from council. Thank you for hearing it and getting it because we've loved doing it.

Thank you very much for the work you've done and I think now Block is okay with the price as well.

So I guess I would say if counsel is in agreement to allow us to then work on that project to bring those birds back to the Parkland Green, we've talked to Jenna a little bit just because she was involved in the past. So she knows that we're talking about this obviously. We will continue to work with her if that is the direction from council on bringing a smaller subset of those birds back to the Park Lane Green. The second part of that discussion then is the offer to donate Melody of the larger bird to the City of Hudson. So does council have any thoughts on officially accepting that as a no cost donation from door to art?

Great, I love it. Sorry, I didn't raise my hand.

The intention be that its current home on the Park Lane Green is its permanent home or?

We've talked about that. Certainly someplace visible and accessible to the public so that the public can enjoy it is the thought and goal. I think if there are other ideas, I think everybody's open to hear that.

You can't give a gift and then determine, tell tell the people what they need to do with it and I won't do that. But my heart's desire would be that it would stay on Park Lane Green. I think it's a landmark and people know where to find it and they enjoy it there. And then if it doesn't, I'm open to whatever city council thinks is best.

I agree, I would like to keep Melody and I would also like to take all the small birds for the different greens. I want them all.

It's not

a good thing for your house. I know we do.

We don't have to decide a permanent place for eternity tonight, right?

I guess not, but if council is willing to accept that donation, then we'll work out the details moving forward. We'll have to have a resolution to accept that and then we can then tack on additional discussions at that time. We have time considering if we're bringing the smaller birds back from July through October, then we have time to work on all that and button that up. I was just going to say, we did talk before about maybe auctioning off the birds, but then we didn't wanna get into that. Your recommendation, Adriana, was just to then donate or give them some to the city or if we do something with some of the other parks or some of the businesses or maybe some of the artists would like the ones that they did back.

So we can work through those details, but okay.

Any other questions for me?

I was just gonna say it's been a pleasure working with you on this project Thank the entire

you counsel for hearing it, appreciate

it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, next is C26-twelve discussion regarding the 2026 state of the city address by the city manager.

Yeah, they all laughed.

Very popular bird.

Oh, are you giving spoilers?

Thank you, Counsel. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and the citizens tonight about the State of the City. I have a prepared speech and the PowerPoint presentation that we'll go over tonight. I just wanted to know, will I have more than five minutes at the podium? This year's theme is Lighting Our Legacy, and I kind of like it.

At first, didn't understand it, and I thought about it more, and it's kind of unbelievable how we do this like every day in the city of Hudson, since I've been here, think in all of our staff. But it is a commitment to honoring illuminating the new paths that will define us, which like I said, I have to say, we almost do that on everything we do in Hudson. We celebrate three monumental milestones of our legacy in Hudson this year. Our nation's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, Western Reserve's Bicentennial and the brightest light of all, Hudson's transition from a volunteer fire department to a fully staffed 20 fourseven department. We are also celebrating the Western Reserve Bicentennial Tree with its 70,000 lights, which is a beacon to learning and innovation along with the fiber to the home, which is bringing information at the speed of light to homes across Hudson.

On this agenda, you see on the left side, three different depictions of the gazebo over the last hundred years, which later in the presentation I'll show everyone the new plans we have for the structure in '26. On the right, you see the roadmap of my speech today. Sorry, my mouse isn't working. And I promise, like our fiber, I will make this speech very fast. Before I begin, I wanna thank the city council and the mayor for your dedication and time in making Hudson a better place to live, work, and play.

I also wanna recognize the 80 volunteers who serve on the 14 boards and commissions. We appreciate your service to the city and thank you for everything you do. The city's organizational chart helps to define the connections between our community, its elected officials, the boards, and our city departments. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of our staff. They are truly the heartbeat of the city.

Now the state of the city, finances. We ended 2025 with a balanced general fund despite the loss of a major employer and the added cost of the fire department staffing. We maintained a AAA bond rating, which less than 5% of the cities in Ohio have this rating. The state auditor issued us a clean audit report just like it has the last eleven years. We entered 2026 with 56% general fund carryover and we secured 15,000,000 in grants, which was a record this year for the city.

We typically have about $2,000,000 in grants annually every year. We ended 2025 in good financial shape. We projected our general revenues at $31,100,000 and we ended the year at $34,200,000 in revenue. Our projected general fund expenses last year were projected at $33,800,000 and our final actual expenses were at $33,100,000 So just a little bit underneath that. In 2026, we are projecting general fund revenues at 32,000,000 and expenses at $33,000,000 We have a carryover as I mentioned above from '25 that we can use to close this gap if needed later in the year.

And if you recall from the retreat, we mentioned that we might look into that around the summertime to see how our finances are going in the city. On economic development. Last year, Hudson welcomed 23 new businesses and celebrated a large expansion at Gemco. I got to tour their plant and they were in much need of that expansion with the pharmaceutical orders that they do out of that facility. We currently have a 93% retail occupancy in our stores.

That came up last year at the end of our last city manager or the last state of the city and we wanted to make sure that we brought that up this year. And then also people have asked me about our office vacancies and we're at the lowest since the end of the pandemic. Unfortunately, in 2025 though, we lost nine businesses in Hudson, including Joann's. But we are resilient and immediately we began planning a new zoning district for this area called District 11. The new zoning District 11.

At the former site, we created to provide a more vibrant mix of retail, health, medical, and residential options for this area of Hudson. We hope to have this work completed later this year. Hudson has become a thriving industrial hub in Summit County, driven by a massive 180 square foot expansion of Cheah and the creation of over 400 new jobs at Kel Tec Technologies, Spectrum, Ramco, and TEM Precision. This is all great news for our tax base. Clinton Crossing development formerly known as Phase two was created out of the comprehensive plan.

The development is proposing residential neighborhood of 50 plus homes that will be anchored by a 20,000 square foot market hall and a 10,000 square foot community space. We hope to have this plan for the development to the Planning Commission later this year. New residential neighborhoods in Hudson. We are excited about 68 new homes currently in design and construction that will be coming to Hudson. These homes will increase our housing stock and provide a variety of housing types.

Lastly, economic development, it's no surprise that Cleveland Magazine continues to rank Hudson at the top of their list for schools, parks, and safety. Congratulations, Hudson. Public safety. In 2026, after a hundred and seventy six years of dedicated service to Hudson, we will be moving from volunteer fire department to a fully staffed 20 fourseven fire department, which will make Hudson safer for years to come. We are investing $5,000,000 into our fire and EMS facility to provide a safer and efficient work environment for our safety personnel.

To every volunteer that has worn the Hudson Fire Department badge, we want to say thank you for your dedication and service. Thank you, Chief, to all your staff. In 2025, our police department handled over 26,000 calls for assistance. We also reinstituted the e bike patrol. These electric bikes make us more efficient, make our officers more approachable versus a typical police vehicle.

They are especially great at events. I also want to congratulate our Chief on receiving the Patriot Award, which is given to cities for supporting our deployed staff and our nation's veterans. Congratulations, Chief. Capital projects. Well, this map shows it all.

We have projects everywhere in Hudson and we have consistently done that. We put the money back into our infrastructure. We have 70 projects alone this year, everything from resurfacing streets to multiple pedestrian and utility projects and two major watershed studies. We continue to reinvest the income taxes back into the city infrastructure to make Hudson a better place. This month, we are beginning the construction of the new public works facility that President Byrd went to see today, the old one on and this one will be built on Hudson Drive on 30 acres of a wooded lot.

We're keeping the wooded area around the perimeter of the site. That was just something we wanted to also give the staff that they had more of a park like setting. This much needed facility will be the engine room of our city. It will help us to keep the lights on and keep the tap water flowing. The facility will open in 2027.

To reinforce our utility grid, we are launching two major public works projects. First, a water well replacement at the water plant and a proposed battery storage system on Stowe Road next to our substation across from the high school. This new electric storage storage system allows us to capture power at off peak rates and then distribute it during peak hours ensuring reliable electric service while keeping costs low for our customers. Next, I want to highlight the bridge over the railroad tracks at Hines Hill, which we fought so hard to get over probably the last eighteen years I've been here. First, it protects our residents from by giving emergency services a clear, fast route to the Northwest Quadrant Of Hudson.

Second, it eliminates the safety risk of the current crossing. And third, it finally puts an end to the frustration of stop trains that hold up school buses and children trying to get to school. This project is backed by a $17,000,000 grant. It is the largest grant we have ever received in the City Of Hudson's history. It's currently in design and we expect construction to begin in 2028.

Our Fiber to the Home project is an $18,000,000 investment over four years. Fiber lines will enable our seniors to access critical telehealth and virtual medical appointments. It allows citizens to work from home with high speed reliable service, and it allows students to engage in virtual learning with no limits. High speed fiber is no longer a luxury, it is a utility to our own residents. Parks had a number of improvements in 2025, including the ADA accessible kayak ramp at Hudson Springs Park, which we got a grant for, a new paved trail through Barlow Farm Park, and new sunshades at the splash pad.

A new inclusive playground at Oak Grove Park will open this summer. The playground will have some very exciting pieces of equipment including a zip line for everyone. All thanks to 1,400,000.0 from the state, county, and private donations along with local funds, this playground is now a reality. Now every child regardless of their ability will be able to play together. Golf course is booming, we saw 51,000 rounds of golf last year.

Typically before the pandemic, we had about 35,000. We opened our new 6,000 square foot facility featuring simulators, a pro shop, a dining room and a patio with great views of the course. With the new simulators, we are open all year long. Events. In 2025, we supported 187 public events in Hudson that helped businesses.

With all the anniversaries this year coming up, that number is only going to be growing. For our nation's two hundred and fiftieth, we are planning a year of fun in Hudson from a community picnic to the July 4 celebration. A stair climb is planned in remembrance of nineeleven which happened twenty five years ago this year. Our legacy project for the nation's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary is the renovation of the gazebo as depicted in the conceptual drawings you see before you. The project will improve accessibility, accommodate more events, improve utilities and ensure that it stands for another fifty years.

RA is celebrating their bicentennial and imagine David Hudson planning the Western Reserve School back in 1826 by candlelight. And today the school is a beacon of light known all over the nation. Western Reserve consistently is ranked at the top of boarding schools in the nation. The school has many events planned throughout the year to celebrate their bicentennial. On behalf of the city, we wish Western Reserve Academy all the best in the next two hundred years.

Lakes Foundation is celebrating twenty five years of philanthropy in mental health and the arts. The restoration of the 1825 Baldwin Bus House and their new headquarters have connected our historic greens to the vibrancy of 1st And Main. Congratulations on twenty five years of giving back. In closing, the State Of The City for 2026, Hudson remains resilient and strong. Our finances are in good shape.

We remain good stewards of our citizens' tax dollars. We continue to honor the past and look to the future from celebrating milestone anniversaries this year to installing fiber lines to connect our citizens to the world. We are lighting our legacy every day. Thank you and I wish you all the best in 2026.

Thank you very much, Tom. I think that was a great idea that to do this in front of council, in front of the TV so people can watch this at home because you're gonna you're doing the state of this city on Thursday not everyone's gonna be able to see this see that and this was a good way to get a summary to all the public, so thank you for doing that.

I appreciate it. It was something that's kind of bothered me over the last couple of years and I literally went to the ICMA and asked other people, other city managers, which is the International City Managers Association, and asked how they did it. I just thought, wow, everybody's kind of making people go pay to watch their state of the cities. A few people went to smaller communities, went to the high schools and what have you, but I always felt that this should be done to counsel and the public first, free in a public meeting where at least they get an overview of the state of the city. They can go and look at our slideshow and get more details and my speech will also be attached to this after tonight.

But I hope this will continue as a tradition in the future for all future city managers in the city to come and report this to Council. And hopefully it wasn't too long, so I didn't keep track, but it was supposed to be ten minutes.

Any comments or questions for Tom?

I

was gonna say it was great. Thought it was a great overview.

Thank you. Apparently it was 14, Jeff said. I gotta trim that down.

Again, was very comprehensive and very understandable and very organized, so thank you.

And thanks to the communications staff, they help us put all these slides together and did a lot of work over the last month.

Last year we had a little bit of time for some Q and A from people in the audience. Are we planning on doing that again this year or?

At the chamber?

At the State of the City after

At the chamber meeting on Thursday? Yes.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you very much. So we're done with one page. Next is D, TMP 8,465, an ordinance amending city council rules to define the role and duties of council liaison. So bringing this back tonight, there was some discussion last time, last workshop about concerns about conflict of interest for liaisons if they are involved in appeals if they're sitting at dais. So actually that a really good concern that was raised.

I had conversations with our city solicitor and let me just let me just read this directly from his email. So it's so I get it all clear concerns over potential conflicts of interest for council liaisons and hearing any administrative appeals on cases where the liaison may have participated to that end please see attached proposed revision which expressly bars any council member liaison from participating in an administrative appeal where they participated in the hearing or discussion on the topic at the hearing level. So the solicitor was after thinking about it was concerned that irrespective of where someone's sitting whether at the dais or in the audience if they could out or there, they could participate in the meeting with comments and questions or and additional providing information and so he thought it was just be safest if we just said that any council liaison would not be allowed to participate in an administrative appeal if they had been at all in the hearing again, irrespective of where they were sitting. So that was the language that we've added at the end of this policy ordinance that speaks to that. Questions or comments or clarification?

Yes. So

you want us to sit in the audience then or does

So it matter with this language it means that if there is an appeal that is made, the council liaison would not participate in that

appeal itself. So

language still says the council member will sit at the dais, that's something that can be worked out with the you know, chair or staff, I mean board chair or staff. It just, the reason why we added it in the first place was that it makes it easier for people to see that who liaison is, makes it easier for them to participate perhaps in a discussion if they are asked questions by the chair of the board or commission and it kind of clear that they're there at that meeting as opposed to if they were sitting in the back or something like that.

I appreciate the revisions. I still stand by my original position that placing a council member at the dais of the quasi judicial board is a bridge too far. Lines were drawn for purpose and the purpose was to keep politics out of our judicial hearings. I will argue that the mere presence of a council member, even though they're not saying anything, can influence decisions and discussions. So I appreciate and respect the revisions, but I can't support this.

I agree with Mr. Sutton. I do not think the liaison should be on the dais, but I think you can sit in the live mission, correct? You can sit in the back, say anything, that's okay.

According to our city solicitor, sitting anywhere, including Just the being there is not good. But I guess that's a question for Councillor Sutton is that, is your concern that if the liaison is anywhere in the room that is a concern?

Is that a question to me? I don't think they should be at the dais. Okay.

Sit in the audience and still say something?

Again, is that question to me? If the chair asked them to, sure. I mean that's historically how it's been done.

So for example, last night at the Park board meeting, there was a separate table similar to how we have here for, I was there with Trent yesterday sitting with him, so you're not at the dais, you're off to the side at a table which does have a microphone which makes it easy to respond to inquiries from the board. Wonder if that could be considered an option for this legislation.

I can say I appreciate what the solicitor said here and appreciate having the options. I am also comfortable. So I have said for Planning Commission which I'm the liaison for, I'm fine sitting in the audience. So if we have a council member who is concerned about it, it doesn't bother me where I sit. So I have told them that I will sit in the audience and that's where I sat last night. And I think Patricia that was where so I'm fine. If this makes council members more comfortable, I'm fine sitting in audience for, those quasi judicial boards, the BCBA and planning and, ARC board.

So maybe remove that language about

the Yeah I was gonna hear from Sam and then yeah.

Yeah I

was just gonna say it just sounds like it's your choice right now. That's just what I was saying. Yeah.

Okay so it sounds like then regardless we should leave addition in red on the bottom of page three that speaks about if that the council liaison will not participate in any appeal and sounds like folks feel that sitting at the dais is not that important and that we can

I would say again that I do think having the the table, like I said, set up with a microphone was very convenient? If that could be a reasonable middle ground of not being at the dais but having access to a microphone because you do speak a number of times between giving your report and answering questions.

But are we also talking about specifically I think the concern that Mr. Sutton brought up was for quasi judicial board so the Park Board I think is not. So I think in that case like Parks, veterans, some of the other ones then there would not be the conservatives sitting up for the dais. That's my understanding of it.

So we could call it out for those three board. It would be a choice.

Think I we should be consistent. There's a table and the council liaison is there with any member from staff as we do here and as we had brought up other members with the EAC and everybody else, I think that we should stay consistent with that is my

opinion. Okay.

For all boards. Is that, Amanda, think that similar sort of situation in Planning Commission?

Yeah, think that would. I know last night they asked me a couple questions and I you know went to the podium which is fine but it is easier just sitting where you already have a mic and yeah, that makes it easier.

We'll think about the work on the logistics of that and I'll work with Marshall, we'll find this and bring it.

Sorry, can I ask one question? So just to be clear, so when we're talking about appeals, so if someone, can you give me an example like so if someone disagrees with like a planning commission decision and then they appeal it and they come to us, this is what I would essentially recuse myself because I was in the audience. Is that what that's meaning? Okay.

Correct. Got it.

Okay. Next is proposed agenda for proposed agenda for 02/17/2026 council meeting. And 4A is the receipt of the January 2026 financial report income. Go ahead, Jeffrey.

Sure, just a couple of things I wanted to point out. First of all, it's very early in the year. So I don't get too excited if you will over fluctuations, but I did. If you saw on the report, the little graph that I put on there, the revenues, the income taxes are down about 8%, which is about 9.3% below estimate. Again, it's very early in the year.

There were some large payments that individuals paid last year. Made estimated payments and this year it's zero. So they had no estimated payments. And then also we still have, we're still with Joanne on the withholding tax. You'll recall Joanne was kind of, I think they announced they were leaving, it was around March.

And so there was, we were still receiving some holding tax from them. So we're still seeing some of the fall off from that. And then on the other one is the broadband, it's highlighted in yellow. It's below estimate of about 3.9% and that was primarily due to we had a couple of some delinquencies on businesses and I made a note of this, they've since resolved those delinquencies. So again, was just more of a timing issue. So that's

it. So based on this one month, don't anticipate that the income tax is gonna be 7% down for the whole year?

I wouldn't expect it to. I look back last year, January 2025, we were down 12% and we bounced back. So some of it, there's some timing issues that sort of work themselves out. Sometimes a company will have three payrolls in one month typically it's two, but they have a third payroll. So there's some sort of anomaly. So again, it's the first month of the year, I don't excited, whatever you want to call it, one way or the other, up or down. So it's usually by the first quarter and definitely by the middle of the year, we'll have a better feel for how we're going to end up for the year.

Questions? Okay, next is B TMP-eight 363, a resolution authorizing the city manager to enter into storm water easement agreements with various property owners along Baldwin Street and North Main Street.

This is an easement, you see the exhibit attached, usually when you have a storm system that goes through multiple private properties, the city has an easement, especially when it's draining a road. So we actually have our roads being channeled through the two houses I think on Baldwin, the church on Aurora Street, and then the Windstream property. Under those circumstances, each one of those property owners is required to maintain that storm pipe, and that's typically not what any city would want. So we are asking, it's been there for years, and the church had an issue, that's what came up about this about two years ago, and we just decided to ask council if would be okay after we talk to these residents about getting an easement across this entire line and then we would take over the maintenance of it. If it did need any repairs, we probably would do lining of the pipe.

So that's usually typically what we do in backyards and it becomes the structural part of the pipe. Which the next item on the agenda is also about lining and storm sewers. Happy to answer any questions.

And everybody who's involved, all the property owners are okay with this?

The City Engineering Department has met with each one of them, we'll have to go through obviously all the paperwork to put the easements on record down at the county, but that's all. We just wanna get authorization now and then we'll go ahead and move forward with all that paperwork.

Questions or comments? All right, next is CTMP dash 8470 resolution authorizing city manager to advertise for bids and to enter into a contract for the twenty twenty six storm sewer and culvert lining improvement projects and the repair of a 78 inch storm sewer pipe at Darrow Park with the lowest and best bidder.

And again, we found sewer lining to be less invasive. We don't have to do digging. We usually go in to a structure and then we line the pipe. It becomes a structural pipe inside of the pipe and normally they're concrete pipes which they have a friction loss, which slows water down going through them. By lining the pipe, we put almost in a resin, which actually makes it slipperier and less friction and the water more water can get through the pipe with just a little bit of diameter taken away from the pipe. It's not even noticeable.

Next is D, EMP dash eight four seven two, a resolution authorizing the city manager enter into agreement with Cogent Communications, communication for the provision of an internet circuit for the city's velocity broadband services.

So this is a request for dedicated internet circuit from Cogent. We have, our IT guys are coming up. We currently use Everstream and Crown Castle for our internet service. This is a request for redundant upstream connection. It's about $3,100 per month for three years. It's below the state term pricing, which was about $3,600 per month.

Any questions or comments, especially from the tech bros?

I knew that

was coming.

The next several items are there, so. All

right, the next one E TMP-eight 437, a resolution authorizing the city manager to advertise for bids and enter into a contract with the lowest and best bidder for labor and equipment to install and terminate aerial fiber cable for the fiber to the home project at a cost not to exceed $500,000 for a one year term.

And on this, I just want to say after our agenda meeting last week, I hope you all looked at that exhibit because I actually thought engineering did a really good job of showing each one of these next couple items. Do we have that up, Brian? Yeah, exhibit A right there, Brian. Contract diagram right there. So we'll reference this as you guys go through the item.

So this first request is for contract for labor and equipment for our aerial fiber and this is to run aerial fiber, which you can see from the diagram just kind of pull the pole in the air if you will. And this is to connect neighborhoods. So we will still be going out for bid for the larger neighborhoods and what this does is allow us to connect the dots between the neighborhoods. There's say like for example, Longstow Road, there's aerial, we would run aerial fiber to connect some of the neighborhoods there. And so it's not a single contract that we would let out.

It's on a per unit or per foot basis that we would award the contract. And these would be kind of as needed, if you will, type of arrangements with these contractors.

Kyle. Very excited. I

don't know if this is the exact one of these three ones asked this question on, but with the aerial fiber in situations where the house, it's all of its connections run aerial all the way to the house rather than going underground. Do we intend for the fiber to follow that same pattern or will we be doing underground conduit to the house?

In the majority of cases, we would follow that same path attached to the house at the same location and place our box exterior.

Are we adding any poles for this or using existing poles?

So in most cases, we would be using existing poles. At this time we've not identified any locations we would add a new pole.

Great.

The next one is FTMP-eight438 resolution authorizing the city manager advertise for bids and enter into a contract with the lowest and best bidder for labor and equipment to install and terminate underground fiber cable and conduit for the fiber to the home project at a cost not to exceed $1,000,000 for a one year term.

This is similar to the aerial except it's this is underground. So there's gonna be areas of town where need to go, where everything's underground. So this is really almost, these two kind of mirror each other once connecting pole to pole, and these are running underground, again, to connect some of the neighborhoods.

And I don't know if you'll have an exact number on this, but obviously generally we're trying to follow where the wires are already run. Do we know how much if any actual tunneling we're going to have to be doing or in majority of the cases are we able to follow conduit that's already underground in areas that are connected underground via telecom, cable, etcetera?

Typically we would follow existing utilities, whether it be electric or water sewer or whatnot. There are a few occasions like for example, where we'll cross a street where there may not be utilities there. Obviously, we still make note of that in our GIS so that way we can market as appropriate.

Next page already. GTMP-eight 439, a resolution authorizing the city manager to solicit qualified bidders and enter into professional services contract with up to three firms for the labor and equipment to install and terminate customer premise equipment for the provision of velocity broadband services at a total value not to exceed $1,000,000 for a one year term.

So this contract is for as it states more professional services. These are the folks that'll actually be inside the home doing the installations. And so we would like to contract with up to three vendors that will give us the flexibility in terms of one of the issues we've run into, I think we talked about this at the retreat maybe, but is availability of some of these vendors. And so by having three available to us, we can pick and choose which is most available. And then also we can kind of compare them against each other, if you will.

If one of them is by having multiple vendors available, if one of them is we're getting poor reports back that they're not doing quality work, we can stop giving them business, if you will, and use the other two as an example.

Yeah, just to kind of add to that, I think that all of these pieces of legislation really to give us a little more flexibility with how we can do several different tasks as it relates to the fiber to the home project all at the same time. So by having these things all in place, as Jeff had mentioned, if there are instances where we do have to switch to a different vendor or we have a big flurry of lots of installs that we have to do, I think we're projecting to be doing anywhere between 60 to 80 a week on occasion. So these things are going to come really quickly. So we need to make sure that we have vendors that are available to do these types of things, to do this kind of installation. So it's really going to help us to kind of have these contracts available to get these things done.

It goes to be the other items that we talked about too, all these different tasks and things that we've done on a much smaller scale right now. But obviously with the scale we're looking to do on the residential build, we need to have your authorization because it exceeds a certain dollar amount. That's the whole purpose with a whole flurry of these things, meaning we had one

piece

of legislation last week, which was the big one. These are the ones that will allow us to keep the project moving and connect everything together.

Just for everybody to know, Marshall has reviewed all of these because these aren't kind of like what normally do. We usually go with lowest and best bidder and we have one. So we went over all this, this whole team you're seeing in front of you. We sat for a couple hours and came up with this plan. I think it works good for the IT and BBB people. And also from the retreat, just again, Council wanted to try to move the fiber along and go from maybe a four year down to 3.5. And without disrupting the community stuff anymore, these are the ways that we can do that. So that's another kind of benefit that we're getting out of all this.

Next HTMP-eight 481 resolution authorizing the city manager to advertise for bids and enter into contracts with three firms for the North, Central and Southern portions of city for labor and equipment to install and terminate underground fiber and conduit for customers, customer laterals for the provision of velocity broadband services at a total value not to exceed $1,000,000 for a one year term.

This contract is for the, to run from the right of way or the street if you will to the house. And so we divided up, and there's a map in there, divided up the community into three segments. And so we're asking to allow us to enter in the contracts for the labor and equipment to install that, fiber run in the conduit from the right of way to the house.

This kind of area of discussion on the actual connection to the house from the pilot. I know we had had discussion prior about how houses have availability of Velocity Broadband and they request Velocity Broadband and the time between making that request and then installation. I think I remember the numbers off the top of my head. I should have brought them up. We had a bit of a discrepancy on, you know, how many we had requested versus installed.

Could you give me an update on those numbers if there is one? And just to follow-up on kind of do we have any learnings from the winter? Is there a period of time where we really just cannot install to the home because of the cold, the snow, what have you? And how does that line up with kind of the installation schedule for finishing up a neighborhood in the late fall going into winter and then we're gonna say, hey, you can sign up for Velocity Broadband, you're probably not actually going to be able to get Velocity Broadband until spring if that's something we might have learned.

So certainly to kind of touch on that especially with the pilot going later in the year, winter does impact us. Our crews, us included, we continue working outside as long as we can. So even when it's 10 degrees outside, we are working. As long as those conduits that are installed are not waterlogged or frozen, we can still get line in there up to the house. One key difference that we are changing as we move through this project as an industry historically, most ISPs will install this conduit from the right of way to the house after the prime contractor has put all of the conduit in and the fiber in along the street.

We're gonna take an approach to install that lateral once the conduit in front of that house has been complete and deemed acceptable. What that will allow us to do is essentially move this component of construction further or overlay it with the larger construction project along the street side. So that way once we place that fiber, we can immediately connect those homes in front of us that we've already brought this conduit to. It's a little bit different from everyone we've talked to. We've not gotten any pushback as to why we can't do it that way.

It's just not common because of the way other ISPs sub out the work. So with us managing that we can essentially we bring get it to a point where once we bring that fiber down the street and we place that splice closure which can happen within a couple days of each other, those residents that had already signed up will be connected instead of a couple weeks after.

Yes, thank you.

So you are saying you run it to the house first. So like if half of the neighborhood wants it, you run it to those homes and you're running it to the street and then they're connected?

Yes. Okay

and when we talked to the last session, I know we were looking at year two starting the summer to like next year. So are we anticipating getting year one completed by the summer?

That's our anticipation as well as bringing, again pulling year two as forward as we can.

Okay, well thank you very much. I think we're done with I'm sorry.

No, please.

I guess I did realize. So do you have now or in the future, can I get an update on those pilot numbers to what the take rate and actual installs are?

I think I just sent a month end report that you guys get.

Okay.

I sent that out yesterday. You should have those numbers quick. I think it went to communications. I think communications goes and distributes that probably this weekend. Okay, I might have

missed that. Thank you.

But I think the bottom line though is that obviously the really, really cold, the way it's been the last three weeks, it definitely slows things down. So hopefully we're on the other side of that but we shall see.

Okay, so it looks like everyone else read their emails but okay so you're done yeah I TMP eight thousand four and seventy nine a resolution supporting a technical correction for FY24 community project funds and company municipal water infrastructure improvements providing broader benefits to the city's water system, including the following projects Hudson Drive waterline, waterline at City Hall and new well at the water treatment plant.

So this relates to a discussion we had at the retreat. We went over the whole plan. We got a grant from Congresswoman Sykes office. It did not cover doing all of Nicholson. So we went to Nicholson and asked them if they wanted to be assessed for the difference. We needed a 60% to say yes in order to assess, we didn't even get percent. So at that point, we looked where could we do a technical correction. We came up with these three ideas at the retreat. Congresswoman Sykes' office had said just kind of get a consensus head nod, is counsel okay with doing the technical correction? When we communicated that back with them then they asked for formal legislation supporting the technical correction. So this is just the formal legislation supporting the technical correction.

Thank you. Jay, TMP eight thousand four eighty, a resolution authorizing advances of local taxes.

This is just something that the county requires that we pass every year. When the county collects the property taxes, they can advance that money to us. They don't hold all the money until final settlement they'll advance it. But we need to pass a resolution that permits them to advance it to us.

Okay, TMP-eight 482, resolution amending '20 five-fifty four, a three year contract for the summer fireworks in '25, '26 and 2027 and declaring an emergency.

We did a three year contract last year for the fireworks at twenty six thousand seven hundred and fifty. This year we're doing additional fireworks for the two hundred and fiftieth celebration. It's an extra $25,000 So we just need to amend the contract to get approval to spend that with them. We already have the money budgeted, we just need the contract amended.

Is that an additional night or the one night will be doubled?

One night will be doubled.

So it's like one night and it's gonna be

Yeah, we'll have it's like a festival this year. So there'll be a band, there'll be food trucks, there'll be more events for the children and then the fireworks will top it off and we're doing a two hundred and fiftieth display. We got on American Fireworks list last year.

Questions at all? L TMP-eight thousand four and ninety two, a resolution authorizing city manager to advertise for bids and enter into a contract with the lowest and best bidder for the gazebo legacy project and declaring an emergency.

We discussed this I think at last workshop, this is the gazebo project. It's currently on Let's Talk Hudson. It runs through February 15. It goes to Artboard tomorrow for them to take a look at the gazebo. But because of the time crunch with getting it done, we put it on here for bid and award too. We'll look to I think on Let's Talk Hudson some of major points were the wood benches in there, the wood railings, and then we're getting quite a few comments on that right now.

While he's pulling that up, we're still bringing this back to council. This is just the opportunity to go out to award, so we can get it going as quickly as possible.

So the big comments we're getting right now is this, they don't like the kind of the rod, the metal rod railing. They feel like that takes away from the historic feel of it, the wood and the benches aren't in there right now. This shows the benches not being in there. So we've talked about where we can we'll have to take a couple of them out because right now the opening isn't as big as so we're opening it up wider. Some will have to come out, but the ones we can leave in we talked to the architect today about leaving those in.

So we are still working on the design. It'll look pretty similar to this. We're also looking at does the railing need to go down the middle or can we put it on the side so that it opens up the middle. So we're going through all those points, trying to be responsive to the comments we're getting.

Is comments it that we're getting or is there actually like are people picking a certain style or?

We only put the one style out. We didn't give them a choice. The one question was do you support a change and it's still over 60% support a minimal change to the gazebo as it is. So they are supportive of a change, it's just they don't like some of them.

Have we heard from anybody representing people with disabilities regarding the lift versus a ramp?

We don't have that information yet, but we'll have it by the time we come back to council.

The next one is, Now we're moving on to legislation five, legislation for 02/17/2026 council meeting A is 25 dash one four six, an ordinance amending the official zoning district map of the city of Hudson in chapter twelve oh five, chapter twelve oh six and chapter twelve thirteen of the land development code to establish zoning District 11. Says here that scheduling a public hearing next week and staff requesting action to be held until March 3. So so we'll be voting on so to then if we agree with the staff's recommendation.

And Doctor. Bird real quick, just so council knows too, is next week's a dual meeting because you have the February off. So the public hearing will be in the council meeting and then you can discuss this in the workshop afterwards.

B is 20 six-thirteen and ordinance amending section 672.02 I six of the codified ordinances of the city of Hudson in order to prohibit the carrying seal handgun in city buildings. This is scheduled for a third reading and will be actionable on February 17. Next one is C 20 six-twenty one in ordinance amending section one plan submissions and general notes of chapter fourteen nineteen engineering standards for infrastructure construction of the building and housing code. This was discussed by Mr. Costco last week and it's scheduled for a second reading.

Oh no, talked to us a couple weeks ago. Second reading on February 17. D is TMP-eight thousand four and sixty five. That's the ordinance amending city council rules to define the role and duties of council liaisons. So I will make those adjustments pertaining to the sitting at the dais and that will be scheduled for a first reading next week.

Any other comment or any other additions for future agendas?

We will need to do something Arbor Day, I believe. I'm not sure if that's on the sixty day tracker proclamation for that, but

I'll look. With

It usually is, but I'll make sure.

Most likely need to do that in the March timeframe and with the February off, want to get that on the tracker.

Okay, number seven is adjournment. Is there a motion to adjourn?

Move we adjourn.

Second. Second. All in favor?

Aye. We

are done at twenty one point three three.